I say allegedly because I don't know more about him than Twitter. As I mentioned to him, I have more assurance that God is real than I have that Mr. Obie is real. After all, as I asserted to his complete lack of understanding, I get understandable electronic communications from robots every day of the week.
At Switchboard, I am presented with this information when a search is done: We did not find any directory results for D Obie in Houston, Texas. Could this be evidence that Mr. Obie does not exist?
While he won't tell me which version of god he says does not exist, I am believing all the others are false except for the One True God, the Creator of the Universe.
For our so-called "atheist" readers, why do you allow yourselves to be called that? When you dissect the root word in the original, a means "without" while theo is the root word for God. If God does not exist, how can you be without that which you say does not exist? Seems like that would be something like saying you are going to get a root canal on a tooth that does not exist.
As I explained to the mythical Mr. Obie, being called an agnostic would be more accurate verbiage, since you can't know (ágnōtos) there is no god, since you have not experienced all there is to experience in life nor traveled to furtherest reaches of the universe to uncover any of the life forms there.
Now Clinton Richard Dawkins ran a campaign in the United Kingdom. The thing is interesting in that the campaign got translated into the King's English that there's PROBABLY no god. Did you notice the amazing gap between probably and no god? How is it possible to claim there IS no god and quantify the claim as probable?
IF, there is no god and I choose to believe, as I explained to Mr. Obie, then I have harmed no one. IF, however, there IS a God and I have rejected His Son, then there's hell to pay. It's a gamble. For what are you, Reader, prepared to wager your soul?
Mr. Obie, if indeed he does exist, has been a good sport, for the most part. Unlike some of his cohorts, he only resorted to name-calling a handful of times. I have occasionally noted that name-calling does not win debates, much less friends, ex. unsportsmanlike conduct.
So, he won't read "Evidence that Demands a Verdict". He is aware of "A Case for Christ". I have told him Don't Check your Brain at the Door.
Reader, I challenge you to know what you believe and be capable of always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. In the Greek, defense is martyr, i.e. be a witness. In some versions, it reads to give a reason. Obviously, the word has quite a different meaning in the Church today. More obviously, one can not be a witness to what they have not experienced.
He has stated time and again that the Bible is false, but offers no evidence. Since he rejects the Bible, I will resume my discussion by noting extra-Biblical evidence of Jesus. After all, he admits that Jesus was a real person.
So, outside the Bible, what evidence can one glean that God does exist? One of my favorite is Does God Exist? Mr. Clayton has taught in the public schools for 41 years and has been doing presentations on the compatibility of science and faith for 41 years. I have found his material quite challenging mentally and accurate factually.
Mr. Obie has been, on no less than three occasions, challenged with Pick the date. I will pick the place. We can have a lively discussion. His lack of faith has resulted in no debate on any evidence he may present regarding the existence of God. There are so many variations of the solution to the challenge that the reader can only conclude it lacks substance to his belief in nothing. Perhaps, Reader, this is additional evidence that Mr. Obie does not exist.
Reader, if Mr. Obie could not read the books to which I have directed his attention, I wonder why I should take my time to give MY reasons for accepting the One True God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, His Son Jesus, my Lord, and the Holy Spirit.
The summary of this discussion would naturally be the workings of the witnesses described by Jesus as He prays in the garden before His crucifixion.
Extra-Biblical evidence of Jesus would be found in the writings of Josephus, Oregin, and Pliny the Younger, just to name a few. Had Mr. Obie read any of the references above, he would have known this.
Additionally, Galen and the Talmud mention Jesus. Lucien, Thallus, and Flavius record, for posterity, the reality of Jesus. This is not hard to find.
Even Islam mentions Jesus and Mary in the Qur'an.
As mentioned, the early Church fathers wrote about Jesus. Their writings are not recorded in the Bible but they are the writings of the disciples of the Apostles. It appears, Mr. Obie bases his discounting of God on just a small portion of the evidence a Christian would use to determine the validity of Faith.
The Bible mentions over 500 witnesses of the risen Christ. These people are now dead. The reader, at this point, should ask "Why did they die?" History records that the majority of believers in the first 300 years of the Church believed under the peril of death. Indeed, there remain today societies that have serious penalties for believers.
In other words, Reader, why would someone believe, if as a result of that believing, they would be torn asunder, drawn and quartered, crucified, burned at the stake, and a plethora of other methods the ancients used to kill, as described in Foxes Book of Martyrs?
These believers were not stupid, ignorant people. They could think and write. They could and did attend schools. Many of their writings remain, yet are not included in the Bible.
Mr. Obie, whoever he is, would say that miracles produced by God are not possible because they can not be reproduced. To this, Reader, can we consider two thoughts?
