Miracle - Metal in the head vanishing

[Stefan]

Recently out-of-the-closet atheist here, from a charismatic Christian background (that means dancing, speaking in tongues, literal interpretations of the bible, prophesying, praying for miracles of healing and other sorts). What would you wonderful intelligent skeptics say to someone who tells you they personally know a person who has been raised from the dead by prayer in Jesus' name after being dead for 24 hours, and personally knows someone who had a metal plate that had been surgically implanted in their head show up on an x-ray one week, then completely vanish in the next week's x-ray after it was prayed (also in the name of Jesus) that it would disappear?

 

I mean besides the questions of clarifying who they are, who the doctor was, etc.What would you tell someone who was convinced this had happened? Would you just give up talking to them? I am very curious as this was one of the first things said to me when I came out.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

P.S. I sent out 46 personal emails to people yesterday coming out explaining my journey and reasons for not believing and offered to talk further and discuss it with anyone who was willing. 10 people have already taken me up on it. They are reasonable people outside their faith, and I laid down guidelines that I may ask them to read certain books or articles before we continue our discussion if it is getting repetitive or stuck (which some will), and that I may stop if neither of us is increasing our knowledge, but I already know it is going to be exhausting. I know, I opened myself up to it.

 

ANYWAY, what are some of your favorite sources/books/sites/etc. for atheist materials to refer to, other than the obvious (FDR)? I will probably be able to use anything I can.

 

[dsayers]

What would you wonderful intelligent skeptics say to someone who tells you...

 

That they were lied to or are lying. Either way they are lying as they are passing off as truth statements that which they do not know to be true and in fact know cannot be true. In your first example, this simply is not possible. I don't recall the exact amount of time--I believe it's ridiculously low, like 3 minutes--but the brain cannot survive going without oxygen for very long without suffering permanent damage. In the second example, we know that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted. In order for the metal plate to be gone, either somebody would've had to extract it or it would've had to have been converted to energy. I'm no nuclear physicist, but I'm guessing the only materials we know how to control the yield of from matter to energy conversion are not materials that we implant in humans for medical purposes.

 

 

P.S. I sent out 46 personal emails to people yesterday coming out explaining my journey and reasons for not believing and offered to talk further and discuss it with anyone who was willing. 10 people have already taken me up on it. They are reasonable people outside their faith, and I laid down guidelines that I may ask them to read certain books or articles before we continue our discussion if it is getting repetitive or stuck (which some will), and that I may stop if neither of us is increasing our knowledge, but I already know it is going to be exhausting. I know, I opened myself up to it.

 

If I may ask a personal question: How much time has elapsed from the time you first accepted the case against deities to the time you shared this with others? I ask because you mentioned reading materials as a requisite for discussion. That's not necessarily a problem, though there are two ways I would expect it to be problematic. The first being that religion is not the result of logic, reason, and evidence. It is typically inflicted upon young children, backed by enormous threats to discourage scrutiny. As a result, you will not be able to dissuade them using logic, reason, and evidence. The second reason it is problematic is that if you are not prepared to make the cases the reading material makes yourself, you will come across to them as a feeble-minded parrot simply regurgitating data that allows you to shirk your responsibility to God (from their perspective).

 

I waited a good six months from the time I first started studying philosophy and pursuing self-knowledge to the time I shared this with others and I wanted to wait longer. By this time, I was able to argue against common propaganda without having to resort to quotes and/or linking materials, even if doing so might make the point more succinctly. A buddy of mine, as a result of my asserting that philosophy finds government to be false, was open-minded to the possibility. He chose to research it randomly starting with John Locke's case for the social contract. Off the top of my head, I was able to construct a logical deconstruction that hit the myth on like five fronts or so. That doesn't mean I'm right or that Locke's case is faulty, but I'm sure it was a lot more convincing than saying "hey, once you're done with that, watch this hour long video and/or read this book."

 

Contrast this to earlier on, when I first was exposed to self-ownership and the NAP. I was so liberated by it that I couldn't wait to share it with statists. Unfortunately, I was so underdeveloped that I ended up getting distracted by propaganda or otherwise acting as a bad advertisement for the truth. Wasn't too big of a deal since the people I was talking to were not in my life and were operating out of confirmation bias anyways.

 

There is one exception and this is Stefan Molyneux's series called An Introduction to Philosophy. On youtube, it's 18 parts and just shy of 11 hours of comparatively bad audio quality. But it steps you through how to start with first principles. I recommend it all the time and go over it again myself from time to time to calibrate the most important tool I have: my mind. It covers a lot of common thinking errors. In the case of what you're about to go through, it very succinctly points out things like how omnipotence and omniscience are incompatible and how the claim "God exists" is actually making numerous claims simultaneously, including ones that are statistically impossible, require a great deal of proof to claim, or are literally self-defeating.

 

Good luck to you and may the FDR community be an aide and a respite from the battlefield.

[Stefan]

It has been about 7 months since I started researching and about 3 since I started calling myself an atheist. I am familiar with the introduction to philosophy - it is great - I'll give it another listen.

