An atheist and a theist walk into a bar...

Chris OConnor

Theist: What would you accept as evidence for a God existing?

Atheist: I'd accept some sort of sensory evidence such as seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and so forth. And because God is an extraordinary claim I'd expect there to be an extraordinary supply of evidence, both in quantity and quality, before I believe.

Theist: But God doesn't give us sensory evidence of His existence. You have to have faith. This is a core tenet of the Christian religion. If there was evidence then everyone would know, and faith wouldn't be necessary.

Atheist: Let me ask you a question. If you were a fraud and you wanted to create a religion that could never be challenged or refuted what would you do? Wouldn't you define your God in such a fashion that nobody could ever claim he didn't exist? You'd claim your God couldn’t be sensed, so that when no sensory evidence is available nobody can argue that this is proof your God doesn't exist. You escape critique this way, correct?

What else would you do with your religion to insure it survives and has mass appeal? You might scare people into belief by claiming that they will suffer terribly if they don't jump on the bandwagon and accept your religion. This would be smart...wouldn't it? Scare people into belief! Nice, eh? You know, like threaten them with burning in a lake of fire for all of eternity.

Oh, and then you should make it easy to join. The Jews are rather exclusionary in their practices, and as a result have had major problems integrating with the rest of society throughout history. No, you want your religion to be simple to join, rewarding, and not subject to critique. So you'd probably have a simply handshake to get you into the club. Wait...that looks silly. Nah, you'd make it something cooler like tell people that they simply have to, "Accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior (TM)." This is simple as hell! This religion is bound to grow!

No evidence...plenty of fear and intimidation...easy to join.

Theist: You're getting off track! My God doesn't provide evidence. He wants you to just believe!

Atheist: And you know this how?

Theist: The Bible says so.

Atheist: How do you know you can trust what is written in the Bible?

Theist: The Bible is the word of God!

Atheist: Cool. Ok, how do you KNOW it is the word of God?

Theist: You have to have FAITH! Man, you just don't get it....do you?

Atheist: Faith in what?

Theist: Faith in God.

Atheist: How do you know God exists?

Theist: It says so in the Bible.

Atheist: But the Bible was written by man.

Theist: Yes, but inspired by God.

Atheist: How do you know the authors didn't just make it up?

Theist: I have faith.

Atheist: Faith in what?

Theist: Faith in God.

Atheist: How do you know God exists?

Theist: It says so in the Bible.

Atheist: But the Bible was written by man.

Theist: Yes, but inspired by God.

Atheist: Notice something circular here?

Theist: No.

Atheist: Maybe this is the problem. You might want to take a course in critical thinking so you can understand what a circular argument looks like.

Theist: Ahh...so now I'm not educated enough?

Atheist: It appears so.

Theist: Ok, Mr. Brainiac, explain to me why you think we come from apes!

Atheist: I don't think we come from apes.

Theist: Then you don't believe in evolution?

Atheist: I didn't say that.

Theist: True, but you said we don't come from apes. Evolutionists say we do.

Atheist: First of all, there is no such thing as evolutionists. They are called evolutionary biologists. Secondly, the theory of evolution doesn't state that we come from apes. We simply share a common ancestor. But more importantly, the theory of evolution has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of your argument.

Theist: Ok, Mr. Smartypants...I suppose you think we just popped into existence!?

Atheist: Again, you're uneducated and attempting to discuss a subject that takes years to understand. If you actually cared about learning this material you would take a course or visit a web site or read a book. But no, you want me to do your thinking for you. And when I explain things you'll laugh it off. I've been thru this before.

Theist: And I've been thru it before too. You atheists think you know it all.

Atheist: Some atheists might think this, but I don't. But I do know more than you about several things. First of all, I understand your religion better than you because I've studied the Bible and the psychology of faith. Second, I know how to think because I've educated myself in the appropriate subjects. And most importantly, my intelligence is not the focus of this discussion. And neither is evolution. Why don't we stay on track and discuss your God?

Theist: Why don't we discuss YOUR God? You believe in evolution as much as I believe in God!

