RagingRev

Foreward

About two months ago I was browsing through my normal routine of atheist sites and blogs when I happened upon an advertisement for Mormon.org’s chat service which allows anyone to log onto the website and chat with a missionary from the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as Mormons or LDS).  I decided to log on and chat with the kind folks there to see why they believed what they did and so on,  being an individual that is not entirely unfamiliar with LDS beliefs I came in with a foreknowledge of the basic LDS doctrine and simply wanted to challenge these kind people to think about the origin of their belief – something I had to do for myself once upon a time.

Missionary One: Initial encounter

The first missionary I talked to was a very kind young man, if I remember correctly he was 19 and in training to go to South America to present their version of the gospel to the people there, you see, the chat center is located in Provo, UT at the Missionary Training Academy where all the LDS missionaries go for a time prior to being sent out. (Most LDS members go on mission at some point in their life usually in their early 20’s, the mission generally lasts two years and is part of being a holder of the Melchizedek Priesthood). I explained to him that I was an atheist and that I was at one time a Christian, he spoke to me about  his “relationship with god” and how he knew god was real because he felt him so strongly in his life and because he had seen god’s many blessings on him and his family. I explained to him a little about my past and how I too had a relationship with my own deity and that at one point I came to realize that this deity was merely my own mental and emotional interpretation of the god of the Bible and the god that I most wanted to serve. (aka, an imaginary friend that I molded after my own view of god). Eventually I gave this missionary my phone number and he and I talked about this subject on two different nights, he would also give me some verses from the Book of Mormon to read. I read what he asked each time that he did. During our last conversation he let me know that he was leaving to go on his mission and would therefore be unable to call again and asked permission to give my number to another missionary named Stephen, I agreed and issued one final challenge to him: I simply asked that he ask himself if he would be comfortable with even the idea of there not being a god and that if he could find a way to cope with that if he would then begin to challenge the idea of god that he had. He agreed.

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Last Thursday my wife and I were in the midst of an argument. Nothing major of course, she was stressed out and when she is stressed she screams at me for a while until she feels better and then usually everything is all good. During our argument we saw a little head bobbing around through the window on our door…there was the pastor that performed our wedding ceremony standing there.

I’m not sure who sent him or if he had even been sent at all, this was the first time I had seen him in the three years since we were wed so the visit was quite peculiar. When my wife and I were in the process of getting married we both still believed though we had our doubts about Christianity, nonetheless the pastor found himself easily impressed by us and our resolve to remain virgins until our wedding night, so as far as he knew all was well with our faith at that time. I can only assume that he had gotten some wind of my fall from grace, this is a small town and I am very much an Out atheist, but regardless this is how our conversation went:

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As I was making my daily rounds the other day on Facebook the status of one of my friends caught my eye. Because Facebook and especially statuses are incredibly bad places to hold sensible debates I have decided to post the comments that occured after that. If it is hard to follow I am sorry, but I truly hope that the participants might join in and begin commenting here in order to continue hashing this out…now that we have Intense Debate installed at RagingRev these sorts of things should be MUCH easier to facilitate. 

note!: I am changing the names of anyone that may not want to be identified…Just stuff I am making up

as you can see, it’s long, but I hope it will be worth it and I truly hope those involved will join in on the comments. Note also that I did remove a small side conversation and one other part but they were not important…we are at over 5000 words here.

Here is what it said:

Erich’s Status:  It’s Atheist Day! (The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”)

Bill says:

I am an atheist, but I am not a fool. Your statement is exactly backwards, because who is the bigger fool? One who uses logic and reason to define their way, or one who blindly believes in superstition, (faith)? Now, I don’t go around calling all of my religious friends “fools,” but you seem to have no problem dishing out such an insult.

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I think I have dealt with this before on this blog, but things seem to have escalated around here at my small Georgia town. My wife and I seem to increasingly be the subject of random conversation with people that we don’t even really know.

To be completely honest, one of the things that prompted me to start RagingRev and move my blog from Livejournal was that the rumor mill was running wild around these parts. My former Pastor approached me at the gas station one day telling me that he heard I was in to “Satanism” and things like that, at the time I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the title of Atheist but once I settled into those shoes I felt the need to dispell some of the ludicrous things that were being falsely derived from my Livejournal at the time. Quite simply put, someone (I don’t know whom) read a few of my entries wherein I express an interest in the Occult, and decided that I must be a Satanist…how silly!

