The following is an ongoing conversation that has resulted from an old high school friend posting a video to a social networking site. The video is Steve Harvey pretending to introduce Jesus Christ during his comedy act.
I haven’t seen my friend for decades, I graduated in 1968, he in 1969. I figured he was religious, he still lives in Oklahoma and there are indications in his profile, but it turns out that his friends are zealots indeed and seemingly immune to anything other than Christian dogma. They don’t seem to have a chink in their imagined armor of faith where reason can intrude. It will be interesting to see whether my friend (Cap’n Curtis) keeps me on board or makes me walk the plank.
To keep these folks anonymous, I haven’t used the full names of anyone but myself (ChemBob) and Steve Harvey. I’ve also embedded the video, so you can see for yourself what got this conversation going. It is clear, as usual in discussions with fundamentalists, that I’m not making any headway. My arguments might not be the best that could be used, but I’m not convinced that better arguments would matter either. Note the smug “holier than thou” Christianity displayed by ‘Phil’ after I’ve left the conversation.
In a very real sense, I feel sorry for these people. They will live their entire lives believing in a fictitious supernatural being that is watching over them and providing them with an afterlife provided they behave in a specific manner, support certain causes, and convert others to their way of thinking. I think this opens them up to all kinds of authoritarian dogma and ready manipulation by sociopaths in Christian guise. It also seems such a waste of time and energy.
Cap’n Curtis worth watching!
How Would you Introduce God?
Steve Harvey, secular comedian, in front of a secular audience. He poses the question “How would you introduce God?” His response is amazing. Takes 3 minutes to watch. Well worth it.
ChemBob
Rampant emotionalism doesn’t equate with rationality or reality. It is interesting how he’s using the faith of these people to promote his own monetary well-being and popularity. BTW, he’s hardly a secular comedian any more.
Richard
Enjoyed the enthusiasm in the cliip. Frankly there was a time I thought like Robert, but I spent 3 years intensly studying the Bible and the claims of Chrisitianity and came to the conclusion that while impossible to disprove, those claims made more sense than anything else I could come up with. In the end, I concluded belief and unbelief are matters of faith, and for me belief made more sense to me. Christianity is neither rampant emotionalism nor a lack of rationality, it is faith. Reality only extends as far as our senses can reach and then we are on our own. Denying something exists on the sole basis that one has not yet personally experienced it is true irrationality.
ChemBob
I was religious for a very long time. I’ve read and studied the entire Bible too (along with other religions). Parts of it are horrid and precisely what one would expect from bronze-age tribal feudalism. Even the New Testament is irrational in the concept that God sacrifices himself as his only son to give us mortals a way to be forgiven for a ridiculous original sin (involving talking snakes and a betrayal, which an omniscient God would have known would happen), then resurrects himself three days later. If you are a God, you kill yourself, and you know you aren’t actually dying, that you’re coming back, that’s not really much of a sacrifice is it? This is a tale of blood sacrifice and rebirth, common among primitive tribes, and its reality is desired by many because they fear death equaling nonexistence.
Actually we have made great strides in understanding the natural processes that have resulted in things on Earth being how they are. God is not required, not excluded, but not required. BTW, not believing in something for which there is no evidence is the rational, not the irrational choice. The burden of proof is on the claimant. We have developed instruments and mathematics that have extended our understanding beyond our senses. Such observations and measurements, operating within the scientific method, comprise the best means we have developed to understand reality.
Phil
Faith is the key — A belief in that which cannot be scientifically proven. Each person makes the choice. The path is narrow… You get to choose — Yea!!!!!!!!!!
Cap’n Curtis
Robert, Faith can not be rationalized. How can you be “Religious” with out faith? You have put your faith in your “science”. But your science AKA the laws of physics were set in motion by God. “In the beginning there was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.”
ChemBob
I don’t have faith in science, not blind faith anyway. As a methodological approach, science simply works. Check out how we are communicating at this moment. It works. Now pray to God that I hear your thoughts and see if I do. All tests of intercessory prayer have failed to show cause and effect. Like I said, I’m not totally excluding the possibility of a God, but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anything was set in motion by a supernatural being and lots of evidence of comprehensible natural mechanisms for everything around us. I don’t have faith in millennia old books written during a time where most things were not understood, other than through superstitions that had been passed down.
You are religious and that is fine, as long as you are not among those who would turn this country into a theocracy; it is clear how well that has worked in the Middle East. I am not religious and that is fine also.
Phil
Robert we will pray for that, but GOD gives you free will. Therefore, in my humble opinion, GOD can’t give you what you are not seeking and do not want. A few Christians can’t get together and direct your life like a puppet. If you would pray for the same thing earnestly — now were talking.
ChemBob
You don’t get it. I’m not asking you to pray for me, I neither want your prayers nor believe in prayer other than as a relaxing meditative device. My point was that it doesn’t work, that you could pray for me to hear your thoughts and that would not work, whereas via science and technology you can express and I can read your thoughts on FB. I’ve been where you are, the best cure for it is actually reading the Bible. Don’t even go into the entire question of free will, it’s too complicated for writing about in a FB comment.
Phil
I could not have said it better myself Robert — I don’t get it. But thats OK — I don’t need to. –
Kim
1 Cor 1 – For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Kim
I have many things I would love to say on this subject, but I need to go to bed. But just one thing…God does answer prayer. I have seen it many, many times. But God will not respond to tests.
