Anti-theist

Then you have no foundation.Matt 7: 24-27

You might as well be angry at the defiance of a culture that is turning its back on Alfred E. Neuman.People cannot be defiant of a god unless they (a) believe that god exists and (b) are able to access whatever orders that god is supposedly giving.You need to accept that there are people who do not believe that your god exists. And you need to accept that such people will pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Christianity (or the version that included Zacharias) did far more damage to itself when it went full out in support Donald Trump.

If you had stopped there, you would probably have been right. But, instead, you gave us a paragraph of wishful thinking which will turn out to be mostly wrong.

Those are not necessarily contradictory.I appreciate Hitchens for his skills at rhetoric. But I never trusted his judgement. He came out on the wrong side of many issues. In particular, I disagreed with his views on the Iraq war.

What amuses me is that the strongest opponents of relativism (typically fundie preachers) are so obviously relativists themselves.

It didn't bother me. But then I take most cosmology as speculative.He seems to be attempting to answer the question "Why is there something, rather than nothing." And we should all know that there will never be an answer for this question.

Honestly, I don't see this. Most of what the US sends to other nations is done for a very American benefit.But yes, the Internet does exist and that tends to give people a somewhat more global outlook (unless they watch FOX). That seems to say that you do not follow Jesus at all. Instead you follow the counterfeit American Jesus. The US has been a major contributor to global warming. If we aren't willing to do something about this, then civilization is doomed. That's pretty much right wing propaganda. I have never thought I was being accused of "white privilege". Yes, I am a beneficiary of white privilege, but that's a fact rather than an accusation.I don't know about being supposed to hand out reparations. How about we just extend the same privilege to all Americans, and not just whites.And honestly, Phat, you need a better bullshit detector.

Are you honest to yourself? There's no such thing. Churches are human institutions, and we humans are fallible. Then he is conning you, and you are falling for it.

That has to do with being dishonest with other people. That's not what I mean when I ask if you are honest with yourself.Self-deception is very easy to do. Are you sufficiently skeptical? This is where confirmation bias comes in, and we are all susceptible to it. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Perhaps it is only weak evidence of absence. Or perhaps it is strong evidence of absence. That's something you have to evaluate yourself.Are there demons? Maybe "demon" is just another name for mosquito. And in that case, there are demons. The real problem here is that we do not have a sufficiently clear definition of "demon" so we can't actually tell.I look at it differently. People who claim to cast out demons say that they are solving a problem. Is the problem actually solved?Sure, when someone is put on stage with an act of casting out demons, that can have a psychological effect, though that effect wears off after a while. Does casting out demons have more than a psychological effect? As far as I know, the scientific research all says "no" to that.

It is probably the other way around. Perception has a strong grip on you. Perception is very powerful. Back when I was a Christian, I would notice instances of good fortune and tell myself that it was God being good to me. But when there were instances of bad fortune, I rarely blamed God for that. I just took the bad fortune in stride.After leaving Christianity, that continued to happen.We all have instances of good fortune. Even Hitler had such instances. He would not have become Chancellor without them.Our perception is very good a picking up instances of good fortune that we can use to our benefit. It pays far less attention to instances of bad fortune. This leads to a kind of confirmation bias. And that's where some skepticism is needed.

I hope you can be just as critical of Christians who try to humiliate non-Christians. And I hope you are sufficiently unbiased to be aware that this is a very common practice.

But then, conservative Christianity is not Christianity either.

Personally, I am not anti-theist.The behavior of theists probably explains anti-theism.

It's a parody takedown of the bullshit arguments coming from apologetics.Since you do not see those arguments as bullshit, the humor won't work for you.

Here's my take on this.Maybe two or three months ago, somewhere online I saw a question: What is it that conservatives want to conserve?I did not see an answer at that time. But my own answer is that they want to conserve privilege (their own privilege). At one time, it was about the privilege of aristocrats. It later morphed into the privilege of wealth. And these days it is often Christian privilege or white privilege.When Jesus said to give it away, my take is that he was saying to give up the privilege. He was saying that we should be part of the common community, and not require special privilege.