When someone sets a record, are they able to reproduce the same effort consistently again and again? For example, does the person who broke the four-minute mile continue to this day maintain a four-minute mile? Because of the aging process, it is quite certain that the four-minute mile runner 30 years ago may, today, do good to walk a mile. Yet, history has recorded the record as broken. Such is it with the history of the Church. Because God exists, the Church continues to run and history continues to record her action.
Set against that, Reader, is the documentation of the miracles that witnesses observed. Because the miracle can not be reproduced in a laboratory should, in no way, obliterate the fact that the miracle occurred. In other words, witnesses can record the event, based on their viewpoint. For example, the auto accident at Main and Broadway could have four witnesses on the four corners of the intersection record different details of the accident but, the fact that they recorded differing facts does not obliterate the fact that the wreck happened.
There must be a body of Jesus to be produced for the Resurrection and Ascension to be false. Produce the body. Show that He did not resurrect. Show that He did not ascend. The lie is made known to the world. End of Christianity. In the mean time, there's the empty tomb against which Mr. Obie may have you believe the Body was stolen or Jesus passed out.
Next, Reader, why would the Church spend so much time in evangelistic and humanitarian work, if it was for a lie? The discovery of the New World was, in SO many cases, ex. Christopher Columbus, not for the work of man but to further the reach of the Church. If it were for riches, Columbus died penniless. There is, however, no record of him being disappointed in the outcome of his work.
The early church spent time rescuing the discards of society. It is no secret that unwanted babies, discarded on the trash heap, were rescued to nurtured to life. That continues today in Christians being pro-life and while the world is pro-death.
It's no secret the the first hospitals were religious operations. In Mr. Obie's home town, if indeed that is where he lives, there are three hospitals, i.e. St. Luke's, St. Joseph, and the Methodist Health Care system still bear witness of the faith upon which they were founded.
Reader, please don't believe Mr. Obie. There's no evidence he or his unbeliefs are real. Your faith does not need to rest on feelings. There's plenty of evidence to show that Jesus is real, that He died for your sins, He presented Himself to many witnesses (the least of which was me), He ascended into Heaven where He patiently sits at the right hand of Father God waiting to return to redeem His Church.
In other words, I have experience with Jesus, the Son of God, and Father God. I found the belief in nothing wanting. Jesus has the power to change the lives of people. Over the years, He has proven that power to be real to those witnesses, real people, in the first century and today and every day in between.
5 comments:
Response from a real human, for @colston.
I would like to start with a thank you. The primary goal of this Twitter account, @DavetheAtheist, is to get people to begin thinking about faith. Today, religion is so deeply ingrained in the substance of most humans, it is a struggle to simply break through the mold into which we are apparently born.
As for your inquiry at Switchboard, I will reveal to you that my last name is not Obie. That is my middle name, after my great-grandfather. Being a slightly skeptical middle-aged man, I prefer to keep my full identity on the internet private. I will assure you that I am a real person, and that I do live in Houston.
You claim that I will not tell you which version of God doesn't exist. Let me clarify, then. It is my understanding, through nearly 25 years of research, that the human concept of God isn't real. Be that the Christian god, the Muslim god, or the many gods of the Greek, the human invention of god is no longer a relevant concept. God has long been an explanation for the unexplainable, but we have made such progress that it seems quite ignorant to let the desire to gain more knowledge fall by the wayside.
You assert that all other gods are false except the Christian god. I have always had a problem with this ill-founded sense of supremacy. There exists just as much evidence for all other gods as there does for the Christian god, so why choose one over the other?
You make a good point regarding the word "atheist." You cannot be without something that doesn't exist, because there does not exist the possibility to be with that thing. Perhaps atheist is a misnomer, but these technicalities are really of no matter to me. The definition I think is best fitting is "accepter of the real."
If you are going to claim that one cannot know there is no god, I can accept that. If God can be used to describe perhaps an element of a dimension for which we have not gained complete understanding, then perhaps we can say that it is impossible to know whether or not God exists. However, I will assert here that it is possible to know that the Abrahamic, monotheistic god does not exist. As I have demonstrated in our restrained tweet conversations, all that needs to be shown to prove something false is a counterexample (basic law of mathematics). Furthermore, I have demonstrated the counterexamples to the claims of the Bible and the Qur'an, and we can logically and reasonably accept that the Abrahamic, monotheistic idea of God isn't truth.
Your use of Pascal's Wager is a debilitating element of your argument. Let me tell you why. First, you operate under the assumption that these are the only two options: nothing, or a god of heaven and hell. However, we have demonstrated that your concept of God is completely false; therefore, the wager you make is completely moot. However, speaking in real terms, if you choose to believe, you literally hurt the intellectual progress of humanity. One can clearly see how imposing Christian beliefs (i.e. that Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution) hurts our children. Scientists take the evidence and form a conclusion based on the evidence, whereas Christians take a conclusion and formulate false evidence to support it. You, Mr. Colston, are using fear as a means of persuasion. Is that not a form of terrorism?
