Tag Archives: faith

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Lack Of Proof And Proof Of Lack

SHOULD CHRISTIANS FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE, WHEREVER IT LEADS?

Is there any evidence of the Jews being held in slavery in Egypt?
Is there any evidence of the Jews escaping their slavery – The Exodus?
Is there any evidence of them wandering in the desert for 40 years?
Is there any evidence that the Earth is ten thousand years old?
Is there any evidence of a global flood?
Is there any evidence of the Jews conquering the Promised Land?

In order, the answers are
NO
NO
NO
NO
NO, and
Other than unsubstantiated Biblical claims, there is no evidence that ANY God ever promised any land to the Jews.  The cities that the Israelites took over were financially, socially, and militarily failed mini-kingdoms, where the populace welcomed new, more efficient, less corrupt administrators.

I agree that there is no good evidence for these Biblical events. I have learned that Christianity is not an evidence based faith, as some like to claim. Rather, Christianity is a spiritual experience based faith. When one encounters God through the reading of Scripture, then the Lord imparts that necessary knowledge of himself. Christians know these things happened, not because of the evidence, but because God has revealed it in his word. The Divinely self-authenticating Scriptures are all the evidence we need.

But then, why don’t we find the evidence for these things? My conclusion is that God is testing us, to see if we really love him, to see if we are willing to trust what he says in the face of doubts and contrary evidence.

So, you don’t actually follow the evidence.  You follow delusion, desperation, and pre-supposition.  You frantically try to make facts fit fiction, fantasy, and Faith.

If you go looking for something that you expect to find – that you’ve been told, over and over and over, that you will find – that you want to find – that you need to find….  You will probably find it – whether it exists or not!

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Blog Prompt Challenge – Spirituality

How important is spirituality in your life?

I don’t know – because the question is as vague, and impossible to nail down, as a will-o’-the-wisp.  I would have to say, Not at all, because I see no evidence that such a thing exists.

I imagine that the person who posed this question thought that it was clear and straightforward, but like arguments for the existence of a “GOD,” no-one can give a firm, precise definition, and no two people agree on what it is.

The dictionary says that it is the quality or fact of being spiritual, predominantly spiritual character as shown in thought, life, etc.; spiritual tendency or tone, without actually saying just what “Spirit” is, besides someone’s desperate imagination.

I recently read an online article titled, “The brain is mortal, but is the mind eternal?”   Neither I, nor millions of other Atheists, have ever been shown evidence to indicate that such a thing is even possible.  Despite the fact that the headline was posed as a question, there will be thousands of Christian debaters and Apologists who will use it as Proof, “because I read it.”

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The Danger Of Believing In Nothing

My title, above, was his title, I presume as some sort of ‘gotcha’ Christian argument.  In his post, it changed to The Danger Of Belief In Nothing – Atheist Quotes.  I responded,

The Danger Of Believing That Atheists Believe In Nothing

and the debate was on.  In a 1000-word blogpost, he never actually described or explained what the danger was.

Hi Archon, thank you for the commenting. Feel free to share here. The floor is always open for discussion. Do you feel that Atheists believe in something and that the faith of no faith has faith?

Naah….  Despite my warning, you’re still couching your questions and statements in your belief in unverified assumptions.  Atheists believe in pretty much the same things that Christians believe, except the existence of an incoherent, ill-defined, unprovable, supernatural entity, which is the creator and ruler of the Cosmos.  Atheists, generally, have no faith.  Faith is the excuse that people give for believing something for which they have no good reason.  If they had a good reason, they would give that.  Atheists have reasonable expectations, based on inquiry, research, and previously-observed history.

His Atheist quotes included, Julian Barnes (Atheist novelist)
“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.” and
Jean-Paul Sartre
“That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget.”

