Sure, Zeitgeist is part BS, but if it erodes Christianity, more power ot it.

The sad state of affairs according to many Christian theologians is that God offers us Heaven or Hell and ten doesn’t (to use the Deacon’s words) show up in real life so that we can know he exists and has the power to affect how things go for us in the hereafter. some Christians think this is as it should be, for if god were to reveal himself more clearly, we would no longer be free to reject him. In other words, we are made less free by knowing more.

I dispute this. An informed choice is just as free as a choice made in ignorance. More free, I’d think; because the more I know about the possible consequences of my potential actions, the more I can act in a way to satisfy the balance of my desires. But God does not give us this advantage. If God showed up in my life, I’d know the facts about my coming afterlife and could make an informed choice. God hs not shown up and I am left with a bunch of inconsistent texts and personal testimonies that are maddeningly unpersuasive.

Getting back to your mugger analogy. I’d rather be mugged by a menacing figure who showed me his gun so I could be sure of what was up than meet a person who casually walked up to me and asked for $20, and then shot me in the back an hour later because I refused. The real mugger gave me a real choice as bad as it was.

Furthermore, the idea that knowing more about God would make it impossble to freely accept or reject him is un-Biblical. Adam and Eve had had direct experience of God, yet they ate the fruit. The Israelites experienced the plagues of Egypt and saw the pillars of fire and smoke guiding them across the desert, but some of them made and worshiped the golden calf.

BTW, wha’chall think about that whole Solar Messiah hypothesis? The idea that religious movements are affected by the astrological ages defined by the procession of the equinoxes. The Exodus happened (if it happened) during the change from the age of Taurus to the age of Aries. Moses hearled in the age of Aries by rejecting the golden calf (Taurus) and replacing it with the passover lamb and the shofar, the ram’s horn. Jesus (supposedly) came at the time of the transition from Aries to Pisces and their’s a lot of fish references and imagry surrounding him. There’s even one text in the Gospels that says to seek the man bearing water (Aquarius) to know when Jesus will return. That would be around 2150 when procession will carry the vernal equinox into Aquarius.

I got all this from some one third BS youtube link someone emailed me. The other two thirds made me think. But I do remember looking up the “Man bearing water at the end of the age” quote (Luke, IIRC) and it was really there.

Galloway “Vox doesn’t agree with Hitchens that human morality has evolved . And yet there was a time when the Catholic church, that bastion of Christianity, advocated torture and murder to deal with heresy. Since the church no longer holds that position, then it’s safe to conclude that ‘morality has evolved’.”
Yes, but you’re forgetting that a) evolution is a false theory devised by “scientists” that hate God and, b) the Catholic church isn’t the One True Church. True Christianstm clearly believe whateveritis that Vox believes (much as other True Christianstm like Pat Robertson or Ray Comfort, the Pope or any number of other True Christianstm, whose belief is incompatible with Vox, themselves and others, that have found the narrow way believe that their way is the capital ‘T’ True way). If Vox is the only one that believes what Vox believes, then Vox is the only True Christiantm…besides that Jesus fellow, and get this, he was Jewish.

Vox, of course, has zero understanding of what science is and how it works. He does not comprehend what it means for a theory to explain and predict observations, and we’ve seen over and over again that he doesn’t understand the concept of evidence. I think this last point is the real origin of his problems: a sheer undercomprehension of what evidence is and what it means to build a case from it.

Not that this stops him from making proclamations about the status of scientific concepts, like abiogenesis, cosmological creation, and biological evolution. He declares he has “read the research” and that he finds “serious logical problems” with it all, and ultimately that science is pretty useless (One of his favorite claims is that it is the free market and not science that creates new technology — wrap your head around that one).

He criticises science despite no scientific knowledge, and then he turns around and lambasts atheists for making claims about religion without being theologians.

Realize though that this is all seems totally reasonable from the perspective of someone who doesn’t understand the concept of “evidence”. In an evidence-free world, there is no knowledge; there are only assertions. Theological and scientific assertions are basically the same as one another. The only expertise one needs is in how to maniuplate concepts and make intuitively-persuasive declarations. You can always make a pretense of applying rules of logic to create arguments, you just can’t anchor them to anything, and you can’t justify their use. So to save yourself from relativism and nihilism, you declare the existence of purely abstract “essences” that underlie all your intuitions and prejudices. And Voila — Gods are born.

To Vox, as with most theists, God is just the assumed “true essence” that must exist if life is to be saved from pure meaninglessness and relativism. If relativism is false (or incoherent, or self-defeating), then some “essence” must be there to prop up truth…so he really does view God as a logical conclusion. And because he doesn’t understand evidence, he doesn’t understand what it means to START from the evidence and argue toward a conclusion. So he infers that when atheists start at the evidence and arrive at a different conclusion, they must be using faulty logic. So, he writes an entire book, poking around atheists arguments, looking for any pretext to dismiss their arguments as illogical. And he never realizes how far his BASIC inability to comprehend the concept of “evidence” causes him to miss the mark.

At the end of chapter 9, Vox Day states: “Free will is at the heart of the Christian faith.” I don’t see how. Either you follow God’s directives or burn in hell forever. That’s like a mugger holding a gun on someone and demanding that they hand over the money, then when he’s caught, telling the police that the victim handed the money over at his own free will.

I imagine that, somewhere in the world, Ray Comfort is executing a slight re-write of his legendary ‘banana proof for God’s existence’, even though he’s already admitted to the utter lameness of the argument. Eventually, everybody will get tired of calling him on it, and he’ll claim victory by attrition (much like Dinesh D’Souza claims victory by disinterest and absence of opponent).

Your comment on objection #1 points out his bad faith. As much as he’d hate to admit it, science’s hypotheses, and even their conclusions, are always TENTATIVE. Science’s authority always comes in degrees, concomitant with what seems presently reasonable given the information available.

The Creation Myth, on the other hand, claims perfect authority upon no evidence, but solely upon its own word (any supporting ‘evidence’ comes after the fact, and only in order to support the original proposition). Not only that, but the Creation Myth is inextricably bound up in an aura of moral consequence, such that one isn’t just in error for questioning the dogma. One is evil.

This is apples and oranges, folks! And Vox doesn’t make the argument because it’s logically compelling; he just does it because ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING IS ARGUABLE. At least, it is to a polemicist whose goal is to ‘win’ an argument, and not a sincere search for the truth. Just keep throwing shit at the fan, and even if none of it sticks to the fan, well…it stuck to the floor, didn’t it? I WIN!

Don’t hold your breath waiting for any serious discussion from Vox. Like everybody else, you totally don’t understand his grasp of logical principles…or so he says.