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General Debate on Christianity with an Atheist

General Debate on Christianity with an Atheist

Last updated on: June 6, 2026 at 12:54 am by Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

General Debate on Christianity with an Atheist 2026-06-06T00:54:10-04:00 Dave Armstrong

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Photo credit: Patrick Gannon’s Facebook profile photo, retrieved on 12-7-25.

Patrick Gannon is a atheist who showed up out of the blue on my Facebook page, supposedly “responding” to the cross-posting of my blog article, “Gospel Simplicity” (Austin Suggs) Combox Anti-Mariology”. See the Facebook thread for further boring, tedious details about methodological issues that he made four repetitive complaints about, which was edited out of this. His words will be in blue.

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The whole story is ludicrous. An all-powerful god impregnates a young maiden (without first asking for her consent), with himself, so he can be born as himself, so he can sacrifice himself. to himself, all to relieve us of a condition he placed on us to begin with. That’s the best an all-powerful god can come up with? Not very impressive for a being said to be powerful enough to create the whole universe….

Note that in 1854 the Church decided with a wink and a nod from God (but no biblical support), that Mary was conceived without original sin! Hallelujah! However, for some reason, this all-powerful god was incapable of doing that for everyone else, so we have to believe this ridiculous story or spend eternity in conscious torment.
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It’s time to grow up, face reality, and let these silly old stories fade away.

Thanks for your comment. First of all, if indeed there is an all-powerful, omniscient God and a theistic God (as many great philosophers have believed in), and which is the basis for your rant (if He’s not there, why rant?), I would fully expect there to be things that I thought were — to use your words — ludicrous, ridiculous, silly, and outside of reality. But if there is such a being, or anything near the classic theistic and biblical God, none of this should surprise us in the least.
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By analogy, as we continue to advance in science, things get weirder and odder, even inexplicable. We learned about relativity, then we got quantum mechanics, which continues to be mind-stretching and almost inconceivable. Now we have dark matter and dark energy. We still haven’t figured out how life began (i.e., in a materialistic universe). Nor have we found life anywhere else in the universe.
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But do we conclude that science is a false avenue of knowledge for those reasons? No. We rationally determine that physical reality is very complex and a thing that is increasingly difficult to understand, but we learn more and more all the time. We don’t give up and conclude that it’s all “ludicrous” because WE personally don’t care for it and find it unacceptable. That’s what you’ve done with God.
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Some nitpicking:

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1) God wasn’t “born as himself” strictly speaking, because God the Father is a spirit. He decided to take on flesh and become a man, while remaining God.

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2) “a condition he placed on us to begin with.” This is untrue. We were created without sin and any problems. All we had to do was obey our Creator and we would be in a perpetual paradise with all that we need. But we decided that we know better and rebelled. THEN the problems began. That’s not God’s fault. Sometimes parents have a stray, wild child, where it wasn’t their fault. They often have other children who grow up fine. God gave us a free will and that included the possibility of rebellion against Him. I’d rather have that state of affairs than one in which I *have* to follow God because I have no free will or choice and can’t do otherwise. In other words, we’d all be robots. God loved us too much to put us in *that* box.

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3) I’ve made elaborate but I think convincing arguments that the Bible teaches a sinless Mary, which is the essence of the Immaculate Conception. The Bible refers to several people being sanctified from the womb (e.g., John the Baptist, Jeremiah).

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Happy holidays!
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I’m the apologist here. It’s my article you commented under. You’re welcome to engage my arguments. I gave you an answer. Yet you have replied to everyone under the sun (everyone except me) and acted like a rude, pompous troll. This page is not a platform for atheist propaganda. It’s a place for respectful discussion, which is always welcome and encouraged. All I ask for is basic courtesy and civility.
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Because you didn’t reply to me, and tried to dominate my page with your anti-Christian rhetoric, I will delete all of your replies to others, as examples of trolling (and delete other replies to you, to be fair). You’re still welcome to have an intelligent discussion with me. But based on your obnoxious behavior so far, I don’t consider it very likely.

I would be delighted to respond to you.

If you’re so “delighted to respond” to me, then why didn’t you respond to my article in the first place, rather than rant and rave with the usual playbook atheist boilerplate (that I am familiar with up and down)?
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I don’t write for you. I write for others who still have open minds. I have criticized your religion, but I don’t recall criticizing or insulting any people who posted, unless they insulted me first, and I generally just point out that people who do that, tend to lack the intellect to debate a topic in an adult fashion. Now that you brought your posts to my attention, I have tried to respond to each of your points, without resorting to personal insults. If your religion can not stand up to criticism, then perhaps it has problems you should examine in more detail…..

I said, if you are interested in an intelligent discussion, fire away. I’m here, and fully able and ready to interact. That’s why I replied to you. This present attempt of yours won’t cut it. Nice try. You decide beforehand that I can’t take any criticism, before you have even interacted with me or my arguments, and so you set up a scenario where you can depart as a supposed unopposed, triumphant victor against the supposedly “coward” apologist. That game doesn’t work with me. Kindly interact with my arguments or get lost.
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My article was not the meme that was here before. I just ran across that, thought it was cute, and used it as an image. It was massively misunderstood because it used some sarcasm and generalized about Protestants (as everyone must do because they are made up of hundreds of competing groups). I should have known better. In any event, I’ve now removed it.

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Oh, by the way, should you decide to stick around and not flee for the hills [which he did a day later], your words will be included in a blog post along with my replies. Here’s your golden opportunity to show how idiotic Christianity and Christians are. That’s obviously what you desire.

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The article was directed against Protestants in the first place. What does atheism have to do with it? So it was just a pretext for you to come in and preach about how “ludicrous” and “ridiculous” Christianity is? Again, what you posted was not a response to me or my arguments. But you did that on my Facebook page, and I’m now calling you on it and challenging you to man up and make an argument, and try to refute mine. I have a long history of debate with atheists. Don’t believe me? See my atheism web page. Maybe you will stick around and engage. Time will tell.

I cut to the chase. Your article is only pertinent if there really was a virgin birth, and you need to prove that first to be taken seriously.

Huh? My article was not about the virgin birth. Protestants and Catholics both accept that. Therefore, it wasn’t my task to prove or defend that doctrine in an article devoted to Protestant misunderstandings about Catholic mariology. I was talking about stuff we disagree on. It was an educational post designed to do two things:

object to people who clearly know very little about Catholic mariology (i.e., Protestants) consistently misrepresenting it in the combox of a popular YouTube video.