Phil Scott
Nice Job Kim
ChemBob
Quoting an ancient book of the stories that mostly uneducated shepherds used to understand the world, along with your belief in your own personal experiences, which are impossible to separate statistically from coincidence, doesn’t make it true Kim. If anything does destroy our society, it will be the foolishness of blind religious zealotry, both Islamic and Christian, it won’t be the atheists and agnostics.
The only reason you are a Christian is because you were born into it. Had you been born in Saudi Arabia you would be Muslim; India, likely Hindu; ancient Greece you’d worship the ancient Gods of Olympus. I can’t comprehend why so many people can’t climb over the wall of their childhood religious indoctrination and see the light on the other side.
Your faith leaves you in the thrall of authoritarian figures, who can use their “authority” to manipulate you in ways that are not in your self-interest. Suicide bombers and doctor murderers are examples of that. They are also examples of extreme ignorance, stupidity, and the inability to think rationally. Fortunately most Christians and Muslims aren’t quite that radically enthralled, but there are many lesser things that religion coerces one to do that are still not to your benefit. It is time to wake up.
I wish we could have a cup of coffee. That would be a fun discussion. You say I am only a Christian because I was born into it. And yes I was…I always went to church. But I know now that I didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ until I started going to Bible Study Fellowship. I would have described myself as “religious” even though I had almost completely quit going to church during college. But I didn’t know what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ. But by studying God’s Word for myself I came to know God and understand what it really meant to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. God doesn’t care about our “religiousness” or our intellectual study of His Word. God is concerned with the nature of our hearts. He wants us to have relationship with Him through his Son Jesus. You should find a Bible Study Fellowship class near you. You can find one at bsfinternational.org. Skeptics are welcome.
ChemBob
Kim, what I think you’re missing from my previous comments is that I’ve been there and done that, all of it. Baptist churches, Episcopal churches, attended services at several others, went to Bible schools, attended prayer groups, read the entire Bible, studied Zen, Taoism, the archaeology of religious sites, on and on and on. And I finally realized that there was absolutely nothing to indicate that there was any God anywhere other than in the imaginations of people. What I found, on the contrary, was lots of evidence that there is almost certainly no God.
If you read, really read the Bible, especially the extremely unpleasant parts (there are many), you will realize that you can’t possibly think that the actions and doings being described are those of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God. Much of it is entirely too petty and vain. Much of it is contradictory in the extreme. Much of it is downright silly and no rational person could believe that it would happen other than in drug or illness-induced hallucination.
You are certainly free to worship as you wish, as I am free to disbelieve. All I ask is that, within such faith, Christians (and Muslims for that matter) remain rational with regard to our humanity and the potential negative impacts that any extreme faith-based positions can have on their fellow humans. I also think that it is very important, both for the good of believers and non-believers, for religion and government to remain absolutely separate. After all, what if a variant of Christianity other than your own began using the government to dictate to you how you must believe?
Kim
Your other point that I would challenge is that because Christ is God and knew he would be resurrected His sacrifice is meaningless.
Christ had to undergo the cross in our weak human body. He felt the pain, he felt the loneliness, he felt the shame. He was abandoned by His friends; He was humiliated and spat upon by the people He came to save. He suffered torturous abuse, abuse that our minds cannot even really wrap themselves around. And He took on the weight of all of our sin. Sin so ugly that even God, His beloved Father, had to turn away from Him. And He did this all for us. So that we can be free from the punishment for our sins. And we know that Jesus agonized over the trial that He was going to undergo because the Bible tells us so in Matthew 26.
And because of His struggles and human life Jesus really understand us. He knows what it is like to suffer emotionally and physically. He understands our struggles. And He sits right there at the right hand of God intervening in our behalf.
When you really, really think about it. Not on an intellectual level but on a human level how can you not be emotional. How can you not be absolutely awed that the God of the universe loves you that much!
ChemBob
The Romans crucified lots of people, not just Jesus (assuming he is an actual historical figure), so I think human minds have been wrapped around that level of suffering. I’m sorry Kim, but I just think that all of that is nonsense and relying on writings that occurred at least 60 years after the fact is too dependent on hearsay and the frailty of human memory.
An omniscient God would already know the sorts of agony that we could experience, after all didn’t he create us? What kind of God would put any of us through the agony of Roman crucifixion or the tortures of Vlad the Impaler, or the butchery of the Crusades and wars without end?
I am emotional, I think the universe is awe-inspiring, I just don’t think there is some supernatural being that gives a care one way or the other. It’s all natural and in that context it all makes complete sense.
—At this point I told them I had work to do and needed to get back to it—
Phil
Kim I think you would agree — That Mr Powell probably went to church but unfortunately did not have a one to one, personal relationship with Christ. It is hard to deny something doesn’t exsist when you know it did. I know I have parents, siblings, cousins — how can I deny that they exsisted. While my relationship with GOD is not in the flesh, so to speak, his presence in my life and the lives of those arlound me is undeniable.
Kim
Okay…one more smat alecky comment. All the people that have ever been crucified are dead…so I don’t think any living people can actually appreciate the torture of the cross. I know people do it for a little while to experience the pain. But unless they go through the flogging (which killed most people by the way) and carrying their cross after being beaten within an inch of their lives, I don’t think they can get it.
And regarding the butchery that men do to each other. That’s not God. That’s us living in a world of sin. We do it to each other. We have free will, remember?
Okay I really have to go clean my house or the filth is going to take over. Have a good day.
Phil
Well said Kim — Praise the LORD and have a blessed holiday season. For we still serve a risen King.
So they believe in something they have never seen but won’t believe in the Easter Bunny, he lives, because I said so.
If the Easter Bunny was discussed by ancient shepherds in a really old book, they’d probably believe that too.