How not to start a conversation with a skeptic...I think

[brewer]

Tell me if I'm wrong but I think "Thou shalt not kill" is one of the most obvious contradictions. Or was it poorly translated and should have said "Thou shalt not kill based on thy own thoughts and initiative. Kill only when thy lord say's it is warranted.".

[robvalue]

Indeed, the whole of the bible operates under the idea that you can ignore any rules if the correct voice in your head gives the go-ahead.

[Simon Moon]

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I got a PM from someone who had some frankly very immature ideas about how to open a dialogue with someone about their faith and the other's skepticism. Let me start with a list of some things I think are critical for theists to understand before they open their mouths with the intention of trying to convert someone or, at the very least, convince them that faith isn't the worst thing to befall humanity since pathogens. This may be just my own opinion and I'd really like to hear what other atheists and/or skeptics think, if you agree, vehemently disagree, and of course, why or why not, since we should theoretically like justifying beliefs, right? I'm going to frame it as a letter to a theist, even though I doubt any of them would care to read it. I've got something of a reputation, apparently.

Firstly, you cannot start with the presumption that there is any truth in your holy book. That has already been proven false scientifically in so many cases, and has failed to overturn this determination, and for obvious reasons. Do not make the claim that your holy book contains any truth, you make yourself look like either an ignoramus or a liar, and that's never a good impression to give. You're already going in with the label of 'deluded' to anyone who doesn't share your beliefs, so think twice about how you want to bring your holy book into the discussion, if you bring it in at all, which probably won't help. If there is no information in a holy book that can't be determined through the scientific method or common sense, even what little truth it does contain is irrelevant. Prophecy is also right out, though I'm not going to go into why, but it's easy enough to find why on youtube.

Secondly, show us that you respect facts and information so it doesn't give us the impression that you are just going to stonewall every point WE make, otherwise it's a one-way conversation and neither side benefits. It doesn't help anyone to ignore scientific findings or things that are simply blindingly obvious, and again, gives you a bad impression in the eyes of skeptics. One of the main problems we have is the denial of or discounting of the value of the scientific method. You don't have to deny that you still believe what is in your holy book despite what science says, but you better have a damn good reason or you can't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Thirdly, please consider that statistically speaking (this goes to point 2) skeptics know more about your holy books than you do. Be prepared to acknowledge when we point out things that you may not know (most of us have been there before deconversion) and not outright deny them, but either agree to look it up later or do it on the spot if you so happen to be where you can do that. This point comes with three seemingly insurmountable obstacles that you need to address for there to remain any reason to bring a holy book into the discussion at all:
-The holy book contains contradictions, outright falsehoods and numerous signs of deliberate tampering in most cases
-Morality based on a carrot-and-stick reward-and-punishment system is to fail to understand what is moral and thus morals do not come from any holy book, authority figure, and are not in any way absolute nor objective
-If you attempt to discount or discard parts of your holy book because of how they fail to appeal, or have been proven misleading, your attempts to give validity to the rest are completely pointless; if you aren't sure why that is, I'm really not sure what to tell you. Something about flipping a coin comes to mind.

Fourth (and I'm running out of main points; not sure if that's because I'm tired and/or sick), you do not get to exempt yourself from the fundamentalism of other believers if you claim that you get your worldview and morals from your holy books. There is no moral difference between a fairweather Christian and a Muslim suicide bomber when the way they arrived at their conclusions (as different as those conclusions may be) because both positions are equally defensible from the standpoint of each holy book, as well as the opposite interpretation in each book. Let me explain why this is, if you think this is unreasonable: If a person gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and makes it home safely, how are they morally any different from someone who hit and killed someone during their drunk drive home? Same method of arriving at a conclusion (irrationality), different results. No moral difference. Not until you acknowledge that you are really using your own internal moral compass to reject the bad parts of your holy book. It will do wonders for your self-esteem, too. This will also save you the trouble of attempting to justify atrocities in your holy books, as this is something we have probably all completely lost our taste for. As well as the failed, morbid moral lessons those books teach and yet you reject. If you are at the very least willing to say that there is no excusing some of these all-too-human (and evidently NOT divine) writings, once again, you do nothing but give off an air of dishonesty or at least naivete.

Fifth...if there is no evidence other than anecdotal, philosophical word sludge and all of the other dishonest approaches outlined about, why would you expect any of us to take you seriously? Without the threat of a terrible afterlife, the bribe of a wonderful one (though this is impossible in principle anyway), other emotional appeals, can you give a single good reason why we should not look at you like you are someone in desperate need of psychological assistance?

