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If your religious, how can you possibly argue with that last video?
If I question one of your beliefs you respond with It's just what I believe.
However, when one of my beliefs are questioned, I can at least come to either the following conclusion:
* I explain it with evidence to back it up.
or
* I don't know the answer.
And, it's okay I don't know the answer! You know why? Because, my beliefs aren't based on a book written by a backwards society thousands of years ago. It's based on the work of scientists, engineers, and other intelligent people that are trying to reverse the damage caused to our science, government, laws, and society by your religion!
That video is the most moronic thing I have seen in 2008. Llamavore gave a lot of good reasons why it's ridiculous, but I'll give a few more.
It makes vast and baseless assumptions about the nature of people's faith by, for example, assuming an interventionist God.
It makes assumptions about the nature of rationalisations - that they are all weird and irrational, hence always calling them excuses.
It assumes that the faithful should necessarily understand and be able to explain God's actions - since God is a perfect being, and man is, by nature imperfect, it is ridiculous in the extreme to expect the imperfect to comprehend the perfect.
It assumes that the burden of proof definitively lies with other side - you cannot prove the non-existence of god, which is why militant atheism, such as displayed in that video, is a logically untenable position. You can believe that there is no God, but you cannot know that there is no God. Hence, agonsticism is the strongest rational non-deistic position.
Many of the 'answers' provided on the assumption that God is imaginary don't require God to be imaginary at all - he could just as easily be non-interventionist.
It's quite clear to me, as a philosophy student, that either this guy has never been anywhere near a critical thinking class or session, or he is such an unstoppable moron that his own atheistic dogma is entirely clouding his judgement, and any critical thinking he has picked up has been completely mauled by his desire to trick and deceive people into abandoning what may well be rationally and logically consistent beliefs.
I, for example, am a Christian. I have not a single problem answering any of the questions set out, because I am rational about my faith (he seems to assume this is not possible either).
1) Why won't God heal amputees?
Because he's a non-interventionist.
2) Why are there so many starving people in our world?
Because God is non-interventionist?
3) Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?
He doesn't - God didn't write the Bible, man did.
4) Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?
The Bible was written by primitive men, not God. Right answer, wrong rationalisation. On the other hand, who's to say science should be given so much sway? It's not the only course for the rational mind to follow. Sensory scepticism undermines empirical science entirely. Add in Bertrand Russell's 5 minute Universe hypothesis, and you've got no way to prove God create the whole world five minutes ago, dinosaur fossils, science, memories and all...
5) Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?
Again, not his words. See a pattern developing here?
6) Why do bad things happen to good people?
The scale of either his idiocy, ignorance or capacity for deception here is staggering. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of books written on this very topic, debates raging for hundreds of years, and he wants to simplify the question to 30 seconds of his shit-stirring video? It's misguided at best. Regardless, the answer isn't overwhelmingly complex. Free will is the greatest gift God gave us. By not interfering, God gave us the chance to shape the course of our own lives, both in terms of events and how we react to them. God could interfere if he wished, but he won't - to do so would be unfair, and would imbalance the system he has created which lets every man or woman determine his or her own course. God is a meritocrat, as all the best people are. So bad things happen to good people because bad people exist, because we live in a natural world that is bigger than ourselves, because this life is not the only life and all unjust punishments will be redeemed by greater rewards in heaven (if you get there)... There are a lot of answers, I don't have time to go in to all of them, or explain why this guy is such a shit-stirring moron.
7) Why didn't Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?
Who's to say they didn't? Just because it hasn't yet been found doesn't mean to say it doesn't exist, or never existed.
8) How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
Who's to say he hasn't? We can never rationally entirely discount any person's religious experience - because we can never get inside their heads. However unlikely it may seem, every so-called nut who claims to have talked to God could be telling the truth (though they would have talked to the Metatron, rather than God himself.) On the other hand, why should he appear to us? One might argue that we've been given all the help we can fairly receive - a personal appearance would be proof. Proof denies faith, and without faith, God is nothing to us, because our free will would be useless - there's no choice to know something, it's generally self-evident, but faith requires choice.
9) Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
As Llamavore said, maybe it's figurative, like a lot of the Bible (e.g. the creation story and the parables). By sharing bread and wine in Jesus' name, all Christians through all the ages are united in a common action representative of the sacrifice he made to allow man to clean his own soul.
10) Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?
Because they aren't perfect, and make mistakes, like everyone, and misjudged their partner? Because people change, no matter what faith they hold? Because God doesn't want you to be unhappy? Because marriage is more of an administrative and state institution now than a religious one? Lots of answers, take your pick.
It's probably coloured by some bad experiences of his own, but the chip on this guy's shoulder is clearly obstructing his vision. I'll be the first to say that organised religion isn't my preference (I believe religion is a relationship between you and God, and no one has the right to tell you how to conduct that relationship), but it hasn't been uniformly destructive and evil. Many people behave better because of religion, just as some behave worse.
Furthermore, this is symptomatic of the sort of idiocy pushed by Richard Dawkins, who totally lost the plot. Philosophy, science and religion are not enemies. They are all compatible, and every moron who furthers the crusade type mentality is an enemy to progress. Science only gives us how - that is the entire scope of its remit. It does not give us why. This is evidenced by the fact that an enormous number of leading scientists of all fields are Christians, or religious, and not uncomfortable at all about interaction between their faith and their work. Galileo was spurred on to his discoveries by his love for God, as was Newton. Einstein himself spoke of how untenable atheism is.
I'm all for rational debate - I'm a philosopher, after all: I'd be a pretty poor one, if I wasn't. But this isn't it. I haven't watched the other two videos, but if they're anything like as non-sensical, blinkered, self-contradictory, hypocritical, illogical, crass and idiotic as the second one, then I can only commend you on undermining the whole purpose of this topic, because there has been no rational debate, just a uniform dconstruction of illogical and unjustified claims. You need two sides to a debate. So far, this is just a demolition.
Topic: Let's have a religious debate in the middle of this board! (Read 3159 times)
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