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Following a very long discussion on theism vs atheism, one of the local apologists named JJ asked me the following (rhetorical) question:
"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Bible says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and God's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details.

The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Jesus?'"

My reply:

That's a rather loaded question there JJ.

My position is:
1) The bible is not inspired by deity - it is mythology, the same as many thousands of other religious writings, each of which (with the exception of exactly one) you also regard as mere mythology.
2) "Sin" is a manmade idea and a highly dubious one at that. Actions matter; I'll put my faith into law & ethics. "Sin" is a thought crime; it is far more important what one actually chooses to do when confronted by temptation than it is that the temptation itself merely exists. The moral difference beween someone only considering stealing from you and actually stealing from you is both obvious and considerable - the same goes for murder, rape, assault, etc. Is any moral compass required for one to choose to do the right thing when there is no possibility of temptation? If one has no temptation, then it seems to follow that one's behavior is neither morally good nor bad, but merely amoral. How can moral actions even exist if they are not defined by the possibility of immoral actions? And, as defined by theologians, "sin" is even the mere contemplation of immoral actions.
3) There is absolutely no evidence for any supernatural phenomena, much less God - and the existence of deity is a far more extraordinary claim than, say, astrology or telepathy. For me personally, I would have to first be convinced God actually existed before I could believe in, much less worship, he/she/it.

"Salvation" from what exactly? Are you making a veiled threat of hell here? The concept of hell is morally repulsive, as well as illogical and devoid of any evidence establishing it as reality and not merely as a concept created by and existing entirely within the minds of certain humans. You'd need something more persuasive than the threat of Pascall's Wager if you want to convince me or anyone who thinks as I do. To do so, the evangelist must first establish:

A) Supernatural causes exist

B) Some supernatural causes require infinite qualities

C) This supernatural, infinite cause is divinity and not, for example, deistic

D) This alleged divinity is specifically the Christian God, and not any one of the many thousands of other gods humanity has worshiped either now or in the past, many of which are older than Christianity and some of them, such as the Baha'is, endorse objectively superior ethics. Offending the wrong god, Allah for example, would presumably give one the same result as unbelief.

E) That the Christian God, contrary to ordinary logic, isn't a universalist in spite of His alleged omnibenevolence

F) That the Christian God, contrary to the ordinary logic of his alleged omni justice, really does judge finite beings according to an infinite standard of perfection, going so far as to hold all people guilty for decisions they did not make (i.e. original sin). To put it plainly, the god of the bible is not just by any reasonable standard of justice and hence, very likely not *the* divinity even it were demonstrated to exist in reality (i.e. the "god" of the bible is much more likely a demiurge than an ultimate godhead).

G) That the Christian God recognizes one's preferred denomination as the legitimate messenger of His will. Of the 30,000+ denominations & sects of Christianity, most (all?) of them are either schismatic, heretical or both. Converting to the wrong denomination would also presumably give the same result as unbelief.

"If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy. As a schismatic, you have torn and divided the body of Christ. Choose heresy every time" - McCord, James. I'll add, this is a very ironic statement coming from a Presbyterian, i.e. a schism of the Roman Catholic church. Every Protestant and Evangelical is a schismatic

H) That a divinity that endorses rape, genocide, slavery, murder, theft, sexism, bigotry and racism - who does not follow his own alleged moral "absolutes," for which he makes frequent changes, additions or exceptions - is actually worthy of worship even if it were established to exist in reality and not merely in the minds of believers

Nice.

Cherryj wrote:"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Bible says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and God's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Jesus?'"

I would be inclined to reply: how perplexed would you be if someone told you these statements:

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Qur'an says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Allah's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Muhammad?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Avesta says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Ahura Mazda's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Zarathustra?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Bhagavad Gita says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Vishnu's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Krishna?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Guru Granth Sahib says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Ik Onkar's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Guru Nanak?'"

And so on. As if stomping one's feet and insisting something is true is an argument...

I'd say that's a pretty good set of points to make in any religious discussion, Cherryj. (Doug too for that matter.) You spelled out all the objections quite clearly. (Or I guess I should say many good ones rather than all. There are so many good objections to religion that it'd be difficult to even list them all.) You also showed how far away theists are from meeting their burden of proof, I think. So many steps they've failed to make and things they need to demonstrate.

Might I ask what JJ's reply was, if any?

Doug wrote:

Cherryj wrote:"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Bible says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and God's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Jesus?'"

I would be inclined to reply: how perplexed would you be if someone told you these statements:

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Qur'an says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Allah's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Muhammad?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Avesta says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Ahura Mazda's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Zarathustra?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Bhagavad Gita says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Vishnu's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Krishna?'"

