The absurdity of Christianity

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Not according to some. The Universalist Christians believe all people will go to heaven. Apparently the perfect infallible knowledge that was revealed to us can be interpreted in a few different ways.

Saying Christianity is absurd is like saying water is wet

And that is how I disguise my controversial views with ambiguity.

If you know, you know....

Special pleading is really just another way of saying double standard, and that isn’t the case here. The attributes of God allow for the renewing of the human mind such that a human being can know that the knowledge revealed to him by God is reliable and true. All knowledge is reliable and true by definition, incidentally, else it’s not knowledge.


Ok, this doesn’t even begin to make sense, and for two reasons. First, the idea comes from an 11th century (not that the time period matters) idea that actual infinities cannot exist in the physical universe (Al-Ghazali). Second, if every new idea is fallacious because it’s a Texas sharpshooter, then there are never new ideas at all. People examine old ideas and problems all the time and figure out new ways of solving them. There is a difference between things that begin to exist and God who does not have a beginning. It is not a logical necessity for God to have a beginning in order to exist, therefore God is the transcendent, uncaused Cause of the temporally non-eternal universe in which we exist.


YOU don’t know. Christians do know.


Damn you, autocorrect. It’s annoying that I have to undo things my iPad “fixes.” I catch most things, but sometimes they slip through.

The point of Hitchens’s razor is that neither argument or counter argument without evidence is convincing. Just because unsubstantiated atheist claims appear to be no more ridiculous than theist claims doesn’t save atheist claims from still being ridiculous. And that right there is my point. Hitchens’s razor applies equally to believers and non-believers, assuming there’s any truth to it, which I doubt.

I doubt the validity of Hitchens’s razor because it assumes that evidence is necessary for an argument. Substantiated claims based on evidence require either circular reasoning (by assuming reliance on evidence to be true while not requiring evidence for reliance on evidence—and not even THAT can be externally verified without circular reasoning), or they require an infinite regress, which isn’t actually possible. I don’t recall evidence being demanded for Hitchens’s razor, either, so if you enjoy throwing around ridiculous things like special pleading and Texas sharpshooters whether they actually apply to an argument or not, I’d start with that.


Faith in God.


If you’re going to invalidate philosophy, then you have to invalidate science that depends on it, and the requirement of evidence is a PHILOSOPHICAL tenet of science. You cannot demand evidence for something without some epistemic rationale for why you need evidence in the first place, or how you even know what you have is actually evidence in the first place. For all you actually know with any certainty all the evidence you have is just part of The Simulation and isn’t even real.

You are also assuming that evidence is always necessary. The assumption that evidence is required for everything is based either on an infinite regress or it is circular reasoning.

There is actually an easy way to fix this: Admit that science assumes faith in things that have been tested in the past, or faith in the reliability of the senses. For the sake of THIS experiment, we are assuming x, y, and z to be true because x, y, and z are not what we’re testing. It doesn’t have to be recondite. Admit that you have faith and that Christian faith is just as valid.


Who left behind some clues? The ALIENS? Yeah, Puma Punku surely was an alien landing/launching pad that “they” destroyed on their way out. Clues, indeed!


Nor does it prove its non-existence.

“Human experience is fallible and cannot be trusted” is, ironically, a pretty iron-clad argument for why we should disbelieve people who claim that they have a magical invisible imaginary friend that totally exists but they can’t prove it.

Some theists have hallucinated a religious experience. Some are deluded (a very small number, although militant atheists would like to pretend it is the majority). Some are charlatans; I tend to put anyone who uses an ontological argument in this category. Most simply haven’t subjected their beliefs to rigorous scrutiny and will come out with nonsense like “I know God exists because I have faith”.

The intelligent ones will admit that there’s no rational basis for believing in a deity, but say that their belief possesses a functional purpose for them. These people certainly exist, but they tend not to get drawn into debates online because they don’t deny the absurdity of their belief and aren’t interested in trying to justify themselves.

For me it isn’t that. I take selfish pleasure in self-examination and learning things. Over time I notice patterns, one of those being the absurdity of screaming “Evidence! EVIDENCE!! !” all the time. Evidence doesn’t matter when you choose to ignore it. The pattern I’ve noticed most is this:

Atheist: Christians never provide evidence.
Christian: [provides evidence]
Atheist: THAT’S NOT EVIDENCE!

