Atheism is unreasonable

[Ben Davis]

Hi, I said I'd take the opportunity to talk with you so here I am. I've caught up with all the other posts on this thread, so-far. My tuppenceworth:

Lets take away all of the fluff and feathers for a minute. Let's take away all of the technical babble, all of the rhetoric for just a second.

There's plenty of rhetoric in your answers to others. I hope you stay truer to your word with me.

I can't speak for every religion, but I am a Christian theist. Now what does that imply? Well, that would mean that I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sins of mankind, and that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

Okay, you've got a straightforward John 3:16 approach.

That is basically my belief in a nut shell. Now, if you are an atheist, you may find my beliefs laughable, sickening, stupid, etc....which is fine,

Thanks for your permission...

Christianity isn't for everyone because after all, Jesus may or may not have said "But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it." (Matt 7:14).

Fixed.

But as an atheist, here is what you have to believe...you have to believe that billions of years ago before humanity, dead matter was floating around in space...and for whatever reason, suddenly, this dead matter "came to life". Not only did it come to life, but it came to life and began thinking, talking, and having sex.

Nonsense. Atheism is the lack of belief in god/s, nothing more. It has no inherent belief structure. Atheists can (and do) believe all sorts of things, both rational and irrational. This is clearly a conflation of atheism with an appalling straw-man of scientific material-naturalism. Given that you claim to have a high-school education (I'm assuming you passed), this must be a deliberate attempt to misrepresent atheism, material naturalism and the scientific method for a nefarious purpose. Please remind me, which commandment forbids lying?

Oh, and what was that you were saying about not using rhetoric?

Just think about that for a second. This non-living material suddenly CAME TO LIFE.

Yes, that's the christian claim. Oh, I get it! You're trying to make a naturalistic position seem as ridiculous as the claims of Genesis! Isn't that sincere of you...

For the life of me, I just can't get myself to believe that, even if I tried.

Why? If you truly believe your strawman to be the case, the only difference between it and your christian position is that you put god at the beginning instead of a naturalistic process. If it's so unbelievable, why does it bear such a remarkable resemblance to your beliefs?

However, since you've clearly demonstrated that you're deliberately misrepresenting naturalism in order to make atheism look bad, all you're achieving is making christianity look bad. Way to score an own-goal.

I just don't understand how naturalism/atheism is a more reasonable position than theism.

If you truly understood the naturalist position, maybe you would. There are plenty of christians who do.

You have to believe that a process that can't think or see, created consciousness.

Not to be an atheist, you don't. All you have to have is an absence of belief in theistic propositions. You don't even have to oppose them.

So consciousness came from a process that can't think??

Everything that we know about the mechanisms of the current state of this universe tells us that's the most likely scenario and the more we learn, the closer we come to demonstrating it. Why would you think that the emergence of consciousness is any different to the emergence of life or of biodiversity?

I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

And you finish with an awful non-sequitur, one which tends to emanate from back-water pulpits where uneducated comments receive no challenge. That you would spout such a well-rebutted apologetic confirms, for me, that you know full-well what you're doing and you know that it's dishonest. Further, your answers to others on this thread smack of similar deceit.

You are a liar and a fraud.