"It seems everyone on this board knows what the Guru Granth Sahib says about sin and it's consequences and eternity and Ik Onkar's free gift of salvation.....so I'll skip those details. The question is, now that you know that ---- 'what will you do with Guru Nanak?'"

And so on. As if stomping one's feet and insisting something is true is an argument...

Excellent points Doug - I've used a similar approach before, most recently in regards to Christian special pleading on the subject of martyrdom (who would die for lie?, etc). Ali (Shi'ite Islam), Joseph Smith (Mormonism), Guru Arjan (Sikhism) and Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází (Baha'i) are a few of the various martyrs who 1) were founders of major monotheistic religions or key disciples of the founder 2) either wrote or contributed foundational scriptures to these various major religions and 3) were martyred over their refusal to compromise with either unbelievers or schismatics who opposed their religious views, refusing to repudiate what Christian apologists would call the lies of their supposed revelations. I've found with hard-core fundies, the views of any given theist apart from their own preferred branch don't seem to register.

The rule of thumb I've adopted recently is this: is this individual arguing from a basis of presuppositional apologics or classical apologetics? If they're presuppositionalists, there's very little basis for rational discussion. Presuppositionalism is pure confirmation bias: anyone who opposes their views are foolish because their book says they are foolish by definition and not on the basis of either logic or evidence. When I mention the views of other religions, presuppositionalists will dismiss such arguments outright because they presuppose these various other religions to be false, as opposed to established as most likely false on the basis of a lack of evidence proportional to their various supernatural claims. If conversing with a classical apologist, I agree; the various competing views of theists is excellent reason to suppose that any given theistic view is most likely wrong; most theists will wind up resorting to special pleading when trying to justify why other views are false but theirs is correct. With presuppositionalists, they seem to have no problem with intellectual dishonesty - in their mind, you are already a fool for not believing as they believe, you are trying to confound them (through the use of reason and evidence...) and so they see no reason not to make a foolish reply - to lie, in other words - in order to "confound" you. For example, this same theist recently deliberately used the term "agnostic" when discusing 1-4th century Gnosticism even after it was pointed out to him that these two positions are diametric opposites. And futher, people who do not believe in a deity do not and did not write books proclaiming to believe in a deity.

Indium Flappers wrote: Might I ask what JJ's reply was, if any?

To paraphrase, my reply was ignored, he made an appeal to Pascal's Wager and later he followed up with another loaded question:

"What do you plan to do or what have you done with Jesus?
Accept him
Reject him"

My reply:

I say this with no disrespect intended - but your question is malformed. Specifically, it is a loaded question and a fallacy of bifurcation. My answer is I once accepted Jesus, but I always had my doubts; over time, my doubts grew. I noticed how my questions were never satisfactorily answered. Eventually I realized I didn't believe any of it was true. I found that most apologists and evangelists resort to evasion, to personal attacks - some very hateful - they give poor answers that stand up to no scrutiny, they strawman any view that contradicts their own, etc. If god exists, then they why does his followers have to resort to such dishonest and illogical tactics, I wondered.

Some of the more decent Christians, and yes I am including you in that group, make arguments that are based on emotion, not logic, and that is just not how I'm wired to think. I expect evidence before I believe in something; the evidence should be proportional to the nature of the belief. And the belief that Christianity demands is extraordinary indeed - and entirely lacking in proportionally consistent evidence to support it. I am not "rejecting" Jesus quite simply because I do not believe he exists or that the doctrine and dogma that Christians say about Jesus is genuine and correct.

Let me ask you this: why do you reject Allah? Why do you reject Zeus? Why do you reject the Almighty, All-Powerful, All-Wise, Incomparable, Gracious, Helper, All-Glorious, and Omniscient God - that is worshiped by the followers of the Baha'i faith? Why do you reject the omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, all-perfect creator of the universe that Muslims worship? I expect your answer will be a simple one: because you do not believe these various competing theistic claims are true nor that their beliefs have anything of cosmic importance to teach you. In other words, these other religions are all man-made myths. My answer to you is exactly the same: Jesus is a myth. I neither accept him as my lord and savior nor to I reject him; I simply do not believe in him in exactly the same way that you and I both dismiss the faith claims for many thousands of other gods and goddesses.

I don't think we're using the term "reject" the same way either. When I use it, I mean "dismiss" - for example, I consider a sales pitch, I find the product to be not very useful, and so reject or dismiss the offer. The way you're using it is quite a bit stronger, implying an emotional rather than a rational reason for the decision to "reject." For one to reject anything in your sense of the word, one would first have to understand this thing as actually existing in reality. Just as you do not "reject" the Loch Ness Monster I don't reject Jesus, in your sense of the word; my position on both is exactly the same. Just as there is no reason to believe in the LNM, there is also no reason to believe in Jesus. And so I dismiss - or to use your term "reject" - both claims equally.

