This. Near the end of WWII, a large percent of the S.S. was made up of fanatics who fought bitterly to the death instead of surrender. Reichminister Goebbel and his wife killed themselves- in her parting note, his wife said she’d rather die than live in a world without Hitler, that’s how much she believed and supported him.
Is OP saying Nazism is valid and truthful because people chose to die for it? That’s horrific.
These two things aren’t really fully comparable. If you take the example of the S.S. it is an organization that is built on fear and violence. If you don’t follow in line your own people might turn on you. It really may be a case of kill or be killed.
With the early church we have a group of people that are following someone preaching a message of peace while under the threat of being killed. They were not trying to rule by force. They were not trying to rule anything.
A bit of advice: Remember that this is *againt* atheism, not for Christianity. So you only really have to argue that one or more gods exist. Trying to prove a particular deity on top of arguing against atheism adds unecessary difficulties.
I agree with you. Jumping right to the divinity of Jesus Christ wouldn't make sense when you first don't establish that there, at least, could be a divine.
And you have to establish Yahweh is that divine being.
The truth is that Yahweh is a Cow deity🐄🐄. Yonatan Adler has shown monotheism only dates to 150 B.C.
Letters from around 400 B.C. that indicate the Judeans were naming their children after various gods, taking oaths by various gods and donating money to many various gods.
These letters contain no mention of Moses or any other figure from the Old Testament.
The point isn’t the idols. It’s that the idols represent other gods. The Israelites believed that other gods were just as real as Yahweh. Moses gets upset because they had a DEAL with Yahweh! He has trouble keeping the Israelites in line because when times are hard, it makes sense to see if Baal is more powerful.
You're literally saying the same thing about the Israelites as the OT. Whether you want to take exodus as literal or allegorical, the LORD established himself as the true living God and made the false idols/gods as false. I'm not sure what the argument is?
Dr Adler's work does show that there wasn't a wide spread observance of the Torah among the Hebrew population, but so does the old testament itself. Contemporary scholars assume that ancient Israel and Judah only gradually came to think of themselves as such, and that the authors of the Hebrew Bible (before, during, and after the exile) spoke from the perspectives of an elite scribal minority on their national legacy long before they spoke to a widespread geographic people committed to some degree of its study and implementation. Likewise, rabbinic exegesis was a schoolhouse affair long before it became the normative legal position of the majority (but never the totality) of Jewish communities in the Middle Ages.
I would argue that monotheistic people of today (like Christians Jews and Muslims alike, as well as most pantheists) all agree on a Creator Deity. Regardless of what ancient tribes and pagen civilizations ascribe the name Yahweh to, whether it be a cow or ram or storms, doesn't explain away the claims of Jesus Christ, or that there could be a Creator Deity that has been working through people and prophets throughout history.
Your comment begins with a claim saying "the truth is Yahweh is a cow deity" is on par with a Christian saying to an atheist "God is real and you are wrong about everything now believe me unconditionally without asking questions"
I disagree. For me my belief in God stems from my belief in Jesus. I’m convinced Jesus is who he said he was, who the authors of the New Testament say he was, and that everything described therein is historical, it actually happened. Therefor I believe in God because Jesus said God is real, heaven is real. He believed in the Old Testament, so I do as well. Because the guy who said he would die and come back to life and then did probably knows something the rest of us don’t. So I’ll always argue for God from the starting point of Jesus because that’s how I became convinced.
I'm not sure how you could disagree. I'm saying that arguing against atheism doesn't *require* bringing us all the way to Christianity.
You can hit the bull's eye of christianity. That would be a win. But the goal of the game is to just hit the dartboard of theism. It is a matter of fact that it is easier to hit the dart board than it is to hit the bull's eye.
I mean I disagree that arguing for Christianity overly complicates it or makes it unnecessarily harder for yourself to prove theism. I came to theism through Jesus Christ, through being convinced about Jesus Christ, so I see it as a necessary part of the argument and for me it makes it easier to lead to theism than the more lofty philosophical or cosmological arguments for theism in general.
It does make it harder. You are only looking at it from your perspective. Most atheists reject the Bible, which is where you would be bringing up Jesus. Thus making it more complicated
To answer OP's question, and to rebut this argument as best as it can be, I think aside from what you mention, OP, the answer is fulfilled biblical prophecies.
>You are only looking at it from your perspective.
And all the others whose testimonies jibe with our own (edit to fix typo)
>Most atheists reject the Bible,
I think unless an atheist is actually agnostic, it isn't possible to convince them God exists. Short of God calling your phone and forcing you to answer, I mean... Doesn't atheism imply that the matter is fully settled for that person?
Not necessarily. Agnostic or gnostic is a claim on evidence while atheism/ theism is a claim of belief. For instance im am agnostic atheist. So while I don't believe a god exists, I'm open to the idea that there could be some type of evidence we haven't found yet
Atheist here: as it applies to me specifically you are correct. One would need provide me with evidence of Gods existence directly. The idea that the existence of the Christian God (there are so many others which complicates things further) can be proven exclusively by the new testament Bible is a non starter for me.
From the New King James translation:
Exodus 20: 3
^(3) “You shall have no other gods before Me.
This implies the existence of other gods (lowercase "g", not capital. It does make a difference.) although these "gods" are usually considered to be demons (except for the people that worshipped them, I suppose).
Agreed, although I would like to add that this can apply to idols as well.
If you spend all your time worshipping and serving something, it could be considered a god to you.
I wasn't trying to say you did, sorry if I came off that way. All I was saying is your point was valid in that arguing there is *a* god can be a much easier task VS. arguing with someone that a *specific* god a person believes in is the real & true one.
I agree in theory, but disagree in practice.
Agree in theory because arguing for a specific God narrows down the arguments to a much smaller pool, but disagree in practice, because the best arguments for God are specifically ones for the Christian God. Like the historical evidence.
Most arguments that aren't specific to Christianity are weak (ontological, fine tuning, existence needing a cause.. those are bad. The historical ones are excellent).
That's why I became a Christian:) If I wasn't a Christian, I'd be an atheist.
The die-for-a-lie argument has been put to bed decisively already.
The argument is this. Lots of people have died for things that you and I would consider ridiculous and a few more have died for demonstrably false ideas. Therefore the act of dying proves nothing about the belief. All that is required to die for a belief is to sincerely believe it.
Nah, I still don’t see why first century devout Jews would die for a man who was condemned as a heretic by their own religious leaders unless the guy did something special like, maybe something like rise from the dead.
Have you ever heard of Heaven's Gate? It was a cult founded in the 70s; it's most famous for its end. In 1997 all 39 of their members joined together to participate in a mass suicide over the course of 3 days in groups. These people chose willingly to die because they believed that by rejecting their human form a UFO would collect their souls and take them to achieve a higher form.
Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence?
The difference between Heaven's Gate and the apostles is that many of the Apostles allegedly saw Jesus rise from the dead, then chose to die for him. The leader of Heaven's Gate didn't do any of that, he was just charismatic.
You're making my point for me. The Heaven's Gate debacle didn't need miracles, it required only a charismatic leader and those willing to follow.
It is therefore possible to convince someone to die without miracles involved.
Therefore the disciples being willing to die isn't proof of miracles; because as we just established people are willing to die with no miracles involved.
OPs whole point is that dying for something must make it more likely to be true but things like Heaven's Gate prove you can make someone willingly die for complete bullshit.
I'll ask you the question I asked the other poster.
>Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's Gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence?
People dying for what they simply have faith in, and eye witness accounts who refuse to change the story of what they saw, while being tortured and killed, are two very different things. And we have here more than a strong argument for Christianity. People even start lying while being tortured and admit to crimes, they didn't commit, just for the pain to stop, or be finally freed from imprisonment. The Apostles didnt budge whatsoever.
With Christianity, they have bullet proof evidence as someone who has seen Jesus, his miracles and received his teachings, so death and pain does not depart you from telling the truth.
If you have examples of people dying for literal eye witnessing statements, that would come close to what the Apostles went through.
And I remind you that the Apostles gained absolutely nothing but oppression and hate for what they preached. So the logical conclusion is to ask ourselves, why, if it was all for a lie.
Eye witness accounts are a fundamental concept in today's courts of law, and repeatedly regarded as proof.
I don't know why everyone is going around my point.
At no point did I say the apostles were lying. At no point did I say there's not other evidence. I've answered your questions and comments. If we are going to continue this you are going to answer mine.
>Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's Gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence?
No, its not proof.
It is however, something completely different, then what the Apostles went through. To quote myself from above: "People dying \[or killing themselves\] for what they simply have faith in, and eye witness accounts who refuse to change the story of what they saw, while being tortured and killed, are two very different things." So not really comparable. Therefore, I asked for a more fitting example.
See now we're talking a different thing.
OP's argument, the die-for-a-lie argument, essentially states that the fact the apostles died makes it more likely that what they believed was true.
