Trying to talk to believers about their belief is often frustrating and unproductive. Based on a great deal of practice and a deep interest in the best techniques to approach these difficult conversations, I think I can offer some constructive tips. I've written the following to help skeptics have productive conversations about religion. These techniques are heavily based on Peter Boghossian's "Street Epistemology" concept, and Anthony Magnabosco's work. (Anthony's videos are highly recommended to see these strategies in action)

HOW TO TALK TO RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR RELIGION

• You cannot convince someone else of anything — You can only provide new information, and if they accept it, they convince themselves. Sounds simple enough, but the problem is the backfire effect. This is the defensive tendency, upon hearing something contradictory, to reflexively reject it in order to preserve a belief. The result is an even stronger belief. Simply put, people like to be right, and they dislike being wrong, especially about something they consider important. So we are faced with the difficult task of getting someone to question their cherished beliefs, while we avoid being contradictory. Sounds impossible, but it's just tricky. The key is to ask questions and inspire empathy.
  
  
• Establish at the outset that you are open to new evidence, that you are willing to change your mind. Religious people like to define atheism as a religion because it's easier to dismiss dogma than an honestly curious person. But atheism has no dogma, and as an atheist, you are unattached to anything except a commitment to finding the truth, whatever it may be. You are not certain or closed-minded. You are agnostic, open, and honest, and it is this attitude that you want to inspire within the believer as much as possible. The best way to do that is to lead by example.
  
  
• Your entire discussion (and every future discussion) should primarily concern the investigation of one subject: "Why do you believe, and is it a good reason?" Instead of engaging in an argument, establish a teacher-student dynamic, with you as the student.
  
  
• How do we determine what is most likely true? Does your proposed method work consistently for everyone, or only when you use it? It's so easy to get entangled with irrelevant details, but stay on point. We want to help the believer discover that their epistemological method is unreliable, because this is the foundation of belief.
  
  
• Socratic method. Ask questions often and make assertions as sparingly as possible. I cannot overstate how important this is. Ask "why" enough, and you'll soon realize how comfortable the faithful are at describing "what" they believe, and how unprepared they are to explain the "why". And the "why" is what matters.
  
  
• Frequently summarize, in your own words, what you've heard. Ask if your summary is accurate. This assures them that you are listening and sincerely want to understand, and helps them to consider their own ideas, which can sound much less convincing when expressed with different verbiage and coming from outside one's own head. (No, I don't mean to summarize Christian doctrine as ancient blood magic. Be charitable.)
  
  
• When you hear the word, "faith", ask for a definition and don't continue until you get something reasonably coherent. Explore the reliability of faith. Ask about scenarios where faith leads to false conclusions. Listen carefully for when they use "faith" to mean something else, then return to asking what faith means. Believers often use "faith", "trust", "hope", and "belief" interchangeably. This is symptomatic of a circular belief structure — If all those words mean the same thing, then, "I have trust in my belief because I have faith" is really saying, "I have faith in my faith because I have faith".
  
  
• Avoid counter-apologetics. There are logical answers to every theistic argument, but they always fall on deaf ears. Why is this? The backfire effect plays a role, but also important to note: Apologetics are typically post facto rationalizations, and not the core reason for belief. Nobody ever converted to theism upon hearing the cosmological argument. Trying to rebut these kinds of excuses is not only argumentative, but irrelevant. If forced to engage apologetics, a good question is, "Were you a believer before you learned about these arguments?" The honest answer is always yes, so try to explore those foundational reasons for belief.
  
  
• The example of other religions should always be at the ready. When a spiritual revelation is mentioned, ask how the authenticity of one revelation can be established over another. When they talk about their holy book, ask how we can determine which holy book is most correct. When they appeal to faith, ask about people who have faith in a false god.
  
  
• "If the Muslim / Hindu / Mormon is mistaken about their revelation / book / evidence / faith... how can they discover their mistake?" You won't believe how effective and incisive this question is until you try it. It's a simple question about falsifiability, and believers, though well experienced with confirmation, don't think much about falsifiability. Whatever the answer, explore the reliability of the method.
  
  
• These kinds of questions tend to make believers uncomfortable because they rarely (if ever) consider their foundational reasoning. Expect responses of rhetorical tap-dancing which don't really answer the questions posed. Expect elaborations on "what" they believe, and not "why". Be patient and try not to interrupt. But...
  
  
• Don't get sidetracked. If you're asking good questions, you'll often get answers to questions you didn't ask. These answers will often contain fallacies or absurdities you'll want to counter, but resist that urge! Stay on topic, but don't be argumentative. If your question isn't answered, listen respectfully, then ask again, as gently as possible. I mean, avoid saying, "You didn't answer the question!" This is an accusation of evasion, and adversarial. Repeat what you just heard, ask if that's a fair summary, say, "Hmm" thoughtfully and then say, "But I don't understand how that explains..." Do you see the difference? The first response is an accusation. The second establishes that you are listening, and accuses yourself of a failure to understand. This humble attitude is important. Lead by example.
  
  
• Where appropriate, instead of saying, "I" or "You", say, "We". For example, "How can we tell the difference between something non-physical (supernatural) and something that doesn't exist?" This is a subtle but effective way to inspire empathy. You are inviting them to be your partner in an honest search for truth.
  
  
• You want to follow the beliefs of the person who is most correct. There are many competing religions and the reasons for belief offered by members of most religions are strikingly similar. Illustrate these similarities in your questions. Can the believer demonstrate that their reasons are superior to what other religions can provide? The object is to inspire empathy and get them thinking about the issue from your open perspective, faced with a variety of god claims, rather than from a position of closed certainty. If you are successful, you won't need to ask why their god hides from an honest seeker of truth — If they trust your sincerity, they'll ask themselves.
  
  I cannot guarantee that these strategies will make atheists out of everyone you encounter. But I can assure with some confidence that your conversations will be more productive, and will better provoke honest self-reflection in the believer. And that's the first step.

> Interestingly, if you look at the history, literalism/fundamentalism didn't arise until well after the Enlightenment. Literalism is best understood as an over-exaggerated response to the challenge posed to "easy" Christianity by the advancement of science.

I refuse to accept the idea that, say, 9th century monks or 15th century inquisitors did not believe the bible to be literally true. I accept, of course, that much of today's literalism is unthinking, childish backlash against scientific knowledge. However, literalism has always been around and was simply assumed prior to the enlightenment.

>Also, I was not stating my own beliefs, I was merely arguing that the OP presented few arguments which would be challenging to a Christian.

God's devil's advocate. Gotcha. What are your beliefs and why do you not find the arguments you present to be compelling?

> Christians don't believe that all beliefs require evidence.

Of course they don't, they'd have to believe something else if they did. They might have to be gasp agnostic or atheist.

> Telling them that faith-based beliefs "ought" to require evidence is merely an assertion of your own evidentialism;

That isn't what I'm doing. What I'm doing is suggesting that beliefs that are based on evidence are much more likely to be true than those that aren't. The Christian response which you are echoing here is, "I don't care what is more likely to be true, I care about believing in Christianity no matter how unlikely it may be."

> Responsible Christians, of which I know many, would not dispute that your hypothetical is plausible; they would simply say it isnot what they believe. Their belief is not based on plausibility, it is based on faith.

And it is this belief based on nothing but faith that is of absolutely no value. One can have faith in anything. There are an infinite number of things one can believe in. There is only one method for us to determine what we ought to believe in, via evidence. The only other way for us to know what we ought to believe is from supernatural inspiration of some kind. Of course, all the mutually incompatible religions that have ever existed have laid claim on divine inspiration. What to do???

> That number is higher than I would have thought. I guess the great majority of wackadoodle evangelicals happen to live in America. Even in America, something like 80% identify as Christian, so there are still quite a lot of non-YEC Christians.

Something just occurred to me. What right do you have of calling anyone a wackadoodle evangelical? Their faith is just as valid (or invalid) as any "responsible" Christian.

> I'm not sure what you mean here. I don't recall claiming that Christianity should get any credit for discovering natural selection.

I'm suggesting that Christians do not get any credit for accepting evolution. The power of evidence has shaken the foundations of the Christian faith. This was pushed onto Christianity from the outside.

>The point is that you can only justify this with an appeal to evidentialism, just as the Christian can only justify their belief with an appeal to God. You've only gotten back to where you started.

I reject your assertion that evidence is no better than faith as simply false.

> People who believe in miracles would dispute the assertion that they have never been shown to happen. The Catholic Church believes itself to hold a vast library of evidence of miracles. This is how they decide who gets to be a saint.

>Again, you and I think this is bunk, but it is not logically inconsistent for a Christian to believe it.

I disagree. Given that every mutually incompatible religion lays claims to miraculous events and given that all supposedly miraculous events that have ever been put forward have failed to maintain their divine luster in the hard light of rational examination, it is absolutely illogical for a Christian (or a person of any other religion) to believe in miracles. The best we can say is that there are unproven claims of miracles.

What's more, the entire subject of miracles completely belies your notion that the religious accept their religion on faith. Miracles, if they exist, must necessarily be the work of God (which God depends largely on which religion you were brought up to believe in). Miracles, as you pointed out, are used by various religions as evidence of God's existence. The only reason faith comes into play when discussing miracles is because there is not one single miracle that we know for a fact has happened and that cannot be denied. If there were even one miracle that was undeniably the work of the Christian God, then what choice would anyone have but to accept Christianity? People would be foolish not to.

>I'm not sure. If he is omnipotent then he can tell a lie. If he is omnibenevolent then he would tell a lie if circumstances were such that telling the lie did more good than telling the truth. I'm not sure if this situation could ever actually occur. I'm not sure if it's logically inconsistent with Christian beliefs for God to tell a lie. However, their faith is that he doesn't.

You evaded the point I was making and I think you realize that. My question what if the Christian God exists but is lying about the entire story. What if there is a pantheon of Gods competing for man's attention and the Christian God made a power play to gain dominance over the other gods?

The problem with faith is that this scenario is exactly as plausible as the entirety of the Christian religion. There is no good reason to believe Christianity over this bizarre pantheon of backstabbing deities. There's no good reason to believe Christianity over Islam or Hinduism. The only thing the religious have is a desire to believe and a desire to believe has clearly shown an ability to convince people that they should believe. Only those who value evidence and are open to any possibility have any shot at determining the truth about the world.

> They believe in him without a reason, as previously discussed.

Exactly. What other claim is there that people believe without reason? If someone came to us and declared that they believed the world was flat, we'd (rightly) think they were being irrational and may attempt to correct them by providing them the evidence that suggests otherwise. You're suggesting that religious belief (which is a truth claim about the universe) should not be held to this same standard. Why?

> Christians believe Jesus to be eternal. Only his physical form was temporal.

>This is not about what I personally believe. It is about whether the OP's points are strong arguments. Christians believe that "The Word" is eternal, so it existed prior to the Abrahamic religions. Again, this is a faith.

You dodged the question. It doesn't matter if Jesus (or "the word" whatever that means) always existed, what matters is that Christians haven't always existed. During this pre-abrahamic religion state of the world, when people had absolutely no concept of the tyrannical warrior god of Judea, where did they get their morals? Surely not from other Gods since the Abrahamic religions are clearly monotheistic religions and would preclude other gods from existing in the first place.

My point is that your rebuttals to the OP's points are weak and this is but one example of that. If Christians suggest that morality comes only from God, then morality could not have existed prior to human knowledge of God's existence. So how is it that humans survived these brutal, amoral millennia when there could not have been a single act of kindness?

> What I meant here is that evolutionary biology can tell us how humans behave and why they behave that way, but it is inherently incapable of telling us how they ought to behave. There is, and can be, no reasoning from biology to "ought."

I submit that this statement is simply false. I'll simply point you to The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris as this is exactly what he spends three hundred or so pages arguing against.

>No. I'm saying that you can tell an evolution-story to support any position. People frequently do. But without some sort of testable prediction and reproducible experiment, a consistent evidentialist would reject many of these stories.

Not having the answer to a question does not mean that any answer is of equal value.

>If Gaussian field theory is a product of natural selection, then everything is.

That's a non-answer.

> All I'm saying is that this doesn't strike me as a productive argument for his non-existence.

It's a productive argument against part of His existence.

Hi there, and thank you for your trust!

It sounds like your boyfriend is going about this a bit insensitively. Logical arguments are OK for debates, when both sides do it for the intellectual challenge. It's not humane to tear a person's world view out from under them when they're unprepared for it and a captive audience. I'm sure he means well and wants you to be closer to him, but he's being a bit of a caveman about it. Don't be mad at him, but tell him you think you'll be better off if you do your own information seeking, at your own pace. Ask him to have the patience and the trust to let you educate yourself. If he really cares for you, he should be fine with this: It may even be taking a burden off his shoulders.

I think there are some things you can consider and think about that will put things into focus and make this mess seem less of a problem.

Do you remember that song by Elton John Sting? "I hope the Russians love their children too."

Consider, first, some family in Tibet. Mom and dad live in a simple hut, doing some farming or whatever Tibetans do, and they have a bunch of children. They work hard to feed the family, and in the evening when they get together for supper they talk and smile and laugh a lot. They hug their children, they care for them when they're sick. They observe some kind of religious rituals, though they've probably never heard of Jesus. When a neighbor has a problem, they help them out. When someone dies, they mourn their passing and wish them a happy afterlife. Apart from the fact that they look Asian, they're people just like you, and they're good people. They have similar hopes and fears, they have stories to share and comfort them, and so forth. Two thirds of the world's people don't believe in Jesus, yet they're humans just like you and mostly decent people, just like your neighbors. Do you think they're all going to hell? Do you think they're paralyzed by their distance from your god, from their fear of death? No. Forget what religion these folks are, they're human.

Atheists are just a special case of those "other" humans. They believe in even less "other-worldly" stuff than the folks in Tibet do. Yet you probably meet atheists on the street every day. Some of them greet you and smile, most of them would help you if you had a problem and they were around. Atheists are not like vampires: They're not evil, they don't have to stay out of God's sunlight, and they don't burn up in churches and from contact with holy water ;)

Atheists have stories too, about the creation of the universe, which is really awesomely huge and inspiring. About the struggle of life to evolve to the fine humans we are today. About the many important achievements humans have made in their short time of being intelligent and basically masters of the world.

Rather than wrenching at your faith, I suggest you take a look at other cultures and religions for a bit. Consider that there humans out there who think other things than you, yet manage to be good people and lead happy lives. I'm almost embarrassed enough to delete my sappy paragraph about the Tibetan family, but I'll leave it in there to let you know what I'm getting at.

Then, inhale a bit of science. Go to church if you feel you need to, but also listen to videos by Carl Sagan. Get an appreciation for the wonders of the universe and of nature here on our planet. It's a rich and wonderful world out there. There is so much to see, to learn! Some people are in awe of God for producing all this; but you can just as easily be in awe of nature, of the intricate mechanisms that brought all this about without anyone taking a hand in it.

More stuff on nature and evolution can be learned, more or less gently, from Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. Get your boyfriend to buy it for you! But stay away from The God Delusion. While Dawkins is thoughtful and sensible, you don't want him telling you about how bad your god is - at least not right away.

A thought from me about a metaphor for God. Training wheels! You know how you have those wheels on your bike to keep it from tipping over as you're starting out? And how, once you've learned to keep your cycle straight, those training wheels are no longer really doing anything any more? That's God. It's comforting to feel that God is behind you in everything you do, it gives you strength and confidence. But everything you've achieved... that was you! You're standing up straight and doing fine, God is the training wheels you don't really need. On the other hand, I'm not going to say he really, truly absolutely isn't there. If you want him to be there, let him be there. Your BF will just have to put up with him for a while longer as you outgrow your training wheels.

Finally, about death: The good news is, it's not nearly the problem you think it is. There's a statistic that says, devout Christians are more than three times as likely, in their final week, to demand aggressive life-extending treatment than atheists. In English: Christians are more scared of dying than atheists are. You'd think that with heaven waiting, they'd be anxious to go! Actually, their religion -your religion- is telling them a comforting lie, letting them stick their heads in the sand all their lives. At the end, they panic because they're not sure what they believe is true. And they struggle for every minute of life.

I was religious once, and I had the "fear of death" phase, as many other atheists here report. You know what? I got over it. I confronted the idea, wrapped my head around it, got over it... and I've been completely unworried about death ever since. You'll get other people quoting Mark Twain for you here: About death being the same as the state you were in before you were born, and that didn't inconvenience you either, did it? Seriously, while I worry that my death may be painful or unpleasant, being dead is something I almost look forward to. It's like the long vacation I've always been meaning to take.

Well, I don't know if that will convince you, but... other people have been there too, and it turns out not to be the horrible problem you think it is. Things will be fine! Just allow yourself some time, and remind your BF to not be pushy about things. You can keep a spare room for when God comes to visit, but don't be surprised if that room turns out to fill up with other junk you're throwing out ;)

Please take notice of the reply that follows this for a continuation of my response.

I appreciate your kind approach and apparent openness to persuasion, which motivated me to write this. I hope you'll find it worthwhile. I'll try to start simply:

What is a philosophical argument? Think of it as a mechanism for deriving implications from certain observations of the natural world. If, from these, we arrive at theological implications, they are just as significant as any other information (say, from science...which is built upon philosophy anyhow) in that they are explanatory and represent an advance in knowledge. There has been a considerable change in the Anglo-American collegiate realm regarding Christian theism, especially in philosophy departments. The secularization of academia today was, in large part, due to the privatization of Christian institutions and advances in observational astronomy. The former because Christians left colleges for their own academic strongholds, and the latter because we began to see what had previously been thought of as astrological influences and personifications as what they really are: distant spheres of (hydrogen) gas (which should stop no one from considering Christianity, in light of the fact that our belief system distinguishes the radically contingent universe from a God who exists by the necessity of His own nature).

Since the late 1900s we have done away with positivism, and its attendant verification principle (the idea that only that which can be verified through the senses is true...an idea which cannot be verified through the senses. It's positively self- defeating, meaning that it is self-referentially incoherent) and the works of philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga (the most contributive philosopher of religion in recent years...before he retired he was the president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers) in revamping classical arguments for God's existence (such as the Ontological Argument, which has now become an exercise in modal logic), refuting the argument for atheism from the existence of evil in both its logical and probabilistic forms, and defending the position that belief in God is an epistemologically warranted metaphysical initiative (meaning that, in the absence of a defeater for Christian theism, it qualifies as a belief that can be held without reference to anything in reality, wholly substantiated by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit). The following are some arguments for the existence of God that I have so far studied and found compelling, and consider them in cumulation as indicative of the supernatural and of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic God or of whatever other theologically significant conclusion their exponents aspire to establish:

A Leibnizian Formulation of the Argument from Contingency (God best explains the universe's being existent rather than not), Arguments from our Moral Experience (we perceive an objective realm of moral values and duties that could not otherwise exist without God), from the coherency of the concept of God (the idea of God should not make sense unless He actually does exist. It's remarkable that it would be a rational idea. This is more popularly known as the Ontological argument, and I suggest you look into it as it is defended by William Lane Craig for an approachable start to studying it), from the probable origin of the universe (from which one may deduce a personal cause), from reason (One version would go like this: evolution selects on phenotypes, and by extension, on survival value, not truth value. Thus, we have a defeater for naturalism by its invalidation of our cognitive faculties, rendering the naturalistic conclusion invalid...however, this version is a combination of multiple arguments iferring from the existence of the reasoning process justification for rejecting naturalism in favor of a theistic alternative), from the inability for non-theism to correspond to one's participation in reality ((the consequences to atheism are so great that it seems we are forced, by our nature, to worship God. But to hold atheism is to not recognize God, conversely, holding theism is to recognize (worship) God. From a Christian perspective, should it surprise us that to draw away from the Source of Life in our greatest purpose--which would be to worship God AKA hold (Christian) theism--is to find a life unlivable?)), from religious experience, the historically and historiographically corroborated resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, from intentional states of consciousness, the phycological relevance of neurological confluence, etc. (see that paper on the argument from reason), from the "fine tuning" of initial cosmological and subsequent universal conditions for the development of intelligent life, from the applicability of mathematics to the physical world, from Certain Aspects of the Laws of Nature and more. (If ever you were to take an interest in Aristotelian metaphysics, Aquinas by Edward Feser would be a great introduction to Thomas Aquinas's "Five Ways" which you should certainly at least look into his blog for the basics. I'll recommend that you start with this post, patiently read to get the most out of it. As an analytic philosopher that became a Christian from atheism after studying Thomism, I think you'll find he argues from a higher standard, endeavoring to convince not Christians but atheists as adamant as he was)...you'll find further recommended reading on many of those arguments listed after their respective reference sections.

On Intelligent Design--Here's what I think...there's a a great deal of confusion regarding inferences from instantiations of biological complexity to an Intelligent Source. Many equate this with Young Earth Creationism, when it's entirely different. Some stop when they fail to see how it categorizes as science (it doesn't, and that's not what matters anyway). Here you will find arguments such as that from the existence of consciousness, the first cell of life, irreducible complexity, the linguistic properties of DNA, and the like. Antony Flew would be a good example of a world-famous atheist turned theist over these sorts of arguments from apparent design/teleology (the equivalent to Dawkins from the last generation however, but the difference would be in his having an informed opinion and philosophical excellence, in addition to his desire for meaningful discourse).

I think an honest assessment of each of these will show that they at each at least raise the probability that God exists on their own. Now, I want to guard against what keeps many from fully seeing the force behind natural theology: they are meant to be taken cumulatively, so that together they can raise the probability of theism's truth value such that it is rational to lend credence to it.

I get this a lot: "if there were evidence for Christianity, then everyone would be a Christian. Therefore, Christianity is not substantiated." I hope you can see why this should not be taken seriously. Firstly, it could be said of any worldview. If there is something evidently true on atheism, why isn't everyone an atheist? And so, if there truly is something rationally compelling about Christianity, I believe you will find it by earnestly seeking Christ where many others have found it (I've described some of these authentications below). Furthermore, college study is oriented towards specialization, which is decided by one's interests.

As for Christian evidences, I was originally convinced of Christianity by simply reading the Bible. If you are interested in pursuing truth, rather than arguments (which bear the inherently biased objective of discerning who's right rather than what's right) then I highly recommend that you seek God where He can be found: in His word, from which faith is derived, as it appears in the actions and words of Christians, and in the text itself. I think you'll find, in the person of Jesus Christ, that He knows us too well, and loves us far too much, to not be our Father. By this, I mean that there is something so true about Christianity: it makes too much sense. And way too much sense out of life and the world. As C.S. Lewis said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." After I earnestly sought God for the first time, like (I should hope) David ("a man after His own heart"), I found that the scales fell from my eyes, like Paul, and I gained an entirely new perspective of the world and was changed to so great an extent in ways that I can only regard as supernatural.

I apologize if I said hundreds of thousands of years. The events in the Bible seem to only cover the 4-8 thousand years leading up to Christ and the early church. No room for hundreds of thousands in there. What I meant to say is hundreds and thousands, though it would probably have been safer to say hundreds only. Many miraculous stories in the Bible and bookended by generations of Jews that experience no such miracles. My point was that miracles weren't necessarily a day to day occurrence in Biblical times either. When I used the parenting analogy I didn't mean to say that God has pulled back completely and is not present or active in the years since the early church. That would be bad parenting indeed! After Jesus ascended, Christians belive that God gave his Spirit to indwell his followers. This is an ongoing miracle for Christians who have experienced it and leaned on it. Christians definitely believe God is still active.
So now we're to the question about the flashy miracles like water into wine and resurrection of the dead. The point about the printing press and the internet is a common one. Why would the transference of information about Christ's miracles through one medium be superior to another? If the miracles happened pre-papyrus, we could wonder why the miracles didn't happen later during the age of scrolls. The miracles were recorded and shared not only orally but in book form in the gospels during the lifetimes of its eyewitnesses. What it really comes down to is: Why can't I see a miracle right now with my own eyes? And for that I fall back on what I wrote before. I don't know exactly and Christians differ. I personally think such revelation would undermine the free will of too many people. For the whole word to suddenly be made aware that God does exist and he is just as all powerful as ever, would lead to a mass conversion of people deprived of the chance to find God and instead motivated completely by fear. I doubt this is the sort of relationship God had in mind. Like I said before, using us to help the poor and the oppressed not only gets the job done for the victims but also grows us into the people He wants us to be.

According to the current Big Bang model, time, space, and matter all came into being at the Big Bang. The laws of physics and the universe deal exclusively with these three things. How could the law of gravity have existed before mass? How could the laws of electric fields exist before electrons? The laws of the universe are only applicable in a reality already containing time, space, and matter. Let's assume for a second that the fundamental laws DID somehow exist prior to the quantities they describe. Laws are abstract objects like numbers. Abstract objects can be helpful for describing the way things are, but they do not stand in causal relationship to anything (i.e. they cannot cause anything to happen or come into being).
Popular science articles do a great disservice when they talk about the possibility of something coming from nothing. The ideas you are referring to is evidence of atomic and subatomic particles 'popping' into existence from the quantum vacuum. This is highly misleading to laymen because the quantum vacuum isn't technically 'nothing'. It may not contain atoms or the subatomic particles we are aware of but it definitely contains energy fields and electromagnetic waves. From fluctuations in these energy fields it may appear that a subatomic particle 'pops' into existence but I can assure you that energy fields are not synonymous with 'nothing'. Nor is the quantum vacuum an accurate depiction of reality logically prior to the Big Bang. Before that first instance there was 'nothing', as in zip, no energy fields, no energy, no atoms, etc. There is still literally no theory for how something can come to exist out of pure nothingness and I wouldn't hold my breath either. Like the hypothesis of many worlds or other universes, scientific testing in this space is impossible. We have time, space, and matter at our disposal for testing which affords us no feasible glimpse outside of those realities. How can one use material tools (matter) to test or gain knowledge of a state prior to matter? Immaterial realities, such as the one prior to the Big Bang are unobservable which is the death sentence for scientific inquiry in that space. If you can't observe it, you can't test hypothesis. So now we're left with an immaterial cause of the material universe. It can't be natural laws of the universe because those describe the way things are inside the universe, not outside of it. So I ask myself, what is immaterial, powerful enough to create a universe, and intentional enough to create a universe fine-tuned to allow the evolution of life?

It's a good question to ask why all the supposed waste in the universe, volcanoes on limitless other planets, etc. Did you know that for the superhot early material in the Big Bang to coalesce into stars and planets and stable solar systems necessary for life that we should actually expect the universe to have grown as big as it has and be as old as it is? It takes so many years to get a stable universe like that and then so many more for a sentient species to evolve. Not only that but I think you assume I believe that God did it all for us! I think that would be arrogant of me. The Bible itself mentions other sentient species completely separate from humanity and earth: angels. They're usually thought of in Christianity as purely spiritual beings but who's to say they are? What if they had their own planet out there? What if God's plan is so much bigger than just us? The Bible is God's revelation to humanity, but it doesn't tell us even a fraction of all we'd like to know about God or the universe out there. For one thing, I don't think they make books that big. For another, if my hope in Christ is sound, enternity is a long time, and there's lots to see.

As for the laws of physics seeming violent and random, this is another case where we wouldnt have our stable solar system if it weren't for the violent and spectacular collision of stars and asteroids and life and death of galaxies. Think of forrest fires. They seem pointless and destructive, but they are necessary for new life to grow. Through the violence and the chaos, new seeds are released by the agitated flora which give the forrest a new lease on existence. There are fundamental forces and quantities in our universe that if, at the Big Bang, they had turned out to be the tiniest fraction different from what they currently are, that stars wouldn't have formed? Change another and atoms wouldn't form into molecules. There are approximately 10^80 atoms in the entire universe. The amount needed to change one of these quantities to make life impossible in the universe is something like 1 part in 10^120. Inconceivable!

As for an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, I'm not too worried. The Bible is fairly ambiguous about how the Earth is going to end so if it's by asteroid.. I guess that's as good a way as any. Regardless of how the world ends or how I die, I am confident in my hope that God will gather me into his presence and the real adventure begins.