Educating anyone who reads my post as to the true nature of Catholic beliefs about Mary and why we believe in them.

Yet you come along and say I have to prove the virgin birth, and (gasp!) if I don’t, I won’t be “taken seriously.” Right. Next time, I suggest that you 1) read the article you are supposedly responding to, and 2) understand its target audience and purpose. Then you won’t make non sequitur criticisms like this, and you will actually be responding to me and my arguments.

First the science. Please learn a little something about QFT or Quantum Field Theory which derives from QM (Quantum Mechanics) and Relativity. I will post an article at the bottom of this to give you a basic overview of the science. Don’t feel bad, it is still working its way through society, following the last 30 years of testing this 100 year old theory.

I have a fair knowledge about science. I’ve written two books about it (one / two); the second defending the Bible by means of various scientific fields. But the level of my knowledge is not relevant to the analogy that I made, anyway. Rather than respond to that, you give me a lecture and assume I know nothing whatever about quantum mechanics or relativity. What seems to be going on — I could be wrong here — is that you have done something very common: not understood analogical argument and my particular use of it in a specific way. Otherwise (assuming you actually want to constructively dialogue), you would have replied to my analogy.

It took a long time for knowledge of evolution to percolate through society and become the powerful challenge to Christianity that it is today.

It’s not a challenge to our beliefs whatsoever. I am a theistic evolutionist. Evolution would simply be the way and the mechanism that God chose to create. It was stated from the beginning by Darwin, who wrote Origin of Species while still fully a theist and close friends of his, notably the Christian botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888), that theistic evolution was a perfectly acceptable variant of evolution. In his autobiography written in 1876, Darwin recalled that at the time of writing Origin of Species:

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the ‘Origin of Species;’ and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?

I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic. (cited in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son, Francis Darwin, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1896, vol. 1 of 2, p. 282)

Evolution (of any sort) indeed challenges young-earth creationism, but not Christianity. That viewpoint is a small minority position now. I used to be an old-earth creationist but I have never at any time been a young-earther.

I had a priest admit to me that QFT was the greatest challenge facing the Vatican today, so trust me – there are people in theist religions trying to figure out how to deal with it.

It’s no more of a threat to Christianity than anything else in science. All it mans is that God chose t incorporate it within His creation. This is one of the bedrocks of matter and how it operates. It certainly never cold have come about without God. We have no reason to this day to believe so. I agree with Darwin, and also Albert Einstein, who wrote:

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious. (Response to atheist, Alfred Kerr [Winter 1927] who, after deriding ideas of God and religion at a dinner party in the home of the publisher Samuel von Fischer, had queried him “I hear that you are supposed to be deeply religious” — as quoted in Diaries of a Cosmopolitan, 1918-1937, by H. G. Kessler, [Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1971 edition] )

I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. (From an interview, quoted in Glimpses of the Great by G. S. Viereck [Macauley, New York, 1930], cited in Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion [Princeton University Press, 1999], p. 48; see much more along these lines from Einstein)

Fundagelicals simply attack and demean science, but that’s not the Catholic way, after significant missteps with folks like Galileo.

We agree there!

As for Dark Energy and Dark Matter, what we know for sure, is that they don’t interact with the stuff we are made of in any way that would be meaningful. They are probably something like neutrinos, trillions of which flow through us continually, without interacting with us.

That may or may not be the case, but you still are not comprehending — therefore, not interacting with, the analogy that I proposed.

You say none of this silly stuff should surprise us, but I would expect an all-knowing god to be intelligent and rational.

Yes, so do I, and this is the biblical position. You have “determined” that He isn’t rational, based on various tenets of theology that you find “ludicrous” etc. But you haven’t laid out your reasoning chain for why you believe this to be the case. Just because you personally don’t care for a particular view has no force. I care relatively little for Mozart’s music. That doesn’t prove that it is able to be dismissed without further discussion.

Perhaps this was a poor expectation on my part?

No. The expectation is perfectly proper. What you determine to be unrational is a different question, and you need to give us reasons for why you believe as you do. In a word, you need to do “atheist apologetics” in a rational manner, just as I do Christian and Catholic apologetics in a rational manner.

If God is a “spirit,” then HOW does he interact with us? What is the mechanism by which immaterial things outside space and time, interact with physical, material things inside space and time?

Thoughts, prayers, and various sorts of revelation, and through the creation that He has made. Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 (RSV): “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse;”
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Even David Hume, who was not an atheist, as I discovered 40 years ago, agrees:

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion . . .

Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .

All things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author. (Natural History of Religion, 1757, ed. H.E. Root, London: 1956, 21, 26; see much more on Hume and theism)

FT confirms beyond reasonable doubt that this does not happen, or we would know it, and God’s “spirit” would no longer be supernatural. If there were god, devil, soul, etc. stuff interacting with us, we’d have unexplained interactions we’d have to continue to hunt down, but there aren’t any.

It does no such thing, and you haven’t presented any reason for why anyone should believe that it does. You’ve given us bald assertions. Materialistic science is your religion, as it is for most atheists. You worship matter. It can do no wrong. And it’s omnipotent. It can, on its own, create everything (out of nothing!) that we have in the universe. That’s blind faith beyond anything Christians believe.

The burden of proof is clearly on the apologist to explain exactly HOW their gods, devils and whatnot interact with us, in light of QFT. If apologists can’t do that, there’s no reason to take them seriously.

We can argue it by appealing to the nature of the Bible, which is claimed to be (and we believe is) revelation straight from God, passed through human authors. If we examine the Bible from a scientific perspective, we find that it is shown to be accurate and trustworthy over and over. I did this in my book on biblical archaeology.

Another approach is defending the Bible’s profound internal coherence and consistency, over against innumerable attacks by atheists and theologically liberal “higher critics.” I did this in my book, Inspired!: 198 Supposed Biblical Contradictions Resolved. That one is available for free. I’ll send you a PDF of my other book on Bible and science if you want one. These are two ways that I would defend the notion of God communicating to us. He did through the Bible.

