Okay so this is a converstation I had over facebook with a person that I used to go to church with, but since then I've seen the light and embraced agnosticism.
I think it's a really interesting conversation. It ends with my old 'friend' telling me basically the only reason they stayed in touch with me was to convert me, and now they don't care what I do so they are no longer my 'friend'.
I was a bit shocked by it all. Feels like they lied to me in order to try and convert me back to Christianity. I'm going to have trouble trusting a Christian on any level after that.
Anyway here's the conversation. You can just skim through it if you want, the juicy stuff is at the end.
Let me know what you make of it all. I'm still trying to process how horrible of a person this Christian is.
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Beth (christian):
What's the point of living if there is no GOd.
Go through the motions..well who made the damn motions.
our brains didnt make themselves up.
Dont believe in GOd? Well then go murder your brother coz sure as hell there are no laws binding you now..every law is based upon the Old Testament so SCREW that...
Amanda? well why stop there...why even have one gf..go have 10...whats stopping you>?...morals??? hmmm?
I think you're sick of christians backing down from arguments with you coz you go "oh yess they dont even know the facts so why should i believe them"
Well you know ...you DO have to find your own way... but don't blame it on the hypocrites...dont blame it on poverty... dont blame it on history books coz its on you now.
I may not have all the facts...but it's coz i KNOW what i believe and i don't believe God expected us to be rocket scientists to figure it out!..and you say "well you should know the facts?" well you yourself just said to me "why do i need to know where i come from"...i do...but i dont think i have to know everything about everything...
Romans 1:16-
16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,c just as it is written: “The righteous will live by FAITH.”d
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
I have hope for you but its not my job to prove it to you, it's between y ou two.. anyways ...talk soon.
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Me:
You need to know the facts that back up your belief.
I need to know the facts that back up my belief. However my belief does not require me to know where I come from. That is the core of being agnostic, not knowing. If I claimed I knew something, I would have to show how I knew it. I do not claim this, so I do not need to show this. You however claim this and need to show it.
There is no need to quote scripture to me. You can't prove something to be true by saying whatever it is your trying to prove says that it is true. I can write that the sun is blue. And then argue like you have, that my statement is true, because my statement says that the sun is blue. It is circular reasoning and worthless.
I disagree with you when you say God does not require us to know everything in order to believe. Firstly I disagree that God has any part in it. Which leaves your proposal that we do not need to know everything to believe. However I disagree with this in part, because although we don't need to know everything to believe something, we need to know everything about the belief we claim in order to justify it. Or else it is a belief based on ignorance. And to base your belief on ignorance puts you in a position where you can no longer critize anyone elses belief. I base my belief on the acceptance that I am ignorant, I do not claim that I am not. I do not say, 'I am ignorant, so I'm going to have faith' I say I am ignorant therefore I cannot justify believing any belief that requires anything other than ignorance.
Can you honestly tell me that the only thing that holds you back from killing others is a book that tells you not to?
I will not murder because I'm not a murderer. And I am not a murderer because I choose not to be a murderer. Because I am a good hearted and caring person. To base a choice on your own nature, is so much more worthwhile and significant, then to base a choice on what a book has told you to choose.
I know you think that without God everyone is evil. But there is nothing that proves this. A person's desire to do good or evil is determined by their genetics and their environment. This has been shown many times in psychological research. A persons' nature is not determined by a mystical being in another dimension.
What it all boils down to for me. Is that Christianity is a hypothesis answering the question of why are we here? It says we are here because God is so loving that he wasn't happy with what he had and needed to show that love to others. However these others rebelled against him and so he showed more love by killing himself. But not really himself but a man version of himself, that was only part of himself but that was actually not just part of himself but actually his whole self so he died but didn't die because it was only part of himself but died fully because it wasn't just part of himself and then he was raised from the dead therefore paying for all the rebellion that the people had done and now all we have to do is believe that part of God died for us and rose again, while believing that all of God died and rose again, and has forgiven us, in order to take part in salvation. And salvation is in another dimension called heaven. Where there is the son the father and the holy spirit who are all seperate gods but who are all the one god, and we get to spend all the rest of eternity in the presence of these gods/god and that's our reward for believing that god died.
Okay now that's one hypothesis.