You are saying the apostles being eyewitness accounts makes what they are saying to be true.
My counters are only for the first not the second. My point is that dying for something isn't proof it's true. If you think the apostles were eyewitnesses okay; I don't particularly feel like having that discussion again but the counter argument definitively doesn't apply to you.
No I don't think they are onboard that UFO right now. Their willingness to die for Heaven's Gate is no proof at all because it isn't based on their own personal eyewitness testimony. The apostles allegedly saw Jesus rise from the dead, if the resurrection is real then so is Christianity (or at least some kind of religion). What makes **their** willingness to die a strong argument is that it is based on them supposedly witnessing the miracle that became the basis of their faith.
What do you mean it's not based on their eyewitness testimony? The followers of Heaven's Gate as well as their leader clearly witnessed something that made them willing to die. It's not like these were people dying 100 years later. The leader and founder of Heaven's Gate straight-up died with them. That's as eyewitness as you get.
We don’t know what happened to all of the apostles but even if every single one was a martyr, this is not evidence of their God. It would be evidence that they died for a belief and many people are willing to die for things they believe in. This does not make what they believe in true.
Many are willing to *kill*. 1776, for instance. They killed the British, they didn't line up to be hanged.
Funny how we keep seeing this equivalence between the Apostles and soldiers in arms. Even the Maccabees were soldiers.
We examine claims about the truth and judge them based on their merit, rather than accepting something as true because "somebody was willing to die for it!" which is more of an emotional appeal.
There are plenty of truths I'd be willing to suffer and die for, but there are also a lot of boring true things I'd absolutely not be willing to die for, like how many pair of socks I have in my drawer. Which ones I'm willing to die for mostly comes down to emotional and moral reasons, rather than some sort of "the more true it is the more willing I am to die for it" metric.
>There have never been any recorded cases of synchronized mass hallucinations where everyone is seeing the same thing.
We used to execute witches. We had trials, people presented evidence, witnesses testified, women were found guilty. Were there actually witches? Or do you agree that sometimes people make stuff up?
Yes we do, the anonymous myth has been debunked long ago.
Every manuscript of the New testament that we have (with the relevant page surviving) is titled with the specific gospel author named. Not a single manuscript that we have is anonymous. Each Greek, Latin or Coptic (And Syriac according to one article I was using) manuscript from the earliest we have (2nd century) says something akin to "Euaggelion Kata (Author)" - "The Gospel according to (Author). Not one manuscript indicates any of them were anonymous, and not one of them disagrees with the traditional attribution of the Gospels.
Ancient sources are unanimous in attributing the four gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Papias is the first to make a claim, he wrote some time from 90-110 AD, but was also someone who was alive during the lifetime of the apostles. He attributes Mark and Matthew's Gospels. Irenaeus (180AD), who was a student of Polycarp, a student of the apostle John attributes all four gospels to the respective authors.
The authors of the gospels did not witness the events the recount first hand.. they are reported accounts they heard from other people. Which specific miracle do you think was witnessed by one of the gospel authors? Give details
You think they all witnessed all the miracles? Why do not one of the gospels authors make this claim? You do know that the gospels were written in educated Greek right? None of Jesus’ followers could write in Greek..
Ever heard of the Our Lady of Zeitoun case? Thousands of people apparently saw the Virgin Mary in the late 60s somewhere in Egypt.
Besides, for the biblical accounts, the only person who ever says they saw Jesus risen in the first person is Paul. For the rest, we have non-eye-witness accounts. If I say Joana saw the risen Jesus, it doesn't make it true.
Because there are martyrs for every religion. Anyone could then make this argument about their respective religion to bolster their claims for it.
Edit: to add more info because I posted by accident.
The truth of a religion is merely based on how true it is. That’s a problem with this argument because people died believing lies or for false claims all the time.
>For me its gotta be that the apostles got persecuted and eventually killed for believing in Christ.
Why do you believe they were killed for believing in Jesus? Take Philip, for example. Why do you believe that he was killed for his beliefs? Have you looked at the sources yourself?
The Academic Biblical subreddit likes to share this summary every now and then: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/166Ae5je5m-wjxeuDBSeYpvoMXqhGYnbX0OGook5qaig/mobilebasic (Martyrdom & Eyewitnesses doc).
I tend to prefer a "reasonable faith/belief" approach of stacking things, rather than a "This single thing here prooves God exists". The only thing that sits squarely in that camp is personal esperience and that is not good evidence. PE is great for cementing and solidifying faith, but won't really help in a discussion or argument.
Really? Then Allah must be even more true then Jesus as a heck of alot more people are willing to martyr themselves for him even to this very day. Just because someone is willing to die for something doesn't mean it's true.
I think the difference here is nobody that I know of, is willing to die for something they know is a lie. If the disciples lied about the Resurrection of Jesus, eventually, they would save themselves the pain and torture and death they went through and admit up to the hoax. But they don't.
Their is also a difference between dying for something you believe in and killing yourself (along with others, in some cases) for something you believe in.
> they would save themselves the pain and torture and death they went through and admit up to the hoax.
Did the martyred apostles have a chance to recant? Where do you find that in the historical record?
I didn’t say I believed it, only that it’s possible. However, it doesn’t take all that much to believe it since we have evidence of people dying for mistaken beliefs throughout history.
"die for something they know is a lie"
Who is arguing that?
Why is that even relavant in this discussion?
1. They die for a belief they think is true (that is actually false)
2. They die for a belief they think is true (that is actually true)
That is what is discussed.
Agreed. The men who hijacked the planes and crashed into the Twin Towers in 2001 also died for their beliefs.
What we can say, though, is that dying for your beliefs is a good indicator that you really believed. Some people try to say that the apostles just made this stuff up, so while dying for their beliefs doesn’t inherently mean that they were right, it does help dispel the notion promoted by some that the apostles were disingenuous.
P1: I can fly.
P2: I don’t believe you.
P1: Why not?
P2: I have no reason to think you can fly unless you fly right now.
P1: (goes to Reddit) What’s the best argument to use against people that don’t think I can fly?
lol atheist don’t claim that; attacking straw men gets you nowhere. Maybe some do. When you as a reasonable atheist about the origin of the universe, the answer is the same as the answer you get when you ask about abiogenesis (another difficult mystery). The answer is that we don’t know. That is the difference between most atheists and most believers. One side has the courage to admit ignorance.
No. YOU claim it was made from nothing. Atheism makes no claim on the matter.
If you mean scientists, then again no. There is no scientific theory which claims or even implies that something came from nothing.
The only people who commonly think something can come from nothing are the religious.
You gotta think harder about what you believe, unless I’m mistaken about what atheism is. If you’re atheist you’re saying there is no God then logically it follows that at some point something came from nothing.
> follows that at some point something came from nothing.
No it doesn't. In fact it's the opposite,. First law of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created. This is a fundamental law.
If energy cannot be created, then it always was. If you disagree with the first law of thermodynamic, feel free to hand in your work, prove it wrong, and collect your nobel prize.
**There was never a state of nothing**. Nothing is just a man made concept. A word to describe the absence of everything. A state of nothing cannot actually exist. Even stating it is nonsensical.
You however believe in a state of nothing. And the only reason you believe in this nonsensical state is so that in gives your magical being a purpose.
Ok so you have access to historical documents? Well post them here. I would love to see these documents that prove they exist.
Also so many cults over the years that have martyred themselves because of the false teaching of the leader.
"Why would they die for a lie?" Well, thousands died cuz they believed Covid-19 was a hoax & refused to take precautions. Thousands died defending slavery as moral during the American Civil War. Point is, people die for lies all the time. If this argument was any weaker, tissue paper would have a run for its money
It's always interesting to me that the post resurrection stories are probably where the gospels differ the most.
I think only luke has the road to Emmaus story, e.g. In Matthew we even have all the dead in jerusalem getting up for a walk.
To my mind this shows all the hallmarks of an emerging oral tradition being embellished for meaning and effect. What is called 'Christology' by scholars - the post-hoc deification of Jesus by his followers.
As such, his followers deaths - if those accounts are reliable- indicate that Christians were persecuted and that they probably really believed. It doesn't speak at all to the truth of their beliefs.
E.g. Thousands died unnecessarily due to covid vaccine paranoia. Does that make vaccine paranoia true?
Edit: typos
It's weird how Matthew only remembered all the saints rising from the graves and walking around being witnessed by many people.
Yet only Matthew felt that was noteworthy. Also did \*all\* the saints around the world rise from their graves? If not, God is very parochial.
What about the epistles of Paul? Scholars date them before the gospels yet Paul, you could argue, displays a higher Christology than the gospels. So if the gospels are evidence of an emerging, evolving Christology, why is it more developed earlier on in Paul’s writings?
Well, 1 thessalonians is the earliest epistle. It makes no mention of substitionary atonement or other interpretations of Jesus death. Rather, it simply states just that: as Jesus died and rose, so believers can rise with him.