Whew, this post is looooong (and possibly boring so I apologize). Alright, home stretch. Why do we have to live on Earth if the end goal is Heaven? There's something important I want to get out of the way first. According to Christianity, Humans aren't destined for Heaven. Earth was created to be the home planet of Humanity whom God wanted to know and enter into a relationship with. With our sentience and free will came our responsibility to take care of this planet. By ditching God and using the Earth for our own selfish purposes, we have made it into kind of a crappy place sometimes. The Earth was supposed to be our ultimate home for all time. By turning from God, Christianity teaches that humanity brought ruin not only to ourselves but the Earth as well. The whole thing needs God's healing. Once those who have freely chosen to accept and enact God's healing have died, the world as we know it will end and a new Earth will be made as the final home for those who freely entered into a relationship with God. Heaven, is more of a temporary location for souls as they await the end. The Bible is not entirely clear if the old Earth will be abandoned and new one created or if the current planet will simply be restored and made 'like new'. This is all my personal interpretation of Christian eschatology of course but it basically coincides with mainstream Christian thought. In the meantime though, this is the Earth we have. It is still our responsibility to take care of it and take care of it's people.

Alright so I hope I didn't waste too much of your time with this post. I should probably stop responding since the post length is growing exponentially. However I would like to point you towards some other materials if you are interested.

On the existence of God: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology - Various

http://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Companion-Theology-Companions-Philosophy/dp/1444350854/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341437104&sr=1-1&keywords=blackwell+companion+to+natural+theology

On Old Testament Ethics: Is God a Moral Monster? - Paul Copan

http://www.amazon.com/Is-God-Moral-Monster-Testament/dp/0801072751/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341437061&sr=8-1&keywords=is+god+a+moral+monster

Miscellaneous websites:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/ <--Ugly website but awesome man. Check the Q&A page.

I could list more, but the Bibliographies in these books will lead you to priceless resources on their own. Thank you for the questions, they were intelligent and clear.

p.s. I hope I rightly interpreted your 'dizzying intellect' line to be a reference to Princess Bride. Otherwise I probably just come off as a cocky jerk at the top of this post.

Let me first say this: you are an amazing and incredibly courageous woman! There are two things I have found to be the most important in life. A life without them is one stripped of its humanity and flavor. Indeed, people have died for them, fought for them and spent countless lifetimes seeking them;and rightly so for they are freedom and truth. I left my religion because I would not be a slave to any man, clergy or capricious deity. I left because I would not rest my entire existence on an iron age book that was obviously a lie. I valued my freedom and my quest for truth more than the love that my family had for me, more than my friends and my security. For finding the strength, the courage and above all the love of humanity to do the same...I want you to know that you deserve respect.

I can definitely sympathize with the non-christian culture problem. Think about it this way: you are on a great adventure. For the first time in your life, you have been given the chance to discover what it truly means to be YOU (free of cavemen superstitions and guilt of being human). As hardcore Christians we were taught that everything about us is just that-christian. That is not true! We still have our own personal preferences, personalities and tastes. The mistake that people make is to assume that, because they are no longer Christians, they are sorority material and going clubbing every weekend is their cup of tea. So be yourself, surround yourself with people who will love you for it and most importantly: don't be afraid to tell your story. Stories are the foundation of identity and having one is essential to being human. The next time you are completely lost in a conversation, don't be scared to say why. Doing so will not only help the other person connect with you on a deeper level, it will also help you gain more self acceptance. Sure, maybe the sexy quarterback won't want you anymore. But do you really want people in your life who would turn their backs on you, if only they knew ye? Don't worry about it too much though. In time, you will be surprised by how much of a non-christian you have become.

Your mother may no longer be with you but she lives on through your memories and her legacy to the family she cherished and to the world she lived in. I think it is more respectful and humane to celebrate who she was and what she accomplished than to constantly spend that time feeding the false hope of seeing her again. I am sorry if I sound too rude but I could not find a better way to say it. When all the chips are down, your family may no longer want you. I can feel the pain that brings as I write this. However, its would be their loss and not yours. You can surround your life with people who love you and support you despite not being blood relatives-isn't that what family is all about? And should you feel so inclined, you can make your own family and have children that you will "love no matter what (parenting 101)".

Lastly, you do not need to worry about burning in hell, trust me. Better still, don't trust me and pick up three books I strongly recommend: [Godless] (http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775) ,[Letter to a christian nation] (http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Sam-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427723744&sr=1-1&keywords=letter+to+a+christian+nation) and [God is not great] (http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427723824&sr=1-1&keywords=god+is+not+great) . Before you do that ask yourself: if you went to heaven, would you trust yourself to have a good time knowing that good people are being tortured FOREVER? Why? Because they didn't believe in a god that did everything he could to hide from us. Or maybe they mistakenly believed in the wrong one?

As for my story. Well, I was raised in a christian fundamentalist cult. Being LGBT certainly didn't help and all in all, it would probably make you cry. You don't need to cry right now, you need to be happy because from now on you will forever be free of the superstitions of ancient cavemen (85% of the world still isn't). You are free to own your own mind, your body and your soul -just kidding, nobody has one-you are truly free (pause a moment and realize what that means) and the prototype for the next step in the evolution of the homo sapiens mindset. I am sure there are far more cheerful stories here on Reddit.

Overview of the Week's Blog Posts

>Skepticism about free will has become ever more prominent. If one browses the popular science section of any large bookshop or flicks through recent popular science magazines, one is likely to come across some books or articles arguing that free will is an illusion: a left-over from an outmoded, pre-scientific way of thinking that has no place in modern science. The authors typically cite some influential neuroscientific studies that appear to undermine the idea of free will by showing that human actions are caused not by our intentional mental states, but by physical processes in the brain and body. More broadly, if everything in the universe is governed by the laws of physics, and our actions are part of that universe, then how could those actions be free? This line of reasoning, in turn, puts pressure on our traditional notions of responsibility. How could it make sense to hold anyone responsible for their actions if those actions weren’t done out of this person’s own free will?
>
>Such skepticism about free will is not yet the mainstream view among the general public. Nor is it the mainstream view among academic philosophers, the majority of whom are “free-will compatibilists”: proponents of the thesis that free will – perhaps after some definitional tweaking – is compatible with a law-governed, even deterministic universe. But free-will skepticism is on the rise, as illustrated by Sam Harris’s best-selling book, Free Will (2012). Many free-will skeptics have a noble moral motive, alongside their scientific motivation: they find the present criminal justice systems in many countries unjust and wish to argue for criminal justice reform. But one can certainly agree on the need for an overhaul of our criminal justice systems and advocate a more rehabilitative and less retributivist approach, while still thinking that it is a philosophical mistake to throw the notion of free will out of the window. Moreover, the idea of free will is central to our human self-understanding as agents, independently of its relevance to criminal justice. How, for instance, could we genuinely deliberate about which course of action to take – say, when we choose a job, a partner, or a political cause we wish to endorse – if we didn’t take ourselves to be free in making this choice?
>
>In my book, Why Free Will is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019), I offer a new defence of free will against the growing skepticism. Crucially, I do not proceed by denying science or watering down the definition of free will. Rather, my aim is to show that if we understand the lessons of a scientific worldview correctly, the idea of free will – in a fairly robust sense – is not just consistent with such a worldview but supported by it. In short, I argue that there is a naturalistic case for free will.
>
>In this series of blog posts, I will first describe what I take to be the main challenges for free will from a scientifically informed perspective and then explain what my strategy is for answering those challenges. And I will illustrate this strategy by zooming in on the most widely discussed challenge, namely the challenge from determinism. Of course, I will only be able to sketch some key ideas relatively informally; more detailed and precise arguments can be found in the book itself, as well as in some of my earlier articles (available on my webpage).

The Rest of the Blog Post(s)

Use the link from the OP to find the rest of the blog post summarized above as well as the remaining blog posts from Christian List throughout the week.

The Podcast Version

You can listen to Christian List discuss their book Why Free Will Is Real on the New Books in Philosophy podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/christian-list-why-free-will-is-real-harvard-up-2019/

First off, great contest! This is making be realize how much there is in my life to be grateful for. I won't be TOO obnoxious, but I'll name a few.

1. My parents: They are incredibly supportive and always there when I need them. I'm truly SO lucky to have them in my life.
   
   
2. My dog: Because he makes me feel SO loved. It doesn't matter if I went outside for 5 minutes or if I have been gone for 3 months he always greets me like he hasn't seen me in years and is so glad that I returned. A dogs love is something everyone should experience, imo.
   
   
3. My boyfriend (/u/pendragone01): Because he makes me feel like the prettiest girl in the world and puts up with my craziness even when I wouldn't want to be around me. True love!
   
   
4. My best friend: Because even when we are miles apart, haven't seen each other in months, and haven't talked in days nothing changes between us we are still the best friends ever! I couldn't ask for a better friendship.
   
   
5. Coffee: Because of that warm, happy feeling it gives me whenever I drink it.
   
   
6. My nephew: Because he reminds me that anything is possible in life no matter if you are 2 or 22! And he makes me laugh because a 2 year old is A LOT like a drunk 22 year old.
   
   Under $15
   
   Under $10

> if anyone has any experience with college kids and what they like to ask.

First off, your typical college kid has not read anything on religion as sophisticated C.S. Lewis et al. I think it will be less the kids and more the professors that might ask tough questions. I think /r/atheism is about as sophisticated as college kids will be. So, not that I would encourage you to check out that sub, but those are mainly college kids posting overly simplistic things like "religion starts wars" or "faith is inconsistent with science", "The religious are bigots" etc...

Some professors may have read significantly more sophisticated things then typically show up on the sophomoric memes of /r/atheism. But for every one of them, there is someone like those I list below that have just as sophisticated counterpoint.

With that said here is my advice:

1. Don't close your mind at college. There are many great truths the "secular world" knows and you need to treasure them all up. Don't become the Christian who thinks humans rode dinosaurs like horses. Be prepared to learn and work hard to learn.
   
   
2. Though I argue way too much, be careful when arguing/debating about religion that you never lose your cool. Always be civil and respectful. I have seen more people converted by "good examples" then by intellectual argument.
   
   
3. When you see intellectual things tugging at your faith, please allow the Christian Philosophers to also give their side of the story. Some here troubling things and give up way faster than they should. Some notable Christian Philosophers to follow: William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Alexander Pruss, basically the several authors of the chapters of this book which are all top notch philosophers and deeply faithful, this site has some contributors that are top notch, etc...
   
   And some of them like William Lane Craig have sections of their website devoted to answering questions so if you have any tough questions do be afraid to ask these people. Just please, no matter what confusing question you run into, know that there are incredibly smart and respected intellectuals who have already addressed that confusing issue.
   
   Also, follow their blogs, newsletters, youtube debates and websites (as well as check out their books) so you always stay on top of the latest Christian arguments.
   
   
4. The sophomoric posts of /r/atheism are literally being posted often by college kids so that sub is a good example of what you will find other kids bring up.
   
   
5. And what ever you do, always make sure you do the "little things" like pray and read the scriptures. One danger intellectuals sometimes have is ignoring these little things that bring power like a grain of mustard seed.
   
   

I find from reading the comments you seem to be getting a lot of flak for various things. I think part of it may be your insistence on labeling positions as worldviews. I don't think it is necessarily wrong, but the word carries some baggage that may be implying more than you intent, or more than others would wish to be labeled with. While labels can be useful for quickly describing a position you or someone else may hold, be certain to know of the variations and try to attach specific answers to specific questions that underly labels, and to make sure you have specific definitions as well (i.e. Q: Do you believe in God? A: Generally no, but it would help if you could define God, as I can't say if I believe in something that I can't define or describe).

First:
>Atheism is not a stance, not really. Atheists do not believe in anything

I think I can see what you mean here but be really careful with -ists and -isms. Atheism being a stance or not a stance is very much in how someone views themselves. One can be a "strong atheist", as it has been put, and actively believe and assert that there is no God, god, gods, godesses or supernatural beings (which is the term I will stick with), or one can be a looser form of agnostic atheist. There are many who would even say that, regardless of what agnostics say, they are in fact atheists because atheism, being not the opposite but the negaitve of theism (a- theism) is the lack of belief in supreme supernatural beings (this includes Penn Jillette, as he mentions this view in his book "God No!). So I think the error you made here is saying Athiest do not believe in anything, as that is not true. I call myself an Atheist (or Real Big Atheist; mild or moderate anti-theist; Ignostic Agnostic Atheist; etc) but I believe in lots of things. I believe I am sitting in a chair while I write this. What I think you meant to say was Atheism does not imply a belief in something. Under any definition it is either the lack of belief or belief that another belief is false, it is not a statement on the existence of a thing.

Second:
>Anti-Theism, on the other hand, IS a worldview.

Again, worldview is a risky word to use as it suggests that there is larger over-arching position to it. I would call secular humanism a worldview, but I don't know if I would call anti-theism a worldview (and there are secular humanists who would see themselves as anti-theist and some who wouldn't). I would be more tempted to call it a position. Regardless of semantics, I think anti-theism is easier to define. Anti-theism is the opposition to theism. Simple. Theism being the belief in one or more gods (Theos), and thus being anti that.

On anti-theism, I agree with you, but I find anti-theism is subservient to a larger desire for truth. As has been argued below, theism can be used for good or bad. People could be motivated to work harder for Dear Leader, and improve life for us all. If theism is not true though, then can we truly consider that an appropriate course of action? In doing so we would subvert informed consent, and undermine the freedom of a person live their own lives and to choose their own beliefs. However, I have never been shown a case where theism was used where a non-supernatural alternative could be used. The teaching of philosophy to elementary students has shown be very useful for improving not just academic outcomes, but also social outcomes 1. Here is the group that published that document, there are many more on their resources page.

The above paragraph completely ignores any harm that may come from religion, and I do that intentionally. If a given religion is true, then extreme measures can be justifiable if you are preventing someone from enduring annihilation or eternal torture. Utilitarian defenses of religion can only be relevant if they are false. However, if they are false, then any harm that comes along is thus completely unjustifiable unless the benefits outweigh them AND you are willing to admit that truth is not intrinsically valuable. The first constraint is difficult to measure, and does not seem to add up, especially when considering that magical thinking can overlap into other areas, and thus a firm belief in the supernatural (as opposed to an allowance of the possibility, or a thought experiment) could be a hindrance to honest political or philosophical discourse, and technological progress. I prefer discussing religion and supernatural beliefs in an epistemological framework, epistemology being the philosophical study of knowledge, or how we know what we know. While I have enjoyed Hitchens, I find his arguments to fall short of compelling in terms of convincing me of the accuracy of atheism or value of anti-theism; his moral arguments work for a current common moral standard which I happen to agree to a fair degree, but they do not do much to convince me of any implicit truth, nor that the moral standard being used is necessarily correct and thus failing to adhere to it is truly as abhorrent as would naturally appear.

A book I recently listened to on audiobook (from audible.com) was "A Manual for Creating Atheists" by Peter Boghossian. I would strongly recommend this book, especially if you want to actively act as an anti-theist and atheist activist.

I would love to discuss any other aspects of atheism or anti-theism, especially if you disagree with any points I have made. I would also suggest looking into ignosticism (as it is a good additional label for getting people into discussion), the /r/philosophy subreddit and the /r/antitheism subreddit.

One of the key tenants of learning and what often leads to atheism is simply asking questions. These questions often illustrate big problems in some beliefs and lead us away from certain conclusions, like a supernatural entity. It's what we mean when we say we're practicing skepticism and it can take on a variety of forms, but here are some suggestions I find compelling.

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

Richard has excellent technical skill in how he discusses questions and ideas that make supernatural belief look very delusional, hence the title. His points on religious indoctrination of children being actual abuse are particularly potent.

Many others will suggest Hitchens' God is not Great and while I haven't read it I think he is a much better speaker than Dawkins, so it may be better. Though I think Dawkins has a more refined technical skill in tackling some more complex ideas.

Any sophisticated discussion on philosophy - Youtube

I really like Crashcourse and its different offerings to get introduced to different studies and find this is a good place to start finding interesting questions you might not have thought of. While much of its content is definitely not atheist in nature they do have a very honest discussion about different topics that practice real skepticism that can lead to atheism like I described earlier.

Sam Harris

The link is of a specific podcast of his, but notably one of the videos in the text called It is Always Now is wonderful. Lots of people have specific issues with Harris, often different, and all I would suggest is to not let something you dislike about him to allow you to dismiss ideas he might stumble upon. His ability to find questions, especially new ways to ask old questions, is really powerful.

I also think that Harris is a great introduction to the idea of what to believe while being a skeptic. This idea of what to believe is very complicated because being skeptical tends to suggest that you should never operate off belief and always be as objective as possible, so please be patient in exploring it. But basically after you use skepticism to get rid of toxic beliefs you need to find ways to build up helpful beliefs and I think Harris is helpful in finding those. A more effective person though is:

Jordan Peterson

He opens with stating he's "not an atheist anymore." So this is a little misleading because he does also say in other areas that he doesn't believe in a supernatural God as well, and he's not lying when he says either statement. Explaining how that can be would take a while and I'm still exploring it myself but I think he has some VERY powerful messages about what is worth believing even while valuing skepticism. Look up his Message to Millennials and Tragedy vs Evil lectures if you're interested, I found those videos very useful.

I actually deconverted from Catholicism in college. I'm a revert.

I never got into into the party culture. I'm really against drinking and doing drugs, and I've always been skeptical of sex outside of a committed relationship and those morals stuck with me even after I deconverted from Christianity. What I did encounter was a lot of intellectual arguments against religion that I couldn't answer. However, what I also eventually discovered was that most of those objections had been heard before and responded to, at least in some manner.

So, here's my semi-comprehensive list of apologetics apologetics resources that I've accumulated over the years.

IMHO, the following books cover all the essentials very well and are probably must reads. You can buy used or online copies of them relatively cheaply, under 20 dollars if you're in the US. Check out Trent Horn's Answering Atheism, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (you can probably get Mere Christianity at your at public library), and What is Marriage? Man and Woman a Defense for defending the concept of natural marriage. You should also read How to Argue which is a free pdf. I haven't researched abortion apologetics as extensively as other areas but I know Trent Horn has some books on those.

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I'm not going to say you should read all of my remaining recommendations but I'm putting the rest out there for you so you know they exist.

Now, no list of apologtics is going to cover every argument about Christianity so I would also recommend some online resources. www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism is an amazing forum. It has tons of Catholics who are way more knowledgable and experienced that me who can answer questions and stuff. You may or may not have heard of it ;). I also recommend William Lane Craig's site: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer. Again, Craig is a protestant so don't look to him for a defense of Catholicism. However, he's good when it comes to defending the basics of Christianity from atheism. Catholic Answers is good. Fr Barron is good. Strange Notions can be good, I link to it in my last paragraph.

The exact relationship between faith and reason was my biggest stumbling block on the road back to Catholicism, so I have some good recommendations on that topic. I recommend the papal encycle Fides et Ratio and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ. Plantinga's book Where the Conflict Really Lies is also popular and uses evolution to make an interesting argument against materialism. Plantinga's not a Catholic so I don't know how well they would square with Catholic philosophies like Thomism, but, yeah, he exists. He also wrote this giant essay on faith and science, which was helpful. The book God and the Philosophers is pretty good too, it's an anthology of different Christian philosophers and talks about how they converted to Christianity.

Some comprehensive (but expensive) books by non-Catholics include The Blackwell Companion to natural theology by William Lane Craig (not a Catholic). I've heard good things about Richard Swinburne's apologetics trilogy The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason. Swinburne is Eastern Orthodox, just for the record.

I want to give a special shoutout to Edward Fesser. He's a secular atheist philosopher who converted to Catholicism. You can read his conversion story here. He also has a blog that you can google. Fesser also wrote a bunch of books that are highly recommended by people on this sub, although I haven't read them.

You might be familiar with some of this already, but I'm going to explain it as though you have no familiarity with this subject.

Philosophy of religion explores topics such as the existence of God, concepts of God, religious language, religious belief, miracles, and so on. Philosophyofreligion.info presents a good primer for the subject.

It seems like your primary interest is in the existence of God. Natural theology, although the approach of doing theology without the assistance of special, divine revelation, in philosophical circles is basically synonymous with arguments for the existence of God. Natural atheological arguments, as some have put it (i.e. Plantinga), are arguments for atheism.

Popular arguments for the existence of God would be the various cosmological, teleological, ontological, and axiological arguments. There's almost too many of them to keep track. Popular arguments against the existence of God would be the various kinds of the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and attacks on the coherence of theism.

"The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology" is perhaps the best single resource on arguments for and against the existence of God, although it is highly advanced. "The Cambridge Companion to Atheism" is also a very solid resource. "The Existence of God" by Swinburne is classic, as is his "Coherence of Theism." Again, all of those are fairly advanced. Swinburne has a shorter, more popular level version of "The Existence of God" titled "Is There a God?" Stephen Davis also has a similar book titled "God, Reason and Theistic Proofs." If you're going to be reading Oppy and Sobel, I recommend reading their counterparts in any of these books above (barring the "Cambridge Companion to Atheism," of course), that way you have a good balance of perspectives.

With regards to the philosophy of religion a bit more broadly, William Rowe, C. Stephen Evans, and Brian Davies each have solid, brief introduction books. Michael Murray and Eleonore Stump have a more thorough introduction; Louis Pojman and Michael Rea have a great anthology; and William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, and Michael Rea have perhaps the greatest single resource on this subject.

Moreover, William Lane Craig has dozens of debates on topics concerning the existence of God (and other topics) available on YouTube. Here is a fantastic list of his debates with links available in the table. You'll see some popular figures in the list that aren't good philosophers (i.e. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, etc.), but there are quite a few very high caliber philosophers on that list too (i.e. Michael Tooley, Quentin Smith, Peter Millican, Stephen Law, etc.).

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Good luck!

I've been thinking about this. The works which first pop to mind are probably too technical for general interest as they are written to be read by other professional philosophers. I'm trying to think of what might be interest to the educated person who isn't a Philosophy major.
*****

Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft writes a lot of things for a general audience. He is a Catholic philosopher at Boston College. He often speaks at other universities, and has even been part of a debate with a former professor of mine, so he is at least pretty well-known in philosophical circles. He has a bunch of free readings on the "featured readings" and "more featured readings" pages of his site, which also has lectures and such. Here is his author page on Amazon. His books are also mostly intended for a general audience. I've read a handful of them, so if you're thinking of ordering one, or finding it at a library, let me know and I'll give you my two cents. The Sea Within: Waves and the Meaning of All Things is interesting. He is fairly old, and a lifelong surfer. In that book he draws analogies between the natural pull the ocean has on us and the pull God has on us. He also has many Socrates Meets... books which don't have so much to do with religion, but provide accessible introductions to various philosophers (e.g. Socrates Meets Sartre).
*****

Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Plantinga is a very prominent philosopher, and a Christian. Much of his writing is intended for the professional philosophical audience, but some if it might be accessible to a general audience. Here is his Amazon author page. Let me know if you're thinking about checking out any of his stuff. Like I said, a lot of it is more technical than Kreeft's. Also, he is in the analytic tradition, whereas Kreeft is more in the continental tradition. I think that further distances him from the casual reader.

Some of Plantinga's works which might be good:

• God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God is pretty much what it's long title says.
  
  
• I see a brand new book, which I might get myself! It's on a topic which often comes up in this very forum, science and religion. (Anybody want to read it with me?!) Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Publisher's blurb:
  
  >This book is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates -- the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.
  
  *****
  

  Søren Kierkegaard
  

  
  If you're thinking more historically, I think Kierkegaard can be very interesting. He is considered by many to be a proto-existentialist (a sort of existentialist before existentialism existed as a movement). Fear and Trembling is relatively easy to read, short, and probably his most read work. I recommend it. Also, here is his Amazon author page.
  
  *****
  

  Others
  

  
  Those three were just a few of the many Christian philosophers I find interesting. There are a whole lot more, some more accessible than others to a general audience. This is still just a fraction of the historical Christian philosophical scene, but I think it will give you a good start. These are all of them off of the top of my head whom I have studied to some extent.
  
  

  Contemporary:
  

  
  

• John Hick (Amazon) (Website) (Wiki): Primarily a philosopher of religion and theologian, comes from a rather liberal, mystic Christian perspective.
  
  
• Bas van Fraassen (Wiki): Doesn't actually do much on religion, just a prominent philosopher who happens to be a theist. In fact, many would not guess him to be a theist due to his ultra-empiricism.
  
  
• Peter van Inwagen (Wiki): A prominent philosopher in both philosophy of religion, and other areas. Some would argue he's even a better philosopher than Plantinga (heresy among some Christian philosophers, lol).
  
  
• J.P. Moreland (Wiki): Christian philosopher, does a lot of apologetics.
  
  
• William Lane Craig (Wiki): Well-known, but not well-liked by many philosophers, does a lot of apologetics and travels the world doing public debates with atheists. Has also done a good deal of publishing.
  
  
• Cornell West (Wiki): Awesome guy!
  
  
• Richard Swinburne: (Wiki) (Amazon Author Page): Has written many books more geared towards a general audience I believe.
  
  

  Historical
  

  
  

• Francis of Assisi
  
  
• Augustine of Hippo
  
  
• Peter Abelard
  
  
• Thomas Aquinas
  
  
• Renee Descartes
  
  
• John Locke
  
  
• George Berkeley
  
  
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
  
  
• Blaise Pascal
  
  
• Johann Gotlieb Fichte
  
  
• Immanuel Kant
  
  
• William James: One badass mo'fo in my humble opinion. Early twentieth century American philosopher, part of the pragmatist school, and a defender of faith.
  
  ****
  Author's Note: I've been working on this entry for about 45 minutes now. I hope someone reads some of it. Time for a break. If you have any questions, or wanna talk philosophy, let me know, it's in my blood.*
  
  

I would go with Demon Haunted World over the God Delusion. Dawkins may be the polemicist du jour, but I think Sagan's approach is way more effective for situations like this. He's far more subtle about making you think, whereas Dawkins' brash rhetoric can just make people instinctively defensive and shut down honest introspection.

Also, might I suggest Godless by Dan Barker? He was an Evangelical preacher for almost two decades before becoming an atheist, so he knows all about Christianity and may have an approach to which your friend might be more sympathetic.

Do the lectures have to be in person? Where do you live? Skepticon 5 is coming up in Springfield, Missouri and there will be plenty of amazing talks there (though they will be primarily aimed at people who are already skeptics). They have many, many fantastic lectures already posted online from past conferences, so I highly suggest perusing them at your leisure.

If you do choose a lecture on evolution, make sure it's a good one. You can't debate science the same way you can debate philosophical or theological ideas that rest upon logic alone. Everything depends on the data. Make sure it explores what would need to be true if evolution were not true.

For example, if all species on Earth nearly perished in a global flood, they would all have an extreme population bottleneck at the exact same period which would show up very obviously in their genetic diversity. However, this is not true for the vast majority of species on Earth. Cheetahs, however, are so genetically similar due to a population bottleneck during the last ice age that they can accept skin transplants from any other cheetah without an immune response. But, they are still diverse enough that the mutation rate required to gain this diversity in the span of four thousand years would be so great that the species would have gone extinct simply from birth defects.

Anyway, Ken Miller might be a good place to start. He's a Christian as well, but is basically responsible for destroying Intelligent Design.

Also, just because I think so highly of this talk, you should check this out (and here's an updated version more oriented towards effective strategy that goes over some of the same material but expands on other areas). It has tons of valuable suggestions for how to be effective in getting people to question their beliefs and avoiding common pitfalls and red herrings.

I went through a very similar experience in losing my faith; it was rough, and it was rocky. I had a lot of the same feelings--wanting to believe, just in case my doubts were wrong, feeling sad at losing what had been a huge part of my identity, but feeling relieved also...and then feeling really guilty about it. It's a real roller-coaster of emotions, and it's hard to go through; I sympathize!

I feel much better, having lost my belief entirely and let go of religion; those feelings of self-loathing, self-doubt, and fear that are given to those of us who grow up in religious settings are hard to let go of, but we are better off without them. They are not healthy, psychologically or emotionally. Someone else pointed out that the kind of relationship we're taught to have with god is very similar to the relationship you'd have with an abusive spouse; it's a connection I've made before, too, and making it gave me a lot of courage and strength, which is what it takes to walk away from an abusive relationship of any kind.

