Outsmarted by a Christian, need help to contradict

[poc243]

[Kyuuketsuki]

Simply say to him (?) I concede there are good things done by religious people all the time but there is no way to tell if those things are done on account of religion or just because those people are good people ... there was a time when Christianity ruled the known world, it was known as the Dark Ages & we really don't want a new set.

Welcome to the forum.

Kyu

[Edwardo Piet]

There is no evidence of God and he almost certainly doesn't exist - he's highly improbable.

So remember moral arguments do not in anyway imply truth of God of course.

And you don't need to believe in God to be a good person. Belief in God can possibly potentially cause a lot of delusion and harm in the world (especially literal fundamentalism of whatever kind be it Christianity, Islam, or Judaism or whatever).

Now if belief in God either scares you into doing good more than you would normally if you're not a good person anyway....or if you are being good simply for the reward in heaven...then that's not a very noble reason but its possible belief in God could make you do good when you were a bad person (for ignoble reasons).

You certainly don't need to believe in God to do good or be a good person of course, far from it. And you also obviously don't need to be good to follow the golden rule or any positive teachings from the bible such as some of Jesus' teachings for example, or whatever.

There is a lot of horrific stuff in the bible and an atheist can cherry-pick to get moral teachings just as any moderate Christian can....not that he would ever need it of course - the Golden rule, etc is pretty straight forward. If you are a good person and have empathy and care about people you will be good anyway. You don't need to 'read it in the bible' first. You can get the morals from all sorts of places and a lot of our morality is natural and we are born with it, empathy, etc.

For a start the Golden Rule isn't even original to the bible. Others thought of it before, Confucius being one of them.

So how have you lost the debate exactly? God almost certainly doesn't exist and you don't need Christianity to be moral at all, or any religion...

And Christianity has done an awful lot of harm and the good it has done could have been done without it....if there was anything that could only be done exclusive to Christianity then I think that must just be the moral policing of it...the fear or want of reward...

Because you don't need to be Christian to follow moral teachings and have a good sense of morality! The fact so many people throughout history doesn't make Christianity particularly moral at all. If they had been atheists they could be moral too. And I can't imagine wars being caused in the name of an absence of belief, can you?

Atheism is not a religion or an ideology. You can do all the moral things Christianity did without Christianity. Its just that so many people throughout history have been Christian, the fact that some people may fear a non-existent God that they believe in or want reward from him and do more good than those particular people would normally.....and then come to think of it Christianity has caused an awful lot of a mess too.

Many bad things have been done in the name of Christianity...following the bible whether taken literally or whatever (mostly the literal I think though!!).

How can bad be done in the name of an absence of a belief in God and nothing more? No teachings or ideology required with that absence of belief.

Atheism I think is above Christianity in the matter of morality overall when you think of the harm that has been done in the past by Christianity.

And the truth matters too. There almost certainly is no God so how can you lose a debate against a Christian who believes in one? If Christianity did a lot of good in its name and was even as moral or more moral than atheism overall...you wouldn't lose the debate. Christianity would still be a delusion - God would still almost certainly not exist.

How can Christianity being a form of theism lose to atheism when atheism doesn't believe in God and Christianity does....and there almost certainly ISN'T a God?

EvF

[Tiberius]

What Kyu said.

Not meaning to bash you in any way, but you made some terrible arguments in that thread, and you opened yourself up to attempting to prove God's non existence (which I should add is a logical fallacy - you cannot prove the negative of something). You then failed to recognise that they were creating a strawman of your position, and you fell for it, allowing them to attack you even more.

I'd simply walk away from the conversation now if I were you. You lost the debate.

[leo-rcc]

Adrian wrote what I was thinking while reading the thread. It would take a lot of time and effort and some better arguments than you used in this debate to clean up that mess. Face it, you lost that round, learn from it and come better prepared for the next debate.

[Eilonnwy]

tl;dr

Never ignore the good religion can and does do. Commend them for it, and then point out that all the good can be accomplished secularly. Charity is not copyrighted by the religious, and in fact their charities can be more affective if their religious component can be removed.

One of my favorite questions is "What tangible benefit of religion cannot be achieved entirely by secular means?" Make sure to stress tangible benefit. (I.e. believing in an afterlife where you see your relatives is not tangible in this world, not provable, so essentially a lie.)

The point should not be that religion is only horrible and only does bad things. It is an institution that does good things with a lot of bad baggage attached to it, so why support it if it does good and bad because essentially you condone the bad. Take the good aspects of religion, the charity and all that and chuck the superstition and corruption that leads to the bad.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well even though negative proof is a fallacy...how can you lose the debate though doing that fallacy even if you did it?

Because they have already lost by default because there is no evidence of God and he almost certainly doesn't exist. Making a crappy argument for God's non-existent can't make you lose the debate if the theist(s) have already lost by default until they provide any evidence, can it?

EvF

[leo-rcc]

EvF. you really don't get the finesses of debate. You can still be right and lose a debate. If your reasoning is wrong, you lose, it is as simple as that.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes but that's only if there's actually a debate here.

No evidence of God and God=highly improbable=Christians lose by default. There is no real debate here.

It doesn't matter how fallacious the arguments are if it isn't even debatable, there's no debate. The Christians already lost it by default or its not a debate at all. Right?

Bascially: So what if you have fallacious arguments if they have already lost by default until they provide evidence? They need to give evidence of God first.

Because that's step 1 for the debate on God.

EvF

[leo-rcc]

And that is where he dropped the ball by making the claim that god isn't real. That is a positive claim that he needs to back up. And the religious people are not stupid, they know when someone drops the ball like that.