Debate With Dan

For the past couple of days, I have been engaged in a debate with Dan, the author of a Blog entitled "The Truth".

Until now this debate has taken place in the comments section of his blog and in the comments sections of three of my previous posts: here, here, and here. Since the debate is not fully contained in any one place, and my most recent reply is not only long, but, I think, useful to others, I have decided to simplify things, and use posts here to continue our discussion.

The following is Dan's most recent statement, and came to me by way of e-mail. It was later published on his blog. My previous reply can be found here:

RE: This was my response to what you wrote
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:30:59 -0800
I can prove there is a God. If you see a building you know there is a builder and if you see a painting you know there is a painter and if you observe all of creation then you know in your heart that there is a creator

I know for a fact because I have experience. For example a kid is told by his dad not to touch that iron because it is hot and he says OK and believes it is hot but when the dad leaves the room the kid touches the iron and burns himself. Now if a friend or an adult comes by and says touch that iron because I promises it is not hot the kid would say “NO WAY” because he went from a belief that the iron is hot to an experience that it is hot and no one can tell him otherwise. I have experienced God and he reviled himself to me so no man on this earth can tell me otherwise. John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

I live by “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.”

If you take the law of averages which scientist loves then you have to admit that Christianity is ranked number one at 2-3 billion Christians. So if 30 people tell you your drunk then fall down. Well 3 billion people base there various and different experiences and intellects and cultures on ONE faith not to mention entire countries basing there dating system on Jesus i.e. the year is 2006 after our lord Jesus rose from the dead. You must conclude in a scientific hypothesis that Christ did exist and even Islam admits to that and that makes over 70% of the entire world believes in Jesus. But you are here to tell me he doesn’t and that makes you a foolish person in denial. John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

You may be spending eternity in the lake of fire. If you are wrong are you willing to base your salvation on what you believe? If I am right I will spend eternity in Heaven and if I am wrong I just turn into worm meat. IF you are right you become worm meat but if you are wrong you will spend eternity in Hell. Have you done the research like us Christians? Google and go to “Hell’s best kept secret”

God bless you on your journey

My retort follows: (I have broken Dan's comment into pieces to ensure an understandable context for my answers)

Paragraph One:

"I can prove there is a God. If you see a building you know there is a builder and if you see a painting you know there is a painter and if you observe all of creation then you know in your heart that there is a creator"

I already covered this with a prior comment.

Paragraph Two:

"I know for a fact because I have experience. For example a kid is told by his dad not to touch that iron because it is hot and he says OK and believes it is hot but when the dad leaves the room the kid touches the iron and burns himself. Now if a friend or an adult comes by and says touch that iron because I promises it is not hot the kid would say “NO WAY” because he went from a belief that the iron is hot to an experience that it is hot and no one can tell him otherwise. I have experienced God and he reviled himself to me so no man on this earth can tell me otherwise. John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

Since this paragraph is something of a run-on, I will break it into pieces and address the pieces separately.

First piece:

"I know for a fact because I have experience. For example a kid is told by his dad not to touch that iron because it is hot and he says OK and believes it is hot but when the dad leaves the room the kid touches the iron and burns himself. Now if a friend or an adult comes by and says touch that iron because I promises it is not hot the kid would say “NO WAY” because he went from a belief that the iron is hot to an experience that it is hot and no one can tell him otherwise."

First--a bit of confusion on my part--Are you saying that the child/iron parable is your experience? If so, a parable hardly qualifies as experience. If not then OK.

As for the example/parable: If the child believes the iron to be hot, he would not touch it. What is more likely going on is that he doesn't trust his father (perhaps because his father had lied in the past), and then proves to himself, by way of a simplified form of the scientific method, that his father was right. The child will now believe that all irons are hot; at least until further scientific study shows that he is wrong, and that, in fact, only "some" Irons are hot.

