A particularly annoying exchange: Apparently the Christian God now includes a...

[Rampant.A.I.]

Every other God! And therefore no criteria need be provided to distinguish the believer's deity from other deities.

In another group, I asked the question:

What criteria do you use to conclude <my deity> exists, and all other deities are mythology?

They quickly began moving the goal posts:




Apparently, any deity ever believed in is now The Christian God.

If that condescension after evading a simple question through semantics wasn't enough:



Which, of course, because I'm questioning his reasonable belief in God: I must be a Dawkins parrot, right?

[Esquilax]

It's to be expected: fiat cultural appropriation is a tenet of most religions, but you see it most rabidly and unthinkingly in christianity, where the believers will often just gobble up everything they possibly can as being the handiwork of their god, heedless of the realities of the situation.

[Rampant.A.I.]

This is my response. Hopefully I'm addressing it, because I'm not sure how else to address such a blatant see saw definition tipped whenever it supports the position being asserted:

I can't tell you how much these types of apologist acrobatics annoy me.

I mean, come on. "Well; that may be true of Fundies, but hey, you're too stupid to understand MY beliefs, I don't blame you since you've probably never been exposed to them, little tyke!"

[jesus_wept]

If all gods are the same why don't they prove their point by changing religion and worshiping Krishna instead of Jesus? Surely they'd have no excuse not to?

[Rampant.A.I.]

That's part of my point and annoyance. Stating the believer would likely presuppose a different God based on where they'd been born was, in my opinion, the entire point of Dawkins' tweet.

The believer immediately goes on the defensive, because Dawkins, adds in "therefore your belief is wrong," fabricating a genetic fallacy that didn't exist in the original tweet.

Anyway, I'm reasonably sure it's "because Jesus," which is a clear indicator the truth of Christianity is simply presupposed, and these are apologetic backflips to justify Christianity being chosen in the first place.

Endless loop, back to "well; what criteria did you use to determine that?"

[Ben Davis]

---

Every other God! And therefore no criteria need be provided to distinguish the believer's deity from other deities.

In another group, I asked the question:

What criteria do you use to conclude <my deity> exists, and all other deities are mythology?

They quickly began moving the goal posts:




Apparently, any deity ever believed in is now The Christian God.

If that condescension after evading a simple question through semantics wasn't enough:



Which, of course, because I'm questioning his reasonable belief in God: I must be a Dawkins parrot, right?

---

He's just talking nonsense. Different deities have different attributes, some are mutually exclusive, which mean that this position can't stand.

[Esquilax]

They're just talking nonsense. Different deities have different attributes, some are mutually exclusive, which mean that this position can't stand.

Which is where the whole "personal interpretation" grey area comes in: any mismatch of attributes is just the fault of the wrong interpretation being used. Obviously if every god is the christian god there's a lot of that going around.

[jesus_wept]

I'd ask if Satan was the Christian god too, and if not, how can they tell the difference?

And how do they know they're not really worshipping Satan?

I reckon hours of fun could be had watching them run round in circles and special plead with their argument.

[BlackMason]

This is my response. Hopefully I'm addressing it, because I'm not sure how else to address such a blatant see saw definition tipped whenever it supports the position being asserted:

I can't tell you how much these types of apologist acrobatics annoy me.

I mean, come on. "Well; that may be true of Fundies, but hey, you're too stupid to understand MY beliefs, I don't blame you since you've probably never been exposed to them, little tyke!"

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink unfortunately.

[ManMachine]

Every other God! And therefore no criteria need be provided to distinguish the believer's deity from other deities.

In another group, I asked the question:

What criteria do you use to conclude <my deity> exists, and all other deities are mythology?

They quickly began moving the goal posts:

---

Apparently, any deity ever believed in is now The Christian God.

If that condescension after evading a simple question through semantics wasn't enough:

---

Which, of course, because I'm questioning his reasonable belief in God: I must be a Dawkins parrot, right?

It's kind of interesting that the proper translation of the opening words of the Bible are ambiguous. The word specifically used, 'elohiym', has a plural meaning (gods) as well as a singular meaning.

This has always been a matter of some debate among Jewish scholars, perhaps it alludes to an earlier version of the OT that was handed down from another polytheistic religion. There are strong thematic concordances with the OT and earlier writings by the Sumerians and Canaanites. There are similarities between these and Egyptian religion. Perhaps it all did come from one source, perhaps there is only one god who divides, unites and re-boots every few thousand years.

Seems like the Christian's god is a fan of recycling.

MM