What bothers me about christianity.

[Darwin]

Based on my personal experience,believers can vary from annoying to highly respectable,this is not the case I´m going to bring up though.

What I´m about to explore below is not intended to reflect the whole picture of my personal attitude towards christianity,stepping back to see the grey (know what I mean)

I was reading about various forms of philosophy and came up with this site.
http://reachingforchrist.org

A few links:
http://reachingforchrist.org/apologetics/evolution.html
http://reachingforchrist.org/apologetics/atheism.html
http://www.reachingforchrist.org/falsedoctrines/index.html

Some statements and suggestions to be found:
-whether atheism is "viable".
-refuting/rebuttals for atheism/agnosticism (pondering on whether it can be a valid "opinion")
-associating atheism with possible moral decay.
-associating atheism with evolutionary thought.
-exposing "errors" in alternative world religions and philosophies.
-explaining that there is no evidence for God´s non-existence.
-atheist moral is not absolute
-there is no "proof" for atheism.
-evolution is a "religion" ("dumb religion")
-agnosticism/atheism as "belief systems".
etc.


On a more lighter (if in a way,serious) note,perhaps we are dealing with a certain religious equivalent for social darwinism?

[evildave]

You may as well link this as well...

http://www.chick.com/


Oh, and THIS. Even better. Salvation through CHICK TRACTS!
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0945/0945_01.asp

[c4ts]

OMG, that testimonial... it's Ruby!

[c4ts]

It's dissectin' time! (From http://reachingforchrist.org/apologetics/atheismpe.html )

In this article we will be exploring the very foundation of all evolutionary, materialist and skeptical thinking and/or philosophy. I truly believe that if you debunk the evolutionary theory (it has already been debunked, but because of philosophical presuppositions it is clung to with religious fervor) you destroy atheism.
Not really, but you do destroy more than a century's worth of progress in the field of biology if you render the entire concept of evolution impossible, but that would bring about huge advancements in the field, as any other revolutionary breakthrough would...

But materialism, skepticism, and the atheistic worldview, disguised as "science" has crept into our classrooms and has harvested more then just pseudo-science. It has led to such philosophies as "free-thinking" etc. To totally blow materialism out of the water and put that corpse to rest for all-time, one must pull the foundation out from under it. That foundation is called atheism.
I doubt he can successfully prove that evoltionary theory is actually atheism.

If you destroy atheism, then "free-thought," skepticism, etc, will follow in its demise. Let's begin by defining some terms.
The theory could still be tenable in its own right, without atheism. God, an omnipotent being, could cause animals to evolve. Argue against God's omnipotence and you will be buried under an avalanche of Western philosophy...

Also, if skepticism is to fail in the process, than he himself cannot allow disbelief in the theory evolution...

Atheism is defined as "the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; THIS USE HAS BECOME THE STANDARD ONE.
So only hard atheism is responsible for evolution, as all other types are not really athesm. Not only is this arguing for popularity, it singles out Dark Cobra as the only real atheist. Everyone else is just agnostic. Sorry guys.

In the Apology Socrates is accused of atheism for not believing in the Athenian gods.
And this has nothing to do with anything, since Socrates was falsely accused according to his definition.

Some distinguish between theoretical atheism and practical atheism. A theoretical atheist is one who self-consciously denies the existence of a supreme being, whereas a practical atheist may believe that a supreme being exists but lives as though there were no god." (The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition, Robert Audi, General Editor, emphasis mine)
But earlier he was using the "standard definition" of "atheist." Now he is using the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy's definition, which does not assume what he does. A "practical atheist" is, by his earlier definition, "an agnostic," since a practical atheist cannot not "hold the view that there are no gods" if he may believe that a supreme being exists.

Agnosticism is defined as, "(a) term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869 to denote the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, 'I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objection to the doctrine.'
Now he has yet again defined atheism, this time meaning something completely different, something he would have called "agnosticism" earlier.

Let's see if he switches between the three definitions.

By the way, Thomas Henry Huxley used Darwin's theory of evolution to argue for atheism. He is to blame, not atheism itself. Darwin himself was a Christian.

