The Great Struggle: Intelligence vs. Faith

The theist from the last post never did respond to my comments herself, but sent no fewer than three other theist buddies to attack my responses. Yes, sent--they each mentioned that she asked them to chime in; guess she can't defend her faith herself. Their attacks consisted of variations of, "oh yeah? well the Bible says that Satan will purposefully try to confuse us so since you're confused you're obviously the spawn of Satan! So there!!", except the spelling was a lot worse. Unfortunately, it was nothing intelligent enough to which to reply.

Today I watched the following clip from the Atheist Experience:



I thought it was great. Simple, and eloquent. And by the way--this is a big step for me, to post something atheist-related on my FB. The mere fact that an alternative (i.e. rational and reasonable) view to their theism was dare presented is enough to incur their wrath, but I don't care too much. I don't care if it pisses some people off. This discussion NEEDS to be had and religion needs to be challenged. It may not change minds at all, and if it does it certainly won't be right away, but if it plants a seed and causes one of them, one day, to begin to think for themselves, I believe it is worth it. Certainly for me, little experiences in my past (that I, at the time, vehemently rejected and spewed all kinds of righteous hate towards) have stayed with me in my mind, and have let to my blissful, happy intellectual freedom. I am no longer bound by the shackles of religious fantasy, and I wish I could go back and thank the people who helped me.

Anyway, here is her response to my video:



I'll try to look beyond the sporadic attention to grammar, capitalization and punctuation; this is hard, though, since such things are a mark of an educated individual--thus, I tend to grant more respect to someone who uses them in a situation such as this.

The video and her response really speak for themselves. Objectively speaking, she is so blind to the truth that she (just like the caller who insisted that the Bible does not endorse slavery while at the same time admitting that it did) is incapable of recognizing the contradictions which are so utterly obvious. It can't possibly be that the damn thing doesn't make sense; it must be that Satan is causing us to misinterpret, Satan twists our thought processes, Satan makes daily attempts to get us to not believe...... if by Satan, you mean "brains and reason", I wholeheartedly agree.

It seems the daily struggle is with her mind trying to rationalize her faith; it can't be done. Don't blame Satan. If your faith doesn't make sense, and seems wrong and convoluted, and you have to utilize logical fallacies to justify it, it's not Satan or dark forces at work--it's your brains desperately trying to be used, but you keep sweeping them under the rug, hoping they go away, and label it as "sin", so that you don't have to think.

The Real Cost of Religious Faith

If you haven't heard of the Atheist Experience show, you need to check it out. It's supremely awesome and I'm quite addicted to clips of the show on YouTube. They also have the show archived. Matt Dillahunty is the bomb (in a good way); he is the current host and came to his atheism while contemplating becoming a pastor, and investigating the Bible. The show airs live every Sunday from Austin, TX.

One clip that I thoroughly enjoyed and did such a fantastic job of talking about several important points, is this:



Just watch it, and then watch the thousands of other clips or all the shows in their entirety. ;) The clips are great, though, because they highlight the best portions.

Matt does such an awesome job of being rational, analyzing evidence, pointing out logical fallacies, and how all religions are based on faith; when it comes down to it, your faith in Christianity has no more weight than a Muslim's faith in Islam. You throw out all the evidence and make a choice to believe what you want to believe, and can only justify it by saying "it takes faith." In this clip and in many others, there is a common theme: what kind of almighty God would need faith to believe in him? If he were so omnipotent, couldn't he just prove himself once and for all so that we can stop worrying about it? It's a great show that has really helped me refine my critical thinking skills and understand atheism better.