The lad has engaged in an activity that will prove invaluable throughout his life: he has formed a hypothesis--the iron's not hot, an experiment--touching the iron, and then based upon his experiment, formed a theory--all irons are hot. He will no doubt perform another experiment or series of them and discover that his initial theory is flawed and form a modified theory based on his new findings such as--not all irons are hot.

Eventually, through many repetitions of his experiment, and with the same findings coming from others who perform the same exact experiments our lad will formulate a law such as--some, but not all irons are hot.

Then he, or maybe someone following in his footsteps will pursue the question--why are some irons hot and others not.

But, the young man will always know that some irons are hot, in the same way that he knows that the initial iron is hot when the second, and I might say abusive, adult comes along and says that the iron isn't hot, because he has proof that it is; proof that he can easily share by showing the second adult (the non-believer if you will) the burn on his hand, thereby supplying empirical evidence for his position.

You have yet to show me your burn.

As for the piece where you discuss God making himself hated by you I am confused. Unless, of course you mean revealed and not reviled. In which case, I would counter with my own experience with the Baggins. [see previous retort]

I would be considered insane if I went up and down the street shouting that I had seen the Baggins, and I dare say that few if any would come to me for some divine knowledge. But, many people have claimed to have seen God--Jim Jones, and David Koresh come immediately to mind as does Joseph Smith. Despite their claims I have not decided to drink poison kool-aid, not burnt myself alive at a compound in Texas, and have not become a Mormon. This is because I don't have a habit of blindly accepting anything I am told.

In fact Muhammad also had God reveal himself to him. Should I believe that?

Then we have your philosophy on life:

"I live by 'I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.'"

If this is how you decide to live, then that is your decision, but for me this is an old argument which was once thrown at me by my late-wife's priest. He and I had regular philosophical debates. I like talking with Catholic Priests about such things because they are generally better educated than most clergy, and don't hold to the antiquated notion that the Bible is literal truth. But, I digress.

Under this logic, shouldn't you believe in the Hindu afterlife, the Jewish after-life, the Buddhist, the ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Sumerian, Babylonian or any number of other beliefs that were written down long before the Christian one? What if I said that if you don't follow the teachings of Frodo Baggins and Gandolf you will go to Hell? You would naturally say that these beliefs were silly and had no basis in reality, and therefore wouldn't consider it a risk to not follow them.

Better yet what if my neighbor wrote two conflicting stories about my Frodo-given ability to create Wallabies out of muffins, then presented them to you as the only place in the universe that told that story, and said that it was the Frodo's honest truth. It would no doubt be easy for you to refute his claim because of the two conflicting stories. Without some kind of unbiased supporting document or a news story saying the same thing my neighbor's story would fall flat on it's own merits.

In the spirit of this parable read Genesis chapter one then go back later and read chapter two. Then answer the following question: If the Bible can't even get the creation story straight then how am I supposed to believe any of it? And since it is the only place there is an argument for the Christian god in the entire universe, why should I believe in such a god based on flawed evidence? (In case you don't see what I am talking about--I had already intended to post a blog about the conflict in the Genesis creation stories, so I will do so following this one for clarification)

For that matter explain the two versions of Judas' death I talked about in an earlier post. The Catholics have a good, albeit flawed, answer for these issues, but it involves accepting a lot of the Bible as fairy-tale, which I doubt you are ready to do.

So, I reverse the statement, and say that I would rather live my life, the only one I get. I know that I will eventually die and that will be the end of me, so I won't waste my life by expending time, money, or energy that could be spent with my children or in any number of other useful and/or enjoyable activities by following a religion based on Bronze Age myths.

Then we have a rather unwieldy Paragraph Four:

"If you take the law of averages which scientist loves then you have to admit that Christianity is ranked number one at 2-3 billion Christians. So if 30 people tell you your drunk then fall down. Well 3 billion people base there various and different experiences and intellects and cultures on ONE faith not to mention entire countries basing there dating system on Jesus i.e. the year is 2006 after our lord Jesus rose from the dead. You must conclude in a scientific hypothesis that Christ did exist and even Islam admits to that and that makes over 70% of the entire world believes in Jesus. But you are here to tell me he doesn’t and that makes you a foolish person in denial. John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

First off, the law of averages does not apply here, a census does. And, as we are shown in in 2 Samuel chapter 24 God will kill at least 70,000 of his own people in payment for a king taking a census. As for a hypothesis based on the census... . A hypothesis is an educated guess that is put to experimentation in order to arrive at a theory. Due to my education, I would never arrive at a hypothesis as baseless as the existence of Christ.

