10 Questions Biblical Literalists Cannot Honestly Answer

[Mister Agenda]

Clearly there is no reason for the statement 'God doesn't exist' except as a response to the claim 'God does exist'. 'God doesn't exist' is the null hypothesis that needs to be disproven before acceptance of the hypothesis 'God does exist' can be rationally justified.

Same with Shiva, Yetis, ghosts, deep lake monsters, alien abductions, and so on. The null hypothesis must be disproven before it becomes reasonable to believe the hypothesis that they are real. Anecdotes are not sufficient support for things that can't be otherwise observed to exist. If you say ghosts are real and we say 'nuh uh, prove it!' the ball is in your court. We are perfectly justified in rejecting your claim until you adequately support it. You wouldn't buy 'I know it in my heart' for Krishna as proof that Krishna is real, (else you would believe that Krishna is real and who Krishna is claimed to be, because Krishna believers offer that exact same support for Krishna), so why would you expect it to carry water for us? It only works on people who already agree with you. It's a useless apologetic that Jesus was never recorded as using. I mean seriously, how would Jesus have acted online? According to the Gospels he would demonstrate his love and trustworthiness and not worry about those of us who don't decide to follow him. But evangelists never follow the advice of Jesus on how to win converts. They go with 'indoctrinate kids as young as you can get 'em' and 'preach at people into you're blue in the face'.

 You are so wrong in several ways. First he didn't say what I've bold above. He made the positive statement that God doesn't exist and never said anything about me proving God does exist. I can say Krishna doesn't exist because I know God does exist, (even if I can't prove it to your satisfaction) God says there are no other gods but Me. Since I know Him and I know Him not to lie I know there's no other gods. I've never tried to pressure anyone into believing, that would defeat what I believe and what Christ taught, I've known Christians who did and that just doesn't cut it. Your indoctrination statement is a slap in the face to all those great Sunday school teachers that present the Bible to children in a simple way to teach them what it says. I know many who never pressure children and do you know why, because they believe as I do, forcing a decision is not a decision for Christ thus no salvation and it could eventually end up causing them to reject the Bible and the God who gave it. I was never pressured by anyone to believe and I grew up in a old time Southern Baptist church.

GC 

GC

Gotta love people who start their replies with 'You're wrong'.

What you bolded above was not a quote, so I don't know what you think you gain by pointing out that it's not a quote. That although those weren't the exact words, they can still be taken as an expression of the null hypothesis was my point. No one says 'ghosts aren't real' until someone, somewhere, sometime, has said 'ghosts are real'. The people who don't believe in ghosts either didn't come up with the concept or understand that if they happened to originate the idea of ghosts on their own, it's just an idea. No one says 'Ghosts aren't real' in a conceptual vacuum. No one says 'God isn't real' in a conceptual vacuum. It's always a response to the claim that God really exists, even if no one said those actual words before the other person said 'God isn't real'. The burden of proof doesn't shift that easily. If the Defense speaks first, they don't have to suddenly prove their client is innocent, the prosecution still has the burden to show that the person is guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt for very serious crimes.

Your story about really knowing God exists is just a story. The same way a Hindu could say the Christian God doesn't exist (or more likely, that Christians are way off base about the nature of the godhead) because they already know that Brahma is real. They know Brahma doesn't lie. The problem with your argument is that a believer in any other deity or any other version of a creator can make the same argument. It's weightless and worthless. It's like saying 'I like peas'. It informs us of something about you, but it doesn't mean that peas are better than carrots, objectively. We're all well aware that you believe in God. Repeating yourself doesn't add any new information and telling us that you really believe it because of spiritual experiences leaves you with the problem that spiritual experiences aren't proof of anything but your internal brain state, because anyone can have them about any god or spirit or afterlife or nature or animal if they enter or cultivate a conducive mental state. Online, your personal experience of God is just a story, especially since even if it's true, God doesn't give you anything to say here that's at all convincing to a skeptic. Just a story like other believers in other religions also have. They can't all be right, but they CAN all be wrong.

Your 'slap in the face' remark is a fallacious appeal to emotion. Whether it offends you or would offend any Sunday School teachers you want to share with is irrelevant to whether it's true. Young children are not capable of critically evaluating the information given to them by adults. No matter how good the intentions of your emotionally fragile Sunday School teachers, what they are doing is indoctrination. It's indoctrination whether Muslims do it, Hindus do it, Catholics do it, Evangelicals do it, or Yazidis do it. You don't have to pressure children for it to be indoctrination. You just have to make sure they hear your religion first. If such indoctrination were neglected and the only thing taught children were established facts, I have no doubt that theistic religion would decline rapidly, because indoctrinating the next generation is how religions perpetuate themselves.

There's a reason why there's no major religion that believes in letting children discover the true religion for themselves, in confidence that it will always lead them back to the religion of their parents.

And to make sure you're not confused by the word 'indoctrination' again:

in·doc·tri·na·tion
/inˌdäktrəˈnāSHən/
noun
noun: indoctrination

the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.

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Then what is the evidence?

His feelers! Only a recalcitrant atheist determined to believe God isn't real would not just take his word for it! If someone really believes something is true and has spiritual experiences that confirm it, well, it HAS to be true and that makes it knowledge! Unless the person who really believes something is true and has spiritual experiences to confirm it isn't Christian.

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I'm not getting worked up and I'm not sure why you think that. Like I said in my post above I see no evidence of unicorns or leprechauns and thus do not believe in them. I have and do see evidence of God in creation and the more I learn about the creation the more I see Him. I know that atheist believe in evolution and thus reject God through this belief, however there's so much about animals that is impossible for evolution to be involved. For one, some animals according to evolutionary science haven't changed in many millions of years. What happened to the process in them?  I see no evidence for evolution and would have a hard time trusting the science because the definition of evolution changes when it's convenient to rebut science that is contrary to what is believed by evolutionary science, so I can't believe in it.

GC

I know someone who says they saw a leprechaun. I believe they are truly sincere and they actually experience seeing a leprechaun that demonstrated magical powers.

Now you have evidence of leprechauns equivalent to the evidence that you've given us for God. Do you believe in leprechauns now? If not, why not?

Not all atheists believe in evolution and I don't know of any who rejected God based on evolution. Although if any did, I would suppose it would be because their religious teachers taught them that evolution was false and unsupported and when they investigated the matter they found that evolution was misrepresented. Hundreds of millions of theists accept evolution. Evolution is a red herring when it comes to discussing atheism and theism.

Organisms continue to evolve, you being under the impression that the process has somehow stopped is an example of the kind of misinformation that creationists spread about evolution.

And I don't think you would see evidence for evolution if you were buried in it up to your neck. That's the power of indoctrination, no pressure needed. If people were as determined not to believe the germ theory of disease as they are to reject evolution, a lot of us wouldn't be here, because the same kinds of objections that creationists raise about evolution can be raised about any biological theory. 'This scientist is using a word differently than that scientist! Were you there? No one's ever made a germ from scratch in a lab! Just because a certain kind of bacteria is present when people have a certain disease doesn't mean the bacteria caused the disease! Viruses are just too small to cause diseases! Lung cancer is caused by carcinogens, not germs, so the theory is disproven! You can't trust germ scientists because they're too invested in the theory being true!'