But He also communicated by giving us solid historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, such as described by Protestant apologist Gary R. Habermas in his 1054-page book, On the Resurrection: Evidences (2024), that I have sitting on my bedside table right now. So we have logical, scientific, and historical arguments, and that’s not even getting to the many philosophical ones.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, God set the kids up to fail. They could not possibly know that disobedience was wrong until AFTER they ate of the magical fruit.

They knew what every young child knows: that mommy and daddy know better than they do, and ought to be obeyed. If they can know it, then rational adults (Adam and Eve, as representatives of the entire human race, as the Bible holds) would know that God was higher than them, and ought not be disobeyed. They already knew that He was loving, by how He treated them. They had everything they needed. So it’s a variation of “you don’t bite the hand that feeds ya.”

Atheists have a bigger problem explaining the “problem of good” than we do with the problem of evil. I had a great debate on this topic with an atheist, way back in 2001, that I consider my most enjoyable debate ever, in over a thousand efforts. You’re always coking after us, but you have several huge difficulties in your own system: this factor being perhaps the biggest.

The talking serpent told the truth, saying they would not die on the day they ate of it, which is what God told them. They didn’t die on that day, did they?

They died spiritually. They became mortal and subject to physical death, whereas before death wasn’t present. That was the devil’s trick: using sophistry to twist spiritual death into a denial of instantaneous physical death. They didn’t physically die right away, but now they could and would inevitably die; that’s the point of the Christian view of original sin or the fall. And to this day, it’s still as good of an explanation of evil in the world as any.

Yahweh either did not know or he lied.

Nonsense, as just explained. He set up reasonable limits for His creatures, and they chose to deliberately transgress them and make themselves the “boss” rather than God. That’s what nonbelieving human beings have done ever since. It’s what you yourself do.

Also the serpent told them God did not want them to know good and evil (why not?) which is confirmed in Gen 3:22.

Because one doesn’t need to know what evil is in a world where it doesn’t exist. They were in a state of innocence, like young children, or dogs, across whose minds such things never cross, until something bad happens to them that was caused by a malevolent being.

Perhaps God did not want them to know that he was far from “good” as most of us understand that word, which the rest of the Bible goes on to demonstrate.

That’s your false assumption or premise. I relentlessly disagree with it in my apologetics. Atheists who bash Christianity and/or the Bible (anti-theists ,as I call them) always — I repeat, ALWAYS — don’t adequately understand what the Bible actually teaches, and distort it by creating numerous straw men and then tearing them down. I’ve never seen an exception among atheists who analyze and criticize the Bible in my 44 years of doing Christian apologetics. You won’t be the exception, believe me, should you agree to continue discussing things with me.

Free will? The Bible has precious little free will. God is always directing events, hardening hearts, making people do this and that. He sends both good and evil (Isaiah 45:7).

This is Calvinism, a small minority position in historical Christianity, and today. I’ve refuted it many times by the Bible itself.

Actually, the Bible might be right. Science is telling us that if we have free will, it is very limited. Everything we do flows from what came before it, and we are not responsible for our initial conditions. We didn’t freely choose to come here in the first place – I’d have taken a pass, if I was told that I had to believe unbelievable things or burn for eternity!!! We don’t choose our parents or the DNA they give us, the upbringing, the experiences, the education, the health care, etc. We don’t choose any of that, and everything we do, ultimately flows from all of that and more.

Well, of course, as a materialist, you must therefore, in the final analysis, be a fatalist and determinist, and that rules out free will. But that doesn’t give you any meaning of life, or hope in the long run. You can pretend everything is fine and dandy by dong cherished hobbies, loving other people,. playing sports, listening to music, watching the stars, etc. (i.e., the same things everyone else likes). But if you think about it long and deeply enough, it must lead to despair and nihilism.
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If you don’t like the concept of the Immaculate Conception, take it up with the Catholic Church. I simply pointed out the history behind it. I think they painted themselves into a corner (as they have done with abortion and infant baptism).

I’m a Catholic, and defend it from the Bible and reason. The fact that you couldn’t figure that out by now, is, I confess, more than a little humorous. But you’ve been responding to arguments all along that had nothing whatsoever to do with my actual article, so why should this surprise me?

Again, I’m sorry if I missed one of your posts. I scrolled through, but for some reason, don’t see anything except your post threatening to delete my comments and the one I just responded to.

It happens. I take your word for it, and thanks again. I’ve been deliberately ignored so many times I perhaps rashly assumed it was happening again, but that wasn’t in fact the case. My apologies, too.

If I missed something, please bring it to my attention.

Well, my entire blog post, . . . which was linked in the first comment. But then why would you care about internal Catholic-Protestant squabbles, anyway?

Happy Holidays to you too! And a Festivus for the rest of us!

Thanks. All the best to you.
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Do you oppose slavery? Do you oppose misogyny and sexism? Do you oppose homophobia (perhaps not), discrimination against the disabled, murder of innocents, genocide and child sex slavery? I do.

Yes to all. I even oppose the wanton torture and slaughter of innocent preborn children in their mothers’ wombs (which has now been legally done in numbers like half a billion or more), on the same basis that I oppose all these other evils (the golden rule and the royal commandment and simple ingrained human decency and conscience, even before we get to religious prescriptions for behavior). Do you?

Is it wrong to complain and “rant” about these things?

No; of course not.

If you’ve read the entire Bible, you know that its god commits, commands or condones these things,

I have, and I do not know that, and have written about all or almost these things, often many times. But some things have to be discussed at length and explained further. Slavery is one of them, because there were different kinds of slavery: some of which was basically identical to indentured servanthood. But here are my articles and links about that topic:

Seidensticker Folly #10: Slavery in the Old Testament [8-20-18]

Seidensticker Folly #11: Slavery & the New Testament [8-20-18]

The Bible, Church History, & Slavery (Resources) [2-11-11]

Catholic Encyclopedia: SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY

Catholic Encyclopedia: ETHICAL ASPECT OF SLAVERY

Did the Church Ever Support Slavery? (Steve Weidenkopf, Catholic Answers Magazine, 9-18-17)

What you call genocide are instances where God judged, and so we have to go back and examine that premise. If indeed there is a God, does He have the prerogative to judge individuals and even nations who have transgressed boundaries that He set for them, by the analogy of human judges and courts of law? We have laws, and those who violate them are punished; sometimes up to death (I oppose capital punishment, by the way). If one accepts the rightness of human laws and punishments for violating them, and things like police use of power to protect the innocent, and justified defensive wars, I fail to see how one can argue that God has no such right to enforce His laws on those whom He has created. I wrote along these lines:

