"Is Christianity Rational" debate with a friend

[jlay]

The reason is that any peoples who do not believe in a creator can be classified as atheist. They can still believe in ghosts, spiritualism, etc. Those are not the people we are dealing with here. And for the sake of this discussion, I think Smiley knows that. I don't think you will have people from the Dawkins and Hitchens camp (the new atheist) purporting a soul.

[MarcusOfLycia]

Just to clarify, the type of atheist I was talking about was indeed the kind that doesn't believe in anything supernatural whatsoever. I thought I had used the term 'deterministic atheist' or something similar but I could be wrong, and I apologize for that. I don't mean to lump everyone in the same category for any of this.

[jlay]

the only way around this, and its often quoted, is if god infuses your spirit with his love, and you only ever feel love and happiness and joy, forever. well im sorry to put a dampener on that but if god removes all your negative emotions, well he is changing who you are. your negative emotions, along with your positive ones, make up who you are. if god removes them, then the you that is reading this is effectively dead.

You should really read Romans 8. I mean, you really put the ball on the tee here.
Ever heard of the word, 'surrender?' You should really look into this stuff, because the Bible explains everything your bring up here. God is changing who we are. Not against our will. If you do not want God to remove your negative emotions, He won't. In fact, you'll have them for eternity.

then the you that is reading this is effectively dead.

Woohoo, preach it brother. Rom. 6:4

go back to school, in your head i mean. to a class you found dull. your sitting there bored out of your skull, watching the clock tick by, you have half an hour until you can go do something else, now imagine that feeling you got when you chose not to look at the clock, and get down and do some work to make time go faster, yet when you thought half hour must be up and looked, you still had 20 minutes to go. that's what an afterlife would be like. only instead of school work, you have the choice of doing anything and everything which after a few trillion years will be as tiresome as school work, but instead of ticking so so slowly, time has stopped. no matter how much you wait, there is nothing to wait for. nothing. for as far ahead as is possible to imagine.

Are you sure that is what the afterlife will be like? Me thinks you are wrong. Boredom, tiresome, etc. Those are words you can only attach to the here and now. They evoke decay. But if every breath, every sight, every smell, every taste, every sound were like new the moment you experienced them, then those words would not even exists. And my friend, they won't.

[smiley]

Do you have a reference for that, include the type of "atheists" polled?

"Americans Describe Their Views About Life After Death.” The Barna Group. 21 Oct. 2003

Now, I have not seen the poll myself, but this was a reference given in the book I got that statistic from.

The reason is that any peoples who do not believe in a creator can be classified as atheist. They can still believe in ghosts, spiritualism, etc. Those are not the people we are dealing with here. And for the sake of this discussion, I think Smiley knows that. I don't think you will have people from the Dawkins and Hitchens camp (the new atheist) purporting a soul.

Actually, Sam Harris says that he is open to "spiritual possibilities".

[jlay]

If someone says they are open to spiritual possibilities, then they are admitting that they are not sure whether God exists or not, and are therefore not an atheist, but an agnostic. No matter how stubbornly they may argue against it.

[Canuckster1127]

I've found it's generally more effective to allow people to define their own positions than to assume I know better than they, what they believe. There are many different "variations" of how people self-describe themselves as atheists.

Remember, Pagans in the late 1st and through the 2nd century referred to christians as atheists because they rejected Roman and Greek Gods.

[Kurieuo]

Do you have a reference for that, include the type of "atheists" polled?

"Americans Describe Their Views About Life After Death.” The Barna Group. 21 Oct. 2003

Now, I have not seen the poll myself, but this was a reference given in the book I got that statistic from.

I'd be interested to see the questions surveyed as many questions can be confusing, and from experience, those phone callers really don't care about getting your responses right. They seem more interested in just getting a response.

However, given Barna's survey and analysis is accurate, it shows how many people are irrational with their beliefs. People are emotive and are generally quite irrational, holding all sorts of inconsistent beliefs. I once asked an "Atheist" friend who believed in karma, "who runs the general rules of karma?" He looked at me realising the inconsistency and shrugged.

There are a many people out there (on all sides) who hold inconsistent beliefs. I am sure myself is included in that, although I try to think through all main beliefs I hold to. I'd encourage anyone to be as coherent as possible with their beliefs. As I see it, being as coherent as possible will inevitably lead one to know more truth.

Sadly, I think many Atheists try to assume the stance of being rational (ergo the question in this topic "Is Christianity Rational" which is suggestive that it is not), when in fact many beliefs of Atheists in life and in civilised society are incoherent with their Atheism.

