RE: Why the religious will never admit you won the argument (and why they don't care)
June 17, 2016 at 6:26 pm
(June 17, 2016 at 4:27 pm)SteveII Wrote: You certainly are painting with a broad brush.Thank you for your message, I will answer you point by point:
1. What is obviously untrue about the NT?
2. I have an excellent understanding of critical thinking and a very good understanding of the scientific method, logic and reasoning. Are this things supposed to prevent my belief in God? What is a "very narrow view of science"?
3. Are you a well-informed atheist? There really aren't logical fallacies in those arguments you are talking about. The only one's who think there are logical fallacies are atheists that keep telling each other that. Most of these arguments are centuries old and philosophers would have dismissed them long ago if that were the case.
4. Do you know how life on earth came about? I wasn't aware that anyone knew.
5. You mistake "nones" for those without a belief. Those are people who do not identify with an organized religion but very much believe in something. You should be looking for population stats on atheists. They are are still struggling.
6. Opinion that is only even remotely true if you through in muslim terrorism. Painting with a broad brush again.
It would be nice if you could give concrete examples why you don't think I am correct instead of remaining vague and generalizing almost everything.
1. I assume NT means New Testament? The numerous contradictions between the gospel accounts for a start. Then there's the lack of ANY historical evidence outside of the Bible for the life of Jesus (the one single passage in Josephus is considered by scholars to have been a fake.)
2. Yes, this is a generalization - for example many Christians and Muslims disbelieve evolution, but anyone who has studied evolution knows that it is a fact, the term 'theory' in science has a different meaning and does not mean 'hypothesis'. Logically it is unreasonable to believe that a God exists until it has been demonstrated to exist, and since no demonstration has been made, it's an unreasonable position. However, most people don't think about it that seriously.
3. I wish they had been dismissed long ago, since they have all been repeatedly debunked. They aren't the real reasons most people hold on to their beliefs anyway, which is why most religious people don't really care that they are debunked. But they are false - name any one and I will show you.
4. I have an understanding of what science currently holds as the best explanation for the origins of life and the evolution of life to its present form - and enough to know that, for example, Creationism is utter garbage.
5. I put this down to the fact that we are still in the dark ages of civilization, still racked with superstition and only half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee... but for people who actually care about whether what they believe is true regardless of whether it is what they want to believe or what would be nice to believe, then we have some hope.
6. Concrete examples of harm caused by religion I assume you mean? Excluding Islamic Jihad? Ok:
- The Catholic Church - sheltering pedophile priests from legal justice; allying with the Nazi party and fascism in the 20th Century - the Konkordat; their stance on abortion and contraception in AIDs riddled Africa saying condoms are worse than AIDs or that they help spread it.
- The Archbishop of Cantebury, the Pope and other religious leaders world wide who, when people were murdered on the streets of Paris, said the problem was with Blasphemy - for SHAME.
- Christians in the USA trying to teach Intelligent Design psydoscientific creationist garbage to children in schools
- The forced genital mutilation of children in Jewish and Muslim communities
- Homophobia of the kind that inspires a repressed homosexual to shoot up a gay club, of which religion is the main source...
Need I go on?