How to Persuade an Atheist to Become Christian:

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Hi Gonners,

Why not? My argument for atheism is the same as your argument for a-leprechaunism after all.

It’s ass-backwards and solipsistic – we fit the universe, not the other way around.

You can’t “avoid” something you’ve been given no cogent reason to think exists in the first place.

No, “science” just says that the universe must have been just so back when for it to look as it does now. Had there been slightly different starting conditions, it would look different now and a three-toed gringle monster on Alpha Centauri would be posting, “How special am I – the universe is designed just for me”.

Hillside I think you are gussying up a ''universe is'' argument into a ''why the universe is like this argument'' or at least proposing we should be forbidden certain questions..

That the observed universe has constants harmonised with the existence of life is a fact.
I don't need a fine tuned universe for belief. But apparently the Sean Carrolls of this world need there not to be one.

[Rhiannon]

Hope,

Why on earth would a university of all places have an "official line" on homosexuality, other that is than indifference?

Then they should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

"The way to deal with such folks"!!!!!???

Seriously?

Seriously seriously?
 
But the scumbags you seem to approve of provide cover for the Phelp's of this world - "we all agree that what gay people get up to in private is a "sin" right, only maybe ol' Fred has taken it a bit too far."

Absolutely contemptible.

Can't argue with this, Blue.

[ProfessorDavey]

One could turn it around, of course, and ask:

'How to persuade a christian to become atheist (or at the very least non religious)'

The answer - do nothing, just wait until they grow up and become adults and hey presto about 50% will have become non religious.

[Nearly Sane]

One could turn it around, of course, and ask:

'How to persuade a christian to become atheist (or at the very least non religious)'

The answer - do nothing, just wait until they grow up and become adults and hey presto about 50% will have become non religious.

Though wikihow does cover that as welll


http://m.wikihow.com/Persuade-a-Christian-to-Become-Atheist

Personally I think worrying about whether someone is atheist, theist or whatever is stunningly less important than how they act towards others. It's no more important than which end of the egg they open.

[Ricky Spanish]

Found an interesting juxtaposition on a website run by cracked magazine of all places:

"Atheism is inevitable secular progress. Its existence is a thing society needs. However, too many atheists act like missionaries -- evangelizing at strangers who just want to live their lives, feeling and acting smugly superior because of their (non)beliefs, and insisting that a greater good justifies their asshole behavior. I would know; I'm an atheist myself, so I talk to them all the goddamn time. So it's especially frustrating when my more devoutly atheist friends don't realize that not only do a lot of their arguments fall on deaf ears, but also how in the long run, they hurt their own cause way more than they help. Here are a few examples."

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-atheist-arguments-which-arent-helping-anyone/

[Sassy]

Then why has there been a group out in Hounslow High Street yelling their message of redemption and entrance to heaven by confession and forgiveness of sin to anyone who is stupid enough to walk anywhere near them?

Read Chapter 10 of Acts.  How does anyone hear about Christ and are saved/ They hear the word. I believe that part speaks for itself. They don't go home with them and try talking them into believing. You need think for yourself and reason without bias. My post is not altered as far as the contents. You cannot talk anyone into being a believer.

[Sassy]

Oh - I've heard about this ~Jesus~ bloke. Where is he now, and how do I make an appointment to have a chat with him?

Just believe in your heart he is the Son of God who died for your sins and he will come to you.


I guess in reality you do not want to know him, You are just curious due to your sense of laughing at it most of the time.

[Leonard James]

Just believe in your heart he is the Son of God who died for your sins and he will come to you.


I guess in reality you do not want to know him, You are just curious due to your sense of laughing at it most of the time.

Your problem, Sass, is that your sense of humour doesn't appreciate just how amusing it is.

[King Oberon]

The only thing I need to become a christian is ... evidence.

But lets face it if there were evidence then we would all be christians and it wouldn't all be dependent of fanciful wishful thinking or as our christian colleagues call it ... faith 

[floo]

Just believe in your heart he is the Son of God who died for your sins and he will come to you.


I guess in reality you do not want to know him, You are just curious due to your sense of laughing at it most of the time.

That isn't true. I believed in him as a child and he didn't give me any sign of his presence when I needed him!

[Shaker]

I really think you actually believe that you and others have actually disposed of them.

