How do Christians Expect to Convert Atheists?

[Science Fan]

Immanuel Can: The passages most definitely concern atheists, as well as any non-Christian, as you stated. You cannot refute my position regarding atheists being demonized by such passages by arguing that the demonization also extends to non-Christians in general. That strengthens my position as it enlarges the list of people whom Christian doctrine has unfairly labeled as wicked for their beliefs.

[Science Fan]

Immanuel Can: Your claim that atheists have no basis to even argue for morality is itself an irrational statement, and one that adds to the demonization of atheists. Morality predates Christianity and religion in general, we know this from evolutionary biology. It would in fact be impossible for any Christian to make any moral argument, of any kind, unless our brains were first hardwired for morality in the first place. Morality is in fact completely independent of any religion and or any belief in a god or set of gods. To falsely claim that atheists have no concept of morality is itself a false claim, as well as an immoral one.

[Seleucus]

I'm starting to think that some people are not actually interested in answering the question: "How do Christians Expect to Convert Atheists?", otherwise, I think there would be first of all a discussion about methodology, a literature review, and a collection of documentary evidence and an attempt to sort and analyze it. But, that doesn't seem to be what is happening...

[Immanuel Can]

You cannot refute my position regarding atheists...

Actually, I can -- very easily. It's impossible that a text written in the 1st Century could "demonize" a concept that was not even in existence until the 16th.

... it enlarges the list of people whom Christian doctrine has unfairly labeled as wicked for their beliefs.

Yes, it does...but I was not apologizing for that. If anything, I would disagree with the word "unfairly." God judges righteously.

The "wicked," by definition, have "wicked" beliefs and do "wicked" things. More often, the Bible calls this "sin," and describes it as the natural condition of all human beings without God's salvation.

[Immanuel Can]

Morality predates Christianity and religion in general, we know this from evolutionary biology.

This is untrue. In fact, we know it's untrue.

What we do know is that all kinds of behavior predate Christianity: we do not know what the moral status of any particular behavior is until we refer to a moral system.

But what is your moral system?

The only alternative to that is the one I pointed out to you: that you would have to be a moral objectivist. And if you say that morality "predates" all human activity, then you are a moral objectivist by definition. You would have to believe that moral precepts are somehow "written into" the pre-evolutionary natural world; and how would you explain that that was so...especially since Hume (the Atheist "saint") said it was decidedly not so, and that there was no way to deduce any "ought" from an "is" like evolutionary behavior.

[Lacewing]

I'm starting to think that some people are not actually interested in answering the question: "How do Christians Expect to Convert Atheists?", otherwise, I think there would be first of all a discussion about methodology, a literature review, and a collection of documentary evidence and an attempt to sort and analyze it. But, that doesn't seem to be what is happening...

Perhaps the goal is not ultimately to convert atheists -- but rather to feel glorified for having something/someone to convert.

[Science Fan]

That's not a refutation. It doesn't matter that the name for the act -- "demonization" may have come along later on -- the act of demonization was still being done by Christians, in the past, as well as the present. In fact, you just demonized atheists by falsely claiming atheists are incapable of making any moral claims. As if atheists are immoral creeps, and the Christians, the people who gave us the Inquisition, witch burnings, the Crusades, the subjugation of women, the persecution of Jews, gays, religious minorities, including atheists and agnostics, are morally enlightened beings?

[Science Fan]

I don't have to be a moral objectivist at all. Christians certainly aren't. The Christian Bible makes many immoral claims that Christians these days ignore, because they don't believe in them. In other words, even Christians engage in a subjective selection of those parts of the Bible they consider to be moral and reject what they consider to be immoral.

God is not and cannot be a source of morality anyway, as Plato revealed thousands of years ago.

Morality may turn out to be objective, but I have seen no convincing proof for this position. Morality may also turn out to be subjective, and I also have not seen any convincing proof for this position either. It is presently unknown whether morality iss objective or subjective. What is known, however, is that God could not be a source of morality, without making morality completely subjective, a rule of force. Moreover, since we have no evidence for the existence of any god, much less a statement from any alleged god on what its position is on moral issues that we face, especially when it comes to issues never mentioned in the Bible, like the use of stem cells for medical research, even if God were the source of morality, we would have no access to this source, and all we are left with are the completely subjective claims of those who make a delusional assertion that they know the mind of God.

[uwot]

Morality predates Christianity and religion in general, we know this from evolutionary biology.

This is untrue. In fact, we know it's untrue.

What we do know is that all kinds of behavior predate Christianity: we do not know what the moral status of any particular behavior is until we refer to a moral system.

The Ten Commandments predate christianity, Mr Can.

