Why Are Christians Afraid To Doubt?

I don't believe in it, and I'll tell you what - nobody at this forum believes in the Theory of evolution.Because you don't have to believe in it to recognize that it's the model that is best supported by all the evidence, and provides the greatest degree of explanitory power. I, like others, accept that the theory of evolution is the most accurate and predictive model to explain the diversity and history of life on Earth.But believe in it? No, of course not. I don't have to believe in it; it's sufficient to recognize that evolution is supported by a weight of evidence and alternative conjectures are supported by none.

Yes, we should. Reasonable people realize that it's better to be mostly right and getting righter, than to stick to the same eternally wrong story.People who don't change their minds in the face of new evidence aren't being reasonable. The only reason to prefer unchanging dogma over the ongoing process of science is because one has a big problem with uncertainty.I suggest you learn to live with a little uncertainty. Sure. We change our minds in the face of new evidence, like reasonable people.But in the meantime, science has accomplished a lot. You're reading this message on the results of science. In every scientific discipline, knowledge doubles every few years. What new knowledge has religion produced? None whatsoever.Honestly, in a world where we're communicating on computers via satellites in space, where diseases that once ravaged humanity now exist only in test tubes; where the crippled are made whole, not by one wandering savior but by hundreds of thousands of mortal doctors, it's ridiculous to fault science for being an ongoing process.It's that ongoing process that results in truth and knowledge. Science is alive and changing. Religion is dead because it never changes. It's not something to be "relied upon"; because it is unchanging, it can be relied upon for nothing at all. Nonsense. There's an abundance of evidence for that feat. There's no evidence at all for the ministry of Jesus; the earliest written record of his life comes at least 70 years after his death - and the death of every eyewitness. Don't confuse "trust" and "faith." When I drive a vehicle over a bridge, I have evidence about the safety of both of those things. That's trust.But God? Jesus? There's no evidence that either is trustworthy. To put one's confidence in those figures is faith - belief in what one has no evidence for. Choose faith if you will - it's no matter to me - but there's absolutely nothing reasonable about it. (For many people, that's the selling point.)

Nonsense, there's plenty of evidence. For instance - the 20 or 30 mutually contradictory English translations of the Bible. If God has the magic power to preserve the accuracy of his message, they should all say the same thing.Of course, they don't. As it turns out, you can write whatever you want and no supernatural force will stop you from stamping "Holy Bible" right on the cover. God, clearly, has no ability to prevent the degradation of the fidelity of his original text (of course, I use that term jokingly; God would have to exist to be the author of the Bible.)That doesn't even get into issues with translations in other languages, or the fact that not all Christians even agree on what material actually constitutes the Bible. Catholics have more books in theirs, maybe you'd heard about that. Which martyrs? The earliest stories of martyrdom, like Jesus's ministry, are likely apocryphal. After that it's just people dying for what they believed was true. Happens all the time. Surely you wouldn't take a Muslim seriously who suggested that the religious fervor and zealotry of a suicide bomber was proof of the accuracy of the Qu'ran? Or weren't you aware that other religions besides Christianity have martyrs, too? We don't have any evidence they existed in the first place. Being certain and being wrong, at the same time. For instance, if you were absolutely certain that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen at the time of his death, you would have "false certainty", because that didn't happen.

I don't see that it's necessary to assume anything. It's sufficient to observe that scientific knowledge literally doubles every 2-3 years, and religious knowledge has not increased in several centuries. What evidence? That's it? A book? That was nearly 2000 years ago. That's the last thing your religion has produced?Color me not impressed, particularly when set against the achievements of science. In the face of the disparity of results? I don't see that you're operating rationally. None that we wouldn't change in the face of new evidence. I think maybe you've misunderstood the word "constant" in the scientific context. (Misunderstanding scientific terminology is something the religious do quite often.) Nonsense. Are you serious? Haven't you just made it clear, then, that your sole purpose is to confuse the issue?How can confusing things be a path to truth? You're clearly dissembling to protect your dogma.