I do try to keep my conversations at a peaceful place. One of the biggest problems I have with blind faith is the tendency it has to lead people to violence and hatred. Let me assure you that I have thoroughly enjoyed our exchanges, and I welcome more peaceful debates for a long time to come.
Now, do not claim to your readers that I won't read any of these books. Like you, I am sure, I am a busy person. As you may have read, I will be heading to Europe in 48 hours. My life on Twitter as DavetheAtheist does not consume my being. I will be reading these works as soon as I can. I have told you this during our Twitter conversations, so for you to tell your readers that I have refused is a downright lie.
I pose the same challenge to all readers. After all, this entire exchange has been in the pursuit of truth and intellectual progress, has it not?
Again, you bear false witness to your readers. I have offered evidence of the verifiable falsehood of the Bible. Science definitely shows the impossibility of such stories as the creation of the world and Noah's flood, and we have empirically tested the falsities of prayer.
Your "Pick the date. I will pick the place." argument is irrelevant, as we have discussed the actual logistics of a meeting. It is not a matter of faith, rather a matter of real-life reasons why I cannot pick up my life and meet you anywhere in the country.
As we have already established, the fundamental difference in our viewpoints is how we regard scientific validity. The fact that so many people died in the name of Christ offers no substance for your argument, unless you are going to claim that the martyrs of Islam provide substance to the claims of that religion.
The type of reproduction that you are demonstrating is not the same as scientific reproduction. Scientists never assume that they can recreate the exact same scenarios to test the validity of an event because they understand that the element of time constantly alters the environment in which the event took place. What I call for is the ability to test claims against the scientific laws that we have determined are true. This is why we can negate the claims of miracles, because they violate the laws of science. Your faith fills the gap; but, as I have said, your faith is unsupported and therefore quite meaningless. Your car wreck example is actually perfect for the things that I have claimed. Four different people can tell four different stories of the same car accident, but they don't change the actual events of the incident. The same is true for religion and the existence of God. Thousands of religions can claim the absolute truth of God, yet none of these assertions change the validity or lack thereof of God. There is no reason to start from a base of faith, so it is only reasonable that one should accept the scientific evidence before him, which all indicate that God and his miracles are false.
Your desire for me to prove a falsehood violates the laws of logic. It is the same as you asking me to prove to you that leprechauns and unicorns don't exist. There is no evidence of these magical creatures, and their substance violates the laws of science, so I simply don't accept them as true. The same is true for God. The only reason this foolish belief has embedded itself in the heart of modern society is simple: the desire for power and money, which leads me to my argument for your next point.
The sole reason for evangelistic and humanitarian work through the church is want of money. There is a reason that one associates evangelism with large churches, flat screen TVs, and coffee bars. Church has long been a source of oppression and income, and this concept has not changed today.
It is also no secret that the early church was responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions of people. The Crusades are just one example of the horrific qualities of religion. The advancement of Christianity (and all religion) comes in many forms; many of which are violent. As we have established, there is no reason to lift the beliefs of one religion higher than another, for they all stand on the same claim: faith. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that religion is the source of the worst cruelties man has ever seen. Men fly planes into buildings, rape and murder opposition, and enact genocide all in the name of religion.
This, Mr. Colston, is why I do what I do. This is why your claim that belief is harmless is the furthest from the truth that it can be. And this, Mr. Colston, is why your readers should consider both of our arguments and see that blind faith is infinitely destructive.
I'll make just two points:
A - theism
= being without theism.
Theism is BELIEF in god. Therefore an theist lacks such belief.
Second point: stack up the evidence for Jesus' miracles against the miracles of Satya Sai Baba. (google if you haven't heard of him)
Then explain why you don't accept Satya Sai Baba as an incarnate god. There are thousands upon thousands of living eyewitnesses to SSB's miracles - equal to or exceeding those of Jesus. You can even find footage of them on youtube. Don't believe? Provide evidence for your disbelief then.
Or... is that the wrong question?
More asked me to explain the difference between Jesua and Satya Sai Baba.
The Nine-Point Code of Conduct
1) Daily meditation and prayer.
2) Group devotional singing or prayer with family members once a week.
3) Participation in Sai Spiritual Education by children of the family.
4) Participation in community service work and other programs of the organization.
5) Regular attendance at the Center's devotional meetings.
6) Regular study of Sathya Sai Baba literature.
7) The use of soft, loving speech with everyone.
8) Not speaking ill of others, especially in their absence.
Jesus, on the other hand, said "Love God. Love others." Upon that rests all the Law.
Does this mean that More is a deist after all?
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