They must think I'm weak.
I'm talking about the bible thumping people who find my site and choose to try and save me.
Maybe it's because I appear to not have a brain, that because I post kid stories or song lyrics, that somehow, I'm not really an atheist, and just a weak minded individual who needs saving.
I know there are other bloggers out there like Stupid Evil Bastard, and Alan Mackenzie, whom these people would probably feel intimidated talking to this way.
So there's definitely something about the way I post that says, "Look! We found one! We can save this one!"
Yesterdays little fun with some of the religious, turned into an all day, all night email session to save me.
I want to stress that not all Christians behave this way. I am actually very dear friends with several very religious people on the net like CJ, who has never once in all the many years we have known each other on line, condemned me to hell for not believing in God.
I need to make it very clear, that the things I say to some of these people, and about religion in general, does not apply to all Christians. There are very good people out there who understand that not all of us need to believe the same things. They are open to true dialog on the subject, they can hear my side, ask me questions, I can ask them questions, and neither of us feel threatened by the other's views.
With that said, let's talk about Betty.
Betty found my site yesterday and has made it her mission to save me.
She's the one who asked me to take the test.
Betty is one very determined individual. I'll give her that much credit.
But what Betty doesn't understand about me is that I enjoy this back and forth. It passes the time when I'm bored. It makes me giggle.
Betty doesn't understand that I'm really not up for the saving she's offering.
There were 13 emails back and forth between Betty and I yesterday, and she has promised me more. She was tired at midnight and needed to go to bed. But she promised me she would be back.
I can hardly wait.
It started off with her telling me there was no fossil proof of evolution. So I showed her there was. That we have indeed found fossils of certain fish that through various fossil stages, had shown to evolve and go from strictly underwater creatures with gills and fins, to fish that contained both gills and lungs and legs and flippers with fingers.
They clearly spent time on both land and water.
We discussed who wrote the bible, how many years ago, how many continents it was written on.
Then we ventured into the traditional questions that Kirk Cameron loves to attack people with on the streets.
Do you consider yourself to be a good person? Ever told a lie? Stolen ? Committed adultery? Looked with lust? Used God's name as a curse word? Always honored your parents? If so, you've broken God's Law and because God is good, must punish you. That place of punishment is Hell. The Bible says each man will see himself good in his own eyes. It also says God alone is good. (morally excellent). Be honest, if you've lied, you've done it knowningly, against your conscience. God gave us a consciene (it means "with knowledge") When we break God's Law, we do it willingly.
To which I answered all of them honestly and finishing with my usual, those are God's laws, not mans, they don't apply to me.
Pretty much everything Betty asked me, I answered honestly and it was followed by her reciting scripture to me.
Over and over and over.
For many, many emails. Me, speaking like a normal human being, her speaking like a preacher on high shouting bible verses at me like it was going to eventually sink in and make me slap my forehead and start repenting.
Note to other thumpers. This tactic of just reciting scripture is yawn inducing. If it's supposed to save us, it's failing.
She kept asking me to take the test again and again. I did keep taking it. For fun. I kept changing my answers to see what different results I would get.
Some of them were kind of funny.
I digress.
I replied back to her, and she replied back to me. Her replies to me are quoted.
I took the test. No, I'm not good enough to go to heaven, but it doesn't matter anyway because there is no heaven or hell.
Where do you get that information? When you were in your Mom's tummy, were you aware that there was a big ole world out there? Jesus said you must be born again, what is born of flesh is flesh, but what is born of God's Spirit is spirit. This is eternal life, to know God, and His Son whom He has sent.
Did you not understand that about me yet? I am an atheist, and absolutely nothing you can say is going to change my mind, make me repent, ask forgiveness, and be a deaf, and blind, and dumb follower of a fictitious story.
What we believe does not negate reality. If I am standing in front of a train on the tracks, even if I don't believe the train will hit me...it is coming.
Again with the vehicle analogy.
By this time, I'm getting really bored with this game. I replied to her, but I admit, I was a bit testy with her now.
"Because the train is real Betty. Everything about that train is real.
I can't believe you all use the same tactics.
Oh yes I can, the way of the master tells you to use these on people to try and confuse them about what is real and what isn't.
The truck analogy. The train analogy.
