How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Don't think SB meant you specifically, RonKon.

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But ... you know, now that you mention it.... I AM going to start saying "I forgive you" to the Christians with whom I must constantly argue.

I forgive them for misquoting scientists I respect and butchering the actual teachings of science in order to build strawman arguments about science so they can go on telling me I'm the idiot for not accepting their magical fairytale version of the world.

I forgive them for spending time and effort misrepresenting atheists as immoral, amoral, and/or evil... especially when they compare us to horrible dictators like Stalin. That one takes a lot of forgiveness.

I forgive them for trying to legislate their religious doctrines into law, for trying to infiltrate school boards and courts of law and administrative offices through which they can impose their religion onto those who do not wish it.

I forgive them for trying to suggest that my Beloved not marry me, because I'm a nonbeliever, and for trying to tell me that they would interfere if I refused to teach my son the bigotry of Christianity, with regards to homosexuals and other religions.

I forgive them for using manipulative and deceptive tactics, with big, pretty graphs and charts, with their version of "teach the controversy" and relabeling Creationism into "intelligent design", which wastes the time of professors and scientists everywhere trying to keep America from falling completely into scientific illiteracy, with these Creationists willfully going around and Lying For Jesus™ in an attempt to convince people that science doesn't really know what it's talking about.

I forgive them for trying to be the bully about everything, by arrogantly proclaiming the most insane, untestable (or if testable, provably wrong) things as TheTruth™, as though force of personality/confidence could make things TheTruth™, and then when the atheists call them out on these basic facts, they turn around and either pretend THEY are the ones under attack (the Martyr Card), or they try to say that we are the arrogant ones for trying to use our "human brains with Man's Knowledge" (verbatim, what I have been told on numerous occasions).

I forgive them for the subjugation of women, for the psychological torment they have inflicted upon millions through the guilt game, and for targeting children and emotionally-distraught people, who do not have the skeptical defenses in place to call BS on the religion's insidious teachings, which wind their way into the mind and destroy the self-protective, skeptical parts of the brain, teaching people not to question too deeply, or teaching them to reject the questioner of that faith-tradition.

I forgive them for setting my planet back, technologically, by at least 1000 years (known as the Dark Ages), since I could be typing this from a colony on Kepler-186f, perhaps, had the flowering Greek and Persian traditions of rational thinking been crushed by the rise of theocratic feudalism.

Thank you for that. I can say that I forgive. I do forgive, and I try to forge friendships with people who still embrace such philosophies, after all the knowledge we have gained, after all the progress we have made in the REBIRTH (Re-Naissance) of reason, in the Enlightenment of mankind, after that long darkness imposed by religion on western civilization... I do forgive those who try to push us backward in time, or who cling desperately to the present against any progress, in the name of "faith". Yes, I can say it: I forgive you.

I forgive you. But I do not forget.


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