The following is a word for word email exchange (irrevalent details removed) that I had with a woman a few weeks ago who is obviously Christian. This will blow your mind.
Her: "I believe if I ask anything in Jesus name it shall be received."
Me: "We live in the 21st century.. the information age. We are a little too advanced to be believing in stone-age myths, and talking snakes, and pregnant virgins."
Her: "Wow I took a screen shot of this for safe keeps. It is the folk like yourself that I am intrigued by... I used to be you no sky daddies, but that flying spaghetti monster.
"I hope one day you get to witness the truth of his existence that remove all doubt to activate the change in your life. Everyone get it, I saved this email because when you do get it. It will be fun to laugh at it. Haha"
Me: "So that is your only motivation? To be right? To rub it in my face? That's pathetic. If there is a god, he is facepalming himself right now. His message was to love; not rejoice in the demise of others. You really don't get it, do you?
"Do you know what I get if I'm right? Nothing. If there is no afterlife, I don't get to rub it in anyone's face because none of us will even be there.
"Pride... that is one of Satan's favorite sins.. If there is an afterlife and a judgment and a heaven, I'm closer to getting it than you are.
"Tell me something... If you used to be a FSM follower, what is the event that changed your mind?
I used to be a Jesus follower until I turned on my brain and realized that god having his favorite son tortured to death is not only brutal and disturbing, it is so man made. How exactly does Jesus getting nailed to a cross somehow magically undo all the sin and evil that exists in the world? (That sin exists in the first place because a naked woman was talked into eating an apple by a talking snake). Just tell me that doesn't reek of... stupid.
"Yes, I hope I also get to see the truth of his existence because at that very moment, I will believe.. until then it is a fairy tale and god is just an imaginary friend for grownups.
"Now, since you believe that Jesus will give you anything you ask for, ask him to visit me. If he does, I'll humbly admit that you are right. If he doesn't, well, you can still enjoy basking in your own arrogance anyway."
No further response.
7 comments:
Conversations like that are infuriating. You give a little reason and then ultra religious person falls back on faith and feelings. There's no room for both reason and faith. The two can't exist for too long together.
Your responses were spot on.
Randomly found your blog while looking for missionary planners which I saw that you hate..lol.
Obviously decided to write the following:
The title of your post seemingly expresses a common mindset I come across from people I have chatted online with that identify themselves as Atheist.
I oft encounter Atheists that use the tactic you employed with your title which is to basically use this one experience to stereotype / define the entire Christian culture.
Seems a convenient way to ignore / discard a group of peoples ideas.
It is interesting also interesting how in this post you take things from scripture and twist them so they appear stranger / weirder.
I have seen this tactic aplenty with Anti-LDS / Mormon people finding random Quotes / statements from Church leaders taken completely out of context.
Either way it just seems like another tactic seemingly to make it easier for you to ignore religion in general.
If you actually were LDS / Mormon you know Christ didn't suffer for our sins on the cross but in Gethsemane.
You would know that Christ died on the Cross so all of us could be resurrected.
The idea of a savior really isn't that strange /far fetched of an idea. I am sorry you feel the need to convince yourself that it is.
Marcus, first of all, I believe you have responded to the wrong post. I think you were responding to the post where I wrote that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't really that great.
Yes, I was LDS, and yes, I am aware that the death of Jesus brings about resurrection and the atonement in Gethsemane brings about the forgiveness of sins.
Haha, yes! The idea of a savior does make perfect sense. So does a magical fruit tree and a talking snake!
You know what really makes it easy to ignore religion?
Religion.
I always enjoy comments like these.
"How exactly does Jesus getting nailed to a cross somehow magically undo all the sin and evil that exists in the world?"
Do you read comments? Jw
It's a bit saddening every time I see an example of what's supposed to be a powerful defeat of an ignorant Christian by an intellectually superior atheist. The final blow always seems so....lacking.
The idea of "if Jesus exists, why hasn't He shown Himself to me?" is such a low-level tripe. If you really were interested in answers to questions like that, you could easily find them after a few minutes of searching the internet, and realize that it's not really such a profound thing to ask, after all.
Persisting in using statements like these point to one of two things:
a) willful ignorance -- you honestly don't know what's wrong with your "spot on responses", because you don't let yourself think deeply about them in case that would lead to questioning your reasons for disbelief.
b) willful deceit -- you know that it's hardly the best criticism you could come with, but you use a first-line defense of lame excuses to protect your sincerely held reasons from ever coming under scrutiny, hoping to confuse or exhaust any 'religious person' who decides to address them, long before they'd get deeper.
Which is it for you?
$0.02
If I was trying to protect my "sincerely held reasons from ever coming under scrutiny", I would not let people like you comment, would I?
The question "If Jesus exists, why doesn't he show himself to me?" is a perfectly acceptable question. It seems to me that if my eternal salvation hangs in the balance, that this supernatural being would do all in his power to reveal himself to the world.
People spread the word of god.
People build churches.
People print Bibles.
People comment here defending god.
It's all people. There is nothing divine about it.
You also state how disappointing the final blow is. Is it too simple for your far superior brain? Well, atheism is simple. It's called opening your eyes, looking around, and stop seeing whatever you want to see.
It is simple, so I keep it that way.
"The question "If Jesus exists, why doesn't he show himself to me?" is a perfectly acceptable question."
Not as a rhetorical question that presumes "he doesn't exist" as its answer.
If you ask the question sincerely, what are your proposed answers to it? Do you think He might have a valid reason for not appearing in your living room?
Here's a simple question: if people say something is true, is it necessarily false?
If it is not necessarily false, then the next question is, how do you determine if what people say is true or not?
You say "there is nothing divine about it" as if you think a God would be so high-and-mighty that He wouldn't want to act through human agents, where do you get that sort of idea of deity? Not from the Bible, that's obvious.
Ask yourself this: if a God created mankind, it would seem like He has some intention for mankind to play a role in His goals for the universe He created.
If He does not want mankind to play any such role, then why were we created?
This isn't an existential crisis on my part. It's an ad-absurdiam argument against your expressed view.
It seems obvious that if humanity has a part in God's plan, then that would not be limited to mere existence, but would reasonably concern active involvement in unfolding it. What reason is there to suppose that God would not be interested in mankind spreading His word?
There is no sound excuse.
There are many unsupported assumptions you make about the deity you keep rejecting. Are you familiar with the logical fallacy known as the straw man? You can reject a god you made up in your own head all day long, all life long, and it won't accomplish anything except keeping you ignorant to the one true God who will hold you accountable for your foolishness.
I encourage you to second guess your assumptions. Tomorrow is not promised.
I have asked that question sincerely. Either he exists and chooses not to answer me, or he doesn't exist at all.
Since we know that it is impossible (with our technology at this given time anyway) for someone to just appear in my living room, I'm going to go with Occam's Razor and assume that the simpler of the two options is most likely to be true.
He doesn't exist.
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