Atheist: Ok, you win. You're clearly shown how evolution is bogus. Now that we have that behind us we can discuss your God. So why do you believe in a God?

Theist: Because the Bible tells me to believe!

Atheist: But the Bible was written by man.

Theist: It is the inspired word of God. Don't you ever learn?

Atheist: How do you know it is the inspired word of God?

Theist: I have faith. I trust in the Lord.

Atheist: Sounds you like trust in the authors of the Bible.

Theist: What is that supposed to mean?

Atheist: Well, you believe the Bible, and we agree that the Bible was written by man. So it sounds to me like you are trusting that those people that authored the Bible, and claimed it to be inspired by a God, were telling the truth.

Theist: Of course they were telling the truth.

Atheist: How do you know? Have you ever lied? Have you ever know others to lie? Have you ever been tricked? Have you ever deceived? Why is it so hard to fathom that a book written a few thousand years ago might be full of errors, lies and deception?

Theist: God doesn't lie, make errors or deceive!

Atheist: We aren't discussing God right now. Focus, if you will, on those original authors. Could it be possible that those authors lied, made errors, and/or deceived?

Theist: Umm...I guess so. But the Bible is the word of God, so we aren't discussing those authors.

Atheist: If man wrote the Bible, we certainly are discussing man. Have you ever considered the possibility that you've been tricked?

Theist: God wouldn't trick me. God loves me.

Atheist: But humans might trick you. Right?

Theist: Yes, of course.

Atheist: So you might have been tricked by the authors of the Bible, right?

Theist: Has anyone ever told you that you think too damn much?

Atheist: Yes, theists tell me I think too damn much all the time.

Chris

Dissident Heart

Below is a repost of an earlier constructed conversation...I think it pertinent to Chris' initial saloon dialogue. (Likewise, I am depending upon the graciousness of Chris to use his name once again in this fictional conversation)

Chris: Prove to me that your God exists.

Dissident: Excuse me?

Chris: You heard me, prove to me that God exists.

Dissident: Why?

Chris: Because I know he doesn’t.

Dissident: Then why bother me, if you already know.

Chris: Because I have to show you that your God doesn’t exist.

Dissident: Who’s business is it of yours regarding my idea of God?

Chris: It’s important to me to show how cowardly, ignorant, and willfully stupid it is to believe in God.

Dissident: What do you know about me and my God?

Chris: All I need to know, and from what I know, it’s all wrong; and ball-less too.

Dissident: Well, thanks for sharing, now run along.

Chris: It figures, just like a coward to run away.

Dissident: Can I show you something?

Chris: Only if it’s your God, thus giving me the pleasure of exposing the façade.

Dissident: This is Sister Maureen. She’s an Irish Nun living in California who runs a Sanctuary for political refugees from Central America…places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala- nations completely ravaged by paramilitaries and dictatorial governments largely supplied and supported by the US in the 1980s. She leads a group of volunteers, students, and lawyers who donate their services to help women, children, men and families escaping the terrors of their homes. She speaks four languages, knows immigration law inside and out, and carries a presence of awesome strength and calm…and she is a Franciscan Sister who has committed here life to a Gospel that demands care for the sojourn, protection of the refugee, love of the frightened and outcast. She prays daily and often, attends worship twice a week, has an angelic voice, and can often be found at dinner with grateful families speaking many varieties of indigenous and Spanish dialects. She’s been arrested on multiple occasions for protesting US Foreign Policy and Military action across Central and South America. She has been a beacon of hope and actual hand of liberation for thousands of individuals and hundreds of families.

Chris: So. This is very nice, but where’s your God? Don’t try to evade the question and run off into some sort of ‘social justice’ narrative that ignores my question. What are you afraid of?

Dissident: Afraid? If you ask me, Sister Maureen is fearless. The only thing she fears is the number of families still terrorized.

Chris: There you go, getting all emotional. Get to the point. Where is your God?

