Conversation Killers

I would say that’s a cop out answer from the theist. They are unwilling to look at the contradiction of a loving god and the death and destruction around them.

Drakim, I’ve used the example in your last paragraph before, but that’s the first time I had read your other response (the one about arguing something specific, like against homosexuality).

I will definitely be filing that away in my brain to use later.

So far, every argument I’ve heard for belief has ultimately come down to “it’s beyond our understanding; we just have to take it on faith.” The thing is, I’m not trying to understand EVERYTHING, just the fundamentals of the faith I’m supposed to adopt. If the fundamentals of each religion are so seemingly self-contradictory, then any loving gods that exist will understand and forgive that I don’t believe in them.

Would creator gods really put us in a world where, in every other situation, evidence-based logic is the only reliable path to the truth, and then require belief contrary to the available evidence and logic? In that kind of universe, pursuing the truth would be pointless.

Other potential conversation stoppers:
1. Statements that “Sin is keeping you from understanding.”
2. Statements along the lines that “the devil is clouding your logic.”
3. Statements that “You know I’m right, but you’re avoiding (insert god here)’s truth.”

In each of these, the believer has made clear that nothing you say can have any credibility in his or her eyes. To such a believer, the very fact that you disagree with them is proof that you are either incapable of understanding or are choosing not to understand.

This response is subordinate to another, more general, conversation killer: “You don’t know everything; therefore, you might be wrong.”

Another interesting sub-killer is this: “Yes, that is perfectly logical, but what if logic itself is wrong?” The problem with this is that no conclusion can be drawn from it. How can you say, “I reject reason, therefore…”

The general response to all these is that we can only do the best we can with the tools we have at our disposal. Of course there should be a caveat lurking at the very back of our minds that says, “Remember, you might be wrong!” For all we know, we’re agents in a computer simulation, or dreaming, or in the thrall of an omnipotent being, or whatever. But the only tools we have for distinguishing between hypotheses are evidence and reason.

The problem for those who choose to ignore these tools is that it leaves them with nothing. They choose a particular theory about the world, find that evidence and reason point away from it, and so reject them. But then they have no means of supporting their own claims. If God is beyond our comprehension, then the statements of theists about him are just as meaningless as the statements of atheists. “God is good” means as much as “God is fishy”.

We all might be wrong, but we all do our best to understand the world regardless, and the only tools we have for this are evidence and reason. It’s better to give the wrong answer than to not even engage the question.

I posed this same question once to Prof. Matt McCormick at his Atheism: Proving the Negative blog (http://www.atheismblog.blogspot.com/) and I found his answer very helpful. Basically, once someone says that God is unknowable, then they have not only refuted your claims about god, but also their own. They have essentially admitted that all of their previous assertions about the nature of god are baseless. They can’t have it both ways – making assertions about a god and also denying your assertions because He is unknowable.

The ‘beyond our understanding” argument is the ultimate in special pleading, which is why it is such a conversation-stopper. It is also the ultimate blinkered approach to life. I can deal with the fact that some things are beyond my understanding, but only so long as someone understands them. Therefore, I can accept that the statins I take to lower cholesterol will do the job despite my lack of a degree in medicine or biochemistry. But I rely on the demonstrable expertise of thousands of highly trained professionals whose claims to knowledge depend on something a bit more apparent than special revelation from the Holy Spirit.

The answer is to raise the stakes on their claim. Yes, God is transcendent of human understanding, so transcendent that no human mind or combination of human minds or words spoken or written in a human language ever have, ever can, or ever will be able to make any statement even remotely relevant to the true nature of God. Them thinking their silly little 1000 page Bible can transfer any marginal understanding of the true nature or desires of such a being is as ridiculous as an ant trying to understand a 747. Tell them that there God is just too big for them and that they should shut the hell up about things that they could not remotely understand.

If God is that ‘beyond’ us then it makes no sense that all religions are based on, at some point with some prophet, God being ‘close and personal’ to us.

This people claim to know God, having ‘personal relationships’ and yet say he is beyond understanding, which is ridiculous. How did the people who pieced the bible together have this ‘understanding’ but we can’t?

As Lao-Tsu said, those who speak of God do not know of him, and those who know of him do not speak of him.

If God exists, then His understanding is way beyond ours, and we would only know what He would reveal to us of His understanding.

Conversation killers is the time when you actually start analyzing the content of the convo killer text. You can see that the person is making assumptions without evidence.

#1. What is the evidence that he has understanding at all. (he could have created but not understood, or partially understood). Things are created all of the time that aren’t fully understood.

#2. What is the evidence that his understanding (if it exists) is way beyond ours?

#3. What is the evidence that we would only know what he would reveal to us?

#4. What is the evidence that he reveals things to us?

#5. Assuming he does reveal things to us. What is the evidence that the things he reveals are accurate and correct?

Number 3 is pretty much debunked already. We can hypothesize, perform experiments and analyze evidence, ad infinitum.

