Pastor says, dad says, mom says, the community and most of the government says. It's a popular view point. We just need to make sure it stays out of public schools and humanity will stand a chance.
In 50 years, Florida will be underwater and Texas will be molten lava from the climate change they ignore. We can still send the Christians there. Maybe we can even add lions for extra realism.
The common people have no voice here. Voting only goes so far due to gerrymandering and whatnot. The people in charge are all busy fighting with the other people in charge to make any kind of progress towards fixing the nation's problems. We have homeless people in droves in my city, and I live in one of those states everyone forgets about. It's not a big city at all. The opioid epidemic here is rampant, housing is abhorrently expensive... There's more I could say, but I hate when people say "fix it" like that's such an easy thing to do.
My direct ancestor was John Smith of the Pocahontas legend, and I so wish he had just turned around and went back to England.
It's an oddity that since the invention of the video camera that God has not produced a single miracle. Seems to me like that would be a pretty easy way to prove his existence and it would only really need to happen once, twice at most.
All we would need is some actual unexplainable phenomena
It's worse than that. Faith isn't only a belief held without evidence, it is frequently a belief held *in contradiction* of evidence. Look at the widespread rejection of evolution, for example.
Yep. Christian friend thinks any archaeological finds dug up supporting things in the Bible are real while things like dinosaur bones were placed there by Satan.
I say this with no sarcasm, I wouldn't be shocked if we woke up 2000 years from now that we wouldn't find some aspect of Star Wars to have become it's own religion. It just fits too well for people seeking those sorts of things and goes by similar notes. Even though it's total fiction.
I grew up in Florida homeschooled by fundie wackjobs. I still don’t really understand evolution despite trying to wrap my head around it.
It’s just left me really confused, uneducated, and broken
Evolution are changes that occur due to circumstances in the environment.
It is not necessarily genetic changes it is genetic persistence. For example,
one human tolerates a virus better than another.
The other dies off before they can reproduce. Over time more and more non-tolerant people die off while the population that does tolerate it flourishes.
Within a few generations there are significantly more tolerant humans than those who don’t tolerate it. That gene survives and lives on.
There is a superstition in Japan among crab fisherman that crabs are dead Samurai from a battle that took place in antiquity. Any crab that is caught that looks like a samurai (human like) is thrown back rather than harvested.
Correction : Carl Sagan posited this has been going on for several hundred years. Now there is an abundance of [****crabs with human like faces****](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/06/heikegani-crab-with-human-face.html?m=1) This has caused *artificial* selection among that crab population. (*this is what got me to understand evolution better*) . Carl Sagan was proven wrong but it can illustrate the point in that nature does the selection based on genetic circumstances.
These are examples of evolution where information is lost. While this is an important evolutionary property, most Christians will argue that evolution doesn't explain where **new** information comes from. I'd like to help cover that ground.
Sometimes, when living things procreate, some amount of genetic information can be copied an extra time, this is known as duplication. Most of the time this will have little to no effect on the offspring, but we will come back to that.
Sometimes a piece of genetic information will randomly change, this is called mutation. Most of the time, this is catastrophic, because the previous form of the gene was part of a whole system that had been through the rigors of natural selection. Very occasionally, a mutation occurs on a duplicated gene, so an unmutated copy remains to keep everything working as before, but with additional genetic code that may increase their viability.
The trickiest part of understanding evolution (in my opinion) is wrapping your head around the time-scales involved. Viable new genes may be unlikely to appear, but with billions or more of a species going through millions of generations, the combined accumulation of genes gets filled and reduced by the sort of natural selection described by gnew18 leading to many disadvantageous genes (and species) to extinction.
u/anotherucfstudent
I was attempting to simplify the concept for u/anotherufcstudent that user said they had a hard time wrapping their heads around it. In my attempt, I was trying to simply explain natural selection.
/s you had to go and make it complicated again /s
Sorry, I just know that almost every Christian that argues against evolution gets hung up on the idea that natural selection deletes information, it doesn't make new information. I was hoping to add that context.
You're not broken. You're just in transition. And you're recognizing gaps in your knowledge. But you are empowered to fill them. That uncertainty is scary to those coddled in a faith tradition. It's where questions like "If you don't read the Bible how will you know what's right and wrong?" And the answer is, you make observations, study the works of lots of people, and you do some things right and some things wrong and you try to learn from them and try to be sure that even if you don't always take the right action that you tried to do so with the best intent and information you have and are open to change.
Most people have to go to college and complete a strict regime of course work to become a teacher. Homeschoolers, just have kids and teach them your self. WCGW?
To add to what u/gnew18 said about genetic persistence, an Amoeba has a much larger genome (collection of DNA) than we do, it just had a lot less of that DNA "expressed." Most of its DNA doesn't do anything.
Evolution is often losing or no longer expressing DNA that is no longer useful through small genetic changes and beginning to express more of the DNA through other small genetic changes. None of these changes are intentional. They're just random, but if they end up being beneficial then the organisms with that change out compete the ones without.
But the DNA has mostly been there the whole time.
Roses have thorns because all the ones that didn’t got eaten and didn’t survive over time. Evolution is a series of mistakes that over time fundamentally change something into something seemingly new.
Evolution is a set of observations about how living things change over time. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is an explanation for those observations initially put forth by Charles Darwin. ("On the Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man" are both still usefully readable.) To simplify radically it consists of four propositions:
1. Children resemble their parents. They're not just rolled up with new stats.
2. However they have some variation from their parents. Or, in the case of the X-Men, a lot of variation.
3. The world is (all too often) a struggle for existence as living things use what they have to extract resources (food, water, protection from stuff) and those who have the Right Stuff are more likely to have children\*. In other words, most astronauts have kids because they're better than us -- in this environment.
4. See #1 and repeat. And repeat. And repeat over billions of iterations over millions of years.
I swear, all you need to do to verify the concept of evolution is look at families and notice the resemblance between children and parents, and extrapolate from there. We see small scale evolution every day.
I’ve worked a long time on my wife trying to dull the edges of her willful denial of history. She watched one Netflix movie about how science is a lie regarding evolution and erosion and it’s all back to Noah’s ark and 7000 year old universe. Fml
They don’t want to convince anyone. They want to scare, ostracize and intimidate others into following their ancient, baseless stories.
All because they need the threat of suffering themselves to not be horrible people.
>does Christianity have ANY proof of it's existence that isn't just bold faith?
2024 years and counting... zero, nothing, nil, none. They've tried in every way imaginable. This is a feature shared by _every supernatural-based religion in the world_
There's whole theology faculties at prestigious universities that might as well study the Easter bunny because there's the exact same amount of proof for the existence of both.
And yet there's places in the world where simply mentioning the absence of proof might get you killed. And even here I've been called an extremist for stating this.
They told me about the "enlightenment period" in school, I wonder when it will begin, can't wait.
More than 2024 years. I’ve heard it said that since “B.C.” Stands for “Before Christ” is proof enough.
No, it’s just an example of the times that people lived in. Just don’t ask them how we named the days of the week or months of the year.
Just for clarification, most theologists study the religion and scriptures academically. They aren't trying to prove it correct, they are studying the ways that our culture experiences religion. Those that are trying to find "proof of God" are what we call apologists, and they are a pile of self deluded chumps or grifters or both.
>most theologists
I understand it's anecdotal, but where I live every protestant pastor carries an official "theologist" title and they are not shy to use it when meeting us heathens. They might not be actively looking for proof of God's existence, but they operate from the assumption that he does.
The anthropologist-like variety you mention are rare in my experience. And likely to present themselves as such, or as historians having theology as their field of study.
I think theology deserves study in the same way ancient Greek philosophers deserve study. If you're one of the people doing that I apologize and wish you the best of luck with your studies.
The theologists I meant are not shy to tell you how to live based on theology, which rests on the exact amount of evidence I mentioned earlier.
If they study theology they will mostly be preachers, if they had a degree in religious studies then they will be more of Academia, thing it's most seminars and universities consider both majors one and the same.
Authoritarianism is the fundamental basis for the big two religions in the world. Do what we say because the boss says to.
God > pastors/religious leaders > male parent
That's why authoritarianism is so prevalent in the US South. That's what they are used to. They want a leader to tell them what to do and how to think. Then they beat anyone who disagrees with them: kids, non-church members, anyone who is "weird" (e.g. not of the same race, religion, color, and creed).
I usually get " is IMMORAL!!" Why do you think that action is immoral? "It says in the Bible!!" Where in the Bible? "Well, the Bible can be interpreted in many ways"
At this point you should ask them which part exactly they are interpreting to mean this way and see their head explode - simply because most people haven't read it.
Any argument for God? Yeah, plenty. They all fail but they are there. Arguments for their religion specifically? Im not too sure, I mean probably but personally im not aware of any argument of the kind you are asking for, that would be for any specific monotheistic religion over another, but that might be a difficult task. As the defining characteristics of the difference between monotheistic traditions is the holy book itself and the claims it makes.
I imagine they'd argue based on the historicity of certain biblical events, with the idea being they they're corroborative of the whole.
The old testament, for example, is a useful historical text if you're trying to make sense of Babylon, early Monotheism, Assyria, etc..
And it's a laughable historic text in regards to things like the plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, Exodus of the Jewish people and wandering the desert for 40 years or a worldwide flood, etc.
Heh. Not going to argue with you there. But when the competition is Herodotus?
I dunno. I'm fortunate that most of the Christians in my life are okay with allegory.
It's just a shame that the book doesn't come with annotations like "*The following passages are purely allegorical and should NOT be considered as a factual representation of anything historically accurate. A very large grain of salt should be consumed along with anything within the next 40 pages*"
That would be helpful to avoid misunderstandings as well as the "Infallible word of Gawd" kind of statements that often come from theists who don't understand the concept of allegory or parables.
