no conclusive proof here
my friend posted an essay called "The Atheist Teenagers Primer" in her journal and i greatly enjoyed ripping the arguments to shreds. i wasn't trying to prove that god exists, just showing that the arguments used in the essay don't prove that god doesn't exist. anything in italics is from the original essay. i've quoted it verbatim and interspersed my remarks. the original essay is credited to someone named jon nelson. also, i just want to add that my rebuttal is by no means definative. i simply haven't done anything of this sort of intellectual thinking in a while, so i did it for fun.
First of all, nobody has ever come up with a description of what god is that everyone can agree on. Most people who believe in God think that he is some kind of invisible super-power who can do anything he wants at any time. They also think that he is omniscient, meaning that he possesses unlimited intelligence. But this makes the idea of god very difficult to accept. If God can do anything he wants, then why doesn't he eliminate evil in the world? A lot of religious people have thought about this and come up with the idea that we humans have something called "free will", which means that we have the ability to think; in other words, we have a choice whether to do good or not to do good.
forget the rest of this paragraph. the main problem lies in the first sentence: "nobody has ever come up with a description of what god is that everyone can agree on". strictly speaking, this is true as a factual statement, but it doesn't work as evidence in proof of either god's existence or non-existence. nobody ever came up with a description of what "right" and "wrong" are that everybody can agree on either... but we all still behave as if these concepts exist and have some bearing on our lives. "right" and "wrong" are each a sort of invisible super-power; they are different from the concept of god, of course, in the fact that they haven't been personified in western culture (or have they? what about the devil?). now, to the rest of the paragraph: "Most people who believe in God think that he is some kind of invisible super-power who can do anything he wants at any time. They also think that he is omniscient, meaning that he possesses unlimited intelligence. But this makes the idea of god very difficult to accept. If God can do anything he wants, then why doesn't he eliminate evil in the world?" ok, if you accept the rather simplistic definiton put forth in the first sentence (which disregards the truth of the "what everyone can agree on" statement anyway), and if you accept that this god guy has unlimited intelligence, you're probably also going to accept that humans are not invisible super-powers and are not in possession of unlimited intelligence. in that case, you have to accept that god has reasons for doing or not doing things that you don't know anything about, and also has knowlege of things you can't even imagine. why doesn't god eliminate evil from the world? that's like asking why the universe is infinitely expanding (if you believe the scientific assertion that the universe is indeed infinitely expanding), beyond "simple" practical explanations involving physics. that's like questioning a serial killer's motives, or the motives of somebody like mother theresa. even when it comes to fellow humans, there's always more wiggle room and there's always something you can't understand about another person's motives. we're supposed to expect clarity and comprehensibility of motives from this "invisible super-power" who, after all, theoretically made humans in his [sic] image? if god exists in this perfect, invisible form, there's no way humans will ever be able to define god, much less comprehend his motives. [all i have done here is discredit these specific arguments against god's existence. i haven't (yet?) discredited all of them, and even if i did, it would prove nothing more than that the specific arguments are weak; discrediting arguments against the existence of something does not automatically prove the existence of that thing. like i said, i'm playing devil's advocate.]
But this doesn't let God off the hook. He is still supposed to be all good. Even if we do have free will, God, if he exists, should step in when he sees evil being done, shouldn't he? For example, if you saw people being mugged or murdered and you had the ability to stop it without any risk to you, you would do something about it, wouldn't you? Then shouldn't we expect at least as much from a God who is supposed to be all-good?
ok, forgive the hoky-ness of this argument, but who has seen the movie bruce almighty? bruce makes the decision to answer all of the prayers prayed while he is "almighty" with a "yes" (interesting assumption that all of the prayers were requests for favors, but anyway). at the end, god (played by the wonderful morgan freeman!) shows bruce how the lives of some of those people were affected by getting a positive answer to their prayers. one specific example was of a kid who was beat up everyday and if he hadn't had his prayers answered he would have gone on to become... well, i don't remember specifically, but the idea was that he would have learned to turn his pain around and would become stronger and he would be helpful to other people. but bruce gave this little boy the strength to beat up his bullies, and after that he became a bully himself and wound up as no more than a professional wrestler. life is a lot more complicated than even situations like a young kid being picked on initially seem, so an all-knowing god would theoretically be able to see the outcomes of various situations and would know how and when and if to step in. again, comparing humans to god in this case also falls apart as a metaphor, because while we like to think highly of ourselves, very often humans will run away from harm being done to another instead of trying to stop it. there are extreme pacifists who would not lift a finger to help somebody being beaten, but who would stand by as a "witness" to the victim's suffering. there are people who are very good at turning the other cheek when it comes to other people's pain and not noticing when somebody is being hurt: many years ago a woman was stabbed to death in new york city and there were many people around who could have come to her aid, but none of them did. i'm sure we've all been slowed down on the highway because there was an accident and people have been slowing down to look at what happened (it's called "rubber-necking" if you're not familiar with the term)... but how many of those people stopped to help?
