Arguments with a Christian

[slosprint]

A few days ago I received a message on youtube from a Christian which read:

Hi slosprint 5,
I noticed you commented on one of my comments on Mark Brown's video.
I would just like to say that I do have a loving God, and He loves you too. You just have to open up to Him and believe. I can't make you have faith in Him - that's something only you can do. I will pray for you though and just try talking to Him. He loves you.
God bless,
livebyphil4thirteen

John 3:15
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son - that whoever shall believe in Him will not perish but have Eternal Life.

Noticing that this was bullcrap, I replied with the following:

If you give me one good reason to believe in god that I cannot easily counter-argue I will accept him.

It was a simple request, especially since he was the one who messaged me first, and not long after I got this message:

Hi there,
Well, for one, look at all the many things around you. Look at your body - and think about how complex your DNA and brain are. He has always helped me, and He has given me strength that I know I couldn't have alone. He has given me peace, love, and happiness. There are still struggles and I still get sad and heartbroken too but the difference is I know He is with me, and I'm never alone.

Just talk to Him and open up your heart to Him. He won't let you down.
But the thing is - what gets us to Heaven is Jesus. No one deserves to have eternal life because we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But what's amazing is Jesus died on the cross for your sins and mine. He died for YOU as an individual. He loves you. That's the only way to Heaven... repenting of your sins and asking Jesus to come live in your heart and take control. He is the way to life.

http://www.needhim.org/

God bless,
lifebyphil4thirteen

P.S. Anything else, just ask, and I'll try to help.

WOW! His reasons for believing in god were things that have been explained by science already and the rest was crap which he asserted from the bible! I replied:

It seems to me that we have 3 possibilities that might explain how DNA and the brain were so complex.

1. Random chance

2. God

3. Natural selection

I think we can both agree that the first option is completely ridiculous, but is the god hypothesis any better? Let us assume for a moment that god created the universe and everything in it. The creator would have to be at least as complex, if not more so than the universe itself. this begs the question: where did god come from? I doubt you think that he was created by another entity, or that he evolved from less complex beings, which is the only reasonable explanation that I can come up with. You most likely think that, correct me if I'm wrong, God was present at the beginning of everything, and that nothing whatsoever existed before god. If this is so, how can we explain his existence through anything but random chance? As stated before, God must be at least as complex as the universe itself, if not more so. God is not an answer, it is a redoubling of the question.

Natural selection is a better explanation, as it takes incredibly complex systems and shows how they could have come about through a series of mutation followed by elimination. While the individual mutations may be random, the way in which creatures with mutations that are beneficial to them survive better than creatures whose mutations are not is certainly not a matter of chance. Give this process a few hundred million years and you see the extremely complex animals and organisms that are present today.

Moving on to the rest, which is mostly assertions from the bible, the truth value of which we have not discussed yet. I assume that you think, again, correct me if I am wrong, that the bible is the word of god. If this is so, the least you would expect from a text which is written by an all knowing being would be some science or mathematics at least a few decades ahead of it's time. Take for example, the value of pi, which the Greeks at the time had estimated accurately to around 5 decimal places. What does the bible have to say about pi? Let's look at 1 Kings 7:27. The bible states that pi is exactly 3, which even at the time was a terrible, terrible estimate. It states the same thing in II Chronicles 4:2. How could an all knowing god possibly have made the same mistake twice?

So yeah, I guess since you ended your message with a quote I will do the same.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

Seeing as I just pwned him I expected at least an acknowledgment of my points, but instead he just decided to ignore all of them and claim that he spoke to god:

Hello!
Well, I don't know everything in the world, but I know God is real because He's shown Himself to me.
There have been coincidences that couldn't have happened just by themselves also. One time, I was completely heartbroken and I felt lead to go to Jeremy Camp's music page on Tangle.com. This came on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpBuEuagZxE&ob=av2e

That was no coincidence, I know. I cannot convince you to believe in God - the Bible says it takes childlike faith to enter heaven. (taking in all of this the way a child would - with open eyes and trust) Matthew 18:3


God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed. ~Saint Augustine

Whenever I see sunbeams coming through clouds, it always looks to me like God shining himself down onto us. The thing about sunbeams is they're always there even though we can't always see them. Same with God. ~Terri Guillemets

We love because He first loved us, and I love Him. He has given me unending peace and love, and He has changed my life around. I cannot make you believe, but I just want you to know that I believe in Him with all my heart, and I'm praying for you.

God bless you,
lifebyphil4thirteen

Since logic didn't seem to affect him much, I decided to devote only the first half of my reply to him to logic, the 2nd half I guess came from my own philosophy.