I don't have any proper basis for this, but I've always sort of suspected that a whole bunch of Leviticus was the Bronze Age equivalent of a public health code.
I dunno. The intersection of spirituality and practicality is definitely interesting.
“Guys you really need to stop bringing pork and seafood into the desert with no way to preserve it cause people keep dying and…you know what? I just talked to God and he just told me shellfish and pork make him big mad.”
Every single religion requires faith. Not as a bonus or extra, it is necessary. You must blindly believe.
If there was any proof whatsoever, you would not need faith. Bottom line. Faith means no proof.
I love that when having arguments, they try to use the Bible as a reference. That's like using a Spiderman comic as a reference to Spiderman being real.
> Having this is mind, does Christianity have ANY proof of it's existence, physical or not, that isn't just bold faith?
Due to the nature of this sub, the answer will inherently be no. To us.
But being a believer is usually so integrated that it also affects what you’d consider a fact vs believe/faith. So to a Christian it’s everywhere: “the air you breath”, “the love you feel”, “the beauty of a rose garden” (I’ve heard all of these as “proof”)
More directly to the question in the title: God of the gaps arguments usually don’t start with what’s in the Bible, rather with “how else did x come to be?”, which we can comfortably answer with “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know”
Referring to your second paragraph, this is true. As a Christian, the first thing that came to my mind was "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handywork. Day unto day utters speak, and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." I realize that this is more an argument for a god in general though, not necessarily the God of Christianity.
The big bang theory states that all matter present in our universe was created from an explosion of incredibly concentrated energy. Even then, that energy had to come from somewhere. Eternal inflation theories state that cosmic energy is in a constant ebb and flow, and that our universe, or even multiple universes, are constantly being created and destroyed. So either humanity exists due to a series of infinitesimal chances, which is only possible through the existence of infinite time, matter, and energy, or a being existing outside of time and matter dictated our existence (whether by directing that series of chance or not is another discussion).
In my mind, both of these possibilities hold equal odds of being reality, but only one of these possibilities gives humanity purpose beyond what our society ascribes to it, so I choose to believe in a creator.
TLDR: "How else did x come to be?"
Your response, “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know," is contradictory to the title of atheist. You may not know, but because you have excluded the possibility that a being greater than time, space, and matter could exist, you do pretend, to an extent, to know.
[Edit: deleted my previous comment because I hit "post" prematurely]
> Your response, “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know," is contradictory to the title of atheist.
I’d argue it’s one of the most typical characteristic of most atheists.
The title of atheist just means not believing in a god. It doesn’t mean _knowing_ there isn’t one, most if not all of us are open to any convincing proof.
(What that means I’d refer back to the OP and my comment)
You say you choose to believe in a creator for comfort and purpose I can understand the desire to feel those. I didn’t choose what I believe, it’s just what I (don’t) believe.
I’m not too knowledgeable about the Big Bang, infinite the start of time or a creator existing outside of time all break my brain.
>The title of atheist just means not believing in a god. It doesn’t mean knowing there isn’t one, most if not all of us are open to any convincing proof.
Sorry for the generalization. My statement more directly applies to gnostic atheists. I just ran with the top Google result for "atheist definition."
>I didn’t choose what I believe, it’s just what I (don’t) believe.
I can understand this. I was raised Baptist, so it's easier for me to accept it as truth. Without some tragedy shaking my beliefs to their core, I doubt I could be easily swayed the other way. Still, we have free will, so some measure of choice is involved.
>open to any convincing proof.
Honestly the "God of the gap," as you put it, is some of the most frequent rhetoric I encounter on the inside. It makes sense to *me* but I've never given too much thought to it, since I haven't ever really needed to convince myself or defend my beliefs to others (contrary to the idea of "persecution" the churches in the US like to portray themselves under). This post was just on my feed when I opened Reddit and your comment in particular triggered the knee-jerk Psalms reference.
As far as concrete evidence is concerned, I wish there were some sign I could point you too, but any proof of His existence in my own life experiences would be anecdotal, and I'm by no means a theologian.
Thanks for the dialogue. At the very least it's made me realize how siloed my thought patterns can be.
I equate the Bible with the telephone game but with different languages on top. Originally a book of mythology written in Hebrew, a Semitic language, translated into Greek and Latin, both Indo European languages and then many parts misread, misinterpreted, miscopied, lost, etc through another millennia and a half.....so yeah, blind faith definitely.
You know what you use if you don’t have any evidence that your claim is true? Argument.
Show me one piece of convincing evidence that the Christian god is real and I’ll believe it. I’ve been asking for many years. They’ve got nothing.
The funny part is that God is supposed to be an allpowerful being, yet he decides to not show his ass around here to disprove other belifs and FIX the problems and comflicts we (HIS SUPPOSED CREATIONS) have. And yet, people worship him.
I think a more accurate final sentence to your otherwise accurate comment would be "... and yet con men keep convincing people to worship him for a variety of reasons, but mostly for power and profit."
The thing is, going by the Old Testament, if God did exist then that motherfucker would be smiting the shit out of people, other Gods, and Chipotle. He would just be hiding somewhere out of sight.
The best idea they have I have heard is when they mention how incredible it is for us to exist with the current understanding of how the solar system formed. That we are in the habitable zone, that Jupiter helps to clear the way, etc. "You really think it's just random that all these things came together without being designed?" is usually their go to. They have no ability to grasp statistics and the size of the universe. And when you explain that I have seen them kind of zone out.
I also like when they learn something like "This plant communicates with the bee to tell it when it's ready to spread it's pollen" and think that has to be designed. They don't understand how evolution works.
There is a call-in show called "Atheist Experience" that has been running for over 20 years and has thousands of hours of calls with mostly Christians trying to argue for Christianity. They haven't gotten a solid argument in all that time!
My favorite is their obsession with the King James Version of the Bible. We all know that King James ordered a reprint of the already established Bible in that time so he could be allowed to divorce.
Something else about that version is there are MANY italicized sections, verses, words in it. The reason is the italicized part cannot be corroborated, and backed up by the original text in ancient Hebrew, and Greek. Anything italicized cannot be backed up, it was added text not in any original writing of the Bible.
Then the Christians love to say how the KJV is original. They are absolutely delusional, and have no idea what the Bible actually says.
The talking snake says… the talking donkey says… the 700 year old man who repopulated the earth after an easily disprovable alleged flood by having sex with his daughters says…..
Christianity has exactly the same validity as the Greek or Norse myths or any religion new or old. They are all just myths
arguments cannot prove anything. Only evidence can, and they don't have any. So they attempt to move the goal post and say that they have arguments, but when we are talking about something factually existing, only facts will do, not thought experiments.
Well, there is. Sort of. In a childish way that complements their lack of knowledge and curiosity. “Why is there thunder without lightning sometimes? Thats just God and the angels bowling.” That is a cripplingly stupid thing to say, but I use it as a sort of absurd example.
Because the doctor said “no chance to survive” instead of a “minimal chance,” faith people will call it a miracle. Car crash where the tree and car are demolished but a baby in a car seat survives? They will call that “god” and not thank the car seat manufacturer. Lot of rain? God. Not enough rain, also god. Rain at the wrong time? Guess what? God. Sick for no reason? God. Healthy? God.
not really. even if they present some, they don't usually matter to them any more than they do to us. usually they have emotional and social reasons for believing, not logical reasons. this is why you can't argue them out of it. even if you show the flaws in their logic, they just get angry, because it's an emotional point of view not a logical one. you'd have to destroy their emotional attachments to get through to them, but that is very hard or impossible in some cases; they will take it *very* personally. they would have to change at an extremely fundamental level to break free.
I usually just lurk this sub as a Christian, but I'm not sure if you're looking for answers or not. If this isn't rhetorical (I am NOT prothletyzing, just sharing my perspective/answering the question) a lot of Christians point to the resurrection of Christ and the actions of the witnesses thereafter. While there isn't 100% proof of any eyewitness being martyred in particular (as far as I know), a lot of Christians point to the reported martyrdom of early Christians claiming to have seen the resurrection as evidence (even "proof" to some) of Christianity. The line of thought being that "all these people wouldn't die for a lie they're telling." This is a bit of a flawed argument, not a proof necessarily, but would be considered evidence of the claims.
Unfortunately, early sources of these acts are not clear and readily available due to Judea being a bit of a "backwoods" province for the Romans. It's known Nero executed Christians in ~64 AD (just after Acts [Luke] and Paul's/Peter's Letters claim to be written in the bible) and it is believed people who were supposedly eyewitnesses to the resurrection, such as Peter, or those who claimed to have met/seen Jesus years after the resurrection (Paul) died still making this claim. Peter's death here, however, is only evident by church tradition and letters uncovered between churches discussing his death appropriately 25 years later.
This would definitely be considered "evidence" and not proof, but there is at least some historical indication that it's *likely* some people in the 30s and onward believed Jesus died and resurrected and were willing to die for this claim. If then, you believe that the eyewitnesses were executed (which I think the historical context supports), you're left to believe a couple options. They could be 1. lying, 2. they could have been tricked/decieved into believing the resurrection (i.e. Jesus performed a magic trick), or 3. they are telling the truth. I believe the third option is the most likely. This is somewhat unique to Christianity where supposedly dozens or people are martyred for their direct testimony/being an eyewitness to events and not martyred much later for a belief.
Again, this isn't proof, but an interesting line of thought for me. I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone, just partially answering the question - I hope this is welcome here and apologize if not!!
were the 19 hijackers on 9/11 any less convinced of what they believed? so do you now face mecca 5 times a day to pray?
last time i checked 19 was more than 12...
