Bible thumpers

[Miles]

It's Saturday morning,11:28, just had an attempted visit from some bible thumpers. Four Baptists who took no notice of my rapid response of "Not interested" and attempted to enter my house and stick some literature in my face. Perhaps I should go visit them tomorrow and sit in the front row with a six pack of beer and a cope of Hustler, or would that be a bit over the top..............

[dales]

They must have seen your sig line.

[Gob]

Oh man, think of the fun you and I could do doing just that Miles!

[Rick]

Do it Miles.

I'm curious as to the out come...

[loCAtek]

Hey, do a Homer on their front lawn and lounge naked in a kiddie pool with the empties floating around you...

[SisterMaryFellatio]

please say you did it?

[thestoat]

A friend I house shared with had Jehova's Witnesses call a few years back. He asked politely what they wanted to talk about. The transcript goes along the lines of ...

"We'd like to talk to you about God"
"Why? He doesn't exist"
"Of course he exists! I can prove he exists!"
"Rubbish, you can't even prove that I exist""But ... errr...you're standing in front of me"
"I could be a figment of your imagination"

At that stage they "had to be going".

On another occasion they called at a house I lived in alone. Rough transcript:

"I don't hold with the bible - it contradicts itself"
"No it doesn't".
"What about 'an eye for an eye' and 'turn the other cheek'?"
"Ah - the old testament was written a long time before the new testament. It was written for a very different age"
"And the new testament was written nearly 2000 years ago - for a very different age"
"I hadn't though of that"

Both the above are true stories. Just talk to the idiots - sometimes they see sense or admit their idiocy. However, I did meet one person who believed the Earth was about 5000 years only and build by his god in 6 days. Any evidence I presented to him, such as dinosaur remains or carbon dating techniques was shrugged off with a "God is trying to confuse you". What can you do?

[Andrew D]

That's right. The God who created you and endowed you with a rational mind also filled the world around you with tricks designed to deceive your rational mind.

That's to test your faith.

What should you believe -- the conclusions to which the rationality with which God chose to endow you lead you? or the conclusions which the rationality with which God chose to endow you do not lead you but which that same God wants you to believe? Isn't the answer obvious?

I mean, if you were God, wouldn't you do the same thing?

[thestoat]

But why would God want to test your faith? If he is Omniscient then surely he knows without having to make any tests.

And surely the point in a reasonable debate (not that I am describing that ability to that guy) is that you debate from a level playing field. If he can introduce the abilities and efforts of someone I don't believe in then surely I can do the same and ascribe any event I choose to "The Great Walrus that lives under the invisible and untouchable unicorn willy at the bottom of my garden"

[Gob]

The idea that a "belief" also gives you entitlements, as in the people in Miles’ OP who believe that they are granted the right to intrude into his property by their belief, is totally abhorrent.

My belief in the flying spaghetti monster gives me the right to punch them in the nose in that case.

[Big RR]

A friend I house shared with had Jehova's Witnesses call a few years back. He asked politely what they wanted to talk about. The transcript goes along the lines of ...

"We'd like to talk to you about God"
"Why? He doesn't exist"
"Of course he exists! I can prove he exists!"
"Rubbish, you can't even prove that I exist""But ... errr...you're standing in front of me"
"I could be a figment of your imagination"

At that stage they "had to be going".

On another occasion they called at a house I lived in alone. Rough transcript:

"I don't hold with the bible - it contradicts itself"
"No it doesn't".
"What about 'an eye for an eye' and 'turn the other cheek'?"
"Ah - the old testament was written a long time before the new testament. It was written for a very different age"
"And the new testament was written nearly 2000 years ago - for a very different age"
"I hadn't though of that"

Both the above are true stories. Just talk to the idiots - sometimes they see sense or admit their idiocy. However, I did meet one person who believed the Earth was about 5000 years only and build by his god in 6 days. Any evidence I presented to him, such as dinosaur remains or carbon dating techniques was shrugged off with a "God is trying to confuse you". What can you do?

Pretty poor bible thumpers there; most of them are trained to have a bible verse to answer every question, or are like the latter and say that god often confounds us because we can't understand everything, but god's "plan" for us is clear. I have never seen one of the witnesses say "I hadn't thought of that"; indeed, most don't think because thinking leads to too many questions they cannot answer.

[Crackpot]

Witnesses believe in the limited space in heaven theory. Namely that only 144.000 will make it to heaven. (tricky sine they number far more than that)

It has been said (I'm not sure of the veracity of this claim) that their door to door sessions are as much (if not more so) to ensure damnation than to save souls.