The agnostic hypothesis states that: we haven't seen a god, we haven't talked to a god, we don't know if he actually exists, but we know there's a world, so something must have caused it, it's probably something that happened in this dimension that obeys the laws of this dimension because all we have ever seen is this dimension and things that obey the laws of this dimension, so it's too much of a stretch to say something in another dimension caused it. And in this dimension we see things like big bangs and evolution as being possible so that's probably the cause of creation rather than something that isn't based on any observable evidence.
Anyway I believe Jesus and his followers were mentally ill. I've seen schizophrenics in real life claim the same sorts of things as Jesus and believe totally that they were true. And considering that multi dimensional beings aren't as common as schizophrenics, I would have to say I believe the mentallly ill hypothesis over the multi dimension being hypothesis. Especially considering it obeys the laws of this reality.
I use parsimonious logic when deciding what I believe. Which means believing the simplest and most logical explanation.
So if I go to the fridge and find an apple in it, I do not believe that the apple came from another dimension through a worm hole created by aliens. I will jump to the simplest and most logical explanation, that my girlfriend must have gone to the shop and bought apples and left them in my fridge.
However simple logical thought does not always dominate. In ignorance superstition plays its part. As can be seen in many behavioural experiments with animals. Birds for example were given food randomly. After a few days the birds started behaving oddly. One would peck at the corner of the cage, another would spin in circles, another would fly backwards and forwards. Why? Because the birds thought that these actions were what was giving them the food. They though 'hey I was spinning when I got food, so I'll spin again'. Of course it's all just random.
It's much like christian belief. They believe and something happens, for example they pray and get the job they prayed for. So now they believe in prayer. Except this new belief is not falsifiable, meaning it can't be proved wrong. Because when they next pray and don't get something they want, there is an explantion, that they didn't pray with enough faith or what they were praying for wasn't in their best interest. But as long as the random rewards from time to time remain, their belief will also. In this random rewarding environment extinction of a belief is impossible.
Through superstition created by classical conditioning of pairing a reward with a behaviour, beliefs form and through mental justification and unfalsifiable theories they flourish. What you are left with is a belief that you know, that you can't prove, and that is inconsistent. AKA christianity.
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A 2nd msg to follow my last one sent straight after the last one:
I'm not frustrated with you and I'm not getting angry with you or what you say. But I kind of felt like your reply to me was showing frustration and anger, and if that's the case, I don't think we should talk about Christianity, because it will probably ruin our little friendship that we have. I like talking to you about stuff and find what you have to say really helpful, and I like being there for you when you need someone to talk to. I don't want to ruin that by arguing about religion. But with that said, if you aren't getting annoyed or frustrated by my replies regarding religion, then I'm fine with us talking more about it. But at the same time I know I must be annoying you, because I speak about religion in a condecending way, and almost arrogantly suggesting that I know how rediculous the belief is. And this is because I do think I know better. I can't deny that after studying religion for years and going to bible college and then studying the bible at uni and then studying psychology and the way peoples' minds work, I think that I know better than someone who hasn't. That makes me come off as arrogant, but I think it's justifiable and I'm not going to deny it. So basically I'm saying, that when talking to me about religion I'm probably going to sound arrogant, piss you off, and we probably aren't going to be able to stay friends. And that would suck...majorly. I'm not sure if it's a risk worth taking, as I don't think either of us are going to change our minds. But I'm leaving that decision up to you. If you think we can have a healthy discussion about religion with all this, then I'm all for it.
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Beth (christian):
dunno hey. i dont care what ppl say...i do know God and ..its not something i've read in books ok. I just dont undersgtand how you cant see Him n everything...breath...consiousness...life...death.
I guess just remeber these convos when you find yourself in crisis...
An yeha we can keep talking.
i'm srry for getting heated...i'm sre u understand its jus a passion...
i cant give you all the answers...i wish i could...but i hope your life works out how you feel it will.
Cheers,
b
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Me:
t's okay. Don't worry about me dealing with a crisis. I'm an emergency crisis counselor...I'll be right.
And like you said, the God you know isn't a God you can know from reading in books. Which is the real hook with Christianity. Because for each Christian God is tailor made to their own values. You have some christians who know God as a judge who hates homosexuals, and coincidentally they themselves hate homosexuals. You have other Christians who know God as all loving, and coincidentally they value love. You have other Christians who know God as a 'cool dude', and coincidentally they themselves value being 'cool dudes'.
