Are Christians Delusional? HELP

[Newbie2]

“Every scientific study shows prayer has no effect”

This is not true. Even if it can only be attributed to the “Placebo effect”, which is the only thing in prayer that science can explain, prayer is helpful. Studies have shown the benefits of the so-called “placebo effect” of prayer.

“Devalues human life”

Christianity devalues human life??? He offers no proof of this, except this lie:

“…it’s OK to die (in war)because if you die you get to go to heaven”

This is not Christian teaching.

“…forces you to discard rational thought in many parts of your life”

Bull-ony. Christianity is not inconsistant with rational thought. The author of that YouTube tripe apparently never heard of St. Thomas Aquinas. IMHO, there is no more a rational a thinker than St. Thomas.

“your irrationality hurts us all”

How? And why should he care? (answered below)

“My goal here is not to criticize you for your religious beliefs…”

Bull-ony. Then why bother us at all? Our “delusions” are harmful to nobody but ourselves, right? After all Christian “delusions” include charitable virtues like generosity, taking care of our fellow man, justice, freedom, etc.

“Why would you believe in a being named god for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence”

First of all, it’s “God”. Why wouldn’t he use the capital letter “G”? Perhaps because he knows there IS a God? Second, it’s called “faith”. Third, we believe it because it’s true; it’s not true because we believe it to be so.

And why would an Atheist care what we believe or not believe after all? Because the author wants to seed doubt. To the OP:

Don’t believe this tripe. Follow St. Anselm’s motto; faith seeking understanding.

PS Personally, methinks it drives Atheists nuts that educated, rational people can be faithful Christians.

This guy also has a Youtube video “10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer”, which include 10 sophomoric questions (he uses the term “fascinating questions”), demonstrating a total lack of familiarity with the very notion of Christianity which he attempts to debunk.

I would have thought, at the very least, that he would have been “intelligent” and “rational” enough to research his topic and accurately present facets of Christianity which he could then (attempt to) debunk.

Nah, this guy is a total amateur. There are much more clever ways of challenging Christianity.

 

[Starwynd]

Two points:
I came here for proof of god. We can’t simply take the assumption that god exists or claim that because a book says it exists, we should believe it - especially a book that is claimed to be the word of god.

First of all “proof” is a vague term and can mean different things. Since you want the proof, you have to define the exact manner of proof you want to find. The proof is all around you. You have but to open your eyes and see.

Questioning is one thing, but you made demands that we justify our beliefs to you, setting yourself up as judge jury and executioner. So I suspect you’re really not interested in real and honest debate. Some of your semantic tricks are quite apparent to that effect as well.

Logic and rationality has its weakness too. Ever noticed how different people can come to different conclusions using logic and reason based on one body of evidence? Logic can also be treated as a religion as well. Evolution is one great example. The Big Bang hypothesis is another. There is no real hard evidence to support either, just logic and rationality, but because it’s the best explanation that fits the evidence, it becomes widely accepted as a truth that one must not touch or become on par with the holocaust deniers and moon landing’s a hoax kind of people.

Now, a little about me. I was an atheist, but I had an extraordinary event that happened to me that helped me find my faith in God. Before that event I was very rational too and I tried for a long time to use logic to explain it, but logic just could not hold a candle to what I went through. The event is very difficult for me to talk about and will be for years to come and the only person I can talk to about it is my priest because of irrational and prejudiced attitudes like yours. The only thing I question now is whether I am being the right kind of Christian, if all it takes is just going to Church and repeating a few words. And there will always things I will wrestle with myself because of how late in life I came into my faith, and my own rationality gets in the way. Rationality alone is not great proof.

I don’t believe that Christianity is delusional, but you do have to watch out for the real charlatans that make it out to be. Both within and without. Saying it is delusional only reveals one’s own bias and prejudice. Playing semantic games is also a revelation of one’s own prejudices and bias because it means they are not really searching for their own answers, just interested in the ridicule of those who believe differently.

 

[BlaineTog]

I think that is possibly the least persuasive attack on Christianity I’ve ever seen. He essentially puts scare quotes around the stories and says, “Look! You don’t believe that, right?”

Utter poppycock, I say!