I think that's about all I can come up with. Really, you've got a tremendous uphill battle from the very beginning, so think about this: Why is it that your arguments have not changed, nor succeeded, in thousands of years? They uniformly fail just as hard today as they always did. Do you not think there's something to this lack of success that comes from following the same script? Adaptation (evolution, baby) is key, and it's one of the hallmarks of the rational mind. Learning new facts, adjusting one's beliefs accordingly rather than stubbornly remaining in one place despite all the implications. Not saying that something is always absolutely moral or immoral 100% of the time or that it is so because someone 'said so'. You can't really expect anything that you have to offer to be more tempting than that if you can't actually deliver on those promises because they naturally can't have the same success rate as science, for one of the biggest reasons we reject faith in the first place.

Phew...so, am I being too hard? Too defensive and sensitive? I just feel like it's impossible not to feel like my intelligence is being insulted when someone approaches me with whatever seemingly friendly intent they might have. Since most of us have been where theists are and have the benefit of being on the inside looking out and the outside looking in, for them to not consider this and meet us half-way is already pretty condescending, in my opinion. But like I said, I'm sick, I'm tired and that PM really pissed me off, so maybe I'm wrong all over. But let's hear it, what do you guys think?

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I like how you atheists seem to think you know the bible, but can't seem to grasp that the Bible wasn't originally written in English and therefore what you perceive as a contradiction is not so in the context of the original language.

Yeah, leave it to an omnipotent, omniscient deity to have his 'word' (allegedly the most important message ever):

Be written decades or longer after the alleged events.

In languages he would know are sure to die, be susceptible to copy error, misinterpretations, human manipulation.

On little pieced of parchment, that are known to be easily destroyed.

To only a very small group of people in one very small geographical area on the planet, leaving the rest of humanity to 'invent' religions, that this deity would know would displease him.

Such great planning.

And none of this hints at Christianity being just another human 'invented' religion... Nope, not at all.

[Astonished]

I like how you atheists seem to think you know the bible, but can't seem to grasp that the Bible wasn't originally written in English and therefore what you perceive as a contradiction is not so in the context of the original language.

You're absolutely right, except that even biblical scholars accept that there are contradictions.

Or that you are absolutely certain the original text was in fact perfect or different in any significant way. By the way, do you care to back that claim up, Hugs, or are you just going to sit there with your thumb up your ass to hold in yet another empty, baseless assertion? Want to put some green on that proposition? And even if you're right, that means we can infer nothing whatsoever from the bible in its current form and is therefore useless and we should all be deists AT BEST. There's no part of that argument that doesn't make the proponent look foolish.

[Rhondazvous]

I like how you atheists seem to think you know the bible, but can't seem to grasp that the Bible wasn't originally written in English and therefore what you perceive as a contradiction is not so in the context of the original language.

You're absolutely right, except that even biblical scholars accept that there are contradictions.

To say the original manuscripts were pure even if contradictions exist in the translations is to reduce the bible to a provincial document not meant for those outside the original language culture. If God couldn't preserve the purity of the translations what good to me is the purity of original manuscripts meant for another people at another time?

[ignoramus]

Maybe God is an Arab and didn't care about others? Who's to say

[Astonished]

Maybe God is an Arab and didn't care about others? Who's to say

Hmm...if we're made in god's image and god is Arab, why are there more white people around the globe than the rest? He just doesn't know what he wants or how to make up his damn mind.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Dude, every single one of your posts in here has left me literally speechless. I mean, the level of intellectual vapidity required to have such a fundamental misunderstanding of logic, reality, even your own worldview, it's staggering. This is why it's so heartbreaking seeing what religion, even this nice-nice cherry-picking la-di-da version you seem to hold onto, is doing to you. When you're ready to accept help, we're always here, but for the life of us, you make it so damned hard to get to the point where you're willing to listen to reason.

Please.  

Since you claim the bible contradicts itself how about posting one of those contradictions for starters.

The Bible says that no one can see God.  Then God and Moses talked face-to-face.  Then it says again that no one can see God.  Jesus shows up and everyone sees him.  Heck, they even kill him.

[Huggy Bear]

I like how you atheists seem to think you know the bible, but can't seem to grasp that the Bible wasn't originally written in English and therefore what you perceive as a contradiction is not so in the context of the original language.

Yeah, leave it to an omnipotent, omniscient deity to have his 'word' (allegedly the most important message ever):

Be written decades or longer after the alleged events.

