Atheist vs. Theist

Edison Trent's picture

What are the best Biblical textual errors?

I've seen Rook's nice, long, list of Biblical errors and contradicitons, but I feel that taking the list on would take too much of my time unless I was able to have a lot of people working with me.  So what are the most striking, the worst of the worst, errors the Bible has?

Godless Morality

Whenever a religious person asks an atheist to explain the existence of morality without god, the atheist resorts to the following answer:

"Who are you to claim a monopoly on morality?  Religion makes people immoral.  Religious people are responsible for the inquisition, 9/11, child molestation (whether it's priests who go against the bible, or Mohammad marrying a 9 year old), etc.  I'm an atheist, I'm a moral person, I understand that rape and murder are wrong even though I've seen the bible as a stupid and false book since I was 8 years old.

 

That answer is true, at least in part, but not sufficient.  How do we know we have objective good and objective evil?  I agree with Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, and other atheists that 9/11 was an evil action committed by religious fanatics, and of course I see Hitler as pure evil.  But how can we make that judgement and see ourselves as more rightous than Usama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot?

The reasonable belief in God

First let us distinguish the separate definitions of reason.  There is a scientific reason (often called empirical knowledge), there is ethical reasoning (what makes you happy?  What is the greatest good for the greatest number?), and there is logical and mathematical reasoning (absolute or tautological knowledge).  The former two use the tools of the latter in order to function coherently and provide the best answers that we, as humans can come up with.

So, here is the question: why would it be reasonable for you to believe in a God?  Obviously there is no empirical reason to do so, and this is what Atheists first point to when they discuss religion.  God is not observed with our senses, he does not speak to you (or at least most of you), there is no evidence for him, and therefore no scientific reason to believe in him.  Therefore there is no reason (either scientific, ethical, or logical) to believe that God took a direct hand in the things which science can explain.  There is no reason (of any kind), with the evidence that we have now, to believe such ridiculous notions as "God made the world in six days," or that the earth is six thousand years old.  There is no reason to believe in the absolute truth of the Bible.

william_374's picture

Who has the burden of proof?

If we were to discover a fully automated factory of some kind on the Moon or Mars, we would have to assume it is the product of design, at least until we could satisfactorily show that it is not.

This situation "defaults" to a designer, and the burden of proof resides on those who champion an alternate, much more complicated explanation. The existence of the designer *is* an explanation, in fact it is the simplest one. And please, no "who created the designer" questions, IF he is necessary, then he DOES exist, and he has the property of having always existed.

triften's picture

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled...

Now I've actually had a theist tell me "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." I don't know where the saying came from, but I'm sure a good number recognize it.

It occurred to me the other day, that, assuming God and Satan exist and all that jazz, the greatest trick the Devil could possibly pull was convincing people that his voice was God's.

So, if you believe in god and satan, then when god "wants" you to do something, how do you know it's god telling you and not the devil?

Hambydammit's picture

How to Twist Data

On October 27, an article appeared in the Guardian addressing a Christian professor's testimony before Parliamant regarding abortion law. In his testimony, Professor John Wyatt, of the Christian Medical Fellowhip, testified that his data for 1995-2006 contradicted the peer reviewed data collected and reported in a study called Epicure. In the peer reviewed data, there was a slight increase in premature babies' survival rates at week 24, but no significant improvement in the dismal 10-20% survival rate for births at 22 and 23 weeks. Prof Wyatt claims a 42% survival rate for weeks 22 and 23. It doesn't take much to understand why a Christian might be happy about that sort of thing. Their stated goal is to limit abortion as early as possible. These statistics, if verified, could easily provide ammo for their political arsenal.

The Strange, Questionable Question

When considering the origin of the question of gods, one has to wonder who may have been the first to ask; then one has to imagine the staggering ignorance this person would have been born into, and the kinds of everyday occurrences this person would have thought miraculous. It would have been a perception with no framework for understanding cause and effect. The weather, child-birth, the sun, the stars, comets, earthquakes, disease, death, would all be strange, inexplicable and unpredictable. Who would blame such a person for, out of desperation, fashioning some specious means of appeal to make the bad things stop, and the good things continue, when he or she has no means of interpreting what is happening on any but the most immediate level? 

Why is it...

that every field of endeavor seems to move from

concept->evidence->conclusion

except for religion?

Religion seems to go from concept->conclusion->evidence.

It seems like the entire Bible was written like this (my opinion only). Paul had a god-concept -> the gospel writers came later and created a "human" character to make Paul's concept more palatable -> to make the character work, the writers backtracked through the OT prophecies and linked them to make this character a Messiah

Forgive me for sharing my journey with you but I'm trying to understand all this.

Vessel's picture

The 'God' Circle

Is there a single argument for the existence of a god that does not distill down to the simple unsupported claim that god is the answer to a question for which no other answer is presently known?

Is there any definition for god that doesn't define him as nothing more than the answer to an unanswered question?

 

It seems to me when we boil down the arguments for a god and the definitions of god we basically get one big circle. For instance, one might say that a god is required to explain the eixstence of the universe. But what is meant by 'god' when they use the word as an explanation for this phenomenon of the universe existing. Well, apparently they mean the entity that created the universe. 

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