A Life-Changing Philosophy
“In the nineteenth century Charles Bradlaugh, a prominent atheist, challenged a Christian man to debate the validity of the claims of Christianity. The Christian, Hugh Price Hughes, was an active soul-winner who worked among the poor in the slums of London. Hughes told Bradlaugh he would agree to the debate on one condition. Hughes said, ’I propose to you that we bring some concrete evidences of the validity of our beliefs in the form of men and women who have been redeemed from the lives of sin and shame by the influence of our teaching. I will bring 100 such men and women, and I challenge you to do the same.’ Hughes then said that if Bradlaugh couldn’t bring 100, then he could bring 50; if he couldn’t bring 50, then he could bring 20. He finally whittled the number down to one. All Bradlaugh had to do was to find one person whose life was improved by atheism and Hughes – who would bring 100 people improved by Christ – would agree to debate him. Bradlaugh withdrew!” (from What If Jesus Had Never Been Born by Dr James Kennedy)
Comments
August 25th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
how ignorant you are for this post.. yes there are many people positively affected by Christianity, but have you ever heard of the Crusades? Christianity is one of the biggest tools that leaders utilize to go to war. I suppose that ignorance is bliss to these people. To say people’s lives aren’t improved by atheism is ridiculous. I am testament to that fact. It is liberating to have an outlook on life from a logical standpoint.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Jesse, people will use any ideology as an excuse to justify their prejudices. You can’t blame the ideology for atrocities done inconsistantly with it.
Are you suggesting that my life is lived from an illogical standpoint? If you can point out where this illogic lies, I will renounce my faith.
But most of all, Jesse, I want to ask you, Do you know anything of this:
“The happiest day of my life was the day I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior for the remission of my sins, duly repented for, and with God’s help I hope and pray for the strength to glorify our father through my daily living as a witness and follower of Christ. Searching the Scriptures is my greatest source of hope and inspiration, having yet to learn the full power of prayer. I used to say, ‘This is a great world.’ With this new faith, this feeling has increased a thousandfold and I fairly ache within from happiness and rejoicing in sharing God’s manifold blessing which He gives to this world with Infinite mercy and grace.”
Do you know anything of that, Jesse? Do you know hope? Do you know purpose? Do you know this joy?
September 10th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Yes people will use any ideology as an excuse to justify their prejudices, of course. But stating that the ideology has no effect upon their actions would be illogical. I’m not stating that your entire life is lived from an illogical concept, but your religious views are. “If you can point out where this illogic lies, I will renounce my faith.” I am going to hold you to that. : ) I merely will ask you the question, “What evidence do you have of God? ” and if your answer is life itself, or some other cliche i would not like to even waste my time. Logic, specifically scientific logic, is based upon observation, followed by theory, followed by support for that theory. Do i know anything of hope or purpose or joy? Im sure you would like that answer to be no. Of course, i have experienced these innate emotions. I was raised as a conservative/orthadox member of Judaism. Gradually, I surrounded myself with knowledge, and i approached the questions of creation and death and life itself with a logical standpoint. Atheism/Agnosticism is logical. Nobody knows whether there is a god. IM NOT STATING THAT THERE IS NO GOD. However, I am stating that there is no evidence to support the concept of a god.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Of course ideology *should* have an effect on their actions. What is clear in the cases that you mentioned, though, is that it hasn’t.
In the examples you mentioned, the behaviour would not have been improved had the offenders been *less* Christian. However, it would have been improved if they had been *more* Christian.
Here is a question for you: you are saying that the Crusades were wrong. Who says they were wrong?
Because I suspect you are evaluating them based on standards you got out of the religion you now reject.
What evidence do I have of God? Here are some. Note – I’m not saying any one of these is a knock-down argument on its own. But taken together, I think they’re pretty persuasive.
1. That anything at all exists. God is the best explanation for where all the stuff came from and for what set off the Big Bang.
2. That the world is regular, and not chaotic. God is the best explanation for where the laws of nature came from.
3. That the world is finely tuned to support life. The odds of the cosmological constant being a value which can support life are 1 in 10^53. There are about 15 other such constants. Stephen Hawking (smart guy, by the way) says “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way except as an act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” It’s almost like the universe knew we were coming… God is the best explanation of why.
4. Life – what caused atoms to come alive? (Miller’s experiment used the wrong chemicals, btw. With the right chemicals you produce embalming fluid)
5. Design – the universe is beautiful. It’s unnecessary for it to be beautiful. We recognise beauty as a transcendent quality that comes from an artist. God is the artist. Likewise (and separately) God is the designer.
6. Intelligence – the existence of rationality makes more sense if the fundamental reality behind all creation (God) is rational. Otherwise, there is no basis for why rationality should arise in an irrational world.