[Dontaskme]

even if God were the source of morality, we would have no access to this source, and all we are left with are the completely subjective claims of those who make a delusional assertion that they know the mind of God.

No one knows the mind, the mind knows itself which is unknowable to anything inside or outside of it. Except in this conception.

Morality may turn out to be objective, but I have seen no convincing proof for this position. Morality may also turn out to be subjective, and I also have not seen any convincing proof for this position either. It is presently unknown whether morality iss objective or subjective. What is known, however, is that God could not be a source of morality, without making morality completely subjective, a rule of force.

Well there cannot be an objective or subjective morality known without an absolute law that says yes or no that they do or do not exist, that absolute must always be present in the experiencing witness itself (self -evident) ...that I witness has to exist else nothing is known.

Does morality exist?> .....make up your mind and tell yourself what exists and what does not. Who or what else is going to give you the answers to your questions but you?..The story of the past only exists in the telling of it.

Whether some thing or some one exists or not, every concept is a mental creation only as you tell it to yourself and believe it or not.

But who would believe this?

[ken]

The author takes a much more heavily macro- and meso- level approach, somewhat different from the micro-level ethnographic approach I had suggested.

Is that what you would really do?

I'm not making any claim about why atheists convert to Christianity, that would be a big job. I would suggest meanwhile that a literature review, grassroots bottom-up ethnographic interviews with sorting and tallying of trends, combing for deeper psychoanalytic interpretation, and a collection of bigger trends as Yang (2005) did would be a pretty solid methodological come at it. You could probably get that published in a good journal, or present at a high-level conference, or take a graduate or doctoral degree.

No human being can be a "atheist", "christian", nor even a "muslim", so how and why do some human beings even think there could even be a "conversion" or that they could "convert" another?

Yes, Sartre talked about that kind of thing a lot in Being and Nothingness.

Did you assume that I had some sort of interest in this?

I hope I did not make things to hard for you this time, did I?

Are you feeling angry about something?

Again you did not answer any of My questions. What you did do, however, is make assumptions, which were wrong again. When will you stop interpreting/projecting? Only when you do is when you will stop making wrong assumptions and misinterpretations.

[ken]

I'm starting to think that some people are not actually interested in answering the question: "How do Christians Expect to Convert Atheists?", otherwise, I think there would be first of all a discussion about methodology, a literature review, and a collection of documentary evidence and an attempt to sort and analyze it. But, that doesn't seem to be what is happening...

Human beings could do that, and completely waste their time and energy. Or, they could just ask the people who are labelled as "christian" and ask them How do you expect to convert atheists? That way the answer will be found, very simple and easy really.

But if people are interested in what IS really true, then there is no thing as 'christian' and 'atheist'. There is, however, people with labels and the label of a thing does not make that thing the label.

[Seleucus]

I'm starting to think that some people are not actually interested in answering the question: "How do Christians Expect to Convert Atheists?", otherwise, I think there would be first of all a discussion about methodology, a literature review, and a collection of documentary evidence and an attempt to sort and analyze it. But, that doesn't seem to be what is happening...

Human beings could do that, and completely waste their time and energy. Or, they could just ask the people who are labelled as "christian" and ask them How do you expect to convert atheists? That way the answer will be found, very simple and easy really.

Couldn't agree more. This thread has some nice exemplars.

But if people are interested in what IS really true, then there is no thing as 'christian' and 'atheist'. There is, however, people with labels and the label of a thing does not make that thing the label.

The idea of an individual agent is of course right out of Christian morality, so there's nothing wrong with drawing a boarder around a group like Christians, as opposed to an equally arbitrary line around a so-called "individual". Meanwhile I also totally dig what you mean about not labeling and just abiding in the silence of pure is-ness.

[Science Fan]

Why assume that one needs some sort of "absolute law" from a law giver in order to have objective morality? That's certainly not logically necessary. After all, we can observe conservation of energy without this being dictated by some law-giver. There is no reason to treat morality any differently from physics, that is, if one assumes that there is an objective basis for morality, like there is an objective basis for physical laws in physics.

[thedoc]

Why assume that one needs some sort of "absolute law" from a law giver in order to have objective morality? That's certainly not logically necessary. After all, we can observe conservation of energy without this being dictated by some law-giver. There is no reason to treat morality any differently from physics, that is, if one assumes that there is an objective basis for morality, like there is an objective basis for physical laws in physics.

We don't know that, it is just as possible that an original "law giver" dictated what the physical laws are that run the universe. There is no reason to assume or not that there was an original lawgiver for both physics and morality, but that is not a good enough reason to not try to discover what those laws are. Religion itself does not discourage scientific discovery, but some religious people will try to say that some things are God's business and man should not investigate them, those people are wrong and possibly very narrow minded.