Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[John V]

It gets old, meng. Started in Oct of 2011 on TTAF with a thousand posts in the first month, with fat ol' several paragraph rants; but once you cut away the reactionary release, there really ain't much to say about it.

I disagree. I started about 1998 on the now defunct Cygnus' Study. There was plenty of shit back then too, but there were lots of threads where we'd be going to the Hebrew and Greek, or using formal logic, or other substantive means to debate. It was cool while it lasted. I learned a lot.

I do not agree with your conclusion that "we just want a place to feel better about ourselves;" mostly I still kick it to socialize with my peeps and to show newly minted atheists that it is OK to be an atheist in a theistic environment.

It's a generalization and doesn't apply to everyone, but it applies to a lot of people here.

[Minimalist]

The quiz is absolutely brilliant.  There is no way to get any score other than 0, no matter how well you know your Bible.  It's too bad that most folks will find it frustrating, instead of actually testing the test . . . answering one way for the first answers, and then the opposite.

It is brilliant in that every question has contradictory answers depending on which Bible verse you hang your hat on.

I'm sure some apologist asshole, somewhere, will jump up and down and hold his breath until he turns blue insisting that the contradictions are not contradictory!

Those assholes are all the same.

[Rhondazvous]

And these Christians think there is anything about their claims worthy of a "debate"....

Debating them only provides unwarranted validation, akin, to physicists debating purveyors of "angel therapy", astronomers debating astrologers, or an MD discussing the finer points of the latest techniques in homeopathy.

Like all woo, with theism, there is no there, there.

Mockery and ridicule are some of the most powerful weapons we have against dark-ages thinking. They've had sufficient opportunity to make their case and have failed miserably.

You couldn't be righter.

So we're not willing to engage in a quality debate about whether 2 + 2 = 8. What can we say?

[Minimalist]

Trinity  1+1+1 = 1

Not even good math.

It's correct in fields of rank 2. Just sayin...

Geek!

[Rhondazvous]

It gets old, meng. Started in Oct of 2011 on TTAF with a thousand posts in the first month, with fat ol' several paragraph rants; but once you cut away the reactionary release, there really ain't much to say about it.

I disagree. I started about 1998 on the now defunct Cygnus' Study. There was plenty of shit back then too, but there were lots of threads where we'd be going to the Hebrew and Greek, or using formal logic, or other substantive means to debate. It was cool while it lasted. I learned a lot.

1998! That was almost 20 years ago. And from this you draw your conclusions? Raises my suspicions about just what you mean by "quality debate."

If I thought it worth my time to research how many Christians sites have gone belly up. I wonder what I'd find.

All the Hebrew, all the Greek, all of what theists call logic in the world will not prove the existence of god if the damn deity won't even do you the curtsey of showing himself.

[Minimalist]

All the Hebrew, all the Greek, all of what theists call logic in the world will not prove the existence of god if the damn deity won't even do you the curtsey of showing himself.

That's a bullshit excuse of apologists.  This happy horseshit that they call a bible is routinely translated by professionals who can and do read ancient languages.  What happens when the result is something that the modern jesus freak finds objectionable is they start claiming that if you stand on your head and read it reversed in a mirror in the pluperfect subjunctive it doesn't mean what they don't like and does mean what they oh-so-want-it to mean.

The truth is word by word translation of ancient Greek to modern English is shaky at best.

[Kingpin]

But even if you walked in to a room and a being appeared to you claiming to be God and knew things about you only you would know, would you believe in God or chalk it up to a psychotic episode? I've always been fascinated by the demand of non-believers that God let himself be known. I seriously think if any non-believer was to have an experience of a being coming to them and knowing all about them and performing a miracle in front of them, they would probably still not believe. It's what is commonly referred to as a doubting Thomas. I think the only meaningful way is to reveal himself to all people at once in the sky so people can have corroboration. But I guess that's whats described in Revelation.

[Esquilax]

But even if you walked in to a room and a being appeared to you claiming to be God and knew things about you only you would know, would you believe in God or chalk it up to a psychotic episode?

I would probably recognize that an event is not the cause of an event, and would investigate further. If this god being refused to allow me the additional data that would let me come to a rational conclusion about the nature of the event, then that is hardly my fault.

 I've always been fascinated by the demand of non-believers that God let himself be known.  I seriously think if any non-believer was to have an experience of a being coming to them and knowing all about them and performing a miracle in front of them, they would probably still not believe.

Probably, if the event alone is the only thing we had to go on. That's only irrational if you think that being god is the only way that someone could possibly know things about a stranger, which is a ridiculous claim on the face of it. TV psychics worldwide make a living off of their ability to glean personal details about someone they've never met without being god, after all.

Having high standards of evidence for supernatural claims, or any claim that we cannot establish is even possible, for that matter, is not a weakness, and I refuse to apologize for that. I'm kinda perplexed at how many theists think it's weird that a group of people who're all about obtaining data to come to rational conclusions about events would... you know, want to do that.

[Kingpin]

But even if you walked in to a room and a being appeared to you claiming to be God and knew things about you only you would know, would you believe in God or chalk it up to a psychotic episode?

I would probably recognize that an event is not the cause of an event, and would investigate further. If this god being refused to allow me the additional data that would let me come to a rational conclusion about the nature of the event, then that is hardly my fault.

 I've always been fascinated by the demand of non-believers that God let himself be known.  I seriously think if any non-believer was to have an experience of a being coming to them and knowing all about them and performing a miracle in front of them, they would probably still not believe.

Probably, if the event alone is the only thing we had to go on. That's only irrational if you think that being god is the only way that someone could possibly know things about a stranger, which is a ridiculous claim on the face of it. TV psychics worldwide make a living off of their ability to glean personal details about someone they've never met without being god, after all.

Having high standards of evidence for supernatural claims, or any claim that we cannot establish is even possible, for that matter, is not a weakness, and I refuse to apologize for that. I'm kinda perplexed at how many theists think it's weird that a group of people who're all about obtaining data to come to rational conclusions about events would... you know, want to do that.

Thanks for the response Esquilax.  I agree with you.  My point was we are skeptical by nature and for that reason, having an experience like I described above we tend to only accept the supernatural explanation as an absolute last resort if at all.  

For God to meaningfully show himself, wouldn't it have to be supernaturally for anyone to accept it?  But if it is supernatural, aren't we even less likely to accept it?  It's a kind of conundrum.  I see this man in the room, floating off the floor, knows things about me and then shows my deceased relative to me.  I either accept that this is God and he is real or I accept that I've gone barking mad.  If i tell others, they would of course assume I'd gone barking mad.  So if we are overly skeptical of the supernatural how could a God meaningfully reveal himself?

[Minimalist]

I've previously explained what 'god' would have to do to get me to believe he existed.

Were he to meet that test then we could sit down and I'd let him explain why his book portrays him as such a murderous dick.