My advice? Give yourself some time to relax and breathe. It's not the devil making you have these thoughts; it's the exercise of your reason, and you should feel proud that you are intelligent and perceptive enough to see through the bullshit given to you by people whose real motive (whether they know it or not) is to control you.

Also, now is a great time to gather some information. If you've got $10, I recommend picking up Godless, by Dan Barker. It's a great book, and it made me feel a lot more comfortable with my own growing atheism; it addressed a lot of the concerns I had, and talked about some very similar experiences, and gave me a place to start looking for other information.

As for how to get to a place of being comfortable and not feeling guilty...that just takes time, as do all major adjustments. For me, it mostly consisted of examining what it was I was feeling guilty about, and then realizing that there was no objective reason to feel guilty--that I hadn't done anything wrong, and that the things I had been taught to hate about myself (doubt, questioning, curiosity, sexuality, etc.) weren't bad; all of those things are natural, and beneficial as well.

If you're having a really difficult time, I'd recommend spending some time with a support group or spending a few sessions with a counselor. There are lots of sites on the web that offer support and services for those going through the de-conversion process; do a search for "ex-Christian support group" or something along those lines and spend some time exploring, or try a place like Ex-Christian.net or Losing My Religion.

Above all, don't stop exercising your curiosity and your reason! I wish you good luck, support, and a good journey. :)

The question is not whether you feel close to god. The question is do you believe in God?

If the answer is, as I suspect it might be, "I don't know," then that is what you need to tackle first. You would have to remove all the questions of halal and haram, whether you can drink alcohol or not, eat bacon or not, because at this point they are irrelevant. They are details of what God has asked us to do, which mean nothing if you don't believe in God.

You have to assess whether you believe in God without involving your wants and desires into it. Then you'll have to face a very important and difficult decision: if you do believe in God, and become convinced it is the truth despite your emotions, are you willing to act upon that truth?

That statement you said about taking off the hijab and feeling the wind in your hair was me. I was lost. I too had read the Qur'an so many times with no real comprehension. I was in a swamp of doubt drowning in emotions and desires of what I wanted to do but which Islam was preventing me from doing. It was all Islam's fault you see, why everything was wrong, and everything would become so much better without it, because then I'd be in control of my life and decisions. I would do all the nice and fun things I couldn't otherwise do. See, that's what shaytan does, he masks the real issue in shallow wants and delusions of control that distract you from the real problem in hopes that you go completely off course.

I had a total emotional and faith breakdown one day complete with tears, as I came to the realization that I rationally believe that God absolutely exists and could not lie to myself, even though my heart felt emotionally empty of that belief. I had that breakdown because I thought myself too weak emotionally to face that belief and its consequences, that I almost didn't want to. But I did, I begged Allah for help, put my reason in charge of my emotions, and... I slowly got over it. I won't say I magically overnight went from resentful to pious, it has been a journey of many years. But with every small effort I made to stick with my deen, it became much easier and more good came my way. It still requires daily effort but now, alhamdulillah, my belief is no longer just rational and emotionally empty, but incredibly rich and filled with utter love for my Creator. The more love I have for Allah (swt) the more those wants and desires I used have feel like they were the prison and that now I feel the joy of freedom that only one who was in a prison can feel.

Some of the things that seem to have helped for me and for my younger sister (who went through what I went through a couple of years after me, but her faith was emotional and she needed to work on the rational part) that may help you too: Reading some philosophical works: reading the kalam cosmological argument helped me, she's currently reading There is a God by Anthony Flew (a famous atheist who ended up believing late in life). She also started a Qur'an club among a group of friends who were interested and we meet every other Sunday to discuss a surah. That has helped tremendously for us to connect with the Qur'an on a personal level. Listening to Nouman Ali Khan discuss the Qur'an has also helped us understand it a lot. Also, I feel like I'm sharing this video a lot these days, but here goes: Jeffrey Lang - The purpose of life.

My point is, find whatever works for you.

I pray Allah (swt) will guide you and make things clearer for you.

Edit: added some resources/links. I hope they help!

>See, the thing is, none of them are impossible, and all of them are very likely.

No, the fact is none of them have been proven. None. And just because none are “impossible” that doesn’t mean that they are likely.

> We're just not sure exactly how it happened, but we have very good reasons to think that it did, in fact, happen.

You are sure it happened naturalistic-ally, not because of the scientific data but because of your commitment to naturalism/atheism. Again there is no viable theory of how life originated. None.

Physicist Fred Hoyle: "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." source

This was kinda like the argument Antony Flew which convinced him about the existence of God. The odds of information in DNA developing “naturally are so astronomic” that they for all intents and purposes zero.

Flew’s argument is that if one tries to produce a 488 letter sonnet by chance it would be take one to the ~10^690 chances to get it right [that is 1 with 690 zeros after it] The number of particles in the universe is only ~10^80. There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you’d be off by a factor of 10 to the 600th.

If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second producing random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials.

It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a that paragraph by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger. Yet atheists/naturalists say the info in DNA just happened by "chance". And remember the 10^690 chance is just for a 488 letter sonnet, not the much more complex 3 million base pair of DNA.

But we don’t have since the beginning of time [~13.8 billion years] for life to come about naturally, Earth was formed ~4.5 billion years ago and life first appeared ~3.5 billion years ago. So “chance” had only 1 billion years to bring about life naturally.

Furthermore “chance” has no causal powers, there must be some mechanism.

The comeback for naturalists is usually "we don't know" or, “well, it’s not zero so it still possible” so my question would be how is naturalism falsified? If it can’t be then it is simply dogma.

If one took a million chances a second since the beginning of time you’d only have 10^90 chances where as a 488 letter sonnet would need 10^690 chances. And DNA is more complex than the 488 letter sonnet. But it happened by “chance” with no known mechanism! Yes it does take faith to be an atheist/naturalist.

>Contrast with any and all religious explanations, which have no evidence whatsoever and rely entirely on philosophical claims.

You do realize that science has as its foundation philosophy? I listed ten of them previously. If one gives a philosophical argument against naturalism/atheism or for theism the one comeback that cannot be spoken is “but it’s not science” because what doe science has as it foundation? PHILOSOPHY!

So if you try to discount “any and all religious explanations” because they rely entirely on philosophical claims then you’d have to discount science as well since it relies entirely on philosophical claims for its foundation. Otherwise it’s just special pleading

>Let me google that for you. This link in particular seems like a good start.

Except I never said anything about "adding" info. I said the “origin of info in DNA.

>...you do realize that dozens of scientists the world over have dedicated their lives to answering this question, right? They don't just make this shit up, they study for thousands of hours the genetic code of every living thing they can find, study intensely how DNA changes, and try to come up with the most likely scenarios to explain evolution.

There is a difference between “how DNA works” and ‘how DNA originated”. And if scientists are commited to only naturalistic explanations how likely are they to find anything other than naturalistic explanations?

>It doesn't. It's just one more explanation that atheism/naturalism found, that super-naturalism hasn't even bothered trying to research before asserting nonsense answers.

So philosophy is nonsense? But science has philosophy as it foundation! Remember supernatural explanations are philosophical in nature. Sounds like a special pleading fallacy; science utilizes philosophy but super-naturalism cannot.

>Absolutely! You study and you study, and you eventually find out that the results you get make no sense whatsoever in light of naturalism, and results consistently and repeatedly go against naturalism.

That is the result! Given the current scientific knowledge a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life, the universe, the info in DNA in untenable. A naturalistic understanding of how the brain developed means that it isn’t reliable.

>In 300 years of science, that hasn't happened, ever. You need more than just the odd statistical outlier, you need massive, continuous results from all the fields of science, that are inconsistent with naturalism.

You think only science can inform us on this? but as has been pointed out: science has philosophy as it foundation so philosophical arguments against naturalism have as much merit as any scientific arguments for naturalism ...Oh, wait there can be no scientific evidence for naturalism since science assumes naturalism, and it is a fallacy to assume to be true what you are trying to prove to be true; it’s circular logic

None of your “analysis” of the ten assumptions that I listed earlier do nothing to show that there are not philosophical assumptions that science uses but cannot prove.

For example for “3) the knowability of the external world” you say, “No idea what you mean by that. I look outside, I see rain fall from clouds, I can know that rain falls from clouds.” But the success of the scientific method assumes not only that reality has the quality of rationality, but that it is also knowable. That is, it is conceivable that my mind/brain is rational, but I could be irrational, and not able to form valid conclusions about reality - which is the implications of a brain that evolved for survivability and not rational thought. Per evolution/atheism our brains are organs for survivability, not pipelines to the truth. The scientist cannot prove that his or her mind is capable of anything more than utilitarian problem solving that may or may not speak actual truth.

>Under supernaturalism, if you make a new anti-cancer drug, how can you tell if the drug actually works, only works in 50% of patients, or if it's just a god messing with your results and that you have no way of knowing whether or not they are messing with you?

As I said if God set up the world as orderly then science could work. Now you want to say “if it isn’t orderly” then it wouldn’t work. Well, yes but that isn’t what I said. So you are using a strawman.

>We have never known anything remotely as accurate as this. Science can...

This isn’t science vs religion. As I’ve said before science can work without naturalism, if we have an orderly universe. In fact science did work without the presumption of naturalism.

>Saying I don't know is far better than pretending to know with made-up answers and mythological stories.

This is another strawman.

>It doesn't show naturalism false, it shows that our knowledge is incomplete.
if any failing of naturalism can be answered by saying, ”I don’t know” or “*we haven’t figured it out yet” how then is naturalism ever falsified?

Even if all the data pointed to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science not because of a lack of data but because it is not naturalistic. all that would have to be said is, “We haven’t figured out how this date conforms to a naturalistic model of the world.”

>What would prove naturalism false is again, irrefutable evidence that there is more than just the natural, that there is a supernatural realm affecting our reality in demonstrable, clear, repeatable ways.

Irrefutable evidence? You do realize that nothing in all of science is irrefutable, don’t you? All scientific knowledge is open to inquiry, and can change given enough data.

But you put the bar for supernaturalism to Irrefutable, that’s another special pleading fallacy from you. And why does it have to be repeatable? Do we know that WWII happened? Yes. Is it repeatable? No. So we can know things even of they are not repeatable.

>Since we already covered that ground, I'd like to ask you what you think of a god that would make us deliberately with a brain that isn't great at math, logic, and figuring out what's true.

Already answered. He didn’t, an unreliable brain is only a problem if it came about, as atheists/naturalists believe, by an unguided, purposeless process.

A few pointers:

• Get yourself a copy of Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists and read it yourself. It's a good manual for teaching people how to talk to people of faith about their faith in a non-confrontational way using the socratic method. I liked the audiobook version. Gently challenge him on things he learns at church. Try to get him to explain what he's learned in his own words. Ask him if that makes sense, and so on.
  
• Science: get your kid interested in science, whether it be dinosaurs, astronomy, chemistry, electricity - something. If there's something he's already into, encourage it.
  
• Supplement his church with other mythologies. Take him to a mosque or synagogue. Talk about how different people have different beliefs. Read him Norse and Greek mythology before bedtime. Get him a book like C. Scott Littleton's Anthology of Mythology. It's got lots of pictures.
  
• Cosmos. If you have not seen it with him, you need to see it with him. Prepare to pause each episode when he has a question. Do your best to answer them and if you encounter something you don't know, be honest but follow up afterwards with a visit to wikipedia. You can get it on DVD as well as stream it on Hulu and Netflix, I think. If he likes science shows like that, there are plenty others folks here could recommend.
  
  One common theme here is this: teach him that it's important to value having as many true beliefs as possible. Instruct him on the importance of wanting to have good reasons or evidence for the things we believe. Part of this is the scientific method, but also a general desire for intellectual honesty comes into play here as well.
  
  You might also get some good suggestions are /r/atheistparents.
  
  
  

Hey, I'm glad to hear that! It's a topic of some interest for me.

I think too much of discussion about God today gets wrapped up in politics, especially in the United States. That's certainly something new, and can be found back even to the start of Christianity, or even human civilization. It tends to be rightly shunned and mocked.

However, the idea of God is something more central and serious than that. Sure, most people are idiots, so when they talk about something they don't study up on or look at different viewpoints, which is really really common for religion, they end up saying stupid stuff.

That's why it's worth distinguishing from theologians and philosophers who actually do that stuff, and many of them walk away from it with a clear and respectable, and even persuasive, ideas.

If you want to read up more, I can recommend a few works.

• God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga - One of the best respected books today on theism, and sparked a lot of discussion on God's existence in philosophy today. Plantinga argues that ultimately neither the arguments for theism or atheism hold, but that one can still rationally believe in God in a way similar to how you believe in the existence of other minds, despite having no way to directly perceive or prove the thoughts of others.
  
  
• Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes - This book is most people's jumping on point to philosophy, since it's pretty standard in philosophy 101 classes, since he's extremely important in the history of philosophy, and explains things without much jargon and works from the ground up. Descartes tries to ground his beliefs in pure reason, showing that through the knowledge of his own existence and God's existence, we can be certain of the existence of everything around us.
  
  
• The Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo by Plato - Dialogues leading up to the death of Socrates, and fairly easy to read. Plato is arguably the most influential philosopher in history, and his dialogues are all aimed at teaching you to ask philosophical question and get a sense of what philosophical answers look like.
  
  
• The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - An excellent podcast which is exactly what it says on the tin. Works from Pre-Socratics, and has made it up to the Renaissance, with a few other podcasts also started to cover Indian and Africana philosophy. Most philosophers will have something to say on God, and these 20 minute introductions and explanations help shape that understanding.
  
  
• Gregory Sadler - A philosophy professor who puts his lectures for free on Youtube. Plenty on most philosophers you can list off, and takes a special interest in Anselm.
  
  
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are sites dedicated to thoroughly explaining the arguments of different people in philosophy. Incredibly useful.
  
  You should especially look at the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, Origen, Pseudo-Dionysus, Augustine, Anselm, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Soren Kierkegaard.
  
  If you want to look more at the stuff I was arguing, you can also consider looking specifically at Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, posted for free here, although Aquinas is fairly jargon heavy, and expects familiarity with Aristotle, Averroes, and other points in Christian theological history.
  
  Edit: As a small aside, on the point of how atheism is defined, a moderator of /r/askphilosophy wrote a pretty good summary for what the term means in academic disciplines a while back. Worth checking out.

I went through almost the exact same thing. After leaving our main church, my wife and I stopped going all together. Several years later, after we moved because of jobs, we started going again. Needless to say, that didn't last long.

My wife and I both come from very strong Christian backgrounds; my wife's father was a Southern-Baptist minister for decades, and my dad went to Dallas Theological Seminary and taught church classes most of his life. So let's just say that leaving wasn't an easy thing.

However, my own search led me to realize the truth. Since my wife and I are very close, I talked with her about these things but was very careful about what I said. I'm still careful. I approach the discussions from the standpoint of "searching for answers" rather than declaring that I've already decided.

My mantra over the last few years has been "If it were possible to know the truth, and one of the possibilities was that God didn't exist, would you really want to know?" Well, my answer is yes. I don't want to be a blind-follower Christian. If God is real, then I want to know for sure!

I recommend approaching it like that. It let's your spouse see that you are truly searching for answers. The truth is all we really want, and we can't use a 3000 year-old book to do it. We need real answers, not mythology.

Be sure to talk about it a lot, and be open minded to your spouse's point of view. Let them know you still care for them deeply.

This sub-reddit has been so helpful and caring, so good job starting here. Also grab some books or find some web-sites that discus these things. Here are a few I recommend:

Sites

• http://new.exchristian.net/
  
  
• http://www.patheos.com/ (you'll find many opinions here. great site)
  
  
• https://richarddawkins.net/
  
  Books
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Undeniable-Evolution-Creation-Bill-Nye/dp/1250074223
  
  Cheers
  ~Nate

I wish I could tell you that all you need to do is to stop believing in God and suddenly things will become much clearer. Unfortunately, this is not really the case.

Think of the God idea as a piece of malware, which is running on the computer of your brain. It's malware because it takes up your resources to do something that isn't beneficial to you. Once upon a time you installed the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, and it asked you to install the God program as part of it. You clicked OK at the time, but now you've figured out it's malware, and you need to find a way to get rid of the malware, but you don't want to uninstall the Loving Parents And Social Circle software too.

This is a very touchy process and I can't guarantee you'll be successful. Some people give up and simply decide to go without the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, because the licensing requirements are just too restrictive. I don't recommend this path. Even if the requirements are pretty rough, it's good software.

But here's the kick that no one tells you: by getting rid of the malware, you don't just suddenly have an awesome computer you can use for anything. You have to find and download lots of other software now. Getting rid of the malware was just the beginning, and now the real work begins. You're already way behind people who got rid of their malware ages ago, or maybe never had it to begin with. You need to play catch-up.

Here's the good news: most people, once they've finally gotten rid of the malware, wake up the next day and get really excited about all the new things their computer can potentially do, and they find themselves staying up all night downloading and running new stuff. There's a burst of energy that comes with suddenly finding all these free resources.

Maybe there's some old software sitting there that you never really used, and now you can run it much better than you did before. That was the case with me, and this was the software I ran. Then I started downloading more and more and more. Now I feel like my speeds are better than most and about as fast as the people I find interesting to talk to.

Define God. What is God to a Christian? What is it that they truly believe in? Love? Kindness? Slow to anger? Show your wife a list of things that you believe in and that she believes in. Show her that you still share belief in many things.

I have not read these books but they are from former Christians. Their logic and perspective maybe helpful.
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
Christian No More: On Leaving Christianity, Debunking Christianity, And Embracing Atheism And Freethinking

Give her time to adjust. And, if you truly love and want to be with your wife, PROVE IT. Be romantic. Tell her you love her. Tell her you want her to be your wife. Tell her you want to grow old with her. Tell her what a great friend she is. Love notes. Flowers. Phone messages. Text messages. Facebook messages. Do whatever it takes. Even give her control of the TV remote.

I don't know of the consequences but if you have to, you can bring up the Bible verses which say that it is good not to leave a non-believing spouse, not bring up the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against God.

Good luck to you. Be patient with her.

Personal research, mostly. I'm a big history nerd with a slant toward religion and other macabre subject matter. I'm actually not as well read as I'd like to be on these subjects, and I basically blend different sources into a knowledge smoothie and pour it out onto a page and see what works for me and what doesn't.

I'll list a few books I've read that I enjoyed. There are certainly more here and there, but these are the "big ones" I was citing when writing all the comments in this thread. I typically know more about Christianity than the other major faiths because of the culture around me.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch

A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Karen Armstrong

The next two balance each other out quite well. Hardline anti-theism contrasted with "You know, maybe we can make this work".

The Case for God - Karen Armstrong

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins



Lately, I have been reading the Stoics, which like Buddhism, I find to be one of the more personally palatable philosophies of mind I have come across, although I find rational contemplation a bit more accessible to my Westernized nature.

Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters - Translated by Moses Hadas

Discourses and Selected Writings (of Epictetus) - Translated by Robert Dobbin

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Translated by George Long

I'm still waiting on Fed Ex to deliver this one:

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine

Also, if you're into history in general, a nice primer for what sorts of things to dive into when poking around history is this fun series on YouTube. I usually watch a video then spend a while reading more in depth about whatever subject is covered that week in order to fill the gaps. Plus, John and Hank are super awesome. The writing is superb and I think, most importantly, he presents an overall argument for why studying history is so important because of its relevance to current events.

Crash Course: World History - John Green

I would say yes, but with a few caveats. I myself am a bit of an autodidact, and I study philosophy as a hobby in my free time. I am currently a university student who works part time, so I sympathize with your concerns about limited time and energy. Some things I think you should be aware of:

• Studying on your own will be slower and generally less efficient than getting a degree. You won’t have the same obligations or motivators that university students have.

• You will lack access to resources that university students have. This includes both academic material (journals, essays, books) but also an environment with instructors and fellow students to consult when you’re confused.

• You will not have the benefit of writing essays and having them graded by an instructor.

Despite this, I still think there is a lot to be gained from self study. You have the freedom to pursue whatever you want, and you can go at a pace that’s comfortable to you. Plus there’s something to be said about challenging yourself and doing constructive things in your free time.

It may be best to start with introductory texts like Copleston’s history to get a general idea for each philosopher and to find what interests you. If you are still interested in the thinkers you mentioned, you should move on to primary sources. I’d recommend the following reading plan which should cover some of the “essentials” and has a sort of progression from one thinker to the next:

1. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle
   
2. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings by Descartes
   
3. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals by Hume
   
4. Critique of Pure Reason by Kant
   
   These four books will give you a solid foundation in western philosophy. You have the fundamental ideas and questions from the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle, rationalism from Descartes, empiricism from Hume, and the synthesis of the two in Kant. Moving on:
   
   
5. Logical Investigations by Husserl
   
   
6. Being and Time by Heidegger
   
   
7. Being and Nothingness by Sartre
   
   These three cover your interests in phenomenology, from its foundations in Husserl, to Heidegger’s magnum opus, to Sartre’s interpretation and his development of existentialism. Finally we have:
   
   
8. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer & Adorno
   
   
9. Speech and Phenomenon by Derrida
   
   These two cover Horkheimer & Adorno’s critical take on enlightenment rationality and Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology.
   
   None of these books are particularly easy (especially Husserl and Heidegger), but I encourage you to try! Take it one book at a time, read slow and take notes, and consult the IEP and SEP if you’re confused, watch YouTube lectures, or ask on this subreddit.
   
   Good luck!

A great resource that has taught me tons, is "The Atheist Debates Project" run by and featuring Matt Dillahunty. Watch the episodes for free on YouTube. I'm a patron to support the excellent work that Matt does.

Further, you can see these ideas in action, by listening/watching the podcast/YouTube/live stream of the Internet TV show, "The Atheist Experience". Some callers aren't interesting, but some exchanges are just gold.

I myself have written a primer on beliefs and labels to help introduce one to the landscape. Read that to understand the concepts. View the links in the green resource boxes to dive deeper into any subject. Watch the debates linked to, to see how others argue the material.

Just be a sponge for this. Prop up you iPhone in the bathroom and play debates while you brush your teeth or in the kitchen as you scramble your eggs. You'll get in an extra 30+ minutes a day of absorbing this content.

To learn about how best to get people to think without ever really arguing, but instead, using the socratic method to get them to think about their own positions, read the book (or listen to the excellent audiobook), A Manual for Creating Atheists. Based on these techniques, you can watch Anthony Magnabosco as he approaches people and politely asks them questions to get them to think. This technique is called Street Epistemology.

Finally, go through the Philosophy playlist on YouTube, from the channel Crash Course. They do an excellent job of introducing a lot of the concepts and terminology involved in philosophical argumentation--which is what all of this comes down to.

We need more people who educate themselves and can speak intelligently to the issues. So thank you for taking an interest. This is an awesome journey. Welcome.

Oh man, you've hit on a really hard topic.

First off, before I get into any of the juicy topics, let me say this: Consider where your parents are coming from based on their views. An analogy: If you were evacuating a building on fire and saw someone who didn't know they are in danger, would you try to notify them? For the sake of argument, let's say yes (I expect so). They see this world as a building burning down and they view themselves as trying to warn us of the danger we are supposedly in. Expand this to the fact that they are your parents and as their kid, you told them you are walking back into a burning building. They are literally scared for you. Irrationally scared, but still scared non the less. I am not sure if your short term situation or plans, but in the long term you need to accept that they are not going to share your views and may not accept you. Don't let them abuse you! They have to independently accept you for who you are or you need to distance yourself if they don't. Take care of yourself, maintain your dignity and self respect, and make decisions that make you happy and lead you towards living a happy and fulfilled life.

Some information on their reaction:

> I tried to be gentle about it and not criticize her but she kept telling me to defend why I didn't believe in God, and then when I answered she was like "you're trying to disprove God and attack my beliefs" . she later said I was being rude, (I was being as respectful as possible) when I explained that she said I was being "politely rude"???? But because of my beliefs I obviously thought she was a moron and I reject her values. (I never called her a moron and I said that I respected her faith and I didn't want this to be a source of contention for us)

Let's step back and parse this. Typically, strongly religious people follow a form of ethics called "Theological Ethics." The theological ethics system may incorporate other forms of ethics such as utilitarian, kant or phenomenological, but it is ultimately rooted in theology. Do [Action] because god demands it in or through [insert religious book, prophet, etc...]. In their view, all ethics and morality flow only from god. If god says give to the poor, you give to the poor. If god says kill that tribe, you kill that tribe. All ethics and morals are literally rooted in their version of god.

So, when you say "I don't believe in god," many people will imply "therefore I am not a moral person" OR "you think I am an idiot because I need god to work out what is right or wrong." In some cases, a person "without god" is seen as downright evil. However, we know that people can be moral and develop an ethics system without attributing it to or believing in god. We often follow heuristics such as the golden rule, informed consent or "no person is a means to an end."

Some theologians argue that this is only by the grace of god that he has allowed us to be a tool for good despite disbelieving, never mind that in many religions we are still considered doomed to eternal torment no matter how much good we do in the world and that an immoral or amoral person who believes in god has a higher chance into being accepted into paradise over an atheist who genuinely wanted to help others.

A few things you can do is work out why you can continue being a good person without needing to believe in a god. I personally see value in both society and individuals. I want the world to be a better place so that I can enjoy less violence, longer healthier lives. I want to see people individually succeed because it betters our society. Society is made up of individuals. Because life is precious, and this is our one life, we must make the most of it but not at the expense of others because their life is precious too. Informed consent is incredibly important. A society following informed consent reduces or prevents rape, murder, irresponsible or malicious human testing, robberies, etc...

Anyways, if you are interested in ethics and morality in the context of atheism and why reason will likely lead to a more just society, you should pick up a copy of The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer. http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Arc-Science-Better-People/dp/0805096914

If you're interested in why atheism and why you don't need religion to be moral, you should pick up a copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (who is giving an AMA this may 27). https://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins-ebook/dp/B003JTHWJQ

I personally think you will have a hard time converting your family to atheism, but if you want to shore up some of your arguments about why atheism, you should pick up a copy of A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghassian. I don't recommend you actively seek out these conversations with your family at this point, but they can help give you a better grounding about your belief system (yes, atheism is a belief system). http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094

To conclude, don't stop loving your parents but don't let them abuse you either.

[edits for minor typos and formatting]

Damn man, this sucks. But you know, there are plenty more fish in the sea... also, insert multiplying fish joke here.

Faith isn't a thing you can choose to have or to be given. It's deeply rooted and by definition stands in the face logical thought processes. It's a feeling in your gut that can slip away despite the most sincere efforts to hold onto it. Likewise no amount of her relating miracles will make it take root. She's trying to connivence you to have a feeling, and inherently non-cognative thing. You can't control feelings, at least not with that degree of control. Faith has to creep into your consciousness like all other superstitions. Usually this happens as a child grows, it's easier to indoctrinate the young. In adults, all intents and purposes, faith spreads like a virus. That's why you tend to get preached to when someone dies or before big life events - it's easier to manipulate someones thinking when they're distraught or distracted. Constantly trying to persuade you isn't going to work for her, which will cause frustration at best but most likely a great deal of resentment. It's going to drive a wedge between you. And really, do you even want the faith? Remembering that side effects may include faulty epistemological claims, poor reasoning and a willingness to indoctrinate others, especially children, in a sick self loathing misogynistic homophobic middle eastern blood cult. Not worth it man.

hmm, apparently I woke up on the grumpy side of the bed. But still...

Luckily there's a cure. It's called logic and it's easy to administer. Engage the discussion sincerely and ask good questions. You might find A manual for creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian useful.

Alternatively you could take her up on her offer to read the Bible, but on the condition that you read it cover to cover. No pull quotes or 'special readings' from her paster. Just cover to cover. After all, it's the authoritative word of God, how could reading it all be a bad thing? By the end of the book god will be a lot less important to her life. Because he's a fucking monster, never-mind all the internally inconsistent nonsense and outlandish claims about the world that we know to be false.

But all of this assumes that the relationship it worth your time and energy because helping someone out of a faith-based delusion is a long shitty road.