When there is no actual God you can make him or her whatever you want to. That's why people feel such a connection with God. Because they can have an intense relationship with him. Relationships are a means of relating to another. When you see that you have things in common with someone you say to yourself 'I can relate to this person, I want a relationship with this person'. By tailor making God to suit yourself, you can relate to him extremely well. You can have a deep and strong relationship because you have so much in common with your values etc...
Now if God was a prick, who randomly killed little children for fun, then you would not be able to relate to him and would probably not believe in him, because this god is not 'your' god.
So you don't worship god at all, you only worship your own personal idea of god.
That's the result of just knowing god, rather than actually reading the books and believing in the actual god, instead of your own personal interpretation. But the problem is the books leave so much up to personal interpretation for this very reason. If the bible actually taught everything straight forward, then there wouldn't be hundreds of different denominations of churches.
Also you don't see God in everything. You don't see a rape victim and see the power of God in that. You choose where you want to see God and where you don't want to see god. Once again creating your own personal view of God because you can just pick and choose what you want to believe and attribute to him.
Right now your religious beliefs are fulfilling your needs. That's why you aren't going to study the Bible at bible college. Or read books like the God delusion. Or study religion or philosophy at uni. Because right now you don't want to know anything more, because you are happy knowing God the way you know him right now. Truth therefore takes a back seat to having your needs met.
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Beth (christian):
He is stillthe God of the BIble. I still believe in all of that. 100%. but i know 'm not gonna change ur thiking...but u know wat? it doesn effect me
I havent even read half of what you wrote... it bores me coz ur so set in proving rong something uobviusly DO care about.
And i dont worship my idea of GOd...
omigosh...letsget onething straght... you do NOT understand me. So dont think you knw me.
i'm not your friend coz ur cool or coz get on with u. i'm ur frien coz sometimes we have God talks and i hoped yu'd come round agin.
Ur life will pass away without effecting me. But who WILL remember you...obviously nt God in ur opinion
Have a great life tellin lies to the ppl u counsel
We'll see who's right on judgement day
u know the truth i dont care if this angers u.
u have no excuse .
i dontrlly wantto talk to you anymore
as i said...nohin in common.
later
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And with that I was removed from her facebook so that I couldn't reply.
Seems very immature of her.
Anyway I'd really like to hear what you guys have to say about this.
I think it's a really interesting conversation. It ends with my old 'friend' telling me basically the only reason they stayed in touch with me was to convert me, and now they don't care what I do so they are no longer my 'friend'.
I was a bit shocked by it all. Feels like they lied to me in order to try and convert me back to Christianity. I'm going to have trouble trusting a Christian on any level after that.
Anyway here's the conversation. You can just skim through it if you want, the juicy stuff is at the end.
Let me know what you make of it all. I'm still trying to process how horrible of a person this Christian is.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth (christian):
What's the point of living if there is no GOd.
Go through the motions..well who made the damn motions.
our brains didnt make themselves up.
Dont believe in GOd? Well then go murder your brother coz sure as hell there are no laws binding you now..every law is based upon the Old Testament so SCREW that...
Amanda? well why stop there...why even have one gf..go have 10...whats stopping you>?...morals??? hmmm?
I think you're sick of christians backing down from arguments with you coz you go "oh yess they dont even know the facts so why should i believe them"
Well you know ...you DO have to find your own way... but don't blame it on the hypocrites...dont blame it on poverty... dont blame it on history books coz its on you now.
I may not have all the facts...but it's coz i KNOW what i believe and i don't believe God expected us to be rocket scientists to figure it out!..and you say "well you should know the facts?" well you yourself just said to me "why do i need to know where i come from"...i do...but i dont think i have to know everything about everything...
Romans 1:16-
16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,c just as it is written: “The righteous will live by FAITH.”d
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
I have hope for you but its not my job to prove it to you, it's between y ou two.. anyways ...talk soon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Me:
You need to know the facts that back up your belief.
I need to know the facts that back up my belief. However my belief does not require me to know where I come from. That is the core of being agnostic, not knowing. If I claimed I knew something, I would have to show how I knew it. I do not claim this, so I do not need to show this. You however claim this and need to show it.
There is no need to quote scripture to me. You can't prove something to be true by saying whatever it is your trying to prove says that it is true. I can write that the sun is blue. And then argue like you have, that my statement is true, because my statement says that the sun is blue. It is circular reasoning and worthless.