Deep contextual analysis of the religious myth texts provides a lot of evidence that the proposed revelations of deities are both inaccurate and contradictory to the reality of evidence.

“But didn’t God create us to be equals? That’s why he wasn’t satisfied with his angels.”

But, there are a few of the concepts of God you can tear into, such as:

-If God is omniscient-knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen, why did he create his angel Lucifer in the first place?

-Why can’t God handle his business and end the prolonged the suffering? By biblical scholars, the Earth is 6,000 years old. That means 6,000 years of unnecessary pain and suffering. He’ going to stop Satan, at some point in the future. Either he hasn’t been able to, or he hasn’t been willing to.

-Why did God give us free will. Supposedly, the angels had no free will, but look what happened to Lucifer.

If these are examples of “Divine wisdom and comprehension”, the bar is being set pretty low.

I think that standard answer is two fold:

1. It proves that the persons that believe that or state that are very close minded and don’t want to have their faith shattered by some free thinking person.

or

2. They really do believe it in hopes that after they die, they get some reward in heaven for not questioning the existence of a god while they were alive in human form.

Sure, it’s a cop out answer, but I really don’t think people think they are copping out. They have lulled themselves into believing this out of fear of the unknown.

Here’s an idea: If God is unknowable but says that heaven is desirable and hell is not… whose idea of desirable and undesirable is he working with? Maybe his idea of desirable is an eternity of horrific torture and horror, while his idea of undesirable is something like an eternal orgasm.

Once you say that “God is unknowable” you instantly make his existence or lack thereof irrelevant.

Something like this actually happened to me over the weekend.

My uncle is sort of a Pantheist and equally incomprehensible on a religious level to myself and my devout parents.

He asked me, point blank, if it was true that I did not believe there is a god to which I replied that there was likely no god. Then he and my parents looked at each other as though they had caught me in a gotcha saying, “If you can think of it, you believe it exists.”

I was caught off guard. I was expecting a reply that was a little more substantial and it took me a moment to re-gear my brain for that base level of discourse.

My brother spoke before me saying, “I can imagine what a unicorn looks like, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.” My sister did very much the same arguing that conceptual existence is totally different from physical existence and that the two are not all inclusive.

The reply was “Well how do you know?”

That’s always been a killer for me. As someone who holds science in the highest regard, 100% assuredness is not something that I can give myself to. There are always degrees of doubt, some so small as to be insignificant and others that are severely large as to render the premise dismissible. I had to concede that I was never 100% sure of anything but I could be 99.9% sure of most things.

As expected god existed in the fraction of percents beyond certainty. I’ve come across that argument twice and have no response. They declare that god exists where I concede I have no knowledge or certainty — come to think of it it is a bit like the “god is mysterious” conversation killer.

Why is it that sometimes when I post on the blog, I get an error page?

The conversation killer my friends likes to use is something like “Well, even if I can’t convince you…” At that point you know the conversation is pointless.

This is the “Argument from Ignorance” — frequently phrased “God works in mysterious ways!” — and what I would generally do is point out that it is equivalent to conceding the argument.

What the theist has done is admit that his argument about God is unsupportable or even clearly wrong, and retreat to ignorance as if that somehow makes it okay.

The best counter is to use an example to show how silly or ridiculous that is. Try this reply:

Imagine that medical science comes up with a new drug that supposedly has no side effects, and will cure or prevent 75% of all cases of heart disease. Millions start taking it. Three years later, statistics clearly show that being on the drug has very little effect on heart disease, but patients using it have a 100x increased risk of dying of liver failure – people are dropping like flies. Do you (A) instruct people to stop taking the drug or (B) say “Well, medical science works in mysterious ways, but keep taking the stuff because it cures heart disease!”

Obviously, B is a really stupid option. If people employ the argument from ignorance in any field of knowledge other than religion, we either laugh at them, or conclude they’re idiots – and rightly so.

I was approached by a mormon missionary shortly after 9/11. He assured me the truth of his beliefs because “I can feel it in my heart”. I pointed out that the the 9/11 hijackers felt things in their hearts too, and I did not consider that to be a reliable guide. In the quietude that followed, as I watched the wheels spin and the smoke rise above his head, I wondered if this was the first time he had ever given any real thought to his belief system. I never met him again, so I don’t know if this made any long lasting impression on him.

I have found that the fastest way to end a discussion is to reveal that I am an atheist.

thiosulfate –

looks like they tried to trot out the ole’ ontological argument.

This guy has a pretty good smack down of that argument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLQ0DnUTyX8&channel=TheoreticalBullshit

Drakim nailed it in the very first post:

Will the theist accept the “God is beyond our understanding” if HE is arguing something specific, like the rules of marrige? He will not, he will be arguing from the point that God has a very direct and clear opinion on this issue.

If something is ‘beyond our understanding’, then the most one can say is ‘we don’t/can’t understand it’. Period.

Two words for Mr. theist: Prove it.

I’ve never heard a theist use “mysterious ways” consistently. If god is mysterious and unknowable, that’s always the case. In which case, why call god “good”?