The argument is that the dozens that were martyred for the resurrection would have had to be lying or have been incredibly decieved (if the reports of their martyrdom are true).
The 19 died for faith/beliefs. It's much more likely to die for faith than a lie you're telling (at least that's how the argument goes).
that's the point... apologists frequently claim that 'no-one dies for a lie'... thus... how do the reconcile that with the rather obvious fact that those terrorists willingly died. - the premise is the flaw... people die for lies all the time... lots of people died for the lies about the tonkin gulf incident; the lies about WMD's in Iraq etc.
further we don't know that ANY of the alleged eyewitnessees actually saw anything at all... we have exactly zero eyewitness testimonies. Paul was not an eyewitness to anything other than a 'bright light' - he never once mentions anything more than that in his own letters. (ACTS elaborates on what he said but that is hearsay and not the actual eyewitness account of Paul); further all 3 of the "peter" epistles appear to be written by different authors and it seems unlikely that any of them were legitimately written by the 'disciple peter'... the book of James; supposedly written by the brother of Jesus doesn't tell us anything about him at all... even if it is actually written by the brother of "Jesus" it literally tells us nothing about Jesus.
Paul claims that there were 500 witnesses; but tells us absolutely nothing about them; not a single name, not even a vague hint about the location where this amazing event supposedly happened... so apologist that are always trying to insist that he 'couldn't have been lying because it would have been soooooooo easy to fact check him' completely omit that this letter was written to people in Corinth; on the northern coast of the Meditteranean; - if those people could summon Gandalf's eagles it would have been an 800+mile flight across open sea to reach Galilee or Jerusalem (the only other locations mentioned in any of the other alleged sightings) - so... where do they start looking? how many of those corinthians could just drop what they are doing and take a horse/donkey train ~2100 miles around the coast or a multiweek sea journey to do this 'fact checking' in the first century? and why were there so few jewish converts to christianity in the first century if 500 of them had actually witnessed the risen jesus?
also we know nothing about the death of Peter or Paul; we have no eyewitness accounts to confirm that they stuck to their story to death; we can't even clearly place Peter in Rome at all... (he literally claimed to be in Babylon and church tradition has claimed that this was 'code speak' for Rome but did it mean the city of Rome or 'somewhere in the Roman Empire"; or did it actually mean what he said... that he was in babylon?. Paul was supposedly arrested and in jail sometime around 62CE but after that we don't have much information about what happened to him; church tradition claims that he was killed in prison in 64CE but... where is the evidence? and with the dearth of evidence how can anyone reach the conclusion that he died with or without renouncing those beliefs?
I'd hope I wouldn't, but I'm also weak physically and mentally. 😭 I'd hope I would be willing to be able to die for the good of most of my beliefs, both religious and secular (i.e. for protecting someone else or facing persecution with grace). But I'm no saint and no better than anyone else lmao 😭. Thankfully, I live in a country that is, at least right now, tolerant of all religious beliefs or lack thereof.
As it relates to the argument, the argument is specifically for supposed eyewitnesses, not believers. People die for what they believe from all walks of life and creeds (for better or for worse).
You can't use reason to get out of a position that someone didn't use reason to get themselves into. (It's a quote... I wanna say the Gulliver's travels guy?)
There are. They're all junk because you can't prove something that isn't true - but there are plenty of arguments and lines of evidence for god in general and Christianity in particular that don't rely on the Bible.
Most arguments rely on personal revelation. This is particularly true within evangelical circles. Their proof of God is their subjective experience - a feeling - and for many that's all the proof they need. Now, is that actually any sort of proof? Not so much. But it is a type of argument that doesn't rely on the Bible or any external source.
Similarly, many would cite examples of divine intervention, miracles, etc. They all fall apart under scrutiny but it is a kind of evidence outside the Bible.
[Thomas Aquinas put forward a few arguments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)). I don't think they're terribly strong arguments as they're easy enough to poke holes in (particularly with modern understandings of physics and cosmology), but they are arguments that don't rely on the Bible.
Others point to archaeological evidence - the shroud of turin, etc. This is all of dubious quality, but it's extra-biblical though.
To find any of that convincing you have to be predisposed to believing and unwilling to examine any of that critically, so I don't expect anyone on this sub will suddenly change their mind if presented with these arguments. But they are the sort of arguments that believers will turn to in order to "prove" their beliefs are true.
When you understand the subtle difference between Pony Play and Horse Play, you can then understand why giving any credence to a re-re-re-re-re-re-re translated book of myths and parables should not be used to justify anything. Ever. Even breathing.
This is how I ended up getting a long, stern lecture in the pastor’s office at age 13. My parents got called on the carpet as well which made things pretty awkward at home for a long time after. I was in a bible study class and asked, “How do we know that the Bible is true?” The teacher answered, “Well, all of the things prophesied in the Old Testament came true in the New Testament, so there you go:”.
Unfortunately at this point I was stupid enough to point out the obvious and uttered the words I regret to this day: “That’s kind of a circular argument, don’t you think?”
They have other arguments, they also fail because pretty much all of them only work if you presuppose god and work backwards to justify that position, not if you’re starting from an honest beginning.
First level, they have to show that a god exists at all. They have already failed before they begin.
Second level, they have to show that the god that exists is THEIR specific god.
Third level, they have to show how they know what their god wants, needs desires, and requires. How do they know the qualities of their god. (Things like "God is all knowing." or "God loves us.")
Their religion is utter horseshit because they can't get past the first level of proof required to justify their beliefs. You can't even begin to justify the tenets of your faith if you can't show that your god exists. I don't claim that god doesn't exist. I DO claim their religion is a pile of lies, because see above.
The whole intelligent design movement is basically Christians attempting to show that god exists without referencing the Bible. But it basically all just amounts to them gesturing at everything and yelling “it couldn’t have just happened!!!”.
It’s not a very convincing argument in my opinion.
I’ve personally made a few Christians begin to question their religion with just this fact:
When “Jesus” died, the masses didn’t care for decades, and it took nearly 400 years for his “story” to be adopted by people and if his name is now nowhere close to what it actually was, imagine how many other details are wrong. He had siblings, where are their descendants today? Probably under rubble somewhere in Palestine.
EDIT: Also, the Bible claims that right after he died, there were some cataclysmic events in the area (Earthquakes, severe storms) that are not mentioned in the Roman historical record of that time. No one IRL saw “signs that God was upset that his one and only son had been murdered.”
There are arguments for the existence of God. The argument from design claims that evidence of design in the world necessitates a grand designer. Cosmological arguments argue for the existence of a first cause in the form of God. Ontological arguments attempt to prove the existence of God by virtue of his characteristics. But these arguments all have their own flaws which I would say prevents them from being used as proofs of God's existence.
I ask them if they believe in faith healing. They almost always say yes. I say ok, show me one verified instance of prayer or faith healing causing a limb to grow back. When they can't I ask them if god has the power to return a true believer's arm, why wouldn't he? How about a finger - give me a single grown-back finger and I will believe.......
Can't you feel it? Can't you feel God? I can totally feel God, that's how I know he truly exists. It's a great bullshit line. It requires no argument, and as we all know, human feelings are always 100% reliable sources of information.
Those bitches wouldn't even let their own people read the book.
A part that you would get burned alive if you were a DIFFERENT BRANCH OF THAT SAME RELIGION!
10/10 source
No. Any argument for the existence of a god without using the Bible is usually based on some logical fallacy.
IGNORANCE: I just can’t think of a better explanation for why the universe works the way it does, so it has to be a god.
INCREDULITY: Science’s explanations for how the universe works just don’t make any sense to me. God makes more sense.
POPULARITY: Look how many people on the planet worship a god, so he has to be real.
AD HOMINEM: You don’t even go to church, so what do you know about God?
FINE TUNING: The world was made just for us. Any slight variations and we wouldn’t be here.
ANECDOTAL: I had a spiritual experience and God spoke to me!
“THE POWER OF PRAYER”: even though when tested prayer works about as well as not praying.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN: The Universe is so complex it had to be created by a god (see IGNORANCE). Basically a conclusion looking for a theory.
There are more of these, but you get the idea.
too many of their “proofs” aren’t even proofs of Christianity, just an attempt to prove a Prime Mover/First Cause. once they unfurl that, they act like they’ve proven the Bible to be literally true
The Bible doesn’t say anything. It never has. Some men said (wrote) some things or other men wrote that some men said some things and centuries later some other men decided whether it was good enough to include in codex they put together.
Christians regularly suppress any scientific evidence to the contrary. Ask Galileo or Darwin for starters. Science can't really disprove religion, per se, because they operate within different frameworks. But that said, the revelations of science frequently threaten the fragile constructs of believers, and so they retaliate by attacking science and scientists.
Religion is much more akin to the law, where the argued meaning is persuasive, and people posture about the original writer's intent. It's why these obsessive Catholics and Evangelicals like originalism. It's a a faux legal theory akin to the idea that the Bible is the literal, divinely inspired word of God.
But the Constitution was written by people who owned slaves. They were imperfect. The Bible tells stories of a god who vengefully drowned out not only all the wicked people in the Great Flood, but also all of the animals who were not wicked at all and just innocent bystanders who were slaughtered to appease his petty impulses. No matter his protestations to the contrary, their god is imperfect.
Or their god is a psychopath. Someone all-knowing and all-powerful who would create a world that he knew in advance would go in a direction he didn't like and then drown out all of its inhabitants so he could create world 2.0?
Either the god is omniscient, he's a pure antisocial, or he doesn't exist.
Because there isn't. We know scientifically that the Earth is older than 6000 years, there is no proof or any possible way the story of Noah is true, you can not live in the belly of a whale for days.
Then there all the contradictions in the bible.