I disagree with you when you say God does not require us to know everything in order to believe. Firstly I disagree that God has any part in it. Which leaves your proposal that we do not need to know everything to believe. However I disagree with this in part, because although we don't need to know everything to believe something, we need to know everything about the belief we claim in order to justify it. Or else it is a belief based on ignorance. And to base your belief on ignorance puts you in a position where you can no longer critize anyone elses belief. I base my belief on the acceptance that I am ignorant, I do not claim that I am not. I do not say, 'I am ignorant, so I'm going to have faith' I say I am ignorant therefore I cannot justify believing any belief that requires anything other than ignorance.
Can you honestly tell me that the only thing that holds you back from killing others is a book that tells you not to?
I will not murder because I'm not a murderer. And I am not a murderer because I choose not to be a murderer. Because I am a good hearted and caring person. To base a choice on your own nature, is so much more worthwhile and significant, then to base a choice on what a book has told you to choose.
I know you think that without God everyone is evil. But there is nothing that proves this. A person's desire to do good or evil is determined by their genetics and their environment. This has been shown many times in psychological research. A persons' nature is not determined by a mystical being in another dimension.
What it all boils down to for me. Is that Christianity is a hypothesis answering the question of why are we here? It says we are here because God is so loving that he wasn't happy with what he had and needed to show that love to others. However these others rebelled against him and so he showed more love by killing himself. But not really himself but a man version of himself, that was only part of himself but that was actually not just part of himself but actually his whole self so he died but didn't die because it was only part of himself but died fully because it wasn't just part of himself and then he was raised from the dead therefore paying for all the rebellion that the people had done and now all we have to do is believe that part of God died for us and rose again, while believing that all of God died and rose again, and has forgiven us, in order to take part in salvation. And salvation is in another dimension called heaven. Where there is the son the father and the holy spirit who are all seperate gods but who are all the one god, and we get to spend all the rest of eternity in the presence of these gods/god and that's our reward for believing that god died.
Okay now that's one hypothesis.
The agnostic hypothesis states that: we haven't seen a god, we haven't talked to a god, we don't know if he actually exists, but we know there's a world, so something must have caused it, it's probably something that happened in this dimension that obeys the laws of this dimension because all we have ever seen is this dimension and things that obey the laws of this dimension, so it's too much of a stretch to say something in another dimension caused it. And in this dimension we see things like big bangs and evolution as being possible so that's probably the cause of creation rather than something that isn't based on any observable evidence.
Anyway I believe Jesus and his followers were mentally ill. I've seen schizophrenics in real life claim the same sorts of things as Jesus and believe totally that they were true. And considering that multi dimensional beings aren't as common as schizophrenics, I would have to say I believe the mentallly ill hypothesis over the multi dimension being hypothesis. Especially considering it obeys the laws of this reality.
I use parsimonious logic when deciding what I believe. Which means believing the simplest and most logical explanation.
So if I go to the fridge and find an apple in it, I do not believe that the apple came from another dimension through a worm hole created by aliens. I will jump to the simplest and most logical explanation, that my girlfriend must have gone to the shop and bought apples and left them in my fridge.
However simple logical thought does not always dominate. In ignorance superstition plays its part. As can be seen in many behavioural experiments with animals. Birds for example were given food randomly. After a few days the birds started behaving oddly. One would peck at the corner of the cage, another would spin in circles, another would fly backwards and forwards. Why? Because the birds thought that these actions were what was giving them the food. They though 'hey I was spinning when I got food, so I'll spin again'. Of course it's all just random.
It's much like christian belief. They believe and something happens, for example they pray and get the job they prayed for. So now they believe in prayer. Except this new belief is not falsifiable, meaning it can't be proved wrong. Because when they next pray and don't get something they want, there is an explantion, that they didn't pray with enough faith or what they were praying for wasn't in their best interest. But as long as the random rewards from time to time remain, their belief will also. In this random rewarding environment extinction of a belief is impossible.