I do not deny that you think god has shown himself to you, but I ask only this: Why is it that Christians always have the christian god appear before them, whereas Hindus always have a Hindu god, Muslims always have the Muslim god, and an ancient Greeks had one of their gods appear before them? I do not deny you of your experience, but you have given me no reason to hold it to a higher standard than anyone else, no offense intended. The bible may say it takes childlike faith to enter heaven, but so does pretty much every other religious text out there. By what criteria is anyone supposed to chose the right one by? Each one claims to be the only way into heaven, or whatever other paradise/reincarnation it may preach about. By what criteria can you decide between the Bible, The Koran or the Ramayana? I could go on and on in my list of holy texts, but the main point is there is nothing that makes one more true than any other one. They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong, which is what current evidence suggests.

"I don't try to imagine a personal god; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it" - Albert Einstein

I apologize if I find your claim that you have spoken to god hard to believe, but as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If my friend told me he got a new pet dog I would find no reason to doubt him, as this is quite an ordinary claim and I would find no reason to doubt it. However, if my friend were to claim that he got a new pet T-REX which he kept in his garage and just so happened to be invisible, I would immediately call into question the truthfulness of my friend's statement. Speaking to an omnipotent being however is most certainly a testable claim, and if it were true than it would not be an unreasonable request for you to ask god to tell you the four digit number that I am currently saving to a word document. You will probably think that his is a ridiculous request, but if god really did care about me he would tell you those numbers, so I would see reason to believe you and thus supposedly have my soul saved by converting.

I am quite happy as an atheist, more happy I am convinced than most theists are. I realize that life is limited, and that I must live it to its full extent while I am able. I find that viewing the sheer majesty of the universe as far greater than any religious experience could give me, and that what we are able to see with our eyes is only a small fraction of what is possible. I see a tree and am able to imagine the complex and harmonious processes which keep it alive. I am able to imagine the millions of years of evolution which put it there, and ponder what it might look like in another 100 million. But of course there is more to life than just staring at trees. You can only imagine what lies beneath the sea, or in the distant reaches of space, but I for one prefer to say "I don't know" and actually explore, rather than just explaining it with god. I for one am interested to see how far science and humanity can progress in my lifetime, and the most important thing in order to do so is to keep a feeling of curiosity and wonder for the world, something I can not imagine being able to sustain while claiming to know that an all knowing and powerful being did all of it. I could extend this paragraph far longer than I have, but for now I think I have written enough so I will close with a quote by Thomas Jefferson.

"The priests of the different religious sects dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the duperies on which they live."

That is all that has happened so far, but I honestly wonder how he can reply to my kick ass final paragraph. I will post updates here.

[TheArchitect]

I admire your effort Slosprint, i'd be fked if i'd spend that long talking to a preacher. Certainly not sober...

[slosprint]

It's fun.

[gouldy]

I often feel as though the religious people who have been able to obtain use of the internet, are just trolls. How could you sit at a computer screen and tell someone that you had spoken to God and not just be sat there pissing yourself laughing!?

Nevertheless, I find it amusing to put them down in a similar fashion as above. Youtube is definitely a brilliant battle ground for this and it certainly helps pass away the lunch hour at work!

Way to completely disregard genetic drift.

This guy is just a typical christian. Stubborn and close minded... They choose to believe in fairy tales and push reality to the side. The reality is, our minds were not built to understand such complex structures. I'm much more concerned with enjoying life and living life to the fullest rather than wasting my time trying to study and put labels on something I wasn't built to understand. Am i saying there is a god? no, am i saying there isn't? no. What I'm saying is that i don't care. I'll know when i get there. where ever "there" may be.

[slosprint]

Originally posted by Toatal Pro

Way to completely disregard genetic drift.

It's a youtube message, I wasn't about to copy/paste the whole Origin of Species on there.

[gouldy]

Originally posted by Toatal Pro

Way to completely disregard genetic drift.

Imagine going into this kind of detail when talking to some kind of muslim, or christian or whatever we're talking about, all the same. They've stopped listening to you the moment you pointed out their argument may not be valid.

Originally posted by slosprint

Originally posted by Toatal Pro

Way to completely disregard genetic drift.

It's a youtube message, I wasn't about to copy/paste the whole Origin of Species on there.

Right, because On the Origin of Species details genetic drift.

[slosprint]

I just said something completely retarded, didn't I?

[Coasterkidmwm]

Your timeframe is off but sure whatever you say.