But there are many other problems with the idea of God's existence. As we already pointed out, no one has ever come up with a definition of what god actually is. They insist that he exists, or that he "created" the universe, but they never tell us just what it is that actually did the creating. Before you can create something, you have to first exist, don't you? How can God do anything unless he first exists as something? How can he think without a physical brain? How can he create anything without a physical body?
there's no argument here; just a bunch of unanswered questions.
People who believe in God insist that he is not like human beings, that heaven is not like earth, and that the soul is not like our mind. They tell us about these things only by saying what they aren't. They never tell us what they are. Just what is a God? Just where is heaven? Just what is a soul? They never give us any definitions; all they do is tell us what they aren't. So how is something that can only be described by negation any different than not existing?
definitions are tricky; can anybody give me a definition of the article (part of speech) "a"? how about a definition of a "mind"? what is this "earth", exactly? even if we can't come up with precise definitions for these concepts, we understand them to exist through subjective empirical experience. in its most basic form, a similar argument is descartes' "i think, therefore i am" philosophy. there's no way that thinking proves one's existence in the real world other than to oneself, yet other people also accept the fact of my existence. clearly, something other than thought is required to support a proof of anybody's existence. language is symbolic. the letters we use represent the sounds that we make and either the letters or the sounds, when strung together, create a highly symbolic way of referring to things and concepts. i could say that a truth of my existence is that i am "solid", but if all of the space between the atoms of my body was removed, i would be the size of a pinhead. clearly, the concept of "solid" is not easy to define, understand, or work with. i could also say that a fact about me is that i am "intelligent". but what is intelligence? how does one determine that i have intelligence? there's no empirical way to prove it, but people who know me generally agree that i'm intelligent, and beyond that it is generally agreed that humans are intelligent. in fact, "intelligent" is a concept that is used by comparison. whatever it is that i have, when people say that i am intelligent they are effectually saying that i am more intelligent than something else. the same goes for the general population of humans.
there's a degree of trust built into the use of language, being that ultimately the only definition of anything is our common understanding of it. if i say the word "egg", you and i will pretty much understand that word to mean the same thing. when we define or explain a new concept to somebody, what we are really doing is trying to convey the same connotations and understanding that we have about that concept. point being, there's not a hard-and-fast definition of anything in this world, and yet it doesn't fall apart. clearly, definitions are not essential to the understanding of a concept... nor are they essential to the existence of that concept. lack of (acceptable) definitions does not disprove the existence of god, heaven, or souls.
Believers also insist that the universe is too complicated to have come into existence by itself. They think that God explains the origin of the universe better than what they call "blind chance." But chance doesn't have anything to do with it. Nothing happens by "chance;" everything that occurs in the universe occurs because of specific laws which we humans have identified. For example, if you throw something in the air and it falls down, we have identified this as the law of gravity. We don't need a god to explain why it falls down. Just because we don't have a specific answer to something doesn't mean that we can introduce "God" as an answer. God doesn't answer anything. It doesn't tell us what God actually is, or how he caused the thing to happen.
wow, really simplistic argument here... ok. disregarding the fact that it's really simplistic to say that everything occurs because of specific laws, and disregarding the fact that some really nutty unexplainable stuff happens that has to be explained away because it threatens these laws that humans want so desperately to believe in... this argument begs the question (that is to say, it builds an argument off of an assumption. "begging the question" does not mean literally "begging" someone to ask the question.) of how those laws came into existence in the first place. clearly, my senses and other empirical evidence tell me that gravity exists. an explanation of how gravity came to be is not going to change the fact of its' existence and effect on me. an explanation of how god came to exist won't change the fact (in a "believer's" eyes) of god's existence or of his [sic] effect on that believer. also, it's possible that god exists and that he created gravity. the existence of gravity does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of god. just because "we don't need a god to explain why it falls down" doesn't mean that there is no god to explain why a thing falls to the ground. for the last two sentences, insert the word "gravity" in place of god and see what happens. "gravity doesn't answer anything. it doesn't tell us what gravity actually is, or how [it] caused the thing to happen." it makes the same sense as those sentences in the original, but nobody is questioning the existence of gravity...