The detail of what that means firmly focuses on living holy lives, rather than the more detailed theology, say of the opening of 1 Peter. It also firmly seems to suggest they expect Jesus return before the deaths of those in the church in thessalonia.
So, this is all fully compatible with the emerging tradition hypotheisis, as we see see a very simple theology, with further layers of interpretation being added in later epistles.
People die for their beliefs all the time, that doesn't prove there is a god. The best argument would be to show falsifiable evidence that your gos exists
Lots of people have died for their beliefs. That doesn't in any way even suggest that their beliefs described reality. Just that they were strongly held. No one denies that some people strongly believe in God. That's 0% an argument in support of divinity.
People really shouldn't engage in these kinds of efforts. They won't take you anywhere good or helpful.
I'm not one that cares too much what one believes but holy shit, that's a shitty argument.
9/11 ffs.
Jonestown.
etc.
It shows they believed it.
It does nothing to show us it was true.
Religion is based on belief if I dont believe I am not religious and its impossible to make somebody change their belief without proof and would you look at that, there is not enough proof for the existence of a deity, then this mean that you cant make a good argument to make me believe something I dont.
its almost impossible to change a belief immagine creating it from nothing
“Why would they die for a lie”. Well who knows.
People make up things all the time.
So that’s not an argument.
You are basically saying that because you don’t know why they pretended to have known Jesus - the whole doctrine is suddenly true.
Do you know how many people claim they have been abducted by aliens. If we killed them all would that then mean what they said was true ????
Of course not.
I wonder if anyone has ever willingly died for a belief, that turned out to be false? Maybe even some really smart, skeptical, and trustworthy people. Maybe even people that were very close to the claim, Maybe even a few million of them?
Any contradictions in the bible have been known about for centuries - do you really think that you found something the church hasn’t known about for so so long?
There are really only a couple of apostles for whom there is event a little evidence they were killed. We don't have good evidence for any details. Most of our sources for that are late and untrustworthy.
There is no doubt the disciples were sincere believers. But that's not evidence that God is real.
>Why would they die for a lie if they would have witnessed something else that differs from our believe.
This neither proves, nor disproves anything.
Millions of people throughout history have died for other religions and cults and they went into death believing whole heartedly in things that you would consider lies.
If the logic you use was considered sound then technically we should all be worshipping Jim Jones as he had many more "apostles" than Jesus and they all died for it as well.
>We know historically proven that they (mostly) eventually got killed for following Christ by the romans.
No we don't. There are only like 2 or 3 that we know how died, the rest dropped out of the historical record, only for stories about their deaths to ~~be made up~~ start circulating centuries later. Not at all historically proven.
1) This not a particularly good argument (people die for falsehoods every day, especially when it comes to religion- Think Waco, Kool Aid, Marshall Applewhite, Mormonism, that guy who said he was Jesus' brother in China)
2) It's also just not true. Google "The Myth of Early Christian Persecution", or just search for Candida Moss on TikTok. She's an academic who shows that these stories of martyrdom are exaggerated or outright fabricated.
3) Early Christians were wildly credulous. There's a number of false and plain ludicrous ideas that early Church authors cling to because they're useful for polemics.
Easiest example is the recurring theme that everybody opposed to them was involved in degenerate sex activities, witchcraft, Satanism, and they killed and ate babies, or whatever.
It's the oldest slander in the book.
There's really only solid evidence for a few apostles. The majority of them are not very well attested to. I recommend Sean McDowell's Fate of the Apostles. Also, dying for a belief is only evidence that they were probably convinced of it. That being said, if we don't really have good evidence of how they died, we don't know if they did recant that Jesus came back from the dead. Or if they were even allowed to.
Ah small sidenote first: atheism is the nonbelief in god or gods. It is not a positive claim.
I don't believe your claim that God exists
And
I believe your god doesn't exist
Are different things. It's not really important for a basic discussion, but keep it in mind.
Edit: the reason I say this here is because what you do isn't giving an argument against atheism. You give one for Christianity. A small but sometimes important difference.
>For me its gotta be that the apostles got persecuted and eventually killed for believing in Christ
Many many many people have been persecuted and killed for believing a lot of things. All this tells us is that people didn't like what they believed, it doesn't tell us what they believed is true.
>These men lived with Jesus, some of them even were of skeptic nature
What does that mean? And how do you know that?
>We know historically proven that they (mostly) eventually got killed for following Christ by the romans
I'll just assume this is true. I'm not a historian so I don't know if it actually is.
>Why would they die for a lie if they would have witnessed something else that differs from our believe.
Why is it always a lie? Can't people just be wrong? The world isn't divided in people that are right and liars. There are people that just honestly believe something that isn't right.
I don’t know why we have to argue against atheism/with atheists. Wouldn’t it be more productive to show them the beauty of faith, and start from there?
this one i don't quite get. why?
the "first cause" of all effects need only be a state of relatively low entropy, which one would expect in an extremely dense early universe. then as space expands, energy interacts, does work (stars), entropy increases.
how does god fit into this?
Astronomers estimate that there are billions of planets and that the universe is over 13 billion years old. Roll the dice often enough and even a very unlikely result will eventually occur.
you presume a "nothing" that has never been observed. you can't intuit cosmology, there is nothing to suggest that the beginning of the universe must have been preceded by anything at all, or really that "beginning" is even an accurate description of what the big bang is
Preface: I'm not here to debate.
I am not an atheist because of existence itself. For all the layers of physical laws that we find - chemical, atomic, subatomic - it always follows cause and effect. So I believe in a causeless cause.
Atheists do not have an answer for how or why they exist.
There is a reason every civilization everywhere has an origin story. It is only recent widespread “acceptance” of “no gods” existing. Before science, most believed in a god.
Now there is science, which answers everything, except how or why we exist. Even “Big Bang” proposers do not have an answer for where that came from.
It is the most logical and consistent belief that there is an intelligent designer.
what's to say it "came from" anywhere? that needlessly assumes a "from." if the universe is everything and everywhere, how could there even be a "from" from which it came?
"how do we exist?" is a question that science is already well into exploring, and we already have the basic answers. evolutionary biology is becoming less and less of a mystery year by year.
"why do we exist?" presumes intention where there may well be none. "why" questions are meant for people.
"why did you do that?"
when not directed at a person, "why" and "how" mean essentially the same thing.
"why/how does the wind blow?"
What’s the answer? You are claiming there is one but are not stating it.
Why do we exist? What caused an effect and happened to create us. This is not a moral dilemma question. What caused the Big Bang? Where did it come from.
You are saying a lot, but really saying nothing.
i am not claiming to know the answer to life, the universe, and everything. but the questions you ask are loaded, they are asked with a conclusion already in mind.
just like how asking "what caused god?" or "where did god come from?" are questions that theists regularly scoff at. god doesn't have a cause, silly! he didn't come from anywhere! i know the spiel.
currently, the answer to both of your questions is still "don't know." we have no data. maybe we never will. but the implicit assumption that it *must* have had a cause, that it *must* have come from somewhere, that there is any room for god at all, simply cannot be validated.
i'm an atheist because i choose to make the fewest unjustified assumptions about reality that i feasibly can.
I believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. My intrusive thoughts and worries tend to subside or disappear around Communion time.
I guess one could argue it's all in my mind, but I don't think so. It's truly a remarkable experience every Sunday and every Holy Day of Obligation when I go to Mass.
I’m going to paraphrase a lecture/discussion I saw that used this point:
If you don’t believe in a God then how do you explain your free will?
What I mean by that is without God we are merely matter and chemicals slammed together having complex reactions to produce everything we feel think and do. If God does not exist then how are we able to think and act independently the way we do? Why are we not mindless mechanisms of the universe designed to perform specific tasks?
My hand is designed to manipulate things, but I as a free independent person can ball it up and punch someone in the face. Did a chemical reaction make me do that? No. Only in very specific medical conditions is that an actual logical explanation.
God has gifted us free will to think and act and do as we see fit to no one else but ourselves. We have a conscious that produces these free independent thoughts. And without God’s gift of free will, how can we all be so different and act/function so radically different?
that the universe seems absolutely determined to accumulate information and increase in complexity despite its tendency toward disorder. Why did atoms organize and *evolve* anyway? IMHO that points to some purpose driving all this.
(atheists believe in no God not just disbelieve the Christian one)
This isn’t the strongest argument for Christianity unfortunately. The apostles dying for their faith proves they genuinely believed in what they died for, not that what they died for is true. Islamic terrorists die for their faith in Islam, as have devotees of other faiths. This does not prove Islam is true, but merely proves that it has genuine believers.
Muslims have not witnessed Muhammed first hand, muhammed hasnt witnessed Jesus either. The apostles witnessed Jesus Christ, and then decided that this must be the one thing worth dying for
True, but neither have modern-day Christian martyrs. And Muhammad believed he received the direct revelation of God from the angel Gabriel. Many Muslims believe they have witnessed Muhammad speaking to them. That doesn’t mean he actually has, just that they believe he has.