[Mikey]

Please continue, We haven't had one of these site bonding debates in quite some time.

[slosprint]

UPDATE!!!

Hi again,

I just want you to know that God does love you and He's right there with you. He just wants you to turn to Him.


God bless

Thanks for not acknowledging any of my arguments I don't need an imaginary friend though, thanks!

Is God on your left or right? How would you know which way to turn?

Turn both ways. And up. And down. And maybe diagonally, just for the hell of it. All at the same time.

I used to be christian myself. Long story there but it's one of those things people come to the conclusion of on their own and, well surely, reading forum posts on it isn't what gets them to look outside their beliefs.

One thing I do notice is that non-religious people tend to discuss the whole topic much more easily than believers do. It seems that the majority of believers tend to either not talk about it often or won't shut up about it and IMO that says a lot.

But the fact is, if a person's mind and/or emotions are trapped under that which is religion, no talk nor explanation will convince them otherwise. It's how religion works and is how the same dogmatic, mentally oppressive ideas survived and thrived over so many centuries. (And to them, it's the devil and fear of damnation if they doubt it; some of the primary mechanisms that keep many religions going.)

I have my own discussions from Youtube to show and they are far more hilarious (and the person who replied far stupider) than what slo posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoa32UYiuG8

My comment that started it all: "The only thing more scary than demonic possessions is the fact that people believe they're real." I got 29 likes for it and several replies, which I replied to back. (The whole comments page can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet? ... oa32UYiuG8 )

Here's one particular "thread" from there.

___________________________________________________

Me: The only thing more scary than demonic possessions is the fact that people believe they're real.

Reply: Demons are real, but they don't act the way the church tells people they act. So much propaganda comes from church it's disgusting to say the least.

Me: There is absolutely no evidence for such demons existing anymore than there is evidence for the existence of invisible pink unicorns. Therefore I think it is safe to assume that they in fact do not exist. (This is the problem with complete agnosticism towards religion: are we going to be agnostic towards the existence of invisible, undetectable giant bubbles in the sky that will take us to the 10th dimension if we believe they exist? They won't reveal themselves to nonbelievers!)

Reply: Demons DO exist, if you can't fathom that, or have never experienced the spirit World too bad for you.

Me: I've never experienced the world of Narnia either. Too bad for me.

Reply: But you HAVE experienced the World of cat rape, far worse IMO! HA HA HA, MOAR LULZ @ YOU LOSER:)!!!
______________________________________________________


I decided to end it there. He obviously didn't need any help looking like an idiot after that point.

I generally don't do it without provocation, as one of the main things that drives me away from religion is the 'ramming it down people's throats'. You can believe whatever you want, and that's cool with me, as long as you aren't trying to force it on others, just like I'm not going to try to force atheism on you. Haven't read this whole thing, and I'm not sure I agree with what I have read.

Looks like most of us here are, by definition, atheist. I use the label "non-religious" because atheism isn't a religion (despite what some incredibly deluded people will tell you) and because "atheism" is far too misunderstood by most people. The fact that people consider Dawkins or Hitchens as "outspoken" atheists and don't consider the pope an outspoken catholic says a lot. Atheists don't proselytize; we engage in discussions, write books, and defend seperation of church and state.

I have found that in these types of situations, the best thing to do is to just say thanks and then ignore them. They will be happy because they will feel as if they did something good and you will feel happy because you don't have to get all riled up about your own opinions.

I do agree though that that is annoying. I think its important for people to be able to question their beliefs. Pushing it on others only shows insecurity.

[hyyyper]

Making fun of believers is hilarious. Slos, keep us updated [:D]

[coolbeans326]

Originally posted by Symbiotic

I have found that in these types of situations, the best thing to do is to just say thanks and then ignore them. They will be happy because they will feel as if they did something good and you will feel happy because you don't have to get all riled up about your own opinions.

I do agree though that that is annoying. I think its important for people to be able to question their beliefs. Pushing it on others only shows insecurity.

I concur. Just give the guy a "Cool man. Thanks for the heads up." and be on your way.

May I pray sometimes but I don't really believe in God,but I don't complain about him...I don't join sides and I don't like people like this guy,whos stalking slo,but anyway,maybe god is above us or religions just help us to see the world from another perspective,so maybe they are only stories...

[slosprint]

I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm trying to share Jesus' love with you. I will continue to pray for you. <3

Whoever comes up with the best reply gets it sent to him!

I'm tha devil and gonna take your soul and make a Hell BBQ out of it!
[devilish][devilish][devilish]MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA[devilish][devilish][devilish](evil laugh)