None of his ‘Atheist Quotes’ prove the existence of God, or even give convincing evidence.  Several of them speak merely of ‘meaning, purpose, or spirituality.’  They are statements from intelligent, insightful writers who recognize the desperate desire of many believers to want and need a softer, kinder, New-Age, Woke, benevolent Cosmic Overlord, which cannot be shown to exist.  Even the Bible – which should be the sole font of all that is Christian, but often isn’t – only shows an improvement in their imaginary God, from a smiting, judgmental psychopath in the Old Testament, to merely a sociopath in the New Testament.

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Religious Horseless Carriage

In order to attempt to justify their beliefs and faith, many Christian debaters make pre-suppositional claims that are the complete opposite of logic and observed reality.

With respect, his entire point on meaning is that Atheists cannot ground *their* sense of meaning in anything and therefore any sense of meaning is illusory. His argument is entirely that meaning must be grounded in something ultimate and, unless it is, it is ultimately meaningless. That strikes me as self-evidentially true and the Atheist must show how whatever subjective meaning they insist to be meaningful is, in fact, ultimately meaningful. There may be answers to that, but it is for Atheists to offer them. One cannot simply sneer one’s way out of answering.

“Meaning” doesn’t prove God. It would take the confirmed existence of a God, to prove meaning. My sense of meaning is grounded in what I think and feel. I can prove that I exist, and have opinions – which is more than the greatest winner of Hide and Seek can do. 

Nobody was arguing that the ability to provide subjective meaning proves God exists though the argument being made was that subjective meaning is not ultimately grounded and so it is ultimately meaningless. It requires something ultimate to ground ultimate meaning otherwise it isn’t ultimate. Everybody recognizes your subjective sense of meaning is grounded in what you think and feel.

This author has no evidence for his claims, and simply insists that meaning in one’s life has to be “objective” to be worth anything.  He has put the cart firmly before the horse, but sadly, I can still see the horse’s ass.  If God cannot be shown to exist then, no matter how much he wants and needs an ‘ultimate’ ground for (his) morality, my/our ‘subjective’ one is the best there is.

Businessman/philosopher Charlie Kirk went to college and university campuses to debate with students.  When he was discussing politics, education, or finance, his thoughts were clear and hard.  When a subject like abortion or transgender led him into his Christian beliefs, an eighth-grade student could embarrass him.

Archeology has never proved the Bible wrong.
In 1000 pages, the Bible says a thousand different things – some good, some bad, many irrelevant.  With the same degree of accuracy and truth, it could be said that Archeology has never proved Harry Potter wrong.  We found this magical castle/campus, but it’s not Hogwarts.  A negative cannot be proven.

I was in a bad place, but I gave myself to Jesus, and I turned my life around, and became a successful businessman.
No He Didn’t!!  He gave himself to the belief in Jesus, and the placebo effect.  He was told that if he did X, Y would occur.  He did X, and Y occurred, but the two were not related.  He was told that he needed a crutch, but never noticed that he accomplished it with his own strength and resolve, and never actually needed the crutch.

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It Would Be A Sin

Many Christian debaters and apologists view and present Good, and Evil, Right, and Wrong, as real, concrete items, rather than abstract, human, mental concepts.  They claim that the existence of Sin and Morality somehow proves the existence of God.  Rather, it is the exact opposite.  It requires a God to prove the existence of morality, and especially, Sin.

Sin is a transgression against God.  No God = no sin.  No God to hand it out means that there is no morality.  What we have is social-animal, evolution-driven, ethics – The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number.

What’s the point?  What am I here for?  How can I live the most valuable life with the time I’ve got?
Interesting and productive questions…. but they can be both asked and answered, without stuffing God into the cracks.
It’s just tough to ask the questions without acknowledging Spirituality and Soul which then provokes one’s view of creation, humans, time, etc.
Two delightfully vague and tenuous terms whose definitions can be made to mean anything, without evidence, but which usually mean desperation and delusion.  Also, there is no evidence of “Creation,” and no evidence of the need for a God for the existence of humans, time, etc.