Some others have commented that they have successful inter-faith relationships and that's great. Good on them. If you can do that too awesome, but given that she's so desperate to push it on you and you're already annoyed but it... seems like 'live and let live' isn't going to be the solution. Besides, even it does work out eventually it will be time to indoctrinate, or not, your kids. Never-mind religion's constant medaling in, and association with, politics and culture. There are going to be more large issues. It might be a better call to acknowledge that you have different world views and will likely grow in different directions. Finding someone with your value set or outlook on life might be the better path.

One last comment but I want to share this with you. You already have a lot to read so definitely don't start out with this. This book, assembled by the heavyweights in the philosophy of religion, is basically the gold standard for apologetics.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Blackwell-Companion-Natural-Theology/dp/1444350854

Just want to show you how the professionals think and write. After you've read through the other suggestions, maybe you can get your hands on it through interlibrary loan or on Kindle.

Lastly, the first commentator on Amazon had some great things to say that are also relevant:

>This is a fantastic book. But is it the "greatest defense of theism" ever assembled? No. Why? Because it is (in general) not defensive; rather, this would fall under the category of "offensive" apologetics. In general, this book attempts to prove God through Kalam, ontological, etc. But to say that this is a defense of theism simply shows the other reviewer's misunderstanding of philosophy. A defense of theism is when atheists attempt, through logic, to disprove God, and the theist "defends" theism by showing that the atheist's proofs are false (this is where theism is at its strongest). Disproving an argument FOR God does not disprove God. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

>And when a reviewer writes that they will be "dismantling" the arguments shown here, simply disregard this. The philosophers and theologians who write essays in this book are top notch; atheist philosophers have a hard enough time trying to rebut them, and a 3rd year civil engineer student is attempting to? He is simply preaching to the choir (ironically, an atheist choir). I have witnessed quite a few layman try to disprove the Kalam, or the Modal, etc., only to use faulty logic or completely misunderstand the arguments. Christopher Hitchens admitted to being beat by William Lane Craig in a debate, and renowned atheist philosopher Walter Sinnot-Armstrong admitted to the coherency of theism during another Craig debate, and yet the average layman believes he has a chance??? Go look on Reasonablefaith.org to read all the poor attempts at outsmarting Craig.

>My main point is this: Do not obsess. I went through a time when I was rampantly reading apologetics, and then I would turn around to read atheistic literature. I did this because I was constantly in a state of, "But what if Craig/Plantinga/Moreland/etc. is wrong?? Look at all the atheists today! Surely they can't ALL be wrong!" This line of thinking is natural, though can be very detrimental. Even the great Socrates recognizes the problem here: "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing. And that is that I know nothing." We cannot know the answer to every question or every objection. Do not constantly worry about atheists attempting to disprove God, for this leads no where. Eventually you will have to make a choice, and stick with it without having to worry about possible objections.

The last sentence sounds like intellectual dishonesty (at least to me it did, at first.). But I have found that it is true that at some point, you have to make a commitment to yourself to assume X position is true, at least until some stronger argument against it can be found. That sounds like common sense but the above mindset is something that one can get wrapped up in (as I did), so I feel that that piece of advice is worth remembering at times.

Firstly by not using labels. Labels suck anyway.

> perhaps part of the reason people fall in line with all the positions of a particular party is that it's just easier that way

That's partly the reason, the other reason is that we only have two parties. So, in essence you aren't making a "positive" choice but a "negative" one instead. One may not agree with everything Blue but are certainly against Red for instance.

Funny clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7E9SS-X4YY

If we had a greater variety of parties you would find people gravitating to ones that believe more of what they believe. That, however, is a pipe dream given our current electoral system so no sense talking about it.

I'm not going to talk about any of your other beliefs or points as we could be here all day (both those I agree with and those I don't). But instead stay with your philosophical angst.

> And yet, l have a low opinion of the modern left.

My only advice is this. Don't do what labels are intended to do... box people in. When confronted with someone who claims to be a Liberal, or a Libertarian, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or whatever... don't foist your understanding of what they then should believe onto them. For every person, in every instance, and on every topic you have to ask.

Learn to ask open questions rather than closed questions. Questions like, "Do you believe X" are ok, but even better is "What do you believe?" Rather than, "Do you believe X about immigration", "What do you believe regarding immigration?". The open questions will always produce better results. Often times you will "catch" them in a contradiction, and that's ok. Don't rub it in their face, simply ask them about it as kindly and gently as you can. Make them consider their position through your questions. Don't try and change their mind but instead reconsider... to think. Providing them data sometimes help although a lot less than you might think. The mistake many, including myself, make is that we feel that the person we are talking to is merely ignorant of the facts. But it turns out that when it comes to beliefs, especially personal beliefs, facts are much less important than you might think.

Your goal should be to get to know the person, not the label. This technique is called Street Epistemology and you should look it up if you are interested. It can be done with varying degrees of success, I am still struggling with some aspects of it myself. Here is one of the books that founded the technique: https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094

Enjoy.

Not long after I went off to college. I'd heard and read all the terrible things in the bible, but my loss of faith actually had to do with really studying the history of religion for the first time, and understanding how humanity's changing understanding of the world and growing sense of morality had influenced every major and minor change in dogma along the way. (Very similar to how I was able to dismiss creation when I learned about evolution in school.) I had already started to become more like a "deist" rather than a "theist" without realizing it, but I also had plenty of "religious experiences" that made me feel a personal relationship with god and kept me from dismissing it completely.

My first real challenge to my belief didn't happen until I investigated a church other than the non-denominational type I'd always been taken to growing up. I did this because my very serious boyfriend at the time was mormon (Who is now my atheist husband ;) and of course wanted to give it an honest look. But naturally I was skeptical. I looked on the internet for information, and to make a looong story short, I knew that it was untrue. (Like, literally plagiarized. Heh, literally...) But in researching one religion, I unknowingly started studying them all, and I encountered a lot of new arguments because of this (and just from being on the internet everyday helped with that too. Reddit was a big influence) and I remember deciding that I could not dismiss his religion or any other without truly looking into my own. So I decided to read arguments against everything I'd been taught, like a scientifically minded person is supposed to want to do.

Like you, I made a reddit post around this time, asking for sources and wanting others to tell me why they made the decision. Still identifying as christian, I didn't even know what information was out there, and what sources would be a best place to start. On that post I was given a link to this video series (edit: also linked by someone else) and when I had finished it I was an atheist. My "official" transition happened in just two hours, but really it made me realize how much I already didn't believe and taught me about a lot of other things about the bible I'd never heard such as the Documentary Hypothesis and the origins of Judaism. It was just my "last straw."

What you should look into next really depends on what might interest you the most or have the biggest impact. Here's a site that lists a ton of relevant books by category. Two I personally would highly recommend: "The God Delusion" which is fairly popular and a great place to start for a comprehensive understanding of the main issues, and "A History of God" is absolutely amazing for understanding the natural evolution of religion.

>I feel like we've been approaching God incorrectly the whole time.

Humanity has mapped out a hell of a lot of territory on the God issue, from a priori arguments to a posteriori arguments, arguments from mystical experience, pragmatic arguments, appeals to faith. Are you familiar with this body of literature? If so, where is there to go from here? At this point in our cultural evolution, I find it difficult to come up with anything worth saying that hasn't already been said.

>(I come from a Christian background, and I have had to dissent with everyone who taught me the things that I know).

That must have been difficult. A lot of people go through a similar experience. I was raised in a non-religious household - it's not that my parents were atheists - the subject just never really came up. So I never got religious, but I found the subject interesting so I've done a fair bit of studying on comparative religion and arguments for and against God. If you want to look at a very readable case for atheism, Dawkins' book The God Delusion is about as good a starting place as any. Though if the idea of atheism is depressing to you, you might give it a miss. The world doesn't need more depressed people. =) I think there is wisdom in Robert Anton Wilson's quip that in order to do good, you have to feel good."

>I don't know, because I don't necessarily believe that God does exist, just that he could.

So would it be fair to call you an agnostic? I was agnostic for years.

>It is in this regard different than science, where I fully trust those who came before me, because they accepted that they could have been wrong.

I wonder if you're putting too much trust in science. Scientific conclusions get overturned all the time - that's part of what makes science awesome. To use an evolutionary analogy, science is like natural selection, forever weeding out ideas that don't live up to the evidence, whereas religion is like genetic drift, floating along unable to improve itself because it is unwilling to admit that it might have been wrong.

>I didn't know continental vs analytical terms are outdated.

Dated perhaps isn't the right term, but just know that they do have certain limits.

As for post-WWII philosophy, there's a lot, but I'm going to let you know that much of it can't be well-understood without a basic understanding of Heidegger, much of whose thought was pre-WWII. His best known work is Being and Time, but it's one of the most challenging texts in the western canon. For an easier introduction to prep you for it, I'd recommend some of his early lecture material, such as The Hermeneutics of Facticity and The History of the Concept of Time. This could just be me, but I've found his lectures to be generally easier than his primary texts. If you want to trace the development of his thought, much of which was post-WWII, the Basic Writings anthology has a number of essays by him. While nothing really eclipsed Being and Time, much of his later thought is still studied. I'd say the most significant work of his later career was his Contributions to Philosophy, which took the form of briefer aphorisms and anecdotes, more similar to Nietzsche in style, but still grounded in much of his own thought and terminology.

If you want to move away from Heidegger, some of the big texts would be Gadamer's Truth and Method (Gadamer was a student of Heidegger's, so the former's thought is very deeply influenced by the latter), Sartre's two texts Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism (note the similarity to Sartre's title with Heidegger's Being and Time, and also note that Heidegger would respond rather critically to Sartre's Existentialism with an essay in the Basic Writings), and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (a key feminist work heavily influenced by Sartre and Heidegger).

Beyond this my knowledge is a bit scattered, as I've only just completed undergrad. I really would recommend David West's text as a decent overview that will guide you in what the key texts are, as well as good secondary sources. I've not brought up Derrida, who was also huge, as well as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault and Charles Taylor just to name a few. On top of those, there's a ton of pre-WWII stuff that's hugely important for understanding these thinkers, such as the ideas of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, and the whole field of psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung and Lacan). Then there's postmodernism, postcolonialism, the various strands of feminism, and tons more. The more I type, the more I'm just reminding myself how little I know about this area (even though it's the area I'm most interested in).

Let me know if there's anything more you need to know or if you want to know a decent secondary source.

I will answer, but first let me address this:

> Every time I ask an atheist this question I never get a simple answer.

Two problems:

1. Atheism and evolution are different things. Many atheists believe in evolution, but not all. For example, there are atheists who believe we were seeded on the planet by aliens. Many people who believe in evolution are atheists, but very definitely not all. Some of the most prominent proponents of evolution are Christians. Evolution IS NOT in conflict with Christian views, it is ONLY in conflict with certain, specific interpretations of the bible. This Christian website does a good job of explaining how they are compatible.
   
2. Trying to justify a very complex theory with literally millions of pieces of evidence supporting it with just a single piece of evidence is a fool's errand. No single piece of evidence, in isolation, is enough to justify believing in evolution. But when you look at the overwhelming evidence contained in the entire body of evidence, it suddenly becomes extremely hard to deny.
   
   So I won't try to cite a single piece of evidence. What I will do is cite a particular field that is often overlooked in the discussion: Biogeography.
   
   Note: Simple isn't one sentence. I will simplify as much as possible, but complex topics can't necessarily be stripped down to far.
   
   Biogeography is the study of the distribution of life on the planet. It asks questions like:
   
   

• Why do we find certain types of species-- plants, birds, insects-- native to oceanic island (islands that were never connected to another land mass), but not other species (land mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish)? This is the discovery that first led Darwin to develop his theory. Creationism cannot offer a reasonable explanation for this.
  
• Why are there two types of mammals, marsupials and placentals, but marsupials are exclusively native to Australia (where they make up nearly all native mammals) and the Americas? Why are there are no native marsupials species anywhere in Europe or Asia? (And fwiw, this question is pretty concrete disproof of at least the Noah's flood story)
  
• Why do plants in similar environments tend to have similar traits, yet they can be completely distinct species? For example cacti in the deserts of the Americas and the succulents of the deserts of asia have very similar traits-- a fleshy stem to store water, spines to deter predators, small or non-existent leaves to reduce water loss-- yet the actual plants are biologically very different.
  
  These are just a few sample questions raised by biogeography, but they give you a sense of what is going on. These questions are trivially answered by evolution (plus plate tectonics for #2). For creation, they tend to take some rationalizing. Sure you can just say "god works in mysterious ways", but you can't come up with a good explanation for why an intelligent designer would do these things.
  
  Anyway, this is a super brief explanation of a big (but not difficult) topic. Biogeography as a whole I think is a pretty devastating argument against creationism and for evolution. To really understand it, I highly recommend the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. It covers the topic thoroughly, plus pretty much all the other evidence supporting the topic. It is highly readable, easily accessible, and absolutely fascinating.
  
  And I want to repeat this because it is so important: Evolution is not in contradiction with Christianity. You do not have to give up your core beliefs to accept evolution as true. It is ONLY in contradiction with certain readings of the bible, most of which are not based on anything that is clearly stated in the bible.
  
  
  

I'm a little late to the party, but I just thought I'd add my voice.

There are a couple things I would like to say. I'm sure none of it hasn't already been said somewhere here, but I'll just repeat for emphasis.

First of all, hi! And welcome. I'm sure you are feeling so confused and overwhelmed right now. That's okay. There's a lot to take in and consider. Take your time, go at your own pace, and make sure that wherever you end up is a place that is right for you. It's important to always consider what others have to say but that doesn't mean you have to follow what they say. You make your decisions and you determine your path.

If this road you are taking brings you to atheism (or anything unacceptable to your family and/or friends) you do not have to come out before you are ready. Depending on your situation it could be very detrimental to do so before the time is right. If someone will do wrong by you if they know the truth, then you are by no means obligated to give them the truth. And when the right time is, only you can say. Others may be able to help you with it, but when it comes down to it, it is your life and your decision.

And, again, if you eventually begin to identify as an atheist it is possible, and maybe even probable that you will feel angry. Many of us have been through it, or still are going through it. Angry about things that are happening around the world today and angry about things from your upbringing. That is okay too. There are many things we should be angry about. Just don't let that anger consume you. And be sure to still be reasonable. Anger can be a good thing when placed appropriately and if it's kept in perspective. It's a hard field to navigate but you'll figure it out with time and experience.

Don't get so caught up in one worldview that you are stuck in an echo chamber, never exposed to differing thoughts and opinions. Keep an open mind and don't shut things out simply because you don't want to change your opinion or are so convinced of something that you think there's no chance you could ever be wrong. This really applies to everything in life...not just religious beliefs or lack thereof.

I wanted to address you personally, rather than discuss the beliefs because I'm sure you have been given so much to consider and read already. It is likely that everything I have to suggest has already been mentioned, but:

• There are so many good videos at The Atheist Experience
  
  
• Greta Christina's blog has many wonderful and thought provoking writings
  
  
• "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins is incredible (as is most of his work)
  
  
• Just about any Christopher Hitchens debate on YouTube is fascinating. I also loved his book "God Is Not Great" but if you aren't a reader it may be tiresome and difficult to get through.
  
  
• PZ Myers blog, Pharyngula is excellent as well.
  
  I could go on, but this post is already so much longer than I intended. So I'll just end on this note: things might look pretty frightening and overwhelming right now, but don't let it scare you off. There is no better feeling than learning and coming to your own conclusions about who you are and what you believe. Especially if you've had those things decided for you your entire life. If you ever need help or have questions, come here. There are many of us who are more than willing to do what we can to help.
  
  Good luck! :)

The only one I can help you with is religion. For Christianity, I always suggest The Bible. I know this is obvious, but it seems that very few people read it from cover to cover. This may be going away from what you want, though. Personally, I read The Bible as literature, so that does, for me, place it in fiction. If you want an atheist perspective, I highly recommend The God Delusion; for some shorter pieces, I think one should look at Existentialism is a Humanism (if you like this read, it is basically taken from his book Being and Nothingness). If you want to get into some Asian faith, maybe get a copy of the Tao Te Ching to better understand Taoism. Just to add another, and this is one of my favorites; look at Food of the Gods. This is a really interesting read about how substances have affected cultures and their beliefs. It ranges from different foods to the most illicit intoxicants. For me, it really gave me a greater perspective of the uses and benefits to "drugs" that go beyond taking them simply for a good time. If any of these interest you, I can list more for what specifically interests you. It's not much, but I minor in religious studies, so I guess I have a decent grasp on what is worth one's time.

Perhaps it's time to move away from LDS specific arguments, and start questioning the God concept in general; especially as it relates to morality.

One argument I've always liked, is that even if there is a god, by far the strongest test of morality it could ask for is if a person will be moral while believing there is no such being, and no promise of reward or punishment.

If she is willing to read, I recommend the following:

• Start with The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It's much less confrontational than the stuff from more current atheist writers, and his argument is awesome. He basically debunks religion by dismantling the new age movement, and then showing that religion is basically the same.
  
  
• After reading that I would go with "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, or "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. Both are much more confrontational, and in my opinion, are not recommended unless someone is already close to on the fence. Both also deal heavily with the immorality of religion, but I think "God Is Not Great" probably puts more focus on that particular issue.
  
  YouTube is also a fantastic resource. Here are some of the video series that I found particularly convincing as I was going through my own transition:
  
  
• Why I Am No Longer a Christian
  
  
• Psychology of Belief
  
  
• Morality By QualiaSoup: 1 - Good Without Gods, 2 - Not So Good Books, 3 - Objectivity and Oughtness
  
  
• The Best Optical Illusion in the World
  
  I think it's also important to remember that there is are alternative worldviews out there which are not based on religion, which are just as rewarding and fulfilling, if not more so. Here are a few videos that have sparked that sense of wonder and that I used to associate with the spirit. Most of these are not direct attacks on religion, but rather are just inspiring ideas from a secular\scientific worldview. I recognize that these may not have universal appeal, but they spoke to me, and may do so for you and your wife as well:
  
  
• My Spirituality as an Atheist
  
  
• You are Here (Pale Blue Dot)
  
  
• The Sagan Series
  
  
• The Most Astounding Fact: Neil deGrasse Tyson
  
  
• We Stopped Dreaming: Episode 1, Episode 2
  
  
• Science Saved My Soul
  
  
• Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me?
  
  
• Instruction Manual for Life
  
  
• We Got Scared
  
  
• The Greatest Speech Ever Made
  
  

I glanced at the thread, and it seems like you were very unprepared for this sort of discussion. If you just wanted to dispel myths about a secular lifestyle, I would have made that clear from the outset. Frankly, you were unprepared to make arguments supporting atheism as a philosophical position.

Part of the reason you got trolled so hard is that you made assumptions about theists and they noticed. Your own prejudices got in the way. Theists are not stupid; I personally was a theist until late into college, and I learned Christian apologetics in detail. I don't consider myself stupid, and I still believed the Christian side of things. It's not like I've suddenly become smarter as an atheist...I've just abandoned some unjustified beliefs based on new evidence that convinced me those arguments were false.

Unfortunately for you, it seems you aren't familiar with these arguments...you've either only had to deal with the most straightforward of religious beliefs ("I believe because it's so!") or you never really examined your own beliefs. This is OK...you don't need a master's degree in philosophy or natural sciences to be an atheist. If you're going to argue those positions, though, it helps to be prepared for what the opposition is going to bring. You weren't. You naively assumed they wouldn't have good reasons for believing what they believe, and they wielded it against you.

Some general things that could have helped you:

1. Asking you random questions that are unrelated to the subject is common and acceptable in an AMA. This is not (necessarily) trolling, and if your original goal was to dispel myths that you are some sort of strange person, answering these in a straightforward manner would have helped, not hurt, your position. Also, people are going to assume when you do an AMA that you have a good understanding of the subject (frankly, and I'm not trying to offend...you don't).
   
2. It's always risky to assume what other people believe. If you aren't sure, ask. There were many "gotcha" moments where people pointed out your own straw-men regarding the Christian worldview. There are many Christians who are highly educated and have a deep understanding of their beliefs, and these beliefs may not conform to the Bible-belt anti-science faith healing shenanigans (stereotypes intended). You confronted their beliefs with an assumption that they lacked reason yet showed an incredible lack of interest and knowledge in science and philosophy. Again, you don't need these things, but if you're going to argue they support your position you should damn well know what they are.
   
3. I found it odd that you came from a position of doxatic closure (in plain terms, close-mindedness). Several times you mentioned that nothing would change your mind. This is a terrible place to begin a debate from, and isn't a very intellectually honest one. You invite comparisons to religion by doing so, because such closure is usually associated with strong dogmatic belief. I recommend saying coming from a position of doxatic openness, as you are more likely to get honest responses and discussions, not to mention it's generally a good idea. One of the key differences between most atheists and theists is around this axis...as an atheist, I am willing and able to adjust my beliefs based on evidence, and theists generally are not. If God were proved by solid, scientific data that could not be explained any other way, I would change my mind. If you're going to have a rational position, you need to be able to accept "Reason 101"...all hypothesis must be falsifiable (in other words, all your beliefs must have criteria that would disprove them, or they cannot be justified beliefs as there would be no way to discern truth from fiction). At one point you tell someone they weren't "devoted" enough to atheism, which is an extremely strange statement, and negates other statements you made about how atheism isn't a religion.
   
4. Finally, you really need to learn some philosophy. I know, I know, for some reason many atheists (especially young atheists) have this thing against philosophy, thinking it's some anti-scientific nonsense about mystical caves and pretending that nothing can be true or known. This couldn't be further from the truth. Philosophy is all about logic and conclusions, and science is heavily based on philosophy. In fact, physics used to be called "natural philosophy", and you could argue that science is a specific form of philosophy in regards to reality. Is there bad philosophy? Absolutely. Is there practically meaningless philosophy? Oh, definitely. The same is true of virtually any area of human knowledge, but if you really want to get involved in learning about atheism you can't really do it without a basis in philosophical thought. The fact is you're using philosophy whether you think you are or not, but without a solid base you were running into issues when people brought up common arguments against your philosophical position. While learning general philosophy will be useful, if you want something specific, I recommend A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. It really gets to the essence of epistemology and would have greatly helped you in your discussion. It appears you came to the conclusion of atheism because you experienced a situation where you had to deal with a lot of asshole Christians. While this may be your reason, it's not going to be something that will convince anyone of anything. I highly recommend finding out why you believe the way you believe.
   
   Hope that helps. Good luck on your journey.

Much like you, I've also recently developed a strong interest in Levinas. I've yet to read him, though, so please take that into account when considering my recommendations.

I recently asked some of my professors and a friend of mine who wrote his master's thesis on Levinas to help me out with getting started. This is what they recommended:

• This introductory book by Colin Davis has been the most recommended to me. Davis succeeds in the difficult task of executing a clear exposition of Levinas' difficult prose without sacrificing too much of its nuance.
  
• Regarding Levinas' own writing, begin with On Escape. This work develops Levinas' fundamental ideas on Being and alterity, demonstrates how he does phenomenology, and reveals his engagement with Heidegger and Husserl
  
• The two next best works to read are Existence and Existents and Time and the Other.
  
  I'm not too knowledgeable of Husserl, so all I can really recommend from him is the Cartesian Meditations, which sort of serves as an introduction to Husserl's own method of phenomenology.
  
  For Heidegger, the most important work in this regard is certainly Being and Time. If you have the time, I recommend picking up the Basic Writings and reading through most of it.
  
  On a final note, Levinas was steeped within the Jewish intellectual tradition. Jewish philosophers often emphasize the role of community and social contextuality in general. It might serve you well to read works such as Martin Buber's I and Thou and Gabriel Marcel's Being and Having.
  
  EDIT: Another good compliment to Levinas is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.

> There seems to be an assumption that people whose basic needs are taken care of are all going to sit on their asses and watch Judge Judy all day. And I mean sure, there will be a certain percentage that does - but a) do you really want to have that cohort as your coworkers?

Work changes a person. "Free time off" for now leads to a life of inactivity. And yes, almost everyone I know would accept an offer for some free time off. And then when the next generation is coming up, they will be less likely to work when the payoff value is reduced, changing our culture and making us poor.

Leisure isn't bad. But you have to have a healthy understanding of leisure. This is a good source for starters. And leisure should never serve as a person's primary activity. Work that provides value to others (and value is often best measured through market mechanisms) is important.

I wouldn't worry about college; you'll be studying things more attuned to your interests, and you'll be surrounded by similar sorts of people. College is actually great for figuring yourself out for this very reason, since you'll be exposed not just to all sorts of different types of content and perspectives, but you'll also get some chances to go more in-depth on particular topics of interest, especially once you start taking upper-level courses that expect specialization. My favorite college memories are actually of afternoons in the library reading, taking notes and putting papers together. I loved this so much I've even started writing my own stuff post-college.

As for getting to know yourself, I'd recommend reading. Since this is the INTJ-sub, I know everyone here prefers things to be a bit more direct, and while I certainly read more nonfiction, I've found things like art, music, poetry, film and fiction are great ways to understand yourself better than any nonfiction work could tap into. I got into fiction via Joseph Campbell, a literary critic who himself was heavily influenced by Jung, and from there it was writers like Hermann Hesse, James Joyce, George Saunders and Olga Grushin that taught me things about myself that I doubt any nonfiction work could. This isn't to downplay the importance of nonfiction (Heidegger, Marion and Kierkegaard have all been huge for me as well), but since fiction and the arts in general don't seem as valued throughout reddit, I thought I'd throw that out there. Read.

I was this missionary. Not really, but I could rationalize with the best of them. Logic just did not enter my way of thinking. This missionary is SMART. You have to be smart to maneuver a conversation the way he did.

Looking back on it, I'm not sure if one conversation could change my mind. My mind was changed very, very slowly and by many, many conversations. With that said, I think you should just debate one topic and stick to it. Don't change...don't let him change. The reason to select just one topic is because five years from now, that's all he'll remember.

I had a conversation 10 years before I left the church with a guy. He said "Is the world more righteous now than it was 50 years ago?" I said "NO! We are more wicked now than ever!"

Then he said, "We're curing cancer, providing insulin, creating artificial limbs, and generally healing more people with more technology and medicine than in the history of the world. Surely God wouldn't bless us with such longevity for no reason? We're SUPER righteous!"

That stuck with me for a long time. It made no sense to me. Why would God do that? If God wasn't doing that, then why would Satan bless us with long, happy lives?

I guess what I'm saying is that this conversation might have been a major victory for you, but we won't know for years to come. People need lots of time to abandon their delusions.

Personally, I think you were on the right track when you attacked faith. Everyone feels the spirit. Everyone thinks it tells them what is true. Everyone believes in really different things. Therefore, faith and the spirit must be an unreliable way at arriving at truth. His central message is that faith is the ONLY reliable method for arriving at truth. He's using a method that is deeply flawed at finding ANY truth.

This is directly from Peter Boghassian's book, A Manual For Creating Atheists

> "I've heard this argument before, and it does not hold water."

Nice. A bold but completely empty assertion.

> "It's merely an attempt to shackle the psuedoscience of evolution to many more well-known and proven sciences."

Ohhhh.. and from there you spring to another, completely unsupported, empty assertion.

> "If you're going to make the audacious claim that all sciences must be abandoned if evolution is not embraced,..."

It's not remotely audacious. The fact you can pretend it is only indicated both the depth of your own lack of knowledge about the sciences in general and the equal lack of such knowledge by most in Christian culture.

> "... I'd like to see your proof."

Nice try. You have made a series of empty assertions in order to hand wave away an entire section of science, (evolutionary theory). The evidence for evolution is as strong, as robust, and as complete as it is for any of the other theories I have listed and is often dependent upon them.

The simplest such example is based upon the fact that those who reject evolution are nearly universally Young Earth Creationist, (I am not saying all, but the vast majority). Evolution demands more time than Young Earth dogma allows for. In order to weasel around Geological dating of fossil records, most Young Earth proponents will put forth hypothesis, (they call them 'theories'... it's actually kindof cute in a 'child playing at scientist' sort of way), that tend to do all of the following: fail to account for most of the factual evidence on hand in the geological sciences, demand that we completely throw out all methods of dating used in modern geological sciences, chuck out everything we know in general about geology.

Well, there goes one of the sciences on my list - thrown out for nothing but ideological reasons.