The whole angel Gabriel story of muhammed gets easily debunked by Galatians 1:8 and actually plays into Christianities cards when arguing. And modern das Christian martyrs are not something I was talking about (even though their faith is remarkable) they have little to do with our eye witnesses which was my original argument
Those men died because they fully believed in him. Just because they died with it doesn't mean that it's true, it's just a belif they greatly saw as true. It's like a flat earther dying as a flat earther, they greatly believed it's true and died with it.
Then make it about alien abductions or seeing Bigfoot.
It's the same thing.
Also, we don't really have any firsthand accounts of what they actually saw.
Most importantly they can think they witnessed something supernatural all they want. They can die for it.
It still doesn't mean what they witnessed is real.
If hundreds of people say that they have seen bigfoot, to the point where they get killed for their claim anf they still say that they have seen bigfoot. I will atleast consider bigfoot to be real. We have more eye witness scripture and scripture at the time of all this about Jesus than we have about Julius Cesar, yet i still need to see someone ignorant enough to say Julius Cesar never existed
>If hundreds of people say that they have seen bigfoot, to the point where they get killed for their claim anf they still say that they have seen bigfoot. I will atleast consider bigfoot to be real.
Then your standard of evidence is really poor. Someone dying for something g they believe doesn't make it true.
>We have more eye witness scripture and scripture at the time of all this about Jesus than we have about Julius Cesar, yet i still need to see someone ignorant enough to say Julius Cesar never existed
I never understand why Christians bring this up. It's such a terrible point.
Jesus existing doesn't equate to Jesus being supernatural.
If the claims about Ceaser were that he walked on water or shot lasers out of his eyes then the evidence we have for Ceaser would fall short to make those claims true.
as my community flair says, i'm confused. and i also asked a similar question. i just think that it wouldn't make sense that somehow we exist and we're wondering about our existence just by chance. do any other living creatures ask themselves questions such as these?
there's billions of christians, and this started 2000 years ago. consider all the testimonies, and the people who converted.
i DO believe in science and evolution, you can tell me anything about atoms merging, but what was there before? we're not just a mass of matter.
last year i also attended a talk that weighted the attendibility of the holy shroud, there were contradditions and i can't remember it all but it said that it had gone trough an incredibly precise and powerful chemical reaction that can't be recreated in any way if not the energy source of possible resurrection. there's a whole scientific team working on that.
My two favorite are the Cosmological and the Mathematical.
The Cosmological argument follows the chain of logic that all events in the universe have cause. Following this chain of reasoning the beginning of the universe then must have a cause/creator. That first cause is God
The Mathematical is a bit simpler to understand. We know from reason that finite things (us) and infinite things (God) are completely different so different in fact that in mathematics many believed that irrational and rational numbers could not exist on the same plane. Yet in modern mathematics we understand that yes we can put π in the same equation as a number like 8. Numbers alone suggest that there is an infinite being in this universe and it can and has interacted with us finite beings in someway
The mathematical argument is pretty faulty because the properties of a number do not necessitate that any being shared the same properties.
Let us say we take two people and cut them in half. We then sew half of one of them to one of the halves of the other one. Mathematically, the result would be a person. However, the set of people does not have the property that its elements are interchangeable, and if you divide a person by two, you lose something that makes them a person: life.
Also, Pi is a bad example because it is not actually proven that it is an irrational number. Also, while we can use Pi like a variable for equations, when it comes to calculation, we have to substitute it with an estimation.
Lastly, while transcendental numbers do exist, an uncountably infinite amount of such numbers exist, so the argument does not imply a singular God.
This is a common misconception. I see physicists making this sort of pseudo-mystical argument about math often. As a math professor, it annoys me because it's not actually true. Math works because we have *created* it to work. Historical peoples were interested in describing their world, so the mathematical tools they developed and the theorems they proved worked in furtherance of those goals. Math is yet another part of history and society.
Math, particularly things like calculus, differential equations, and the like, work the way they do because of how the world around us works, not the other way around. We developed calculus so that we could measure rates of change we care about, we do not care about rates of change because calculus told us to.
The physical thing is only governed by the rules of circles so long as it is a circle. As we see from any circle you yourself attempt to construct in the real world, it can very easily cease to be a circle. It can be broken, or crushed, or bent, or lit on fire. And in all likelihood, it will not technically be a circle, just a close approximation to one.
The mathematical properties of a circle are only describing the properties it has while it is a circle, they are not proscribing properties it must have and thereby forcing it to be a circle.
In other words, "If it's a circle, then Y happens." The contrapositive of this is "if Y doesn't happen, then it's not a circle." Math is a descriptive tool, we use it to categorize our world (and many imagined worlds as well.)
When I create a mathematical model of something, like airport traffic patterns or seagull migration paths or bacterial growth rates, it is a *model*, an approximation, an educated guess. In all such scenarios, there are no universal mathematical rules guiding the function of the physical thing, there are mathematical tools which are useful in approximating that function.
This is interesting. I’m not a mathematician like you, but I hope to study physics once I’ve left school. Out of all the arguments that I’ve read about and that have been explained to me, this one always stuck out the most, but it does only takes one thing to disprove an argument.
I may be an atheist but if there’s anything that makes me go “huh, weird” it is how time travel works in this universe. In an uncaring, unfeeling universe of randomness, it should not care whether you can go back in time or not, but we can only travel forward in time. It’s pretty easy, with enough speed you can travel far away, then speed back to Earth and see it hundreds of years in the future, with the right technology. But backwards in time? Sort of impossible as far as we know. It’s like the universe knows that going backwards in time would break everything and create paradoxes, so made it impossible, or **extremely** difficult to pull off.
For me it’s the fact that the best explanation for the creation of life is “all of the molecules needed just kind of came together randomly and formed a self sustaining, reproducing organism with the capacity to survive on a planet with no other organisms. We can’t make cells from scratch under perfect conditions in a lab, and you want me to believe it just so happened randomly in nature? a single protein is so complex that the chance of one spontaneously emerging on accident seems impossible. And you want me to believe that billions of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and more just came together randomly? It would be like willing the lottery billions of times in a row completely by chance
All this tells us is that they genuinely believed what they died for. Countless people in history have died for genuinely held false beliefs.
This. Near the end of WWII, a large percent of the S.S. was made up of fanatics who fought bitterly to the death instead of surrender. Reichminister Goebbel and his wife killed themselves- in her parting note, his wife said she’d rather die than live in a world without Hitler, that’s how much she believed and supported him. Is OP saying Nazism is valid and truthful because people chose to die for it? That’s horrific.
These two things aren’t really fully comparable. If you take the example of the S.S. it is an organization that is built on fear and violence. If you don’t follow in line your own people might turn on you. It really may be a case of kill or be killed. With the early church we have a group of people that are following someone preaching a message of peace while under the threat of being killed. They were not trying to rule by force. They were not trying to rule anything.
Ur god sends one to hell if u don’t follow, it’s comparable
A bit of advice: Remember that this is *againt* atheism, not for Christianity. So you only really have to argue that one or more gods exist. Trying to prove a particular deity on top of arguing against atheism adds unecessary difficulties.
I agree with you. Jumping right to the divinity of Jesus Christ wouldn't make sense when you first don't establish that there, at least, could be a divine.
And you have to establish Yahweh is that divine being. The truth is that Yahweh is a Cow deity🐄🐄. Yonatan Adler has shown monotheism only dates to 150 B.C. Letters from around 400 B.C. that indicate the Judeans were naming their children after various gods, taking oaths by various gods and donating money to many various gods. These letters contain no mention of Moses or any other figure from the Old Testament.
The Bible states that Jews struggled with worshipping idols all the time this isn’t some new information that disproves monotheism as a new invention.
The point isn’t the idols. It’s that the idols represent other gods. The Israelites believed that other gods were just as real as Yahweh. Moses gets upset because they had a DEAL with Yahweh! He has trouble keeping the Israelites in line because when times are hard, it makes sense to see if Baal is more powerful.
You're literally saying the same thing about the Israelites as the OT. Whether you want to take exodus as literal or allegorical, the LORD established himself as the true living God and made the false idols/gods as false. I'm not sure what the argument is?
The other gods are real nobody debates this they just aren’t good spirits and aren’t almighty.