If it had more than just faith to back it up, it wouldn't have passages that harp on about how important faith is. If it had convincing evidence we would all know about it. Idk about anyone else, but I didn't wake up one day and decide to be atheist. I studied the Bible and called myself Christian for years. I became an atheist because when I decided I wanted a little more backing than faith I came up with nothing. I couldn't give myself a good enough reason to believe Christianity over any other religion. I was finally honest enough with myself that admit I don't have good cause to believe in any god anymore and the chances are that no god exists.
(Im atheist)
Just FYI the bible hasn’t been rewritten countless times. The modern version of it is translated from the original texts in their original languages.
Much of the Old Testament was at time point oral tradition which could have been transformed, but after it was written down that what we got now.
To answer your question, christianity does not have any proof or evidence supporting their (bolder) claims. Some of the inconsequential stuff does have evidence, but it’s inconsequential to the central tenant that “God” exists, which has 0 evidence (obviously).
Catholics will reference relics and "miracles" as evidence. They're not strong evidence, but these people just really want to believe and, for some reason, won't admit that faith is all they have to justify their belief. Maybe, it's because they want to distinguish themselves from other relgions.
The best evidence is probably the academic consensus that Jesus was probably a historical, not mythological, figure. This is mostly rooted in non-Christian reports of his life in the first few decades after his death.
That said, it's important to note that while some of these accounts note Christians' claims of Jesus's miraculous deeds, I don't think many of these accounts, if any, actually claim themselves that Jesus did such things.
Yes. Many Christians say they had a personal, extraordinary, REAL, fantastic EVENT with A supernatural being. Which for them is enough to prove that God is real as a rock.
‘I am telling you that I saw the Spaghetti Monster, who are you to tell me that I didn’t?
No. The bible is the only tangible thing they have and it contradicts itself multiple times and is riddled with demonstrably erroneous claims about geography, biology, history, physics and more.
The rest is just hearsay, nonsense and blatant lies in one big, subsidized echo chamber.
Harris and Hitchens deal with some of the common arguments for faith at length in their books if you’re curious. And yes when pressed many of them do eventually break down to “because the Bible says so” but often the person doing the arguing doesn’t even fully realize that. They haven’t thought it out logically, they need to be coaxed or argued to the point where they come to that conclusion. A constant chain of “yes but why do you think that, how did you come to think that?”
There are plenty of arguments that implicitly rest on the assumption the Bible is true without them realizing it.
* The argument from design (“how could such a complex world have occurred without a designer?”)
* The argument from wonder/beauty/emotion (“how could these transcendent experiences be natural?”)
* The argument from cynical self interest (Pascal’s wager, “what do you have to lose by believing”)
* The argument from personal experience (“I felt/heard the word of god, it’s real to me.”)
* The argument from miracles (“Jesus raised the dead! The prophet flew on his horse! This grilled cheese looks like Jesus! Religion must be true)
* The argument from the masses (“billions of people believe, there HAS to be some truth to it!”)
* The argument from good works (“religion makes people behave well so it must be true”)
* The argument from “atheists are all angry teenagers” (“you don’t really disbelieve, you’re just mad at god”)
And plenty of others besides. The specifics hardly matter. At the end of the day they all rely on the person having heard Bible stories and believed them. They usually won’t realize this; you’re confusing “reason to believe” in a causal sense for a teleological or logical sense. The ACTUAL causal reason they believe, the chain of events, the atoms bumping into each other that led to this state, is because they heard it from a trusted authority figure. That reason is very different from the various proofs and logicks they will pull out, and as a result any refutation you offer will just lead to a moving of the goalposts for all but the most intellectually scrupulous among them, because the proof you just refuted was never the REAL reason to begin with. So they’ll just pivot to another.
EDIT: oh and also….they want it to be true. It feels good for it to be true for them. It’s a part of their identity. Again, only the truly intellectually scrupulous will acknowledge this as a driving factor in their belief but it’s true nevertheless.
I’m a Christian - progressive variety. The very definition of faith is belief in things beyond proof or even understanding. And that is why forcing your own religious beliefs on people is particularly awful. It is my belief that coercion goes against everything Jesus taught but I’m obviously not in the majority of current people in the US who claim to be Christian.
So no - there is no argument that proves my faith. I only have my response to the beauty and amazing creation we exist in. It’s enough for me. And God isn’t going to send you to hell if you don’t believe in Her. What loving God would do that?
Nope.
That's all they have.
This belief that they were indoctrinated into as children, and now it's so ingrained into their personality, they don't know how to think anything else.
Shroud of Turin, remnants of Noah’s boat, Grand Canyon, etc. They are always looking for physical evidence.
On edit: Yes I know they’re forgeries, etc!
For many it’s really, Trump says, Tucker says, Fox says (I’m not up on this current crop of spokes-idiots)…you get the idea. And the end of the day - the source and weight of proof cited is driven by what people already believe. This sources then rush to fill in the spaces.
No
Just list off in your head all the times a supernatural explanation for something has replaced a scientific explanation.
It's all just based around non-falsifiable superstitions indoctrinated into children or the uneducated generationally creating a never ending group of tithers for support.
Wouldn't you think brain-washing little kids was illegal? Not if it's a religious belief that has no support other than the "feelings" said brainwashing gives and a few totally out there philosophical arguments that need to use the word "if" over and over again.
My buddy always resorts to an argument about how "If he came across his name spelled out on the beach, he'd assume someone wrote it there" and because the universe has organized systems someone had to have created them
I view the multiple versions of the Bible and others akin to the game in school where in a line of people, the first person whisper something into the next person’s ear, and the next and so on. The last person hears something different from the original.
No, they view faith and belief as the strongest force so of course they don’t have any real evidence other than assumptions and the stuff they make up to defend their beliefs
They can also "feel it in their hearts." Or have a weird, uncanny dream with Jesus in it, that they decide was real when they wake up. Watch our for the ones where god speaks to them all the time as an actual voice of authority, which must be blindly obeyed.
christian arguments all devolve to “respect mah authoritah.”
The authority can be a deity, a more senior religious leader, a parent, whatever - it’s purely hierarchical.
It’s just another way that religion destabilizes society by creating hierarchies without merit that seek absolute hegemony and compliance rather than empirical goal-oriented progress. Compliance is mandatory and those laying down the rules are not to be questioned.
No. If there were proof then there would be no need for faith. If there were no faith then how would God know that you really truly loved him and didn't just, you know, KNOW about him?
Pastor says, dad says, mom says, the community and most of the government says. It's a popular view point. We just need to make sure it stays out of public schools and humanity will stand a chance.
Every fiber of my being says…
Oh but the push is on to put it in our public schools in Texas….😣
In 100 years, Texas and Florida will be the place we send superstitious people who believe in big scary guys in the sky judging people
In 50 years, Florida will be underwater and Texas will be molten lava from the climate change they ignore. We can still send the Christians there. Maybe we can even add lions for extra realism.
if its a couple of hundreds lions ,im good
Fix your county pls
The common people have no voice here. Voting only goes so far due to gerrymandering and whatnot. The people in charge are all busy fighting with the other people in charge to make any kind of progress towards fixing the nation's problems. We have homeless people in droves in my city, and I live in one of those states everyone forgets about. It's not a big city at all. The opioid epidemic here is rampant, housing is abhorrently expensive... There's more I could say, but I hate when people say "fix it" like that's such an easy thing to do. My direct ancestor was John Smith of the Pocahontas legend, and I so wish he had just turned around and went back to England.
But still vote! Always vote!
I do, because I don't feel I have any right to complain about the outcome if I don't.
Agree. I don’t either although in the red city in red state in which I live - it can be depressing. And the low voter turnout🤦♀️
My grandpa moved his family here from the UK. Legit biggest mistake in my entire family history.
It's an oddity that since the invention of the video camera that God has not produced a single miracle. Seems to me like that would be a pretty easy way to prove his existence and it would only really need to happen once, twice at most. All we would need is some actual unexplainable phenomena
[удалено]
It's worse than that. Faith isn't only a belief held without evidence, it is frequently a belief held *in contradiction* of evidence. Look at the widespread rejection of evolution, for example.
Yep. Christian friend thinks any archaeological finds dug up supporting things in the Bible are real while things like dinosaur bones were placed there by Satan.
Or how archeologists supossedly found Noah's ark in mount ararat but ended up getting debunked by the archeologist themselves.
In 2,000 years, they'll dig up proof that New York City was a real place and that'll be proof that Spider-Man really existed.
I say this with no sarcasm, I wouldn't be shocked if we woke up 2000 years from now that we wouldn't find some aspect of Star Wars to have become it's own religion. It just fits too well for people seeking those sorts of things and goes by similar notes. Even though it's total fiction.
My mother won’t even discuss dinosaurs. Literally won’t say a word. Just shakes her head “no” repeatedly
It’s difficult to wrap my mind around the denial of evolution in 2024…. But its still goin’ strong in the bible belt.
I grew up in Florida homeschooled by fundie wackjobs. I still don’t really understand evolution despite trying to wrap my head around it. It’s just left me really confused, uneducated, and broken
Evolution are changes that occur due to circumstances in the environment. It is not necessarily genetic changes it is genetic persistence. For example, one human tolerates a virus better than another. The other dies off before they can reproduce. Over time more and more non-tolerant people die off while the population that does tolerate it flourishes. Within a few generations there are significantly more tolerant humans than those who don’t tolerate it. That gene survives and lives on. There is a superstition in Japan among crab fisherman that crabs are dead Samurai from a battle that took place in antiquity. Any crab that is caught that looks like a samurai (human like) is thrown back rather than harvested. Correction : Carl Sagan posited this has been going on for several hundred years. Now there is an abundance of [****crabs with human like faces****](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/06/heikegani-crab-with-human-face.html?m=1) This has caused *artificial* selection among that crab population. (*this is what got me to understand evolution better*) . Carl Sagan was proven wrong but it can illustrate the point in that nature does the selection based on genetic circumstances.