Is God an Unjust Judge? Dialogue with an Atheist [10-30-17]

God’s Judgment of Sin: Analogies for an Atheist Inquirer [9-6-18]

God’s Judgment of Humans (Sometimes, Entire Nations) [2-16-07]

“How Can God Order the Massacre of Innocents?” (Amalekites, etc.) [11-10-07]

Israel as God’s Agent of Judgment [9-28-14]

Madison vs. Jesus #9: Clueless Re Rebellion & Judgment [8-7-19]

David Madison vs. Paul and Romans #11: Chapter 11 (“Scary” & “Vindictive” Yahweh? / Endless Stupefied Insults of God / Judgment Explained Yet Again) [8-30-19]

As for the Bible supposedly being against women, of course I’ve addressed that, too, among my 5,000+ articles:

Christian Sexual Views and Support from Sociology (Discussions About Christian Sexual Morality and Marriage with Atheists)[12-8-06]

Dialogue: Sexist, Misogynist Bible and Christianity? (Debate with Five Atheists. Are Christian Women Abused as “Sheep”?) [9-20-10; abridged a bit on 2-12-20]

Does the Bible condone hatred of homosexuals? No. We would say that it teaches a moral code regarding sexuality that prohibits certain activities as immoral (for various separately determined reasons). These don’t single out homosexuals. So, for example, in the OT heterosexual adulterers could be stoned as well. All sex before marriage, masturbation, etc. are considered to be sins, that affect far more heterosexuals than homosexuals, proportionately. Again, one must go back to the beginning of the discussion: what is the basis for these prohibitions? Are they loving or unloving? Do they make people happy or unhappy?

God sets rules and commands things for our own good; for our greatest happiness and fulfillment (just as all parents do with their children, wgho often don;t understand and rebel against such rules). It’s at this deeper level that fields such as sociology have a lot to offer. We have lots of polls that tell us what behaviors and life choices make people happy and fulfilled, and very often these secular polls strikingly conform what Christians, and Jews for 2000 years before that, and several other world religions have been saying all along. But when people disagree with reasonable restrictions of behavior, they tend to question the motives and ethics of the ones who suggest them: up to and including God.

and many Christians are ignorant of this, given that very few Christians ever read the entire Bible.

Very true. This is a big reason why I have devoted my life to teaching folks the Bible, Catholicism, and general Christianity, and equipping them with the rational tools of understanding why we believe whatever we believe, within the Christian and biblical worldview. There are certainly many misguided people like you out there who are trying to tear down people’s faith because you wrongly believe that it is harmful to them and others. So I’m out here critiquing the critiques, and defeating the defeaters, as Alvin Plantinga would say. People deserve to hear criticisms of relentless and wrongheaded, illogical, and often fact-challenged atheist hostility to the Bible and Christianity and Christians personally. Let them hear both sides and make up their own minds. Agree?

The Bible has been used to defend slavery, sexism, discrimination, etc. for centuries on end, and it still happens.

A lot of folks, including Christians, interpret the Bible wrongly and fight straw men of their own making, as you are doing. I and many others are here to try to correct those errors as well.

People ask me why I continue to read it (on my 5th reading now) and one reason, of course is so they can’t throw scripture at me that they’ve taken out of context, but also because someone has to tell them what it actually says.

Yes; I’ve dealt with atheists like you for years, and in hundreds of articles I have wrangled with them point-by-point, showing them exactly how they are wrongly interpreting what the Bible teaches. They virtually never reply back. You’re in the second round. Good for you. I commend you. You haven’t fled for the hills or ignored me altogether. It’s the same old same old: anti-theist atheists think they know more about the Bible and Christianity, so they say, than an apologist like myself who has studied and defended the Bible for 44 years. Ironically, most of the anti-theist atheists are former fundamentalists: a thing I never was. I grew up as a nominal Methodist, then became a practical atheist for some ten years (never went to church on Sunday, basically, from 1968-1980), then became an evangelical (of a thinking variety), at age 18 in 1977, and then Catholic at age 32 in 1990.

Just curious: what is your background? Many atheists think they are making these compelling arguments about the Bible, when in fact they are simply regurgitating the old dumbfounded hyper-literalism that they believed in as anti-intellectual fundamentalists (apparently not even being aware of it). I’ve seen it a hundred times. I hung around and interacted with atheists for over a year — in their own forums — a few years ago. But I’ve done a lot more than that. My book on the Bible and science and archaeology was a direct result of that.

I appreciate that you started by saying “if” there is a god, which I interpret to understand means that you realize that there is absolutely no compelling, objective evidence for any such gods.

You understand wrong. That’s a manner of speaking in argumentation, “if x, then y” etc. I’m recognizing that certain things follow only if there is a God held as a premise. It’s not implying in the slightest that I personally doubt that sufficient evidence exists to support His existence, or that this evidence is way more convincing that than for atheism.

People are not born believing in a god.

Actually, they are. It has to be unlearned. If you grow up in an atheist family, you will tend to become one. We are what we eat. People are born with a moral conscience, and that was put there by God. An they understand the rightness and goodness of the love of a good parent, and know it’s not right if they have an abusive parent.

This has to be taught, and of course, where you live determines for the most part, which god you will worship.

Very true. But that’s because most people don’t make the required effort to study on their own, and so they simply adapt whatever worldview they are immersed in. It has no bearing on the relative truthfulness of things. This was true in my life up to age 18. My family were fairly nominal Protestant Christians, and so I was, too. They stopped going to church, and so did I. I hardly had a choice, at ten years old. The church was a couple of miles away. Not that I would have gone by myself, anyway. It bored me to death, and no one made it unboring.

“If” there is a god, and “if” it’s your god, he did a poor job of making sure everyone around the world knew who he was.

He did fine. The problem is with Christians, who 1) don’t know what they believe, or 2) why they do, and very often 3) don’t exhibit the joy and love that they should have, and so 4) they have no motivation to share what they have learned with others, and others are not impressed enough by them or by their message, to come on board. God has done more than enough to make Himself known, But we have to be His messengers and witnesses. We blame God for lots of things that are our fault.