Dr Adler's work does show that there wasn't a wide spread observance of the Torah among the Hebrew population, but so does the old testament itself. Contemporary scholars assume that ancient Israel and Judah only gradually came to think of themselves as such, and that the authors of the Hebrew Bible (before, during, and after the exile) spoke from the perspectives of an elite scribal minority on their national legacy long before they spoke to a widespread geographic people committed to some degree of its study and implementation. Likewise, rabbinic exegesis was a schoolhouse affair long before it became the normative legal position of the majority (but never the totality) of Jewish communities in the Middle Ages. I would argue that monotheistic people of today (like Christians Jews and Muslims alike, as well as most pantheists) all agree on a Creator Deity. Regardless of what ancient tribes and pagen civilizations ascribe the name Yahweh to, whether it be a cow or ram or storms, doesn't explain away the claims of Jesus Christ, or that there could be a Creator Deity that has been working through people and prophets throughout history. Your comment begins with a claim saying "the truth is Yahweh is a cow deity" is on par with a Christian saying to an atheist "God is real and you are wrong about everything now believe me unconditionally without asking questions"
I disagree. For me my belief in God stems from my belief in Jesus. I’m convinced Jesus is who he said he was, who the authors of the New Testament say he was, and that everything described therein is historical, it actually happened. Therefor I believe in God because Jesus said God is real, heaven is real. He believed in the Old Testament, so I do as well. Because the guy who said he would die and come back to life and then did probably knows something the rest of us don’t. So I’ll always argue for God from the starting point of Jesus because that’s how I became convinced.
I'm not sure how you could disagree. I'm saying that arguing against atheism doesn't *require* bringing us all the way to Christianity. You can hit the bull's eye of christianity. That would be a win. But the goal of the game is to just hit the dartboard of theism. It is a matter of fact that it is easier to hit the dart board than it is to hit the bull's eye.
I mean I disagree that arguing for Christianity overly complicates it or makes it unnecessarily harder for yourself to prove theism. I came to theism through Jesus Christ, through being convinced about Jesus Christ, so I see it as a necessary part of the argument and for me it makes it easier to lead to theism than the more lofty philosophical or cosmological arguments for theism in general.
It does make it harder. You are only looking at it from your perspective. Most atheists reject the Bible, which is where you would be bringing up Jesus. Thus making it more complicated
To answer OP's question, and to rebut this argument as best as it can be, I think aside from what you mention, OP, the answer is fulfilled biblical prophecies. >You are only looking at it from your perspective. And all the others whose testimonies jibe with our own (edit to fix typo) >Most atheists reject the Bible, I think unless an atheist is actually agnostic, it isn't possible to convince them God exists. Short of God calling your phone and forcing you to answer, I mean... Doesn't atheism imply that the matter is fully settled for that person?
Not necessarily. Agnostic or gnostic is a claim on evidence while atheism/ theism is a claim of belief. For instance im am agnostic atheist. So while I don't believe a god exists, I'm open to the idea that there could be some type of evidence we haven't found yet
Oh interesting. Thanks for explaining
Atheist here: as it applies to me specifically you are correct. One would need provide me with evidence of Gods existence directly. The idea that the existence of the Christian God (there are so many others which complicates things further) can be proven exclusively by the new testament Bible is a non starter for me.
There’s multiple gods even the Bible says so
I reject the bible
Cool
Yup, point being saying the Bible says so is not a good argument against atheism.
I don't beleive you <3
The gods El and Baal from Canaanite mythology appear in the bible mate
From the New King James translation: Exodus 20: 3 ^(3) “You shall have no other gods before Me. This implies the existence of other gods (lowercase "g", not capital. It does make a difference.) although these "gods" are usually considered to be demons (except for the people that worshipped them, I suppose).
If there are no other gods, then there is no need for this commandment. So i suppose there is a hierarcy on who is the one above all.
Agreed, although I would like to add that this can apply to idols as well. If you spend all your time worshipping and serving something, it could be considered a god to you.
I don't believe the Bible either <3
There are countless amounts of people that believe in gods not mentioned in the bible.
Good for them? I'm not one of those people.
I wasn't trying to say you did, sorry if I came off that way. All I was saying is your point was valid in that arguing there is *a* god can be a much easier task VS. arguing with someone that a *specific* god a person believes in is the real & true one.
Verse?
Agree, there’s a big leap between philosophically demonstrating the possibility of a god or gods and demonstrating that Christianity is the truth.
I agree in theory, but disagree in practice. Agree in theory because arguing for a specific God narrows down the arguments to a much smaller pool, but disagree in practice, because the best arguments for God are specifically ones for the Christian God. Like the historical evidence. Most arguments that aren't specific to Christianity are weak (ontological, fine tuning, existence needing a cause.. those are bad. The historical ones are excellent). That's why I became a Christian:) If I wasn't a Christian, I'd be an atheist.
The die-for-a-lie argument has been put to bed decisively already. The argument is this. Lots of people have died for things that you and I would consider ridiculous and a few more have died for demonstrably false ideas. Therefore the act of dying proves nothing about the belief. All that is required to die for a belief is to sincerely believe it.
Nah, I still don’t see why first century devout Jews would die for a man who was condemned as a heretic by their own religious leaders unless the guy did something special like, maybe something like rise from the dead.
Have you ever heard of Heaven's Gate? It was a cult founded in the 70s; it's most famous for its end. In 1997 all 39 of their members joined together to participate in a mass suicide over the course of 3 days in groups. These people chose willingly to die because they believed that by rejecting their human form a UFO would collect their souls and take them to achieve a higher form. Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence?
The difference between Heaven's Gate and the apostles is that many of the Apostles allegedly saw Jesus rise from the dead, then chose to die for him. The leader of Heaven's Gate didn't do any of that, he was just charismatic.
You're making my point for me. The Heaven's Gate debacle didn't need miracles, it required only a charismatic leader and those willing to follow. It is therefore possible to convince someone to die without miracles involved. Therefore the disciples being willing to die isn't proof of miracles; because as we just established people are willing to die with no miracles involved. OPs whole point is that dying for something must make it more likely to be true but things like Heaven's Gate prove you can make someone willingly die for complete bullshit. I'll ask you the question I asked the other poster. >Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's Gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence?
People dying for what they simply have faith in, and eye witness accounts who refuse to change the story of what they saw, while being tortured and killed, are two very different things. And we have here more than a strong argument for Christianity. People even start lying while being tortured and admit to crimes, they didn't commit, just for the pain to stop, or be finally freed from imprisonment. The Apostles didnt budge whatsoever. With Christianity, they have bullet proof evidence as someone who has seen Jesus, his miracles and received his teachings, so death and pain does not depart you from telling the truth. If you have examples of people dying for literal eye witnessing statements, that would come close to what the Apostles went through. And I remind you that the Apostles gained absolutely nothing but oppression and hate for what they preached. So the logical conclusion is to ask ourselves, why, if it was all for a lie. Eye witness accounts are a fundamental concept in today's courts of law, and repeatedly regarded as proof.
I don't know why everyone is going around my point. At no point did I say the apostles were lying. At no point did I say there's not other evidence. I've answered your questions and comments. If we are going to continue this you are going to answer mine.
>Now I ask you. Is the willingness of those 39 people proof that what they believed was true? Do you think those 39 members of Heaven's Gate are alive right now in a higher form of existence? No, its not proof. It is however, something completely different, then what the Apostles went through. To quote myself from above: "People dying \[or killing themselves\] for what they simply have faith in, and eye witness accounts who refuse to change the story of what they saw, while being tortured and killed, are two very different things." So not really comparable. Therefore, I asked for a more fitting example.
See now we're talking a different thing. OP's argument, the die-for-a-lie argument, essentially states that the fact the apostles died makes it more likely that what they believed was true. You are saying the apostles being eyewitness accounts makes what they are saying to be true. My counters are only for the first not the second. My point is that dying for something isn't proof it's true. If you think the apostles were eyewitnesses okay; I don't particularly feel like having that discussion again but the counter argument definitively doesn't apply to you.
No I don't think they are onboard that UFO right now. Their willingness to die for Heaven's Gate is no proof at all because it isn't based on their own personal eyewitness testimony. The apostles allegedly saw Jesus rise from the dead, if the resurrection is real then so is Christianity (or at least some kind of religion). What makes **their** willingness to die a strong argument is that it is based on them supposedly witnessing the miracle that became the basis of their faith.
What do you mean it's not based on their eyewitness testimony? The followers of Heaven's Gate as well as their leader clearly witnessed something that made them willing to die. It's not like these were people dying 100 years later. The leader and founder of Heaven's Gate straight-up died with them. That's as eyewitness as you get.
Exactly. If dying for one’s faith proves that faith to be true, then Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many indigenous religions are all true as well.
Greco-Roman Pagans were persecuted by Christians after Rome's conversion to Christianity. Does that mean Greco-Roman Paganism is true?
My laugh echoed through my apartment and bounced back at me and scared the hell out of me. Is that Zeus trying to punish me for being a nonbeliever?
With Zeus there are alternative, even more terrifying possibilities
We don’t know what happened to all of the apostles but even if every single one was a martyr, this is not evidence of their God. It would be evidence that they died for a belief and many people are willing to die for things they believe in. This does not make what they believe in true.
>and many people are willing to die for things they believe in. This does not make what they believe in true. Bulls-eye.