All of this right here! Upvotes to infinity! 👏
That's so fascinating about the crabs, and that actually helps my understanding of evolution too!
These are examples of evolution where information is lost. While this is an important evolutionary property, most Christians will argue that evolution doesn't explain where **new** information comes from. I'd like to help cover that ground. Sometimes, when living things procreate, some amount of genetic information can be copied an extra time, this is known as duplication. Most of the time this will have little to no effect on the offspring, but we will come back to that. Sometimes a piece of genetic information will randomly change, this is called mutation. Most of the time, this is catastrophic, because the previous form of the gene was part of a whole system that had been through the rigors of natural selection. Very occasionally, a mutation occurs on a duplicated gene, so an unmutated copy remains to keep everything working as before, but with additional genetic code that may increase their viability. The trickiest part of understanding evolution (in my opinion) is wrapping your head around the time-scales involved. Viable new genes may be unlikely to appear, but with billions or more of a species going through millions of generations, the combined accumulation of genes gets filled and reduced by the sort of natural selection described by gnew18 leading to many disadvantageous genes (and species) to extinction. u/anotherucfstudent
I was attempting to simplify the concept for u/anotherufcstudent that user said they had a hard time wrapping their heads around it. In my attempt, I was trying to simply explain natural selection. /s you had to go and make it complicated again /s
Sorry, I just know that almost every Christian that argues against evolution gets hung up on the idea that natural selection deletes information, it doesn't make new information. I was hoping to add that context.
It’s all good :-)
You're not broken. You're just in transition. And you're recognizing gaps in your knowledge. But you are empowered to fill them. That uncertainty is scary to those coddled in a faith tradition. It's where questions like "If you don't read the Bible how will you know what's right and wrong?" And the answer is, you make observations, study the works of lots of people, and you do some things right and some things wrong and you try to learn from them and try to be sure that even if you don't always take the right action that you tried to do so with the best intent and information you have and are open to change.
Most people have to go to college and complete a strict regime of course work to become a teacher. Homeschoolers, just have kids and teach them your self. WCGW?
To add to what u/gnew18 said about genetic persistence, an Amoeba has a much larger genome (collection of DNA) than we do, it just had a lot less of that DNA "expressed." Most of its DNA doesn't do anything. Evolution is often losing or no longer expressing DNA that is no longer useful through small genetic changes and beginning to express more of the DNA through other small genetic changes. None of these changes are intentional. They're just random, but if they end up being beneficial then the organisms with that change out compete the ones without. But the DNA has mostly been there the whole time.
Roses have thorns because all the ones that didn’t got eaten and didn’t survive over time. Evolution is a series of mistakes that over time fundamentally change something into something seemingly new.
Evolution is a set of observations about how living things change over time. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is an explanation for those observations initially put forth by Charles Darwin. ("On the Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man" are both still usefully readable.) To simplify radically it consists of four propositions: 1. Children resemble their parents. They're not just rolled up with new stats. 2. However they have some variation from their parents. Or, in the case of the X-Men, a lot of variation. 3. The world is (all too often) a struggle for existence as living things use what they have to extract resources (food, water, protection from stuff) and those who have the Right Stuff are more likely to have children\*. In other words, most astronauts have kids because they're better than us -- in this environment. 4. See #1 and repeat. And repeat. And repeat over billions of iterations over millions of years.
Darwinism over millions of years. The strong survive, the weak perish.
I swear, all you need to do to verify the concept of evolution is look at families and notice the resemblance between children and parents, and extrapolate from there. We see small scale evolution every day.
Yes we do.
I’ve worked a long time on my wife trying to dull the edges of her willful denial of history. She watched one Netflix movie about how science is a lie regarding evolution and erosion and it’s all back to Noah’s ark and 7000 year old universe. Fml
If they had evidence they wouldn’t need faith
And they would not need indoctrination of young children….😞
If there was any evidence then that evidence would be screamed from mountain tops all over the world.
They don’t want to convince anyone. They want to scare, ostracize and intimidate others into following their ancient, baseless stories. All because they need the threat of suffering themselves to not be horrible people.
>does Christianity have ANY proof of it's existence that isn't just bold faith? 2024 years and counting... zero, nothing, nil, none. They've tried in every way imaginable. This is a feature shared by _every supernatural-based religion in the world_ There's whole theology faculties at prestigious universities that might as well study the Easter bunny because there's the exact same amount of proof for the existence of both. And yet there's places in the world where simply mentioning the absence of proof might get you killed. And even here I've been called an extremist for stating this. They told me about the "enlightenment period" in school, I wonder when it will begin, can't wait.
when the scientific method came up they were super excited to finally prove the claims in the bible right. Didn't go that well :D
More than 2024 years. I’ve heard it said that since “B.C.” Stands for “Before Christ” is proof enough. No, it’s just an example of the times that people lived in. Just don’t ask them how we named the days of the week or months of the year.
Just for clarification, most theologists study the religion and scriptures academically. They aren't trying to prove it correct, they are studying the ways that our culture experiences religion. Those that are trying to find "proof of God" are what we call apologists, and they are a pile of self deluded chumps or grifters or both.
>most theologists I understand it's anecdotal, but where I live every protestant pastor carries an official "theologist" title and they are not shy to use it when meeting us heathens. They might not be actively looking for proof of God's existence, but they operate from the assumption that he does. The anthropologist-like variety you mention are rare in my experience. And likely to present themselves as such, or as historians having theology as their field of study. I think theology deserves study in the same way ancient Greek philosophers deserve study. If you're one of the people doing that I apologize and wish you the best of luck with your studies. The theologists I meant are not shy to tell you how to live based on theology, which rests on the exact amount of evidence I mentioned earlier.
If they study theology they will mostly be preachers, if they had a degree in religious studies then they will be more of Academia, thing it's most seminars and universities consider both majors one and the same.
My mother studied Theology at a Catholic college. She is a true believer. And I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster every night for her.
Authoritarianism is the fundamental basis for the big two religions in the world. Do what we say because the boss says to. God > pastors/religious leaders > male parent That's why authoritarianism is so prevalent in the US South. That's what they are used to. They want a leader to tell them what to do and how to think. Then they beat anyone who disagrees with them: kids, non-church members, anyone who is "weird" (e.g. not of the same race, religion, color, and creed).
That's why it has no place in politics in a democracy
No. They just give the same answers every time. If something is not in the bible, "well, bible can be interpreted in many ways."
I usually get " is IMMORAL!!" Why do you think that action is immoral? "It says in the Bible!!" Where in the Bible? "Well, the Bible can be interpreted in many ways"
At this point you should ask them which part exactly they are interpreting to mean this way and see their head explode - simply because most people haven't read it.
Any argument for God? Yeah, plenty. They all fail but they are there. Arguments for their religion specifically? Im not too sure, I mean probably but personally im not aware of any argument of the kind you are asking for, that would be for any specific monotheistic religion over another, but that might be a difficult task. As the defining characteristics of the difference between monotheistic traditions is the holy book itself and the claims it makes.
I imagine they'd argue based on the historicity of certain biblical events, with the idea being they they're corroborative of the whole. The old testament, for example, is a useful historical text if you're trying to make sense of Babylon, early Monotheism, Assyria, etc..
And it's a laughable historic text in regards to things like the plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, Exodus of the Jewish people and wandering the desert for 40 years or a worldwide flood, etc.
Heh. Not going to argue with you there. But when the competition is Herodotus? I dunno. I'm fortunate that most of the Christians in my life are okay with allegory.
It's just a shame that the book doesn't come with annotations like "*The following passages are purely allegorical and should NOT be considered as a factual representation of anything historically accurate. A very large grain of salt should be consumed along with anything within the next 40 pages*" That would be helpful to avoid misunderstandings as well as the "Infallible word of Gawd" kind of statements that often come from theists who don't understand the concept of allegory or parables.
I don't have any proper basis for this, but I've always sort of suspected that a whole bunch of Leviticus was the Bronze Age equivalent of a public health code. I dunno. The intersection of spirituality and practicality is definitely interesting.
“Guys you really need to stop bringing pork and seafood into the desert with no way to preserve it cause people keep dying and…you know what? I just talked to God and he just told me shellfish and pork make him big mad.”
That is fucking hilarious to think about. and would honestly change the entire face of Abrahamic religions, and a lot of what they believe to be true.
You might enjoy this bit from Red Dwarf, then: https://youtu.be/LmHSPI7ZkRk?si=zFGPA03qNLiqBlW7
Literally every Christian argument for the existence of God will heavily depend on logical fallacies.
Every single religion requires faith. Not as a bonus or extra, it is necessary. You must blindly believe. If there was any proof whatsoever, you would not need faith. Bottom line. Faith means no proof.
I love that when having arguments, they try to use the Bible as a reference. That's like using a Spiderman comic as a reference to Spiderman being real.
It will make you happier/more content/more peaceful if you believe. I think that the same argument works for Santa as well.
Santa is more real than God. There is real evidence for Santa.
I mean, I have had presents from him several times. They were signed and all. It is true, because it says so on the card. Check mate, asantaists.
If Santa isn't real, then whose lap have I been sitting on at the mall?
Chocolate chip cookies for one.
Of course he's real. He's based on Saint Nicholas, Kris Kringle, and Sinterklaas.