Dissident: Let me introduce you to Chaplain Dianne. She works as a Hospital Chaplain with patients and their families facing medical crises and death. She sits with patients facing dreadful diagnoses- an amputeed limb, ravaging cancer, massive stroke, gun shot wound, car accident. She also walks with Families as they prepare for the death of a lovedone. She helps them to voice their fears, anger, terror, sadness, pain, joy…and seek reconciliation and forgiveness with themselves, their families, and their God. She prays with them, sings with them, reads with them, listens, cries, offers last rites, arranges worship services at bed side- not telling them what to think about God, or who their God is or isn’t, but employing her presence as a loving and forgiving witness to their pain and grief.

Chris: When is this fluffy emotional nonsense going to end? Are you such a coward that you won’t answer my question: Where is this God?

Dissident: Coward? If you ask me, Chaplain Dianne is intrepid in the face of so much misery, sadness, and terrible grief. The only thing she fears is the number of families facing these crises with no language, practice, presence to witness their loss.

Chris: What will it take to get you to simply answer my question? It’s clear you are a fake and insult to thinking people. I don’t think you really believe in this God after all.

Dissident: Let me introduce you to Reverend Dr. King, Jr. He is a Baptist Minister, graduate of Seminary, and lifetime member of the traditional Black Church in white supremacist America. He’s offered his voice, leadership and life to a growing movement of black liberation in a rabidly segregationist, Jim and Jane crow racist Dixie. He’s composed a liberational narrative that connects the struggle for freedom by Blacks in apartheid America, to the exodus of Israelites out of Egypt; and the Resurrection of Christ connected to the rising from the dead racist brutalities to new life for White and Black Americans. King provided a vision of the ‘Beloved Community’ with its roots in a Gospel command to love of enemy, forgiveness of abuse, and the lifting of all Americans to their created essence as ‘children of God’.

Chris: Love, love, love…blah, blah, blah. Face it. You can’t prove your God exists. You can’t define what he is. All you can do is talk about protecting the refugee, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, aiding the sick, healing the grieved, confronting injustices, demanding freedom and liberty for the oppressed, lifting humanity to its most humane abilities to love.

Dissident: Exactly.

Chris: Exactly what?

Dissident: Well, not necessarily 'exactly', because talking about love is easy...wheras actually loving is a whole other ball of wax. But, in this context, the best you get is a few descriptions of lives that love- or at least try to.

Chris: But where is God in all this? You haven't proven anything.

Dissident: Who said I was trying to prove anything? When you demand I provide proof that God exists, I introduce you to a few extraordinary lives where, they would say, God has empowered them with exceptional powers to heal, encourage, motivate and mobilize others to lives of peace and justice. They say that prayer, song, meditation, worship, reading, speaking and listening to those who are oppressed, grieving, facing death...this is where they find God.

They are the first to confess how pitiful their language is, their definitions, their explanations. For them, the important thing is the deed; and in the action, the meaning becomes clear, is incarnate in the interaction of these fragile souls seeking help. As they see it, talk is cheap. And talking about God is especially cheap, considering how much work is to be done.

Chris: This is equivocation, manipulation of my emotions to try to get me to connect to the righteous morality of their action, while forgetting the lack of logical precision in their explanations. Why don't you just concede the loss of this argument?

Dissident: Fine. You win. I can't prove God exists. I'll be going now.

Chris: Where to?

Dissident: A shelter needs some techie assistance setting up a couple workstations so their clients can get access to e-mail, create cover letters, resumes, do some job search, maybe reconnect with an estranged family member, just plain get excited about learning again...I'm sure you have some tools to lend to the project?

Chris: Will your God be there?

Dissident: I hope so...there's a lot of work to be done.

Chris OConnor

I never said that I know God doesn't exist. Why is this concept difficult for you Dissident? I'm an agnostic atheist. Don't you understand what agnostic atheism means? We're been through it over and over. Either you're playing stupid or...

Chris

Chris OConnor

Dissident

I'm copying and pasting your dialogue, but stopping right where you have made your very first error...

Chris: Prove to me that your God exists.

Dissident: Excuse me?

Chris: You heard me, prove to me that God exists.

Dissident: Why?

Chris: Because I know he doesn’t.