"Agnosticism is a form of skepticism applied to metaphysics, especially theism. The position is sometimes attributed to Kant, who held that we cannot have knowledge of God or immortality but we must be content with faith. AGNOSTICISM SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH ATHEISM, THE BELIEF THAT NO GOD EXISTS." (Ibid, emphasis mine)
And now he is redifining agnosticism. In big capital letters, he restates his first definition of atheism, negating Huxely (and this is part of a quote from Huxely, by the way) and rendering the Cambridge Dictionary's dichotomy irrelevant. Huxely is now wrong, thanks to leaving the caps lock on! Look at how masterfully he switches between the definitions. It's like playing 3 card monty or the shell game.

So we can see the general consensus that atheism and agnosticism are in severe contrast.
Interesting. He's arguing from popularity again after setting up his own consensus, and he has not made anything clear about how a view that there are no gods is consistent with Huxley's view of agnosticism, as Huxley makes it clear that "there are no gods" is the position atheism takes. I am confused as hell regarding what agnosticism is because he's playing the frikkin' semantic shell game with atheism. He loudly declares that atheism and agnosticism are really different but he does not explain how or why the difference is anything more than subtle.

I see many professing atheists using arguments such as "you will never know this side of the grave," etc, to back up their belief.
Atheism has belief. This means he is using his first definition.

But one must not, as we have noted, confuse the two.
Well too bad, because I did! No thanks to his arguing from popularity and defining atheism thrice.

An atheist should give arguments to back up their belief in atheism, not confuse it with agnosticism.
That's a relief, thanks to the definition he uses. An atheist might say "no belief in god is atheism as well as belief in no god," but that would be confusing it with his first definition of agnosticism. I don't know what kind of logical fallacy telling your opponent what he should and should not do is called, but he's doing it.

If one can only use such an argument then they are not really an atheist, but a fence-sitting agnostic.
I finally remembered what the fallacy is called: attacking the person.

Madeline O' Hare was quoted in the Saturday Evening Post as saying, "Agnostics are just atheists without guts, because they are afraid to speak up." I guess I could add that they could be theists without guts. I am not saying that agnostics are idiots, what I am saying is that it is very easy to be an agnostic and just throw up your hands. "We will never know I guess." If I had a lazy brain I might just say that and leave it alone. But I think one can find rational answers to this world we live in if they put a little work in it.
Now he's on a tangent attacking what he calls agnosticism. This is completely irrelevant.

The Cosmological Argument
The argument for God's existence in the area of cosmology is very discernable as far as I am concerned. It is obvious, if you have a complex machine, you have a designer. If I told you that my TV evolved out of nothing on my coffee table you would laugh.
Confusing nature with artifice, I see. Reproduction is key to the theory of evolution, something his analogy ignores. Tables don't make other tables. TV sets don't make other TV sets. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are complicated machines. We've all seen Muscleman try to do something similar

Also, shouldn't he be arguing that man was created like the TV was, not debunking it? But I know very little about what he should and shouldn't be doing...

How good does it sound then if one proposes that a living cell, thousands upon thousands of times more complex than any TV ever built by man could have evolved by itself? I don't have to see the designer to know that he exists, but I still know it was designed.
Reproduciton, not complexity, is key. Also, complexity does not necessarily imply intelligent design. Snowflakes, for example, are complex, but they are not designed the way a TV or coffee table is designed.

To render atheism a useless and futile cause one must pull the foundation out from under it.
He already said that.

The theory of evolution has collapsed and the further science, paleontology and microbiology advance, the further Neo-Darwinism will be buried. Not every evolutionist is an atheist, but every atheist is an evolutionist.
If every p is q, but not every q is p, then not enough is known about either p or q to state a mathematical relationship, especially the kind where one is the foundation for the other. Not enough is known about either set to say you cannot have p without q.

Some may argue that that is patently false but every theory that I know of that is being tossed around today would fall into 1 of 4 categories: 1) The universe is an illusion 2) The universe created itself 3) The universe is self-existent and eternal all by itself 4) The universe was created by a timeless, changeless, Supreme Being. It is either or, there is no viable fifth option. Let's examine these four and see which one comes out on top.
OK, that's it. I give up. I don't have time for this. It's gonna take weeks to point out all the flaws... You guys can play with the rest.