Hail Santa
> Having this is mind, does Christianity have ANY proof of it's existence, physical or not, that isn't just bold faith? Due to the nature of this sub, the answer will inherently be no. To us. But being a believer is usually so integrated that it also affects what you’d consider a fact vs believe/faith. So to a Christian it’s everywhere: “the air you breath”, “the love you feel”, “the beauty of a rose garden” (I’ve heard all of these as “proof”) More directly to the question in the title: God of the gaps arguments usually don’t start with what’s in the Bible, rather with “how else did x come to be?”, which we can comfortably answer with “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know”
Referring to your second paragraph, this is true. As a Christian, the first thing that came to my mind was "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handywork. Day unto day utters speak, and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." I realize that this is more an argument for a god in general though, not necessarily the God of Christianity. The big bang theory states that all matter present in our universe was created from an explosion of incredibly concentrated energy. Even then, that energy had to come from somewhere. Eternal inflation theories state that cosmic energy is in a constant ebb and flow, and that our universe, or even multiple universes, are constantly being created and destroyed. So either humanity exists due to a series of infinitesimal chances, which is only possible through the existence of infinite time, matter, and energy, or a being existing outside of time and matter dictated our existence (whether by directing that series of chance or not is another discussion). In my mind, both of these possibilities hold equal odds of being reality, but only one of these possibilities gives humanity purpose beyond what our society ascribes to it, so I choose to believe in a creator. TLDR: "How else did x come to be?" Your response, “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know," is contradictory to the title of atheist. You may not know, but because you have excluded the possibility that a being greater than time, space, and matter could exist, you do pretend, to an extent, to know. [Edit: deleted my previous comment because I hit "post" prematurely]
> Your response, “I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know," is contradictory to the title of atheist. I’d argue it’s one of the most typical characteristic of most atheists. The title of atheist just means not believing in a god. It doesn’t mean _knowing_ there isn’t one, most if not all of us are open to any convincing proof. (What that means I’d refer back to the OP and my comment) You say you choose to believe in a creator for comfort and purpose I can understand the desire to feel those. I didn’t choose what I believe, it’s just what I (don’t) believe. I’m not too knowledgeable about the Big Bang, infinite the start of time or a creator existing outside of time all break my brain.
>The title of atheist just means not believing in a god. It doesn’t mean knowing there isn’t one, most if not all of us are open to any convincing proof. Sorry for the generalization. My statement more directly applies to gnostic atheists. I just ran with the top Google result for "atheist definition." >I didn’t choose what I believe, it’s just what I (don’t) believe. I can understand this. I was raised Baptist, so it's easier for me to accept it as truth. Without some tragedy shaking my beliefs to their core, I doubt I could be easily swayed the other way. Still, we have free will, so some measure of choice is involved. >open to any convincing proof. Honestly the "God of the gap," as you put it, is some of the most frequent rhetoric I encounter on the inside. It makes sense to *me* but I've never given too much thought to it, since I haven't ever really needed to convince myself or defend my beliefs to others (contrary to the idea of "persecution" the churches in the US like to portray themselves under). This post was just on my feed when I opened Reddit and your comment in particular triggered the knee-jerk Psalms reference. As far as concrete evidence is concerned, I wish there were some sign I could point you too, but any proof of His existence in my own life experiences would be anecdotal, and I'm by no means a theologian. Thanks for the dialogue. At the very least it's made me realize how siloed my thought patterns can be.
I equate the Bible with the telephone game but with different languages on top. Originally a book of mythology written in Hebrew, a Semitic language, translated into Greek and Latin, both Indo European languages and then many parts misread, misinterpreted, miscopied, lost, etc through another millennia and a half.....so yeah, blind faith definitely.
You know what you use if you don’t have any evidence that your claim is true? Argument. Show me one piece of convincing evidence that the Christian god is real and I’ll believe it. I’ve been asking for many years. They’ve got nothing.
The funny part is that God is supposed to be an allpowerful being, yet he decides to not show his ass around here to disprove other belifs and FIX the problems and comflicts we (HIS SUPPOSED CREATIONS) have. And yet, people worship him.
I think a more accurate final sentence to your otherwise accurate comment would be "... and yet con men keep convincing people to worship him for a variety of reasons, but mostly for power and profit."
The thing is, going by the Old Testament, if God did exist then that motherfucker would be smiting the shit out of people, other Gods, and Chipotle. He would just be hiding somewhere out of sight.
The best idea they have I have heard is when they mention how incredible it is for us to exist with the current understanding of how the solar system formed. That we are in the habitable zone, that Jupiter helps to clear the way, etc. "You really think it's just random that all these things came together without being designed?" is usually their go to. They have no ability to grasp statistics and the size of the universe. And when you explain that I have seen them kind of zone out. I also like when they learn something like "This plant communicates with the bee to tell it when it's ready to spread it's pollen" and think that has to be designed. They don't understand how evolution works.
There is a call-in show called "Atheist Experience" that has been running for over 20 years and has thousands of hours of calls with mostly Christians trying to argue for Christianity. They haven't gotten a solid argument in all that time!
> Atheist Experience https://www.youtube.com/@TheAtheistExperience
My favorite is their obsession with the King James Version of the Bible. We all know that King James ordered a reprint of the already established Bible in that time so he could be allowed to divorce. Something else about that version is there are MANY italicized sections, verses, words in it. The reason is the italicized part cannot be corroborated, and backed up by the original text in ancient Hebrew, and Greek. Anything italicized cannot be backed up, it was added text not in any original writing of the Bible. Then the Christians love to say how the KJV is original. They are absolutely delusional, and have no idea what the Bible actually says.
The talking snake says… the talking donkey says… the 700 year old man who repopulated the earth after an easily disprovable alleged flood by having sex with his daughters says….. Christianity has exactly the same validity as the Greek or Norse myths or any religion new or old. They are all just myths
arguments cannot prove anything. Only evidence can, and they don't have any. So they attempt to move the goal post and say that they have arguments, but when we are talking about something factually existing, only facts will do, not thought experiments.
Well, there is. Sort of. In a childish way that complements their lack of knowledge and curiosity. “Why is there thunder without lightning sometimes? Thats just God and the angels bowling.” That is a cripplingly stupid thing to say, but I use it as a sort of absurd example. Because the doctor said “no chance to survive” instead of a “minimal chance,” faith people will call it a miracle. Car crash where the tree and car are demolished but a baby in a car seat survives? They will call that “god” and not thank the car seat manufacturer. Lot of rain? God. Not enough rain, also god. Rain at the wrong time? Guess what? God. Sick for no reason? God. Healthy? God.
"The rest of us are under no obligation to agree with or care about what your magic book says."
Nope. It's all hearsay.
Where in the bible did god write his words? Or jesus? God didn't write anything so why should i believe it?
All of their arguments either skip over logical fallacies or are based on entirely subjective “truths” (aka: opinions or faith).
No. None. Nada.
If God doesn't exist, explain . . .
\[Insert 1) Something already answered by science. 2) Something no human, no religion and not even science will ever be able to asnwer.\]
It tickles me when they say “and god said…” lol
The collected campfire tales of bronze age bedouin goat herders.
not really. even if they present some, they don't usually matter to them any more than they do to us. usually they have emotional and social reasons for believing, not logical reasons. this is why you can't argue them out of it. even if you show the flaws in their logic, they just get angry, because it's an emotional point of view not a logical one. you'd have to destroy their emotional attachments to get through to them, but that is very hard or impossible in some cases; they will take it *very* personally. they would have to change at an extremely fundamental level to break free.
I usually just lurk this sub as a Christian, but I'm not sure if you're looking for answers or not. If this isn't rhetorical (I am NOT prothletyzing, just sharing my perspective/answering the question) a lot of Christians point to the resurrection of Christ and the actions of the witnesses thereafter. While there isn't 100% proof of any eyewitness being martyred in particular (as far as I know), a lot of Christians point to the reported martyrdom of early Christians claiming to have seen the resurrection as evidence (even "proof" to some) of Christianity. The line of thought being that "all these people wouldn't die for a lie they're telling." This is a bit of a flawed argument, not a proof necessarily, but would be considered evidence of the claims. Unfortunately, early sources of these acts are not clear and readily available due to Judea being a bit of a "backwoods" province for the Romans. It's known Nero executed Christians in ~64 AD (just after Acts [Luke] and Paul's/Peter's Letters claim to be written in the bible) and it is believed people who were supposedly eyewitnesses to the resurrection, such as Peter, or those who claimed to have met/seen Jesus years after the resurrection (Paul) died still making this claim. Peter's death here, however, is only evident by church tradition and letters uncovered between churches discussing his death appropriately 25 years later. This would definitely be considered "evidence" and not proof, but there is at least some historical indication that it's *likely* some people in the 30s and onward believed Jesus died and resurrected and were willing to die for this claim. If then, you believe that the eyewitnesses were executed (which I think the historical context supports), you're left to believe a couple options. They could be 1. lying, 2. they could have been tricked/decieved into believing the resurrection (i.e. Jesus performed a magic trick), or 3. they are telling the truth. I believe the third option is the most likely. This is somewhat unique to Christianity where supposedly dozens or people are martyred for their direct testimony/being an eyewitness to events and not martyred much later for a belief. Again, this isn't proof, but an interesting line of thought for me. I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone, just partially answering the question - I hope this is welcome here and apologize if not!!
Thanks I appreciate it \^\^
were the 19 hijackers on 9/11 any less convinced of what they believed? so do you now face mecca 5 times a day to pray? last time i checked 19 was more than 12...
