Pull up a chair

[max-greece]

How easily you “free” thinkers avoid challenges to your atheistic worldview by falling back on your irrelevant clichés. Let’s count those made since my last post, shall we?

OK - lets go!

1) There is no evidence. For general revelation, the whole of reality is the evidence from which we deduce a basic understanding of the Divine. For special revelation, the various artifacts, and accounts serve as the subjects for interpretation and dispute. Asserting that there is no evidence is simply wrong. The only questions are whether the evidence applies and how strong that evidence is.

I take it that means you are happier with the statements: 1/ The evidence presented is not applicable and, 2/ The evidence is weak.

OK - I'm happy with that - how does it help your case exactly?

2) You assume the conclusion in advanceEvery hypothesis is an advanced conclusion for which you test. Positing divine action in the beginning is no guarantee of the final interpretation. Some miracles prove to be naturally occurring or fraudulent. That is not to say that some believers search for and cling to anything they feel supports their hope. This fault also applies to atheists that instantly dismiss any supernatural claim because it does not fit within a naturalistic paradigm.

Except that when we are dealing with something that by its nature is not provable assuming God exists will never yield a negative answer as it is impossible to prove a negative. That is why the default has to be no God with the onus of proof being on the claimant - or theist in this case.

3) The original Christians weren’t very bright, i.e “primitive goatherders”.Clearly some members of the early Christian community were highly literate and educated, a rarity for the times, since they produced written accounts. Anyone that argues that Saint Paul wasn’t very bright cannot be taken seriously.

Paul wasn't a goat-herder. There is more of a question as to whether he actually existed at all. Apparently several of his "letters" are disputed in terms of their actual authors and origins.

4) The many ‘conflicting’ religious traditions proves they are all bullshit.There is some truth to this, but not much. For nearly all major religions and the late pagan ones, the results of general revelation are overall consistent. Moreover, the mystical traditions within each religion tend to converge on key concepts, like Huxley’s “perennial philosophy”. With respect to special revelation my own denomination is very ecumenical, focusing on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. What people do with their beliefs is much more important than the beliefs themselves. An atheist that rails against “In God We Trust” is being every bit as much of an asshole as a loudmouthed bible-thumper.

I'm glad you see some truth to it although I would dispute the "not much." Enough for those of differing beliefs to go to war on a regular basis. Of course, this is glossing over the fact that often-times those wars are between different factions of the same religion. I imagine you never visited Ireland during "the troubles" for example.

5) Religious believers resort to special pleading.It is not special pleading to approach something according to the nature of the thing under consideration. When it comes to God, He is not just another thing within a world of things, but is the One that serves as the very basis for and unity of the plurality.

Special pleading does come in where Christians (and others) attempt to come up with logical proofs of their faith citing all encompassing rules which handily bypass their creator. The cosmological argument is a typical example.

Please. Atheist twaddle is SO annoying.

Odd then that theists are so unable to address it.