Better reasons to quit Christianity

[spockrates]

Private pastimes aside, it seems to me the no proof debate is a wash. Christians say atheists have no proof there is no God; atheists say Christians have no proof there is a God. I think there might be reasonable reasons to believe there is a God, just as there are reasonable reasons to believer there is not. But it's possible neither side meets the other side's burden of proof, I think. What do you think?

I say there is a god, he hates the very act of worship above all else and will send all christians to a specially created level hell worse than all other levels for this reason. Prove me wrong.

OK, I'm up for the challenge! But first I need to find out something: Did this God in whom you believe create the human race, or is he, she, or it only out to steal, kill and destroy?

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Spock, what you are talking about is highly metaphysical in nature, and as such, delves into uncertain uncertainties. Science just does not have the answer yet, but we're working on it. (Or, at least I am.)

Sweet! Dude, are you a physicist? Or are you searchin for the answer to the question from a different scientific approach?

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You seem to think that atheism is a belief that there is no god, whereas it is the lack of belief in a god.

Fascinating! Do you have a lack of belief in the idea that there is no God because you know the idea is true, or because you don't know the idea is true, or because you simply don't care whether the idea is true?

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Yes, but is it not also irrational to believe they don't? Since there is also no reason to believe souls don't exist? I'm thinking both beliefs are without reason, and so unreasonable. Perhaps the most reasonable position to take is to say that one does not know?

It is irrational not to doubt to the point of dismissal anything that has not been soundly demonstrated to be required to exist. This flows directly from the fact that the collection of equally plausible alternatives to that thing that exclude the said thing out number and out weigh the thing in question by an factor of infinity to one.

Yes, I agree. I'm just thinking doubt that a proposition is true is in no way proof that the proposition is false.

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And how do we handle the eyewitness accounts of those who have had near-death experiences, or those who claim to have seen, heard, or spoken to ghosts? Do we scoff at the idea simply because our experiences are not similar?

No, we scoff at the idea because it cannot be verified. Anecdotes are not evidence. If I told you that the almighty god Geoff appeared to me in a dream and told me to spread his word, would you believe me? No. I'm not giving babble coming out of the mouths of various cretins the same credibility as science.

If that is true, then a great many people are in prison (even on death row) for lack of any evidence. For in your view, isn't an eyewitness testimony no evidence at all? I'm not sure a jury of you peers would buy that one!

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OK. I used to be Evangelical, have considered becoming Catholic, but am investigating atheism before I make up my mind. Does that help?

This reply has the potential of being lenghy. Your statement above makes clearer your line of questioning in this and other threads. I don't understand the limitations you place on your quest.

Atheism is simply the rejection of all god claims. That's it, so I don't understand the Catholic or atheist choice. Are you simply wrestling with the existence of a god? This should be settled before deciding on a brand of religion.

If you decide on the idea of a god as the creator of the universe, how do you then limit your choice to just one of tens of thousands of Christian sects? What happened to all the other creation myths and associated religions? Why wouldn't a desitic position be acceptable if you choose to believe in a god creator?

This is where religion comes in. It's purpose is to tell you how to think about god, what creeds you must maintain for membership, how to treat fellow humans, how to interpret ancient testimony (ancient doesn't apply to Mormons or Scientologists, among others), how to vote (in many cases), what clothes are acceptable, what foods can be consumed, the list goes on. There are varying degrees amongst religions regarding this mind control.

I have difficulty understanding how educated adults can read The Bible or other ancient texts and not immediately dismiss them. To believe that these books are the inspired word of god takes a frightening level of credulity in the 21st century. There is then the argument that they aren't the inspired word of God and there are some good lessons to be learned. This requires an extrabiblical standard of good and bad, so then what need do I have of the Bible for morality if it is not the standard? It may contain excellent expositions of what we might call good, but it is not its source. Joining a particular Christian sect just shifts the standard to the person reading the text from a raised platform at the front of the room. I choose not to abdicate thinking about my existence to anyone, let alone someone that invokes books claimed to be inspired by god that were actually written by scientifically ignorant blood thirsty ancients.