[MarcusOfLycia]

Sadly, I think many Atheists try to assume the stance of being rational (ergo the question in this topic "Is Christianity Rational" which is suggestive that it is not), when in fact many beliefs of Atheists in life and in civilised society are incoherent with their Atheism.

That sums up my thoughts on it very well. I noticed that although the site and the people on it claim to make an unbiased examination of evidence brought before them, they have certainly made up the prejudices already and begin all arguments with assumptions they don't seem to realize. There's a lot of irrational stuff going on in the head of someone who thinks both the universe is an uncontrollable system of cause and effect and that debating Christians about their beliefs over 'rationality' is a meaningful thing to do.

I unfortunately got so caught up in debating with my friend on a lot of this I lost sight of things that are far more important in my life than winning online debates with people who aren't willing or ready to change their minds. Thankfully, staying out of it all has been good for me... he's been on a livid anti-Christian phase (even demonstrating basic lack of understanding of the Bible in some cases to do so) and people are starting to get fed up; I'm expecting the result of this to knock some sense into him. I'm glad that there's been some thoughtful responses to this; I really appreciate it.

[Legatus]

1. Spend, on a cosmological scale, 30 seconds having fun, then infinite time bored out of your mind with nothing to do, massive depression, endless mind numbing nothingness

The argument you are making here is called:
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation):
assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.

You state two options, no eternal life, or an eternal life of boredom. There is another option.
Let us say, for argument sake, that there is a God (it is impossible to prove that there is not an extradimentional being like this, so there may be).
If there is a God, that God is "The Creator".
As The Creator, this being has the power of creation (obviously).
If this being has the power of creation, and if, as christianity says, this universe will be removed and replaced by "the new heavens and the new earth", in which The Creator is present...
Than that being can continously keep creating new things to do and experience (having infinite intelligence to dream up new things helps).
Therefore you will not get bored.


Also, to some of the the agruments here, a question:
Do you hate the tooth fairy? I mean, do you really HATE the tooth fairy?
Of course not, there is no tooth fairy, so it would be a waste of time and energy to hate it.
Yet, atheists spend huge amounts of time and energy hating God, and doing everything they can to get others to do so also.
Conclusion, atheists believe in God.
They just don't like him.

[Legatus]

One thing, "rational debate".
lets face it, people today know little about rational debate, or for that matter, what is or is not rational. They know nothing of logic, or reason, or what an illogical argument looks like, or how to show it to be illogical. They simply don't think that way anymore. Schools used to teach such things, now they do not.

In addition, in a successful society, we have raised a generation of spoiled children, who simply expect things to go like in their childhoods, they get something for nothing. Parents no longer even believe in spanking. Spanking teaches children something, "actions have consequences", so they never learn one of the basics of logic, that thing A can lead to thing B, and they never learn to think ahead. It also teaches "delayed gratification" (because parents can say no). Children, then, not ever having to restrain their emotions ("I want it NOW!"), never learn to stop and think, they "think" with their emotions, their desires, their greeds. Put those two together and they no londer think long term either (especially planning), instead, "instant gratification".

We see this in, say, car ads. Car adds, you say? Yes, look at them now. Lots of emotional images, one after another, no real attempt to say "this car is better because". They only tout emotional stuff, like how many horsepower it has and how fast it can go, never mind that you are not allowed to go that fast. It has also become easy to run scams, even legal ones. For instance, the current "housing crisis" where people, no longer able to think ahead, buy houses they cannot possibly afford, or take out loans on their house just to blow it all on a vacation or something. All these advertisers and businesses study their potential customers carefully, hence these advertisment schemes and busness plans.

In short, rationality is at an all time low (and dropping rapidly), and it's a great time for hucksters and fruads ("theres a sucker born every minute", only now, pretty much ALL of them ae born that way). This includes religious, and anti-religious, hucksters. And that includes the greatest huckster of them all, Satan. And, in fact, there are many frauds currently in vogue, like the false "war" between religion and science (science, invented by a christian monk, using the christian principle that man is fallable and sinful and that therefore you need to use carefull steps to screen out bias and error). This is also concurrent with many other ongoing operations of Satan, the young earth creation thing, to make christians look stupid and backward, which supports the "scientists against God" thing (actually, only some of them) where some turn to illogic and subvert the scientific method to prove that there is no God, secure in the knowledge that, if caught, they can say "you don't want to be one of those stupid, backward religionists, do you?". And many others that support these ideas, such as the "King James Only Controversy", where some believe that you should ONLY use the King James version of the bible (illogical arguments abound), the idea being to support the idea that christinaity is stupid and backward by making them SOUND like they are still in the dark ages (less people can understand that old language to, an added benefit). In short, it's a great time to be a tempter.