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As promised, I am going to attempt to respond to Guy from Heresy Today ’s egregiously long response to my “Dormant Christian” post. So after much hesitation, mainly due to the fact that because of the schedule I am on at my job is screwing with my head (No one else is seeing the pink elephants?) and making it incredibly difficult for me to even sit down and read a comment very well, much less respond to it coherently.  So I will do my best here…at 4:30 in the morning.

Regarding the podcast mentioned below, I am listening to that finally now as I write this, I may make responses to bits and pieces of it here, but we might have to save it for later…another debate perhaps. Guy really should consider manuscripting his podcasts! 72 minutes!

Keep reading for more:

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I really have a hankering for a serious debate…seriously…someone..please…contact me with information and we will do a debate…somewhat formal, you choose the topic…Ray Comfort wouldn’t do it—someone please..

Religious debates only folks—i need something to blog about…

Unless some of you have really good reccomendations for topics—if so…please let me know

The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin .

In the following sound clip a Christian calls in trying to support the idea that God (YHWH of the Bible and Jesus) is morally superior to mankind….I think the hosts of the show make some wonderful points here as to just how that might not be the case. Enjoy!

The Atheist Experience-Morality

In my perpetual  need for inspiration to overcome my bloggers block I asked for some folks to provide with some questions or topics of interest….I’m gonna hit all of the replies as i go along, but this one seems like the easiest one to answer, from Frigga:

I could suggest a few topics and definitely ask a bazillion questions… but I haven’t read your archives, so you’ve probably covered lots of stuff so far.

I’ll ask one anyway. I’d be interested in reading about your journey to becoming a Christian, and then your journey away from Christianity. What was it that made you believe so strongly, and then not believe so strongly?

Do you have any doubts that you could be wrong?

Firstly, anyone can feel free to ask or bring up any topics of interest they want to, rehashed or not, because if it is something i covered more than probably a year ago, it was still with some semblance of Christianity left in me. So really anything is fair game.

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Dizzy answers

Dizzy, at Veritasdomain.wordpress.com was kind enough to post answers to my last post criticizing Ray Comforts Huntington Beach video.

First of all, thank you dizzy for your response and very well thought out rebuttal, also thanks for making it point by point, certainly makes response easier.

I am gonna do this like we normally do around here,  post what Dizzy did, just copy and paste it from THIS LINK and then respond to it,  my responses will be in Bold whilst Dizzy’s text will be in Italics.

Dizzy: Thanks for your post. Since you were kind enough to make a passing reference to veritasdomain as another Christian blog, I thought I’d answer your critique of the debate point by point.

For 0:10 you mention that it’s sad to to start off a video with fear mongering. However, pointing out that Ray Comfort is trying to “peddle” fear doesn’t prove anything but your opinion. “You’re not crazy if they’re really out to get you.” Likewise, it’s not mongering, if hell exists.

Me: At this point in the video I am not really trying to prove any point at all, it is my opinion, as a former apologist of this very faith that the tactic of fear mongering results in a less than productive faith (through experience mind you) in some situations. You are right though, if hell DOES in fact exist i guess it wouldn’t be fear mongering as much as it would be just trying to save someone…the problem with that is that Mr. Comfort is propagating fear of something he can’t prove does indeed exist-if he or anyone can prove that it does then I welcome you to do so. You make a good point none the less, and I truly don’t question the MOTIVES of Mr. Comfort, but his method of delivery is lacking here—as well as his logic.

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OK, Let me just say this, I know that the Ray Comfort post I made last was a tad on the easy side…but, I mean, you can’t blame me for taking on a guy like this….so much pride and assumption rolled into one little man…its just a temptation I can’t possibly refuse….and now, I have even more for this guy. This time I am gonna openly invite Mr. Comfort to this blog to engage me—I have a feeling he has already been here, so this should be pretty easy, but I’m gonna make sure he knows that I am waiting for him by responding to one of his blog posts.

Secondly, I was perusing the inter-web the other day and I found this video linked on another Christian blog…it simply amazes me how Christians are eating this crap up, they really think these are good arguments…all I see is a fast talking salesman with an inch of magnetic hypnosis at the end. Without further ado, here is the video:

im going to go through this with time stops…just follow along:

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