In languages he would know are sure to die, be susceptible to copy error, misinterpretations, human manipulation.  

On little pieced of parchment, that are known to be easily destroyed.

To only a very small group of people in one very small geographical area on the planet, leaving the rest of humanity to 'invent' religions, that this deity would know would displease him.

Such great planning.

And none of this hints at Christianity being just another human 'invented' religion... Nope, not at all.

Actually the Bible was written first in the zodiac which I explained in this post.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-42171-po...pid1234508

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For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: - Romans 1:20

I have always said that the ancient civilizations of the world were monotheists turned polytheists, and that Babylon was the origin of all the worlds mythologies as evidenced from my post from well over a year ago.

The establishment of Babel (Babylon, a great civilization of ancient times), ushered in Polytheism which spread from Babel into Egypt, from Egypt to Greece, and from Greece into the world.

My point is, every polytheistic religion can be traced back to Babel.

As told in the book of Genesis, God promised the woman a seed (this is the prophecy of the virgin birth because "seed" only comes from the man) which we all know to be Jesus Christ, the redeemer.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. - Genesis 3:15

In the Book of Revelation Jesus is the Lion of Judah.

And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. -  Revelation 5:5

So here we have the first and last books of the bible depicting the Virgin and the Lion.

http://www.evidencetoconsider.com/prophe...dle-sphinx

The inset image is from the Temple of Esneh in Egypt. An image of s sphinx is placed between the signs for Leo (on the left) and Virgo (on the right, holding a branch). The word sphinx means “to bind closely together” (from the Greek Sphiggo). This indicates that this is the point at which the constellations begin and end. And, like the head of the sphinx, which is that of a woman, the constellations begin with Virgo, and end, like the tail of the sphinx, which is that of a lion, with Leo.

This means that before there was ever a scripture written God symbolized his plan in the zodiac and the ancient peoples knew this, and are without excuse.

Horus can be traced back to the Horites (you see, Egypt didn't originate anything):
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2011/...ement.html

Monotheism existed in ancient Kush long before the Jews were identifiable as a distinct people. Archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that the Horite priests as early as 3000 B.C. believed in a single supreme creator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horites

The first mention of the Horites in the Torah was when they were defeated by a coalition of Eastern kings led by the Kedorlaomer of Elam (in modern Iran). These kings had come through the Horite territory to subdue a rebellion by a coalition of other 'kings' of peoples whom they had ruled for twelve years, who were living near the Dead Sea and Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:1-12).

Later, according to Genesis 36, the Horites co-existed and inter-married with the family of Esau, grandson of Abraham through Isaac (Genesis 25:21-25). They were eventually brought under the rule of the descendants of Esau, also then known as Edom.

As a side note, what I find Interesting is that the descendant of Esau were described as having red skin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom

The Hebrew word Edom means "red", and is derived from the name of its original founder, whose name was Esau, the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac, because he was born "red all over".

Does the term "redskin" sound familiar? If we look at the native American symbol for God (The Great Spirit), and the symbol for Horus, they both depict an all seeing eye.



Could these native Americans be the descendants of the red-skinned Edomites formerly known as the Horites?

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That being said, trying to blame peoples ignorance of the Bible on God is just asinine, especially since the Bible states to "lean not on your own understanding".

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Or that you are absolutely certain the original text was in fact perfect or different in any significant way. By the way, do you care to back that claim up, Hugs, or are you just going to sit there with your thumb up your ass to hold in yet another empty, baseless assertion? Want to put some green on that proposition? And even if you're right, that means we can infer nothing whatsoever from the bible in its current form and is therefore useless and we should all be deists AT BEST. There's no part of that argument that doesn't make the proponent look foolish.

First of all you made the claim that there are contradictions in the Bible. I clearly asked you to provide evidence of the contradiction (this means to provide the conflicting scriptures). You have yet to do this.

You imply that a loving God flooding the world is contradictory, which shows you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. God is a loving God but he is also a God of Justice. Law requires a penalty, and the penalty for sin is death.

Noah warned of the flood for 120 years, no one believed him...

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; - 2 Peter 2:5

You've had just as much warning, what's your excuse? If God was to destroy you in the same manner, after all the warning you received (let's not forget, you know the Bible better than theists do) would you consider that an injustice?

[Rhondazvous]

Maybe God is an Arab and didn't care about others? Who's to say

Well, Jesus said he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel(Matthew 15:24). So maybe all that crap about going out to preach the gospel to every creature is the reason god forsook him.