 

I do not expect to convince anyone. The best I can hope for is that I may sow seeds of doubt that an honest person with integrity will follow up on later (as I did when a great friend of mine whom I respected sowed seeds of doubt). Or, if nothing else, for those that will never deconvert, if it helps them to understand where I am coming from, as long as the conversation is productive I am happy to help them. I know from experience my disbelief will cause them a lot of pain and I do care about them.

 

The materials I was requesting (if anyone has any to offer) were more for the purpose of my own education to bring better phrasings and such to the table. If I do recommend someone read something, it probably wouldn't be that. I already know though that sometimes people start from so many assumptions and do not understand basic terms that it is a whole lot easier to at least send them a short article or something like it to help them understand the idea before continuing the discussion further.

 

One other thing that has already come up a few times is the misconception that belief or disbelief is a choice. I am comfortable handling this one so far - it is simple to point out that if it were so, they should be able to choose to truly believe there is an invisible pink unicorn standing right beside them. Obviously sincere belief or disbelief is not something you control.

 

Thank you for your thoughts, dsayer.

[dsayers]

I do not expect to convince anyone. The best I can hope for is that I may sow seeds of doubt that an honest person with integrity will follow up on later

 

Good luck to you. I too was raised Christian, though it sounds to a lesser degree than you had been. When I first considered the possibility of there not being a deity, I was so panic-stricken that I'd be punished for my insolence. In the end, guess who it was that validated my doubt? George Carlin. I don't know the exact gap from when the particular material was recorded and when I heard it, but I think over a decade would be a fair description.

 

One other thing that has already come up a few times is the misconception that belief or disbelief is a choice.

 

After I had rejected theism and well before I began to study philosophy, I understood the absolute nature of the word belief. I summed it up by saying that anything somebody could describe as believing to exist, doesn't exist. The easy way to explain it to others is ghosts. Let us suppose that ghosts exist. They will either impress upon our senses or they will not. If they do not, then whether they exist or not would have no distinction. If they do, then we could measure and prove them. Either way, belief never enters into it.

 

As for material, it is my understanding that Richard Dawkins is the author to read on the topic of atheism.

[LanceD]

My response would be "no pictures no thread" lol

 

But really someone who believe in that utter nonsense is so dumb and broken that I do not have the patience to begin to help them. You literally have to break them down and teach them to think, something that should of started the moment they were born.

 

With no foundation to build upon and numerous years of life serving to reinforce their retardation I'm not sure they can be fixed.

[MrCapitalism]

What would you wonderful intelligent skeptics say to someone who tells you they personally know a person who has been raised from the dead by prayer in Jesus' name after being dead for 24 hours, and personally knows someone who had a metal plate that had been surgically implanted in their head show up on an x-ray one week, then completely vanish in the next week's x-ray after it was prayed (also in the name of Jesus) that it would disappear?

What's the success rate on that?Out of all attempts to pray to Jesus to revive people dead for 24 hours, what percentage of the time does that work? If they don't pray to Jesus, what's the percentage of people who are 'revived' after being declared dead for 24 hours?If I gave you a revolver loaded with 6 bullets and told you to point it at your head and pull the trigger six times, would you pray to Jesus that all 6 primers fail and expect to live through the test?

 

If you had a lethal infection which was known to be very vulnerable to antibiotics, and you took those antibiotics, and you didn't pray to Jesus, what would you expect your chances would be of living through the infection?

[James Dean]

I do not expect to convince anyone. The best I can hope for is that I may sow seeds of doubt that an honest person with integrity will follow up on later (as I did when a great friend of mine whom I respected sowed seeds of doubt). Or, if nothing else, for those that will never deconvert, if it helps them to understand where I am coming from, as long as the conversation is productive I am happy to help them. I know from experience my disbelief will cause them a lot of pain and I do care about them.

 

It is a noble effort to plant the seeds of reason and rationality in people, though I doubt such cases can be reversed. Remember, irrationality is like a disease and if it spreads too far, or is too mixed with the healthy tissue, there is no chance of a cure. I'd focus on the children of people you know, or the younger adults, especially boys, who will be naturally questioning the nonsense anyway. 

 

I came to liberty and anarchy this way. I watched Adam Kokesh debate on youtube some other group of statists and dismissed every argument he made out of hand. About a year later the seeds of wisdom that had been planted by that conversation bloomed into a tall oak tree of logic and reason. Exposing simple truths, taxation is theft, the government is force, etc, even while I rejected them at first, there was a point where I could deny their truth no longer. So it is with religion as well (statism is just another kind of religion.) 

 

Point out the basic stuff, the unspoken but amazingly simple truths, god as a concept is a contradiction, god breaks his own commandments, belief by definition denies proof, etc. Even if the people reject this (and they most likely will, the false self is good at protecting it's safety) they next time they hear the truth, they will remember the small seeds that you have planted.

 

best of luck.

[AnarchoBenchwarmer]

As for material, it is my understanding that Richard Dawkins is the author to read on the topic of atheism.

 

Dawkins is excellent. I'm partial to Christopher Hitchens myself, though he did unfortunately come down with a case of the dead.

 

It's really too bad that nobody prayed for him...