Wednesday, June 24, 2009

And I give unto thee, a LIST. How to convert an Atheist: Part 1

So- my Christian (or any religion) readers, are you up to the monumental task of converting an Atheist?
The reward: saving a soul from eternal damnation. And the satisfaction of proving yourself right, which is always fun.
Atheists: If you disagree, or have additional caveats to these challenges, please post below.

For the next few days I am going to post a guide to converting Atheists. Giving these proofs will, depending on the category of the claim, convert us there on the spot, or will give us serious pause.

I'll post the stats for the claim, and then you must read all of the conditions(as in, don't stop at the title.). Post in the comments, e-mail me or blog about it and link to my blog(which will provide a trackback url so I can see it) and we'll get to the business of my(and many others) salvation.
Please note: I began this list inspired by this video- but I am adding a substantial amount of information as well as rejecting some, and adding my own.

The first thing that could convince me you're on the money about this whole God/Holy Book thing is the question of Prophecy.

Item the First: Prophecy
Conversion Status: Absolute
Ease of evidence: Difficult

The first thing that would probably convince me that your book/ideas are the genuine article is a prophecy. Let me first define a prophecy:
A prophecy is a prediction of the future that relies on information not available to the prophet at the time, is clear and concise about its predictions and gives accurate results. It also has a lot of specific information attached to it, so it cannot be interpreted to apply to more than one event.
Now, exclusions:
A prophecy is not vague and does not rely on heavy symbolism to describe the event. Descriptions of prophecy can be a little off, as someone from another time would describe technology of today(steel birds are airplanes, horseless carriages are cars, etc.) but things like "a great darkness upon the heart of man" or "a savior will deliver us from evil" are very vague. They could apply to Jesus, Barack Obama and even Hitler. "Evil" is a very loosely defined word and "deliver us from" could mean anything. "A great darkness" could be the evils of society, or a disease that attacks the cardiovascular system. Any of these could be interpreted to also pertain to multiple events- it must be either a one-time occurrence or something date-related.
A prophecy cannot also be self-fulfilling, as in "the Jews returning to Israel" or a statement made about someone specific about their destiny, and then that person doing their best to fulfill that destiny. This is of course perfectly fine in the case of performing miracles, or other supernatural occurrences.

As for prophecies in the past:
Prophecies have to have undeniable proof to have actually happened. Prophecies such as the ones predicting Jesus, or aspects of his life or later events in the bible(not counting things that have not happened, like revelations) could easily have been written to fit each other, like Jesus being written about to fit information in prophecy previously written about, or prophecies in the old testament that have not been verified as to predate Jesus that could have been inserted later.

Actual evidence you must present:
Historical documents that prove the authenticity of the prophecy, as in letters from the era regarding it, or historians(that are credited and respected among the general historical community) that attest to the document's authenticity, and why they attest to it. Carbon dating is also accepted- but only on older documents as things that occurred less than a few hundred years ago are difficult to pin down.
Photos or evidence of the documents themselves.
Evidence of the event(as long as it's not happening now, or recently, where we might have video evidence).
Evidence that the event is not applicable to other events in history, or that the interpretation has not been stretched to the point of metaphor.

2 comments:

  1. So are you saying here that if someone could show you that a prophet accurately predicted the future you would believe in God? Couldn't they have just been lucky?

    I personally think prophecy is valuable for believers but doesn't have (nor is meant to have) much apologetic value. In other words, you'll need a solid belief in God and in miracles before you can even approach prophecy (otherwise you'll just explain it away somehow, just like you could explain away anything in history if you wanted to).

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  2. Ah- writing a post about this as we speak. I'll mention you, and that will make you famous! You're welcome.

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