As for science, it has steadily reduced Yahweh/Jesus to a “god of the gaps.”

Nonsense. Polls have steadily shown that scientists are some 50% theists or Christians. See,. for example, a Pew Research poll from 2009: “51% believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.” All of those people certainly don’t believe that science has disproven Christianity or all non-materialist religious views. It’s just a treasured myth that materialist idolaters of science like yourself promulgate. Science is your god and religion. But it’s just a variant of philosophy that necessarily starts with unproven and unprovable axioms, much as religion and theology do. Many great philosophers and scientists alike have always believed in God, and theists of some sort even originated 115 fields of scientific endeavor.

There was a time when your god was responsible for rain, storms, lightning, earthquakes, floods, diseases and so on.

He still is, in terms of having created the scientific laws or laws of nature by which they are governed.

Today we know how all that works and your god has been greatly diminished.

This is an extremely simplistic take on the Bible and science. I’ve written quite a bit about this:

Seidensticker Folly #21: Atheist “Bible Science” Absurdities [9-25-18]

Seidensticker Folly #23: Atheist “Bible Science” Inanities, Pt. 2 [10-2-18]

Loftus Atheist Error #9: Bible Espouses Mythical Animals? [9-10-19]

The Bible is Not “Anti-Scientific,” as Skeptics Claim [National Catholic Register, 10-23-19]

Vs. Atheist David Madison #37: Bible, Science, & Germs [12-10-19]

The Bible on Germs, Sanitation, & Infectious Diseases [3-16-20]

Seidensticker Folly #42: Creation “Ex Nihilo” [8-28-20]

“Quantum Entanglement” & the “Upholding” Power of God [10-20-20]

Seidensticker Folly #59: Medieval Hospitals & Medicine [11-3-20]

Seidensticker Folly #71: Spirit-God “Magic”; 68% Dark Energy Isn’t? [2-2-21]

There are really only a couple things we don’t know yet, that are attributed to your god, rather than simply accept that we don’t know yet. We don’t know exactly what kicked off the Big Bang, but there is gathering evidence thanks to ever more powerful telescopes, that the universe is eternal, and that it cycles on a regular basis, expanding, contracting, and then starting over with a new Big Bang.

So it’s supposedly eternal; yet the laws of thermodynamics won’t permit that, because the universe is running down. The Big Bang is too much in line with the Bible, so it has to be run down by atheists somehow. We still don’t know how either the universe or life began, from materialistic premises.

I can go into some of Nobel winner Roger Penrose’s explanation, but I’ll spare you for now.

Thanks!

At this point, we simply don’t know, but there is increasing reason to think we will eventually. There seem to be hints of previous universes within the CMB (cosmic microwave background).

You seem to greatly overestimate how much doubt exists about the Big Bang in scientific circles. In fact, it is overwhelming consensus view. I found this AI overview at Google:

Nearly all cosmologists and astrophysicists accept the Big Bang as the leading model for the universe’s origin, with acceptance rates often cited as over 90-95%, even approaching 99% among specialists, because overwhelming evidence like the cosmic microwave background and expansion of the universe supports it, though specific details (like inflation, dark matter/energy) remain areas of active research, not rejection of the core idea.

And on a related Quora page I found comments like this:

I’d be surprised if within active scientists within cosmology it is less then 99%. Across all sciences you’ll probably be able to boost that up to 95% and if you loosen the definition of scientist then you’ll get even higher numbers. But it is the mainstream theory. Main stream theories are mainstream for a reason. They are the current best explanation for the current observation.

As close to 100% as it’s possible for anything to be in science. The evidence for it is overwhelming. Steady state theories were taken seriously for a few decades, but the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background rendered them untenable. At this point, no alternative theory comes anywhere close in ability to explain numerous different lines of evidence. The details are continually being researched and revised, but the data is overwhelming . . .

Specific surveys of physicists/astronomers/cosmologists
- A 2013 survey of professional astrophysicists published in Research Notes/discipline outlets and conference polls (small-sample) report >90% acceptance of standard cosmological model features (Big Bang, cosmic expansion, cosmic microwave background as evidence).
- Informal polls among cosmology conference attendees and online professional forums repeatedly show >95% acceptance for the basic Big Bang framework (expanding universe from a hot dense early state), with active research focused on details (inflation, dark matter, dark energy).
Surveys of science faculty and graduate students
- University faculty surveys across physics and astronomy departments show very high acceptance rates (typically >90%) for the Big Bang in teaching and research contexts.

We don’t know how the first self-replicating cells appeared (leading to what we call “life” today). Once again, we are making progress in this field and there is no good reason to suggest that “God did it.”

Yeah, scientists have been saying it’s right around the corner for years now. I first started learning science (and loving it) in the 60s. I’m quite sure that if scientists had been asked back then whether we would have discovered how life began, and also discovered life elsewhere in the universe in 60 years, most would have answered affirmatively. Yet it hasn’t happened. You rule out God as the cause because you disbelieve in Him in the first place: not because it’s at all inconsistent with what we know from science alone. You simply assume that it is, but that doesn’t follow.

By definition, science can’t rule out God because its subject matter isn’t non-material things. DUH! Current-day science and basically science since Darwin, decided to adopt materialism, at least in terms of how it methodologically proceeds, But that wasn’t always the case. As I noted, virtually all scientific fields and major new discoveries in the first 300 years of science came from theists and Christians. There is simply no impossible divide or intrinsic contradiction between God and science.

That’s simply another way of saying “We don’t know,” but we teach children (under penalty of eternal torment) to believe that God did it.

Right. “God of the gaps” is a tired, dumb, “pseudo-argument.” Give it up, and read some of the many great Christian philosophers and scientists. Get out of your self-imposed bubble.

Finally, we don’t fully understand consciousness yet.

What a big surprise!

It certainly appears to be an emergent phenomenon, and when you start cutting pieces of a brain out, it goes away piece by piece, but there are still some scientists who think it may be “fundamental,” meaning everything is made of it, including quarks and electrons. How it organizes or interacts with stuff that does exit like quarks and electrons, has no hypothesis and certainly no theories, as there’s no evidence that it does so.

Are you a scientist yourself? Please tell me more about yourself, so I’m not arguing blindly. That’s part of dialogue: being transparent.