Since many people in this country think that Jesus Christ is the most important person in their lives, we should consider this idea too. Unfortunately for them, there is no evidence that such a person actually existed. Many people try to look to history to "prove" Jesus' existence. They talk about the Jewish historian Josephus (died c 102 CE) as having mentioned Jesus. However, there is only one passage in Josephus' histories that refers to Jesus Christ, and that passage is now known to have been forged. The person who put it in was a fourth-century Christian named Eusebius. The fact that so many Christians today still think that Josephus' quote about Jesus is true shows that Christian leaders have been dishonest in maintaining this lie for over two hundred years now.
there's actually some fairly strong evidence that such a person as jesus did exist. check out the book "cows, pigs, wars, and witches" by marvin harris (and by the way, read with a healthy skepticism and don't believe everything at face-value!). the assertion that harris makes is that jesus was an actual historical figure in the hebrew messianic tradition. this tradition said that a strong leader would come to liberate the people from the oppression of the romans. this liberation was very much grounded in the physical world and in economics; basically, the messiah was an early freedom fighter, perhaps something like george washington or geronimo. jesus wasn't the first messiah, nor was he the last, but in order to escape persecution after his execution, his followers turned his story into a metaphor for religious salvation and turned jesus into a peace-freak. as far as explanations go this may hold no more water than the fundamentalist christian version, but it is very interesting to consider.
also: this isn't the only example of the tendency americans have to conflate "god" with "christianity", but it's a rather limiting tendency. this atheist argument is only arguing against the christian idea of god and against some christian beliefs, but not against the universal concept of god and not against any other religion. this argument also isn't arguing for anything but just against other people's beliefs.
Is Christianity necessary for morality? Again all we have to do is look to history to see how Christians who believed in Jesus, God, and the Bible have behaved. Christianity introduced the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings. Some of the most unspeakable evils have been committed in the name of God and religion. How is this possible if Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love? Christians insist that these things weren't done by "real" Christians. That is dishonest. The people who did them believed in Jesus. They believed in God. And they believed in the Bible. If they weren't "real" Christians, then when did the "real" Christian suddenly appear in history?
where's the proof that these people did or did not believe in god, jesus, and the bible? you can't make an argument based on an assumption of somebody else's beliefs. as for the first part, christianity may not be necessary for morality, but in actions christians are no more and no less moral than anybody else. so the religion isn't necessary but that doesn't mean that it's harmful to morality or to someone's ability to act in a moral way.
Atheists don't believe in God. We don't believe in Jesus Christ. And we don't believe in the Bible. And, we have only a fraction of one percent of the prison population. How is that possible if we are immoral?
hate to break it to you, but morality isn't measured by the percentage of your group that's in prison. that might be an indicator, but it doesn't prove the relative morality of any group. also, how do you get away with defining atheists as people who don't believe in god, jesus, and the bible when you complained that christians only define god as not human and that heaven is not earth and that the soul is not the mind? that's hypocrisy, plain and simple.
We encourage all people to think for themselves. At this time in our history, it is important for us to point out that there are alternatives to religion and superstition. We encourage everyone to examine everything and to come to conclusions that are consistent with the facts. We don't want to discriminate against those who are religious. But we also insist that we have a right to have our viewpoint heard.
there are indeed facts contained in this essay which is intended to be conclusive... but there is no conclusive proof that god does not exist, nor proof that jesus did not exist, nor proof that christians (or atheists) are any less moral than other groups of people. in short, the author failed his objective. now here's one for you: even if god does not exist (a question that, for me, is relatively unanswered), what matters is that people believe that god exists and act as if god exists. the truth of a thing does not matter in many cases so long as there is collective belief that the thing is true, and collective action based in that belief. of course, we can't start acting like gravity doesn't exist and expect it to disappear, so there are some cases where truth is obviously objective. that's not to say that there is no objective truth unless the truth is obvious, but there is some room for discretion on the part of believers and non-believers.
and look at these statements side-by-side: "we encourage all people to think for themselves... we encourage everyone to... come to conclusions that are consistent with the facts." right, you can think for yourself as long as we both arrive at my conclusion. sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water no matter who uses it.
like i said above, i'm just showing how these arguments don't make the point that the author wants them to make. there's nothing here that disproves the existence of god... but there's nothing in my debunking that proves the existence of god either. oh well, better luck next time.