Through superstition created by classical conditioning of pairing a reward with a behaviour, beliefs form and through mental justification and unfalsifiable theories they flourish. What you are left with is a belief that you know, that you can't prove, and that is inconsistent. AKA christianity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A 2nd msg to follow my last one sent straight after the last one:
I'm not frustrated with you and I'm not getting angry with you or what you say. But I kind of felt like your reply to me was showing frustration and anger, and if that's the case, I don't think we should talk about Christianity, because it will probably ruin our little friendship that we have. I like talking to you about stuff and find what you have to say really helpful, and I like being there for you when you need someone to talk to. I don't want to ruin that by arguing about religion. But with that said, if you aren't getting annoyed or frustrated by my replies regarding religion, then I'm fine with us talking more about it. But at the same time I know I must be annoying you, because I speak about religion in a condecending way, and almost arrogantly suggesting that I know how rediculous the belief is. And this is because I do think I know better. I can't deny that after studying religion for years and going to bible college and then studying the bible at uni and then studying psychology and the way peoples' minds work, I think that I know better than someone who hasn't. That makes me come off as arrogant, but I think it's justifiable and I'm not going to deny it. So basically I'm saying, that when talking to me about religion I'm probably going to sound arrogant, piss you off, and we probably aren't going to be able to stay friends. And that would suck...majorly. I'm not sure if it's a risk worth taking, as I don't think either of us are going to change our minds. But I'm leaving that decision up to you. If you think we can have a healthy discussion about religion with all this, then I'm all for it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth (christian):
dunno hey. i dont care what ppl say...i do know God and ..its not something i've read in books ok. I just dont undersgtand how you cant see Him n everything...breath...consiousness...life...death.
I guess just remeber these convos when you find yourself in crisis...
An yeha we can keep talking.
i'm srry for getting heated...i'm sre u understand its jus a passion...
i cant give you all the answers...i wish i could...but i hope your life works out how you feel it will.
Cheers,
b
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Me:
t's okay. Don't worry about me dealing with a crisis. I'm an emergency crisis counselor...I'll be right.
And like you said, the God you know isn't a God you can know from reading in books. Which is the real hook with Christianity. Because for each Christian God is tailor made to their own values. You have some christians who know God as a judge who hates homosexuals, and coincidentally they themselves hate homosexuals. You have other Christians who know God as all loving, and coincidentally they value love. You have other Christians who know God as a 'cool dude', and coincidentally they themselves value being 'cool dudes'.
When there is no actual God you can make him or her whatever you want to. That's why people feel such a connection with God. Because they can have an intense relationship with him. Relationships are a means of relating to another. When you see that you have things in common with someone you say to yourself 'I can relate to this person, I want a relationship with this person'. By tailor making God to suit yourself, you can relate to him extremely well. You can have a deep and strong relationship because you have so much in common with your values etc...
Now if God was a prick, who randomly killed little children for fun, then you would not be able to relate to him and would probably not believe in him, because this god is not 'your' god.
So you don't worship god at all, you only worship your own personal idea of god.
That's the result of just knowing god, rather than actually reading the books and believing in the actual god, instead of your own personal interpretation. But the problem is the books leave so much up to personal interpretation for this very reason. If the bible actually taught everything straight forward, then there wouldn't be hundreds of different denominations of churches.
Also you don't see God in everything. You don't see a rape victim and see the power of God in that. You choose where you want to see God and where you don't want to see god. Once again creating your own personal view of God because you can just pick and choose what you want to believe and attribute to him.
Right now your religious beliefs are fulfilling your needs. That's why you aren't going to study the Bible at bible college. Or read books like the God delusion. Or study religion or philosophy at uni. Because right now you don't want to know anything more, because you are happy knowing God the way you know him right now. Truth therefore takes a back seat to having your needs met.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth (christian):
He is stillthe God of the BIble. I still believe in all of that. 100%. but i know 'm not gonna change ur thiking...but u know wat? it doesn effect me
I havent even read half of what you wrote... it bores me coz ur so set in proving rong something uobviusly DO care about.And i dont worship my idea of GOd...
omigosh...letsget onething straght... you do NOT understand me. So dont think you knw me.
i'm not your friend coz ur cool or coz get on with u. i'm ur frien coz sometimes we have God talks and i hoped yu'd come round agin.
Ur life will pass away without effecting me. But who WILL remember you...obviously nt God in ur opinion
Have a great life tellin lies to the ppl u counsel
We'll see who's right on judgement day
u know the truth i dont care if this angers u.
u have no excuse .
i dontrlly wantto talk to you anymore
as i said...nohin in common.
later
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
And with that I was removed from her facebook so that I couldn't reply.
Seems very immature of her.
Anyway I'd really like to hear what you guys have to say about this.