I think it would be cool to discover that consciousness is ubiquitous, but it wouldn’t change anything with regard to an afterlife since there is no way to retain “who we are” after we die.

According to you . . .

That brings us to our latest science, which is QFT or Quantum Field Theory. It was developed a century ago, by the best minds in the world, and about 30 years ago, we developed the technology (mostly particle accelerators) to fully test it, and it turns out to deliver the mot accurate results of any theory ever proposed in human history – far more decimal points of confidence than Relativity, for example. QFT tells us what we and our natural world are made of – mostly quarks and electrons, and everything that interacts with that stuff. If your god, a devil, a soul, ghost or spirit is going to have any agency, or usefulness, it must push around those quarks and electrons in order to make stuff happen.

There is no difficulty in doing that, if we are dealing with an omniscient, all -powerful God, Who created the system in the first place. You simply arbitrarily define God down, to be a much weaker Being than He really is. “God cant do this; He can’t do that.” Who says? That’s not an argument.

There’s no other way, though I encourage you to put forth a hypothesis if you have one. We know, thanks to the last 30 years of testing that there are no gods, devils, souls, ghosts or spirits interacting with us, and that makes them moot, even if there was some way for them to exist outside space and time.

We know no such thing. Who is the “we” that you refer to? I’ve already shown that 50% of scientists believe in God or some higher power (non-materialism). So half of scientists can’t be included in your roster of skepticism. So why don’t you say that, instead of pretending that “all of science” agrees with your atheistic tenets? I’m the one pointing out the actual reality on the ground. Granted, among philosophers, it’s much more bleak, from my perspective. According to a Philpapers survey, 78% said they accept or lean towards atheism. 14% accept or lean towards theism, and the rest went into ‘Other’ with 12.6%.” But that’s not scientists, who are vastly more religious.

Evolution took quite some time to work through society, and QFT is going to take time as well, but it’s far more devastating to Christianity and other theist religions than evolution.

It’s not in the slightest. It’s just wishful thinking on your part. You’ve deluded yourself into thinking that almost all of the “smart people” of the world have adopted your atheism. You keep appealing to science, but scientists only half-agree with you.

The Vatican has to know this, as do fundagelical Christian organizations. The Vatican is currently silent, mentioning only the “spooky” stuff of QM (or quantum mechanics) from which QFT is partially derived, but the two are very different, and the implications of QFT are devastating for the supernatural.

Again, this is wishful thinking. You merely state this conclusion. You haven’t given us a chain of reasoning, demonstrating that it necessarily rules out God.

You’ll be hearing more about this in the years and decades ahead. It’s just making its way into society.

Yeah, that’s what we always hear. What is true is that western society is rapidly secularizing, which I think is a great tragedy and will cause untold and unspeakable suffering, as it already manifestly is. But that has no bearing on the truth or falsity of any given thing. I don’t believe in things based on a head count. I do it through reasoning.

When we start teaching it in Middle School and High School, that will be horrible for theist religions, who won’t be able to answer the kid’s questions.

Christians and conservatives have long since realized that secularized, leftist, “woke” public schools are hopeless, and so we go to Christian / Catholic schools or homeschool (we did the latter with all four of our kids, who all turned out great, are sharp as a tack, and very hard workers). Meanwhile, Detroit public schools (where I attended) are turning out outrageous results, with alarming post-graduate illiteracy rates, and other indicators destined to doom those poor kids to a life a lot less comfortable and happy than they could have had with a proper education.

Fundagelicals approach the problem by attacking science, and saying stupid stuff like “it’s only a theory,” thereby advertising ignorance about what a scientific theory is.

I don’t care what people who are ignorant of the issues say. There will always be a fringe element in any major group in society. There are fringe atheists just as fanatical in other directions.

In the case of QFT, it’s a fact, for all intents and purposes, just like germ theory, information theory, the theory of gravity and of course evolution. So we can go round and round on what unknown authors living in a primitive time wrote about the superstitions of their time, but QFT really does away with the need to do so, because it does away with all the supernatural stuff.

You really are in an impenetrable bubble, constructed by self-delusion and wishful thinking. You’re a true believer. It’s very difficult to persuade folks like that of anything different. Too much blind faith is involved.

If Jesus is God, then he was born as himself, strictly speaking.

God the Son is different from God the Father, so it was different from what was before. God becoming a man was a new thing when it occurred, some 2000 years ago.

He’s simply taking on another form, right?

He went from spirit, to taking on a characteristic of human beings, whom He created.

And who says he is only spirit?

Biblical revelation.

Didn’t Moses see him?

God can appear to the senses. It’s called a “theophany.” He didn’t take on flesh in any permanent sense until the incarnation of Jesus (what that word literally means).

And while we’re on the subject of god and man, what of this so-called “sacrifice”? He lives for an eternity as all-god. He becomes god and man for about 30 years. He goes back to being all-god afterwards. What did he give up? What did he lose? What did he sacrifice? A little pain? He’s god – he can turn off the pain, and if he chooses not to, that’s on him. In the space of an eternity, it’s not even a pinprick.

Are you not in the least moved by the notion (whether you accept it as factual or not) of a God Who loved us so much that He chose to live in poverty, eschewing luxury, identifying with the poor and downtrodden, confronting religious and civil leaders who were oppressing His people, and then choosing to undergo some of the worst physical suffering known to man in order to save us? Why we believe this, and/or why God did it, or why it was required, are separate and most worthwhile discussions. But here I’m just talking about the Christian belief as to what happened in history. What is so terrible about it? Why do feel led to mock it and sneer at it? I think it’s incredibly beautiful: God Himself went through the worst things that human beings experience. You could say that the thing itself is beautiful, while not believing that it actually happened. But you go after the very idea, and I find that puzzling.

I have a large book called “The Other Bible” than has all sorts of early scripture, gospels and revelations that did not make it into the official Bible.

Yes; skeptics love those kinds of things.

In at least one of them, (perhaps the gospel of Judas?), Jesus, the spirit is hovering above Jesus the man, and laughing.

That’s a Gnostic work, from the people who thought that all matter was evil. Not your kind of folks . . .

Come on, we don’t even have objective compelling evidence of a historical Jesus (though I’d put the odds at perhaps 50/50 – most likely a combination of wanna-be messiahs, merged together by the author of Mark. We simply don’t know.

