Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – the vapidity of Christians

Found a rather unintentionally amusing video on youtube with some earnest christian women trying to tell atheists how wrong we are.

Here’s my response. Nothing new, just refuting this nonsense.

dear christians, many of us atheists were christians or theists of other types. We know the stories, the excuses and the apologetics. So your pretense that you are telling us something new is rather amusing and shows you’ve never spoken to an atheist before. You may want to try that.

I was a christian and read the bible, etc. I’m quite a bit more familiar with that it actually says than most christians are. I prayed for help to not lose my faith and unsurprisingly, no god responded. I even looked into the various versions of Christianity and other religions.

The problem is that no theist has any evidence for their claims. They may try to claim evidence, but it has failed at every turn. Many theists use the same arguments for their gods, but don’t accept those arguments if they come from someone of another version. That shows quite a bit of hypocrisy.

There is no evidence for souls, or for your “heaven” and “hell”. Notably Christians themselves can’t agree on what those are. They also can’t agree on: free will vs predestination, how one is saved, who is saved, what morals this god wants, how to interpret their bible, etc.

Every christian claims that only their version is the “right” source, that only you know god personally, etc, and unsurprisingly, not one of you self-professed Christians from the dozens and dozens of versions can show that their version is the right one, or that they can do what jesus promises in the bible to his true followers. As it stands, you all appear to be frauds.

There is nothing to show that any religion, including Christianity and its many versions, has any truth at all. And claiming that believing in your claims is an “act of faith” is the typical excuse of those who have no evidence for their claims.

You then end with the typical “what if you are wrong” plaint. This is nothing more than pascal’s wager, that one should believe in some god just in case. This requires a very stupid god that will accept people who are just covering their bets, and it assumes that one loses nothing from such nonsense. One does lose time and resources if one believes in imaginary gods.

I recommend talking to actual atheists, and reading counter apologetics. If you google “infidel library” you’ll find quite a few. You can even go to my own blog, club schadenfreude, to see quite a few. You also should look at your religion as an outsider to try to understand what we see. Please do read your bible since us atheists generally know it far better than you and know when you are trying to make things up about it.

BTW, don’t lie about Albert Einstein. We atheists have heard it all before, wiht the desperate chrsitain trying to pretend that Einstein agreed with them, in their need to use an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

(excerpt from the transcript) “the most brilliant men who ever existed18:26thought his name was Albert Einstein and18:28you might be familiar with him and he18:30said the more I study science the more I18:32believe in God he also said the highest18:35principles for our aspirations and18:37judgments are given to us in the Jewish18:40Christian religious tradition you know I18:42don’t I don’t think I don’t elieve ever18:43reading that Albert Einstein ever became18:46a Christian I sure hope he did but18:47throughout his life if you read his
18:49writings they reflected his constant18:52battle with his own theology”

Einstein was at best a deist. He didn’t believe in your god at all, and he never was a Christian. He never said that the more he studied science, that he believed in God. And he never said that the principles for aspiration came from judeo christian traditions.

Here are some real quotes from Albert:

“”It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.”” – 1947 letter

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”” – letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it” 24 March 1954 letter to Dispentiere

“Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things” interview for “Glimpses of the Great”

“The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. […] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. […] I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them” – letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954

“I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.”” – 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer