What are some good checkmate arguments against religion?

[RobbyPants]

I don't know of any big checkmate arguments. Especially since religious people will obviously twist christianity into whatever way they need to conform to their beliefs without abandoning it.

Yeah, there is frequently a difference between what Christians will say to each other and what they say when skeptics are around. There's another site I frequent, and I'll share Frank's views on this:

Does anyone here know anything about Christianity or Islam? Is God* supposed to be interacting with us in a meaningful way?


*the name may vary?

That depends on whether you're talking about what they actually say to each other and believe or whether you're talking about the "sophisticated theology" that they trot out when trying to win arguments against atheists. In their actual theologies, their God is in fact an active participant. Not just in the personal lives of individual believers, but in the day to day workings of literally every single thing everywhere. That is what expressions like "God willing" mean. The idea that God personally fucks with absolutely everything all the time and is in fact omnipresent and omnipotent and every single thing that ever happens no matter how inconsequential or important is in fact directly caused by God. So anything that happens, or could happen in the future, happens only because it is the Will of God that such a thing happens.

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Now, you may have noticed that if that were true that you're living in a Skinner Box crafted by someone who literally knows every single thing you would choose when presented with any possible set of stimuli and crafts literally every piece of stimuli you experience for the express purpose of eliciting such a response. And while such a thing is not logically impossible or anything (albeit kind of depressing to contemplate), it is logically incompatible with any meaningful amount of the "free will" that Abrahamic religions constantly wank to. And the moment some Atheist points that out, the Christians and Muslims start busting out the "sophisticated theology".

The difference between regular theology (the actual crap they actually believe) and sophisticated theology is that the sophisticated theology is created for the purpose of being hard to refute by sophisticated people. That means that God instantly stops being a giant bearded leprechaun in the sky that has real effects in the real world and would thus be in some way testable to being a "God of the Gaps". That is: God stops having any and all traits that are in any way falsifiable and the things he (or possibly "it" depending on how "sophisticated" we're getting) controls or even effects are relegated to crap that is for whatever reason currently outside the reach of observation.

So while the actual theology version of God is someone who is a giant glowing bearded White dude who is going to purge the Earth in the "very near future" and lead all of his followers into a giant zombie dance (which is why Christians and Muslims have to be buried whole, so they can be backup dancers during the giant Thriller remake in the very near future), the "sophisticated" version of God only ever did or does anything very long ago, very far away, or in a manner so subtle or tiny that it is completely indistinguishable from not existing at all.

And no, I don't actually think they believe in the sophisticated theology version of their God, because it's trivial and unworthy of worship. The actual heavenly father that they actually talk about in their actual church services would actually be worthy of worship, but since it demonstrably does not exist they are forced to get increasingly "sophisticated" during any discussion with people who ask tough questions.

-Frank

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