A.J. Swoboda, After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith Without Losing It.
That’s not the dumbest book title I’ve ever seen, but it’s well up on the list.
Cool.  What are some of the other dumb titles that have made your list?
Well, there was that one titled, “The Curious Case Of The Man With No Sense Of Irony, Or Humor.”   😮

As with so many things about Christianity, many Apologists have not done enough research about their religion to actually know what they’re talking about.  When the Jews were held in slavery in Babylon, each spring it was a ritual to go to the local temple, and engage in sex with the priests, exchanging seminal fluid – a sign of fertility – for a promise of abundant crops.

The SIN – even if God were to exist – is not gay sex.  It is using it to entreat and worship any deity who is not The Lord thy God is a jealous God.  Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

I have not found any evidence, especially in the Jewish Torah, that circumcision of baby boys was a command of God/Yahweh.  The Jewish people collectively tend to suffer from a DNA genetic likelihood of hemophilia.  While an individual tragedy, the death of a newborn boy from blood loss, would be far less of a drag on his family, and a tribe of nomads.

Similarly, circumcised boys would be far less likely to later develop penile and urinary infections, again being a noisy drag on a poor tribe of nomads, trying to evade and avoid human and animal predators in the wilds.  This is not a God/Yahweh-given religious procedure!  It is a social-evolutionary method to achieve The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number.  The Rabbis just ensured that they made a shekel or two for performing it.

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In The Beginning

And God said, “Let there be a Big Bang,” and there was a big bang; and from the Big Bang emerged matter and radiation.

And God saw the Big Bang, that it was a great explosion; and the evening and the morning were the first billion years, 14 billion years ago.

And God said, Let there be hydrogen and helium and let them swirl randomly; and let some of the gas swirl into regions of higher density; and let those regions of greater density contract themselves into proto-galaxies; and let the proto-galaxies contract themselves further into galaxies.

And when they had done so, God said, Let there be stars.

And the first stars began to form within the galaxies; and when the gases whereof they were made had sufficiently compressed, there began thermonuclear burning and lo, there was starlight.  And the evening and the morning were the third billion years, 11 billion years ago.

And to assure that man would not quickly understand His great works, God gave unto the speed of light, a finite limit of 300,000 kilometers a second, and to the atmosphere of the Earth, when He got around to creating it, five billion years ago, He gave turbulence and distortion, and opacity to many kinds of radiation; and further to confound Man’s understanding, He placed throughout the universe, quasars, neutron stars, black holes and other strange peculiarities.

And God looked upon the work of His singularity approvingly and said, Lo, it is a puzzlement.  And it was a puzzlement.

Could we ever expect a universe with anything as strange as Man in it, to be simple?  God the mathematician, God the astrophysicist, moves in mysterious ways.  Simple theories set forth by simple men with very limited knowledge mean that the creation story of the Bible is likely to be wrong, and the likelihood of the Bible being wrong on any given subject increases as Mankind’s knowledge and understanding increases.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing?  Then he is malevolent.  Is he both able and willing?  Then whence cometh evil?  Is he neither able nor willing?  Then why call him God?

Epicurus: circa 300 BCE

 

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Walk This Way

We all do it, to some extent.  Christians do it more than Atheists.  What is IT??!

“IT” is to assume that other people think, feel, and act just like you do.

It is like comparing British English to American English.  The words are the same, but the conclusions they reach and the information they convey, are vastly different.  I think that I felt it, but I had it clearly pointed out to me by a young, Atheist YouTuber.

He had been raised as a fervent, evangelical Catholic.  In his teens, he began to question!!  By twenty, he admitted that he had become an Atheist.  His Bible-thumper Mother was appalled, and tried to lure/force him back.

First, she accused him of “Just blindly believing what those Atheist books say.” – because she blindly believed in a book.  He explained that he had not read most of the books she was worried about, and the couple that he had, he had not read until after he had declared himself an Atheist.