Those things are very real and I can prove them to you. You can see the train, touch the train, feel it, heck you might even get to ride on one someday. I rode on one, my grandfather built the tracks from Massachusetts all the way to New England and up. It's 100% very real.
I have no proof of Gods existence. None, zero, zippo, zilch.
We can go around and around forever on this Betty.
You believe, great, happy for you. If it helps get you through your life, more power to you. You cannot save me.
I say there is no heaven or hell because that is what I believe. It's my right as a human being to think any way I want to. If we go by your gods book, he gave us free will Betty. Quit trying to take mine from me. It will never happen.
Go find a weaker mind to convert.
You are invading my time, my life, my right to live as I see fit under free will. You had a choice to read my site today. You chose it with your own free will. You could have clicked away, but noooo, you decided to try and save a person who doesn't want to be saved.
I've conversed a better part of my day with you, and you still keep coming around to the same points. You simply can't accept that there are people who don't want god. That we don't care one way or another. That life is what we make of it here and now, not in some fictional afterlife.
I don't want god. I don't want to be saved. I don't want to ask forgiveness. I don't want to believe. I don't need these things Betty.
I'm also not some nitwit who hasn't read the bible. I've been 100% honest with you about everything, the test, my thoughts, my feelings. What have you done other than speak at me like a preacher condemning me to fire and brimstone?
This is my choice Betty.
You must accept it.
Go pray on it every night and come back to me daily if you feel like it, to ask if all your prayers to save my soul have worked yet.
I'll bet you $1,000 that your prayers to save my soul will never come to fruition."
Then she comes at me with a reply to a previous email I sent her on the atrocities God performed and condoned in the bible. I had sent it to her hours previous.
She finally replied to that one.
I told her I was getting bored with this game, this tactic was boring. Anyone can recite scripture, I can too. Speak to me with your own mind and I'll be happy to continue.
That's when she told me she had to go to bed.
While typing this just now, I got two more emails from Betty. She must be wide awake and ready for the game to continue.
She wants my phone number. I don't think so.
Nope. No way. I have a feeling she'll talk so much the battery on my phone will die.
Comments
Why would anyone feel intimidated by me?
Posted by: Alan Mackenzie | March 3, 2007 11:50 AM
Kat,
I hope you don't mind my posting a response to your private email on the web. My email client responded that the server didn't recognise your email address.
Kat wrote:
> Because you are intelligent.
Thank you. Atheists are no more intelligent than theists, but what counts, is the ability to study logic, to understand how people construct arguments, and how and why they fail.
> They mostly go after after people they can confuse with what's real and what isn't.
Yes, many people, including well-educated people fall prey to specious arguments, that is arguments which appear valid, but, are actually misleading, and would require to logician to demonstrate that they are invalid.
> They look for people they can badger down, confuse, talk down to, call us liars and whores etc.
The best way to deal with such people is to acquire a level of knowledge equal or greater to that of the person you debate with. You will not find yourself caught off guard by plausible, but misleading arguments, if you possess a sufficient level of knowledge to highlight that your co-debater is employing poor arguments. I hesitate to assume that all such people are sophists, but, it is true that we encounter people with specious accounts of history, and who shoehorn scientific data into their own view of Holy Scripture, that is, The Bible/Qua ran predicted X; humans discovered X in the 20th century.
> I just recently found your site and started reading it.
I hope you enjoy reading it. Feel free to critique it too.
> The lady who is currently bothering me, would probably not do this to you. You could probably answer all the questions she sent me.
Please send me those questions. If you like, I could post my answers [if I can answer them!] on my blog for all to see.
> If you are interested, I can send you them.
Please do.
> It was her attempt at trying to make me look stupid.
> I did answer all of them and she told me I was confused, that science still had not found any reliable proof of anything at all.
Religious apologetics often attempt to show that there is no difference between science and religion. They misuse the word "faith" and apply it to "justified beliefs". I can tell you that there is no other person in my room apart from me. This is a justified belief. Molecular, anthropological, and fossil evidence force us to conclude that life evolved, even though humans were not present throughout the history of life. Logical positivism tells us that we should look at the evidence, analyse it, and then form conclusions. I would add that scientific theories are subject to refinement, and all scientists would agree with me on that. Darwin's theory of evolution hasn't been static. As the evidence comes in, scientists constantly revise the theory. As Stephen Jay Gould said, facts do not go away when scientists debate them: Einstein's theory of gravity replaced Newton's but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. Religious apologetics do not get this: evolution is "just a theory", and not a refined, and well-formulated way in which to interpret the world's data. I doubt that the theory of evolution will be replaced, but instead, scientists will refine it. We've already falsified group selection, so there is no question that biological theories can be disproved: it is just that the world's data cannot be shown wrong.