So…either someone has his head in the sand or makes the unreasonable assumption that something cannot possibly be evidence if a Christian says it. I went through various phases of trying to give evidence for things, getting confused why it didn’t count, and then remembering that my faith was never any more about evidence than the atheist view. Actually…”atheist” is probably the wrong term. I should probably say anti-theist instead. Whatever. Eventually it hit home when I saw a YouTube video where an atheist was asked what he’d do if God came down right now and confronted him face to face. He said he’d spit in God’s face for allowing all the suffering in the world. Would he believe in God? He answered, “yes, obviously I’d believe in God. But I wouldn’t worship him.” The problems with evidence, aside from what I’ve already said, is that no evidence can ever compel a person to believe something, and evidence, regardless of what it actually is, can always be interpreted by the human mind in multiple ways. Just because someone has evidence of something and claims that something to be true doesn’t make that thing true. Consider this:

Good people donate to charities.
Donald Trump donates to charities. [Evidence can be cited here]
Therefore, Donald Trump is a good person.

You MUST believe Donald Trump to be a good person if you are being honest about your evidence demands. Otherwise you have to deny the premises. Maybe good people don’t donate to charities. Maybe evil people ALSO donate to charities. Maybe charities aren’t actually charities. But then you run the risk of Retro’s Texas Sharpshooter, moving goalposts, red herrings, and all sorts of different ways of sticking your head in the sand or sticking your fingers in your ears. When that happens, it stops being about evidence. Now it’s bias. You couldn’t accept the premises as true EVEN IF THEY WERE because, as an example, your entire worldview depends on Donald Trump being a bad person.

In the same way, you cannot reasonably expect any Christian to accept the premise that God doesn’t exist when the Christian already knows the opposite to be true. The Christian is already aware of the depravity of the human mind, including his own, from Romans 1:18-22. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Assyrian exile, foreign settlers in Samaria experienced God’s wrath (evidence) and asked to return a priest to teach them about God (2 Kings 17:24-28). 2 Kings 17:40 demonstrates the insufficiency of evidence.

If we know that arguing evidence is insufficient, why waste time on it?

At this stage in my life, I’m preferring to focus on the faith aspect of my belief and belief in general. I’m in the midst of forming an objective (reality-based, apart from the human mind) approach to building faith. I’m less interested in defending my beliefs, more in expressing my doubts about the opposite view. The reason why is that by presupposing Christian faith I have no argument that require defense—the matter is already settled. It’s no longer about what’s wrong with my beliefs (nothing), but rather what’s wrong with the beliefs of others (in a word, everything).

The problem of arguments such as the ontological argument is that by following the pattern of discourse throughout time since those arguments were formulated, I found that the one thing they all have in common is that in order to appeal to non-believers, they start with the premise that God does not exist and proceed to show through a specific argument how one must conclude that God does exist. In formal logic, an affirmative conclusion (God exists) cannot follow negative premises (God does not exist). No argument for the existence of God has ever been conclusively won when a Christian argued a proof on an unbeliever’s home turf.

However, it must be noted that even the refutations of a theistic argument have been refuted and that no atheistic or anti-theistic argument has ever been conclusively won, either. The strength of any classical argument has to be weighed against the presuppositions of the Christian making the argument. The ontological argument holds up well under modal logic, as an example, because when something is possibly necessarily true in one world, it is true in all worlds. You don’t have to go to all the trouble of saying that, though, because you can just say it’s necessary. No atheist can claim to know everything, just at best that the likelihood of God’s existence is remote enough that the atheist can safely assume God doesn’t exist. If you’re being honest, you must agree that the possibility that God exists could lie within the realm of things that are currently unknown to you. It is logically possible that a world or universe exists in which God’s existence is possibly necessary. If that is the case for at least one possible world, it has to be the case for all possible worlds, including the actual world. Since the ontological argument from modal logic demonstrates that the atheist assumption is false and IN THIS CASE does not make the assumption that God doesn’t exist, it’s a strong argument.

My point is not to make or defend the ontological argument, but rather to show that at least one variant of the ontological argument is above the rubric of charlatanism.

I would say “I have faith because I know God exists.”

