cofty

Joined

• started 464 topics
• posted 24,957 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by cofty

• 
  26

  Reasoned With A JW Yesterday

  by pale.emperor in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  had a great chat with a jw on my door yesterday.

  girl 1: .... i dont think you would.

  me: ________, and say hi to my uncle ________ for me.. girl 1: i will.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  Excellent reasoning. You have given them something to reflect on later. I hope they do check out JWFacts.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  The best option is the one that best reveals His love

  So why is the physical world perfectly designed to maximise suffering?

  24 pages of avoiding the question!
  

  Do you really believe in this statement?

  Yes. If you don't agree then you need to learn more about the last 3 billion years of the history of life.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  CC accepts the ToE and this theory implies death and destruction. - J_M

  Yes. You have not answered to question, you have restated it. If god chose to bring the present physical world into being through this process then he is not a god of love. He made a world perfectly designed to maximise suffering. Not just a world that inevitably includes some physical suffering - a world that maximises it.

  He is also not the wonderful intelligent designer christians claim he is. 99% of all the species that ever existed failed. They are extinct. Their last representatives died out.

  Five times in the history of life almost all of life was violently wiped out through catastrophic events. These are not the actions of the same god who claims to care about the death of every sparrow.

  You have not even started to deal with these first two points (which you have conflated into one point)

  This is how the physical world works. Catholic faith is all about the salvation of the metaphysical soul.

  That doesn't work. You asserted earlier that your god cares about physical suffering. He clearly doesn't.

  Our physical bodies and some features of our minds came to existence through natural laws. Only our immortal soul was made to be an image of God.

  But according to christians god invented those natural laws from scratch. The predominance of predators and parasites was god's idea. The natural world reflects the nature of the creator. He could have made the world any way he wished. He designed it to maximise pain.

  You are so obsessed by the soul you are willing to justify any physical suffering aren't you?

  There's historical evidence that the Gospels were written before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.

  Many scholars disagree but even so, predicting that the Roman's patience would soon run out with the Jews is not impressive at all. When we read those prophecies in detail it is clear you have to cherry-pick a couple of phrases to get anything useful for your case. That is always the case with bible prophecy.

  This is a very subjective statement. But if you apply statistics then the majority of people says the opposite of this statement. There's statistical evidence against this subjective statement.

  What statistics are you referring to? I am making a simple observation that if god revealed anything through the bible it is reasonable to expect some evidence of that when you read the book. There is none.

  Personally I would have hinted at germ theory of disease. Or mentioned the fact that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Something simple but interesting and way ahead of its time.

  I was going to carry on but you get the picture.

  All your work is ahead of you. This is a thread where I am very happy with the OP and very disappointed with the quality of the conversation that followed.

  Nobody - absolutely nobody - cares about you Roman Catholic dogma. It is totally irrelevant to challenge.

  
  
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  Here is the basic core of the disagreement.

  John M believes that faith is a virtue and requests for evidence are anathema to faith.

  He dismisses all challenges to his doctrines by calling them metaphysical and therefore off limits for rational inquiry. Of course like all theists he will take any shred of evidence available.

  Even if we took the ontological argument seriously and accepted John's personal vision as authentic it would not begin to answer any of the challenges of the OP.

  The OP simply observes that in many ways the world doesn't actually look the way Christians pretend it does.

  Proposing other lines of evidence for God doesn't meet the challenge. Attacking atheism as a worldview doesn't either.

  The OP stands unanswered.
• 
  13

  Reasons to break free from religion

  by googleTTATT in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i am compiling my list.

  you can add yours if you like to.. 1. the hypocrisy in religion.. 2. religion make good people bad and bad people worse and worse people worst.. 3. the false dates given in religion.. 4. religions use their fundamental books to suit their beliefs.. 5. wrong and distorted views about sexual life.

  the list goes on.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  Darknight757 - I agree.

  Of course we can do good things that don't involve lying to ourselves, but some religious groups still lead the way in good deeds and community activity.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  John_Mann your arrogant dismissals of my comments are unworthy of a response.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  How could you possibly know what is moral if your morals are based on your own subjectivity? - Perry

  My morals are based on objective facts about reality.

  Even if you got a moral "right" you would not be able to know it because everything is constantly evolving, including morals, right?

  Wrong. Slavery and infanticide have always been wrong. Objectively wrong. Even when your god was advocating slavery, rape and infanticide it was still objectively wrong. If god existed and if he had inspired the bible these things would not be so.

  You would happily murder babies and take sex slaves just as Joshua's army did if god commanded you to do so wouldn't you? Your morality is based on divine fiat.
  
  
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  It is clear that you prefer throwing around silly labels than holding a rational conversation John. Pity.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  Just for clarity here are the nine simple challenges from the OP. Nine ways in which the claims of christianity just seem unlikely.

  1 - The brutal competition for survival

  2 - Mass extinctions

  3 - "Nature red in tooth and claw"

  4 - Lack of clear bible prophecy

  5 - The complete ordinariness of the bible

  6 - The moral failings of scripture

  7 - The credulity that is required to believe in miracles

  8 - An earth perfectly designed to randomly kill millions of its inhabitants

  9 - The confirmation bias that is required to believe in answered prayer

  I wonder what else we could add to this list.
• 
  496

  This is What I Would Need in Order to Believe

  by cofty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sometimes theists challenge atheists about what evidence would be required before they would believe.

  various unlikely scenarios are offered in reply.

  i have taken the bait myself in the past.. i think the correct answer is much more ordinary.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  cofty

  All of your answers in the last 21 pages have been pretentious piffle - Cofty

  Sorry that was unnecessarily harsh.

  What I mean is you are hiding behind esoteric theology in order to avoid very simple questions.