This is how it should look:

Chris: Prove to me that your God exists.

Dissident: Excuse me?

Chris: You heard me, prove to me that God exists.

Dissident: Why?

Chris: You're the one making the affirmative claim so you shoulder the burden of proof. In addition to being responsible for demonstrating the validity of your claim, you ought to take it upon yourself to go above and beyond in gathering and presenting your evidence. The claim that a deity exists is certainly an extraordinary claim. Would you agree? So I think it is fair to expect you to provide an extraordinary quality and quantity of evidence.

Ok, now continue Dissident. This is going to be fun!

Chris

Dissident Heart

Chris: (From the God and I, Me and the Gods, What Religion Means to Me thread.) My position is that all claims of God are complete bullshit. There is no evidence for Gods of any sort, and all claims that I have been exposed to are rather silly and irrational.

And, from a later post in the same thread:

Chris: While I cannot prove that a God doesn't exist, I can reject the claim as irrational based on the fact that there is no evidence to support the claim.

Likewise:

Chris: When examined critically and without emotion all of the claims of God that I have been exposed to appear to be fake, bogus, nonsense, and gleaming examples of what weak mindw will do to resolve internal conflict. Humans desire to solve, conquer and understand their environment. This quality is of survival benefit, so doing away with it is not in our best interest. But seeing as there are some questions that we do not yet have answers for...some people create imaginary answers. All known claims of God are mans effort to fabricate an answer and pacify an insatiable desire to know the unknwon.

My apologies Chris, you've never said that God doesn't exist: only that those who do are silly, irrational, weak minded, and guided by imaginary bullshit. Is this what agnostic atheism means?

Dissident Heart

Chris: You're the one making the affirmative claim so you shoulder the burden of proof. In addition to being responsible for demonstrating the validity of your claim, you ought to take it upon yourself to go above and beyond in gathering and presenting your evidence. The claim that a deity exists is certainly an extraordinary claim. Would you agree? So I think it is fair to expect you to provide an extraordinary quality and quantity of evidence.

Dissident: Actually, I was busy learning how to love: finding tools, methods, teachers, lessons, examples that might make me a better lover of life; and you've come along demanding that I prove that God exists. I agree that such a thing is extraordinary, which is why I presented a few extraordinary folk for whom God is very important. You know, people who love God and as a result have a tremendous impact on the health, vitality, and defense of justice upon the lives of others. I guess you're right though...this doesn't really respond to the demand you are making.

Chris OConnor

Dissident

Quote:
Actually, I was busy learning how to love: finding tools, methods, teachers, lessons, examples that might make me a better lover of life; and you've come along demanding that I prove that God exists. I agree that such a thing is extraordinary, which is why I presented a few extraordinary folk for whom God is very important. You know, people who love God and as a result have a tremendous impact on the health, vitality, and defense of justice upon the lives of others. I guess you're right though...this doesn't really respond to the demand you are making.

If I were your Critical Thinking teacher I would call campus security and have you thrown out of class.

And if I were to label each formal logical fallacy you commit it would be a fulltime job.

We're discussing whether or not a God exists, so you bring up peripheral subjects such as all the loving things you do with your time. LOL You seriously don't understand how your personal acts of love have NOTHING to do with whether or not a god exists? Seriously?

And you seriously think that you've provided "extraordinary evidence of the existence of God" by "presenting a few extraordinary folk for whom God is very important?" I can present a looooooonnnnnng list of extraordinary people for whom Santa Claus is very important, so does this constitute extraordinary evidence for the existence of Santa Claus? Are you for real or are you trolling?

Quote:
You know, people who love God and as a result have a tremendous impact on the health, vitality, and defense of justice upon the lives of others.

Can I love Santa Claus? Of course I cannot love Santa. Santa doesn't even exist...right? How can these people actually love God if God doesn't even exist?

When are you going to stop discussing the effects of a belief in a god, and actually present a clear argument for the existence of a god? The belief in a god might do all sorts of wonderful things in peoples lives, but it certainly doesn't alter objective reality. Some of us want to know the truth. Is God real? Does a god actually exist?