Could the universe be an illusion? R.C Sproul, in his Not a Chance, totally demolishes all naturalistic theories. If the universe is an illusion, the illusion must somehow be accounted for. If it's a false illusion then it isn't really an illusion at all. If it's a true illusion then someone or something must exist to have an illusion. If this is the case then that which is having the illusion must a) be self-created, self-existent, or b) caused by something ultimately self-existent, so therefore, everything is not an illusion. Moreover, if we assume the illusion is absolute and nothing really exists, including those having the illusion, then there is really no question of origins to answer. But if something exists, then whatever exists must either be self-created, self-existent, or created by something that is self-existent. As Rene Descartes stated, "Sometimes I doubt my own existence, but who is there to do the doubting? I doubt, therefore I am." The hypothesis that the universe is an illusion is pathetic and those who propagate it should not be taken seriously. Could the universe have created itself?

[snip...]

[evildave]

You don't have to quote the WHOLE article. The link's enough.

Granting total proof of evolution no more "proves" anything about "god" as the fundys describe it than thoroughly disproving evolution thoroughly would.

It's only unfortunate that a little ad-hominem is all it takes to convince people who (after all) go to that site looking for confirmation, rather than challenging their preconceptions.


And WHICH testimonial? Those links were a bucket-load of witnessing.

[c4ts]

The first testimonial on the chick tract. The curly-haired lady who says she had paranormal experiences.

[Darwin]

Thanks for pointing out certain lines that I did miss c4ts.

evildave,yes indeed.
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0007/0007_01.asp
etc.

From Chick:
"Author Claims Some Dinosaurs Live Today!




Issue Date: July/August 2000


In March, 1962, five teenage boys rode a small boat to a partially submerged shipwreck off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. They planned to explore the wreck with scuba gear. They encountered a storm that drove them off course and when they got back near the shipwreck it was foggy.

Hearing some strange animal noises, they watched a large head with teeth and green eyes, appear out of the fog several feet above the water on a long neck. As the "sea monster" moved closer, the boys panicked, grabbed their swim fins and dove into the water to try to escape to the ship.

One of the boys, Edward B. McCleary, lived to tell how, one by one, his buddies screamed in agony behind him as he swam for his life. McCleary made it to the ship and was rescued the next day. The body of one of the boys washed ashore several days later. He had drowned, but an intense search found no trace of the other three. The final assumption was that they had been eaten by the sea monster.

This is just one of many incidents related by Dr. Kent Hovind in his Creation Science Evangelism video series. Hovind claims that there have been over 20,000 sightings of "prehistoric" dinosaur type animals in the 20th century. In his video #3, Dinosaurs and the Bible, he shows photographs of other sea creatures that have been caught by fishing boats or washed ashore. He holds interviews with witnesses who describe, in detail, seeing dinosaur-like animals. Natives in remote Amazon or African jungles have been shown pictures of dinosaurs and immediately pointed to ones they have encountered and even killed.

Hovind questions the universal teaching that dinosaurs have been extinct for "millions of years." He says that the usual question asked in school is: "What caused the dinosaurs to become extinct?" Instead, it should be: "Are dinosaurs extinct?"

He points out that the Bible explains history from the beginning of creation about 6 thousand years ago. When a public school child is told, over and over for years, that these fascinating creatures all died "millions of years ago," what chance does a Sunday school teacher have convincing him to trust the Bible?

The word "dinosaur" is a relatively new word, coined in about 1850. Before that, the common word was "dragon" and there are thousands of stories in early history of men dealing with dragons. We have assumed that these were mythological creatures, the stuff of fairy tales. But many of them are told as serious history and primitive art is full of pictures of men fighting, riding on and making beasts of burden of dinosaur-like animals.

Hovind contends that Noah carried some baby dinosaurs on the ark along with all the other animals. After the flood, the climate changed and the large ones, which depended on lush, swamp-like environment, could not survive.

Smaller ones became more scarce as man populated the earth and only survived in the ocean and large, deep lakes such as Lock Ness or remote swamps such as the huge Likouala in equatorial Africa. Today, they are like the grizzly bear, only a few are alive in remote wildernesses far from civilization.

Hovind points to biblical words such as "behemoth," "leviathan," and even "dragon." The descriptions of these animals more accurately match dinosaurs than any other known animal.

Hovind was a high school science teacher for 15 years. He became so disturbed by the teaching of evolution that he quit to become an evangelist. He holds church services and seminars for schools where he shows that the Bible is true.

He makes three main points: God created the earth about 6 thousand years ago; 4400 years ago there was a world-wide flood; dinosaurs are not millions of years old but even exist today.

His 7-tape video set supports these points in extensive detail and challenges Christians to get this information out to counter Satan's lies about evolution and dinosaurs which create such confusion for school children. "

I have yet to see material more disturbed than this.

