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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Recently our friend over at The Atheist Blogger wrote an interesting piece on Religious Child Abuse. In it he posted a video from a BBC Documentary about the Drapper family, a fundamentalist Christian – home schooling family in the UK.

In the Documentary posted in 6 parts below; Deborah Drapper, age 13, is extensively profiled. The cameras follow her around while she goes about her daily activities , interviews her about her faith, and even goes with her on a trip to her brothers college apartment. Deborah is naive…very much like I was at her age…She is an intelligent young girl, my intention is not to call Deborah stupid  here, at all.

When I was about 15 years old I decided to start living my life for God again…I had been “saved” at the age of 6 just like Deborah claimed to be.  At these young ages both Deborah and I claim to have understood 1: That man was depraved and doomed to eternal torment and 2: That Christ died on the cross as a scapegoat for our sins – thereby saving anyone that accepted this belief in Christ and his sacrifice from the eternal furnace. Do you think we could have possibly understood this? Do you think that we could understand the Biblical fall of man or the doctrines of Atonement? I truly don’t. I think at the earlier age we were merely repeating the things we had heard from church, or in Deborah’s case – her parents.

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Today I turned 23. Was a good birthday too because Mellissa @ Blackbird Coffee(the best little coffee shop in the world) gave me free coffee all day, I ended up with 3 Quad shot skinny cappuccinos and a sugar rush from the cinnamon roll she bought me for lunch (lunch of champions). I was wired all day, still am. I also had about 20 people say Happy Birthday on facebook…makes me feel loved just a little.

Tommorow is another important persons (you guys do know I am important right?) birthday, one Charles Darwin would be 200 years old tommorow, and Origin of Species turns 150 this year. In honor of Darwin this year I intened to purchase a copy of Origin of Species and read through it entirely…sadly I am too ignorant of evolution to defend it  well enough…I understand the premise, and it certainly makes sense and even seems to me to be obvious…but I have a lot to learn.

Tommorow I am going to try for an extensive rebuttal to Guy’s response to my last couple of posts….before he loses his mind (…nevermind). I will also try to fix the issues i have had with the Wordpress upgrade if time allows.

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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This man might be stupid!

So the other day I was looking through blogs, dropping my Entrecard on different blogs. I tend to go for the religious/Christian blogs as much as I can, to get the whole Christian crowd to come here as much as possible…

So I stumble upon The Powerhouse Ministry Blog and This Entry in particular. Evidently some dude named Ray Comfort (from Way of The Master Ministries) has some irrefutable evidence for the atheist…it starts with 10 Suggestions for the Novice Atheist, and ends with…The Atheist Test…yes, you heard it here first kids…the Atheist test.

This is my attempt at dismantling this poor mans ridiculous arguments. My own text will be Bolded, his will be normal type: Enjoy

Ten Suggestions for the Novice Atheist

1. Whenever you are presented with credible evidence for God’s existence, call it a “straw man argument,” or “circular reasoning.” If something is quoted from somewhere, label it “quote mining.”

No one has ever presented any credible evidence for god’s existence yet…at least to me…if you can I invite you to do so though! Straw man arguments wouldn’t really fit there, straw men are used to burn down a persons character-its really an audience/judge ploy against the opponent—not an actual real life argument. Circular reasoning will be called what it is…And who in the hell is unhappy about quotes?

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