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The whole Darwin argument has always bothered me. We have a fossil record. Why is it none of them show, say, a chicken head with the body of a lizard? How come in the millions of years this is supposed to have taken, that nothing was ever caught in the *embarrassing* state of leaving their genome family behind, to become a different species altogether on them? You know, sort of like a horse all chagrined because he suddenly has the stripes of a zebra, and he really would have preferred plaid if a change was mandatory; that sort of thing. Peace
Know what else the fossil record shows? No bunny rabbits at the same level as t-rex.
So did god really create everything in a couple days or are you going to use the 'day of gods is like a thousand year bs excuse?'
Some atheists really do a disservice to their cause when they try to argue atheism by attacking the Bible.
They dispute "facts" supposedly found in one book.
One LITTLE book!
That's no different than trying to argue for atheism by disputing "facts" found in the stories of Norse Mythology. And you are just as ineffective when you try to do that with the Bible.
It doesn't matter that a lot of people still believe in the Bible stories. There is zero effect in trying to argue reality based on the claims in the stories inside a book. Zero.
On the other hand, it's more difficult to defend atheism from a philosophical standpoint. You could not have won the argument with someone like Plato.
What do you think?
I think you haven't made a very clear or strong argument.
You say atheists look crazy when they use the bible as an argument.
So are theists equally crazy when they use the bible as an argument?
...as would I have known about it had I grown upwhen it was going on, like your Dad did.The point I was trying to get you to see was that, like the people you mentioned, I wasn't born when it was going on. I was born 5 years later, after the dust had settled and, as I was growing up, up to about the age of about 15 years, I had no understanding of it or interest in it.
...and how do we know that the parent and grandparents of the people on that list gave true and accurate descriptions of the events...because what you are doing now is delving into the realm of 'hearsay'.
Yes indeed....speculation old horse. It's not a bit of good and as such we have to work on the premise of.... 'If we ain't got it and we've never seen it, we must assume that it isn't and never was there.'
...but it should be of interest my dear old toad...because if the tales of the disciples are wrong, why can't the tales of Jesus be wrong?
Why bother??? Because what is true and what is false is important ...and when you blatantly say "...you probably haven't bothered to study every single aspect of all the various Christian sects, because it's not going to change what you already believe to be true, is it?..." it tells us that you are simply not interested in what is true but only what you believe to be true and that no other thing is going to change your belief, even if that other thing IS true - and that is indeed an appalling confession. It is the very thing that you theists are so fond of labelling we atheists with...... closed- mindedness.
The difference is that in my case (and MOST of the evangelicals) it's not a belief in the sense of a mere mental assent to an idea or set of doctrines I perceive to be true and therefore my mindset is unchangeable, but rather the fact that at it's foundation is a spiritual experience that created a new human condition in me, that of no longer just being man, but man with the Spirit of G-d dwelling inside, that makes my equal and corresponding mindset, unchangeable in the face of this new circumstance I find myself in.
This fact is provable, demonstrable, measurable, through the gifts of that Spirit, that have continued to operate for the last 32 years. When something is written and decided upon for whatever reason to be untrue, in the face of proof such as I have dwelling within me and manifesting through me, and to me, it would be illogical for me to deny what is written that lines up with my experience, solely based upon what I THINK (even if it should differ, which it doesn't), rather than what I KNOW by experience, every single day since.
And in case you didn't know, let's not assume that anything I read or anything anyone said to me is responsible for this change, because I had NEVER read the book before I had the experience that changed me overnight, and I can assure you that nothing anyone could have said would have changed me. I was an agnostic non-practicing Jew until I was 30 years of age. The book merely defined the experience I had just had. That's the "root", the rest are really, the "leaves", and as with all trees they go through seasons of some change, but the root does not change. Peace
The difference is that in my case (and MOST of the evangelicals) it's not a belief in the sense of a mere mental assent to an idea or set of doctrines I perceive to be true and therefore my mindset is unchangeable, but rather the fact that at it's foundation is a spiritual experience that created a new human condition in me, that of no longer just being man, but man with the Spirit of G-d dwelling inside, that makes my equal and corresponding mindset, unchangeable in the face of this new circumstance I find myself in.
You can dress it up in as many words as you like but if any atheist on this board told you the same regarding non-belief, you and yours would be screaming that they were closed-minded at the top of your voice.