Not so much me personally but some awfully clever bods who got there first - Kant, Hume, etc.

Let me be a good teacher and repeat again. What you call disposed of is nothing more than coming up with an alternative argument.

No, actually I was thinking more along the lines of demonstrating the premises of an argument to be defective, as Kant did with the ontological argument.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Farmer,

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-atheist-arguments-which-arent-helping-anyone/

Good link, all there, well except flying spaghetti monsters, remind me again, why does it have to fly, is it not omnipresent

I did like this question,

"Would Jesus prefer billions of dollars in paintings or feeding the poor?")

 

Gonnagle.

[ippy]

Just believe in your heart he is the Son of God who died for your sins and he will come to you.


I guess in reality you do not want to know him, You are just curious due to your sense of laughing at it most of the time.

2

ippy

[Leonard James]

Dear Farmer,

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-atheist-arguments-which-arent-helping-anyone/

Good link, all there, well except flying spaghetti monsters, remind me again, why does it have to fly, is it not omnipresent

I did like this question,
 

Gonnagle.

Well, feeding the poor just turns the money into shit ... the paintings will probably increase in value! Mammon has spoken.

[bluehillside Retd.]

FD,

I agree with you Mr G on point  3 in particular, you are right to remind us that fine tuning and multiverse are both out of the stable of science.

No he isn’t. They may be “out of the stable of science”, but the conclusions he draws are wholly erroneous.

Despite any thing we hear to the contrary even Bluehillside's latest science pin up boy Sean Carroll has been taken to task for announcing he is trying to solve the fine tuning 'problem'. Other atheist science writers have questioned in what sense it is a problem since it is only really a problem for antitheism.

You’re confusing “antitheism” with “atheism” again, and it’s not a problem at all for either. It’s actually only a problem for those daft enough to think that the universe was designed to fit them, rather than that we evolved to fit the universe.

Fine tuning seems good for the one universe we have. To favour multiverse just to avoid it doesn't seem like science.

“Fine tuning” isn’t “good” for anything – it’s just Douglas Adams’s puddle again, and no-one “favours” a multiverse to avoid anything.

I personally think that multiverse actually poses a problem for antitheists.

Then, as ever, you personally are flat wrong.

I really think you actually believe that you and others have actually disposed of them.

I really think that you think they haven’t. Some of us can only explain so many times and in so many ways that two plus two does not equal five. That you lie about or just ignore those rebuttals only to pop up again a bit later with another “two plus two equals five” assertion is not a counter-rebuttal, it’s just more dishonesty.

It is yet another example of a Hillsidian reply. Teachers will repeat an explanation. Philosophical dilletanteism obviously doesn't.

Repeating in the face of your obtuseness the explanation for why two plus two does not equal five does not make the explanation any less true.

Let me be a good teacher…

You can’t be a good teacher unless you first have something to teach.

…and repeat again. What you call disposed of is nothing more than coming up with an alternative argument. The last one to really try was Outrider trying to disprove uncaused cause

He only came up with uncaused matter and an alternative in which causation AND uncaused was somehow dismissed.

Why even bother lying about something so readily checkable? You’ve had the various reasons for the “uncaused cause” stupidity given to you several times now, yet you just misrepresent or ignore them.

Why?

When exactly was argument from desire disposed of on this board?.......or is that just the antitheists equivalent of ''It is written''

To “dispose” of an argument you need to make an argument in the first place. Wishful thinking (or as you call it, “the argument from desire”) isn’t an argument of any kind.

The term disposal is dirty, stinking, purulent,shuffling antitheist hype.

Bad meds again perhaps?

I see Hillside has resurrected the old Leprechaun schtick.

Yeah, well when it works perfectly well to show you where you’ve gone wrong again then why not?

Hillside I think you are gussying up a ''universe is'' argument into a ''why the universe is like this argument'' or at least proposing we should be forbidden certain questions.

Then, as ever, you think wrongly.

That the observed universe has constants harmonised with the existence of life is a fact.

No it isn’t. That life has characteristics aligned with the universe is the only fact, not your ass-backwards version of it.

I don't need a fine tuned universe for belief. But apparently the Sean Carrolls of this world need there not to be one.

That’s nice for you.

So?

