Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

Theists are more than welcome to engage me in discussion, but let’s review some basic ground rules of rational debate:

• Be organized. Arrange your thoughts in a structured, coherent manner. Address one topic at a time, gradually building toward a conclusion.
• Be concise. Thoroughly develop your ideas and explain your points, but don’t ramble on endlessly.
• Support your assertions. Factual claims need to be backed up with evidence.  It is not acceptable to quote from “holy” books in ways that assume that these texts are reliable sources.  For example, to a Christian who would support his position with the Bible: would you, as a non-Muslim, accept the truth claims made by the Koran as evidence?  Obviously not, so why would you expect a non-Christian to accept the claims of the Bible?
• Understand the opposing position. Between the Internet and dead-tree publications, there is a staggering amount of information available about any conceivable subject, including atheism. Arguing from a flawed understanding of atheism is not conducive to a productive discussion and is inexcusable.  (I strongly recommend reading Ebon Musings).
• Be open-minded. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If your position fails to withstand rational analysis, be prepared to discard it.  I went through this transformation (deconversion) and, while it was not pleasant, I can assure you that the clear air of rationalism is vastly preferable to the hopelessly illogical morass of theism.

I would now like to direct your attention to a comment whose author has demonstrated epic failure to grasp these basic, intuitive principles.  At 4,118 words (the equivalent of eleven double-spaced printed pages), this jumbled mess of craziness falls far short of being worthy of a line-by-line rebuttal.  I invite the author to revise his “essay” according to the above principles and re-submit it for consideration.

However, having briefly skimmed it, I do feel the need to address some of the commenter’s more egregious statements:

It has been brought to my attention and concern that you feel you have renounced Christ and his gift to all who believe.

I do not “feel” that I have renounced Christianity. I have renounced it.  Period.  This is a matter of public record and has been made abundantly clear, on this blog and elsewhere.  (Feel free to select the “Religion” tag and read my history of posts along these lines.)

I will first address your skepticism with the knowledge and grace given to me through Christ before I bring in the calvary in the form of John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, William Law, and many other devout in the Christian faith.

You meant “cavalry”. “Calvary” is, according to your mythology, the place where the founder of your cult died.

God never expected his children to follow his will without conflict and question. It is quite the opposite, the Lord our God invites us to question his ways so that we may better understand him.

Really?  Your “holy” book seems to disagree.

O’ how we live in such an unbelieving world that demands answers and rejects faith!

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

You seem to reject the notion of faith and place folly on those who hold it true. I rebuke such a foolish and worldly statement.

Again, please work on your reading comprehension skills.  (See, two can play at the rudeness game.)  I don’t “seem to reject the notion of faith” — I do, explicitly and without equivocation, reject the idea that “faith” is a virtue.  Faith is a cop-out, a construct invented by theists to excuse the fact that their beliefs are not supported by evidence and do not cohere with reality. Feel free to take your “rebuke” and perform any number of anatomically improbable procedures with it.

Full trust in science is full trust in our senses. As humans however we are fallible. Our senses thus can be fallible. In other words by your own logic once again this is proven unsound. To have faith in science which is based on even small occasional fallible senses is unsound and foolishness.

First, the notion of having “faith in science” is absurd.  Science is accepted as a useful tool because it is coherent, logical, evidence-based and productive — at no point does blind belief have anything to do with it.

Second, given that human minds are fallible and can make mistakes, how do you know that theism (either in general, or your specific type) is correct?  Science is all about rigorous testing, evaluation and verification, and is thus self-correcting even when carried out by human minds that are vulnerable to making mistakes.  Religion offers no such mechanism.  You believe that the Bible is perfectly correct, but as a fallible human, how can you be sure of that?  Aren’t you just trusting your own mind?  Please see this post.

There are truths of moral action that are held as good for the common people around the whole world since the beginning of time. Everyone knows that it is better to tell the truth and not lie or not to steal. However, if this is governed by chemical reactions why would that be my ultimate reason for not doing so.

The argument from common morality?  Yawn.  Morality does not come from a deity; it is a product of secular reasoning.

If you posit that there is a God who is the source of all morality, you run into Euthypro’s Dilemma: “Does God approve of something because it is good, or is it good because God approves of it? If the former is the case, then there is an objective standard of morality outside of God, and we can simply bypass God and appeal to this standard directly. But if the latter is the case, then good and evil would be entirely determined by God’s whims, and there would be no genuine objective morality, and thus no moral order, at all. In this respect, the moral argument is self-defeating.” (Source.)

Please don’t just copy-and-paste long-discredited apologetic arguments.  It’s boring and a waste of everyone’s time.

Whether senses are used or not all thoughts, feelings, and experiences are verified by the mind. Such a dreadful waste if it were to be thrown away at the end of our time.

Yes, it is a terrible waste that humans die, that our bodies turn to dust, that our knowledge is erased, and that our relationships end.  However, reality is not controlled by our desires — wishing for something doesn’t make it so.  The fact that human lives end, and the unpleasantness of that simple truth, does not make belief in a magic afterlife at all reasonable.

Religion exists around the world since the beginning of time and the afterlife holds true to them all. How could this be unless God has made this idea innate to them? People hope that they wont waste away after death and for good reason; its because they wont. There mind wont let them think that and if they do it is because they fall into denial from truth.

There is a perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanation: humans tend to be gullible, not rational.  The promise of a pleasant afterlife was invented by religion as a way to comfort people who are scared of death.

Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. [...] Praise be to God and his overflowing mercies.

This is a discussion, not a sermon.  Interspersing benedictions makes you sound even sillier than you otherwise would.

“Whatever is moved is moved by another. It is evident to sense that something is moved, for example, the sun. Therefore, is is moved by some other mover. And either that mover is moved or not. If it is moved, the thesis is proved that it is necessary to hold that there is something moving that is immobile. This is God.”

Once again, recycling tired apologetics will get you nowhere.  The argument from design is asinine on its face.  Who or what created God?  How can you claim that the universe couldn’t “just exist”, and then argue with a straight face that it was magically poofed into existence by a God who “just exists”? That doesn’t solve the problem; it just pushes it back one step and introduces an unnecessary entity, violating Occam’s Razor (the principle of parsimony).

It is foolish to demand acts of God and proof of his existence for he is made known to all.

What’s foolish is to claim that there is sufficient proof of the existence of any god.  Your “proof” is evidence of nothing more than the gullibility of delusional human beings.