I reject all god claims due to the lack of evidence. With god out of the way I reject all religions due to their lack of authority in matters of truth. I will consider specific religious tenants based on their adherence to reality. If someone can present evidence for god I will consider it. Even if god's existence were proved, assigning authorship of the Bible to this entity would be a herculean task.

Thanks for the advice, Cato. Please tell me: What evidence for the existence of God have you considered already?

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Coincidences are coincidences for a reason.

If I said, "someone is going to die today", that would be a factual statement based around knowledge that a large amount of people die every day. If I then went further to say, "someone will die today, but it will be because of war", it could turn out to be true or false, because war is fought all around the world, but in that one day not a single death could be caused because of it.

Spacecraft used to be incredibly high-risk flying containers. If I said, "someone is going to die in that particular spacecraft", there would be a high chance of that actually happening. But just because it might happen or does happen, doesn't mean anything metaphysical interfered to make it happen.

Yes, it might be a coincidence. But please consider the evidence: This was the first shuttle disaster. It took the NASA engineers who designed it completely by surprise. There were many safe missions flown prior to the disaster. My wife has lived 40 years. For all of the years prior to the disaster and all of the years after it, she has had no other experience of having a feeling of dreadful certainty that someone she did not know would die and when she would die and how she would die.

What are the odds that this experience that has happened only once in her life is a mere coincidence? Personally, I think it would take more faith for me to believe it was a coincidence than to believe it was not. And this is not a religious bias, for predicting the future is frowned upon by many Christians. Just using it as an example of why I don't automatically dismiss any occurance that is out if the ordinary. The character and state of mind of the person having the experience should be considered, as well as the circumstances surrounding that experience.

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And how do we handle the eyewitness accounts of those who have had near-death experiences, or those who claim to have seen, heard, or spoken to ghosts? Do we scoff at the idea simply because our experiences are not similar?

Do we take into account of diagnosed shizophrenics about voices speaking to their heads telling them to hurt themselves and sometimes others? If no, why should we take into account a person that due to trauma, the brain is not working properly? Its not scoffing, its knowing the human mind, the little we know.

As to ghosts, when I was a kid, I was walking through an old abandoned house, reputed as being haunted, a flash of light from a window scared the shit out of me. I truly believed at that time it was a ghost of somekind, yet, I wasn't satisfied. The next day I repeated my path, and saw the phenomena repeated itself. Hmmm. I gained entrance to the house and discovered a mirror that was in such an angle that reflected a street light at the distance (those times they were white) when I was passing by.

I used science, and it works bitches!

Yes, but see my post about my wife's experience and my recent reply to MO regarding the same.

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Private pastimes aside, it seems to me the no proof debate is a wash. Christians say atheists have no proof there is no God; atheists say Christians have no proof there is a God. I think there might be reasonable reasons to believe there is a God, just as there are reasonable reasons to believer there is not. But it's possible neither side meets the other side's burden of proof, I think. What do you think?

I think you do not understand burden of proof, despite it being explained to you numerous times in several threads (including this one).

For one who claims to love logic, you should know this.

Please see my post about the informal logical fallacy of making an inference from ignorance and explain how it does not apply.

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Let's put it this way: My wife is the most skeptical and logical person I know. She never talks about the paranormal. Yet, the day she watched a news program about the first teacher to take a ride in to space in the space shuttle, she turned to her mother and said, "Mom, I know she is going to die." That shuttle exploded on take off.

Too bad you and she did not take it serously then. if you had made an effort you might have saved the lives of seven people...or at least have it on record that you tried. Have you heard of the Jeane Dixon effect? It refers to Jeane Dixon's many failed predictions being ignored while her few correct ones made her the world's most famous psychic.

