{deleted account} #fundie reddit.com

Recently I tried to convince an atheist of intelligent design. I explained to him how unlikely the probability of life simply developing and evolving in human beings was, and how it is much more rational to assume that an intelligent agent was at work. I explained to him how when we come upon an ancient ruin, our first thought is not "oh this must have resulted from natural causes," but rather "these ruins must have been built!"

I then explained how astronomically more complex life is. At the end of the debate he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well maybe God created the universe, or maybe there's an infinite number of universes and the universe we live in is the only one we could live in, and it's the way it is because out of the infinite number of universes it was bound to happen. I guess we'll never know."

I think this was a very powerful lesson. The truth is that people will believe whatever they want to believe. As Socrates once famously said, "The only thing I know is that I don't know anything." If someone wants to believe something, then they'll find a way to justify their belief. If we could rationally convince people of the existence of God, then He wouldn't be God but rather a man-made idea. God is beyond our mere rationality.

If we could deduce God logically, then there would be no need for faith. People believe what they believe not because it is rationally and logically true beyond a doubt, but because it is useful and convenient. Instead of trying to convince people that we're right, we should just develop our own young earth Biology and Physics that is just as useful as the current old earth Biology and Physics. We can teach both models, since both models are equally effective at making accurate predictions, and let people decide what they want to believe. I think this would be the best approach we can take.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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