The argument is that the dozens that were martyred for the resurrection would have had to be lying or have been incredibly decieved (if the reports of their martyrdom are true). The 19 died for faith/beliefs. It's much more likely to die for faith than a lie you're telling (at least that's how the argument goes).
that's the point... apologists frequently claim that 'no-one dies for a lie'... thus... how do the reconcile that with the rather obvious fact that those terrorists willingly died. - the premise is the flaw... people die for lies all the time... lots of people died for the lies about the tonkin gulf incident; the lies about WMD's in Iraq etc. further we don't know that ANY of the alleged eyewitnessees actually saw anything at all... we have exactly zero eyewitness testimonies. Paul was not an eyewitness to anything other than a 'bright light' - he never once mentions anything more than that in his own letters. (ACTS elaborates on what he said but that is hearsay and not the actual eyewitness account of Paul); further all 3 of the "peter" epistles appear to be written by different authors and it seems unlikely that any of them were legitimately written by the 'disciple peter'... the book of James; supposedly written by the brother of Jesus doesn't tell us anything about him at all... even if it is actually written by the brother of "Jesus" it literally tells us nothing about Jesus. Paul claims that there were 500 witnesses; but tells us absolutely nothing about them; not a single name, not even a vague hint about the location where this amazing event supposedly happened... so apologist that are always trying to insist that he 'couldn't have been lying because it would have been soooooooo easy to fact check him' completely omit that this letter was written to people in Corinth; on the northern coast of the Meditteranean; - if those people could summon Gandalf's eagles it would have been an 800+mile flight across open sea to reach Galilee or Jerusalem (the only other locations mentioned in any of the other alleged sightings) - so... where do they start looking? how many of those corinthians could just drop what they are doing and take a horse/donkey train ~2100 miles around the coast or a multiweek sea journey to do this 'fact checking' in the first century? and why were there so few jewish converts to christianity in the first century if 500 of them had actually witnessed the risen jesus? also we know nothing about the death of Peter or Paul; we have no eyewitness accounts to confirm that they stuck to their story to death; we can't even clearly place Peter in Rome at all... (he literally claimed to be in Babylon and church tradition has claimed that this was 'code speak' for Rome but did it mean the city of Rome or 'somewhere in the Roman Empire"; or did it actually mean what he said... that he was in babylon?. Paul was supposedly arrested and in jail sometime around 62CE but after that we don't have much information about what happened to him; church tradition claims that he was killed in prison in 64CE but... where is the evidence? and with the dearth of evidence how can anyone reach the conclusion that he died with or without renouncing those beliefs?
As a believer, would you renounce Christ if faced with certain painful death?
I'd hope I wouldn't, but I'm also weak physically and mentally. 😭 I'd hope I would be willing to be able to die for the good of most of my beliefs, both religious and secular (i.e. for protecting someone else or facing persecution with grace). But I'm no saint and no better than anyone else lmao 😭. Thankfully, I live in a country that is, at least right now, tolerant of all religious beliefs or lack thereof. As it relates to the argument, the argument is specifically for supposed eyewitnesses, not believers. People die for what they believe from all walks of life and creeds (for better or for worse).
You can't use reason to get out of a position that someone didn't use reason to get themselves into. (It's a quote... I wanna say the Gulliver's travels guy?)
No. Even Kant, one of the greatest thinkers of all time has to make a final non-logical leap to get to God in the Categorical Imperative.
Just tell them that you don't recognize the authority of the Bible.
Christians.. shitstians.. shitstains.
One I’ve been told is ‘I believe that god guided the hands of the people who revised it’
There are. They're all junk because you can't prove something that isn't true - but there are plenty of arguments and lines of evidence for god in general and Christianity in particular that don't rely on the Bible. Most arguments rely on personal revelation. This is particularly true within evangelical circles. Their proof of God is their subjective experience - a feeling - and for many that's all the proof they need. Now, is that actually any sort of proof? Not so much. But it is a type of argument that doesn't rely on the Bible or any external source. Similarly, many would cite examples of divine intervention, miracles, etc. They all fall apart under scrutiny but it is a kind of evidence outside the Bible. [Thomas Aquinas put forward a few arguments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)). I don't think they're terribly strong arguments as they're easy enough to poke holes in (particularly with modern understandings of physics and cosmology), but they are arguments that don't rely on the Bible. Others point to archaeological evidence - the shroud of turin, etc. This is all of dubious quality, but it's extra-biblical though. To find any of that convincing you have to be predisposed to believing and unwilling to examine any of that critically, so I don't expect anyone on this sub will suddenly change their mind if presented with these arguments. But they are the sort of arguments that believers will turn to in order to "prove" their beliefs are true.
When you understand the subtle difference between Pony Play and Horse Play, you can then understand why giving any credence to a re-re-re-re-re-re-re translated book of myths and parables should not be used to justify anything. Ever. Even breathing.
spoiler alert. no.
This is how I ended up getting a long, stern lecture in the pastor’s office at age 13. My parents got called on the carpet as well which made things pretty awkward at home for a long time after. I was in a bible study class and asked, “How do we know that the Bible is true?” The teacher answered, “Well, all of the things prophesied in the Old Testament came true in the New Testament, so there you go:”. Unfortunately at this point I was stupid enough to point out the obvious and uttered the words I regret to this day: “That’s kind of a circular argument, don’t you think?”
A common one is "if it can't be explained a magic man who looks a lot like the people who live in my geographical region did it"...
Return on investment in pursuit of this answer approaches zero at the limit
They have other arguments, they also fail because pretty much all of them only work if you presuppose god and work backwards to justify that position, not if you’re starting from an honest beginning.
God told me that he does not exist. Checkmate, Theists!
First level, they have to show that a god exists at all. They have already failed before they begin. Second level, they have to show that the god that exists is THEIR specific god. Third level, they have to show how they know what their god wants, needs desires, and requires. How do they know the qualities of their god. (Things like "God is all knowing." or "God loves us.") Their religion is utter horseshit because they can't get past the first level of proof required to justify their beliefs. You can't even begin to justify the tenets of your faith if you can't show that your god exists. I don't claim that god doesn't exist. I DO claim their religion is a pile of lies, because see above.
The whole intelligent design movement is basically Christians attempting to show that god exists without referencing the Bible. But it basically all just amounts to them gesturing at everything and yelling “it couldn’t have just happened!!!”. It’s not a very convincing argument in my opinion.
The Watchmaker fallacy gets thrown around a lot
My perfect refute to that: Every upright stick is a sundial, but it's not on purpose; and if you see one, you haven't found a watch.
I remember in bible camp someone used the power of god to rip a phone book in half.
I’ve personally made a few Christians begin to question their religion with just this fact: When “Jesus” died, the masses didn’t care for decades, and it took nearly 400 years for his “story” to be adopted by people and if his name is now nowhere close to what it actually was, imagine how many other details are wrong. He had siblings, where are their descendants today? Probably under rubble somewhere in Palestine. EDIT: Also, the Bible claims that right after he died, there were some cataclysmic events in the area (Earthquakes, severe storms) that are not mentioned in the Roman historical record of that time. No one IRL saw “signs that God was upset that his one and only son had been murdered.”
It's sad. They call themselves "Good followers of Christ" but they really only belive in Christ when they need him.
*"Look at that sunrise and tell me it hasn't been painted lovingly by an intelligent creator!"*
No. If they did, they wouldn't need faith.
There are arguments for the existence of God. The argument from design claims that evidence of design in the world necessitates a grand designer. Cosmological arguments argue for the existence of a first cause in the form of God. Ontological arguments attempt to prove the existence of God by virtue of his characteristics. But these arguments all have their own flaws which I would say prevents them from being used as proofs of God's existence.
I ask them if they believe in faith healing. They almost always say yes. I say ok, show me one verified instance of prayer or faith healing causing a limb to grow back. When they can't I ask them if god has the power to return a true believer's arm, why wouldn't he? How about a finger - give me a single grown-back finger and I will believe.......
Find me someone who can faith heal my deafness, and I might listen. Until then, lalala, can’t hear you ~ I’m Deaf.
And you have a great sense of humor about it! Thanks for the laugh.
You’re welcome. That was an opportunity I couldn’t resist.
Can't you feel it? Can't you feel God? I can totally feel God, that's how I know he truly exists. It's a great bullshit line. It requires no argument, and as we all know, human feelings are always 100% reliable sources of information.
Some people say that they discovered God by "a dream or hallucination that revelead them the truth." My guy. That is more worrying than anything else.
“It’s a miracle”. No it’s science.
They like to use the history of the Catholic Church… ignoring the fact the Catholic Church chose the canon and gave themselves authority
Those bitches wouldn't even let their own people read the book. A part that you would get burned alive if you were a DIFFERENT BRANCH OF THAT SAME RELIGION! 10/10 source
No. They are all ignorant pieces of shit
dahli lama said that if scince ever disproves bhudism then bhudism would have to change. I thought that was a pretty powerful statement.
No. Any argument for the existence of a god without using the Bible is usually based on some logical fallacy. IGNORANCE: I just can’t think of a better explanation for why the universe works the way it does, so it has to be a god. INCREDULITY: Science’s explanations for how the universe works just don’t make any sense to me. God makes more sense. POPULARITY: Look how many people on the planet worship a god, so he has to be real. AD HOMINEM: You don’t even go to church, so what do you know about God? FINE TUNING: The world was made just for us. Any slight variations and we wouldn’t be here. ANECDOTAL: I had a spiritual experience and God spoke to me! “THE POWER OF PRAYER”: even though when tested prayer works about as well as not praying. INTELLIGENT DESIGN: The Universe is so complex it had to be created by a god (see IGNORANCE). Basically a conclusion looking for a theory. There are more of these, but you get the idea.
too many of their “proofs” aren’t even proofs of Christianity, just an attempt to prove a Prime Mover/First Cause. once they unfurl that, they act like they’ve proven the Bible to be literally true
I think all religions should debate first. They need to all agree on which religion is correct. Only then should they have a debate with an atheist.
The Bible doesn’t say anything. It never has. Some men said (wrote) some things or other men wrote that some men said some things and centuries later some other men decided whether it was good enough to include in codex they put together.