Lets look closer though. Lets look at all of those objections that young earth proponents have about things like carbon dating and potassium dating methods, (etc...). Others, in many other places, have done a much more complete job of disassembling the standard arguments against these dating methods than I have space for here but the short version is that those dating methods are the result of fundamental aspects of everything we know about physics. If those dating methods are wrong, (which, though possible, would require the presentation of something other than assertion and unfounded hypothesis to establish), then pretty much all of physics is wrong. Admittedly, that would be really cool. I doubt you have any idea how exciting that would actually be to most of the physicist I know. However, as cool as it would be, it is not only terribly unlikely there is absolutely no reason to suspect it, (unless, once again, we count the empty assertions of people with ideological positions and no evidence to suggest that they may be remotely correct).

But wait... there goes a second, entire field, of science. Thrown out the window because people don't like the time scales associated with evolutionary theory.

Really, this just goes on and on. It's also not hard to educate yourself about the scientific reality of this topic either. All you have to do is get out of the echo chamber of people committed to rejecting evolution and an old earth and look around at what the 'other side' is actually saying.

Here, I'll even make it easy for you.

Here's a great book, by a Christian, explaining the in's and outs of why Evolution has to be true based upon what we know.

Here is a brilliant book talking about the fossil record, how we know what we know about it, and what that actually tells us.

Here is a fantastic book about geology as taught and explained through the disasters that we, as humans, experience from it's actions on occasion.

Finally, I give you a link to the Science Based Medicine website through their search tool. You will find there several, researching, practicing, medical doctors; all of whom are highly respected in their fields. This is their blog about medicine, science, and all things that impinge upon those fields. I have taken the liberty of entering 'evolution' into their search bar for you. The resulting page of articles is what comes up. If nothing else, it should provide a good place for you to springboard from in the search for whatever you want to know past that in the several books I have pointed you at.

Lastly, I want to make one final point. if you read the books I have pointed you at, if you start reading the articles on the site I pointed you at, if you from there start reading the articles and books and studies available all through the world of science publication and science blogging you will find something pretty quickly. Each of those books has different information in them. Any real study of evolution exposes you to not one, or two, but many lines of evidence, (from almost all of the sciences), showing that it is true. Every single book I have ever read trying to argue against evolution, on the other hand, always ended up attempting to make the same unsupportable arguments, (irreducible complexity, gaps in the fossil records, efforts to deny various dating methods), that have been addressed by proponents of evolution a million times if once. If you can't understand all that, if you can't even take the time to educate yourself about some of it before dismissing the position counter to yours out of hand, then you are showing yourself as having no interest in truth. Instead you are saying that you are only interested in trying to make the world believe that you are right.

Ah man, good luck. Let me see if I can add anything... probably already been said.

1. He doesn't "reject" your belief so much as not accept it (just as you don't accept Islam). Some amount of reasonable evidence (to him) has convinced him that Christianity is false. This happens quite a bit and is becoming more common as people become more educated and have less trouble feeding themselves. People don't need a God if they're already comfortable, religion is comfort. I could provide numerous skeptical lists that show Christianity to be false, but that won't help you do anything if you aren't looking to change your mind. Approach it like this: do you need proof that Thor doesn't exist? Having a list of proofs of the non-existence of Thor will not help you reason with someone who doesn't believe in Thor. My main reason for being atheist isn't evidence against god, but lack of evidence for a Specifically-Christian god. Nothing in the Bible is believable to me and many parts of Christian theology completely clash with my moral compass. Devout Christians usually have a block that prevents them from thinking about the parts that are icky; he apparently lost his block.
   
   
2. This sounds like typical teenagery stuff combined with a new antitheist mindset. Like anything new, it becomes very important until the charm/novelty wears off. I'd say it's normal as long as he's not looking at bombs and stuff. A lot of antitheists are mad at the religious organizations more than the belief structure. You can try to guide it towards more reasonable outlets of antitheism. Like, since he hates religious hypocrisy, try to find a secular charity (Habitat for Humanity or something) and get him involved in activities that prove he's not a hypocrite like the religious people he despises. It will help develop social networking skills that he'll miss out on if he doesn't have any extra curricular social activities like church.
   
   
3. I would give up on trying to convince him of absolute moral truths and instead approach it from a position of logic and reason. If he's really turned his back on your religion, you really don't have a moral framework to approach him from; the Bible is moot, he'll pretty much have to rely on the conscience you've hopefully instilled in him as a decent parent. Morality is usually ingrained by this age, so you're probably safe from him becoming a psychopath. As an atheist I abhor drugs because they severely limit one's ability to maintain a rational mind and this is contrary to the things I hold dear: intelligence, reason, etc; but many atheists are nihilists and view drugs as beneficial. This is going to come down to peer-groups and his moral. It's hard to break conditioning. He's a boy, you shouldn't have to worry about abortion too much, but you're going to have almost no common ground on this topic. There is no reason to not have sex before marriage outside of unexpected pregnancy, STDs, and emotional scarring; you kind of have to work with that. Teach him caution and self-protection. Abstinence does have it's physical and mental benefits, but good luck convincing a teenage boy of that. Look up things on social contract. He's a teenager, he'd like the books of Sam Harris because they're just controversial enough to be edgy, but he argues for secular objective morality.
   
   Basically, like all teenagers, you're just in a holding pattern until he gets into his mid 20s and becomes the man he probably would have regardless of belief structure. Give him structure, maybe stop spying on him, let him know you're there to help him and that you love him even if he's going to hell.
   
   If he's a reader:
   http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/143917122X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394670215&sr=1-1&keywords=Moral+Landscape
   
   http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Animal-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
   

> I'm fine with granting that the Universe forming is a miracle.

That's cool. What is it about the Universe that leads you to think it could be a miracle? For me, it is the amazing structure of the laws of physics.

I ask you because, what is it about DNA, ribosomes and the amazing structures within biology that make you then think they are "natural"? To me, microbiology is even more amazing than the cosmological argument. Anthony Flew was the most famous atheist of the 20th century. After he studied DNA and the amazing interplay of physics, chemistry, he became a theist. He wrote "There is a God. How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind" : https://www.amazon.com/There-God-Notorious-Atheist-Changed/dp/0061335304

> Darwin's small changes : Source, please.

See link below. Stephen Jay' Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" is where the evidence leads, and large changes are required to advanced beyond the local minimum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_landscape

http://sciencenordic.com/suggesting-answers-one-darwin%E2%80%99s-mysteries

Here's Darwin on small changes ("slight modifications") from Origin of Species : “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.”

> Until you can show HOW it was "designed", the notion that it IS designed is nonsense.

Huh? That's my whole point. It is a miracle. Atheists often ask for signs, and in microbiology you can see many amazing machines.

Your response sounds like this logically: "unless I think it is not a miracle, I'm not going to believe it is a miracle".

> Second, variation in traits IS evolution by definition.

Unfortunately, the word "evolution" is heavily overloaded. The term "evolution" is used sloppily to apply to mutation, speciation and even abiogenesis. Those are each very distinct concepts. Darwin's book is "Origin of Species", not "new traits". Do you think that blondes are different species than brunettes? Species are things like cats versus dogs. If you love science half as much as I do, please stop trying to confuse the concepts.

>free will by definition requires the possibility of choosing the wrong thing or making a bad choice. and those people who always choose good of their own free will, they exist, but they all live in heaven.

There are many things that human beings cannot do. We cannot fly unassisted or travel faster than the speed of light. However, we are never tempted to say that this restrictions on our ability somehow infringe upon our free will. Even though our possible actions are restricted by a set of parameters, we are still free within those parameters - free will does not require infinite choice.

Given this, it is logically possible that God could have created beings that such that they would always freely choose the good. That is, that these beings would have only innocent inclinations - what Kant called holy will.

>if he interfered then he has compromised our freedom to choose the wrong thing and thus we would not have free will.

Why does having free will necessarily require the ability to harm others? Couldn't God, being omnipotent, have created a world in which people who chose evil harmed only themselves through their actions, and not been able to cause innocents to suffer. I fail to see how this would in any way impinge on those agents' free will.

Clearly, this is not the world we live in. We live in a world in which those who choose evil can inflict harm on others, which seems to suggest that either God does not have the capacity to do this (in which case he is not omnipotent) or does not have the inclination to (in which case he is not omnibenevolent).

>if we choose to live in the material world, suffering and death are unavoidable. it is our choice to live in this world that is the bad choice we have made.

In what way do we choose to live in this world? I'm sorry, but this seems utterly nonsensical to me. We are simply born into the material world; there is no choice involved.

>if you choose to jump off a building, is gravity responsible for your injuries?

Of course not. In that case it is your choice that caused the suffering. However, there are plenty of cases where the free choice of moral agents is in no way responsible for the suffering caused. This is the definition of natural evil.

For example, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, rescue efforts were hampered by rain. If not for that rain, it is surely possible that a few more people might have been pulled from the wreckage. Even assuming that the WTC attacks happened because of the perpetrators exercising their free will, there's no reason for God to have made the situation worse by hampering rescue efforts. Surely God could have simply not sent this rain, or made it not rain, without infringing on anyone's free will.

>wasn't sure of your exact argument for libertarian free will so haven't replied to that.

I certainly don't have an argument for libertarian free will. I do have an argument against it, but it's not really something I can sum up in a short reddit post. If you're interested, I'd encourage you to read Sam Harris' excellent book Free Will. As I said in my first post, the free will defense does require libertarian free will and that's not something I think exists, so for me the argument really does stop there.

I would recommend staying away from the polemics. Authors like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris all have books worth reading, but not really if you want a primer on atheistic alternatives in the areas of worldview, ethics, etc. I will say that Dawkins's earlier works on science would be good, but God Delusion is not an exposition of an atheistic worldview, but rather an attack on religion, and a messy, at times ignorant and oversimplified one at that (I bet I'll get crucified for saying that). As one religious studies student to another, it is a book that gets awfully frustrating every time you realize that he has a horrible grasp of the relevant data.

Books that would be really great to read:

George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God is an approachable critique of some of the more popular arguments for God's existence.

Julian Baggini's Atheism: A Brief Insight is a really good and thorough survey of the explanation, arguments, history, and ethics of atheism.

Greg Epstein's Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe really gets into where someone goes once he/she has already concluded that God doesn't exist. He looks at how one builds a nonreligious life of meaning. Epstein is definitely in the "friendly atheist" category. As the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard (strange, oxymoronic titles aside) he has done a great deal of work with the Pluralism Project in their School of Divinity. He has even worked with inter-religious groups like the InterFaith Youth Core.

A long, but very much worth the time and highly recommended book is Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. In it, she goes very thoroughly through the long history of religious skepticism. She looks at the lives and questions of philosophers, scientists, poets, politicians, even some religious figures who have gone through the "dark night of the soul." This is a book that I think every atheist should read to learn that religious folks aren't the only ones with a long and storied tradition. It is a good grounding in history for secularists.

Thanks for the response. I hoped for a little repartee.

>But there's also a difference between, say, the example you gave of a dragon and these Christian accounts.

No, alas, they are exactly the same. They rely on eye witness (personal anecdote) testimony and have no evidence. Again, if there WAS evidence you (they) would be the first in history to show it. Additionally, you might want to theologically think about your stance on evidence and whether or not there is any. If a god provided evidence of its existence, wouldn't that remove our free will that christians so desperately defend by compelling us to believe? (By the way, you might want to hear what Sam has to say about Free Will)

>you can look at those who have been willing to die for their faith

This doesn't make a thing true. Those who follow Allah say this exact same thing before they blow themselves up on the crowed Israeli bus. The stronger you say your faith is, the faster I walk the other way in fear for my safety. There's no telling where ardent faith leads. Oh yeah, the Crusades for one. 9/11 for another. I'm pretty sure the female genital mutilation crowd is willing to die for their faith too. How about those parents who let their children die of easily cured maladies because they'd rather pray for help to come? I'll bet they're pretty strong in their faith.

Which leads me to...

> insincere or just deluded?

I think the majority of those who profess a belief in supernatural woo-woo actually believe it. True charlatans are rare but exist nonetheless. The easy way to spot a charlatan is the request for money. "God made the universe but you need to give 'til it hurts 'cause he's out of money." Therefore, to answer your either/or question, woo-woo believers are deluded. You know there's a famous book with a title you might recognize, The God Delusion. The clue is in the title.

Since you finished with a question, allow me the same privilege.

Do you care if your beliefs are true?

*Edit: Hyperlinked to The God Delusion by Sir Richard Dawkins. Thought for sure you'd want more details.

The fact that people get their moral feelings from the culture in which they're raise does not imply that all cultures have the best possible moral code. Just the opposite, human moral codes have often been based on ignorance, superstition, a natural inclination to distrust those who are different, and indoctrination at the hands of the rich and powerful.

Despite this, humans do have natural evolutionary feelings of empathy and compassion which were and are necessary for our species to cooperate and persist. We are a communal species and we survive by working together and by caring both for our young and for one another. You can see the same thing in any herd animal species. We've learned to see a wide range of emotions and empathetic reactions in animals which 50 years ago most people would have considered preposterous because they were "just animals".

The great thing about humans is that with the advance of scientific knowledge we can learn that under our skin we are all the same. We can build on our collective knowledge and improve our philosophy of ethics and morality because we are learning creatures and not simply base, instinctual creatures with no capacity for higher thought.

Here are some other people's ideas on the matter.
Sam Harris
This is a lecture about his new book, which you can get on Amazon for about $3.50. If you're really interested, I think $3-$6 is a pretty cheap price for a book on the subject by a renowned and respected mind.
Here's the link to his lecture about the book.
Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Here's a discussion between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins titled, Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?

Here's a wiki page about secular ethics.



It's very, very interesting stuff and there's always more to learn.

These are four books and a lecture series that would certainly be good at getting you started, all of them are academic rigor level, so not something that you'll be able to flip through at the bus stop. They take a bit of time to digest.

• Evidence that Demands a Verdict- good summary of the reasons we have to think that Christianity is historically true.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/New-Evidence-That-Demands-Verdict/dp/0785242198
  
  
• Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology- Natural theology, the arguments from reason for why we have good reason to think that there is a God. Written by academic philosophers.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Companion-Natural-Theology/dp/1444350854
  
  
• Philosophical Foundations of the Christian Worldview- Another excellent book providing a systematic narrative from the ground up.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Foundations-Christian-Worldview-Moreland/dp/0830851879/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=6HXK5P412QMRNR2XB37B
  
  
• New Essays on Divine Hiddeness- If God is real, then why doesn't he just appear to me? This collection of essays from both atheists and Christians explores that argument and offers (what I think) are some pretty good responses.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Hiddenness-Essays-Daniel-Howard-Snyder/dp/0521006104
  
  
• Faith and Reason Lectures by Peter Kreeft- Excellent lecture series by a philosopher who approaches the topic of religion from an introductory level and takes the time to examine the arguments for and against. A great place to start since it covers everything from a general perspective.
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Scholar-Reason-Philosophy-Religion/dp/B001JHT8DI

The strongest thing that keeps people going is a strong sense of purpose that they give themselves.

My motivation is doing good for good's sake. I try to make every day a day where I did something meaningful and to try and experience empathy for someone or something and attempt to show some decency and dignity towards them/it. This can come in many ways but that is the gist of it. Living in a big city leaves a multitude of possible things for me to do. Sometimes I'm dropping off some food+soda to a small group of homeless folks. Other times it's just being able to sit down and listen to someone's troubles. Your life is your responsibility (too adult sounding sorry!) and it's important to find purpose and meaning in it. Human beings are unique and no two are alike and even with the same dna they can become different people. Each human life therefor is priceless and we must find it in ourselves to do justice and dignity to each other because once someone is gone we will never see that person ever again. I don't like thinking about shoulda woulda coulda guilt trips when I see I had failed to do something in hind sight. But I always feel at peace when I do the right thing for someone.

A good book to read sometime is Good Without God. It is a book about secular humanism and really helped me when I was looking for some answers and insight into the way I felt but didn't have all the words to explain it more clearly.

Another thing that keeps me rolling is learning new things about the world around me. When I was a kid I wanted to learn everything I could about everything. Even though kids in school were always mean to me I always had a friend in learning. After I graduated high school there was a time I felt comfortable with all that I knew and didn't feel it was important to learn. I lost something along the way. Ever since I became an atheist I have that strong urge to learn again, like a rekindled fire. i have been rebuilding my math skills using khan academy and have been reading science and technology websites every day so I can learn new things and feel that small sense of accomplishment from learning.

TL:DR
I have a sense of purpose that I assigned myself as a means to self motivate and my life is better for it.

If by 'lacking' you mean 'nonexistent', then yes.

I went to public school but with heavy influence from my folks and church, all of whom seem to be involved in some sort of Fundamentalism competition. I learned exactly as much as I had to in order to pass the test, but I was always convinced it was a lie because scientists are all "out to get" Christianity.

I'm still wrapping my head around just how unhealthy this worldview can be.

I'll echo /u/Cognizant_Psyche - kudos on taking that first step and deciding to get smart on this topic.

I talked to my church pastor, who passed me off to his wife (who has apologetics degrees out the ass). She recommended The Language of God, a tactic which soundly backfired on her. That book was fantastic. It explains evolution from a DNA perspective but then tries to tell me I can still believe in God if I want to. For me, from such a fundamentalist, literalist background, the bible had to be true word-for-word, yet this book flew in the face of the entire Genesis account of creation. If that wasn't real, how could I trust any of the rest?

Once I was 'cleared' to learn about Evolution, I grabbed Dawkins' The God Delusion. I watched the Ham-Nye debate. I grabbed Who Wrote The New Testament, and Misquoting Jesus. That pretty much did it for me.

Alright here are some of the best resources I know as a Catholic. Hope they help!

Edward Feser's blog as well as his The Last Superstition and 5 Proofs of the Existence of God

Stephen Barr's Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Francis Collin's The Language of God

Anthony Flew's There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

Thomas Wood's How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

Brant Pitre's The Case For Jesus

Tim O Neill on the Church and science, the Inquisition and the Galileo affair

Jenny Hawkins on Jesus and God, early Christianity and form criticism

Al Moritz on the Fine Tuning Argument

>There is a reason someone should believe in the supernatural and mystical aspects of Christianity. This is a large issue for me. Solely based on supernatural and mystical ideas, from an outsider perspective, Christianity is no different than animism or Buddhism. I can't have faith alone.

Well when you look at the world's religions, Christianity has a clear and impressive advantage in the miracles/mystical department. Historically, in Christianity, there have been numerous cases of Eucharistic miracles, Marian apparitions, miraculous healings and the spiritual gifts and religious experiences of countless Christian saints -- men and women of great virtue whose admirable character only add to the credibility of their testimony. Examples of these include Paul, Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Hildegard of Bingen, Anthony of Padua, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Vincent Ferrer, Joan of Arc, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Catherine Emmerich, John Vianney, Anna Maria Taigi, Genma Galangi, Faustina Kowalska and Padre Pio. We also have a pair of impressive relics, the shroud of Turin and the sudarium of Orvieto. I'll also throw in Catholic exorcisms.

And these Eucharistic miracles, Marian apparitions and religious/mystical experiences continue to happen today.

What do Buddhism and animism have in comparison?

>Anything that discusses and argues against some common tropes from atheists such as Mother Teresa being a vile, sadistic person.

Honestly, I'm quite stunned at the portrait atheists have painted of her. At worst, she wasn't perfect and made mistakes. She cannot be a vile monster like Hitchens claims she was, that's ridiculous. Here are some articles that defend Mother Teresa -- here, here, here and here.

Check out any of Mother Teresa's personal writings (e.g. No Greater Love, A Simple Path, Come Be Thy Light) to see what she believed in, what she valued and how she saw the world. Check out books written by people who actually knew her such as that of Malcolm Muggeridge, an agnostic BBC reporter who ended up converting to Catholicism because of Teresa and ended up becoming a lifelong friend of hers. Or that of her priest, friend and confessor, Leo Maasburg, who was able to recall 50 inspiring stories of Mother Teresa. Or that of Conroy, a person who actually worked with her. Or any biography of hers. Find out what she was like according to the people around her. Then afterwards, determine for yourself if she resembles Hitchen's "monster" or the Catholic Church's "saint".

> Every time I talk to them, they tell me to go to church or pray or read the bible or some other nonsense.

Agree to their request - IF they do the same for you. You will read the bible and discuss what you find in it with them if they will read something you suggest and they discuss it with you.

Here is a couple of suggestions for reading in the bible:

Luke 19:11-27 The Parable of the Ten Minas - What is the meaning behind this parable? When are your parents gearing up for the slaughter?

Ok, I am too lazy to list other examples - so here is a link - A Book of Blood: Biblical atrocities :D

As for reading material for your parents - check the FAQ for a good list. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, is a popular choice.

Or you can work with your parents to investigate the foundations of the Catholic religion together. The primary most basic foundation to Catholics , and all the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is the belief in one and only one monotheistic deity, Yahweh/YHWH/Allah. All of these religions also have established the precedent of accepting the revealed and religious literature/oral history of previous cultures regarding Yahweh/Allah. A fun and informative activity that any good adherent to Yahwehism should undertake is to investigate the origin story for Yahweh. Where did Yahweh come from? Yahweh did not just pop up fully revealed to the early Israelites (as documented in the Torah). SPOLIER: Yahweh started out as a second tier fertility/rain/warrior local desert God under the El, Father God, Pantheon.

Online evidential sources related to the development and growth of Allahism/Yahwehism:

• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel
  
• The evolution of God
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
• The Ascension of Yahweh: The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism from the Afrasan to Josiah - PDF warning
  
  Other (off-line references - but if you search, you may find them online):
  
  
• The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark Smith
  
• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
  Allah/Yahweh/God is claimed to be the only true God (ex., “There is no god but Allah.”), yet significant physical archeological and linguistic anthropological evidence documents the doctrinal growth of Allah/Yahweh from a subordinate rain/fertility/warrior Deity in a large polytheistic pantheon of revealed and worshiped Deities into a politically and militarily motivated monotheistic Deity belief system. In other words, the evidence points to monotheistic Allahism/Yahwehism as a human-made concept and not as a self-revealed monotheistic Deity.

> Where do atheists and non-Christians get their sense of morality? I’ve been taught that without God there would be no basis for human morality. However, I’ve met non-Christians who are subjectively (and perhaps objectively) more moral than some Christians. I’m asking, philosophically speaking, where morality “comes from”.

The way I see it, treating others how you wish to be treated is both in your own self-interest and in the interest of others. When writ large, it's simple morality. Do you want to be killed? Raped? Your stuff taken away? Then don't treat others that way either. You can take the thought process further or more abstract, in which case you get philosophy. I'm not smart enough for that, or just don't have the patience for it, take your pick. I just do what I'd want others to do, and on most days, I'd rather someone didn't kill me, thank you.

> Where do I start looking for the science behind evolution? I’ve been told that there is a massive amount of science, research, and evidence behind evolution that I’m inclining to believe is true. I know what evolution is and how it works, but I personally need more hard evidence. I’d love some resources if anyone here has any recommendations.

To be honest, I've never taken the time to truly dive into this. Someone else can probably answer better than me.

> From the outside looking at Christians, what are some of the biggest flaws in our arguments for God’s existence?

Most arguments I see involve one or both of two things. First is the Bible. It claims to be the word of God, and is really old, and people have said it's proof of God, so that's basically enough. Spoiler alert: It's not. If I found a 2000 year old Spider-Man comic, would that be proof that he existed? You're taking the oral traditions of primitive people, written down centuries after the alleged events, or in the case of Jesus, third-hand accounts written down decades later, and then centuries after that culled into a canonical document by someone looking to rule his empire with a single religion, as an accurate representation. Second, the concept of "god of the gaps," where anything not sufficiently understood is assumed to be proof of God. Or, the "look around, it's so beautiful/amazing, this couldn't have happened by chance" argument. The realm of things that hasn't been explained by science is rapidly dwindling, and at this point basically all religious people can do is reject the science. Don't be one of those people. I will say, it's impossible to say there is no god, but what is more likely? That there is a being that runs counter to every known tenet of science, that existed before anything else, that is all-seeing and all-knowing, yet gives no concrete proof of its existence, or that there...simply isn't? At this point, I'd accept the whackadoodle ancient alien explanations of the Bible over the supernatural, because at least those are plausible.

One book I'd recommend is Dan Barker's "Godless." He was an extremely passionate Christian, who had the same doubts, followed them to their logical conclusion, and left the faith. He's now actively involved in the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe might be a start. Check your local library.

> Questions about the role of God and religion in today's world have never been more relevant or felt more powerfully. Many of us are searching for a place where we can find not only facts and scientific reason but also hope and moral courage. For some, answers are found in the divine. For others, including the New Atheists, religion is an "enemy."

> But in Good Without God, Greg Epstein presents another, more balanced and inclusive response: Humanism. He highlights humanity's potential for goodness and the ways in which Humanists lead lives of purpose and compassion. Humanism can offer the sense of community we want and often need in good times and bad—and it teaches us that we can lead good and moral lives without the supernatural, without higher powers . . . without God.

I can't say one single piece of evidence (or a single study) convinced me, but I can summarize the various pieces of evidence as biogeography - the fact that we see similar (related) creatures living in the same geographic area and even some creatures on different continents with similar features in places where plate tectonics would lead us to expect similarities - and genetics, most notably the human vitamin c gene, which is defective.


The evidence for evolution is not measured in single studies, but in the weight of the collective evidence. For an overview of the collective evidence across many fields, this book by Jerry Coyne lays out the general case for the factuality of evolution. If you read it you do need to be ready for some Dawkins-esque posturing - he wrote a book on why faith and science are incompatible, but the information in the book is very good. For a basic summary, this Khan Academy page does a good job.

Finally, institutions like the Biologos institute convinced me that it's Biblically okay to believe in Theistic Evolution (Evolutionary Creation? Whichever one posits God's active involvement in creation via evolution.). The final "nail in the coffin" was The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton.

> You're telling me to accept it on faith again.

Not true at all. I cited sources and directly quoted them as pointing out the difference between the various professors and lecturers. I even pointed you directly to the fact that gaining promotion from Boghossian's current position is based on contributing original research.

And this is all on top of the fact that I have previously referred you to Boghossian's publication histosy. If he was required to meet mandatory publication criteria then he'd surely have been fired by now, because he's averaging well under a paper per year. He's producing some useful work, like presentations, letters, etc., but nothing that would be counted towards bringing in grant funding (which is what these scholarly targets are all about).

In fact, if you recall, my original reason for directing you towards his publication history - which you are now trying to submit in its entirety without having to quote any part that backs up your claims - was to outline how little there is for someone whom you claim to be unduly affected by a temporary halt in sponsorship for such work. I count no more than five total publications since he joined PSU, and that includes maximum of two submissions that would qualify. One of them is literally less than a single page in length.

Like I said, scholarship evidently isn't his primary concern, which is why he likely appreciates a role in which it is not required.

>Your own source said they either contribute significantly with academic research and become professors or they're asked ot leave the position in 5-7 years.

So? In what way does that invalidate anything I said? He's only just reaching the lower bound of that range now, so are you trying to claim that he should have been fired early in order to fit that same data?

Incidentally, I suggest you look up the word "generally". Then I suggest you re-read those sources that you so disparaged while consipcuously failing to properly comprehend them.

>your sources do not say that it is the default position for assistant professors

One of them explicitly states that promotion to a tenured position requires that Assistant professors should demonstrate an aptitude for regular and/or noteworthy scholarly contributions. In other words, it clearly states that promotion is for those who show an ability to produce research that goes beyond the typical.

Note that not a single one of those sources states that such research is a mandatory aspect of that position, which has been your claim this entire time. You are trying to shift the burden of proof again.

>the default position isn't that Assistant professors do no research infact to reach the next level of the job

So you've noted - as I myself pointed out - that promotion to a tenured position requires some degree of scholarly contribution. And why is this relevant? For this to be valid you would first have to demonstrate that Boghossian wants a promotion and that he's actively working towards it.

>YOU have to prove that Boghossian either doesn't have research requirements to advance or that he wants to have his position terminated under that set of criteria.