While he had not read the evil Atheist books, and had arrived at his position through years of careful study and research, she then accused him of just unquestioningly accepting the non-religious claims of Atheists who establish themselves in authority – because she unquestioningly accepts the self-declared authority of The Catholic Church.

I recently listened to a Christian apologist try to wiggle out from under an Atheist complaint about the Christian concept of infinite punishment in Hell, for the finite crime of not believing.  His justification was that, the infinite punishment was not for merely not believing, but that Atheists die, and go to be judged, and are cast into Hell, and the infinite punishment is because, even in Hell, they continue to ‘deny God.’

I find this apologist scenario preposterous.  Any Atheist who dies, expecting to just fade out, who finds his spirit, his soul, his consciousness, his personality, still coherent and miraculously transported to Heaven, faces God, is condemned to Hell, and who is suffering horrible tortures – would admit to observed reality and accepted truth – not petulantly continue to ‘deny God,’ whatever that means.  But the Christian apologist believes that the Atheist would – because he would!

Frank Turek, a Christian debater, whose slick, used-car-salesman face beams down from the top of this post, was asked if there was any information or argument that might make him change his mind.  He responded with a Bible verse which orders the loyal to reject anything which might cause them to doubt.  No matter how reliable, proven, or convincing the facts and evidence are, Turek and his ilk will simply deny it!  😳

To even try for a non-believer to have a discussion with a Christian about morals/morality, seems doomed to failure.  It will not become a debate or a conversation.  It is like two solitudes, shouting past each other.

The Christian will allege that there are Objective Morals, things which are good or evil, whether or not people exist.  Without any evidence that either of them exists, they claim that God defines and enforces morals, despite the fact that great swathes of Good Christians disregard and disobey them, filling prisons, divorce courts and rehab facilities.

The very words morals, and morality have been hijacked by Christian debaters.  Like sin, they are something that their God wants mankind to do, or not do.  Atheists have ethics, and evolution-induced empathy.  If Atheists can get Christians to agree that reduction of harm and increase in happiness and wellbeing is an acceptable subjective basis, then we have Objective Atheist Morals, and all without God.

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Apologists Haven’t A Brain In Their Heads

THAT is MY BRAIN!

At least that’s what the office told me when they gave me the disk of pictures. I have no other pictures of my brain with which to compare, and I’ve never seen my brain in person so as to recognize it from these hazy black and white pictures which I’m told came from a big magnet. It remains entirely possible that the pictures on that disk are pictures of somebody else’s brain.

Or that this is a Xerox image of something made entirely of playdough.(sic) I can’t prove that it’s not.

It may not be my brain on the disk, and in fact may not be pictures of anybody’s head at all but may be computer-generated. It’s not impossible.  Maybe the people with problems that require a brain-scan are the only ones who have brains.

In modern America VERY few people have even seen the inside of ANY mammal skull so as to see that there is a brain inside, let alone any human heads.  The number of medical and scientific personnel who claim to have seen inside a human head is a VAST minority of the total.  They except(sic) that we have sent what three or four rovers all the way to Mars and yet they don’t believe in God.

Atheists say that they have never seen God and that I have never seen God and they demand evidence.  They believe electrons exist, having never seen one. They believe the wind exists having never seen it. They believe gravity exists having never seen it. They believe in all kinds of things they have never seen. You know why? Because they’re not really skeptics. There are just some things they don’t want to believe, so they pretend that they are skeptics, when in fact, they are just rebellious sinners.

Except…. that the correct word is accept.  I would think that you would be familiar with one of the most important words of your faith system, considering the number of things that you are expected to blindly accept.  Perhaps you have never seen it in print, and are just taking someone else’s word for it.

Every med student in every medical college in the USA, Canada, and probably around the world, must assist in the dissection of a human cadaver.  The skull is sawed open.  The brain is removed and examined.  The same is true for most veterinary students, with a dog or cat.  This alone consists of tens of thousands of people each year.  And then there are abattoirs and meat-packing plants….

