Stupidly Hilarious Arguments

[Violet]

You actually can force belief... though that is usually called 'brainwashing'.

[Paul the Human]

You actually can force belief... though that is usually called 'brainwashing'.

As scary as it sounds, that is too often what happens in devoutly religious families. Not really 'brainwashing' in the CIA/NSA sense of the word, but indoctrination so powerful that it would take a few rounds of CIA brainwashing to counteract it.

[Thor]

Obviously my mother doesn't see it that way. She goes to AA, depends on her belief in god for a lot of things, especially when things get tough. She thinks that believing God in your worst time is the only way to deal. I can understand the feeling, it's appealing and it comforts her.

Yes, I can understand how the belief that there is somebody out there looking out for you can be appealing and comforting. But doesn't it matter if that comfort is grounded in reality? For example, someone could have terminal cancer and the doctor can give the person comfort by lying to them. That may give someone comfort, but it's a false comfort.

She just doesn't understand that you can't force belief, that not believing in God when hell is all around you that it can be a clarity. Knowing you need to depend on yourself, be responsible and do what you can to get out of that situation, not pray.

Yeah, prayer is really going to help you. I once had a believer tell me that he would pray for me. I told him, "Go ahead and pray for me if you like. You could also dance naked around a bonfire under a full moon and sacrifice a goat for me. They're both equally effective."

I see my non-belief as a strength, she sees her belief as a strength.

Now this is interesting. I see belief as a weakness. Because I know when I get through a difficult time I did it on my own. But a believer will tell you that he made it through a tough time with "God's" help. In effect, the believer thinks he didn't have the strength to get through it on his own and he needed help. I would ask, which is the stronger person? The one who swings the bat on their own and hits the ball? Or the one who hits the ball with dad helping them swing?

[Meatball]

Huh??

Well, here's the argument in Ray's own words.

I offered, "It's really easy to prove God's existence." He replied, "It's not healthy for me to talk about God." I said that I could understand that, and added, "But you are a reasonable and open-minded person, so you can listen to me for two minutes."

He gave me the okay, so I told him how he could know for sure that God existed, that God had given him a conscience and that if he even lusted after a woman, Jesus said that he had committed adultery already with her in his heart. I also mentioned that if a criminal was given a death sentence and he said to the judge, "But I don't believe in the electric chair," it didn't change reality.

He politely listened, and said, "Well, I'd better board the plane."

I might have been missing some vital step that would have made Ray's argument make any damn sense, but from this, I doubt it.

I think you're misrepresenting his argument. There are a few implied points I had to fill in, but this ends up a little more logical.

• Humans have consciences
  
• God defined sin as a bunch of things that are bad
  
• God says that when we commit a sin in our minds it's as bad as commiting it in flesh
  
• When a married man lusts after a woman while married, his conscience knows it's an unfaithful thought and he presumably feels bad
  
• Because this natural "sin detector" theory lines up with ancient texts we can assume these texts are true.
  
• Therefore the Bible is true and God exists.

Of course this argument is still far from perfect, as it doesn't take into account things we feel guilty about that aren't sin, or sins that we don't feel guilty about. It's a terrible argument but it isn't the complete non-sequitor you make it out to be.

[Rev. Rye]

Ah, so you think it's along the lines of Aquinas' "NAtural Law" theory. However, of all of the tellings of that particular argument, this is the only one I found that actually heard him talking about the conscience, and so it seems more intended as an extraneous detail, and not something that should be considered the crux of the argument, so you might be putting too much thought into the argument. I see it more as an extremely half-assed combination of Pascal's Wager and the good-old-fashioned scare tactics of the revivalists of old, only much stupider.

[tackattack]

"I don't think my refusal to believe in fairy tales puts me higher than all the children who do believe in them. Their belief in fairy tales puts them lower than all the atheists. "
FourDeuce01

[SleepingDemon]

Indoctrination in religious families tends to not be the cellar/bible scenario, rather it's the absence of outside information. Most christian families wouldn't allow their children to read anything from Dawkins or Harris. They don't allow them to listen to AronRa, they ingrain in them at an early age that the bible is the absolute word of god, that it's infallible. As the child grows up, they rationalize everything they are taught, dismiss everything that contradicts it, and then utilize the same indoctrination methods on their own children.

Get on youtube and type in, proving the bible is correct and evolution is a lie, and just watch the responses some of these sheltered teenagers give. It's absolute madness. Especially when you consider that most children are so full of questions, so curious, to see it blatantly corrupted and defiled with unwavering belief is disturbing. I feel sorry for these kids, not just because I think they are beneath me, but that if they are so devout this early on, the probabilities of them slipping back into reality as an adult is astronomically improbable.

[tackattack]

I completely agree Sleeping demon with those sentiments. I don't know about a majority, but I nor the majority of my theist friends were raised that way. I can only go off what I've personally seen.