So perhaps, if you are going to talk about rational argument, you should find out what it is.
Things like Logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument
and perhaps even more important, illogic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skep ... ments.html
and the scientific method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_scientific_method
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... thod.shtml

[Silvertusk]

I have just read some of the comments - and again the whole concept of an active atheist baffles me. I don't understand why there are people out there that really want to prove that there is no God - therefore no afterlife, therefore no true justice, therefore no true hope, therefore no true meaning to existence. I am wondering what they prefer in that type of world view that I am missing - please someone tell me!!!!!!!! I am worried that I am missing out on something huge here that I have missed because I have faith in a man who lived 2000 years ago.

Firstly, have you ever contemplated the actual meaning of existing forever. the concept scares the hell out of anyone who has actually put thought into it, every day you wake up knowing that you cannot cease to exist, life looses all meaning. even those who embrace it and set out in their afterlife to go and achieve things, forver is infinite, which means however long you spend doing anything, your time remaining never increases, you could do everything there is to do, several thousand times over, and still not even scratch the surface of your allotted time. if you do something for long enough it becomes tediously boring, imagine existing in a world where every single thing in existence has become tediously boring, everything. there is never anything new to do, and nothing new to try, no new experiences, and you have infinite time left remaining. you will eventually end up just laying down for 5 or 6 trillion years bored out of your mind.

go back to school, in your head i mean. to a class you found dull. your sitting there bored out of your skull, watching the clock tick by, you have half an hour until you can go do something else, now imagine that feeling you got when you chose not to look at the clock, and get down and do some work to make time go faster, yet when you thought half hour must be up and looked, you still had 20 minutes to go. that's what an afterlife would be like. only instead of school work, you have the choice of doing anything and everything which after a few trillion years will be as tiresome as school work, but instead of ticking so so slowly, time has stopped. no matter how much you wait, there is nothing to wait for. nothing. for as far ahead as is possible to imagine.

the only way around this, and its often quoted, is if god infuses your spirit with his love, and you only ever feel love and happiness and joy, forever. well im sorry to put a dampener on that but if god removes all your negative emotions, well he is changing who you are. your negative emotions, along with your positive ones, make up who you are. if god removes them, then the you that is reading this is effectively dead. anything and everything would make you feel great, god could poke your eye out and it would be wonderful to you. you would no longer be you, no longer capable of rational thought, you would have no interests, nothing, you would just be happy. it would be pretty much the same as being lobotomised. so lets look shall we, at our three options

1. Spend, on a cosmological scale, 30 seconds having fun, then infinite time bored out of your mind with nothing to do, massive depression, endless mind numbing nothingness

2. get lobotomised and sit there drooling like an idiot for ever and ever and ever, the real you is effectivly killed and oes to the same places as Ateistic number 3

3. you don't go anywhere, your like a Lego building, atoms assembled, you have your time, you have your fun, you die, the lego bits go back in the bucket, and its the end, you cease to exist, and you go back to where you were for the 14 billion years before you were born. and i'd like to remind you that you didnt exist for 14 billion years and it didn't inconvenience you one little bit during all that time.



yes, Atheists aren't known for caring about true justice, true hope, true meaning to existence. because in the point of view of number three up there, it doesn't matter. imagine your playing Tetris (or any other game you would prefer). your having fun, your doing pretty good at it, your playing it for the fun, not because of any meaning behind it, if someone took it away from you you would be mad right, why? where is the meaning to Tetris? if you get a good score what does it mean? nothing, life is the same, enjoy it, have fun, do what makes you happy, because our time with this big game of life is fleeting, and once its over, there's o extra lives, no continues, that's it, if you get a pretty damn good score you might be on the leader board so everyone will remember you for a while, but that's it. this is all we have so we have to make the most of it, get the best score we can, do as well as we can, and leave the game for the next generation to enjoy. and if you play the game well, when your nearing the end of the game, you will get to look back and remember all those great things you did, all the fun you had, and say to yourself, man, im pretty damn awesome, i rocked at this game!

this view is the only one in which we can logically allow for children starving to death and being circled by vultures. we can allow for murderers to kill people and get away with it, floods, fires, death famine pestilence and war... because in this view, there is no super magic sky daddy who loves us but not enough to avert such tragedy, there is only us. doing the best we can individually.