That’s nonsense. Denial of a historical Jesus is a fringe, laughable position held by an infinitesimal number of scholars or reputed “scholars.” It’s intellectual suicide and I always refuse to discuss it, just as I don’t waste time talking about a flat earth or young earth or geocentrism or far right and left ideologies.

And in any case, he’s a failed messiah. First, he didn’t do anything the Jews expected of their messiah,

The Jews had two different concepts of the Messiah: the suffering servant (seen in Isaiah, especially chapter 53) and the triumphant warrior-king. I studied this over forty years ago. It’s a fact. This was all held before Christianity came along. So we say that the suffering servant was Jesus. The triumphant conqueror will be Jesus when He returns.

and secondly he failed to perform. He promised he would return while some he spoke with still lived, and before a generation passed. FAIL. He’s not coming back.

That’s an incorrect understanding of what He said. I’ve addressed it. I’m trying to finish this reply today so I won’t link it right now.

“a condition he placed on us to begin with.”

This is untrue. We were created without sin and any problems. All we had to do was obey our Creator and we would be in a perpetual paradise with all that we need. But we decided that we know better and rebelled. THEN the problems began. That’s not God’s fault.

You seriously believe the talking serpent, magical fruit story?

I think that the story of Adam and Eve is an account of actual historical events, that contains some mythical or allegorical elements as well, as a type of literature. The “visual” elements were likely, I think, literary or poetic devices to illustrate principles (will you obey God or not). And so the devil was represented a a scary animal, just as he often is to this day.

That pretty much confirms that you don’t accept evolution because that does away with all this,

I’m a theistic evolutionist.

and leaves no reason to be saved by Jesus, whatever that means.

I see no reason for why you think that follows.

In the mythical tale, God set the kids up to fail. They could not possibly know that disobedience was wrong, until AFTER they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. How could they know disobeying God was wrong?

They could, just as children know very early on that disobeying mommy and daddy is wrong and will bring bad consequences (going to their room, removal of a treasured toy, missing dessert, going to bed early, etc.). This ain’t rocket science. It’s not hard to envision or conceptualize.
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And the talking serpent told the truth. Either God did not know or he lied when he told the kids they would die on the day they ate of the fruit. Then he kicks the kids to the curb and abandons them. Great role model, and he does all this because, per Gen 3:22 and confirming the serpent, he did not want humans to know what good and evil were. I suggest that it was because he was evil, as the pages that follow lay out in excruciating detail. I think the author of Gen 3:22 intended that passage as a warning!!!

Here’s an article on how Catholics view the fall.

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I’m not going to debate evolution with you.

No need. We agree; though I do think that it’s not totally explainable by the laws of science, and requires God to make the whole thing work, as His method of creation.
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It’s like playing chess with a pigeon. After you win, the pigeon knocks over the pieces, craps on the board, and flies off declaring victory. Debating the science is futile with those who have decided not to accept it, despite accepting almost everything else based on science. The problem is FEAR.

I already told you I was a theistic evolutionist, so why are we doing this routine? I’m supposed to be scared of a person who thinks science has disproven God and who can’t even figure out that Jesus was a real person, who lived in space and time on the earth? Sure, some people who are ignorant and educated have fear, but perhaps You fear God or fear the demands He would make on your life, were you to believe in Him. You prefer your so-called “freedom.”

As children, most Christians were psychologically abused to think they must believe in Jesus and the need to be saved by him, or suffer eternal, conscious torment. That’s too big a leap. Evolution kills any need to be saved, so accepting it, and its implications means losing belief in Jesus, but that threat of Hell is so deeply ingrained, that it can’t be overcome by a great many. It’s very sad. When and if Christians come to understand that Hell is a lie, that it can’t exist, and that they aren’t going there, they will have no problem accepting evolution.

I can’t start arguing about hell here, nor get into your attempted psychoanalysis and heart- and mind-reading. I’m already at 9600 words. Suffice it to say that we follow Jesus because He is an absolutely unique, utterly admirable, beautiful human being, Who is what He claimed: God incarnate. Fear isn’t any sort of motivation; love is. desire to be fully ourselves, united to God, for Whom we were made, is the goal, and the reward. It’s a life of the deepest purpose and meaning. If someone is a supposed Christian mostly out of fear, I have serious doubts whether they really are a Christian, by any reasonable definition I know of.
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We’ll continue, if you’re willing to. Thanks for the engagement! I admire your zeal, if not your beliefs regarding Christianity and the Bible and Jesus.

I’ve read the Bible numerous times, and you aren’t going to convince me [about the Immaculate Conception, or even the virgin birth]. It’s an invented story by the Matthew author.

Right. How convenient for anti-theists atheists like you. Whatever you disagree with in the Bible, you simply say it was added later — with no evidence for the claim — and presto! The task of interpretation and serious analysis ends!

It’s based on an incorrect translation of “almah” young maiden, not “betulah” or virgin In Isaiah 7:14 that has nothing to do with a messiah. Lots of pagan gods were born of virgins, so Matthew decided his did too.

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I dealt with this charge here, eight years ago:

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: “Mistranslation” of “Virgin”? (Isaiah 7:14) (with Glenn Miller) [7-26-17]

Mark, the first gospel written, according to practically all scholars, had no virgin birth. Clearly this was made up later.

Mark decided to begin with John the Baptist, and Jesus’ first appearance on the public scene. We have four Gospels. Any given one is not required to have what one or more of the others have. And if they don’t, it’s not a “contradiction.”

It’s hard to imagine the Mark author not mentioning it, given that he was the first to invent the historical Jesus.

It’s hard to imagine any intelligent man like yourself, being silly and foolish enough to accept the troglodyte quack theories that Jesus didn’t even exist.

(Paul, the first author knows nothing of a historical Jesus).

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I dealt with that, too:
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Seidensticker Folly #24: Paul’s Massive Ignorance of Jesus (?) [10-5-18]
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Paul Knew the Gospels (vs. Richard Carrier) [1-30-22]

Ehrman Errors #4: Paul’s “Neglect” of the Life of Jesus [3-22-22]

Pearce’s Potshots #56: Paul & Jesus’ Resurrection [12-10-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #58: Paul & Jesus’ “Empty” Tomb [1-29-22]

Luke contradicts almost all aspects of the Mark story, and the author(s) of John who scholars believe may have known the original Hebrew and translation error, left it out. It’s one of the weakest stories in the Bible, right up there with the talking donkey, and talking serpent.