On the other hand, relativists and post-modern philosophers like to think that science does not find absolute truth. This is partially correct, however, science and the scientific method are a potent way of getting close to the truth by means of interpreting data, and formulating theories. The problem is that humans may never know when we have hit absolute truth, because one theory may impede another, more accurate theory. So, there are absolute truths, but, humans are limited to the conditions imposed upon us by our senses, and by the existence of objects that we perceive. Phenomena that are not objects of perception may exist in the universe, but owing to the limitations of our perceptions, we may never discover them. We can use tools to "see" in other electromagnetic wavelengths, but even those tools are limited by the conditions we impose upon them. This may sound a little overly-critical, but I think that this is simply a realistic view. I recommend A Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.
The most important thing to remember, however, is that science has, and does expand our knowledge, and takes us some way beyond our limitations: for example, we may have reason to speculate that our universe may be part of a multiverse, because theory predicts them. We cannot prove it, but it may suggest that our knowledge is not altogether limited to empirical data. An apologetic may object that a multiverse is an article of "faith", yet we have reason to think that a multiverse is possible. We have evidence that universes exist, but no evidence to suggest that Gods exist. The multiverse theory is perfectly justified.
It is interesting to note, that religionists frequently attempt to undermine science by asserting that it is a religion, yet they somehow have to promote the idea that their religion provides a more useful account of the universe than science. Calling science a religion is a fascinating logical contradiction, because it demotes science by suggesting that religion is a step down, and that leaves apologetics, usually creationists, using science to "prove" their faith, as if faith needed bolstering with empirical evidence, at which point it ceases to be faith at all.
Regards,
Alan.
Posted by: Alan Mackenzie | March 3, 2007 1:19 PM
Kat,
I scanned through these questions. They appear to be typical of creationists, such as Kent Hovind. They are full of circular reasoning, false dilemmas, and straw men, not mention outright lies. Science works by providing simple explanations for complex phenomena and concepts [reductionism]. Pseudoscience and apologetics work by providing complicated explanations for complex phenomena [obscurantism]. They begin with a conclusion, and then force-fit evidence to satisfy their presuppositions. You were right to point out the "explanation by default" proposition. Lack of empirical data for theory A does not imply theory B must be right.
I would recommend that you ignore these questions, for anyone who believes that they represent a valid critique of evolution utterly misunderstand the natural sciences. It is best, therefore, to ignore them. If they cannot accept a well-supported theory such as evolution, that is their problem. It is not that we are dogmatic about evolution. We cannot possibly be so. Some things are undeniable facts, such as heliocentric astronomy. If you do not accept that the Earth orbits the sun, tough luck. It does, and that is that. We have no choice in the matter, because the evidence demands that we accept brute facts about the universe.
As an alternative to answering these "critiques" of evolution, I would recommend the following reading materials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation-evolution_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_effect_of_evolutionary_theory
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF
http://www.talkorigins.org/
http://rankatheism.blogspot.com/2007/02/misleading-premises-in-arguments.html
Regards,
Alan.
Posted by: Alan Mackenzie | March 3, 2007 1:55 PM
You are so incredibly funny! I missed chatting w/you last night.....guess Betty monopolized your time, though.
Posted by: Belle | March 3, 2007 4:11 PM
I am a Christian, and believe it or not, I welcome the reading I've just done here. Every person has the right to believe whatever they believe. I'm not about to be so presumptuous as to think everyone should believe the same as I. And unlike so many other Christians, I like to think I keep an open mind and a wide view of the world around me. Please, if you see I'm not, give me a nudge. ;)
Posted by: Leigh | March 3, 2007 7:11 PM
Fascinating. For me, it boils down to those who believe and those who are CERTAIN. It's that certainty that turns people into zealots. Zealots see no one but themselves and their evangelism is based on fear.
Believing is okay. But how can any of us be certain of anything???
Posted by: Chris (Singer) | March 4, 2007 9:18 AM