I think you have a very unclear definition of who God is and what he can offer us. William Lane Craig brought this up - an eternal afterlife without God would be like Hell - I agree. But with an infinite God - then there are an infinite ways for him to "Entertain us" if you were. We will never be bored. And as for the negative emotions - there would not be any because there would be no reason for us to feel any - because we wouls be experiencing such amazing joy and bliss. But I must give you credit for accepting the awful bleak situation that a true athiest world view offers - at least you are honest.

God Bless (even if you dont believe)

Silvertusk.

[Silvertusk]

1. Spend, on a cosmological scale, 30 seconds having fun, then infinite time bored out of your mind with nothing to do, massive depression, endless mind numbing nothingness

The argument you are making here is called:
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation):
assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.

You state two options, no eternal life, or an eternal life of boredom. There is another option.
Let us say, for argument sake, that there is a God (it is impossible to prove that there is not an extradimentional being like this, so there may be).
If there is a God, that God is "The Creator".
As The Creator, this being has the power of creation (obviously).
If this being has the power of creation, and if, as christianity says, this universe will be removed and replaced by "the new heavens and the new earth", in which The Creator is present...
Than that being can continously keep creating new things to do and experience (having infinite intelligence to dream up new things helps).
Therefore you will not get bored.


Also, to some of the the agruments here, a question:
Do you hate the tooth fairy? I mean, do you really HATE the tooth fairy?
Of course not, there is no tooth fairy, so it would be a waste of time and energy to hate it.
Yet, atheists spend huge amounts of time and energy hating God, and doing everything they can to get others to do so also.
Conclusion, atheists believe in God.
They just don't like him.

Absolute genius!!!

[Silvertusk]

One thing, "rational debate".
lets face it, people today know little about rational debate, or for that matter, what is or is not rational. They know nothing of logic, or reason, or what an illogical argument looks like, or how to show it to be illogical. They simply don't think that way anymore. Schools used to teach such things, now they do not.

In addition, in a successful society, we have raised a generation of spoiled children, who simply expect things to go like in their childhoods, they get something for nothing. Parents no longer even believe in spanking. Spanking teaches children something, "actions have consequences", so they never learn one of the basics of logic, that thing A can lead to thing B, and they never learn to think ahead. It also teaches "delayed gratification" (because parents can say no). Children, then, not ever having to restrain their emotions ("I want it NOW!"), never learn to stop and think, they "think" with their emotions, their desires, their greeds. Put those two together and they no londer think long term either (especially planning), instead, "instant gratification".

We see this in, say, car ads. Car adds, you say? Yes, look at them now. Lots of emotional images, one after another, no real attempt to say "this car is better because". They only tout emotional stuff, like how many horsepower it has and how fast it can go, never mind that you are not allowed to go that fast. It has also become easy to run scams, even legal ones. For instance, the current "housing crisis" where people, no longer able to think ahead, buy houses they cannot possibly afford, or take out loans on their house just to blow it all on a vacation or something. All these advertisers and businesses study their potential customers carefully, hence these advertisment schemes and busness plans.

In short, rationality is at an all time low (and dropping rapidly), and it's a great time for hucksters and fruads ("theres a sucker born every minute", only now, pretty much ALL of them ae born that way). This includes religious, and anti-religious, hucksters. And that includes the greatest huckster of them all, Satan. And, in fact, there are many frauds currently in vogue, like the false "war" between religion and science (science, invented by a christian monk, using the christian principle that man is fallable and sinful and that therefore you need to use carefull steps to screen out bias and error). This is also concurrent with many other ongoing operations of Satan, the young earth creation thing, to make christians look stupid and backward, which supports the "scientists against God" thing (actually, only some of them) where some turn to illogic and subvert the scientific method to prove that there is no God, secure in the knowledge that, if caught, they can say "you don't want to be one of those stupid, backward religionists, do you?". And many others that support these ideas, such as the "King James Only Controversy", where some believe that you should ONLY use the King James version of the bible (illogical arguments abound), the idea being to support the idea that christinaity is stupid and backward by making them SOUND like they are still in the dark ages (less people can understand that old language to, an added benefit). In short, it's a great time to be a tempter.

So perhaps, if you are going to talk about rational argument, you should find out what it is.
Things like Logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument
and perhaps even more important, illogic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skep ... ments.html
and the scientific method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_scientific_method
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... thod.shtml

You my friend are making an awful lot of sense. Stop it now please!