We can also include pathologists, and coroners and their assistants, and police officers and paramedics, who, too often, get to see human brains that didn’t need MRIs.  Until one of them finds a skull with no brain in it, I’m going to assume they all do, with the possible exception of yours.  They are a minority – but hardly a VAST one – totalling several million people.

While actually seeing God would be a good start to accepting His existence, not all evidence need be visual.  Do Christians have Faith that electrons exist?  Atheists accept that they do because they can see the actions they cause; televisions glow, cell phones communicate with each other, and ovens get hot.

Atheists (and everyone else) can feel the wind blow, and see its effects, from tornadoes, to kids’ kites flying, to wind turbines.  We don’t need to see the wind to know that it exists.  I can see gravity working every time I drop something.  It will accelerate toward the center of the Earth (or any other celestial body).

On Earth, its speed of fall will increase by 9.8 meters/second/squared.  It has done so each and every observed and measured time.  Only when a dropped pen starts drifting upward will I doubt the existence of gravity.  You can tell me that God makes my light bulbs shine or that angels hold my feet (and every other object) to the ground.  I will rely on reasonable expectations based on a history of testable and repeatable actions.

I will believe the hypotheses of reputable scientists, who have shown their work, rather than the far less coherent and parsimonious claims that Christians make.  I will believe in space/time curvature rather than angels.  Atheists often say that they have not been presented with sufficiently convincing evidence, but evidence is information which convinces, or tends to convince, regarding any given matter.  If it does not convince to some degree, it is not ‘evidence,’ it is just another unverified claim.

I want to believe the most true things, and the fewest false things as possible.  Despite your desperate attempt at mind-reading and fortune-telling, I am not a rebellious sinner!  After 2000 years of asking Christians for evidence, the best they seem to be able to come up with is, ‘You just have to have faith, and you won’t know until you die.’  That is unacceptable to me – no sin involved.  👿

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Creating God

Define the God you believe in, and tell me why you believe.

For any debate or discussion between Atheist and Christian, this is a good idea.  It assures that both parties are talking about the same thing.

At no other time is it a good idea to just let each person define their deity.  If God exists, He/She/It/They are far too vast and varied for a mere human mind to comprehend.  This is why Christians are often disappointed when Atheists fail to believe, because the claims are impossible, or internally contradictory.  There just does not seem to be any way to present a coherent definition of “GOD.”

The first claim that many Christians make about their definition of God, is that (it’s almost always a) He is the Creator of all things.  Even if there were some evidence that was true, it still doesn’t make the Creator, a “God”.  Even if some entity caused it, it may have been accidental, and unintentional – or it may have been intentional, but irrelevant, like a young boy with an ant farm.

No way does the mere claim of a Creator, turn it into a God.  A God wants something – both for us and from us.  He would want to give us life, and a universe to exist in.  He wants worship, obedience, belief and faith.  He wants to give us morals, and rules to live by.  A Creator wants and needs none of that.

In my opinion, Deism is the most useless, contradictory belief position.  A Deist believes in a Creator, but does not believe in a personal God.  A Deist believes in “The Watchmaker God,” an entity of some sort which produced our Universe, wound it up like a watch, with all its physical rules, and then just sits back and watches it – like the lad above, with the ant-farm, an uninvolved observer of His creation, whether unwilling or unable to affect us or our situations.

An invisible God is indistinguishable from a non-existent God.  A ”Creator” which performs no miracles, who answers no prayers, who gives nothing to us, and asks nothing of us, quickly becomes indistinguishable from that non-existent God.  Most Deists don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, salvation, or any sort of life after death.  I’ve got a pet rock from the ’80s that can do that much.  Any Theist who wants non-believers to accept claims of his particular pet Deity, had better be ready to offer more than a ‘Creator.’  He’ll need evidence of some sort, of supernatural involvement in the natural world.

I don’t know even how the supernatural could be viewed, recorded or measured, ‘naturally.’  Christians often ask Atheists what sort of evidence would convince them of the existence of a God.  The short answer??  Empirical!  The conversation will not even begin until they can present a verifiable, repeatable occurrence that can not be shown to have a natural explanation.