Of course you could finally attempt a real argument by proposing a method by which anyone else could distinguish your "intuited" beliefs from just guessing about stuff, but we both know that you'll eternally run away from that one don't we now. Still, at least having you post yet more mistakes here stops you from spending time making up more quotes to mis-ascribe to Richard Dawkins I guess.

So that's good.

[Hope]

Your problem, Sass, is that your sense of humour doesn't appreciate just how amusing it is.

Len, I think her sense of humour fully appreciates just how amusing the arguments that the likes of you put forward are.

[Leonard James]

Len, I think her sense of humour fully appreciates just how amusing the arguments that the likes of you put forward are.

Yes, it's all part of the way religion warps people's ability to perceive life.

[Hope]

Yes, it's all part of the way religion warps people's ability to perceive life.

Or lack of it, perhaps    After all, many people, of all faiths and none, have been able to perceive the threats of climate change, terrorism, global economic issues, changing patterns of crime, etc., etc. for years.  Equally, people from the self same backgrounds have argued that said threats have never and don't exist now.

[Leonard James]

Or lack of it, perhaps    After all, many people, of all faiths and none, have been able to perceive the threats of climate change, terrorism, global economic issues, changing patterns of crime, etc., etc. for years.  Equally, people from the self same backgrounds have argued that said threats have never and don't exist now.

Until there is a glimmer of evidence for something, it is a product of the imagination. Out of the millions of things that people imagine, some are bound to materialise.

[ProfessorDavey]

Or lack of it, perhaps    After all, many people, of all faiths and none, have been able to perceive the threats of climate change, terrorism, global economic issues, changing patterns of crime, etc., etc. for years.  Equally, people from the self same backgrounds have argued that said threats have never and don't exist now.

But there is evidence for climate change - you can measure it - both in global temperatures, and also affects such as glacial melt or polar ice cap area. It isn't a 'belief'.

Sure some people chose to ignore the evidence - or perhaps interpret it in a different way to the orthodox interpretation, but there is still evidence there.

[Sassy]

The only thing I need to become a christian is ... evidence.

But lets face it if there were evidence then we would all be christians and it wouldn't all be dependent of fanciful wishful thinking or as our christian colleagues call it ... faith 

Believing is seeing....rather than seeing is believing.
That is the point thought isn't it... The evidence from that is your reason to believe.

We all make the conscious choice. We hear the word and some fall away before bearing fruit.
Why would anyone want to do something that appears difficult on the surface. Some are just happy to carry on disbelieving it is easier in their eyes and opinion.

Till you take the stand how do you know?

[Sassy]

That isn't true. I believed in him as a child and he didn't give me any sign of his presence when I needed him!

King James Bible
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

If you could not love your parents how can you love God.

If you obey Christs commandments him and his Father would have revealed himself to you.

King James Bible
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

As a child and even now I love my parents.
Whom have you ever loved more than you love yourself? Do you even love yourself?

[floo]

If you could not love your parents how can you love God.

If you obey Christs commandments him and his Father would have revealed himself to you.
As a child and even now I love my parents.
Whom have you ever loved more than you love yourself? Do you even love yourself?

Sass as usual you have no idea what you are talking about. You have no idea whom I love and whom I don't. 

As for the Biblical deity it would be like loving Hitler!

[King Oberon]

Believing is seeing....rather than seeing is believing.

No believing is having evidence for those beliefs rather than believing without evidence, simple.

That is the point thought isn't it... The evidence from that is your reason to believe.

No idea what that means?

We all make the conscious choice. We hear the word and some fall away before bearing fruit.

Again, that is gibberish if you mean we all got religious education when we were young it was full of holes even back then and as I got older I realised only members of the corn circle society and meth drinkers would believe any nonsense written in the bible.

Why would anyone want to do something that appears difficult on the surface. Some are just happy to carry on disbelieving it is easier in their eyes and opinion.

Geezzz... you really can't think outside your own ideals can you sass? 

I would say the opposite. You believe in your god because it's to difficult to for you not to, imagine death final absolute, scare you?

Till you take the stand how do you know?

If I was to 'take a stand' i would rather believe in other gods rather than yours, but then out of the hundreds of gods man has believed in for some reason you only believe in one without evidence and dismiss the others for the same reason  Kids 

I'll stick with fairies thanks. 

[Owlswing]

I'll stick with fairies thanks. 

Fairies are Pagan angels - the messengers of the deities.