You can dress it up in as many words as you like but if any atheist on this board told you the same regarding non-belief, you and yours would be screaming that they were closed-minded at the top of your voice.
Quite. I think he lives in a dream world as great as the flat one that little witness lives on. Frightening!! We're sure going to have a laugh about this in July my dear old scroat.
Well logically what separates christian belief from other beliefs is basically what is detailed in the bible, the combination of old and new testament.
So this means the merits of Christian beliefs rests on the validity of the bible.
In turn this means that in order for christian beliefs to be true, the claims of the bible must be true.
To this end we can state a logical i.e. "God exists." or "The bible is true." These are either false or true. There is no continuous scale in between these two discrete answers, these claims are both positive claims.
By "positive claim" it's not meant as something "good" but rather a logical of existence.
for example
Positive claim: "There is a housefly in my kitchen" Negative claim: "There is no housefly in my kitchen"
The Positive claim is easily proven by walking into the kitchen and observing that there is clearly a housefly buzzing in the middle of it.
The negative claim cannot be proven. If we assume that a housefly will always be seen when in sight, but that kitchens always have corners, drawers and cupboards which we cannot observe all simultaneously. This in turn means that no matter which part of the kitchen you are looking for the housefly in, the housefly can be somewhere else in the kitchen.
Hence the burden of proof is always on the positive claim such as "God exists" or "Event X is accurately described by bible", "A housefly exists in my kitchen".
The negative claim of "There is no god" can never be proven, and therefore defers to its positive opposite for proof.
Another popular way of describing the same thing is the impossibility in dis-proof of many positive claims, such as "God exts" etc.
This would in our example above mean dis-proving that there is a housefly in the kitchen, which again is impossible under the same assumptions and logic as proving the negative claim "There is no housefly in my kitchen".
Therefore the logical conclusion on the "god-problem" should be agnostic atheism for anyone regardless of previously experienced "teachings" on the matter.
The difference is that in my case (and MOST of the evangelicals) it's not a belief in the sense of a mere mental assent to an idea or set of doctrines I perceive to be true and therefore my mindset is unchangeable, but rather the fact that at it's foundation is a spiritual experience that created a new human condition in me, that of no longer just being man, but man with the Spirit of G-d dwelling inside, that makes my equal and corresponding mindset, unchangeable in the face of this new circumstance I find myself in.
This fact is provable, demonstrable, measurable, through the gifts of that Spirit, that have continued to operate for the last 32 years. When something is written and decided upon for whatever reason to be untrue, in the face of proof such as I have dwelling within me and manifesting through me, and to me, it would be illogical for me to deny what is written that lines up with my experience, solely based upon what I THINK (even if it should differ, which it doesn't), rather than what I KNOW by experience, every single day since.
And in case you didn't know, let's not assume that anything I read or anything anyone said to me is responsible for this change, because I had NEVER read the book before I had the experience that changed me overnight, and I can assure you that nothing anyone could have said would have changed me. I was an agnostic non-practicing Jew until I was 30 years of age. The book merely defined the experience I had just had. That's the "root", the rest are really, the "leaves", and as with all trees they go through seasons of some change, but the root does not change. Peace
You seem to be under the impression that the purpose of the argument is to deconvert you. The value of the discussion is to present to other readers the arguments made on both sides and see which sounds (the term 'crazy used in the OP is to pejorative to be usefully applied) the best supported.
To say (eventually) that one is convinced on faith and they are not really interested in the evidence only helps us.
There are a few things that may make atheists look crazy. Zombie -Jesus parades, the FSM cult, Bahomet statues (it really was rather nice..well lit, too), court cases about sweet little old ladies who run cafes.... I had some doubts about Dawkin's atheist advert on buses. But there is either an intent behind it (challenging singular Christian privileges with spoof religions and statues of gods that we don't believe in either) and various gambits to see what works. I can understand the idea behind "Brights" and Sam Harris suggesting we change the name 'Atheists' to something else. But it's not for me.It's too deceptive in intent, too much like being ashamed of what we are. It's too much like evasion to give the other side even to the ghost of a chance to sneer at us. It's perception of atheists that needs to be changed, not our label. I reckon the Atheist TV show was he best ploy ever. I wish there could be atheist TV shows in every city.
Of course, the theist apologetic misrepresentations of atheism to make it look absurd, illogical or immoral are simply misrepresentations, done deliberately to smear.
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Peace
