I’ve  been having a lot of conversations with the religious of late and I am now more convinced than ever that it’s completely pointless.

Why? Because they are not remotely interested in reality. They are only after comfort and I am after nothing but fact. Every single theist that I talk to tries to jump past the only part of the conversation that actually matters.

Is your god real? So let’s talk about it.

 

I’ve known this for a long time and I’ve talked about it, at least in passing, on the channel. There is only one question that matters, ultimately, and that is whether or not their gods are real in the first place. Most theists just try to jump past that with a variety of tactics, but I shut them all down. Show me that your god is real. After that, we can talk about your  book, we can talk about your sotierology, we can jump into eschatology, I have no problem with any of it, but only after we have established that your god exists first because without that, nothing else matters.

If you go an look at debates on YouTube, especially debates specifically about the existence of a god, you will see the problem. The theist does everything in their power to avoid the subject. They assume it but they avoid directly addressing it. Why? Because they know they have no evidence to support it. It’s the evidence that matters and they have none. That’s why they rely on faith. Faith means nothing. Anyone can have faith in anything, no matter how absurd. Your faith and desperate desire for a god to be real doesn’t make any gods real. That’s something they cannot handle.

That’s why they’ve turned to arguments. Arguments are not evidence. It’s why they turn to empty claims. Claims mean nothing. If you cannot show that your god is real, then you have no rational basis for embracing your religious beliefs. You have failed, period. That’s what’s really going on, of course, they have failed and they can’t handle the fact that they’ve failed, after all, that is emotionally uncomfortable, so they cling desperately to blind faith and dumb claims and refuse to take the question seriously, but it is the only question that matters.

Without a real, demonstrable god that you can point to, everything else in your religion falls apart. You can’t just assume a god. You can’t just assert a god. You have to be able to prove a god and I am not interested in dancing around the “it seems to me” nonsense that comes up time and time again. No god, no discussion. What’s the point?

Oh, they have a ton of ready excuses though, don’t they? “My god can’t be detected!” Then how the hell do you know anything about it? They’ll all tell you all about their imaginary friends but they have no way to demonstrate how they came to that knowledge. It’s all just made up, right? How do you know that your god has omni-properties? “I just do!” How? “Because everyone tells me that it’s true!” How do they know? “They just do!” It tumbles into abject stupidity which is all god-beliefs are. If you can’t show me how  you got to your beliefs rationally, then your beliefs aren’t worth taking seriously and since no theist anywhere can do more than quote their stupid books or point to their ridiculous clergy, who have no more evidence than they do, they just spin a good yarn, the whole thing is pointless to even consider.

That’s why, more and more often, I’m just walking away from the conversations. Spewing a load of emotionally-comforting bullshit that sounds good to you doesn’t impress me. It never has and it never will. So why  bother with it at all?

Frankly, I have no good answer to that. Do you? Or should I just go find something more productive to do with my time?