Heh, no, I really don't. You have to demonstrate that he wants tenure, or that his department will fire him if he fails to do so. After all, it's not a legal requirement that they do so, nor that he should be aiming for promotion.

What a hilarious misapplication of logic, and you can bet your life that I'm archiving that little gem.

>under the UK criteria you have to prove Boghossian

He's at PSU. why would I have to prove anything related to the UK system. I only included that as a supplement to the US system, because they both work in the same way.

It is, however, highly useful as a demonstration of your innate dishonesty. You grab at a single word or number, twist it out of all context, apply it to whatever context you think you can use to fabricate a case, then switch it in for the original point. All of a sudden you go from a position which "generally" lasts for 5-7 years to a situation in which Boghossian must be fired or promoted right now, and - for some reason - you get to assume that he's working on the former rather than awaiting the latter, and without even considering the possibility that they'd simply retain him for longer than the typical period out of convenience for all.

Answer me this - assuming you're even capable of answering simple questions if you think they'll force you into a losing position: do you believe that Boghossian must either be promoted to tenured positions or fired between that 5-7 year period? If so, please cite the legally-binding document that decreess that it be so.

>Your own sources support that research being required is the default position in most cases.

Only if promotion is sought. You are now disingenuously attempting to insert yet another axiom: that Boghossian is actively seeking a tenured position.

Once again, you are trying to bullshit your way out of a lost dispute, and I'm not stupid enough to fall for it. This isn't a surprising tactic, but it's certainly interesting to note how carefully you quote around inconvenient words, like "generally". Pure cowardice.

>illusory superiority

Ah! Another new buzzword to stand in for a coherent thought process. I wonder how many times you'll trot this one out...

Three. All in close proximity. Fascinating...

>The Null hypothesis would be Boghossian not being different from other assistant professors

I agree, which means:

>he would be expected to produce research to be able to advance in his position and not be terminated

You have no evidence that this false dichotomy is correct. In fact, You have cherry-picked a quote around evidence that proves that it is untrue. Boghossian has no set time limit on his role by which he must either seek tenure or leave. That's how long that role "generally" lasts, but it is not a mandatory action.

Your entire reply seems to have been predicated upon this non-sequitur (note the correct use of that term). On top of that, it requires that he wants to seek a tenured position, and I previously outlined verifiable data that suggests that this is not the case. I'm going to bet that you won't even try to address any of that.

>research is one of the easier ones of the list

It really isn't.

>provide evidence of him having done the other methods to support your argument

You mean such as:

>> The mid-level position is usually awarded after a substantial record of scholarly accomplishment (such as the publication of one or more books ...)

...is that the kind of thing you mean? Then this will suffice. And, as I mentioned last time, he has another one out this year.

Done.

>you wish to use a very small sample size to represent it

Fine, then you can do so for everything he has published. Please read through all of his published works and cite examples of things he did to produce those papers that may have required sponsorship. Because, as established previously, I have no call to address anything in his papers until you can cite something within them that I need to check. You need to read it all, not me. I was trying to save you some work.

>I had at least 3

I'm not going to buy any of that nonsense from you, so don't bother trying.

Now, that aside, you continue to claim that Boghossian is directly impacted in his regular duties by being temporarily denied sponsorship. With that in mind, please present some evidence that Boghossian's work over the last five years actually requires some form of financial outlay in order to produce it. If not, he requires no sponsorship and any research he feels like doing remains unaffected. If you can provide no examples of this being a potential limiting factor then it is not a limiting factor.

In a similar vein, you have asserted that conducting research is a fundamental part of his job, despite the fact that his position is routinely understood to only rarely confer a mandatory research target. As such, please present evidence that Boghossian has a research quota to meet as part of his regular duties. Please do this with specific reference to the work he has produced within the past five years while at PSU. If you can find no such evidence then you have no basis for insisting that his position differs from everyone else who shares a similar role.

Oh, and have you found out why I'm finding one of your cited papers so funny yet? I was more than a little disappointed that you never tried to read it to see if he did anything that required sponsorship, but the fact that you still mistakenly think that it remains valid is almost as humorous. Do you need that hint?

Excellent, nobody has pointed it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian-ebook/dp/B00LKBT0MC?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&redirect=true&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

This book advocates Street Epistemology which is where you ask a believer why they believe something, and see if it comes down to faith. If it does, you ask for a definition of faith, and whether faith is a reliable epistemology to find truth. If Person A has faith in Allah and Person B has faith in Vishnu, and they're contradictory religions, then how can Person C use faith to find an objective truth?

Read this book to find out why faith is unreliable. I'm not happy with the dictionary definitions because they do not reflect the way that you're approaching faith even in this very thread.

Thus, the best way to think of faith is:

>Pretending to know things you don't know.

i would recommend free will by sam harris, which is brief and unusually lucid for a work of philosophy - you could read this in an afternoon. his take is that free will as it is commonly conceived is an illusion, and that we need to come to terms with how free our will is not in order to become effective decision-makers.

freedom evolves by dan dennett is more technical and dense, but tries to make a compatibilist case that, though our actions are physically determined, we still have freedom in a meaningful way; i.e. the kind you are talking about.

reading about free will will surely blow your mind, even if it doesn't change your mind :)

There's probably a few ways you could go about expanding your knowledge base. The two that seem most fruitful are

1. Reading for a deeper understanding of the topics that you're already familiar with.
   
   
2. Ranging more broadly into other areas that may interest you.
   
   If (1), then I'd probably suggest one of two courses. Either, (a) read the stuff that influenced the existential thinkers that you've listed, or (b) read some literature dealing with issues related to the thinkers you've listed.
   
   For (a) I'd suggest the following:
   
   

• Anything by Kant
  
• (In the case of Kierkegaard) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Aesthetics
  
• (For Nietzsche) Emerson's essays, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, or Spinoza's Ethics
  
• Maybe some Freud for the later thinkers? Civilization and its Discontents is really good.
  
  For (b) it's really a mixed bag. I'd suggest going through the SEP articles on the thinkers you've listed and looking into some good secondary literature on them. If you're super interested in Nietzsche, I'd definitely suggest reading Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality. I really couldn't tell you more unless you told me something more specific about your interests.
  
  If (2), then I suppose I'd suggest one of the following:
  
  
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy for a good, broad introduction to Chinese Thought
  
• The Analects of Confucius. This translation is excellent
  
• A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
  
• Heidegger's Being and Time
  
• Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  
• Some of Rilke's work
  
• Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life
  
  Again, it's hard to give you better directions without more information on what you're actually interested in. I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you, and you couldn't possibly be expected to read, say, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation over break and be expected to really understand it.

Hi, I have a degree in Philosophy and teach Philosophy/English to high schooler. The following advice and recommendations are what I give my students who are interested in philosophy. I would not recommend Kant as an introduction (not that he's bad, but he is difficult to understand). Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a book that explains philosophical topics and questions through humor and uses jokes to illustrate the concepts. It is accessible and thought provoking. If you are interested in logic you might enjoy Logicomix. It is a graphic novel that gives a biographical narrative of Bertrand Russell, an English philosopher whose work is the basis of all modern logic. It is not a book about logic per se, but it does give a good introduction to what logic is and how it can be used. Also, Russell's book A History of Western Philosophy is a good place to start your education in philosophy. If you are interested in atheism, read Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. This book goes through the most common arguments for the existence of God, and debunks them using logic and reasoning. Good luck and read on!

Creation and evolution can co-exist. Be careful not to force her into a false dichotomy.

To quote another person:

> I think your statement about the compatibility of orthodox Christian belief and the embrace of evolutionary theory is correct. So far as I can see, no contradiction between them obtains. I have Catholic friends who are both devout with respect to Church doctrine and fully supportive of modern evolutionary theory, and I find the theodicy and theology that proceed from that more elegant and robust than special-creationist alternatives. If one is going to proceed under the irrational assumptions of Christian theism in the first place, that seems to be a fairly rational way of proceeding from there. In any case, it doesn't place those Christians in the mental ditch so many drive themselves into with the anti-evolutionary bent, denying reason and evidence in abundance for evolutionary theory.

> Even so, I think you are dismissing the problem in a very simplistic fashion. While I just affirmed that evolution and orthodox Christian doctrine are compatible, evolution is nevertheless quite toxic in many cases to support for Christian belief. Many Catholics, for instance, have maintained a kind of faithful theistic evolution throughout their lives, but for many others, evolution seriously undermines faith in God because it in a significant sense makes God superfluous, an afterthought, an unnecessary part of the explanation.

> I think that explains why so many Catholics here militate against the evidence and the facts on the ground concerning evolution. The objection is NOT that evolution cannot be harmonized with Catholic doctrine -- manifestly, it can be -- but rather that evolution betrays a basic conceit many believers have about their status as humans. Christian theology exalts mankind in an ontological sense -- only man is imprinted with the imago dei, only man has the reasoning faculties to apprehend natural law and the noetic facilities for knowing God in a spiritual sense.

> Man is fallen, but that "fallenness" itself is proof of man's ontological primacy in the world; there is hubris in supposing man had somewhere to fall from in the first place.

> As Christian, I know I was guilty of this conceit. And while evolution does not and cannot discredit the idea that God made the universe, and utlimately designed the world so that man would be man, in such form that he might enventually be invested with a soul, fashioned in some dualistic way in God's image, evolution as a mechanical, natural process really takes the pride out of human exceptionalism. Darwin's dangerous idea was that we are animals in the most thoroughgoing sense, cousins of the chimpanzee and relatives of the lowly cabbage, or even the most virulent bacteria, if we are to trace our lineage back far enough.

> I suggest to you that some of the draw of Christian faith -- not all of it, but some -- obtains from this intuitive desire to classify oneself, one's kind as "special". Not just special in some parochial sense, but "cosmically special". Catholicism can still cater to this innate inclination, but it's a lot harder to cater to through the filter of evolutionary theory. Evolution places man as an ordinary leaf, like all the other leaves, or a very large and ancient tree. Many have a conceit grounded in the idea that man was "formed from the dust" in some special, hands-on way -- a custom job, or as they would say in the UK, "bespoke".

> Evolution works right against this conceit, and while doctrine and faith can be maintained in embracing it, evolution just kills a lot of the joy of the "specialness" many believers are enamored of. If evolution is true, God may still be the Creator, the one forming man with the imago dei, somehow, but it sure does look more remote and mechanistic than it used to. And of course, it continually provides the idea that this is just how things would look if God were imaginary, and that's something many believers understand, and resist strongly on those grounds.

The point of course is that they are compatible, but that one must be humble about it. As Pope John Paul II said when he was accepting evolution, "Truth cannot contradict truth". In other words, if you look at the evidence for evolution, it's very clear that it's correct in at least the broad sense even if some of the specifics are still being researched. From this, you have to ask how this applies to your world view - do you think it's a work of the devil or God is trying to test you or some other nonsense, or will you take it as another building block of truth and apply it where appropriate understanding that even if the entire body is evolved, without help, from a single celled organism that this says nothing about anything regarding souls or spirits or whatever they want to believe. Christians believe we leave the physical world behind when we die, so why fight over it being so special?

Edit:

I also recommend this if she has problems believing dating methods... it's a "Christian perspective" but it's accurate and explains it pretty well.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/RESOURCES/WIENS.html

And also a Christian biologist talking for 2 hours (with evidence!) about why evolution is true and ID is BS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

And here is a book written about evolution from the Christian perspective (recommended by Dawkins in a video once), starting at $2.61 used paperback. Just buy her a copy and have it shipped to her.

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

What on Earth are you talking about? This isn't about being stoned (which I don't do anyway). It's about being well educated about evolutionary biology and pointing out that your assertion that humans will be like this forever is inaccurate.

What is so difficult to grasp about that simple point?

Further, as I've also pointed out multiple times, understanding the neurobiological reality of the human mind right now has important implications for how we treat our fellow human beings right now in relation to society, the justice system, etc.

That is very real and very much right now.

I'm not sure how to make myself any more clear.

If you're not smart enough and/or educated enough to grasp modern neurobiology and neuropsychology, on top of my explanations that should be explaining clearly enough the ramifications of those modern day objective realities... that's your shortcoming my friend, not mine.

I can suggest a couple books to help you get a better grasp on this subject... two very approachable and enlightening books I can recommend are "The Moral Landscape - How Science can determine human values" by Sam Harris (a doctorate of cognitive neuroscience) and "Braintrust - What neuroscience tells us about morality" by Patricia Churchland

Is there some other way I can get you to grasp that these are contemporary issues of objective scientific understanding of our own minds right now and how they function right now and how that relates to what we believe, how we relate to each other, how our societies function etc right now?

I understand that you feel the chronospecies issue doesn't have any real bearing on issues right now. I've agreed with you on that in every comment I've written. But that doesn't change the validity of everything else I've said, and for some reason you just seem postively obtuse on that point.

I'm seriously not trying to fight with you, so I'm not sure what has you so upset and so stubbornly resistant to grasping the simple objective realities I'm pointing out, which include some that are very much relevant to right now in our modern society.

For anyone else reading this: don't be deterred by this guy's tone, Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is an excellent little book which explains that true leisure - taking the time to learn, or create - is the fundamental basis of Western culture. And it's pretty true: everyone from Socrates to Virgil to Dante to Pieper himself (as a professor and philosopher) spent significant amounts of non-working time attempting to achieve something greater than a mere occupation.

Think of the difference between a vacation and a professor's sabbatical. According to Pieper:

>We mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity.

Furthermore, in abandoning TV and spending his weekends reading, this guy is trying to spend his free timeaccording to a Pieperian ideal of leisure:

>Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative, beholding, and immersion — in the real. In leisure, there is, furthermore, something of the serenity of ”not-being–able–to–grasp,” of the recognition of the mysterious character of the world, and the confidence of blind faith, which can let things go as they will; there is in it something of the ”trust in the fragmentary, that forms the very life and essence of history.

However, you can't do High Leisure 24 hours a day. This Redditor illustrates this by spending some of his time bashing people on Reddit and bitching about his fellow parishioners and their iPhones and 'splaining to us how using Reddit on a desktop computer is philosophically superior to having portable devices on WiFi. Socrates illustrated it by getting drunk (read Plato's Symposium).

I'm sure Josef Pieper, being a European professor living in Saxony, Germany, went on a vacation and to a pub now and then.

What this Redditor probably needs to read along with Pieper's book on culture is his book on prudence and virtue.

I highly recommend it for an easy-to-read, Thomist organization of the four cardinal virtues of Catholicism.

If you're leaning towards trying to talk him out of it and want some resources, I'd highly recommend reading Peter Boghossian's "A Manual For Creating Atheists" I just finished reading it a few days ago, and it talks you through using the Socratic Method. The main idea is that you just ask pointed questions until the arguments fall apart and look silly. You never ever state what you want them to believe, you only ever offer alternate possibilities, and even these you just ask if they are reasonable possibilities or not.

Obviously, he's his own man and might be too tied up with this girl to react to reason, hormones are strong, strong things. But approaching life with reason instead of faith is the best we can do, and it follows that helping others to do so is the best for humanity. Good luck with whatever choice you make!

I normally avoid discussion religion and atheism outside of /r/atheism, but I wanted to respond to your comment because I think it's missing the point of why atheists tend to make these statements.

The point the atheists are trying to make when they bring up certain passages is not to deny that there is good content mixed in with the bad, or to argue about whether the bible on the whole has more good vs bad content. The real argument is that if you read the bible you find plenty of both, and that when people try to claim it is an infallibly good book, it simply isn't true. Atheists do not believe the bible is the divine word of God, and pointing out the many contradictions in the bible (various facts, historical inconsistencies and contradicting moral directives) is just one way of providing evidence of this. When we hear people claiming that other people should "read and follow the bible", we ask "which part?" as a way of reminding them of the problems inherent to their suggestion.

We recognize there is plenty of good in the bible, but that there is obviously bad stuff too. We do not believe it is the inspired divine word of God, rather we generally think it is just a very interesting collection of ideas and stories put together by ancient authors. If the original 'good book' was really just written by ancient men as an attempt to provide a moral guide for their people, why shouldn't we as modern men come up with new versions of morality to live by today; ones that aren't internally and externally inconsistent, and which reflect the vast amount of knowledge we've gained in the interim? Ones that remove ideas about sexism, racism, and homophobia?

To sum up, when it comes to morality, many atheists are in the secular humanist camp - basically the idea is that as modern, self-reflecting, philosophical, intelligent humans we should define what is moral in a modern context, rather than relying on cultural traditions forged in ancient history, from a book that clearly has a large number of moral and factual contradictions throughout it. If you're at all interested to see one view of what this modern reanalysis of morals might look like, I'd highly recommend The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.

Yes, you can choose to believe something that you don't have evidence for. From a previous discussion on this issue:

Belief formation is under our conscious control just as much as flexing our muscles is under our control. That there exist some things you can't choose to believe is no more interesting than the fact that there exist ways you can't bend your elbow. Your inability to do whatever you want with your joints doesn't make them any less under your voluntary control. So when you or others object, "Uh, I can't believe that 1+1=3, or that the sky is red, or ..." it's not a real objection at all, it's just noise, and it gets tiring.

We all choose to believe things on scant or absent evidence all the time. Scientists call these "hypotheses". We form the belief that this person has the mental state of disliking us by one choice of words or one insignificant scowl. We form a multitude of beliefs about the other drivers on the road ("That guy is an asshole!" and all that entails) because of one minor interaction in traffic. We form the belief that our loved one is sad or bored based on a simple sigh. None of this is even remotely convincing evidence, which is many times proved by the simple act of continuing the investigation, or even just thinking about things more. But that doesn't make the belief illusory: it was a real belief, it was a real propositional truth claim that we chose to accept even at the time it arose. It didn't just happen to us, and anyone who meditates or prays knows full well that the mind itself is something that we can control and direct just as we can our own muscles.

The very idea of "convincing evidence" is a misnomer. There are a wide variety of standards of evidence that we apply throughout our lives. Juries are here another good example: the standard of evidence in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt" but the standard of evidence in a civil trial is much lower, just "the preponderance of the evidence". And in our own lives we often apply far more lax standards of evidence, though we rarely make them explicit, they're often something like "Not logically impossible" or "At least some evidence for it." Scientists often begin with a belief that they hold simply because "the world is more elegant that way" and then form hypotheses and design experiments to prove what they already believe. The belief precedes the evidence.

There is not a thinking person on this planet who is "convinced" of every proposition they hold to the be true. We all hold beliefs that we aren't convinced of by any evidence, and it will take you only the tiniest bit of introspection to find such beliefs in your own life. You still choose to hold those beliefs. You may hold them weakly, and you may choose them arbitrarily, but they are beliefs and you do hold them.

Some particular cases worth pointing out: you probably believe that you and other humans have free will, despite the evidence to the contrary. You probably hold many beliefs about ethics and what constitutes ethical behavior, despite the inability of evidence to apply to those beliefs. If you recognize the reality of these beliefs and the voluntary control you exercise over them, then you should likewise recognize that you can apply such voluntary control over your beliefs about the existence of God. If "God exists" seems to fall into the bucket of "Things I can't choose to believe, like 1+1=3" then that's a different discussion to have.

I'm not sure if Jerry's gotten to this one yet, but I'll post also just in case.

1. The God Virus
   
2. Godless
   
3. The Magic of Reality
   
4. Letter To A Christian Nation
   
   Also there are great podcasts, of course we are partial to Living After Faith (our official Podcast with Deanna and Rich Lyons), and there are many others as well. For blogs there is always Hemant Mehta's Friendly Atheist, and we're starting our blog this weekend as well, but there are tons of just quality folks out there who have so much to share and offer to the secular world.

>I'm hoping to hear from others, especially Liberty grads, who have had similar experiences of losing/leaving faith while or shortly after receiving an evangelical Christian education.

Not exactly what you asked, but I really enjoyed the book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose -- Roose was actually just a college junior at Brown when he decided, instead of doing a semester abroad like many other students, to instead transfer to Liberty university for a semester, even though he wasn't a fundamentalist, as a kind of cultural exchange that he could write about. This wasn't really a de-conversion story, like Dan Barker's Godless, but it still provided an interesting perspective and I won't spoil the last chapter for you but there were some surprises based on what happened while he was there.

> Q: How could science guide us on the moral landscape?

> Harris: Insofar as we can understand human wellbeing, we will understand the conditions that best secure it. Some are obvious, of course. Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I’m not sure we do. Are there genes that make certain people more compassionate than others? What social systems and institutions could maximize our sense of connectedness to the rest of humanity? These questions have answers, and only a science of morality could deliver them.
-- Sam Harris

Upvoted for a really great response.

I would second crillbilly's recommendation of reading Dawkins', specifically The God Delusion. He deals with pretty much every question you've asked here. Complexity and mystery don't necessarily equal a God. If that were true, you could throw anything into those "gaps" in our knowledge. I believe that's where the infamous "spaghetti monster" came from. I could tell you he existed, and if you never find him, that just means you haven't looked in the right place.

There will always be things we won't know, and one can always hold those "unknowables" hostage as proof that there's just one more layer we've yet to peel away in our search for God. But my philosophy on that is: belief is what you want it to be. Its importance is only what you ascribe to it. You don't need it to live a happy life, only if you've talked yourself into believing that you do.

tl;dr - Read Contact by Carl Sagan. Striking a balance between faith and science is pretty much all he did, and he did it well.

The book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne goes over these questions in detail. It talks about the evidence available to Darwin, and the evidence that we have discovered since then.

I listened to the audio book, but it seemed like a nice, accessible book, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Edit: One of the things that the book covered that I found most compelling was the geographic evidence of evolution, a topic I was not really familiar with previously.

To give one specific example, Marsupials are naturally occuring in only two areas, Australia and the Americas, especially South America. Darwin predicted that when we explore Antarctica, we would find fossil evidence of marsupials there, which was later determined to be true. At some point in history, ice bridges connected these three bodies, and allowed marsupials who naturally evolved in S. America to migrate to Australia (or was it the other way around?). Once the two populations split, they continued to evolve, so the two populations are now distinct species, but dna testing proves that they are very closely related.

I am badly paraphrasing the idea, but that is just one of several very strong arguments that the anti-evolution crowd tends to ignore. You really have to stretch to come up with a explanation for these distributions outside of evolution, so it is easier to just pretend the whole line of evidence doesn't exist.

(Unrelated: Marsupial distribution is also strong evidence against the Noah myth. If Marsupials had been on the Ark, how is it that they were able to travel from the middle east to S. America and Australia without leaving any fossil evidence anywhere along the way?)

This is a HUGE , HUGE, concept to talk about and neither of us are going to get to far on it in this thread.

Sam Harris' excellent book "The moral landscape" does a wonderful job of laying out the foundations of human morality without a supernatural bent: (http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/B006W3YQTK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335301465&sr=1-1)

>That doesn't seem right. Why do we then cause suffering for conscious creatures and call it moral? For example, the imprisonment of criminals. That causes suffering to them. Actually we would say it is immoral not to imprison them

It is true that sometime the most moral actions require suffering of others. (Self defense is but one example.) Actually in Harris' book, he also takes on seemingly problematic topics like sado-maschosism. (People deriving personal pleasure from hurting others.) At first glance, it seems as if someone who doesn't believe in god could NOT say "It is objectively wrong to do this."

However, harris lays out a wonderful case of why that isn't true, and he does a MUCH better job than I ever can here. Actually, for a great example of a debate on this matter, there is a 10 part youtube debate with Christian apologist William lane Craig and Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqZ5azg8mlg)

I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend watching this debate as both men are very skilled in their respective positions and both sides are laid out beautifully.

It is called "Is god necessary for morality?"

> In my opinion it should be the goal of society not to discover objective moral truths, but to create the best possible framework upon which a moral system can be established.

This is where everything about this view breaks down. By what basis can you possibly call one framework better than another if there is no objective better and worse to begin with? It makes no sense.

If good is to mean anything, than it means an increase in the well-being of humans, or even more broadly to all conscious creatures. And there are near infinite ways to improve overall well-being, and near infinite ways to make it worse, and it's up to us with our limited understanding and instrumentation to try to make the most sense of it-- but to a much more scientifically advanced civilization wellbeing would be as quantifiable as apples in a barrel.

A book called The Moral Landscape builds an even stronger case against moral relativism. If you haven't read it, it's well worth picking up and if you have I'd be genuinely curious to hear how you can square that circle and keep your perspective.

Read A Manual For Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. Talking to people about God is an entirely different subject. If they are using theism to prop up their decision to eat meat you have to address theism.

Also, watch some of Peter's lectures on YouTube. He teaches to debate/question/query not about facts but rather how one knows what one knows. Theism is based on faith which is an unreliable method for arriving at truth. Illustrate that to be true, or better yet, ask great questions so that your subject discovers it to be true and theism will crumble.

I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 24 years of my life. Very devout.

It's hard for me to know what these particular folks' motivation for being in the JWs is.

Here is what helped me:

Problems With a Global Flood, 2nd Edition: Witnesses are very literal about their interpretation of the bible. If they actually read this page it will go a long way toward dislodging the cornerstones of their faith.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Finding Darwin's God by Ken Miller: A book about evolution that is not directly threatening to religion. It's written by the head of biology at Brown University. The science is solid. The theology is unsurprisingly weak. This book changed my life.

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

If they make it that far, give them this one: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Not all of it applies to witnesses directly (they're not young-earth creationists, for example), but a lot of it still applies. This will supply many final nails for the coffin.

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291101892&sr=1-1

One thing to keep in mind is that they're very unlikely to seek any of this out on their own. They'll view it as a sin. Your best bet is to print these texts out or buy them. Both books can be purchased on Amazon in used condition for almost nothing. Tell them you'll read their books if they read yours and hold them to it. That culture has a very strong intellectual conscience. Most witnesses are really decent people. They're just stuck in a totally stupid mind-trap.

Good luck! You're doing a great thing by trying to help these people.

Peter Boghossian's socratic questioning approach is very in vogue for this sort of thing — a great way you can engage with theists and get them to question their own faith without risk of them feeling affronted. I highly recommend you read this book: A Manual for Creating Atheists.

If you find the book useful (which I have a great deal of confidence you will), there's complementary resources like the Street Epistemology Youtube channel and the Atheos iPhone/Android app.

[related repost from a different thread]

>> So you sound like you began to explain how to make someone have solid seeds of doubt about God and then didn't go any further than the first question. Could you perhaps elaborate on what further questions should be asked and good explanations should they ask something in return?

The question and the follow up steps are there to understand what someone else means. If you try and use what you learn to convince them that they are mistaken, they will start to spout propaganda as a defense mechanism. I covered that a bit when I wrote;

> Why are they convinced? Almost always, they are convinced because they felt something or experienced something. That's it. Yet, if you criticize them or mock them or simply point out why a personal feeling or experience is not very good evidence, they will just switch back to telling you some of the BS about scripture, or the wonders of nature, or some philosophical puzzle; they will stop talking about what they think and they will only focus on the BS.

If you want to get them to change their minds, you have to use an entirely different set of questions and comments but the basis is still on understanding the individual even if their ideas are not (ever?) unique.

> Could you perhaps elaborate on what further questions should be asked and good explanations should they ask something in return?

While there are only a few things that I usually do, I assume that I will not have enough time to deconvert someone. To be honest, if I can get them to stop giving money and time to organizations that do bad deeds, I'm happy. I have no personal interest in deconverting them and it would take a few weeks to do it even if I found it a compelling goal to reach. The time needed is mainly because people tend to take a while to absorb these ideas, and if you are over aggressive they will just reject them and double down on their personal biases out of comfort or to have a sense of certainty.

The primary goal in any conversation is to have the conversation. You don't want to have them drop into a propaganda loop where they just repeat the words and/or ideas they have been indoctrinated with. So, you have to keep them off of their script.

You also have to keep in mind that very few thoughts are constructed in the moment. Our brains don't work that way. Instead, we piece together bits over time and our nerves are biased towards keeping the old structures in place. To change someone's mind over a deeply held socially taught construct takes time and if you rush it they will just re-write the old structures and make them stronger. You want cognitive dissonance. You want them to think things through on their own time for their own reasons, not to robotically reprogram them even if that is exactly how they were trained before to adopt those bad ideas.

So, what are the few things that I discuss with them?

• The moral value of facts; that all moral decisions by humans require facts and that obedience/subservience is not morality.
  