[Crackpot]

[loCAtek]

But why would God want to test your faith? If he is Omniscient then surely he knows without having to make any tests.

It's not for his benefit, but yours.

It's an unfortunate human bent that our abilities can lead to hubris, and that can include faith. The faithful have to be tested to maintain their humility.


Human -> humility

[thestoat]

It's not for his benefit, but yours.

It's a lovely thought, but ultimately I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. For someone who knows all, everything is preordained. Any decision I "make" will be known by him before hand. Thus I can't see any point in it. Of course, if there was no god then it would suddenly all make sense.

"You're an atheist, just like me. The only difference is that I believe in one god less"

[Crackpot]

preordination is up for debate.

[loCAtek]

It's not for his benefit, but yours.

It's a lovely thought, but ultimately I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. For someone who knows all, everything is preordained. Any decision I "make" will be known by him before hand. Thus I can't see any point in it. Of course, if there was no god then it would suddenly all make sense.

"You're an atheist, just like me. The only difference is that I believe in one god less"

It's known by him, if not by you, that's why you might seek guidance.

"You're a believer, jut like me. The only difference is that I believe in one God."

[loCAtek]

Thinking further: You're saying that because you feel you have 'Free Will' that is to say choices in life, your self-control denies the divine? To add to it Gob's assertion that doom and disaster are either malevolent or random, then the atheist position is: All else is chaos but you?

Au contraire, as AndrewD eloquently put it, we're all interconnected and artistically arranged;

Or maybe what we should do is recognize that "the discrete separateness of each of us within our physical world" is illusory -- a mental construct which does not accurately represent reality.

Have you ever spent a while in a room with a bunch of other people? If so, you have inhaled air expelled from their lungs.

And I don't mean just air that they had inhaled and then exhaled as if it were the air in a balloon which one breathes in and then out again without much (if any) substantive change. I mean air that has gone through their entire bodily systems. It has been inhaled into their lungs, processed into their bloodstreams, circulated throughout their bodies, converted from one chemical formation to another, and expelled -- only to be inhaled by you. Where it will repeat that process, only to be inhaled by someone else. And on and on and on ....

Next time you eat a burrito or a plate of spaghetti or a salad or whatever, pause for a moment. Consider a particular bean, noodle, lettuce leaf, etc. Every atom in that thing has been through millions (probably billions or trillions or ...) episodes of having become part of some other being before it becomes part of you. It has been eaten and shat and inhaled and vomited and hurled into space and rested on the ocean floor and risen as vapor and fallen as rain and ....

We are all parts of each other. Whatever spiritual significance that may (or may not) have, it is a fundamental fact about "our physical world". There is no "discrete separateness" except in our minds. In our physical selves (which may also be illusory, but let's save that for another day), there is exactly the opposite: One big whirl of stuff -- the stuff of which all of us are made -- in which "we" as "individuals" are transitory phenomena.

As Carl Sagan said it, 'We are all Star Stuff.'

[thestoat]

I don't disagree at all that we are all interconnected and bits of each other - stardust, etc. That assertion is fine - though to me it does not imply any form of god must have been involved in the mix.

You're saying that because you feel you have 'Free Will' that is to say choices in life, your self-control denies the divine?

Not really - my logic and the utter lack of any evidence supporting any god is what, for me, denies the divine. I'm pointing out that if god is completely all knowing then he does not need to test anyone's faith since he will know the outcome. If there was a god, free will would not exist since anything I did, though I might think it free will, would be known to him beforehand.

then the atheist position is: All else is chaos but you?

No, I don't feel that. In some respects, everything is chaos (me included). There is a universal tendency to move to uniformity. I just think that chaos or no chaos happens due to the laws of physics (some that have not yet been discovered). No deity needed to explain any of it.

Wow - the original topic of Bible Thumpers has changed a tad

[loCAtek]

Do you mean utter lack of physical evidence? That is; what you can perceive with your senses? You only have five, how much evidence can you gather? I gather it's far from 'utter'.

Not really - my logic and the utter lack of any evidence supporting any god is what, for me, denies the divine. I'm pointing out that if god is completely all knowing then he does not need to test anyone's faith since he will know the outcome. If there was a god, free will would not exist since anything I did, though I might think it free will, would be known to him beforehand.

As I said, the tests are not for his benefit, but ours, since we are not all knowing, nor all uttering. True, IMHO on free will, but we are allowed this 'time-out' to consider being separate from God, to consider that we have free will, for as long as we wish it. Since the divine is timeless, it has eternity to wait for us.

Wow - the original topic of Bible Thumpers has changed a tad