I am a Christian, but I see the flaws that faith has.
I see a lot of people, blindly following without a thought of their own,
I do believe in a God, but I hardly use him, or her, as an argument.

The way I’ve always seen it, is whatever is most important in a person’s life, tends to be their “God”. I think just about everyone here is a rational, educated person. I hope to be seen the same. Yes, I believe in an eternal creature that created the cosmos…..

Is it any more crazy than following any other theory? Scientific or not, what a person accepts doesn’t make them stupid, it’s what they do with it.

Honestly though, there is no proof I can give you. Sure, I can see what I think (Key word, think) to be God’s brushstrokes, but I can’t prove it any more than someone could prove every theory of science. Until you see it with your own eyes, it might as well not exist….. it’s a good way to lead a life… but religion does hand down some morals that others MIGHT not get living in an Atheist world.

Though, I will say that people “following God” have caused greater problems in this world than those who are “God free”.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone here, just wanted to actually compliment you all for your intelligence and opinions.

JonPaul.

Ted said,

January 23, 2008 at 12:40 pm

For what it’s worth, I’m from Lancaster, PA, which is predominantly Anabaptist: Amish, Mennonite, etc. I was brought up “interdenominational” which takes a bit from each of these. In a sense, it’s a slightly more liberal version of fundamentalism—though not by much. Atheists are actively discriminated against (I am not openly atheist); people who are gay are broken (actual quote); evolution is worse than wrong, it’s evil; all science is suspect; and thinking and non-biblical knowledge is dangerous.

In Lancaster, this type of Christian is very much the majority (about 70%), though not so much elsewhere, I realize. Odd is rather an understatement.

Jesus Christ! How do you live? I’d have to move, before they try me as a witch or something.

The difference is that we Christians thought we were in receipt of a message from The True God in the form of the bible. We did think that the gods of other contemporary religions (like Allah or Krishna) were deceptions of Satan, but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to say they were actual demons or fallen angels. I never heard that, though I did often hear the verse about how Lucifer “masquerades as an angel of light” in order to deceive as many people as possible from the true faith.

In terms of presenting arguments in order to introduce cognitive dissonance and nudge some believers to take a closer look at their faith, it absolutely does work! It worked to get me out of fundamentalism and eventually out of religion all together and it worked for many, many deconverts that I have met online. Yes, there is a highly emotional component to deconversion, but that may already be present in questioning believers (as it was for me) or it may come about during the questioning and loss of faith.

Claire, I think you’re right: One almost has to be somewhat rational and logical to start with in order to get the questioning going. People who are primarily motivated in life by emotion, and who have a strong emotional attachment to religion, are probably not going to be persuaded to change. However, there are plenty of rational people who believe in religion because they’ve grown up with it and never questioned it. Once they start to examine it, it often falls apart.

In Lancaster, this type of Christian is very much the majority (about 70%), though not so much elsewhere, I realize. Odd is rather an understatement.

I am going to suggest that you know a very odd (and minority) group of Christians.

I think you’d be in the minority on the demon aspect…

Very possible. Likely even, considering the number of Christians I’ve personally spoken to comprise a tiny minority of all Christians.

Re: the contradiction between title and premise. I can’t address your point directly because I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. The title is “Bad Atheist Responses to Christianity” (sensationalist, as headlines are wont to be, and not to be taken as part of the argument) and the (unstated) premise is “these 5 responses atheists give to Christian arguments are ineffective.”

They’re not “bad” because they’re logically inconsistent or irrational or anything like that. They’re bad because they don’t work. (By “not working” I mean, they don’t advance the discussion in any meaningful way.)

Regardless, I think our discussion here has gotten a little bogged down in semantics and pedantic analysis of argument structure.

Don’t miss the overall point of the article: here are a series of arguments often used by atheists against Christians’ arguments, but are largely ineffective.

You can disagree about how effective you think them to be, or even whether or not any justification I’ve cited make sense, etc. I’d be willing to bet at least someone has even had success with one of these. It really depends on how much the Christian has thought about their own beliefs.

But my experience has been that these arguments don’t get people to think about their beliefs in a deeper, more rigorous way, which is ultimately why I debate anyone. I don’t care what anyone believes (to the extent it doesn’t interfere with my life), but I care whether they’ve given it serious thought.

These arguments do not cause this to happen, because Christians already have justifications in place to explain them away. If I’m wrong about this, as I may be, then disregard the article and continue using the arguments. You may very well be able to present them in a way which is convincing. I have not found them to be so.

Edit: I’m doing a follow up post on the Not A Blog this evening, to address a few of the concerns raised. You might be interested in stopping by. Hopefully I can clarify some details (although I’ll necessarily be repeating some of the things I’ve said here).

I think you’d be in the minority on the demon aspect, but that’s neither here nor there. I wondered if you had a response to this:

Title: “Bad Atheist responses to Christianity”. The problem is the contradiction between his title and his premise. If the premise of these responses is talking to a believer, the claim has already been made: the believer believes in said god.

So, when the non-believer says you cannot prove it or says you need to prove it, they are merely stating the obvious because the claim has been made by the believer in the first place.

Can somebody please give me an example of a Christian who thinks Zeus or Thor or any other gods were “fallen angels?”

Almost every Christian I know believes this. This hardly makes it universal, but I’ve heard the explanation many times, most notably from my mother. She specifically told me that all the Hindu gods (and in later discussions all “false Gods” in general) were various demons.

I myself believed it for a number of years while growing up—well into my teens—until I threw out the entire system.