OH BY THE WAY: i officially quit working at the athletic center today. next week is my last week and then i am done dealing with the bullshit for... a very long time at least. i'll just stick to being an alum from now on.
First of all, nobody has ever come up with a description of what god is that everyone can agree on. Most people who believe in God think that he is some kind of invisible super-power who can do anything he wants at any time. They also think that he is omniscient, meaning that he possesses unlimited intelligence. But this makes the idea of god very difficult to accept. If God can do anything he wants, then why doesn't he eliminate evil in the world? A lot of religious people have thought about this and come up with the idea that we humans have something called "free will", which means that we have the ability to think; in other words, we have a choice whether to do good or not to do good.
forget the rest of this paragraph. the main problem lies in the first sentence: "nobody has ever come up with a description of what god is that everyone can agree on". strictly speaking, this is true as a factual statement, but it doesn't work as evidence in proof of either god's existence or non-existence. nobody ever came up with a description of what "right" and "wrong" are that everybody can agree on either... but we all still behave as if these concepts exist and have some bearing on our lives. "right" and "wrong" are each a sort of invisible super-power; they are different from the concept of god, of course, in the fact that they haven't been personified in western culture (or have they? what about the devil?). now, to the rest of the paragraph: "Most people who believe in God think that he is some kind of invisible super-power who can do anything he wants at any time. They also think that he is omniscient, meaning that he possesses unlimited intelligence. But this makes the idea of god very difficult to accept. If God can do anything he wants, then why doesn't he eliminate evil in the world?" ok, if you accept the rather simplistic definiton put forth in the first sentence (which disregards the truth of the "what everyone can agree on" statement anyway), and if you accept that this god guy has unlimited intelligence, you're probably also going to accept that humans are not invisible super-powers and are not in possession of unlimited intelligence. in that case, you have to accept that god has reasons for doing or not doing things that you don't know anything about, and also has knowlege of things you can't even imagine. why doesn't god eliminate evil from the world? that's like asking why the universe is infinitely expanding (if you believe the scientific assertion that the universe is indeed infinitely expanding), beyond "simple" practical explanations involving physics. that's like questioning a serial killer's motives, or the motives of somebody like mother theresa. even when it comes to fellow humans, there's always more wiggle room and there's always something you can't understand about another person's motives. we're supposed to expect clarity and comprehensibility of motives from this "invisible super-power" who, after all, theoretically made humans in his [sic] image? if god exists in this perfect, invisible form, there's no way humans will ever be able to define god, much less comprehend his motives. [all i have done here is discredit these specific arguments against god's existence. i haven't (yet?) discredited all of them, and even if i did, it would prove nothing more than that the specific arguments are weak; discrediting arguments against the existence of something does not automatically prove the existence of that thing. like i said, i'm playing devil's advocate.]
But this doesn't let God off the hook. He is still supposed to be all good. Even if we do have free will, God, if he exists, should step in when he sees evil being done, shouldn't he? For example, if you saw people being mugged or murdered and you had the ability to stop it without any risk to you, you would do something about it, wouldn't you? Then shouldn't we expect at least as much from a God who is supposed to be all-good?
ok, forgive the hoky-ness of this argument, but who has seen the movie bruce almighty? bruce makes the decision to answer all of the prayers prayed while he is "almighty" with a "yes" (interesting assumption that all of the prayers were requests for favors, but anyway). at the end, god (played by the wonderful morgan freeman!) shows bruce how the lives of some of those people were affected by getting a positive answer to their prayers. one specific example was of a kid who was beat up everyday and if he hadn't had his prayers answered he would have gone on to become... well, i don't remember specifically, but the idea was that he would have learned to turn his pain around and would become stronger and he would be helpful to other people. but bruce gave this little boy the strength to beat up his bullies, and after that he became a bully himself and wound up as no more than a professional wrestler. life is a lot more complicated than even situations like a young kid being picked on initially seem, so an all-knowing god would theoretically be able to see the outcomes of various situations and would know how and when and if to step in. again, comparing humans to god in this case also falls apart as a metaphor, because while we like to think highly of ourselves, very often humans will run away from harm being done to another instead of trying to stop it. there are extreme pacifists who would not lift a finger to help somebody being beaten, but who would stand by as a "witness" to the victim's suffering. there are people who are very good at turning the other cheek when it comes to other people's pain and not noticing when somebody is being hurt: many years ago a woman was stabbed to death in new york city and there were many people around who could have come to her aid, but none of them did. i'm sure we've all been slowed down on the highway because there was an accident and people have been slowing down to look at what happened (it's called "rubber-necking" if you're not familiar with the term)... but how many of those people stopped to help?