You can believe in a god if it makes you feel good, but don't try to tell me your god actually exists unless you can demonstrate this as fact. I can't understand why this is such a hard concept for you.

Chris

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 12/27/04 4:06 pm

Chris OConnor

Dissident

Thank you for copying and pasting my past posts so that we are all reminded that I've always been rather precise in how I explain my beliefs and lack of beliefs. Without such quoting one might conclude that I've actually made the claim that God does not and cannot exist. Thank you for demonstrating that I've not made this claim, but have actually rejected the affirmative claim. I appreciate this.

Chris: (From the God and I, Me and the Gods, What Religion Means to Me thread.) My position is that all claims of God are complete bullshit. There is no evidence for Gods of any sort, and all claims that I have been exposed to are rather silly and irrational.

Notice above I do not say that God doesn't exist, but merely state that all claims of God are complete bullshit? Good, we have something to work with now. Again, my argument has always been, and will continue to be, that all claims of God are unfounded and irrational. Does this mean I claim to know that some sort of deity cannot exist somewhere? Nah, and we all know it. I've put great effort into making my arguments and statements clear and precise, as I know brilliant people, such as you, would never allow such a lapse in reasoning to pass by without notice.

Now we can look at your next clipping...

And, from a later post in the same thread:

Chris: While I cannot prove that a God doesn't exist, I can reject the claim as irrational based on the fact that there is no evidence to support the claim.

I'm not sure why you've selected my above words to argue your point, but I think you're now looking like a fool. You presented me in an unfair light in your first post of this thread. You attempted to create a strawman by mocking my position, which as you knew fully well, was NOT my real position. You knew, as you typed those words, that I did NOT hold the position that I know God doesn't exist. Yet you still typed those words. Why? This is what a Christian does? You lied. You lie all the time on BookTalk. Your God's magical chest must swell with pride as he watches how you represent the integrity and virtues of Christianity everyday here on BookTalk. Be more honest Dissident. You owe it to your God to follow his commandments.

And again you copy and paste my statements, which now that I read for a second time, are very nicely constructed...

Chris: When examined critically and without emotion all of the claims of God that I have been exposed to appear to be fake, bogus, nonsense, and gleaming examples of what weak minds will do to resolve internal conflict. Humans desire to solve, conquer and understand their environment. This quality is of survival benefit, so doing away with it is not in our best interest. But seeing as there are some questions that we do not yet have answers for...some people create imaginary answers. All known claims of God are mans effort to fabricate an answer and pacify an insatiable desire to know the unknown.

My above post was damn good and I actually feel proud as I reread it. Thanks for not letting my thoughts drift away into the abyss of old and forgotten message board threads. The more we can keep alive such pearls of wisdom the more we'll help irrational theists, like yourself, become better thinkers. God willing.

Quote:
My apologies Chris, you've never said that God doesn't exist: only that those who do are silly, irrational, weak minded, and guided by imaginary bullshit. Is this what agnostic atheism means?

Thank you. You're right. I never did make such a statement. And yes, in my not-so-humble opinion, most theists are weak-minded, uneducated and suffer from a lack of critical thinking skills. You're an excellent example.

Chris

tarav

After reading the last line in Chris' bar story, I thought it appropriate to post a quote. I just returned from a trip where I visited the estate of Thomas Edison. I bought a bookmark with an Edison quote reading, "All progress, all success, springs from thinking". I like that quote and plan on using it in my defense when I am accused of thinking too much!

Dissident Heart

Chris: We're discussing whether or not a God exists, so you bring up peripheral subjects such as all the loving things you do with your time. LOL You seriously don't understand how your personal acts of love have NOTHING to do with whether or not a god exists? Seriously?

Calling me a fool, liar, and troll is typical.

Thinking that love, justice seeking, peace making, healing the sick, liberating the oppressed...that all of this is peripheral to understanding God...is typical of how little you've tried to learn about the subject.

Reducing the courageous lives of some extraordinary people to buffoons defending the existence of Santa Claus is also very typical.

Your launch into personal insult was quicker than usual, but typical.


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