I didn't suggest methods; I told you what the results would be like if God was preserving his message.He's clearly not. The proliferation of contradictory messages is proof of that. Anastasia's point is diametrically opposed to yours. Her position is that God doesn't want to preserve the accuracy of his message, lest we all be forced into believing the exact same thing. I'd think twice before you tried to employ her views in your favor; they don't fit. Then, obviously, his fervor is not evidence for the truth of his views, now is it?Yet, you offer it as evidence, anyway. You've gone from zero to disingenuous in a little under 2 posts. I doubt it's going to be confusing to anybody to be reminded that Christianity is not the only religion in existence. I don't see why it's necessary to do so. We've already established that martyrdom is no evidence for the veracity of religious dogma. You've directly admitted it, in fact. Ah, right. I'm biased. Somehow you've discovered this without actually presenting any evidence.Never mind, of course, that I was once a Christian just like you. Impossible, right? Surely I must have been born and raised an atheist. Of course, that's not true. I was a Christian for many years, and indeed, was a Christian when I came to the conclusion that there was no evidence whatsoever for the veracity of Christian dogma.It would seem that, in fact, if the evidence was going to convince anybody, it would have convinced me, since I was already sympathetic to the conclusion. Indeed I had a vested interest in finding the evidence, but I found none at all.What you're doing is called "poisoning the well", and it's a technique of disingenuous debaters. It's not so surprising to see that disingenuity is all you have to offer.

How about a collection of books that don't substantially contradict each other on nearly every basic point, including how many books are in the Bible? I'm of the opinion that's what we have now, but surely you must see that your position is that God doesn't take steps to preserve his message, so that it can spread and mutate and we can have these super-interesting religious wars, and more than 600 individual Christian denominations and sects (in the US alone.) Hrm. Who was it that was being accused of circular reasoning, again?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Says who? You?Doesn't the fact that you can't even agree with other Christians on where the message is indicate that, if there even was an attempt to relay a message that would be accurate through all time, it completely failed? A Protestant tradition? Or a Catholic tradition? (Don't forget the Russian Orthodox, Christianity's forgotten third major branch.)Really, you should think twice before suggesting that Christianity's fractured history represents the unerring transmission of a singular message. Who knows? It's a funny thing - anything God does or doesn't do gets spun by you guys to be a good thing. I read yesterday that, worldwide, there's more than 11,000 recognized Christian denominations. And those are only the ones we know about.Surely you see the inherent ridiculousness in asserting "God has relayed his perfect message perfectly preserved through the years, but my church is the only one who actually knows what it is"? That's intellectual weak sauce.

But that's exactly what it means. God's message isn't preserved if it's one message among thousands of false variations, each indistinguishable from each other.It's like a game of telephone. It's the message at the end that matters. So now the mighty power of God is nothing in the face of environment? That's not the "omnipotence" I've heard so much about. You're just making excuses. Not at all, but you're proving my point - it's ludicrous to assert God's message has descended through the ages with no confusion in the face of 11,000 separate Christian denominations with individual, contradicting ideas about what that message even is.Oh, right. They're all wrong and you're right, because you say so. LOL! Because the scientific process eliminates wrong theories over time. Wrong ideas gradually fall by the wayside and a consensus emerges.The exact opposite is happening here. The number of denominations is increasing, not decreasing, consistent with the degradation and mutation of "God's message", whatever that is.

That's not what we're talking about, though. God's message isn't preserved if it's crowded out by thousands of false misinterpretations.Being crowded out is precisely what you guys said wasn't happening. You appear to be retreating from that claim. You! CTD! What do you think we've been talking about this whole time? If God's real message can't be distinguished from the thousands of fake ones, it hasn't been preserved at all. I'm not under an obligation to disprove things that are obviously ridiculous. And to assert message fidelity in the face of 11,000 denominations who disagree with you is 100% ridiculous. If you have some evidence for your ludicrous claim, now is the time to present it.

You shouldn't. Anybody who ever played the game of Telephone should know better.But by the same token you shouldn't go around proclaiming that God has the magic power to preserve his message unchanged through the centuries, while at the same time shrugging your shoulders and saying "eh, well, why would God's message be any different?"Well, I'm not the one who said it was different. You and CTD just did. No, I don't. It's up to you to prove your ridiculous assertions, not me to disprove them. You're under an obligation to support your assertions with evidence if you expect them to be taken seriously.

Fair enough, but did you forget that in the fable, the Emperor doesn't have any clothes?Look, Phat, if you don't believe in something you feel you can defend with reason, logic, and evidence - I don't have a problem with that. You're under no obligation to prove that your faith is a reasonable thing to me. I could care less!But don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Don't roll up in here lambasting atheists for telling you your faith isn't reasonable, and then turn around and admit that you had no intention of defending the rationality of faith all along. For reasonable people engaged in a reasonable effort in truth-seeking, yeah, there is. Making stuff up to get the conclusion that makes you feel warm and fuzzy isn't a path that leads to truth. It's self-deception. Don't engage in it and then bitch when people tell you you're not being reasonable. It's unseemly. Doubt, or don't doubt. I could care less. But don't shit in my lap and tell me it's chocolate. Don't make a claim that faith is compatible with reason if you're not willing to subject your faith to the same strictures as other reasonable beliefs. Faith only gets to play by it's own rules as long as it stays off the table. When you bring faith to the table of reason, it submits to those strictures.