I do agree with you on one point—most Christians tend not to overthink it. It’s exactly like how operating a motor vehicle doesn’t require an advanced degree in engineering or physics to start an engine. It’s not even required to have one to build an engine from casting a mold in sand. It’s just that having the knowledge is helpful and may give you better tools to make the best-running engine or repair one you own without the added expense or hiring a mechanic (who also lacks a degree in physics and engineering). Some Christians enjoy building the engine, some Christians enjoy repairing it, metaphorically speaking. But most of us simply want to get to Heaven and hopefully pick up more people along the way. What’s easier, explaining modal logic during break at your call center gig, or just saying “God loves you”? Most of us live at the “God loves you” level and tend to describe our faith in terms of what it has meant to us throughout our personal experience. For most of us, belief in God is self-evident, same as an ordinary driver sees turning a key in the ignition as common sense. There is no need for evidence when a belief is warranted, same as a driver assumes that the engine will work when he turns the key. It’s when the engine doesn’t work that the driver has to assess what exactly happened. It’s at that point a driver has a need to understand something on a deeper level. For Christians, things like prayers that do not get answered in specific, expected ways, or when good people suffer and evil people succeed, or when some anti-theistic argument appears to defeat a theistic one. The engine does not represent God, but rather faith and belief in God. It is not God who fails, but rather our fallible understanding of it. And just like engines can be repaired by owners who gain the right kind of knowledge and tools, or repaired by mechanics who apprenticed or went to trade school, or by those who created the engine, the human soul and faith in God is strengthened by those God put in the path of those who need that strength. Nobody needs a seminary degree to be saved. You don’t even need to read the Bible to be saved. Accepting Jesus as savior is all that’s required for salvation. Most Christians don’t feel the need to grow past that point—nor should they, since their relationship with God is more important than the intellectual exercise of apologetics in the company of anti-theists who do no wish to believe, anyway. I don’t disagree with you that the decision to accept Jesus is irrational. The problem with reading delusion into it is that nothing ever is rational, anyway, since the human mind is unreliable. Reason only enters the picture when God heals and renews the mind. The true irony is once God reveals himself through the renewal of the mind and the believer knows God for who he is, human reason is no longer needed, at least not with regard to faith.

I’ve always considered God to be the author of logic, which in one sense is true, but not true in the sense we generally think of it. The purpose of logic is to understand the world we exist in, and given the advances we’ve made in science and technology, I’d say logic has served us well. But what happens if someone already knows everything? I don’t see the point of a process of reasoning when all things are already known. All human wisdom is foolishness to God who knows everything already, so I think maybe reason only exists to ensure human survival. Once you can recognize that all human reasoning is inherently irrational, everything else starts to make a weird sort of sense. And yes, I’m being purposefully ironic on that one.

Yep. Another priest insisting that without religion there can be no morality. Funny how I've seen acts of compassion from secular people.

No, the syllogism is fatally flawed. If it had said "ONLY good people donate to charities" then (assuming the premisses were true to fact) it would be logical to conclude that Trump was a good person. But it didn't, so it isn't.

Of course sometimes people do present incorrect premisses as well, and it would seem foolish not to test them before jumping to a conclusion.

And when a conclusion looks wrong, it's entirely reasonable to do some careful checking of the entire syllogism for errors. One of the first lessons I was given in logic was the following example:

All dogs are animals
All cats are animals
Therefore all dogs are cats

The idea was that the obvious veracity of the premisses and the obvious absurdity of the conclusion would get us to realise there must be something wrong with the syllogism. By encouraging us to think for ourselves, the teacher was able to get us to accept the take-home message that a universal affirmative can only be partially converted, which would have been less convincing, and thus harder to understand and learn, if it had been merely presented as dogma.

If we are now resorting to logic/syllogisms for christianity then this is clearly absurd.

If it's not already obvious, children aren't born christians, they obey their parents. Therefore belief is a form of obedience to authority.

As christians get older they are asked to maintain their belief using a concept called faith.

Faith and authority are not logical, the incentive is not spiritual, its based on fear.

How do you know? Did your unreliable imperfect mind tell you that?

No of course not. It was revealed to you by God. The idea that it was revealed to you by God was also revealed to you by God.

Of course all scripture is spirit breathed. It says so in scripture.How does he know that? Did his imperfect fallible mind tell him that? He could have been mistaken.When did I say every new idea is fallacious? Go on. Go back through my posts and find the one where I said every new idea is fallacious.