So many things--so little space, so bear with me here.

First: If thirty people tell me I'm drunk, and I haven't been drinking then I will suspect that those thirty people are nuts or trying to fool me. If I am in fact drunk, then I will know that before they tell me.

Second: Actually it is the year 2006 after the year your lord was supposedly born--get your facts straight. It has nothing to do with death as many people believe. A.D. is an abbreviation for anno Domini and actually means "the year of our lord." It is also incorrect by several years.

As for using the B.C./A.D. system, the Chinese calender, and the Jewish calender predate ours which is only some five hundred years old. It was created by an Italian doctor, and decreed as official by Pope Gregory XIII (hence the name--Gregorian calender). We continue to use it and the B.C./A.D. system out of simplicity not out of a belief in Jesus. If the World's still using it could prove anything along the line of religion, it would be that the Catholics were, and thereby, are right because they conceived the whole idea. And, in fact, most scholarly material now uses B.C.E. and C.E. which stands for: "Before Christian (or Common) era", and "Christian (or Common) era", and acknowledges only the existence of Christians, not Christ.

Third: Not too many years ago, the entire population of the planet, save for a few smart people, believed that the Earth was flat, and that the Sun, stars, and all other things in the universe revolved around the Earth, both concepts found in the Bible. Did majority opinion make these things true?

Two-hundred years ago, the majority of Christian American citizens believed that slavery was morally acceptable. Is that true?

By your argument, anybody who believed that Christ was God in 20 a.c.e. was a fool, because the majority of the World's population had never heard of the guy. Does their ignorance of your savior exclude them from your logic? Just because a majority of people are ignorant of a fact the fact is still a fact, and just because a majority of people believe a lie--it is still a lie.

Fourth: If your god exists, and the Bible is his word then by calling me foolish, you have earned the wrath of your god and are looking at going to your own Hell
by violating the words of Jesus found in Matthew 5:22:

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

If you are right about the whole Jesus thing then you may want to start begging for forgiveness.

A fool as defined by Websters can be a few things (including a dessert), but the two most commonly held definitions are:

1) "a person lacking in judgment or prudence"
2) "a harmlessly deranged person or one lacking in common powers of understanding"

Both definitions imply a lack of ability to understand things and see beyond what they are told to believe, i.e. one who can't think for ones self, as in "a fool and his money are soon parted." Only a fool believes something for which there is no proof, and much proof against.

As for my being in denial: that infers that I have all of the evidence laid out before me, yet continue to ignore it--it would seem that I am not the one in denial, because I am not the one disregarding evidence. I cannot be in denial about something unless there is some shadow of belief.

Fifth: As for the quote from John, I think I have already established that I have no more fear of his warnings than I do of Thor's.

Next you say:

"You may be spending eternity in the lake of fire. If you are wrong are you willing to base your salvation on what you believe? If I am right I will spend eternity in Heaven and if I am wrong I just turn into worm meat. IF you are right you become worm meat but if you are wrong you will spend eternity in Hell. Have you done the research like us Christians? Google and go to 'Hell’s best kept secret'"

Simple answers to the questions are: Yes and Yes. Both of which I think I have shown here. Can you answer both questions the same way?

As for the writings and teachings of Ray Comfort, I am way ahead of you, which is why it was so easy to refute your claims, many of which it would seem are plagiarised from Mr. Comfort.

I promise that his teachings will be covered by a future post, doing so here would get off of the subject and take up too much space.

So, stay tuned.

Finally we have:

"God bless you on your journey"

Thanks for the blessing. Frodo bless you.

Your Turn.