But there are many other problems with the idea of God's existence. As we already pointed out, no one has ever come up with a definition of what god actually is. They insist that he exists, or that he "created" the universe, but they never tell us just what it is that actually did the creating. Before you can create something, you have to first exist, don't you? How can God do anything unless he first exists as something? How can he think without a physical brain? How can he create anything without a physical body?
there's no argument here; just a bunch of unanswered questions.
People who believe in God insist that he is not like human beings, that heaven is not like earth, and that the soul is not like our mind. They tell us about these things only by saying what they aren't. They never tell us what they are. Just what is a God? Just where is heaven? Just what is a soul? They never give us any definitions; all they do is tell us what they aren't. So how is something that can only be described by negation any different than not existing?
definitions are tricky; can anybody give me a definition of the article (part of speech) "a"? how about a definition of a "mind"? what is this "earth", exactly? even if we can't come up with precise definitions for these concepts, we understand them to exist through subjective empirical experience. in its most basic form, a similar argument is descartes' "i think, therefore i am" philosophy. there's no way that thinking proves one's existence in the real world other than to oneself, yet other people also accept the fact of my existence. clearly, something other than thought is required to support a proof of anybody's existence. language is symbolic. the letters we use represent the sounds that we make and either the letters or the sounds, when strung together, create a highly symbolic way of referring to things and concepts. i could say that a truth of my existence is that i am "solid", but if all of the space between the atoms of my body was removed, i would be the size of a pinhead. clearly, the concept of "solid" is not easy to define, understand, or work with. i could also say that a fact about me is that i am "intelligent". but what is intelligence? how does one determine that i have intelligence? there's no empirical way to prove it, but people who know me generally agree that i'm intelligent, and beyond that it is generally agreed that humans are intelligent. in fact, "intelligent" is a concept that is used by comparison. whatever it is that i have, when people say that i am intelligent they are effectually saying that i am more intelligent than something else. the same goes for the general population of humans.
there's a degree of trust built into the use of language, being that ultimately the only definition of anything is our common understanding of it. if i say the word "egg", you and i will pretty much understand that word to mean the same thing. when we define or explain a new concept to somebody, what we are really doing is trying to convey the same connotations and understanding that we have about that concept. point being, there's not a hard-and-fast definition of anything in this world, and yet it doesn't fall apart. clearly, definitions are not essential to the understanding of a concept... nor are they essential to the existence of that concept. lack of (acceptable) definitions does not disprove the existence of god, heaven, or souls.
Believers also insist that the universe is too complicated to have come into existence by itself. They think that God explains the origin of the universe better than what they call "blind chance." But chance doesn't have anything to do with it. Nothing happens by "chance;" everything that occurs in the universe occurs because of specific laws which we humans have identified. For example, if you throw something in the air and it falls down, we have identified this as the law of gravity. We don't need a god to explain why it falls down. Just because we don't have a specific answer to something doesn't mean that we can introduce "God" as an answer. God doesn't answer anything. It doesn't tell us what God actually is, or how he caused the thing to happen.
wow, really simplistic argument here... ok. disregarding the fact that it's really simplistic to say that everything occurs because of specific laws, and disregarding the fact that some really nutty unexplainable stuff happens that has to be explained away because it threatens these laws that humans want so desperately to believe in... this argument begs the question (that is to say, it builds an argument off of an assumption. "begging the question" does not mean literally "begging" someone to ask the question.) of how those laws came into existence in the first place. clearly, my senses and other empirical evidence tell me that gravity exists. an explanation of how gravity came to be is not going to change the fact of its' existence and effect on me. an explanation of how god came to exist won't change the fact (in a "believer's" eyes) of god's existence or of his [sic] effect on that believer. also, it's possible that god exists and that he created gravity. the existence of gravity does nothing to prove or disprove the existence of god. just because "we don't need a god to explain why it falls down" doesn't mean that there is no god to explain why a thing falls to the ground. for the last two sentences, insert the word "gravity" in place of god and see what happens. "gravity doesn't answer anything. it doesn't tell us what gravity actually is, or how [it] caused the thing to happen." it makes the same sense as those sentences in the original, but nobody is questioning the existence of gravity...