People sometimes get premonitions, a strong feeling about a future event. They are usually wrong, but some of them will occasionally be right. Based on a single incident, there's nothing mysterious about your wife's experience: she had a premonition that turned out to be correct. It's not like the odds of a rocket crashing are a million-to-one. And note that your wife didn't predict THAT. If the teacher had died in a car crash or had a stroke or was shot, you would still take the prediction as fulfilled. The less specific the prediction, the more likely it is to be fulfilled by chance.

If premonitions turned out to be true 25% of the time, I would take them seriously. It isn't nearly that close.

So what does this mean? Was she crazy? No, the proof was in the tragedy. Was she lying? She is actually the most honest person I know (I should know, because I've been married to her for many years). She has a type A personality, and would rather confront someone and die, than tell a lie. So how did she know? I don't know. I just know she did, and I cannot deny the evidence.

How does lying enter into it? You give the impression that you were there at the time, so you would be in a position to know firsthand what your wife said, and the only way she could be lying is if she believed the teacher wouldn't die and said she would anyway. Now if Christa McAuliffe were alive today, you would probably have forgotten the incident by now and certainly wouln't bring it up. No lying or craziness, just a very human tendency to count the hits and ignore the misses.

Does this prove there are ghosts? No. But it does prove to me that there are experiences others have that I have never had that cannot be denied as genuine.

Genuine in the sense that all involved were sincere, or genuine in that it was genuinely paranormal? I have had strange experiences myself, including two 'ghostly ones', but I tend to examine such things closely: one was an accidentally-formed illusion, the other fits the profile of a night terror.

So when someone talks about an experience he has had which seems remarkable to me, and I know that person to be sincere and sane, I hesitate to brush off what he says.

When my aunt tells me not to touch the stove because it's hot, I don't touch it. She is sincere and sane, and I hesitate to brush off what she says...and she is in a position to know if the stove is hot. But if she told me not to touch it because it contained a spirit which would destroy my soul, I would (perhaps cautiously, given her previous reliability) have to verify it for myself, starting by finding out why she believes that. Sincere and sane people can be fooled, misperceive, or have strange beliefs. One hallucination doesn't mean you're insane. People have been investigating these things scientifically--the only reliable tool we have to find out if a phenomena is real or not--for over a hundred years without being able to verify a single case that is what it appeared at first to be.

Next to hearsay, eyewitness testimony is the worst kind: a dozen people at a scene will give you a dozen versions of what happened. We miss things, we misinterpret things, we make mistakes; and we are more likely to do all three when frightened. We're wired to be more likely to attribute agency to events than to think they're random because even though people likely to dismiss a rustle in the grass as the breeze will be right more often than people who are more likely to think it's a dangerous predator, the person who is usually right is still more likely to get eaten, 'cause they only have to be wrong once.

Knowing that people have hallucinations, knowing that people sometimes think they're awake when they're still dreaming, knowing that our eyes can play tricks on us, knowing that other people can play tricks on us, knowing that many times it has been shown that something that at first seemed supernatural turned out to be mundane, knowing that everyone who has tried to prove the reality of paranormal phenomena has failed...is it really that reasonable to accept someone's account of an incident that would be at odds with what we already know about the natural world (like how we can know things) at face value?

Think about the implications. If your wife had stopped McAuliffe from boarding the shuttle: Her prediction would have been wrong (assuming you didn't get one of those twist endings where she falls into a wood chipper or something to fulfill the prophecy, since your wife didn't say how McAuliffe would die). However, there was nothing really your wife could have done, so the information was useless, except as a story to tell later, I suppose. But if her information really came from the future, you and she were affected by something that hadn't happened yet. You seem to think that something like God is needed as a terminus for an otherwise infinite chain of cause-and-effect, but you don't even believe that causes must precede effects because you believe in a case where the effect (the premonition) preceded the cause (the crash). If effects can precede causes, the chain of causality can start that way: an effect that preceded a cause, making an ultimate cause unnecessary.