Suppose I offered you a million dollars if you make some arbitrary response - that I am the finest human being on Earth or some such - would you accept it? My guess is, no - because your capacity for reason would tell you I most likely don't have a million dollars to just give to a stranger. You would not be "rejecting" a million dollars in your sense of the word; instead, you'd be merely dismissing it as an entirely implausible offer. And if I offered you a million dollars to reject Jesus and I even proved to you I really had a million dollars to give you and even offered you a binding contract - in other words, the sort of proof Christianity cannot and will not provide - I expect (hope) you'd reject such a blatant offer of bribery. Why? Because bribes, even "real" ones, shouldn't be able to purchase anyone's integrity - one should never have to lie for personal gain. I reject the faith claims of Christianity because I don't believe Christianity has an eternity to sell me when they ask for my profession of faith - and I refuse to accept a bribe, i.e. claiming to believe something my intellect tells me isn't true just to hedge my bets against the possibility of Hell existing. Because my integrity won't allow me to do so. The mistake theists make is they assume atheists and agnostics came to their position lightly or based on emotion; we didn't and we don't. If I couldn't purchase your integrity through a bribe, what makes you think I would take the Pascal's Wager of Christianity when my reason informs me it is a completely bogus claim?

Nice.

Agreed, an excellent reply.

This is going to sound like a bit of horrendously uncalled for pessimism coming out of the blue, (it will sound as such likely because it probably is), but how much success have you (or others on this board) had in deconverting/convincing the people you've spoken with about religion, science, etc?

I just ask because, while I've admittedly not been trying too terribly long, I've had my share of discussions with religious folk, (and with atheist folk in the other direction before I decided Christianity wasn't for me), and I don't think I ever convinced anyone of either side. I've seen statistics showing that religiosity is decreasing (slightly) in the U.S., but in my personal experience the vast majority of people don't seem to be swayable.

So, I guess I'm asking, how often are all of these excellent replies effective, in your experience? I'm all for being able to give a good response even when it's not effective. (As William Blake said, "When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.") But nevertheless, if it's not going to be effective, I think I'd rather know going in.

I don't know, I feel like I'm clouding the light of your replies with my pessimism or something. Sorry about that.

Indium Flappers wrote:but how much success have you (or others on this board) had in deconverting/convincing the people you've spoken with about religion, science, etc?

Personally, my answer would have to be "not much" but would have caveats. I like relating this story:
A student I had when he was an 8th and 9th grader was raised extremely religious. After graduating high school, he had been talking to one of his friends about some common, simple questions (not the kind that completely and easily debase the entire religion). The friend had him send a message to me about it. I gave some straightforward answers, he responded with apologetics, and that was pretty much that.
A full year later, he contacted me again to let me know that he was a fully-fledged atheist. It took a year of mulling over questions, my answers, other answers he found elsewhere, books, online posts, etc. Had he not contacted me the second time, I would never have known. While I don't think that I've done much deconverting, I'd bet that a modest handful of people were pushed in the correct direction due in small part to things I've said somewhere. There is simply no way for me to know what effect (or lack thereof) it's had.
It is important to note, however, that this student started asking questions first, as opposed to the notion that my statements alone got him on the path to deconversion. This is why I end up hoping that lurkers will read our comments and get those nagging questions stuck in their heads until they can't take the cognitive dissonance anymore and start exploring. I very often hold no hope for the person I allege to be addressing with my comments and am instead hoping to hook a reader.

Other things to keep in mind:
It can be useful to share thoughts even with other freethinkers so that we can learn different ways of presenting ideas or see different arguments.
We can sometimes affect people's actions even if we don't affect their beliefs directly. There are surely friends and "friends of friends" whose online commenting habits are curtailed by our presence. As I once put it, "[friend-of-friend preacher guy] and I have come to an unspoken understanding. He pops off with something stupid, I make him look like an idiot, and he runs away and hides for a while." He may still witness and profess expertise to his flock, but this guy has learned to stay mostly quiet when he knows I might see his posts... and it's like whack-a-mole when he occasionally tries to slip one by. I guess my point here is that there is value in intellectually shaming them into any form of silence, be it temporary, locational, audience-based, whatever, even if they won't admit the underlying weakness in certain settings.

