When's the last time you heard something new from the Christians?

[Rhea]

The other thread got me thinking. It's been a long long time since I heard something novel from the Christians trying to explain their beliefs.
Whether that be trying to sell their beliefs, or apologize for their beliefs or make excuses for their beliefs.

I do hear things that are new about how to look at the Christian religion from a few atheists, mostly because there are so few out there, so I haven't heard as many and also because science keeps discovering new things that almost always make the bible less believable.

But religion? All their stuff I heard 40 years ago, you know?

When's the last time a christian gave you an argument that was knew and you had to look stuff up and decide how you felt about it?

 

[Brian63]

A couple categories.

I have read/seen paleontology arguments from Ken Ham giving YEC arguments that I cannot refute, because I have little knowledge and interest in that field. The same thing with many who make historical arguments for the NT being a historical document. I simply have never had much interest in the details of the historical (in)accuracies either way. Accepting their conclusions would require rejecting principles like methodological naturalism though, which has been an extremely useful tool for us to obtain knowledge in the past. The fact that Ken Ham also bypasses scientific consensus to try to legitimize his views is also a huge red flag. The proper way to show that you have come across some important new scientific discovery is to convince peers and other scientists and experts of its legitimacy, not Joe Schmoe's on the street who know nothing about the topic.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Depends on what you consider 'new.' Last week I heard someone arguing that the big bang required god for a justification I hadn't heard before. But really, it strikes me that as the gaps get smaller and smaller, the god of the gaps has to find smaller and smaller niches. So not a new thing as much as a new spot to place the old thing.

Plus, his 'god is the only way to explain this' point was offered to other believers, not someone with enough physics to actually critique its applicability.

 

[Politesse]

When atheists hear new arguments, they just go "Well that's not what MOST Christians believe" and ignore you.

 

[southernhybrid]

Nobody ever brings up religion with me, and what could possible be new about a religion that is over 2000 years old?

 

[James Brown]

Depends on what you consider 'new.' Last week I heard someone arguing that the big bang required god for a justification I hadn't heard before. But really, it strikes me that as the gaps get smaller and smaller, the god of the gaps has to find smaller and smaller niches. So not a new thing as much as a new spot to place the old thing.

Years ago it seemed to me that Apologists (not YEC'rs) had winnowed their arguments down to three remaining 'gaps':

1) The origin of the universe
2) The origin of life
3) The origin of morality

Everything else a well-read apologist will concede has natural explanations (within the framework of "God created the rules of nature"--see Argument #1) but those three were the hills to die on. That's all the arguments I hear from them anymore. I'll hear Apologists grudgingly admit that the Bible may not be inerrant, or that Moses didn't write the Pentaeuch, or that a person can go to Heaven without praying the sinner's prayer. "But only God can make a tree."

I stopped enjoying Theist/Skeptic debates, because they all are restricted to those three topics. "Does God exist?" "Is morality Objective?" "Is Evolution true?" The subjects and arguments are mostly unfalisfiable philosophy. I would like to see debates on more mundane topics--"Do demons exist?" "Was Noah's Deluge Global?" "Did Jesus turn water into wine?" But I suspect apologists aren't interested in those kinds of debates.

 

[Sarpedon]

When atheists hear new arguments, they just go "Well that's not what MOST Christians believe" and ignore you.

If it were a good argument, there would be more people than just one that believes it.

 

[rousseau]

I stopped enjoying Theist/Skeptic debates, because they all are restricted to those three topics. "Does God exist?" "Is morality Objective?" "Is Evolution true?" The subjects and arguments are mostly unfalisfiable philosophy. I would like to see debates on more mundane topics--"Do demons exist?" "Was Noah's Deluge Global?" "Did Jesus turn water into wine?" But I suspect apologists aren't interested in those kinds of debates.

This is why I've lost interest too. The debates amount to materialists bashing their head against a wall until theists admit they're wrong or give up. I much prefer to live in the arena of scholars who've moved a few football fields past religious debate and are discussing new ideas.

God bless the people with the patience for it, I have many things I'd rather involve myself in.

 

[Politesse]

When atheists hear new arguments, they just go "Well that's not what MOST Christians believe" and ignore you.

If it were a good argument, there would be more people than just one that believes it.

Well, okay.

But if you refuse to have conversations about anything other than the majority perspective in your country, you can't very well complain about a lack of novelty, can you? It's like someone bitching about how all movies are the same these days, then refusing to investigate indie cinema because it isn't popular.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But if you refuse to have conversations about anything other than the majority perspective in your country, you can't very well complain about a lack of novelty, can you?

But do you bring up novel perspectives by initiating a new thread for discussion?
Because my impression has been that you bring up a novel POV in the middle of a thread about something that is a majority or at least a plurality position.
Which may mean that it's not a case of refusing something new, but not wanting to derail to discuss something that is not-the-OP.

I may be wrong, but that's what the back of my mind is suggesting. But I threw out all my otherposter surveillance notes...