Since many people in this country think that Jesus Christ is the most important person in their lives, we should consider this idea too. Unfortunately for them, there is no evidence that such a person actually existed. Many people try to look to history to "prove" Jesus' existence. They talk about the Jewish historian Josephus (died c 102 CE) as having mentioned Jesus. However, there is only one passage in Josephus' histories that refers to Jesus Christ, and that passage is now known to have been forged. The person who put it in was a fourth-century Christian named Eusebius. The fact that so many Christians today still think that Josephus' quote about Jesus is true shows that Christian leaders have been dishonest in maintaining this lie for over two hundred years now.
there's actually some fairly strong evidence that such a person as jesus did exist. check out the book "cows, pigs, wars, and witches" by marvin harris (and by the way, read with a healthy skepticism and don't believe everything at face-value!). the assertion that harris makes is that jesus was an actual historical figure in the hebrew messianic tradition. this tradition said that a strong leader would come to liberate the people from the oppression of the romans. this liberation was very much grounded in the physical world and in economics; basically, the messiah was an early freedom fighter, perhaps something like george washington or geronimo. jesus wasn't the first messiah, nor was he the last, but in order to escape persecution after his execution, his followers turned his story into a metaphor for religious salvation and turned jesus into a peace-freak. as far as explanations go this may hold no more water than the fundamentalist christian version, but it is very interesting to consider.
also: this isn't the only example of the tendency americans have to conflate "god" with "christianity", but it's a rather limiting tendency. this atheist argument is only arguing against the christian idea of god and against some christian beliefs, but not against the universal concept of god and not against any other religion. this argument also isn't arguing for anything but just against other people's beliefs.
Is Christianity necessary for morality? Again all we have to do is look to history to see how Christians who believed in Jesus, God, and the Bible have behaved. Christianity introduced the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch burnings. Some of the most unspeakable evils have been committed in the name of God and religion. How is this possible if Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love? Christians insist that these things weren't done by "real" Christians. That is dishonest. The people who did them believed in Jesus. They believed in God. And they believed in the Bible. If they weren't "real" Christians, then when did the "real" Christian suddenly appear in history?
where's the proof that these people did or did not believe in god, jesus, and the bible? you can't make an argument based on an assumption of somebody else's beliefs. as for the first part, christianity may not be necessary for morality, but in actions christians are no more and no less moral than anybody else. so the religion isn't necessary but that doesn't mean that it's harmful to morality or to someone's ability to act in a moral way.
Atheists don't believe in God. We don't believe in Jesus Christ. And we don't believe in the Bible. And, we have only a fraction of one percent of the prison population. How is that possible if we are immoral?
hate to break it to you, but morality isn't measured by the percentage of your group that's in prison. that might be an indicator, but it doesn't prove the relative morality of any group. also, how do you get away with defining atheists as people who don't believe in god, jesus, and the bible when you complained that christians only define god as not human and that heaven is not earth and that the soul is not the mind? that's hypocrisy, plain and simple.
We encourage all people to think for themselves. At this time in our history, it is important for us to point out that there are alternatives to religion and superstition. We encourage everyone to examine everything and to come to conclusions that are consistent with the facts. We don't want to discriminate against those who are religious. But we also insist that we have a right to have our viewpoint heard.
there are indeed facts contained in this essay which is intended to be conclusive... but there is no conclusive proof that god does not exist, nor proof that jesus did not exist, nor proof that christians (or atheists) are any less moral than other groups of people. in short, the author failed his objective. now here's one for you: even if god does not exist (a question that, for me, is relatively unanswered), what matters is that people believe that god exists and act as if god exists. the truth of a thing does not matter in many cases so long as there is collective belief that the thing is true, and collective action based in that belief. of course, we can't start acting like gravity doesn't exist and expect it to disappear, so there are some cases where truth is obviously objective. that's not to say that there is no objective truth unless the truth is obvious, but there is some room for discretion on the part of believers and non-believers.
and look at these statements side-by-side: "we encourage all people to think for themselves... we encourage everyone to... come to conclusions that are consistent with the facts." right, you can think for yourself as long as we both arrive at my conclusion. sorry, but that argument doesn't hold water no matter who uses it.
like i said above, i'm just showing how these arguments don't make the point that the author wants them to make. there's nothing here that disproves the existence of god... but there's nothing in my debunking that proves the existence of god either. oh well, better luck next time.
OH BY THE WAY: i officially quit working at the athletic center today. next week is my last week and then i am done dealing with the bullshit for... a very long time at least. i'll just stick to being an alum from now on.