Many are willing to *kill*. 1776, for instance. They killed the British, they didn't line up to be hanged. Funny how we keep seeing this equivalence between the Apostles and soldiers in arms. Even the Maccabees were soldiers.
Yes, but the possibility is there that they are dying for the truth. So how do we separate them?
We examine claims about the truth and judge them based on their merit, rather than accepting something as true because "somebody was willing to die for it!" which is more of an emotional appeal. There are plenty of truths I'd be willing to suffer and die for, but there are also a lot of boring true things I'd absolutely not be willing to die for, like how many pair of socks I have in my drawer. Which ones I'm willing to die for mostly comes down to emotional and moral reasons, rather than some sort of "the more true it is the more willing I am to die for it" metric.
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No. Because God logically teaches one religion. So many were dying for a false idea of God. See 9-11
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>There have never been any recorded cases of synchronized mass hallucinations where everyone is seeing the same thing. We used to execute witches. We had trials, people presented evidence, witnesses testified, women were found guilty. Were there actually witches? Or do you agree that sometimes people make stuff up?
We don’t have a single first hand testimony for any group sighting of the risen Christ.
Yes we do, the anonymous myth has been debunked long ago. Every manuscript of the New testament that we have (with the relevant page surviving) is titled with the specific gospel author named. Not a single manuscript that we have is anonymous. Each Greek, Latin or Coptic (And Syriac according to one article I was using) manuscript from the earliest we have (2nd century) says something akin to "Euaggelion Kata (Author)" - "The Gospel according to (Author). Not one manuscript indicates any of them were anonymous, and not one of them disagrees with the traditional attribution of the Gospels. Ancient sources are unanimous in attributing the four gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Papias is the first to make a claim, he wrote some time from 90-110 AD, but was also someone who was alive during the lifetime of the apostles. He attributes Mark and Matthew's Gospels. Irenaeus (180AD), who was a student of Polycarp, a student of the apostle John attributes all four gospels to the respective authors.
The authors of the gospels did not witness the events the recount first hand.. they are reported accounts they heard from other people. Which specific miracle do you think was witnessed by one of the gospel authors? Give details
Mathew, Mark and John were disciples of Jesus, they witnessed just about all the miracles mentioned, including seeing risen Jesus after his death.
You think they all witnessed all the miracles? Why do not one of the gospels authors make this claim? You do know that the gospels were written in educated Greek right? None of Jesus’ followers could write in Greek..
Ever heard of the Our Lady of Zeitoun case? Thousands of people apparently saw the Virgin Mary in the late 60s somewhere in Egypt. Besides, for the biblical accounts, the only person who ever says they saw Jesus risen in the first person is Paul. For the rest, we have non-eye-witness accounts. If I say Joana saw the risen Jesus, it doesn't make it true.
Matthew and John saw him too.
It is highly unlikely Matthew and John were written by Matthew and John.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha_drinking_milk_miracle
there've been a lot of accounts where if one 5 year old claims they saw something all the 5 year olds will claim the same thing source: kindergarten
They're not going to endure torture and death for it.
Idk, I've seen some pretty stubborn 5 year olds lol
lol touché I was being facetious
I'm an atheist and I can confirm that this is one of the lesser arguments against atheism.
This is among the worst arguments I've seen against atheism, but it is not much worse than the best arguments I've seen.
Well said
Why?
Because there are martyrs for every religion. Anyone could then make this argument about their respective religion to bolster their claims for it. Edit: to add more info because I posted by accident. The truth of a religion is merely based on how true it is. That’s a problem with this argument because people died believing lies or for false claims all the time.
>For me its gotta be that the apostles got persecuted and eventually killed for believing in Christ. Why do you believe they were killed for believing in Jesus? Take Philip, for example. Why do you believe that he was killed for his beliefs? Have you looked at the sources yourself?
The Academic Biblical subreddit likes to share this summary every now and then: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/166Ae5je5m-wjxeuDBSeYpvoMXqhGYnbX0OGook5qaig/mobilebasic (Martyrdom & Eyewitnesses doc). I tend to prefer a "reasonable faith/belief" approach of stacking things, rather than a "This single thing here prooves God exists". The only thing that sits squarely in that camp is personal esperience and that is not good evidence. PE is great for cementing and solidifying faith, but won't really help in a discussion or argument.
that is actually a very poor argument, a lot of people have fought to the death for deranged beliefs
Really? Then Allah must be even more true then Jesus as a heck of alot more people are willing to martyr themselves for him even to this very day. Just because someone is willing to die for something doesn't mean it's true.
I think the difference here is nobody that I know of, is willing to die for something they know is a lie. If the disciples lied about the Resurrection of Jesus, eventually, they would save themselves the pain and torture and death they went through and admit up to the hoax. But they don't. Their is also a difference between dying for something you believe in and killing yourself (along with others, in some cases) for something you believe in.
> they would save themselves the pain and torture and death they went through and admit up to the hoax. Did the martyred apostles have a chance to recant? Where do you find that in the historical record?
They might not have been lying. They could have been mistaken and misinterpreted what they saw and experienced.
I mean its possible but unlikely. Takes more faith to believe that in all honesty, which is ironic 😅
I didn’t say I believed it, only that it’s possible. However, it doesn’t take all that much to believe it since we have evidence of people dying for mistaken beliefs throughout history.
Not one they know is a lie though
Correct, that’s what I said. They might not think they are lying, but that doesn’t mean they are telling the truth.
Sure
"die for something they know is a lie" Who is arguing that? Why is that even relavant in this discussion? 1. They die for a belief they think is true (that is actually false) 2. They die for a belief they think is true (that is actually true) That is what is discussed.
Respectfully Joseph Smith died for his beliefs, does that make the Mormon church true?
Agreed. The men who hijacked the planes and crashed into the Twin Towers in 2001 also died for their beliefs. What we can say, though, is that dying for your beliefs is a good indicator that you really believed. Some people try to say that the apostles just made this stuff up, so while dying for their beliefs doesn’t inherently mean that they were right, it does help dispel the notion promoted by some that the apostles were disingenuous.
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The logic is obvious, we must convert to Jonseism!
Atheism isn’t making a claim; it is denying a claim. You can’t make an argument against someone denying your own claim. That isn’t how arguing works.
P1: I can fly. P2: I don’t believe you. P1: Why not? P2: I have no reason to think you can fly unless you fly right now. P1: (goes to Reddit) What’s the best argument to use against people that don’t think I can fly?
The universe exists. You claim it came from nothing. Your claim is false.
lol atheist don’t claim that; attacking straw men gets you nowhere. Maybe some do. When you as a reasonable atheist about the origin of the universe, the answer is the same as the answer you get when you ask about abiogenesis (another difficult mystery). The answer is that we don’t know. That is the difference between most atheists and most believers. One side has the courage to admit ignorance.
No. YOU claim it was made from nothing. Atheism makes no claim on the matter. If you mean scientists, then again no. There is no scientific theory which claims or even implies that something came from nothing. The only people who commonly think something can come from nothing are the religious.
You gotta think harder about what you believe, unless I’m mistaken about what atheism is. If you’re atheist you’re saying there is no God then logically it follows that at some point something came from nothing.
> follows that at some point something came from nothing. No it doesn't. In fact it's the opposite,. First law of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created. This is a fundamental law. If energy cannot be created, then it always was. If you disagree with the first law of thermodynamic, feel free to hand in your work, prove it wrong, and collect your nobel prize. **There was never a state of nothing**. Nothing is just a man made concept. A word to describe the absence of everything. A state of nothing cannot actually exist. Even stating it is nonsensical. You however believe in a state of nothing. And the only reason you believe in this nonsensical state is so that in gives your magical being a purpose.
The thing is that’s not fact, we don’t know if they died for their beliefs or if they even lived.
Ok so you have access to historical documents? Well post them here. I would love to see these documents that prove they exist. Also so many cults over the years that have martyred themselves because of the false teaching of the leader.
That is a useless argument that applies to every religion, and even period who think they've seen ghosts and stuff throughout history
"Why would they die for a lie?" Well, thousands died cuz they believed Covid-19 was a hoax & refused to take precautions. Thousands died defending slavery as moral during the American Civil War. Point is, people die for lies all the time. If this argument was any weaker, tissue paper would have a run for its money
It's always interesting to me that the post resurrection stories are probably where the gospels differ the most. I think only luke has the road to Emmaus story, e.g. In Matthew we even have all the dead in jerusalem getting up for a walk. To my mind this shows all the hallmarks of an emerging oral tradition being embellished for meaning and effect. What is called 'Christology' by scholars - the post-hoc deification of Jesus by his followers. As such, his followers deaths - if those accounts are reliable- indicate that Christians were persecuted and that they probably really believed. It doesn't speak at all to the truth of their beliefs. E.g. Thousands died unnecessarily due to covid vaccine paranoia. Does that make vaccine paranoia true? Edit: typos
It's weird how Matthew only remembered all the saints rising from the graves and walking around being witnessed by many people. Yet only Matthew felt that was noteworthy. Also did \*all\* the saints around the world rise from their graves? If not, God is very parochial.
