Preparing for the Conversion Conversation

Sure, my old friend. I'll bite. You are a devout theist, with specific beliefs and claims. I'm a staunch rationalist, which led to my lack of theism. You want to converse with me? Absolutely... but under a few conditions.
1. You are willing to change your viewpoint, as you wish me to change mine. If you are unwilling, then you are preaching to me, and we will not have this conversation.
2. You are willing to support your claims with real facts and numbers. Nothing subjective, made up, or personal testimonials. (i.e. I feel him in my heart, I prayed and my sick aunt got better). If you can't objectively prove God, then there is no reason why we should have this conversation.
3. You do not claim your god exists outside the realm of existence, and thus evidence. If there is no way to disprove him, then there is no way to prove him.
4. You do not use self referential material. Saying that God is real because he is in the Bible, and the Bible is real because God wrote it through the hands of Bronze Age authors, is a logical failure in the utmost degree. I will admit that there are some situations in the Bible that are based in historical fact, but that doesn't make "The Watchmen" a non-fictional documentary of the 80's.

As a win condition, I expect you to prove that there is a God, that he interacts with His creation (by breaking the laws of Physics?), and that your particular beliefs on Him are the correct ones.

As my win condition, I would hope that you will accept evidence that religion in general was created by man to describe gaps in knowledge, that Physics explains how we got to where we are today, and any evidence that a god interacts with the universe is a personal cognitive bias, a hoax, or a misinterpretation of facts, and that there is no evidence that a being actually intervenes in any non-random way.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• EricZombie
• conversation
• Christian
• argument
• God
• atheism
• atheist

[TheOtherSide100]

I've had the "conversation" thing happen on Facebook, too. When it comes up, I remind them the meaning of the word, and use the same criteria that you apply.

The people who want to have a conversation typically want to preach, and are completely closed up to other ideas.

[EricZombie]

@TheOtherSide100 I've seen a conversational flowchart somewhere, a long time ago. I don't remember the specifics, but it laid down the ground rules for any discussion involving religion. I think it applies here.

[bowlsallbroken]

Good luck with your conversation. I've had too many of these talks to be overly optimistic; some of these people have the most amazing psychological defenses in place against reason.

[pastafariandan]

Being a former fundie I use the words of jesus to show that nobody fallows him.

Mathew 15;4-9 is great for this King James version is the best. this will show jesus demanding disrespectful children need to be stoned to death, and if you refuse to kill them you can not go to heaven you;re faith will be in vain.