I'm not going to go down those rabbit holes based on anecdotal evidence.

Please see my reply to MO regarding my wife.

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Let's put it this way: My wife is the most skeptical and logical person I know. She never talks about the paranormal. Yet, the day she watched a news program about the first teacher to take a ride in to space in the space shuttle, she turned to her mother and said, "Mom, I know she is going to die." That shuttle exploded on take off.

So what does this mean? Was she crazy? No, the proof was in the tragedy. Was she lying? She is actually the most honest person I know (I should know, because I've been married to her for many years). She has a type A personality, and would rather confront someone and die, than tell a lie. So how did she know? I don't know. I just know she did, and I cannot deny the evidence.

Does this prove there are ghosts? No. But it does prove to me that there are experiences others have that I have never had that cannot be denied as genuine. So when someone talks about an experience he has had which seems remarkable to me, and I know that person to be sincere and sane, I hesitate to brush off what he says.

Coincidence.

Let me tell YOU a little story. I'm an avid poker player. One time, I found myself in a hand heads up with a friend. The game was no-limit Texas hold'em and we were all-in on the flop with two cards to come.

(If you are not familiar with the game, we each had two hole cards, and there were three exposed community cards on the board. The combination of one's hole cards and the community cards make your hand. As we were all-in (all of the money was in the pot), no further betting would occur).

We turn over our hands, and I see that I am WAY ahead - the only way that my opponent can win is if the two cards to come are either the two remaining nines in the deck, or two spades.

I do not often do this, but this particular time, I called for the dealer to deal the worst possible card for my hand (i.e. the one card that would give my opponent the best chance of beating me, even though the odds would still be slim): the nine of spades. All in the interest of keeping things interesting.

The nine of spades came on the next card. So the sensible thing to do is to call for the least likely card that could beat me: the nine of hearts. Which, by the way, also came.

Improbable things happen, and absent any kind of corroborating evidence that there's something supernatural occuring, I see no reason to chalk such happenings up to anything other than coincidence.

Please see my reply to MO regarding this.

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You were a devout Pentecostal who read the King James Version of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but you could not understand it.

Very uncharitable of you and arrogant, too. I hoped I did not understand it. Turns out I understood it fine. Not looking good.

So you tried reading a more modern version. You then became what you call an agnostic theist, but (for reasons not explained) could no longer believe the Bible was inspired. You were gullible and interested in all things fantastic--UFOs, Nessie, hauntings, Yettie and the like. Then you became more skeptical and open minded. A teacher of your made a fool of himself trying to defend his liberal, Orthodox Christian beliefs. So you decided a closed mind was more rational.

I hoped I was misunderstanding you, too, but again I was wrong. You are just a troll. Yawn. Really though, it's a compliment. It means I don't think you're really stupid enough to sincerely conclude that I decided a closed mind was more rational. You're just baiting me.

The proper application of the burden of proof that you learned in a class on logic was also helpful. The class taught you that you should believe nothing until it meets that burden of proof. You then made up your mind to not even provisionally consider God as a possibility.

I really didn't expect you to give up the game so early. On the off chance that you're really this dense, I still consider God as a possibility. If that's what you really think, so much for your reading comprehension.

The whole trip took you 20 years without the aid of the Internet.

Does that pretty much sum it up?

In a way that demonstrates you're wasting both your time and mine, I suppose. Good to know. B'bye.

Please go back and read you first post to me and explain how I misquoted you. If I have misunderstood you, then I owe you a sincere apology for misunderstanding.

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Thank you everyone for replying. It will take some time to respond to every one, but I hope to do so soon. What I'm hearing are three main reasons for me to quit Christianity, which are ( in order of popular vote):

1. There's no reason to restrict my behavior
2. There is no God
3. There is no soul that survives the body after death, and so, no judgement for one's behavior