I don't think Texas sharpshooter means what you think it means.You mean people examine old conclusions and cherry pick new evidence to support them?I never said it was a logical necessity. Just because God might be uncaused that doesn't mean it was. Just because there's no necessity for something to happen, that doesn't mean it won't happen.

You're still using the same special pleading that we've already covered. It's like if I wanted to prove the world was created by the one eyed, one horned flying purple people eater I could say that everything that isn't purple must have a cause.And now you're back into argument from assertion.I'm so glad you have now decided to apply Hitchens's razor to both sides.If you don't think Hitchens's razor is valid, then why use it?

You're right that evidence is not necessary for an argument. Apologists have made a lot of philosophical arguments without evidence. The ontological argument for example.

That's the weakness of apologetics. They devote a lot of time to thinking of arguments for the existence of God but they never produced any evidence.Gosh, you and Descartes would have been friends. I feel I'm in the 17th century fighting the battle between the European rationalists and the English empiricists.

Why doubt your senses without also doubting the mind. Evidence can be misunderstood but is there no possibility that an argument produced by that flawed, fallible human mind we all possess could be wrong?

Evidence based reasoning led to your iPad. It also led to a massive reduction in infant mortality. I'm not saying it's the best reasoning but it produces results.Why should we rely on faith on God?Invalidate philosophy? Do you enjoy putting words in people's mouths? Philosophy is the foundation of science but you can no more use philosophy alone to prove God exists than you could use philosophy alone to prove there's an as yet undiscovered species of frog living in Scotland. You can't build a house without a foundation but you can't live on a foundation by itself. You need walls and a roof.That's a very convenient thing to say for someone who doesn't have any evidence.So faith is a bad thing now? This reminds me of people who try to insult atheists by saying atheism is a religion while also trying to defend a religion.

Honestly science assumes very little in the reliability of the senses. That's why they use instruments and not direct observation. Unless you're going to say that our senses are so poor that that all scientists involved in testing or retesting the experiment consistently misread the readout in the exact same way.

If science assumes faith in things that have been tested in the path then why does it keep running the same experiments from the past?Just as valid. Are you saying that faith in science has all the validity, reliability and certainty as faith in God? If your argument requires you to lower God to that level, is it really worth it?Who left behind some clues? The ALIENS? Yeah, Puma Punku surely was an alien landing/launching pad that “they” destroyed on their way out. Clues, indeed![/quote]"They" in response to "the civilizations that were active in building those structures". I wasn't referring to the aliens.

Neither one of us believes aliens built the pyramids. I realise that you brought this up for the sake up argument but taking ancient aliens beyond that point would be tangential to our discussion.So we're left with a God whose existence has not been proven.

Well yes, it does seem odd to me that religion, which is supposed to be a matter of faith, should attempt to validate itself by logical reasoning and objective evidence.

The attempt to validate an irrational belief using logic is a form of pseudoscience.

Theology can use archaeological evidence to support the existence of historical figures. However when you use the bible to support existence of metaphysical beings or miracles then that form of theology is pseudoscience.

It is mysterious how so many scientists are comfortable with praying to god?

How thoughtless of them to want evidence!


But of course you have the golden insight to determine which evidence is proper and which evidence is improper. Obviously your infallible mind will never make an error while performing this judgement.


Who said something cannot possibly be evidence if a Christian said it?


Speak for yourself.


How do they know that?


You wouldn't happen to be a Calvinist would you?


I wonder what motivated the author to write that :smirk:


What should you argue instead?


So that's what you should argue instead? Is it sufficient?


No it isn't.


How could there be anything at all wrong with your beliefs. Your wisdom puts Solomon to shame. If you disagree with anyone at all, then it's a given that the other person must be in error.

I think religious scientists quite correctly compartmentalise their career and their faith. You can be religious while still being secular in the way you do your job.

Two fundamental methods with which to navigate life:

1. Belief;
2. Observation and reason.

Pros and cons may be argued for both methods, but these produce people very different in every way - can see the impact in such things as response to covid

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/white- ... 1627464601

and everywhere else, if know what to look for

You can't think like a scientist 9-5pm and then pray to mythical metaphysical beings after hours (although that's what happens).

Number one is a form of fantasy. I'm not saying it should be verboten but its like a shot in the dark, but anyway what works. Religion does have placebo like properties.