But I have never seen one who applies this consistently. God gets the credit for the good stuff, and never the bad stuff, which is mysterious. But if god is really mysterious and beyond understanding, how can you justify awarding credit for any of it – surely you don’t know what the purpose was?

I finally came to the conclusion that the “mysterious ways” argument often seems to be shorthand for “I always know exactly what god’s intentions are, except when you have a question I can’t answer.”

[Of course, if you try to point this lack of consistency out, you’re “mean”.]

So, haven’t bothered to read the whole thread, so here goes:

I usually ask them who’s god is “right.” This doesn’t necessarily shut them up, but it get’s ’em all flustered for a while.

What are some other discussion-killers you have encountered?

Just very recently, I had a regular reader (and Christian) comment on a post of mine about various apologetics arguments. She mentioned a child that she lost: God didn’t cause the child’s death, but will bring positive things as a result. Knowing that she will see her child again one day helps her a lot in coping… I could have back-pedaled on my positions, dismantled her presumptions, or let the discussion die. I just let it die.

I guess when they say God is beyond our understanding, we can always ask, which God or which version of the Christian God? It all comes down to them having the onus of proof for the claims they make. I can say their God molests children on a regular basis and provide no evidence for what I have stated. They would tell me I was wrong and then I could return their own comment back to them, God is beyond their understanding and he molests children for a reason they are not to understand. Really, it gets rather silly. Actually, we could provide evidence from scripture to support a claim that God molests children and does many other rather evil things…actually, ALL evil things.

For example:

God’s “word” tells us the following:
“I create EVIL” (Isa. 45:7)
So a child could not be molested if God didn’t create evil. But there is more.

“…an experience of EVIL has God given to the sons of man…” (Ecc. 1:13, Concordant Liter Old Testament).

“…I [God] will raise up EVIL against thee…” (II Sam. 12:11).

It is just a matter of using the “word” of their God to prove that NOTHING can happen unless it is of their God.

“Yet ALL is of God” (II Cor. 5:18)

I would say that word “ALL” kind of includes …..umm….ALL?

Or

“God is operating ALL in all” (I Cor. 12:6)

Do operate means to control the function. If God is controlling the function, all in all then yes, he is the one controlling the wicked that actually molests a child. As a matter of FACT, according to his “word” he created the wicked for the evil day.

“The Lord has made…the WICKED for the day of EVIL” (Prov. 16:4).

When we start using this God’s “word” then they really have not defense or excuse.

“…shall there be EVIL in a city, and the Lord has not done it?” (Amos 3:6).

Apparently, there is no evil in a city unless it is done by their God. Their God takes complete responsibility for evil, creating evil people, doing evil things, instructing evil….etc.

“What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive EVIL” (Job 2:10).

Give me a break, it is clear, right from scripture that God does evil. Think about it, God sees, hears and knows all. So, if a child is molested, God hears it, watches it and decides to do NOTHING about it.

If a child is molested, it is God that appointed the exact time for it to happen….according to scripture.

“To every thing there is a season [appointed time],and a time to every purpose [matter or event] under the heaven” (Ecc. 3:1).

“…for He has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work…” (The New Revised Standard Version).

“For He has set a season for every event and for every deed…” (The Concordant Literal Old Testament).

We can go on and on with scriptural proof and even examples of what evils their God will do. Look, their God promises to burn billions, including children in a fire of never ending torture. Is that moral? of course not.

Their God drowned most all life on earth, to include babies and the unborn child in the womb of the mother (abortion). is that moral? don’t be absurd!

what one will find if they argue the logic and provide scriptural support is that Christian run away.

there are numerous other scriptures to support what I have stated or to just destroy the majority of the lies they tell.

I like to repeat the comment with some other god, religion, or superstition…

“But Xenu says…”

I want theists to understand that I fee as incredulous about their fictional friends and appeals to mystery as they feel about other myths, cults, and so forth.

My Mormon friends would tell me that I couldn’t go to the highest heaven because I heard the word (Mormonism) and rejected it… I’d respond, “that’s okay, I missed the Heaven’s Gate Spaceship too”–

I also point out that everybody is going to hell according to somebody’s religion.

The best response I’ve heard to, “I’ll pray for you” is, “thanks, and I’ll think for you.”

When I refused literature from a proselytizer, I was told, “God loves you anyhow…” I responded, “I’m sure she does.”

I don’t generally get into god conversations with theists because I hate feeling like I’m enabling their delusions (they aren’t trying to convince me; they are really trying to convince themselves); instead, I try to let them know that I find them as wacked out as they find believers in faiths they don’t share e.g. (Scientologists, Moonies, etc.) and they ought be as private in their beliefs as they want those cults to be.

whenever people give me the “god has a plan, it’s to mysterious” garbage, i point out that he’s an all knowing, all powerful being who created the universe, and the best “plan” he could come up with involved war, famine, child rape, insert atrocity here, whatever? i could come up w/ a better plan than that. at that point it’s usually their turn to be stumped.