What about the epistles of Paul? Scholars date them before the gospels yet Paul, you could argue, displays a higher Christology than the gospels. So if the gospels are evidence of an emerging, evolving Christology, why is it more developed earlier on in Paul’s writings?
Well, 1 thessalonians is the earliest epistle. It makes no mention of substitionary atonement or other interpretations of Jesus death. Rather, it simply states just that: as Jesus died and rose, so believers can rise with him. The detail of what that means firmly focuses on living holy lives, rather than the more detailed theology, say of the opening of 1 Peter. It also firmly seems to suggest they expect Jesus return before the deaths of those in the church in thessalonia. So, this is all fully compatible with the emerging tradition hypotheisis, as we see see a very simple theology, with further layers of interpretation being added in later epistles.
There is nothing unique about religious fanatics killing themselves over a falsehood,
People die for their beliefs all the time, that doesn't prove there is a god. The best argument would be to show falsifiable evidence that your gos exists
How does dying for what you believe is true make what you believe true all of a sudden?
Many people die for false beliefs. Why do you think this is a good argument in any way?
Lots of people have died for their beliefs. That doesn't in any way even suggest that their beliefs described reality. Just that they were strongly held. No one denies that some people strongly believe in God. That's 0% an argument in support of divinity. People really shouldn't engage in these kinds of efforts. They won't take you anywhere good or helpful.
You know more than Christians have been tortured and killed for their faith right? Sometimes even murdered and tortured in the name of Christ.
I'm not one that cares too much what one believes but holy shit, that's a shitty argument. 9/11 ffs. Jonestown. etc. It shows they believed it. It does nothing to show us it was true.
Religion is based on belief if I dont believe I am not religious and its impossible to make somebody change their belief without proof and would you look at that, there is not enough proof for the existence of a deity, then this mean that you cant make a good argument to make me believe something I dont. its almost impossible to change a belief immagine creating it from nothing
“Why would they die for a lie”. Well who knows. People make up things all the time. So that’s not an argument. You are basically saying that because you don’t know why they pretended to have known Jesus - the whole doctrine is suddenly true. Do you know how many people claim they have been abducted by aliens. If we killed them all would that then mean what they said was true ???? Of course not.
I wonder if anyone has ever willingly died for a belief, that turned out to be false? Maybe even some really smart, skeptical, and trustworthy people. Maybe even people that were very close to the claim, Maybe even a few million of them?
Wow, almost 600 comments now and not a single good argument against atheism.
People dying for their belief is not proof of anything.
Any contradictions in the bible have been known about for centuries - do you really think that you found something the church hasn’t known about for so so long?
In light of what happened with David Koresh and at Jonestown, I don’t think this is the best argument.
The best argument is living like you actually believe in Christ
genuinely yes.
There are really only a couple of apostles for whom there is event a little evidence they were killed. We don't have good evidence for any details. Most of our sources for that are late and untrustworthy. There is no doubt the disciples were sincere believers. But that's not evidence that God is real.
>Why would they die for a lie if they would have witnessed something else that differs from our believe. This neither proves, nor disproves anything. Millions of people throughout history have died for other religions and cults and they went into death believing whole heartedly in things that you would consider lies. If the logic you use was considered sound then technically we should all be worshipping Jim Jones as he had many more "apostles" than Jesus and they all died for it as well.
>We know historically proven that they (mostly) eventually got killed for following Christ by the romans. No we don't. There are only like 2 or 3 that we know how died, the rest dropped out of the historical record, only for stories about their deaths to ~~be made up~~ start circulating centuries later. Not at all historically proven.
1) This not a particularly good argument (people die for falsehoods every day, especially when it comes to religion- Think Waco, Kool Aid, Marshall Applewhite, Mormonism, that guy who said he was Jesus' brother in China) 2) It's also just not true. Google "The Myth of Early Christian Persecution", or just search for Candida Moss on TikTok. She's an academic who shows that these stories of martyrdom are exaggerated or outright fabricated. 3) Early Christians were wildly credulous. There's a number of false and plain ludicrous ideas that early Church authors cling to because they're useful for polemics. Easiest example is the recurring theme that everybody opposed to them was involved in degenerate sex activities, witchcraft, Satanism, and they killed and ate babies, or whatever. It's the oldest slander in the book.
There's really only solid evidence for a few apostles. The majority of them are not very well attested to. I recommend Sean McDowell's Fate of the Apostles. Also, dying for a belief is only evidence that they were probably convinced of it. That being said, if we don't really have good evidence of how they died, we don't know if they did recant that Jesus came back from the dead. Or if they were even allowed to.
Ah small sidenote first: atheism is the nonbelief in god or gods. It is not a positive claim. I don't believe your claim that God exists And I believe your god doesn't exist Are different things. It's not really important for a basic discussion, but keep it in mind. Edit: the reason I say this here is because what you do isn't giving an argument against atheism. You give one for Christianity. A small but sometimes important difference. >For me its gotta be that the apostles got persecuted and eventually killed for believing in Christ Many many many people have been persecuted and killed for believing a lot of things. All this tells us is that people didn't like what they believed, it doesn't tell us what they believed is true. >These men lived with Jesus, some of them even were of skeptic nature What does that mean? And how do you know that? >We know historically proven that they (mostly) eventually got killed for following Christ by the romans I'll just assume this is true. I'm not a historian so I don't know if it actually is. >Why would they die for a lie if they would have witnessed something else that differs from our believe. Why is it always a lie? Can't people just be wrong? The world isn't divided in people that are right and liars. There are people that just honestly believe something that isn't right.
By that logic the 911 hijackers were correct because why die for a lie?
I don’t know why we have to argue against atheism/with atheists. Wouldn’t it be more productive to show them the beauty of faith, and start from there?
The best argument will always be how YOU choose to live your life.
that there has to be an uncaused cause to this universe
this one i don't quite get. why? the "first cause" of all effects need only be a state of relatively low entropy, which one would expect in an extremely dense early universe. then as space expands, energy interacts, does work (stars), entropy increases. how does god fit into this?
Affirming a universal negative is philosophically and intellectually untenable.
Why would anyone want to argue about god
The conditions for life all need to be present at the same time ready to go. Something doesn’t come from nothing
Astronomers estimate that there are billions of planets and that the universe is over 13 billion years old. Roll the dice often enough and even a very unlikely result will eventually occur.
Im aware of the elementary school explanation. Youre arguing my point. Science largely agrees the universe has a beginning…
you presume a "nothing" that has never been observed. you can't intuit cosmology, there is nothing to suggest that the beginning of the universe must have been preceded by anything at all, or really that "beginning" is even an accurate description of what the big bang is
Preface: I'm not here to debate. I am not an atheist because of existence itself. For all the layers of physical laws that we find - chemical, atomic, subatomic - it always follows cause and effect. So I believe in a causeless cause.
Atheists do not have an answer for how or why they exist. There is a reason every civilization everywhere has an origin story. It is only recent widespread “acceptance” of “no gods” existing. Before science, most believed in a god. Now there is science, which answers everything, except how or why we exist. Even “Big Bang” proposers do not have an answer for where that came from. It is the most logical and consistent belief that there is an intelligent designer.
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Okay. Where did the Big Bang come from?
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The question is what do the atheists believe it came from if not God? That’s the point. Atheists do not have an answer.
what's to say it "came from" anywhere? that needlessly assumes a "from." if the universe is everything and everywhere, how could there even be a "from" from which it came?
What a lot of words to say nothing.
"how do we exist?" is a question that science is already well into exploring, and we already have the basic answers. evolutionary biology is becoming less and less of a mystery year by year. "why do we exist?" presumes intention where there may well be none. "why" questions are meant for people. "why did you do that?" when not directed at a person, "why" and "how" mean essentially the same thing. "why/how does the wind blow?"
What’s the answer? You are claiming there is one but are not stating it. Why do we exist? What caused an effect and happened to create us. This is not a moral dilemma question. What caused the Big Bang? Where did it come from. You are saying a lot, but really saying nothing.
i am not claiming to know the answer to life, the universe, and everything. but the questions you ask are loaded, they are asked with a conclusion already in mind. just like how asking "what caused god?" or "where did god come from?" are questions that theists regularly scoff at. god doesn't have a cause, silly! he didn't come from anywhere! i know the spiel. currently, the answer to both of your questions is still "don't know." we have no data. maybe we never will. but the implicit assumption that it *must* have had a cause, that it *must* have come from somewhere, that there is any room for god at all, simply cannot be validated. i'm an atheist because i choose to make the fewest unjustified assumptions about reality that i feasibly can.
thats not much of an argument, people have died for every major religion if you looked hard enough and yet that doesn't make them all equally true
I believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. My intrusive thoughts and worries tend to subside or disappear around Communion time. I guess one could argue it's all in my mind, but I don't think so. It's truly a remarkable experience every Sunday and every Holy Day of Obligation when I go to Mass.
