Why Richard Dawkins should debate Christians

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1. In order for someone to believe in the supernatural they must experience it firsthand.
2. In the cases where people experience the supernatural firsthand they are not actually experiencing the supernatural.

It looks like you’ve created a nice little vicious circle there.

Nice try, but I never asserted #1 and, therefore, the premise of #2 is faulty.

I have said, and maintainted that it is unreasonable, and dangerous, to believe in the supernatural without verification.

Since you have already stated that you do not believe firsthand supernatural encounters are acceptable as verification, but since you have also asserted that you were open-minded on this subject before you arrived at your current conclusion, what form of verification would you accept (if you were indeed open-minded you must accept the possibility of some form of verification rather than ruling out the possibility of the supernatural ahead of time and then asserting that the supernatural doesn’t exist)?

I gave you a perfect example of verification with my discovery of bigfoot analogy. Once again, however, I guess I must clarify the obvious.

The human mind can and does play tricks on people. That's why people see things that aren't there, hear voices, and imagine that they are capable of things that they clearly are not capable of.

Speaking of hearing voices, I've always wondered why people take orders from voices in their head, as many people have blamed horrible crimes on "voices" that instructed them to commit these acts. The idea of doing something merely because I've been told to makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

Clearly, however, you would be one that disagrees.

Reasonable verification is simply some form of tangible proof.

As an example, a neighbor of mine recently claimed he saw a car speeding through the neighborhood in the middle of the night completely on fire. He was so convinced that he contacted the police and woke up a number of us neighbors to report this unusual event.

However, the police searched for evidence and found none. No physical evidence, no corroborating testimony, and not a single similar report anywhere in the area.

After the police had a lengthy discussion with my neighbor, he himself concluded that he must have imagined the whole thing despite the fact that it all seemed very real to him.

That's what responsible people do, they put their delussions to an evidentiary test. This type of response to amazing or supernatural event prevents a potentially far more dangerous level of psychosis from setting in.

Scripture doesn’t practice wild speculation about the supernatural; rather it gives accounts and details of specific supernatural events that have occurred throughout our redemptive history.

I will very easily prove this entire theory of yours to be false:

Joshua 10:13
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.

Clearly this event never happened, and even a delussional spiritual person, with some limited capacity to reason, would have to concede this.

This scripture assumes that the sun moves around the earth, which science has proven beyond debate is simply not the case. The story also fails to recognize the fact that the sun holding the same position in the sky would mean that the earth stopped spinning, and that would be cataclysmic.

Now that we know for a fact that this event could never have happened, we can also conclude that this story was invented around the speculation that the earth was the center of the Universe, and that everything in the sky was merely there to complement earth.

So there you have it: A bullshit story and wild speculation. No history involved.

They are not both inventions; that’s merely one reason why the analogy fails. Why is the existence of God farfetched? Simply because you say it is?

Because he cannot be verified? How is that still a point drilling on the outside of your skull?

That’s quite the position to hold…

Yeah, requiring proof is such a ridiculous standard to have.

You have a deductive or inductive argument(s) that proves my God doesn’t exist? To say I am intrigued would be an understatement, please present me with it!

Inductive:

Jesus "said" that he would return within a century.
He's 19 centuries overdue.
Jesus does not have the divine power he claimed to have.

Deductive:

The planet is 4.5 billion years old
The Bible proposes a world history of about 12000 years max.
Therefore, the god of the Bible is made up.

We could go on and on with this, as the Bible, the stories within it, and indeed the Christian concept of god, are all outdated and proven to be lies and plagiarisms.

If there is one thing this discussion has brought to light, it is that I am certainly not the naïve one in this conversation.

Says the guy who believes in Santa Clause... errr... I mean Jehova. Is it really your contention that praying to an invisible man isn't naive?

Really?

Case and point, you just asserted that you have carefully considered both sides of the argument; this seems to imply that there is neutral ground on which a person can stand in order to do this consideration from. Since you claim you are not naïve on such matters; then are you not fully aware that neutral ground on such matters is logically impossible? Why would you assert you carefully considered both sides of the argument when you were sophisticated enough to know that a person cannot possibly do this without assuming one of the two sides is correct ahead of time? Bewildering.

All non-sense. Not a single piece of sound logic in that entire assessment.

Now are you really going to claim you do not have any faith either?

Sure, I have faith, but it's based on logic and reason. I have faith that my daughter will perform well in sports, but I base that on the amount of preparation, focus, and in no small part, her track record.

Your faith, however, is loosely based on word of mouth and terribly inconsistent and impractical books.

Your faith is baseless. Mine is reasonable. Big difference.

I can’t wait for you to join us.

Rejoin, you mean, and that would be redundant. You, on the other hand, are well on your way to where I am. You invited that outcome the moment you thought it was a good idea to mix it up with Atheists.

Only a matter of time.

An open mind is logically impossible because it assumes neutrality is possible. What are we trying to accomplish? I was never made purvey to our goal here!

To help you with your delussion, of course. Duh!