Yet more relentless and irrational atheist biblical skepticism, that I have refuted 150 or so times, point-by-point. See my atheism web page.
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It’s another moot point, particularly if we go back to that “if” there’s a god thing. If there is no god, (or if, per QFT he has nothing to do with us), then sin, original or otherwise, is a moot point. And the Catholic Church decided the story led to “original sin.” Jews didn’t believe that, and the Bible doesn’t specifically say it. The words “original sin,” aren’t found in my Bible translations.

Really?:

Psalm 51:5 (RSV) Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Romans 5:12-21 Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned — [13] sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. [14] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. [15] But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. [16] And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. [17] If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. [18] Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. [19] For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. [20] Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, [21] so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:21-22 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. [22] For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

The dominion of the devil is a result of original sin; it caused a catastrophic cosmic disorder (Gen 3:15, Jn 12:31, 14:30, 2 Cor 4:4, Heb 2:14, 2 Pet 2:19).

Sin isn’t a crime against other humans, which of course needs to be addressed.

Of course it is. If I murder you, that’s a sin, and against another human being: you.

The idea of dying to remove responsibility for a crime committed by another person (vicarious redemption) is vile and reprehensible.

Yeah, I can’t imagine anything more abominable than dying to save others: spiritually or physically. It doesn’t get any worse than that!

Let’s say I kill your loved one. I am arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. My son steps up and takes my place, and he is executed. I am released, and I walk happily, whistling in joy at my renewed freedom, past your house, but my innocent son is dead, your loved one is dead, and I am absolved of responsibility. Is that a desired outcome? Is that even moral or ethical?

That’s not analogous to Jesus’ death on the cross, which had to do with redeeming and saving the entire human race, because God loved us so much.

Even before I left Christianity, the idea of sin was nutty to me.

Yeah, I’m sure that played a big part in why you left. Now you’re free to sin as you wish, with allegedly no consequences.

How do you hurt an all-powerful god so badly that he wants to burn you for eternity?

He doesn’t. He doesn’t send anyone there, and wants no one to perish or go there. He offers the free gift of salvation to all who believe in Him and take up His cross. The only belief-system that is subject to this criticism is Calvinism.

How can an all-powerful god be hurt? If he’s that powerful, then it’s like punishing ants for not doing what I want them to do. And is he really all-powerful, given that in his book, he is portrayed as jealous, petty, vengeful and basically out-of-control crazy at times?

It’s called anthropomorphism and anthropopathism: poetic Hebrew literary devices. Go look up those terms and learn something.

I mean, sending bears to kill kids who tease an old bald [guy]…. come on.

It was a just judgment, once fully understood. The sins involved here were not merely the name-calling.

Hopefully this catches us up. . . . There are plenty of groups out there that give Christians the opportunity to threaten atheists with hell and to hurl personal insults when their intellect doesn’t support mature debate.

Right. Nitpicking, majoring on the minors, and making foolish complaints. This is typical of so many atheists online. You had a chance to engage in an intelligent discussion with an apologist well-familiar with atheism, atheists, and the arguments used. But you decided to flee for the hills [see below how he acted at the end].

I welcome the opportunity to discuss/debate with the original post authors of the groups I visit (or actually that show up on my feed – I don’t seek this stuff out, it seeks me out!).

Yet after a day and vigorous, direct responses from me to the 30 or so charges you have thrown my way, you decided to run as fast as you could to the hills, to hide and forget that I — and this discussion — ever existed. I’m not impressed.

Hold on a minute. You are dragging me off to an entirely different forum where the followers on this one, where the debate originated, are not included, unless they follow the thread. Screw that. I responded to you on FB. Keep the discussion on FB, not an entirely different forum. I’m not following you across the internet, where you set the stage, and set my “character” without knowing anything about me. Respond here, or I’m done with you. I don’t need to prove myself to you. You are the one lacking in any compelling, objective evidence for your god and your beliefs. I have overwhelming compelling objective evidence for the science that shoots down your beliefs. Unless you bring the discussion back here, we’re done. . . . I think we’re done here. . . . Goodbye.

Utterly predictable. Time to run when your sacred cows are being speared . . . I thought you were different for a minute or two there. But it wasn’t to be.

You are the coward. You are the one taking the discussion to another forum without discussing it first. You are the problem here. Apologist? Yeah, you should apologize. You certainly haven’t speared any sacred cows, nor have you countered any of my points in this forum. I am different. I know the Bible and Christianity far better than most people who call themselves Christians. I also know science much better than most Christians. I’m a major threat to folks like you, because I work in evidence, and you work in faith, and faith is an irrational leap over the need for evidence. Faith is not a virtue. It has no method, it solves no problems, it boils down to pretending to know things you don’t know (like Mary being born without original sin – you can’t even prove there ever was a Mary). Faith is all about lying to yourself and trying to convince others to believe what you believe to justify your self-deception.

Right. Keep dreamin’. I provide a point-by-point, 11,000-word response that I worked on most of the day. Not the slightest reply back from you, but instead, more juvenile asinine insults. I’m the coward; I have nothing. Yeah, makes perfect sense! You have this ridiculous aversion to a blog post, as if you will get cooties from it. I was simply trying to make it easy, since you couldn’t even manage to locate my initial response here [on Facebook], after two days.

I’ve seen a lot of things online, in my 29 years, believe me. But this takes the cake. I knew you would run pretty soon, but I’m surprised it was with zero replies.

And now you will be banned [on Facebook], having stunk up the place long enough. I have little patience with verbal diarrhea and pompous asses. But you’ll still be able to reply to my blog if you wish. Say whatever you like over there: the only exception being if you bring up this ludicrous bilge about me deleting posts, after I have explained it three times. That will get you blocked there as well. Your choice.

Wishing you all God’s blessings and the very best during this holy season and always.

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Photo credit: Patrick Gannon’s Facebook profile photo, retrieved on 12-7-25.

Summary: Debate on various premises & tenets of Christianity with an atheist, Patrick Gannon, who popped up, oddly enough, in a thread about Catholic-Protestant differences on Mary.

Atheism & Agnosticism

Apologetics

Atheism

Catholic Apologetics

Debate on Christianity with an Atheist

defense of Christianity

defense of the Catholic faith

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