 

[Politesse]

But if you refuse to have conversations about anything other than the majority perspective in your country, you can't very well complain about a lack of novelty, can you?

But do you bring up novel perspectives by initiating a new thread for discussion?
Because my impression has been that you bring up a novel POV in the middle of a thread about something that is a majority or at least a plurality position.
Which may mean that it's not a case of refusing something new, but not wanting to derail to discuss something that is not-the-OP.

I may be wrong, but that's what the back of my mind is suggesting. But I threw out all my otherposter surveillance notes...

It can't be helped if my honest opinion on an issue is seen as a "derail". I'm not going to feign atheism or Protestantism just to help keep the conversation be more boring.

And I'm not the only person who gets this treatment, though I may be the most patient.

Then again, much though I appreciate the implied compliments to my intellect, I did not actually invent gnosticism, isochristism, christian paganism or taoism, cultural relativism, panentheism or any of the other perspectives of mine that seem to offend the most. Indeed, most of these perspectives have been kicking around in some form or another for longer than atheism has. So perhaps it is true that there are no new arguments under the sun until the next prophet comes along.

 

[Keith&Co.]

It can't be helped if my honest opinion on an issue is seen as a derail. I'm not going to feign atheism or Protestantism just to help keep the conversation be more boring.

Well, of course not.
it's just that if the topic is "I hate it when Christains 'X'" and you want to talk about Christains who 'Y', you may not get a whole lot of interest in that thread. And that's not 'refusing' to discuss 'Y,' it's just not what the thread was started for.

No one's going to complain if you then open a new thread and say, "So, the boredom in Keith's X thread made me think of 'Y.'"

 

[Politesse]

It can't be helped if my honest opinion on an issue is seen as a derail. I'm not going to feign atheism or Protestantism just to help keep the conversation be more boring.

Well, of course not.
it's just that if the topic is "I hate it when Christains 'X'" and you want to talk about Christains who 'Y', you may not get a whole lot of interest in that thread. And that's not 'refusing' to discuss 'Y,' it's just not what the thread was started for.

No one's going to complain if you then open a new thread and say, "So, the boredom in Keith's X thread made me think of 'Y.'"

Well, I hate starting threads, so...

There is also the problem that people always assume I'm engaged in apologetics. Has it occurred to you that by commenting Y, I am in fact agreeing that X is wrong? If the target is fundamentalist Christianity, I guarantee you it is not some secret plot to argue for X by making it seem more reasonable. You'e not the only demographic whose heads would be on pikes if these guys came to power. Secularists in this country would be much better off forming united fronts against fascism, instead of thought-policing each other for perceived religious impurities.

 

[Sarpedon]

I never refused to engage with a point of view that was a majority perspective in a different country. Which country are we talking about?

Also, I have to draw a distinction between an argument being superficially different and actually different. I don't see the actual difference between an unsupported faith position that is slightly different from a different unsupported faith position in such a way that one of my pre-existing objections to that position is invalid. We often entertain faith positions for the sake of discussion, in ways you don't see, because you regard faith positions as being fundamentally valid. We do not. So when we discuss, say, the importance of food taboos in the bible, we are already entertaining various beliefs we don't hold, just to get us to the point where we can discuss food taboos. So when someone comes along and says 'well I don't believe in these food taboos, so your arguments are all invalid,' they are missing the point of the discussion. We use these discussions to illustrate the fundamental arbitraryness and incorrectness of faith positions. We don't care about food taboos, any more than the faithful person who omits that part from their belief system. If the person who (correctly) regards food taboos as being silly and disregards them would look at the other things they believe in the same way, I believe that would lead them to come to disregard them as silly in the same way. As I have noted before, lots of people stop short with their thinking whenever it suits them. They can easily see the flaws of what they don't believe, but fail to see the flaws of what they do believe. I have done this myself at times, and now I routinely reexamine my beliefs and search for flaws, and regularly discard wrong things that I once passionately defended.

So when we don't want to discuss every philosophy that comes through the door, its not because we don't respect your differences, but because we see your sameness. May I point out how exhausting it is to type a well reasoned illustrative argument, only to see it dismissed flippantly by someone who says 'oh, that's a First Reformed Western Synod Methodist thing, I'm a Traditional Southwestern Charismatic Presbyterian,' especially when most of our religious interlocuters are extremely coy about what they actually believe until it's time to dismiss something we say because we failed to guess which belief out of the grab bag that they were holding. Our entire point is that each position is as arbitrary and unsupported by evidence as the other is!

 

[Keith&Co.]

There is also the problem that people always assume I'm engaged in apologetics. Has it occurred to you that by commenting Y, I am in fact agreeing that X is wrong?

No, that hasn't been clear.

If the target is fundamentalist Christianity, I guarantee you it is not some secret plot to argue for X by making it seem more reasonable.

That hasn't been my impression, either.
No, just seemed more a straight-up derail.

