{"id":733,"date":"2013-07-10T14:03:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T18:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/?p=733"},"modified":"2013-07-10T14:52:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T18:52:44","slug":"dear-theist-weve-heard-it-all-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/2013\/07\/10\/dear-theist-weve-heard-it-all-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Theist, We\u2019ve Heard It All Before"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/friendlyatheist\/2013\/07\/08\/video-from-the-megachurch-service\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hemant Mehta<\/a> had a dialog with a Christian mega-church pastor at the pastor\u2019s mega-church. About 6000 people got to hear Mehta talk about atheism. One of the things that Mehta talked about was that he (and most other active atheists) have heard all the questions before. It was after this that his pastor friend brought out a questions that no atheist has every heard before.<\/p>\n<p>Get ready to have your mind blown. The question is\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Is there anything that would tempt you or convince you to believe in God?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I bet you never heard a theist ask you that before, right? Okay, we have all heard that question before. The fact is that Mehta is correct. It is extremely unlikely that a theist is going to ask me a question that I have never heard before. I would love to actually hear a new argument. But I doubt I will. At best, I will just hear some rewording or older arguments.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a theist, please, please, please attempt to blow my mind with a new argument. I would love to hear it but I think you should Google it first just to make sure that no one else already made that argument. Then I want you to Google the question to find out if anyone actually answered the argument before. Then you can hit me with your genius point.<\/p>\n<p>As for Mehta\u2019s appearance at the mega-church, I think everyone should watch it because he did a fantastic job:<\/p>\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.4.5 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/69753974\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p>The only minor point that I want to add to Mehta\u2019s response to the question is that I honestly don\u2019t know what would convince me that God exists\u2026 but do you know who would? God! If God exists, then he would know the precise argument or experience that would convince me and if he doesn\u2019t want me tortured for all eternity, then he would presumably provide that argument or experience to me. The very fact that he hasn\u2019t is actually evidence that he doesn\u2019t exist. Think about it.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2013\/07\/08\/friendly-atheist-informs-megachurch-weve-heard-all-of-it-before\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;Friendly Atheist&#8217; informs megachurch: We&#8217;ve heard all of it before<\/a> (rawstory.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/review\/review-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-god-by-rob-bell\" target=\"_blank\">Review: &#8216;What We Talk About When We Talk About God&#8217; by Rob Bell<\/a> (examiner.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/article\/atheism-101-atheism-is-not-a-worldview?cid=rss\" target=\"_blank\">Atheism 101: Atheism is not a worldview<\/a> (examiner.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/2013\/06\/11\/religious-impasse\/\" target=\"_blank\">Religious Impasse<\/a> (skepticink.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/2013\/07\/08\/hypocrisy-religious-believers-and-the-surveillance-state\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hypocrisy: Religious Believers and The Surveillance State<\/a> (skepticink.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px;height: 15px\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none;float: right\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=d763385d-d6b1-4be7-8659-de2cc5d92494\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, Hemant Mehta had a dialog with a Christian mega-church pastor at the pastor\u2019s mega-church. About 6000 people got to hear Mehta talk about atheism. One of the things that Mehta talked about was that he (and most other active atheists) have heard all the questions before. It was after this that his pastor friend brought out a questions that no atheist has every heard before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17],"tags":[38,50,329,1066,75,632,631,118,609],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-religion","tag-atheism","tag-christian","tag-existence-of-god","tag-god","tag-google","tag-hemant-mehta","tag-megachurch","tag-religion-and-spirituality","tag-theism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}