  
• How do they know what they say is true (when they pop back into the BS; I do not challenge the intuitive felt experience ... at least initially).
  
  
• I listen and I show that I understand exactly what they mean and why they say what they say.
  
  To tie those three things together, I point out that while we are in agreement on these points -- that I am not debating the facts nor am I challenging their personal conclusions -- I have reached a different conclusion. With that in mind, I ask why can I understand all that they think, agree with the details, and yet not come to the same conclusion? What is the difference?
  
  The difference is their intuitive felt personal experience that they attribute to some deity or proxy for a deity. **Yet, wait ...* that's the exact same thing that they said in the last wall of text, so what has changed? Nothing, actually, except for the time you have spent talking with them.
  
  As an experiment, go and ask other atheists that used to be firmly theistic (religious or not) if they have had some similar personal felt experience when they were theists. Many will say yes or that they attempted to have that and failed. Of the atheists that had that experience, many of them did not realize that it was possible not to think any gods existed. They thought that everyone must think that gods exist since that is what they have been told.
  
  So, by showing that you have the same facts, and understand the same ideas, yet you are not personally convinced that any gods exist, you demonstrate to them that what they have thought about what others think is not entirely true. That opens up the possibility that they themselves can also change their minds. So, do they? It depends on many factors, and while emotions are a factor so is the need to be honest about what can be known and how conclusions should be reached.
  
  I don't know if this method is similar to Peter Boghossian's book, but it is likely to be complementary. I've listened to his interviews and his emphasis on epistemology overlaps with some of my 3 points, but I have not read his book yet so I can't say how much of an overlap there is.
  
  ========
  
  source;**
  
  
• http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/2bpzri/talked_theology_with_a_catholic_priest_over/cj7rc2g
  
  [Tag: waterfall 1 & 2.]

Because the book mentioned relates to the topic being discussed by technothrasher and ojfrown. It is not uncommon for one person on Reddit to recommend a book he himself, or herself, has found relevant to a topic being discussed and feels the other person might find interesting as well.

Since you appear to think Sam Harris is just "some random guy", I'll add a little biographical material:

>Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
>
>Mr. Harris' writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
>
>Mr. Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.

Should you wish to learn more about the book, see The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.

Some people are willing to read the works of authors who might have opinions that differ from their own.

I know it's a bit of pop psychology, but I can't help but think that you'd enjoy the works of Malcolm Gladwell, particularly Blink and Outliers. Blink brings forward a lot of the issues about conscious rationalization of unconscious behavior and cognition. The metaphor is that there is a locked door in our mind, behind which a huge series of unconscious processes occur. These processes evolved for specific tasks and have thus evolved, as a necessity, a specifically high accuracy in certain areas.

Described in the book is a particularly interesting psychological case study was done with gamblers. Gamblers were sat at a table with 4 decks of cards, 2 red and 2 blue. They would draw cards that would either net them money or lose them money. The decks were rigged, of course, with the red decks providing a few high payouts with a net loss, and the blue decks providing minor gains and an average positive net. By the 80th draw, on average, the gamblers knew to avoid the red decks and could consciously explain their behavior. At the 40th draw they had a hesitancy to draw from the red deck, but could not explain their behaviors beyond "suspicion". However, by as early as the 20 draw, the subjects demonstrated increased heart rate and sweaty palms when drawing from red that they were not even consciously aware of!

The book Religion Explained takes a lot of these evolved subconscious cognization theories and very convincingly applies them to the realm of religious evolution. It's dryer than Gladwell, but a valuable read nonetheless!

> The idea that the mind is in some way non-physical.

The mind is a product and an element of the physical brain. It may not be concretely tangible (i.e., you can't hold a mind), but that does not mean it is not a part of the physical universe. Physics explains the mind quite well, actually. The neurons in our brain are developed in compliance to the laws of physics and biology, the neurochemicals in our brain are physical substances, and the electric currents in our brains that communicate signals between neurons operate in compliance to the laws of physics.

Evolution also provides insight into the development of consciousness. While, sure, humans are the only terrestrial species with advanced enough consciousness to develop religious and philosophical ideas, we know now that many animals have forms of consciousness and proto-consciousness like what we would expect if humans evolved consciousness from simple origins. The mind is perfectly explainable through naturalistic sciences, and our naturalistic model of human consciousness makes predictions that are falsifiable.

I'd suggest reading Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. Here's a talk he gave on the book. I'd also suggest his The Stuff of Thought, The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate.

I'd also suggest Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. While it's main thrust is to show how science can inform morality, it offers some pretty decent layperson explanation of consciousness, and it is written by an accomplished neuroscientist (whatever your opinion on his religious works may be). His pamphlet-esque Free Will also covers some good ground here.

> All able-bodied humans are born with the ability to learn language.

Not at all true. You can be able-bodied and learning disabled. There was a nonverbal autistic student at my middle school years ago who ran track. Trivial point, but still incorrect.

> I would argue humans also have a Spiritual Acquisition Device.

I would argue that this argument is SAD. (pun; sorry.)

You're positing a massively complex hypothetical neurological infrastructure to link human brains to a divine alternate universe or dimension that has never been shown to exist. Not only has this neural uplink never been observed, but it is entirely unnecessary, as neuroscientists and psychologists have a perfectly functional, testable model of consciousness without it. You're adding a new element to that model that is functionally redundant and untestable. Occam's Razor would trim away your entire posited element out of extraneousness and convolution.

From a post I made awhile back:

If you want to go for a scholastic/western positive apologetics approach check out: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.

If you want to go for a scholastic/western negative apologetics approach check out Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds. This is the work that actually re-kindled serious philosophical debate on the existence of God in Anglophone philosophical circles according to Quinten Smith (a notable atheist philosopher btw). From there you could also check out Alvin Plantinga's warrant trilogy in order: Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief.

Personally I'm skeptical of the scholastic/western approach in general and I favor the Eastern/Mystical approach. I think the scholastic/western approach cannot escape radical skepticism, and I mean this in terms of secular and religious. If one takes seriously the scholastic/western approach in general, whether one is atheist or theist, radical skepticism follows. This video from a radical skeptic that goes by the user name Carneades.org does a good job of demonstrating this: Arguments of the Indirect Skeptic

The Orthodox approach has always been mystical rather than scholastic all the way from the beginnings of Christianity. From Jesus, to the apostles, to the church fathers, to right now we still have the original apostolic faith in the Orthodox Church. Check out this short documentary to learn more: Holy Orthodoxy: The Ancient Church of Acts in the 21st Century.

Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky explains the Eastern/Mystical approach: "To properly understand the Orthodox approach to the Fathers, one must first of all understand the mystical characteristic of Orthodox theology and the tradition of the apophatic approach to an understanding-if "understanding" is indeed the proper word-of what the hidden God in Trinity reveals to us. This needs to be combined with the insight that what is incomprehensible to our reason inspires us to rise above every attempt at philosophical limitation and to reach for an experience beyond the limits of the intellect. The experience of God is a transcendence born from union with the divine-henosis (oneness with God) being the ultimate goal of existence. This makes the requirement of true knowledge (gnosis) the abandoning of all hope of the conventional subject-object approach to discovery. It requires setting aside the dead ends of Scholasticism, nominalism, and the limits set by such Kantian paradigms as noumena/phenomena. One must return to, or better yet, find in one's heart (or nous, the soul's eye) union with the Holy Trinity, which has never been lost in the Orthodox Church."

Source: Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky, (2004). Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. p. 178. Zondervan, Grand Rapids

If you want a good book that will help her feel she's not alone in her search of things other than a god, I HIGHLY recommend "Godless" by Dan Barker

http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252981216&sr=1-1

Dan was a former Evangelical minister, grew up with believer parents, and was as steeped in evangelical, fanatical thinking as you can get. Then one day, he started to think for himself. After a divorce from his then wife, and many other things that ruined his life at that time, he is happier than he was ever during his time in the church. He is happily remarried and is now a co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

http://ffrf.org/

The book tells the story of his early life in the church, his fall from grace as it were, the reasons he believes Christianity is faulty, and what he as an athiest has to look forward to in life. One o fthe best books I've read in a long time.

I study evolutionary biology as a hobby and have read many books on the subject, several of which actually argue in favor of a designer (a position I disagree with based on the evidence). The facts and evidence overwhelmingly support the history of the eye's development as I have described it whether you agree with it or not. If you are interested in the subject, I highly recommend checking out "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth R. Miller and "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes" by Stephen Jay Gould, both of which are very informative and excellent reads.

If you are a blind, ocean-dwelling creature who's food tends to hang out near the surface, a mutation that allows a cell to detect light would make it easier to find food, thus increasing the likelihood that you would survive and pass on that mutation. Furthermore, if another mutation multiplied the number of those light detecting cells, you might be able to better determine your distance to the surface and more precisely hone in on your meal without getting too close to the surface and putting yourself in potential danger. If a further mutation granted you enough of the light-detecting cells that you determine movement, you would be in a much better position to both find food and evade predators.

It is small mutations like this that have selective advantages that result in the development of things like eyes and the rest of our organs. It's not that the creatures "knew what they wanted to see"; it's that mutations provided sensory inputs that increased the likelihood of those creatures surviving. It is the survivors that pass on their genes and spawn the next generation. This is happening constantly in all living things, humans included, and that is an indisputable fact. It can be and has been observed.

I think an excellent book for any questioning christian to read is Godless by Dan Barker. He used to be a fundamentalist evangelical christian, and he clearly articulates and lays out his reasons for his eventual deconversion. He has some excellent youtube debates as well. He's a great guy.

The reason I often enjoy some of his talks more than other big name atheists is because he knows the bible and christianity backward and forward. He has a strong understanding and knowledge of the bible, and is therefore quite easily able to dismantle its credibility and legitimacy.

This reminds me a lot of how people talk about trying to de-convert people. They try showing them evidence of how a particular religion is false, but no matter how much they push the point home the person they're talking to doesn't listen.

(Here's a concrete example for that: Consider someone who believes in a literal interpretation of Noah's Flood [God creates the earth, doesn't like what people are doing, decides to drown them all in a global flood, chooses one man {Noah} and his family to build a boat and collect up 2 of each animal into said boat, they float around on water covering Mt. Everest for 375 days, all animals depart to repopulate the earth]. This story has a list of problems so long in boggles the mind, but ask how Noah and his family simultaneously kept the penguins cold and desert foxes hot without refrigeration, keep the carnivores from eating the herbivores, or whatever else and you get a whole raft of rationalizations if they don't just claim you hate god or are an agent of the devil sent to deceive them.)

What I've learned so far about this problem is that it requires a different approach than facts and evidence. It requires instilling a sense of doubt in what one knows, and how one knows it and modeling an intellectually honest framework for answering such questions.

In the religious example how one knows the truth of claim x is usually answered with faith. They have faith that god helped Noah in every way he needed to get that boat stocked and taken care of. And how do they know their faith is true? To put it one way: They know that they know that they know. It is felt with the same level of conviction that one has asking if they exist.

I hope this was helpful without rambling too much. I am mostly taking from A Manual for Creating Atheists Which I found to be a useful source of information about changing people's minds even outside of religious contexts.


Edit: Please know I'm not trying to hassle anyone about religion here. There are goals worth banding together for and finding ways to help get people out of toxic and counterproductive mindsets is one of them.

> I [...] was wondering if there were any books out there [...] about how living peacefully without [religion] is possible.

Maybe I'm just being cynical and reading into the phrasing here too much, but do you really need to read an entire book to convince you that it's possible to be an atheist and live peacefully? Shouldn't that be a given?

At any rate, there are only three types of atheist-related books that I'm aware of - counter-apologetic books (books that deconstruct arguments made by apologists), anti-theistic books (books that attempt to demonstrate the problems with religion), and what I'll call post-theistic books (books that address the issues that religion likes to claim a monopoly on - issues like ethics and morality).

I'm assuming, based on your question, that you are opposed to reading anti-theistic books. As such, I'd suggest Godless. Besides Dawkin's introduction, it's pretty light on the anti-theism. The first half is really more of a deconversion narrative than an argument, and it's pretty sympathetic to Christian believers. Also this video series might be of interest to you.

After reading some of your comments below, my initial response was going to be to come back when you have an open mind. I don't think you'll get anything out of your pursuit until you do. But then I remembered myself in a similar mindset several years ago. If you'd really like to challenge your faith and develop a more rounded perspective here are some of the things I did that finally opened my eyes and helped me break free from the oppression of religion;

• Read a book like The God Delusion. I read this when I considered myself a Christian. I only made it half way though because I thought it was full of presumptive anti-Christian propaganda. And I honestly still don't have a great opinion of the book, but it got some gears turning for me and challenged me to examine my beliefs honestly.
  
• Read Rob Bell's series, What is the Bible?. Again, the quality of the content may be questionable, but it gets some gears turning in a good way.
  
• Expose yourself to diversity. Meet, and get to know friends from other cultures. Christian friends are fine. Be vulnerable with them and open to their perspectives. I don't think mainstream Christianity can survive honest confrontation with other branches of Christianity. Yes, they mostly all believe Jesus was God and died for our sins, but beyond that the vary widely in their application.
  
• Stop making excuses for God. Be honest with yourself and ask if you've ever had an experience that you can prove was an interaction with God. Christianity is a religion that claims God wants a relationship with individuals, so you should have had direct tangible experience of that somewhere in your life.
  
• Read The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. This one is fairly solid, and a very harsh critic of Christianity. If you do none of the other things on this list, read this. It's free online too.
  
  Good luck.

If you value your relationship (long term), i would suggest taking a different approach.

I went through a similar situation with my GF (now wife). We were both pretty confident YEC's (then i took a Critical Thinking class and boom). The method i used was explaining my thought process and asking her what she thought about it. It's important not to make the issue adversarial, but to make it a conversation. No debate will make her change her mind (or better yet see where you come from).

The problem is not god/religion/church (not directly anyway), but faith. Faith is what causes logic/critical thinking not to work. It allows for magic. Faith is a bad epistemology (how you know what you know). My old CT professor wrote a book about it: A Manual For Creating Atheists. (foreward by Michael Shermer)

The edgy title is a little misleading, the book is about critical thinking and about how you know what you know. It tackles the issue of faith. The method advocated (honest, non-adversarial conversation etc) is pretty well demonstrated by this guy on youtube.

My relationship was very important to me and i almost lost it because of difference of belief. She was also reasonable and agreed to hear me out. Now we both still share utter incredulity that we could have ever held those views. Don't listen to the "just dump her" comments. Relationships with people are too important to just discard.

*full disclosure Amazon link is Smile link to support the skeptic society.

Your best bet is just to tell him to shut up about religion, and make it clear you're serious about it. That's something that might work better than trying to alter his views, which is rarely easy.

If you are really interested in trying to change his mind, use a method that is known to actually work once in a while: it's called Street Epistemology. SE was started by a guy who read Peter Boghossian's book, *A Manual for Creating Atheists. Boghossian is professor of Philosophy at Portland State U. Boghossian has also created a mobile app called Atheos. The first module is free and I would recommend it. Its purpose is to help you through the process of changing someone's mind by preventing you from being sidetracked by the person you're working on (sidetracking is one of the very few tactics they have at their disposal, so they tend to use it a lot).

I've recommended this book on this sub before, but it really is a fantastic read and helps talk to other people and even get some movement on talking with people in the church. It's A Manual for Creating Athiests by Peter Boghossian. It is excellent.

Essentially it teaches people to use the Socratic method to help people understand just how bad faith is at determining what is real. You can also look up "street epistemology" to find other sources and videos of people employing Dr. Boghossian's techniques.

You''re trying to equate someones personal respect (in my case) for other people to me being forced to do something for a religion... that's not the case. There is no Muslim morality when you get down to it, Sam Harris might be able to explain it better to you than I can.

Frankly I think nudity laws are stupid, and repressive. I think it's silly a man can be topless and a woman cannot, if some African ladies told me it was repressive I couldn't walk around topless I would agree with them. However if I wanted to walk around topless, there are cities and places I can go to where the law is actually ok with me walking around topless/nude. You better bet that if these Muslim women tried to walk around not in full body cover anywhere there would be a shit storm coming right at them.

I think that like most things there is a time and a place for everything, and if they chose to wear these full body and face covering clothes that would even be ok, if it wasn't in conjunction with all the other things that oppress these women. If it was "These women are treated as equal but out of respect for their religion wear these garments" fine, but any religion that is based around keeping women down and glorifying men is clearly not acting in the women best interest, and anything stemming from it is going to be put in a negative light regardless.

Hello! Oh yes, my idols, haha. Needless to say, Sagan was an amazing cosmologist, and NDT is just the most amazing personality. Actually, there's a great book written by Tyson, called Death by Black Hole, I wholeheartedly recommend reading it.

I know how you must feel. I went through the same thing. I was threatened by my mother, grabbed by the chest, and threatened to be kicked out of my house. I refused because I had no place to go, as my dad tried to calm her down, luckily they had to leave. I've learned a lot since then, and went back into the closet (though you seem to have a job, and security, so I'd say you don't have to do that) I think there's one effective persuasion technique that you may have not been exposed to - but maybe now it's too late because you're out of the closet. You might even be going through what many people call "an angry atheist phase", this can cause you to become more tribal which can send you into a downward spiral of anger and pain, and suck time like hell.

Here's the effective strategy I came across - this must be approached after you are both cool and preferably the other person doesn't know you are an atheist (but again, to me, it just seems too late):

It's called Street Epistemology. It's most concisely put in this book "A Manual for Creating Atheists", and you can see a good example of it on video here.

If you were an American Indian and you were dancing around the fire with feathers in your head gear, and I walked up to you and said "What are you dancing around the fire for?" You don't take your hat and throw it on the ground and say "You know I never thought of it that way!" We can't do that, we look at the world with our background, we have no other way of doing it.

Why is it that a Nazi gets a lump in his throat when he sees a swastika, and an American feels anger? The difference is the environment they've been brought up in. And if you're brought up in an environment with misinformation, you will behave that way.

No Chinese baby was ever born speaking Chinese, no matter how many generations of Chinese.

A child never writes his own alphabet

I believe, all behavior and actions that all people take are perfectly lawful to their environment and background. How your wife reacted, while it is very harmful to you, and I certainly empathize all the pain that my family has caused me specifically, is perfectly appropriate to her background and upbringing. Not saying what she did to you was beneficial. I'm saying that that is perfectly appropriate to the way she was brought up, and because of her indoctrination, it requires a different approach if you would like to change her beliefs and behaviors.

Over the years I've discovered a better way to convince believers. It's not hard either. It just takes some reading, and understanding on how human behavior works and how people are brainwashed. And how they are victims of that, not acting with their own free will and their own ideas.

A few books that helped me with convincing believers were: Nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg, and semantics to clear language, the easiest book: Language in Thought and Action by Hayakawa. To understand psychological biases check out You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney

But perhaps the most helpful person was being exposed to Jacque Fresco - I shared some of his thoughts above. I highly recommend him - his ideas have changed my life.

I shared this snippet from Jacque Fresco on another post in this subreddit, but it bears repeating:

Conflict occurs when a person doesn’t seek your advice but you advise them.
So the way to get along with people is to let them be what they are unless they say I don’t seem to get along with pollocks whats my problem? Very few people say “What do you think of my value system?” If they do that and it’s sincere, not an ego thing...
If they ask a question, thats where you can get in and suggest but if they don’t, don’t s superimpose your values even if they’re better

If you suggest, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

and they say I don’t like 4 and 5,

don’t argue.

Your question is: How different is the persons background than yours? And does the person seek information? And if they did, don’t feel like you’re instructing them.
If you come home and you brother is using a shovel in the lawn, and he's struggling with it and you come up to him and say "That's no way to use a shovel!"

That's not going to change him. If, however, you say nothing - and he comes up to you, and says "I can't seem to use this shovel efficiently, can you help me?" then you can instruct them but don't feel like you're instructing them so you say "I used to do it that way, then another person taught me to push it down with my foot, and that was easier"

Sometimes people don’t want advice. They feel they’re being put down. So stop giving one another advice, that produces antagonism, unless they ask for it.
You can’t point out “The trouble with you is you don’t listen to anybody” That doesn’t cause em to now listen. They’ll go on with their same pattern.

Unless they say to you “Am I inattentive? Or Do I appear inattentive?” Very few people talk like that. That’s what sane means. Sane means when a person comes over “I’m not familiar with that jigsaw. How do you use it?” Then you instruct them. If they come over everyday and ask you - watch them and guide them through it.
Making a comment “Your’e dimwitted or slow. The trouble with you is you have no imagination.” That doesn’t alter behavior, it only increases conflict.

In order to avoid conflict don’t generate it. You generate it when you offer something to somebody that they didn’t ask for. Let them be. Whatever they say. Unless they turn to you.

If someone says “I’m a catholic” Say “Do you fully accept everything in the catholic doctrine?” “yes!”

The door is shut. It’s welded.

But if he says “Im not sure” thats an opening.

That goes for any subject. Check for openings before you talk. If you’ve had conflict all your life cause you believe that what you say enters their head the way you want to - thats projection. When you tell something to somebody for their own good. “If you keep drinking the way you are - you may become addicted” But if you come at a person and he says “fuck you” then shut up.

If I’m talking to religious people I would say “The bible says thou shalt not kill” How do you handle war?

I would say “The bible says love thine enemy - if a man strikes you turn the other cheek” How do you deal with that?

You may find somewhat long article interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/magazine/bring-back-the-sabbath.html
>Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Freud's, once identified a disorder he called Sunday neurosis. Every Sunday (or, in the case of a Jewish patient, every Saturday), the Sunday neurotic developed a headache or a stomachache or an attack of depression. After ruling out purely physiological causes, including the rich food served at Sunday dinners, Ferenczi figured out what was bothering his patients. They were suffering from the Sabbath.

>On that weekly holiday observed by all ''present-day civilized humanity'' (Ferenczi was writing in 1919, when Sunday was still sacred, even in Budapest, his very cosmopolitan hometown), not only did drudgery give way to festivity, family gatherings and occasionally worship, but the machinery of self-censorship shut down, too, stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach. The Sunday neurotic, rather than enjoying his respite, became distraught; he feared that impulses repressed only with great effort might be unleashed. He induced pain or mental anguish to pre-empt the feeling of being out of control.
... ... ...

>...It was only much later, after I joined the synagogue and changed my life in a million other unforeseen ways, that I developed a theory about my condition. If Ferenczi's patients had suffered from the Sabbath, I was suffering from the lack thereof. In the Darwinian world of the New York 20-something, everything -- even socializing, reading or exercising -- felt like work or the pursuit of work by other means. Had I been able to consult Ferenczi, I believe he would have told me that I was experiencing the painful inklings of sanity...

>...Customs exist because they answer a need; when they disappear, that need must be met in some other way.

>...Talk of God may disturb the secular, so they might prefer to frame the Sabbath in the more neutral context of aesthetics. The Sabbath provides two things essential to anyone who wishes to lift himself out of the banality of mercantile culture: time to contemplate and distance from everyday demands. The Sabbath is to the week what the line break is to poetic language. It is the silence that forces you to return to what came before to find its meaning.

Her article is from a generally secular jewish perspective, the lessons she learned attempting anyway, etc. If you are a Christian Tim Keller has a very good talk which references this article throughout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux0_5zctrsI

The philosopher Josef Pieper has a somewhat dense but very interesting book along these lines as well, called Leisure: The Basis of Culture* where he talks about the difference between rest and true leisure (and was inspired by 'workaholism' of 60 years ago...when we think they had better balance!)

https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp/1586172565/ref=la_B000AQ4VR2_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520461522&sr=1-1
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/767958.Leisure

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/1999/1/josef-pieper-leisure-and-its-discontents
>The introduction by Eliot to Leisure, the Basis of Culture—the first of many books by Pieper to appear in English—is one sign of the seriousness with which he was regarded. Another sign was the book’s reception by reviewers. (The present edition includes excerpts from the original reviews.) The Times Literary Supplement devoted a long and admiring piece to the book, as did The New Statesman. The Spectator was briefer but no less admiring: “These two short essays … go a long way towards a lucid explanation of the present crisis in civilization.” The book was also widely noticed in this country: reviews from The Nation, The Chicago Tribune, Commonweal, and The San Francisco Chronicle are included here. The review by Allen Tate in The New York Times Book Review probably did as much as Eliot’s introduction to stimulate interest in Pieper.

I definitely agree that it's worth it to engage such conversation (though only when you have both the time and inclination so that you're not appearing antsy or overly aggressive).

One of the other good things that I've seen done is to ask if there is any evidence that anyone could provide that would cause them to change their mind. Tell them to ignore whether they think it is possible that any such evidence might arise; but, if something shown to them that they could independently verify that directly contradicted their bible verses, would they be willing to change their belief about the truth of even a single verse? If they answer that no evidence would ever change their mind then they have admitted they are too closed-minded to have any kind of productive conversation and they're admitting they not actually seeking the truth.

Lastly, make sure you're not only talking about items of data like science facts or the specifics about what a particular verse in the bible says. You have to find some way of reaching them emotionally since most of the death grip on their beliefs originates from an emotional process (including self-identity) that facts will help with but will be nearly useless on their own. [See: Boghissian's "A Manual for Creating Atheists" and Romm's "Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga" for making your spontaneous interaction with proselytizers more satisfying.

Reading between the lines of Chris82179's comment, I think he's just pointing out that there may be no single best morality, but that there can definitely be better moralities than others. Let's try this little tweak:

I think my morality is not 'incorrect', it's incomplete. But it's as correct as can be based on the best information available to me.

> what kind of practical existence are we shooting for, and what kind of behaviors and social structures facilitate that existence?

If we base our decisions on the single parameter of "maximizing human wellbeing", then the entire framework for a science of morality emerges. It's the central argument of Sam Harris' excellent The Moral Landscape

Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller is THE book to read on this topic. In the first half of the book, he talks about how all creationism versions (young earth, old earth and irreducible complexity) are not only bunk, but actually bad theology. Then in the second half he goes on the explain how evolution makes perfect sense given a God who gives us free will. In the end, I felt like evolution was actually proof for God, not against. Really, anyone with an interest in this topic should read this book. Amazon Link

Here are a few of the resources that have helped me:

https://biologos.org/
https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Evolution-Do-Have-Choose/dp/0857215787
https://www.amazon.com/Gunning-God-Atheists-Missing-Target/dp/0745953220/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gunning+for+god&qid=1555348576&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Undertaker-Has-Science-Buried/dp/0745953719/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=gunning+for+god&qid=1555348605&s=books&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802831621
Also, I've visited a lot of different churches and have plenty of friends that are Christians. Seeing that Christians are so very different from JW's- many are well educated, intelligent, thinking people- with a faith that is extremely different from the JW belief system. They have this passion, sincerity and relationship with God that is the opposite of the legalistic JW cult.

Yes. I have heard atheists say that Dawkins book was an important source of information for them and it helped lead them to atheism.

Here is a website called Amazon.com

They allow users to review the book.

http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/product-reviews/0618680004

The top comment is by someone who might qualify as "EVIDENCE" that you are looking for.

So here is some evidence, anecdotal and 3rd party.

Versus you saying:

>I don't think Dawkins was very good at converting the religious to non-religion.

>I suspect that most of Dawkins readers were already in agreement with him.

Well.

Yes.

Conjecture.

Definitely. Ironically, /r/Islam is what started me on my journey, because half the content on that sub was stuff I totally disagreed with on a fundamental level. The questions that were being asked were silly (in my opinion), and the answers were even sillier. I didn't realise people actually thought that way. I was a pretty liberal Muslim at the time and thought that you didn't have to follow the Qur'an by the book to be a good Muslim, all you had to do was have good intentions. Seems I was the only one who thought that way.

So I went out looking for a sub that countered that one, which is when I found /r/exmuslim. The more I lurked around this sub the more I started to question organised religion, but still somewhat believed that god existed. Then I read The God Delusion, and that, I think, was the final blow.

But yes, /r/exmuslim played a huge part.

You should check this book out:
http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775

De-conversion can be really tough. You will soon realize how much religion was a part of your life. Not just your thought processes, but your social life as well. You will lose friends, and family will treat you differently.