 

[Atheos]

I think 1eye started with what he (or she, but for convenience I'm going to continue with the generic masculine pronoun) thought were some novel things maybe the atheists among us hadn't considered, such as "Pilate wasn't confirmed in architecture until the 1960's" (false) and the promise that he'd provide others later. He immediately got buried under an avalanche of rejoinders challenging the OP and showing why it was just really poor apologetics.

Part of the problem faced by those who attempt to argue by bluster and assertion is that fact-checking is so accessible now with search engines. But the same infrastructure that provides that convenience also provides the means for junk "science" and con men (such as Ken Hamm) to proliferate their crap to those who are willing to let others do their thinking for them.

1eye claims to have been a long-time poster at Secular Cafe. I was never a member there but I would expect that this level of apologetics would have been soundly trounced there as well as here just based on the members we have here now that were there. It seems odd that he would have expected things to be any different here, but again I don't know much about that part of his history.

1eye sounds a lot like former (banned) member Self Mutation to me, and that's not an accusation of a sock puppet. I don't think he's the same person, but the sickly-sweet flavor of christian "spread the JOY" permeates his posts and many of us who've done it ourselves in our past life now find it vile and repugnant.

If there was any archaeological evidence found that Jesus even existed, that would be something new, and certainly interesting for discussion. The fact that not one contemporary historian noticed this incredible person doing all these incredible things speaks volumes. The fact that christians later fabricated Josephus accounts to try to bolster their beliefs speaks volumes. What doesn't speak volumes is the evidence that any of this ever happened. That's because this evidence doesn't exist, and it's hard for non-existent evidence to make any noise.

 

[Sarpedon]

As an architect, I have to wonder what the significance of a lack of architectural evidence for someone is? Are we to doubt the existence of anyone who didn't build a building?

And I myself have not left physical evidence of my existence in any building I've worked on.

 

[Keith&Co.]

As an architect, I have to wonder what the significance of a lack of architectural evidence for someone is? Are we to doubt the existence of anyone who didn't build a building?

And I myself have not left physical evidence of my existence in any building I've worked on.

I suspect archi-correction on archaeology?

 

[Politesse]

I never refused to engage with a point of view that was a majority perspective in a different country. Which country are we talking about?

Also, I have to draw a distinction between an argument being superficially different and actually different. I don't see the actual difference between an unsupported faith position that is slightly different from a different unsupported faith position in such a way that one of my pre-existing objections to that position is invalid. We often entertain faith positions for the sake of discussion, in ways you don't see, because you regard faith positions as being fundamentally valid. We do not. So when we discuss, say, the importance of food taboos in the bible, we are already entertaining various beliefs we don't hold, just to get us to the point where we can discuss food taboos. So when someone comes along and says 'well I don't believe in these food taboos, so your arguments are all invalid,' they are missing the point of the discussion. We use these discussions to illustrate the fundamental arbitraryness and incorrectness of faith positions. We don't care about food taboos, any more than the faithful person who omits that part from their belief system. If the person who (correctly) regards food taboos as being silly and disregards them would look at the other things they believe in the same way, I believe that would lead them to come to disregard them as silly in the same way. As I have noted before, lots of people stop short with their thinking whenever it suits them. They can easily see the flaws of what they don't believe, but fail to see the flaws of what they do believe. I have done this myself at times, and now I routinely reexamine my beliefs and search for flaws, and regularly discard wrong things that I once passionately defended.

So when we don't want to discuss every philosophy that comes through the door, its not because we don't respect your differences, but because we see your sameness. May I point out how exhausting it is to type a well reasoned illustrative argument, only to see it dismissed flippantly by someone who says 'oh, that's a First Reformed Western Synod Methodist thing, I'm a Traditional Southwestern Charismatic Presbyterian,' especially when most of our religious interlocuters are extremely coy about what they actually believe until it's time to dismiss something we say because we failed to guess which belief out of the grab bag that they were holding. Our entire point is that each position is as arbitrary and unsupported by evidence as the other is!

You're not obliged to discuss anything. If you only want to talk about one denomination and its various tried and true apologetics, nothing is stopping you. I just found the thread kind of funny. Refusing to entertain new ideas, then complaining that there are no new ideas. What other outcome could one possibly expect?

 

[abaddon]

You're not obliged to discuss anything. If you only want to talk about one denomination and its various tried and true apologetics, nothing is stopping you. I just found the thread kind of funny. Refusing to entertain new ideas, then complaining that there are no new ideas. What other outcome could one possibly expect?

If you won't start a new thread about new ideas, you can't know people are refusing to entertain new ideas. You know most atheists like to focus on fundy-ism. If that's the topic, it's the topic. If a person with a more "slant" point-of-view, like you or I, were to enter a discussion on fundy-ism and say "I know of a broader, more 'liberal' religious POV than the fundy's", then we've derailed that discussion.

The choice to not start new threads is a choice to not introduce new ideas in a context where they'll be "entertained".