[shemp]

Dear c4ts:

Thank you for you entry into the "Longest Post Ever" contest. However, the judges have decided that it consists of too much quoted material and not enough original content. Only original content can be considered as a valid entry. However, we commend you on a nice effort and urge you to try again.

Sincerely,
The Judging Committee

[Loki]

If you destroy atheism, then "free-thought," skepticism, etc, will follow in its demise.
And the sooner we can get rid of free thinking the better!!

[Yahzi]

c4ts
You're not looking at it from the historical perspective.

There are four traditional arguments for the existance of God: ontological, moral, teleological, and cosmological. The ontological argument died the day it came out. The moral argument lasted until the first war, famine, mass murder, etc. The cosmological argument stood up a lot better, but when Copy-boy showed that the earth went round the sun, and not vice versa, that argument died a slow, painful death.

However, the teleogical argument was pretty sound. People were obviously different than animals, so the existance of a source of personality (by which I mean the self-conscious mind) made sense. And since personality was immaterial, the source should be immaterial. People had parts that weren't of this material world, so logically there must be an immaterial world to provide those parts. The earliest reference I have seen to this argument was by a rabbi writing in the 10th century: in discussing the origins of man, he cites several theories. The very first theory he cites is that man arose from random chance, and then he dismisses this as obviously too silly to consider. What this tells you is that this idea was already old in the 10th century. It just couldn't be made reasonable, so the teleological argument stood by default - it was the most convincing argument available.

Darwin changed all that. Pinker, Dennet, Crick, and all the science of mind guys are only icing the cake. While it is possible to argue that our bodies are from animals but our minds are from God, it's not terribly convincing. Once Darwin shored up the argument against the teleological, by showing that in fact we could and almost certainly did come from something not necessarily random but certainly mechanical, empirical, undirected, and wholly material, then the teleological argument fell over and died. The last 100 years have simply been a reaction to that.

There have been no new arguments for the existance of God in the last 1000 years. This sort of implies there aren't going to be any new ones. Thus, the religious world cannot be blamed for defending teleology, its last and final bastion of rational argument. Darwin was the hole in the dyke, and so the war is against Darwin and evolution - if they can roll that back, then whatever wierd stuff Francis Crick is doing can be handled easily.

The author is almost right. It is not that disproving evolution destroys atheism, but rather, that proving evolution destroys religion.

Dear c4ts,

Have you emailed the authors of what you are responding to here?

You may not get much more than a "Amen! Preach the good word c4ts!" here I would imagine.

Sincerely,

S. Holmes

There have been no new arguments for the existance of God in the last 1000 years. This sort of implies there aren't going to be any new ones.


Dear Mr. Yahzi,

I fail to see how that follows logically at all. Could you explain that further?

Sincerely,

S. Holmes

[justsaygnosis]

As for the objection to 'free thought' skepticism how many here have heard the statement, 'god's folly is superior to man's wisdom'?
Confronted with that I can only reply that that premise may be true of god but that doesn't extend outward to ministers and evangelists. They might be dumb as a stump but to them they're carrying out god's will so their stupidity is more valid than empirically proven fact.
Proving god is another matter but I'm simply saying I don't mind conceding inferiority to the supreme being of the universe but men are going to have to prove their mettle .
I'll concede inferior understanding to many people but not to anyone who is provably wrong and refuses to admit it.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by evildave
You may as well link this as well...

http://www.chick.com/



Thanks, Evildave, that was the best laugh I've had in a while

[evildave]

You're welcome.

Always glad to help.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by shemp
Dear c4ts:

Thank you for you entry into the "Longest Post Ever" contest. However, the judges have decided that it consists of too much quoted material and not enough original content. Only original content can be considered as a valid entry. However, we commend you on a nice effort and urge you to try again.

Sincerely,
The Judging Committee

Perhaps one day, my post will be c4ts'ed to another thread.

[Yahzi]

Sh*thead Holmes
I fail to see how that follows logically at all. Could you explain that further?
It follows inductively. No, I cannot explain it in words small enough for you to understand. Yes, you are on my ignore list, but this thread (and this thread alone) was open before that blessed event, and hence I have finally been exposed to your selfish babble.

Yes, I can explain that last sentence in words small enough for you to understand: good riddance to bad rubbish.