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Honest Discussion

Big Bang

Unlike many Christian Apologists, who can be very aggressive, argumentative and judgmental, this Christian lady just seemed to have an honest confusion and curiosity about non-believers. She seemed genuinely bewildered that non-believers’ actions, attitudes and opinions didn’t match what she had been brainwashed to expect. Of course, I felt that she was wrong about some of her assumptions, and blinded by her pre-suppositions, about others – so here we are again.

Why can’t the atheist accept what he can’t see for himself—at least when it comes to God. He can’t see gravity, but believes in it; can’t see black holes, but (most) would agree they exist.

When it comes to God, however, inferring His existence from the effect He has on life (which is how we know about gravity and black holes) is insufficient evidence.

The Atheist can see gravity’s direct effect, from dropping a pen, to black holes pulling stars into them, and there is a scientific explanation for all of it. The effects of God’s presence are only obvious to those who presuppose His existence, and every example offered has a natural explanation.

Some, of course, believe they have come to the only rational, intelligent conclusion possible, but that presupposes that the human mind can know all that is or is not in the vast cosmos.

You do not have to know everything, to have an opinion on one subject, even if it seems to be of cosmic proportions. Despite appearances, the argument is not usually about the existence of God, but rather, about the lack of convincing evidence for your definition.

Despite that uncertainty, atheists are certain God is not there. Life maybe; God absolutely not.

Despite that claim, the profound majority of Atheists do not believe that, nor do most of them claim that He does not exist. A small, vocal minority does, but there are ignorant, arrogant fools on both sides of the Bible.

I have reason to believe that the people holding to a strict 6 24-hour day for creation, are wrong.

Cherries

This is what is known as ‘cherry picking’ your arguments

So, you don’t believe what the Bible clearly says, but you want Atheists to believe it??! 🙄

(1)Steve, do you never ask the philosophical questions science cannot answer? Why are we here? Where are we going? What purpose does life serve? (2)Why do we think there’s a right and a wrong? You clearly do think there’s right/wrong as you demonstrate in this comment. (3) Where did your sense of truth come from? (4) Of morality? There are two things followers of the Bible have that those who reject God and the Bible do not have: a standard to go by and motivation to follow the standard. On and on. Science has nothing to say to these things.

(1) Damn, the woman wants infinity explained in a single comment. Of course, science can’t answer philosophical questions. So what??! Despite what she, and others, believes, neither can Religion. For Atheists to honestly say “I don’t know.” is not a mark of weakness. Steve and many others, have asked these questions. A surprising number of Atheists were once preachers/priests/ministers, or students in Seminary Colleges. Isaac Asimov once called the Bible “the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”

(2) There is no right and wrong. What is right for me, is wrong for you. Evolution has taught us to consider outwards: self, family, clan, village, state, nation, world – and each level at a lower intensity. The greatest good for the greatest number. Do unto others what you would have done unto you. A little empathy, compassion, and consideration for others, helps to assure that the human species survives.

(3) “Sense of Truth” is like being a little bit pregnant – it either is, or it isn’t – and if it is, is should be provable. A claim that your religion, or your Holy Book, gives that to you, is quickly disproved by the existence of other religions, and other Holy Books, making the same claim.

(4) Morality is an invention of men who want to get paid to make you feel good that you are following their orders. Atheists, and other non-Christians, all have standards, and motivation to follow them. They just might not be exactly the same as yours, but there is no proof that your morals are the only/correct ones.

Her presupposition is that even Atheists believe in God, but reject Him, where most Atheists honestly do not believe that any such supernatural entity exists.

Science is merely the best methodology to investigate and explain reality. Just because many Atheists embrace and use it, does not mean that they do not also have Philosophical ways of explaining and dealing with these “Moral Problems.” It is not a panacea, as religion claims to be. It is just an effective one of many tools.