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RE: What's the best way to shut up a theist?
April 8, 2014 at 10:25 am
Some you will never "shut up". However, you can cause cognitive dissonance if not with them, a bystander reader. I never get caught up with assuming it is important to convince that person on the spot. Long term you can plant the seed of doubt, sometimes in them, but for all who may read it regardless if they respond in that post.
A couple of tactics I like to use are as follows.
1. Take their own words and use them against them.
For example,
Theist "The Koran says in this verse, "Allah is the one true God"
You come back with.
"Yahweh is the one true God. The God of the Bible is the one true God. Vishnu is the one true God. Does this make sense to you?"
Basically repeat the same sentence with their words and repeat it with different god/s inserted. The point is to get them or a reader to think if they would buy their own argument if someone of a different god claim were using the same tactic.
The other argument I use is combined with that.
Something like, "Does a hurricane need Poseidon to occur? Does lightening need Thor to happen? Was gravity invented by Allah? Quoting a holy book does not make the god real anymore than you believe in Allah because someone quotes the Koran"
It won't shut everyone up you run into. But causing cognitive dissonance does work and many former believers who are now atheists went through this process.
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RE: What's the best way to shut up a theist?
April 8, 2014 at 10:38 am
(April 8, 2014 at 9:48 am)Confused Ape Wrote: I didn't say that. I was replying to Zid and my post got messed up.
I knew it was Zid's comment, I just didn't notice that your name was in the quote box. Thanks for the heads up, I edited the post.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: What's the best way to shut up a theist?
April 15, 2014 at 9:44 pm
The debate is going excellent.
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RE: What's the best way to shut up a theist?
April 22, 2014 at 10:20 pm
Sew their mouth shut.
freedomfromfallacy » I'm weighing my tears to see if the happy ones weigh the same as the sad ones.
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RE: What's the best way to shut up a theist?
April 23, 2014 at 9:17 am
Either a head shot or decapitatition.
Or is that zombies......
I can never remember the difference.
If you're not supposed to ride faster than your guardian angel can fly then mine had better get a bloody SR-71.