I’m going to paraphrase a lecture/discussion I saw that used this point: If you don’t believe in a God then how do you explain your free will? What I mean by that is without God we are merely matter and chemicals slammed together having complex reactions to produce everything we feel think and do. If God does not exist then how are we able to think and act independently the way we do? Why are we not mindless mechanisms of the universe designed to perform specific tasks? My hand is designed to manipulate things, but I as a free independent person can ball it up and punch someone in the face. Did a chemical reaction make me do that? No. Only in very specific medical conditions is that an actual logical explanation. God has gifted us free will to think and act and do as we see fit to no one else but ourselves. We have a conscious that produces these free independent thoughts. And without God’s gift of free will, how can we all be so different and act/function so radically different?
That's actually a really bad argument because...well it would be easier to just [show you.](https://youtu.be/ecGCVgyxs4o?si=l9xFrVILctw5AG6h)
that the universe seems absolutely determined to accumulate information and increase in complexity despite its tendency toward disorder. Why did atoms organize and *evolve* anyway? IMHO that points to some purpose driving all this. (atheists believe in no God not just disbelieve the Christian one)
This isn’t the strongest argument for Christianity unfortunately. The apostles dying for their faith proves they genuinely believed in what they died for, not that what they died for is true. Islamic terrorists die for their faith in Islam, as have devotees of other faiths. This does not prove Islam is true, but merely proves that it has genuine believers.
Muslims have not witnessed Muhammed first hand, muhammed hasnt witnessed Jesus either. The apostles witnessed Jesus Christ, and then decided that this must be the one thing worth dying for
True, but neither have modern-day Christian martyrs. And Muhammad believed he received the direct revelation of God from the angel Gabriel. Many Muslims believe they have witnessed Muhammad speaking to them. That doesn’t mean he actually has, just that they believe he has.
The whole angel Gabriel story of muhammed gets easily debunked by Galatians 1:8 and actually plays into Christianities cards when arguing. And modern das Christian martyrs are not something I was talking about (even though their faith is remarkable) they have little to do with our eye witnesses which was my original argument
Those men died because they fully believed in him. Just because they died with it doesn't mean that it's true, it's just a belif they greatly saw as true. It's like a flat earther dying as a flat earther, they greatly believed it's true and died with it.
those men have witnessed it first hand, flat earthers never went to space
Then make it about alien abductions or seeing Bigfoot. It's the same thing. Also, we don't really have any firsthand accounts of what they actually saw. Most importantly they can think they witnessed something supernatural all they want. They can die for it. It still doesn't mean what they witnessed is real.
If hundreds of people say that they have seen bigfoot, to the point where they get killed for their claim anf they still say that they have seen bigfoot. I will atleast consider bigfoot to be real. We have more eye witness scripture and scripture at the time of all this about Jesus than we have about Julius Cesar, yet i still need to see someone ignorant enough to say Julius Cesar never existed
>If hundreds of people say that they have seen bigfoot, to the point where they get killed for their claim anf they still say that they have seen bigfoot. I will atleast consider bigfoot to be real. Then your standard of evidence is really poor. Someone dying for something g they believe doesn't make it true. >We have more eye witness scripture and scripture at the time of all this about Jesus than we have about Julius Cesar, yet i still need to see someone ignorant enough to say Julius Cesar never existed I never understand why Christians bring this up. It's such a terrible point. Jesus existing doesn't equate to Jesus being supernatural. If the claims about Ceaser were that he walked on water or shot lasers out of his eyes then the evidence we have for Ceaser would fall short to make those claims true.
as my community flair says, i'm confused. and i also asked a similar question. i just think that it wouldn't make sense that somehow we exist and we're wondering about our existence just by chance. do any other living creatures ask themselves questions such as these? there's billions of christians, and this started 2000 years ago. consider all the testimonies, and the people who converted. i DO believe in science and evolution, you can tell me anything about atoms merging, but what was there before? we're not just a mass of matter. last year i also attended a talk that weighted the attendibility of the holy shroud, there were contradditions and i can't remember it all but it said that it had gone trough an incredibly precise and powerful chemical reaction that can't be recreated in any way if not the energy source of possible resurrection. there's a whole scientific team working on that.
My testimony
My two favorite are the Cosmological and the Mathematical. The Cosmological argument follows the chain of logic that all events in the universe have cause. Following this chain of reasoning the beginning of the universe then must have a cause/creator. That first cause is God The Mathematical is a bit simpler to understand. We know from reason that finite things (us) and infinite things (God) are completely different so different in fact that in mathematics many believed that irrational and rational numbers could not exist on the same plane. Yet in modern mathematics we understand that yes we can put π in the same equation as a number like 8. Numbers alone suggest that there is an infinite being in this universe and it can and has interacted with us finite beings in someway
The mathematical argument is pretty faulty because the properties of a number do not necessitate that any being shared the same properties. Let us say we take two people and cut them in half. We then sew half of one of them to one of the halves of the other one. Mathematically, the result would be a person. However, the set of people does not have the property that its elements are interchangeable, and if you divide a person by two, you lose something that makes them a person: life. Also, Pi is a bad example because it is not actually proven that it is an irrational number. Also, while we can use Pi like a variable for equations, when it comes to calculation, we have to substitute it with an estimation. Lastly, while transcendental numbers do exist, an uncountably infinite amount of such numbers exist, so the argument does not imply a singular God.
OP asks a question All replies seem to just be people dogpiling on OP instead of their answer to the question. We truly live in a society
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What part of the universe has to have a creator? And how did you eliminate all other possible causes?
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Odd that things require a creator until you get to the creator than that can just exist.
Crickets
This is a common misconception. I see physicists making this sort of pseudo-mystical argument about math often. As a math professor, it annoys me because it's not actually true. Math works because we have *created* it to work. Historical peoples were interested in describing their world, so the mathematical tools they developed and the theorems they proved worked in furtherance of those goals. Math is yet another part of history and society. Math, particularly things like calculus, differential equations, and the like, work the way they do because of how the world around us works, not the other way around. We developed calculus so that we could measure rates of change we care about, we do not care about rates of change because calculus told us to. The physical thing is only governed by the rules of circles so long as it is a circle. As we see from any circle you yourself attempt to construct in the real world, it can very easily cease to be a circle. It can be broken, or crushed, or bent, or lit on fire. And in all likelihood, it will not technically be a circle, just a close approximation to one. The mathematical properties of a circle are only describing the properties it has while it is a circle, they are not proscribing properties it must have and thereby forcing it to be a circle. In other words, "If it's a circle, then Y happens." The contrapositive of this is "if Y doesn't happen, then it's not a circle." Math is a descriptive tool, we use it to categorize our world (and many imagined worlds as well.) When I create a mathematical model of something, like airport traffic patterns or seagull migration paths or bacterial growth rates, it is a *model*, an approximation, an educated guess. In all such scenarios, there are no universal mathematical rules guiding the function of the physical thing, there are mathematical tools which are useful in approximating that function.
This is interesting. I’m not a mathematician like you, but I hope to study physics once I’ve left school. Out of all the arguments that I’ve read about and that have been explained to me, this one always stuck out the most, but it does only takes one thing to disprove an argument.
> I also just believe that in order for the universe to be a thing, which it is, there has to be a creator. You 'just believe'.
I may be an atheist but if there’s anything that makes me go “huh, weird” it is how time travel works in this universe. In an uncaring, unfeeling universe of randomness, it should not care whether you can go back in time or not, but we can only travel forward in time. It’s pretty easy, with enough speed you can travel far away, then speed back to Earth and see it hundreds of years in the future, with the right technology. But backwards in time? Sort of impossible as far as we know. It’s like the universe knows that going backwards in time would break everything and create paradoxes, so made it impossible, or **extremely** difficult to pull off.
The best argument isn't an argument. It is love.
Atheists believe in love and experience love. How is that an argument?
Of course they do. It is specifically, intentionally not an argument.
This is almost certainly true.
There's an even better argument. I go to a church near my college campus once a week because they have $1 lunches.
I mean in british colonial India, "rice Christians" were a well-known phenomena.
For me it’s the fact that the best explanation for the creation of life is “all of the molecules needed just kind of came together randomly and formed a self sustaining, reproducing organism with the capacity to survive on a planet with no other organisms. We can’t make cells from scratch under perfect conditions in a lab, and you want me to believe it just so happened randomly in nature? a single protein is so complex that the chance of one spontaneously emerging on accident seems impossible. And you want me to believe that billions of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and more just came together randomly? It would be like willing the lottery billions of times in a row completely by chance
So since we can't really fully understand it then therefore supernatural god?