An update on my long-running dialogue with theists on another forum: the argument shifted to what does faith actually do? The assertion was made that faith makes people more moral; the statement was made that religious people have better marriages. I responded with a well-cited article by the Evangelical Christian think tank, The Barna Group, a study that has a margin of error plus or minus less than three percent, that this was not the case. To this they responded with personal attacks and evasion. To that I replied with William Lane Craig's defense of biblical genocide as a example of why unbelievers often consider the arguments apologists make to be disingenuous and frankly repugnant. To which they responded with age-old presupposition that on what basis can atheists critize Biblical genocide?

Statement:
"First, I'm still not sure what basis any naturalist has to attack a Christian's morals on here, except to use the Christian's basis themselves. But again, on what basis do naturalists define genocide as even being wrong?"

Simple: because genocide causes objective harm to our fellow humans and we have evolved as social creatures who care about our fellow humans. As a species, we both survive and thrive because we, as a rule, care about our fellow human beings and we expect them to care about us in return.

Since I still have not gotten a response from any theist, I'll recap my post from yesterday:

Source: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/slaughte ... canaanites

Writer: William Lane Craig, a very notable Christian evangelical, apologist, philospher and theologian with two PhDs.

Original text:

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

Edited text:

So whom did Adolf Hitler wrong in commanding the destruction of the Jews? Not the Jewish adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Nazi soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Nazi soldiers is disturbing.

Kind of a ridiculuous argument, isn't it? Can your reason point out where this argument is wrong, or do we need God to tell us this?

Consider this example: we have a generally accepted rule that traffic laws are to be obeyed. We all understand that while the police may allow us a bit of leeway, we all expect that if we’re caught doing 100 in a 65 zone that we’re going to get a ticket – and for good reason. Driving recklessly endangers both us and other people. Suppose that when the police officer pulls you over to give you a ticket, you say that the accepted rules don’t actually apply to you in this particular case because God spoke to you and He said it was OK. Do you honestly expect anyone to buy this argument? Would you buy it if you were the police officer whose duty it is to help ensure the public safety?

And in your case, you aren’t asking merely for justification to drive recklessly; no harm, no foul. No, your religion is asking for justification to commit genocide – the most heinous possible crime humanity can commit. For this blatantly immoral argument to not to be special pleading – i.e. a logical fallacy – one would have to first meet a very high burden of proof that this commandment actually came from God Almighty himself, and not simply from someone who was looking to rationalize his own decision to commit genocide by invoking God; i.e. the far more likely possible explaination. We can start by asking ourselves, in the first example– why would God make a special exception for one to drive recklessly, endangering other people? Or, in the case of the Canaanites, why would God make a special exception, ordering one tribe to commit genocide against another – murdering men, women and children in the process (and also kidnapping and raping many of the few surviving women).

Does this sound remotely like something that lines up with what theists have to say about God’s supposed character? How does an unchanging, perfect God change in order to permit this one extraordinary exception to a rule that is universally accepted by all of humanity? If you define God to somehow be beyond human reason – the only sort of reason we know actually exists – then you are just appealing to pure moral and intellectual nihilism. And of course, by your own rules, anyone can do the same thing – they can just make up their own God who says it’s all OK. And you would have no reasonable basis for saying they were wrong. And many other religions do exactly this – unless you want to argue that other religions are actually true.

Short of God speaking to everyone, you are asking for everyone to instead rely on a few witnesses – who are each anonymous - and each of whom was quite human and very biased against his neighbors. These alleged witnesses who all had an incentive to take his neighbors property by force, despite what their own law says about murder and theft. You tacitly expect these to be considered as reliable witnesses to everyone with regards to what “God” allegedly says, statements that are quite inconsistent with what believers also say about their deity’s character. To state the obvious, that’s just nuts. In other words, the bible doesn’t come close to meeting this rational burden of proof. Just as your “God says it’s OK” argument wouldn’t get you out of a speeding ticket in the real world, so too does the “God says it’s OK” argument not get the Israelites off of the charges that they, in their own testimony, have committed genocide against the Canaanites.

I’ve said this before and – since I’ve yet to get a cogent reply to it, I’ll say it again - what does faith actually do if it doesn’t make people more moral and ethical than they can be without God? What use is faith if it is so often used to justify the unjustifiable, to defend the indefensible?

Cherryj wrote:Statement:
"First, I'm still not sure what basis any naturalist has to attack a Christian's morals on here, except to use the Christian's basis themselves. But again, on what basis do naturalists define genocide as even being wrong?"

Simple: because genocide causes objective harm to our fellow humans and we have evolved as social creatures who care about our fellow humans. As a species, we both survive and thrive because we, as a rule, care about our fellow human beings and we expect them to care about us in return.

The relevant question here is not how the nonbeliever can say that genocide is wrong, but how the believer can say that genocide is sometimes a moral obligation.

Craig's well-known, morally reprehensible "defense" of genocide is a gift to atheists.