Are Religions/Religious Arguments Complicated Because...

[Rev. Rye]

Personally, I think they're complicated because believers and non-believers aren't thinking on the same level - and neither really understands the other.

That's the essential reason I believe arguments for and against the existence of God are ultimately just exercises in mental masturbation: the minds of theists and atheists seem to be operating so differently that they may as well be working on different planes of reality. I once debated with a theist on abortion, and he simply couldn't understand why I couldn't just believe a priori that abortion should be illegal, even if it is necessary to save the mother's life, and I can't understand how he can deny that every reputable current medical authority considers life to end with the end of brain activity. Not that he disagreed with me that life ends with the brain stops; he disagreed with me that it's commonly accepted; he didn't even give a dissenting authority. Furthermore, he couldn't process that posting graphic photos of aborted fetuses (it actually took 600 posts before it came to that, possibly an internet record) is just as a blatant appeal to emotion, possibly more so, than linking to a testimony by a doctor who had to fix the results of back-alley abortions in the days before Roe v. Wade (after all, arguments about morality need emotion to go anywhere). And I can't understand why he can't take the logic of "pictures of aborted fetuses are unpleasant, therefore, abortion should be made illegal" to its logical conclusion of "pictures of open-heart surgery are unpleasant to look at, therefore, open-heart surgery should be made illegal."

Simply put, arguments will not be likely to win converts either way because theists and atheists are on a totally different wavelength.