Instead of getting angry, prove me wrong.Or don't, but then don't have a bitch-fit when I state my opinion that faith is an exercise in wishful thinking, not a path to what is true.

If it's among countless perversions of the message, with no way to distinguish them, it hasn't been preserved. It's been lost in the static.It's like the Ark at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Stuck in a box among thousands of identical boxes at the Office of Naval Intelligence. Lost to history, forever. Indeed. Since his message clearly hasn't been preserved in any meaningful way, it's ludicrous to assert that he's done so. And remember that this was an assertion you made with absolutely no evidence. Well, there's considerable evidence against your position. It's now time for you to present some in favor of it, or else this discussion is pretty much over. ...wha? I think you've misunderstood something, here, which is why you're leveling these false accusations of misrepresentation.I've never asserted that the martyrs weren't sincere. But their sincerity is not evidence in favor of the veracity of their views. It's only evidence of the incredible power of religion to deceive.Is deception such a foreign concept that you cannot comprehend the term? (Strange, since you're clearly so practiced at it.) You're arguing with a strawman, then. Nobody's disputed that. I doubt very much that people die for things they know not to be true, except crazy people maybe.But it's remarkably easy to get people to believe things that they can see aren't true. A common experiment is to show people these figures:and ask them which were longer and shorter. But there was a catch:

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In reality, all but one of the participants were confederates of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behavior.

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The participants ” the real subject and the confederates ” were all seated in a classroom where they were told to announce their judgment of the length of several lines drawn on a series of displays. They were asked which line was longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates had been prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to the tests.

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While most subjects answered correctly, many showed extreme discomfort, and a high proportion (32%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length.

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Asch conformity experiments - WikipediaAny idiot can see which lines are longer and which are shorter, and indeed, in control groups with no confederates, all participants correctly answered the questions. But in the face of three other people appearing to agree, nearly a third of the people rejected the evidence of their own eyes in order to go with the flow.It's not hard to get people to believe things they know aren't true; a lot of people will do it just because everybody else is. I guess I have no idea what you think you're talking about. Which little statement? I've replied to every statement of yours that I felt was salient to your point. (Largely, I'm ignoring your personal attacks.)

To the contrary. Allow me to quote your exact words:

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What do you want?

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Do you want a collection of books that are accurate to the letter?

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Do you want a group of people that are no more than clones of each other? Do you want to see zombies in action preaching the gospel?

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In other words - God allows his message to change and shift throughout the ages so that people won't be "zombies", and we can have all these super-interesting religious conflicts - just to liven things up. (Wouldn't want people to be clones of each other, after all. Might get boring!) I doubt myself all the time. I'm not sure what you think you're talking about.My point is that what you believe doesn't make sense. It's ridiculous in the extreme to assert that God has successfully preserved his message through the centuries when his message, as far as we can tell, has been completely lost if it ever existed in the first place. It's illogical in the extreme to suggest that you, Anastasia, are one of the only people on Earth to have a "legitimate" copy of the message, when the millions upon millions who disagree with you make the same identical claim.Why should I believe you, over them? You give me no reason at all, which makes me suspect that you're all wrong. And a thousand thousand differing messages is exactly what we would expect if no supernatural message preservation was occurring, which makes that verification of my view. Congratulations on your collective enlightenment, but it's only come about as the result of strenuous efforts on my part, and on the parts of the other atheists here, to engage you people in discussion and educate you about atheism. (A little credit where credit is due, please.)And as far as your assertions about "all the Christians" go, I doubt it'll be a week before another Christian shows up here saying "it takes too much faith to be an atheist" and "I don't know how anybody could trust an atheist, they have no morals" and the like. Your churches are churning them out wholesale. Of course not. That would be an open admission that the whole enterprise is relatively silly. Rational people realize that, in fact, personal experience is a relatively poor tool for getting to the truth. The plural of anecdote is not data, and our memories are a notoriously unreliable tool for developing a truly fair sample space. If there's one thing that allows the specious reasoning at the heart of faith and religion to continue, it's the popular ignorance of even the most basic scientific findings into human cognition.

What translation of the Bible are you using? You don't specify. Aren't the various translations more evidence that there's little to no universal agreement on what that message is supposed to be? Um, where, exactly, do you see that? I don't see anything that's the same between the Bible verse and the Magnificat. As an example of message preservation you couldn't have chosen two more divergent texts. 11,000 individual Christian denominations worldwide, that differ on every conceivable doctrinal point. And that doesn't even include para-Christian traditions.How can you still continue to assert that God's message has been eternally preserved, when nobody can even agree on what that message is? How long can you continue to ignore that very basic point?