All I can tell you is, it's worth it. Having thrown off your childhood indoctrination, you will not be sorry. Ironically, you'll finally find the freedom your church always promised you in Christ.

Well this is a bit exhaustive, I would suggest reaching out to more than one person, perhaps making a thread in this sub or really many other subs as the abrahamic framework and the monotheistic framework is a point of belief in many mediums.

>Why does being a creator mean that?

well first we would have to define what the creator even means, how familiar are you with Kalam and Plato's ideas of God and greek logic overall?

>morality is about improving the lives and existences of humans

well we would all hope that as well, but one should be wary of utilitarianism and its shortcomings.

You should really seek out questions like the origin of reason, and philosophical commentary on the matter.

If you want to go deeper here are some books that may be worthwhile to read/ take a look at. like this one or this one

I need to go mow my lawn unfortunately, but for start Ken Miller, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University is wonderfully smart and wrote a book on evolution and god. Was decent. But yeah, he would count as a brilliant guy I think. Google is your aid if you want more.

Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.

Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The Closing of the Western Mind

What is the What

A Long Way Gone

Alliance of Enemies

The Lucifer Effect

The World Without Us

What the Dog Saw

The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)

One Down, One Dead

Lust for Life

Lost in Shangri-La

Endurance

True Story

Havana Nocturne

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

First of all, recognize what fundamentalists already know: conversions/de-conversions don't happen over night. It takes a long time to change someone's mind.

With that in mind, keep pushing her towards critical thinking.

• If God loves everyone, why was he a mass murderer in the Old Testament?
  
• If preaching is all that is needed to change people's hearts in the New Testament, why didn't he have the Jews preach to people instead of killing them?
  
• If the Bible is divinely inspired, how does it get the creation account so wrong?
  
• Why is the Bible at odds with archaeology?
  
• How can you say that God loves us all when his laws condone slavery and misogyny?
  
  It really depends on how deep she wants to get into it. The average Christian does not wrestle with these questions, they just stick them in a mental file called, "To Be Answered At A Later Date". When that file gets too fat, then they start re-evaluating things.
  
  Best book I can think of would be Godless by Dan Barker. I think it's a great book for the average Christian because he really unpacks the evangelical/pentecostal experience.
  
  The main thing is to just be patient with her, and give her room to explore ideas on her own.

I recommend reading the A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. According to the author, your dad suffers from "Doxastic closure": a person who is resistant to belief revision.

Peter Boghossian borrows techniques from his experience teaching prison inmates and university students in how to convince people out of faith. He emphasizes the importance of not targeting religious concepts (e.g. God) but the base of religious thinking: faith. Once the subject realizes that faith-based reasoning is a flawed way of thinking, religious concepts will just fall apart. He recommends using the Socratic method to engage a person to use critical thinking to realize that faith is an incorrect belief formation mechanism. It is worth the read. Good luck.

I would suggest George A. Smith's Atheism: The case against God which is, while thick, a quick read. Each chapter deals with one aspect and therefore is an easy read. (i read it years ago and found it clear if a bit dry)

For something more emotional, i suggest a "testimony" type book: Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker. I quite enjoyed it.

As with everyone else here though, i suggest you read them first to see if they suit "where you are coming from," but more importantly because Evangelical Christians cannot be trusted so you need to check if she kept her end of the bargain.

I am only recommending books to read because you mentioned that she actually kept her mouth shut and was respectful at your wedding. This is not typical evangelical christian behaviour and indicates that you may not be wasting your time in even having these discussions.

Speaking of behaviour, has she tried crying like a petulant child in a passive-agressive attempt to change your mind yet?

jmsr

PS yes, i'm cynical. what gave it away? >:P

PPS speaking of which, remember to check if she kept her end of the bargain. Personally, i bet she doesn't even get past the jacket blurb.

If they force you to keep going to the same therapist (even if they don't), here's a book you might find useful: http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094

It talks about "street epistemology" which is basically asking questions of believers (such as your therapist) to get at why they believe there is a god. You can also find some good videos on YouTube that demonstrate how others do it.

If your therapist is giving answers like "it's hard to wrap your head around," perhaps her belief is not as strong as she thinks it is. Show her you're truly "exploring both sides" and make her answer why you should believe god exists - because you want to believe what's true. It may rattle her faith just a bit. She may even get uncomfortable and suggest you change therapists.

Read and engage with others! Come check out some of the conversations happening on the sub, they are incredible.

I recommend Joseph Pieper as a good starting point to "wander into the wilderness." His work "Leisure As The Basis of Culture" is easy to read and has some great questions and incites. Or Viktor Frankl's "Man Search For Meaning" may be another good place to start.

> The academic study of Judaism/Christianity is just one part of a larger project: of revealing the naturalistic origins of religion itself. Of course, we've yet to fully flesh out a..."psychology" of ancient religion.

One book I'm still reading, but have found very enlightening, is Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer.

I was quite interested to see K.L. Noll (Brandon University) applying Boyer's anthropological findings on how religion "works" to the study of historical Judaism in "Was There Doctrinal Dissemination in Early Yahweh Religion?" (BI 16, 2008, 295-427). This seems like a useful approach to take.

If you get the chance, I really want to recommend the book Godless by Dan Barker. It's an in-depth look back at his journey from being a fundamentalist pastor to one of the co-chairs of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He's gone about as far as it's possible to go from one end to the other.

Another similar story is the YouTube series "Why I Am No Longer A Christian" by Evi3nce. He uses a lot of professional-level graphics to present a detailed philosophical analysis of exactly why and how his born-again faith fell apart. It's both intellectual and moving.

I'm looking forward to hearing a more polished version of your story too. Congrats on being where you are.

If you liked Cosmos by Sagan you might like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time Updated and Expanded version (link to original version). I would also recommend Richard Dawkins' God Delusion if you are into that kind of thing (I only got a chapter into it so far). American Sniper by Chris Kyle is pretty good IMO (its his story of when he was a Navy Seal sniper in Iraq).

If you are looking for non-fiction I'm starting getting into comic books so I'd recommend Deadpool and Preacher. My last recommendation would be Stephen Coonts's series on Tommy Carmellini.

If I think of anything else I will PM you.

I believe we need to focus on epistemology.

> It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be acquired. Much of the debate in this field has focused on the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

A series of comics will just be ignored as atheistic propaganda. Any cosmology presented will just be further reason for them to believe god made such an amazing universe through whatever means science discovers.

If you focus on what they believe and how they justify it, getting them to think critically you are setting them on the right track.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology#Belief

Modern society values critical thinking and rationality, 2 things their religion has prevented them from developing skills in. So, yes, I agree it is an inability and not a disability, and they are quite capable of shaking their irrational beliefs if they are not constantly referred to as stupid.

There is a great book on amazon called "A Manual for Creating Atheists" which I believe focusses on this, although I am yet to read it but I have heard good things. Not a fan of the title but it is not aimed at theists, it is aimed at atheists who want to engage believers in thoughtful conversation.

For an approach that isn't argumentative and doesn't ridicule them, I'd recommend checking out the book A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. It has some good tips for talking to all kinds of people of faith and helping them to critically examine why they believe the things they do, and whether those beliefs are justified. There are lots of examples on YouTube as well under the banner of Street Epistemology.

Do you still believe in God? I'm honestly not sure from what you've wrote. If you just have doubts / differences in opinion with those in your congregation, you can always find one that better suits you. If you now truly don't believe there is a God (or you're agnostic, or an agnostic atheist), then start working now towards a new life. And begin mentally preparing yourself for the hardship of having your parents and many of your friends judge you, try to talk you out of it or "come back to God," ask why you hate God now or want to pray for you / with you. It will not be easy. Whatever you do, don't let yourself be pressured into a life (ministry, etc.) that you don't want. You only get to live this life once - and the clock is ticking. Life is too short to live it under the heavy blanket that now envelops you; live it on your own terms and not someone else's. I wish you all the best.

Edit: "Godless" by Dan Barker might be helpful for you. He was a former (quite well known preacher) who became an atheist and is now the co-head of the FFRF. http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

>I am mad at myself for not being this analytic about this earlier in my life

I had this exact feeling.

So one thing to realize is that this process takes time I mean for FSM sake u lived a lot with this Idea.keep reading whatever you do keep reading.

some sources or ideas that were helpful to me:

• parables of Jesus
  
• the history of hell
  
• history before ur religion.
  
• the Christ myth theory (However I do believe he existed but it lowered my certainty) and how exodus never happened look for the exodus myth
  
• Commonsense atheism and proving the negative
  
• talk origin and talk design are also very good sources.
  
• read some books on cognitive sciences and psychology of religion , search for recommended atheism books. (understand what cognitive bias is)
  
• this is the phone line u're looking for
  
• read an introductory account on atheism this is one of the best books on atheism
  
• find a way to express u're doubts or else u'll go crazy (at least if u're anything like me) ,blog about it or write about it , talk to s1, ask others questions.
  
• listen to debates about religions.
  
• think about the fact that u finally could emancipate urself from this.
  
• learn a little more about other religions it helps A LOT .
  
• read books by Xbelievers like John Luftus or Dan barker
  
• read more I mean Way more on cosmology and physics. just search for top books on Cosmology
  
• read comparative books like Karen Armstrong books and read the evolution of god
  
• read Religion Explained
  
  

  keep fear away and ...good luck !

I agree, to an extent. OP is going about it the wrong way. I don't know if I'd say there's no value in trying to get friends and family to see reason, though.

To OP (/u/VirusMaster3072), I'd recommend reading A Manual for Creating Atheists. It's not perfect, but the strategies it lays out make for a better foundation for discussing religious topics with people of faith. Going back and forth each saying "I'm right" isn't all that productive. The best approach, though the hardest, is through patience and carefully constructed questions. This book lays out very practical strategies for achieving that.

The alternative is nothing more than digging yourselves further into your own ditches until you're so entrenched you can no longer see eye-to-eye.

Ok, I'll give it a go...


The first thing that got me questioning religion was seeing massive amounts of hypocrisy in church leadership. I was extremely involved as my father was a deacon and my mother worked at the church we attended. It was a common practice for us kids to go to one friends' house or another between morning and evening services, so I saw how the adults acted differently at home then they did at church. I realize not all religious people are like this, but it was the first step for my questioning. Once I was old enough I became a leader in the youth group and started seeing the same hypocrisy in myself.


Despite realizing my hypocrisy I continued to believe, even to the point in participating in multiple missions trips held by the organization Speed the Light. While on these trips we were told to write down our personal testimony so that we could present it during presentations and services. When I tired to put into words why I believed in God and, more importantly, why the audience should believe, I couldn't come up with a good reason. I sat in a bed in the country of Belize thinking, "If I can't come up with a good reason why these people should believe what I do, then why do I believe it?". Despite this thought I continued my charade for two more missions trips and a few more years.


Eventually I stepped down from youth leadership and entered a state of apathy towards religion. I didn't go to church, but I didn't really think about it much. Every now and then something really bad would happen and I'd wonder if God was punishing me, but they were more of fleeting thoughts than anything.



The next big hit for me was when I went to Iraq for a year. When you see good people with families who love them (some of which who were religious) die, the answer "God allows us to suffer so we learn/build character/build faith etc" just doesn't cut it anymore. About a year after I came home from the deployment I actually started looking for information that refuted religion. I'd say that was when my state started the path from apathetic to agnostic to atheist.



The book Letter to a Christian Nation was a big eye-opener for me. Along with other works of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christoper Hitchens, and other authors I'm sure you'll become aware of if you continue to question things. The more I investigated, the more absurd religion seemed; and the more science explained all of the things that I attributed to the supernatural. When I was a child I believed, truly believed, that when I was lying in bed one night I saw an angel appear in my room. It wasn't until I read The God Delusion that I realized there was a scientific explanation for things like that.



The more I found that science could prove things, really prove things, the more I realized that "it's true because the Bible says so" didn't work for me anymore. In the last few years I've learned things that have blown my mind. Things that I thought would take away the wonder of the world have actually enhanced it. I'm a good person because I want to be, not because I'll burn in hell if I'm not; I don't steal because I realize that it's unproductive in the long run, not because some ancient stone tablet and a preacher told me not to, etc.



I'm not saying I don't have personal issues like anger, sadness or depression. You can only fight evolution to a point, we are still human. I guess I'm just saying that the answers I found leading me to atheism were far more satisfying and comforting than anything religion ever offered me. Hope that helps.


tl;dr: it's basically a de-conversion story, read if you'd like I suppose.

You mentioned in this thread that you were interested in WLC. There are several works that might be helpful to you:

Reasonable Faith

and if you have a lot of time

Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Craig and Moreland, but includes a large collection of topics from many modern philosophers)

Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Craig and Moreland)

Again, these last two are rather extensive, but you may find them to be useful if you're interested in the philosophical/scientific aspects of Christianity. Hope this helps!

What an awesome perspective! I've been out for four years and I'm constantly frustrated that my exmormon missionary efforts have been mostly fruitless.

Recently I've been studying Street Epistemology and though I'm still inexperienced, I'm hopeful that I can finally talk to friends and loved ones without anybody getting defensive. You should check it out if you haven't already. This book is literally a manual for using Street Epistemology. Interestingly enough, the goal isn't too de-convert people but rather get them to recognize, just by asking the right questions, the flaws in their own reasoning. If you can get them to be less sure of their beliefs, even slightly, then your encounter is considered a success.

I would recommend reading "Free Will" by Sam Harris. Really fascinating stuff, completely changed how I think about a lot of things. It's a pretty quick read, and he keeps it relatively easy to understand.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451683405

Bart Ehrman's books & videos are a great start for the accuracy of the Bible. He is very clear especially considering he's an academic. Forged would be the best one specifically about the accuracy of the Bible. His books are linked at his website: http://www.bartdehrman.com/books.htm

There are no historical documents of Jesus' life, only a few references to Christians from later documents. Nobody disputes that people believed in Jesus, so those don't really prove anything. It's clear that people believed in Thor and Zeus too. That doesn't mean a thing.

Whether faith is helpful or good, can't help you there. I think it's totally useless except to control sociopaths with low IQs.

For morality, check out Good without God: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Without-God-Billion-Nonreligious/dp/006167012X

or Sam Harris The Moral Landscape: http://www.samharris.org/the-moral-landscape

Science vs religion: that's kind of apples & oranges despite what believers keep saying. Science is a method of investigating hunches. Religion is subservience to an unproven deity.

How about the science of religion? Try Michael Shermer: The Science of Good and Evil: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805077693/ or The Believing Brain: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250008808/ or Why We Believe Weird Things: http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0805070893/

Thanks for visiting. An unexamined belief system is not worth believing!

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I mean... what you claimed is analogous to:

1. Favorite colors are subjective
   
2. There are no favorite colors.
   
   > Please go ahead and link me to the literature claiming that objective morality exists.
   
   Have you heard of Kant? The vast majority of moral philosophy since Kant is positivist. Consequentialism, utilitarianism, realism, cognitivism, humanism, etc.
   
   

• Kant http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/kant-prolegomena-cambridge.pdf
  
  
• Nagel https://books.google.com/books/about/What_Does_It_All_Mean_A_Very_Short_Intro.html?id=Nz_XMrjBQEUC
  
  
• Harris https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/143917122X
  
  
• Aristotle https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwi15MyouJ3lAhUReIYKHegkBy0YABADGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_21788sEwZMxKR6XQV75vb2z30EeA&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwjVyMOouJ3lAhXnwVkKHfmUCPoQwg8IPw&adurl=
  
  
• Plato https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwilgKC6uJ3lAhUZh4YKHYblBf4YABAEGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_3YfFiJI7vTwB33w_dRIJD3gqWUDw&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwi1ipa6uJ3lAhUl01kKHe0pDs4Qwg8IOg&adurl=
  
  
• https://books.google.com/books/about/Critique_of_Pure_Reason.html?id=7bRychF0y0EC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button
  
  
• Kagan https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Morality-Oxford-Ethics/dp/0198239165
  
  
• Bentham https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwjh7M3Mt53lAhWahVoFHb0wAKUYABABGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_3mWpjrlKMHHZMoM__CmFus8jO4xw&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwjB5sXMt53lAhWpq1kKHQJaDPkQwg8IOA&adurl=
  
  
• Kierkegaard https://www.amazon.com/Either-Fragment-Life-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140445773
  
  
  > I refer you back to my last comment. An individual can believe that something is moral but not be obligated by it. I am certain that you are not obligated to do every single thing that you believe to be moral.
  
  Then you aren’t a moral agent right? And if you are a moral agent, then to be a rational actor you’d have to act rationally. To be a rational actor, are you obligated to act rationally?
  
  PS do you want me to write a summary of why moral realism is so prevalent so you don’t have to read them all? It’s super straightforward logically.

Yes, I agree and advances in Neuroscience point to that conclusion as well. I admit though, determinism was/is a hard pill for me to swallow. The philosphical debate over the concept (or illusion) of free will is an interesting topic to me, and one that I am still not sure about.

If you are more interested in the topic I would recommend the Sam Harris' short new book called Free Will, or you can check out this video lecture where he basically paraphrases it (I originally found it on /r/Documentaries) . He spends a lot of time discussing how the deterministic conclusion is inevitable, and then goes on to argue why this doesn't strip all meaning from our lives (determinism vs fatalism).

Free will being an illusion doesn't mean you can't change - you can do something today (read a book, go out and meet someone, meditate) that will change your life. But, because free will is an illusion, you don't know why you may choose to do that "something"...it's all a result of causes and conditions that stretch back to before you were born. But what you do today becomes part of causes and conditions that shape tomorrow.

I suggest reading Sam Harris' "Free Will" - or, watching this YouTube video. Free will being an illusion does not mean your future is set in stone regardless of what you do/don't do...Sam Harris explains it well: it simply means what you do/don't do is a result of previous causes and conditions.

edit - fixed link.

Yes, I don't believe however that moral-good is any sort of divine or supernatural concept, but merely a set of constructs by which we can minimize human suffering and maximize happiness.

What do you think?

Edit: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris describes pretty much what I am describing but in much greater detail and clarity.

>For instance, nobody desires to be a true sociopath (ie: physically and chemically cannot feel good or evil), and those who are true sociopaths... well... many do not function well in society. Like it or not, what God defines as good... really is good

That is not a sociopath. Sociopaths lack empathy, but they may be acutely aware of societal norms. Jon Ronson just wrote a book about socio/psychopaths. I would suggest you read up on the Euthyphro dilemma. We can debate all day about the meaning of "good", but the god in the bible is not it. Condoning rape, commanding genocide, condemning though crime, those are the acts of the god of the bible. Those are not in any way good. If you want to know a little more about modern views of morality you should read up on the evolutionary causes of morality. Sam Harris wrote a very good book about it recently

>How much evil should God get rid of divinely?

Well, none of it according to the bible. Isiah 45:6-7 (Young's literal translation but you can look it up in whichever version you like)

>So that they know from the rising of the sun, And from the west, that there is none besides Me, I [am] Jehovah, and there is none else, Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.'

Here are some works that might interest you: (Introduction wise, not as a systematic defense)

Plantinga, Alvin. God and Other Minds. Cornell University Press, 1990.

Feser, Edward. The Last Superstition: a Refutation of the New Atheism. St. Augustine's Press, 2011.

Plantinga, Alvin. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Eerdmans, 2015.

Pitre, Brant. The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ. Image, 2016.

Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Ignatius Press, 2017.

10 second simplified/short version:

1.) Theism is almost certainly true. (See Feser and Plantinga)

2.) Christianity best fits #1. (See Plantinga and Pitre)

It all depends on the goal. If OP wants to send a message, then choosing The God Delusion or God Is Not Great would certainly send that message. If OP wants a book that's a good read, both are still good choices, but now there're other books that are equally good choices.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, The Portable Atheist, On Bullshit, On Truth, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, The Moral Landscape, The Demon Haunted World, Religion and Science, and many others are excellent reads, but don't send that little (possibly unnecessary) jab.

> assume you might be thinking bout some of the experiments that show we can observe what decision a person will make before they are conscious of the decision

Not at all, although I'm familiar with those as well. Rather, there's demonstrable evidence that you have no free agency in exercising your mind to bring about specific conscious thought on demand. Further, that your biology and your environment are the driving forces that shape your nuerodevelopment, neither of which you have any command of. Thus, by extension, 'you' are the product of concurrent and prior processes that you do not control.

To return to your example,

>Did the neurons that make up my mind not weigh the options and produce an answer on their own?

Yes, and chose an answer based on the sum of your experiences that you had no true free agency in experiencing, and neither did your ancestor's whose biology you share that informed that conclusion.


See: Sam Harris on Free Will, for a deep dive into this topic. Essay Book Lecture

> The consensus is many are forgeries.

The consensus 'amongst people you subscribe to' is many are forgeries. Most of their ideas are quite frankly full of suspicion and more like conspiracy theories than a search for truth.

The consensus over the past two thousand years is overwhelmingly in favour of traditional authorship.

>I don't necessarily agree with that. I know that's the orthodox view, but I don't mind being outside of orthodoxy. I'd rather be outside of the traditional orthodoxy, since I find it often incorrect.

I'm hardly surprised to see you write that.

You do essentially deny all that makes Christianity Christianity.

I suspect your view stems from the doubts you have over the existence of God and anything miraculous such as the bodily resurrection of Christ.

In relation to these two issues, let me ask if you have considered the 'argument from fine-tuning' as evidence for the existence of God? It is the argument which caused prominent atheist professor Anthony Flew to change his mind about the existence of God (so much that he wrote a book about it ).

The second is related to the resurrection of Christ. Apologist Dr. Gary Habermas has compiled a list of twelve historical facts on which most critical scholars agree with regards to the death and resurrection of Christ. There is enough evidence here to affirm the truth of the event if you are really looking for the truth, rather that trying to doubt it.

> If we had writings of them clearly doing so, I'd certainly appraise him differently. We don't have that though, and we do have evidence of them fighting back and forth.

So you don't consider Galatians 2 to be evidence of this?

> It's not about what I "like", it's about truth.

That isn't how it appears I am afraid.

By the way, I am still interested to hear your response from here.

You wrote this:

> I follow Jesus. I follow him as best as I can despite us having flawed accounts.

I responded with this:

> What exactly do you follow?

> If the accounts are flawed, how can you trust any of it?

> Which parts do you adhere to and how do you choose them?

I am very interested to hear your responses please.

Well, it was a pretty long journey, but I'll try to summarize the main points.

I'm a cradle catholic. So when I was young, I attended catechism classes and I just took it all in without thinking about it critically.

As I grew older, I started to question all the things I was taught before. And the more you know about physics and biology, the more you question how the universe really works. Moreover, I got exposed to the writings and ideas of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and the other popularly vocal atheist guys. I got exposed to arguments like the God of the Gaps, I saw the corruption in the catholic church both now and in the past; and all these things just added up and eventually pushed me to become an atheist.

After a certain event in my life though, I was forced to really think about what I truly believe in. I did a lot of thinking and a lot of studying of the arguments of atheists and the other religions as well. What I've come to realize is that catholicism, though not perfect, is probably the closest to the truth about how our universe works and how we should live our lives. That's a big statement, and I'm willing to be proved wrong on that, but here's briefly how I came to that conclusion.

I was exposed to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. His five proofs, and in particular, his argument from contingency is quite a revelation, and to me it makes a lot of sense. I also realized that there is a limit to what science can answer, and the only honest statement that science can make about God is that we don't know and can't prove scientifically whether or not he exists. Then you have the argument from absolute morality (which is not the same as 'what's stopping you from committing crimes if you don't fear a higher power?'). You have the proof of the historicity of Jesus and his message. You have the high probability of the resurrection being a real event. There's also the behaviour of the early church fathers and what they believed the message of Jesus was.

And I also came across many scientist-theists and their writings. John Lennox is particularly good (http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Undertaker-Has-Science-Buried/dp/0745953719). Alistair McGrath is another one who bridges the science-religion debate really well.

So now I'm back to the catholic church. I know it's not perfect, there is still corruption there. But just because the people that make up the church are corrupt does not mean it's message is necessarily corrupt as well.

I would start with the classic Some mistakes of Moses, by Robert Ingersoll.

There is a short book called Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God, by Armin Navabi, that is also a nice read.

One that I recently finished reading and enjoyed very much is The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism, by Aron Ra. The book is not exactly about atheism; it's Aron's rebuttal to many creationist arguments, but Aron is a widely known atheist activist, and the book is very enjoyable.

I usually listen to The Thinking Atheist podcast, from Seth Andrews (a podcast I highly recommend, by the way). There are some book he suggested in his podcast that I haven't read yet, but which I included in my to-read list:

• A Manual for Creating Atheists, by Peter Boghossian.
  
• God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, by Dan Barker.
  
• [The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture] (https://www.amazon.com/God-Virus-Religion-Infects-Culture/dp/0970950519/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486982921&sr=1-1&keywords=the+god+virus), by Darrel Ray.
  
• Sacred Cows: A Lighthearted Look at Belief and Tradition Around the World, by Seth Andrews himself.

My brother, I feel your pain and struggle. You are losing the only foundation you’ve known and are in free fall regarding your faith, or lack thereof. This struggle is actually good, but painful to go through.

I’m not qualified to tell you what to become, or to believe. That depends on your research and desire. I found solace through Humanism (as an agnostic atheist) and it’s not a sad grumpy existence at all. Others have channeled their faith into other religions. Sadly, others have transitioned to other cults, but that’s a different story by itself.

I highly recommend a book called Good Without God by Greg Epstein. I think it may clarify some things for you.

Maybe others can recommend resources for those inclined to remain faithful to the concept of a deity but in a healthier way.

Good Without God on Amazon

You can "argue" with people in real life instead. I'm not really suggesting arguing, but a better form of conversation to get people thinking.

If so, you might be interested in Peter Boghossian's book, a good start on the subject. The title doesn't do it justice, but it's called A Manual for Creating Atheists

I have not read it but i've heard that Kenneth Millers Finding Darwin's God is really good. He is a catholic and was an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.

Here is a short snippet from his 2006 lecture on intelligent design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk
You can find the whole two hour lecture on youtube and i highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.

I recommend The God Delusion if you like science. Dawkins does not pull punches. The book is full of good arguments and interesting information.

For friends and other people who could use a gentle introduction to the idea that atheists aren’t evil, I strongly recommend Letter to a Christian Nation. It’s the sort of book you might give your mom.

If you actually plan on engaging them, there's a manual for that. Can't vouch for it, but you might find it interesting.

Good luck. Sounds kind of like you had an anthill show up in your yard one day.

I am a psychonaut AND a hard determinist.

In my experience, most of the emotional upset we seem to encounter when thinking about determinism is that we feel powerless, as if all power resided in choice. Yet, merely being alive as a human, with human capacities and human capabilities is awesome power already!! It is true that you may never become an Einstein, owing to your environmental and biological history, but you will also likely never become a Hitler.

More to the point, the illusion of choice is persistent-- indeed we probably evolved that apprehension as some sort of psychological stress-release mechanism simultaneously with our abilities of higher thinking and reflection. If you like, you can pretend that you have choice, knowing that what you actually "choose" will quite likely not bring you into a terribly atrocious place, relative to other humans, provided that you are already fairly mentally sound and sufficiently ethical.

I recommend Sam Harris's very short book on Free Will as a basic introduction to determinism, including why a lack of free will does not remove our ability to hold persons responsible for their actions, from a harm-reduction perspective, even though it is entirely senseless to judge their soul or spirit in any moralistic sense thereby.

Apart from highschool (No one should count highschool lol) I've had two years of science studies, both from classes from biology to chemistry so I know a bit about both. I also regularly talk to science teachers I've had as well as frequent science forums when I can. For fun I read things such as

“Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution”
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God.../dp/0061233501
This was written by a scientist who is a Christian.

To:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001QEQRJW/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Why Evolution is True By Jerry A. Coyne

& then I also peruse news networks because every so often people make claims about evolution which leads me down the path of looking at their sources and how they reached that conclusion :)

So I'm stupid but not THAT stupid lol I just have honest questions that confuse me :)

Some stuff that's important in contemporary analytic phil religion:

The Miracle of Theism by J.L. Mackie

God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin Plantinga

God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga

The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne

The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne

Can God Be Free? by William Rowe

Perceiving God by William Alston