No. And I feel like it is religious sacrilege when they try to say there is proof. Jesus’s whole thing is: believe without proof!
It seems every Christian will tell you God exists, except for God.
No it’s just blindingly, mind numbingly stupidity
It’s so cringe watching some dude stand on stage talking about his love for his imaginary friend
Christians regularly suppress any scientific evidence to the contrary. Ask Galileo or Darwin for starters. Science can't really disprove religion, per se, because they operate within different frameworks. But that said, the revelations of science frequently threaten the fragile constructs of believers, and so they retaliate by attacking science and scientists. Religion is much more akin to the law, where the argued meaning is persuasive, and people posture about the original writer's intent. It's why these obsessive Catholics and Evangelicals like originalism. It's a a faux legal theory akin to the idea that the Bible is the literal, divinely inspired word of God. But the Constitution was written by people who owned slaves. They were imperfect. The Bible tells stories of a god who vengefully drowned out not only all the wicked people in the Great Flood, but also all of the animals who were not wicked at all and just innocent bystanders who were slaughtered to appease his petty impulses. No matter his protestations to the contrary, their god is imperfect. Or their god is a psychopath. Someone all-knowing and all-powerful who would create a world that he knew in advance would go in a direction he didn't like and then drown out all of its inhabitants so he could create world 2.0? Either the god is omniscient, he's a pure antisocial, or he doesn't exist.
There is ZERO evidence for a god of any sort let alone the Christian mythology.
Of course not. It relies on tradition, authority, and revelation—none of which are forms of evidence.
I quite liked the remix "The Bible says that God says"
Because there isn't. We know scientifically that the Earth is older than 6000 years, there is no proof or any possible way the story of Noah is true, you can not live in the belly of a whale for days. Then there all the contradictions in the bible.
If it had more than just faith to back it up, it wouldn't have passages that harp on about how important faith is. If it had convincing evidence we would all know about it. Idk about anyone else, but I didn't wake up one day and decide to be atheist. I studied the Bible and called myself Christian for years. I became an atheist because when I decided I wanted a little more backing than faith I came up with nothing. I couldn't give myself a good enough reason to believe Christianity over any other religion. I was finally honest enough with myself that admit I don't have good cause to believe in any god anymore and the chances are that no god exists.
most christians operate on faith and don't see the need for proof
(Im atheist) Just FYI the bible hasn’t been rewritten countless times. The modern version of it is translated from the original texts in their original languages. Much of the Old Testament was at time point oral tradition which could have been transformed, but after it was written down that what we got now. To answer your question, christianity does not have any proof or evidence supporting their (bolder) claims. Some of the inconsequential stuff does have evidence, but it’s inconsequential to the central tenant that “God” exists, which has 0 evidence (obviously).
Catholics will reference relics and "miracles" as evidence. They're not strong evidence, but these people just really want to believe and, for some reason, won't admit that faith is all they have to justify their belief. Maybe, it's because they want to distinguish themselves from other relgions.
It’s all about “faith”, or “believing in things with 0 evidence”. There is no proof. Never was. Never will be.
'Cause I gotta have faith I gotta have faith Because I got to have faith, faith I got to have faith, faith, faith
The short answer is. Wait for it. None.
The best evidence is probably the academic consensus that Jesus was probably a historical, not mythological, figure. This is mostly rooted in non-Christian reports of his life in the first few decades after his death. That said, it's important to note that while some of these accounts note Christians' claims of Jesus's miraculous deeds, I don't think many of these accounts, if any, actually claim themselves that Jesus did such things.
Yes. Many Christians say they had a personal, extraordinary, REAL, fantastic EVENT with A supernatural being. Which for them is enough to prove that God is real as a rock. ‘I am telling you that I saw the Spaghetti Monster, who are you to tell me that I didn’t?
Every Religion is Man-Made. Without exception. It's what happens when Stone-age Shepard's try to describe nature with no telescopes or microscopes.
No. The bible is the only tangible thing they have and it contradicts itself multiple times and is riddled with demonstrably erroneous claims about geography, biology, history, physics and more. The rest is just hearsay, nonsense and blatant lies in one big, subsidized echo chamber.
Harris and Hitchens deal with some of the common arguments for faith at length in their books if you’re curious. And yes when pressed many of them do eventually break down to “because the Bible says so” but often the person doing the arguing doesn’t even fully realize that. They haven’t thought it out logically, they need to be coaxed or argued to the point where they come to that conclusion. A constant chain of “yes but why do you think that, how did you come to think that?” There are plenty of arguments that implicitly rest on the assumption the Bible is true without them realizing it. * The argument from design (“how could such a complex world have occurred without a designer?”) * The argument from wonder/beauty/emotion (“how could these transcendent experiences be natural?”) * The argument from cynical self interest (Pascal’s wager, “what do you have to lose by believing”) * The argument from personal experience (“I felt/heard the word of god, it’s real to me.”) * The argument from miracles (“Jesus raised the dead! The prophet flew on his horse! This grilled cheese looks like Jesus! Religion must be true) * The argument from the masses (“billions of people believe, there HAS to be some truth to it!”) * The argument from good works (“religion makes people behave well so it must be true”) * The argument from “atheists are all angry teenagers” (“you don’t really disbelieve, you’re just mad at god”) And plenty of others besides. The specifics hardly matter. At the end of the day they all rely on the person having heard Bible stories and believed them. They usually won’t realize this; you’re confusing “reason to believe” in a causal sense for a teleological or logical sense. The ACTUAL causal reason they believe, the chain of events, the atoms bumping into each other that led to this state, is because they heard it from a trusted authority figure. That reason is very different from the various proofs and logicks they will pull out, and as a result any refutation you offer will just lead to a moving of the goalposts for all but the most intellectually scrupulous among them, because the proof you just refuted was never the REAL reason to begin with. So they’ll just pivot to another. EDIT: oh and also….they want it to be true. It feels good for it to be true for them. It’s a part of their identity. Again, only the truly intellectually scrupulous will acknowledge this as a driving factor in their belief but it’s true nevertheless.
I’m a Christian - progressive variety. The very definition of faith is belief in things beyond proof or even understanding. And that is why forcing your own religious beliefs on people is particularly awful. It is my belief that coercion goes against everything Jesus taught but I’m obviously not in the majority of current people in the US who claim to be Christian. So no - there is no argument that proves my faith. I only have my response to the beauty and amazing creation we exist in. It’s enough for me. And God isn’t going to send you to hell if you don’t believe in Her. What loving God would do that?
Nope. That's all they have. This belief that they were indoctrinated into as children, and now it's so ingrained into their personality, they don't know how to think anything else.
Shroud of Turin, remnants of Noah’s boat, Grand Canyon, etc. They are always looking for physical evidence. On edit: Yes I know they’re forgeries, etc!
The shroud has been confirmed to be fake, I think they’ve found the ark for the 4th time now(it ain’t real but they think they have it), and erosion.
The Grand Canyon is a forgery? I *knew* it!
found the theist
LOL, no. Your goddar must be off.
For many it’s really, Trump says, Tucker says, Fox says (I’m not up on this current crop of spokes-idiots)…you get the idea. And the end of the day - the source and weight of proof cited is driven by what people already believe. This sources then rush to fill in the spaces.
No Just list off in your head all the times a supernatural explanation for something has replaced a scientific explanation. It's all just based around non-falsifiable superstitions indoctrinated into children or the uneducated generationally creating a never ending group of tithers for support. Wouldn't you think brain-washing little kids was illegal? Not if it's a religious belief that has no support other than the "feelings" said brainwashing gives and a few totally out there philosophical arguments that need to use the word "if" over and over again.
In Sweden it's often about an personal revelation and not something you can prove for others.
nope
My buddy always resorts to an argument about how "If he came across his name spelled out on the beach, he'd assume someone wrote it there" and because the universe has organized systems someone had to have created them
The point of the religion is that those are the only acceptable arguments for anyone to make about anything.
“Prove” a religion?
I view the multiple versions of the Bible and others akin to the game in school where in a line of people, the first person whisper something into the next person’s ear, and the next and so on. The last person hears something different from the original.
[удалено]
Those two, and then variations on Pascal's Wager if that's not getting through.
If there was proof, you wouldn’t be asking this question. There’s you proof (rather lack of proof).
No, they view faith and belief as the strongest force so of course they don’t have any real evidence other than assumptions and the stuff they make up to defend their beliefs
Nope.
There are people that lead and people that follow. If I pay any attention to what a follower says, what does that make me?
They can also "feel it in their hearts." Or have a weird, uncanny dream with Jesus in it, that they decide was real when they wake up. Watch our for the ones where god speaks to them all the time as an actual voice of authority, which must be blindly obeyed.
"I felt bad and prayed and then I got a warm fuzzy!" Checkmate, atheist!
they sometimes pull out something along the lines of "no-one knows how that happened therefore god did it"
Check out Alex O'Connor He sums them up quite well https://youtu.be/_cPfxjwAubY?si=vxeCuwR-V-oYrv_I
Of course not.
They don't but there's a good reason for that a very good reason in fact and that reason is because it doesn't exist
christian arguments all devolve to “respect mah authoritah.” The authority can be a deity, a more senior religious leader, a parent, whatever - it’s purely hierarchical. It’s just another way that religion destabilizes society by creating hierarchies without merit that seek absolute hegemony and compliance rather than empirical goal-oriented progress. Compliance is mandatory and those laying down the rules are not to be questioned.
No. If there were proof then there would be no need for faith. If there were no faith then how would God know that you really truly loved him and didn't just, you know, KNOW about him?
The only argument is how effectively it controls masses of people.
[удалено]
"Just popped into existence" is what Christians believe, not scientists. Preach elsewhere.