Or, more to your level: haha dumbass.

[stamenflicker]

There have been no new arguments for the existance of God in the last 1000 years. This sort of implies there aren't going to be any new ones.

Hell-arious. Besides theories of social construction, narrative theology, linguistic and postmodern theologies, exactly how many do we arguments do we need? How many new arguments have their been for the existence of economies? Humor? Other non-physical entities? How many new arguments do we really need? How many arguments are their for the existence of rocks? How many more do we need?

Flick

[c4ts]

Why should something that truly exists need any sort of argument for its own existence? How do you argue for the existence of anything if it's already there, right in front of you?

[Hazelip]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
Other non-physical entities?

Invisible pink unicorns?

Originally posted by Yahzi
Sh*thead Holmes

It follows inductively.


Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Must you always call me a "Sh*thead"? Your behavior is quite the opposite of being interested in inquiry.

In any case, your it certainly does not "follow inductively".


Yes, you are on my ignore list, but this thread (and this thread alone) was open before that blessed event, and hence I have finally been exposed to your selfish babble.


It certainly seems that I am being ignored too. :)


Or, more to your level: haha dumbass.

Your case would be better served without such outbursts.

Hazelip,

Pseudoscientsts often construct strawmen, unlike some skeptics (who are above that, you see) who often compare things to Santa Claus, reindeer jumping off buildings, invisible pink unicorns, or invisible dragons in garages.

Very sincerely yours,

S. Holmes

[Dancing David]

So Darwin what was the point of the post?

Peace
dancing David

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by c4ts
Why should something that truly exists need any sort of argument for its own existence? How do you argue for the existence of anything if it's already there, right in front of you? Damn!!! Lightbulb moment.... I may have to use this...
It sounds like an excellent topic for a new thread...

This is a variation of the JREF challenge, which says: All you have to do, is what you say you can do.

[Hypnagogiac]

This is a hoot:
If naturalism were true, there wouldn't really be anything wrong with your raping someone. I don't think there is a person on this planet that would agree that rape is amoral
http://reachingforchrist.org/apologetics/atheismpe.html
Funny he should mention rape, because last time I checked, the Bible provided no penalty for rape. As long as it's heterosexual, its a-okay. There's a law that says the rapist is forced to marry his victim, but thats it. The author should have thought about this a little bit more...

(but then again, there was a thread about this (on iidb) that went on for well over 50 posts where a xian insisted that such a law was both a good idea & very progressive for women. go figure)

[stamenflicker]

How do you argue for the existence of anything if it's already there, right in front of you?

A perfect example of one argument regarding existence. There are anti-arguments to those claims stemming from a handful of philosophical disciplines. My point is simply there are most likely a limted number of ways any "thing" can be defined, or undefined.

Flick

[Darwin]

DD,
just create discussion,remove things off my chest and so on.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by stamenflicker
How do you argue for the existence of anything if it's already there, right in front of you?

A perfect example of one argument regarding existence. There are anti-arguments to those claims stemming from a handful of philosophical disciplines. My point is simply there are most likely a limted number of ways any "thing" can be defined, or undefined.

Flick

And having something in the room with you, seems to be one of the more popular ones.;)

[Dancing David]

Thanks Charles D., I must say you are looking good for someone your age.

The wierdest argument I know that the Xians use is, well Science once said this and now it says that, ergo you can't trust anything they say. As though infallabilty is part of truth. Must be why they ganged up on poor old 'relativity'.

It is amazing how many people don't realize that the bible has been added to, amended and edited quite heavily. I would swear that they think god sat down with a typrewriter and wrote the bible in seven days.

Peace\
dancing david

[Darwin]

DD,
Thank you.It takes time these days.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Sherlock Holmes


Dear Mr. Yahzi,

Must you always call me a "Sh*thead"? Your behavior is quite the opposite of being interested in inquiry.

In any case, your it certainly does not "follow inductively".

[/b]

It certainly seems that I am being ignored too. :)



Your case would be better served without such outbursts.

Hazelip,

Pseudoscientsts often construct strawmen, unlike some skeptics (who are above that, you see) who often compare things to Santa Claus, reindeer jumping off buildings, invisible pink unicorns, or invisible dragons in garages.

Very sincerely yours,

S. Holmes [/B]

So a few skeptics have their favorite analogies. Giving the same rebuttal to different arguments won't make them strawmen, as long as it is relevant and applicable each time.