7. Morality – similarly, there’s no reason why we should have such a fundamental sense of justice, right and wrong, if the world is fundamentally amoral. (One of the earliest things children say is “It’s not fair.” And that’s despite what parents always tell their kids, “Life isn’t fair”
8. Purpose – again, in a similar vein, in an arbitrary world it does not make sense for beings to arise who are totally obsessed with finding purpose and meaning.
9. The prophets – raised an Orthodox Jew, you would, I assume, be familiar with the many prophecies in the Bible. The incredible thing is their repeated fulfilment. I won’t list them all, but in addition to the incredible list of Messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus (read the gospel of Matthew for an introduction), there are also things like the length of the exile in Babylon and the means of their release, etc. Basically, reading the Old Testament is incredible.
Not to mention the New Testament.
Neither of which, by the way, have ever been controverted by archaeology.
““It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And, by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries.â€
- Renowned archaeologist Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, (New York: Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959), 136.
and above all,
10. Jesus. His life, death, and resurrection. Historical fact. I’ve written more about it in this comment.
It seems like you set the standard of admissible evidence like this: there’s no evidence for X unless X can be proven by the scientific method.
(Is that right?)
If that’s your view, I’d ask: can that statement be proven by the scientific method?
And if you have experienced those emotions, I’m glad for you. But do you find atheism brings you hope, or despair? Does it bring you purpose, or a sense of futility?
You might find it liberating to be set free from religion – I find it liberating to have my sins forgiven, to have a relationship with my Creator that isn’t based on my ability to be good, and to know my purpose for living. That’s liberating.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Now that’s what I call kitchen-sink apologetics.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I’m not basing the fact that the concept of multiple wars with millions of deaths is wrong based on standards from religion but of humanity.Now let me dismiss each and every one of your 10 points…
1. God is not the best explanation for everything that exists, and what on earth makes you think you have the authority to say that? Have you ever heard of string theory? or multi verse theory? You see, the difference between these and the God theory, is that these are based on sound logic and supported by observation.
2. Pretty similar answer to this… You repeated that God is the best answer. but the big bang positioned our planets in the arrangement they are to produce the laws of nature.
3. Once again, if you were aware of Stephen Hawkings work on Hawking Radiation, you would know that… well you would know this. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/hawking.html
I would invite that you get your facts straight. Multiverse theory is an explanation for these constants in the universe. Id also like to point out that the planets were here before humans. These constants werent made for us, but they allowed us to evolve.
4. What caused atoms to come alive? I will address this question when you tell me what caused God to come alive.
5. Intelligent Design is illogical. Why? One, because there is no evidence whatsoever to support it. Two, because the design is not intelligent. For example, eyesight or the appendix in a human. I can get much much deeper in this topic if you would like, but for the sake of time. Beauty is a quality that humans’ conscious came up with. For example, I see beauty in the results of evolution.
6. I apologize, but i dont even understand this point that youre making. I see absolutely no reason why rationality cant be brought upon by evolution. The human consciousness.
7. Gosh i love the concept of morality. Even if we grant the existence of objective moral values, the argument fails because the first premise is groundless. The rationale for thinking that objective moral values require God is the assumption that only God could ground the objectivity of ethics. But, in fact, there appears to be no way that the existence of God could ground moral truths–anymore than it could ground mathematical or scientific truths. Morality is a product of the human consciousness.
8. These answers are all similar. Human consciousness, take psychology. evolution.
9. and 10. Regardless of what, pardon my french, bullshit article you post, there is absolutely no evidence of any prophet’s miracles. Not only that, but a fundamental thing that many Christians dont understand is that SUPERNATURAL OCCURRENCES CALL FOR SUPERNATURAL EVIDENCE. Thousands of people say that they were abducted by aliens each year. Why dont we believe them? It is for this very reason.
Secondly, i am so sorry to tell you this, and no offense, but im sure youll take it anyways, THERE IS NO SOLID ACCOUNT OF ANY OF JESUS’S MIRACLES FROM ANY LEGITIMATE HISTORIAN. For example, his resurrection, one account says he appears here and another says he appears a few miles away at the same time. Even if we were to take these accounts as truthfully written, which they werent, the misinformation of these two makes it historically insignificant. Now is when you rebuttle with ” Well, in both cases he appeared” Well if two people told you that there was a car accident, but in each case the difference in their stories was where the accident took place (miles away), you would logically assume theyre not talking about the same crash.
Let me rephrase an earlier statement. for i do see value in practicing religion! It brings happiness to many many people. You see, the great thing about atheism is that i dont have hope in an imaginary character, and that i dont spend my time praying and giving money to its cause. My purpose is to enjoy my life, which I am. Im glad that your sins will be forgiven and that you have a relationship with your imaginary creator. If you believe in god this passionately you should believe in fairies and zeus and horus.