Hello, Anyone interested in a debate?

[nihilistcat]

Umm...  We would care if it were bullshit.  If the threshold were only beneficial we would adopt subjective morality or ethical utility alone just like everyone else.  We would not bother to further constrain the conduct permitted by the ethical law with the moral law.

Well, I obviously don't expect a theist to concede a point like that (if it were only that easy). 

But for me, the only relevant question is .... did any of the extraordinary claims made by holy books actually happen? Because if they didn't, then surely there are plenty of more enlightened sources we could use to inform our morality. We'd certainly want to use sources that are not at odds with science (only in the mind of religion is science and religion compatible, and of course they have to say that at this point, because science has proven its merit and utility, whereas religion cannot prove anything), sources that do not reflect the primitivity of its authors, sources which are not laden with misogyny and homophobia (and other forms of violence/authoritarianism), etc. 

So the only thing I was ever concerned with regarding religiosity has been questions like ... did Jesus really come back from the dead, did upon his resurrection, a multitude of other dead people also came back from the dead (and appear to many people), did Muhammad really have an encounter with an angel while alone in a cave, did a guy like Moses really exist and did he really have a meaningful conversation with god, who appeared in the form of a burning bush, and did that god really give him stone tablets inscribed with rules to live by, etc.? 

I mean, an arbitrary concept like faith can be used to support any claim imaginable, so I see no merit in the idea of granting religion a special pleading from the ways we typically examine the veracity of claims. And under that standard, religion fails on every level. These extraordinary claims have no support from any of the typical things we look for when examining the veracity of historical claims. No independent corroboration, we can't even reliably trace authorship of biblical manuscripts, etc., so we're forced to believe fantastic stories that we have no way to verify, about a god who has apparently restricted himself to only communicating with people who lived prior to the first century, or somewhat later in the case of Islam, and claims being promoted by churches that have an obvious self-interest in maintaining the status quo. 

If you want me to elaborate on these points, I'll do so gladly (even though they're all very typical arguments), but ultimately, if a group of people were to come up to me today with a claim about their cult leader who came back from the dead, I'd think they were either brainwashed, crazy, or on drugs (and so would you). The only real difference between you and me is I see no reason why the same fact pattern should be considered more believable merely because it appears in an ancient holy book? Indeed, under all other circumstances, we scrutinize claims made by the ancients more than we scrutinize contemporaneous claims (for reasons that I hope you agree are obvious). 

I've been critiqued by Christian apologists for examining Christianity using the same standard as I examine all religious claims, but I find no compelling reason why I should grant Christianity a special pleading on top of the special pleading it already demands of its adherents. The fact is ... when you listen to even the best apologists (and there are some very good apologists out there), they all treat the existence of god as a foregone conclusion (a presuppositional apologetic), which is an attempt (whether inadvertent or not) to skirt the central issue, why should anyone believe that a god exists? Moreover, Christianity, like other faith systems, fits the mythic archetype. 

Any honest student of evolutionary science, theoretical physics, etc., will tell you ... there is nothing in or about nature that makes the existence of a deity obvious, indeed, the exact opposite is true. At one time, before we understood evolution, the formation of the universe, the ways particles attract and form atoms, the ways chemical elements bond and form more complex molecules, etc., it may very well have seemed like an intelligent designer was necessary to create the universe. In fact this was Aristotle's metaphysical argument. He analogizes creation of the universe to creation of a statue by an artist, where the first job of the artist is to mentally conceptualize what his final product will look like. According to Aristotle, like the artist must exist to first conceptualize his final creation, some sort of intelligent designer must exist to conceptualize what the universe should look like before setting out to create it. 

Of course, considering what we know about evolution, the byproduct of random mutations coupled with natural selection, we now know that an intelligent designer was not necessary. Granted, there is much we have to learn about the formation of the universe. There are still gaps where you could fit a god. But then we look at the trend. As the gaps narrow, religion continually changes the story. It shifts from literal to figurative interpretation. And so, my conclusion is ... religious faith is irrational.