debating a christian - little help [View all]

[jogi1969]

Hello

I have been lurking on DU for a while;
I come here to read posts and learn.

I have a group of friends who I go bowling with on Saturday, nominally we just talk BS about our game but a new group member started bringing up religion. At first it started with innocuous bible verses, which was easy enough to ignore but when I was asked directly do I believe I stated I am an atheist.
So the person is taken aback - DILLIGAF - and I enjoyed the game, but like a good christian he kept quoting bible verses and telling me that god 'loves' me and asking why would I reject it. So I asked what about the millions of children who will be raped/sold into sexual slavery/abused by the time we go home. His response was to tell me about some inspirational person who gives motivational speeches to churches - a woman who was sexually abused by her father for a decade and how she was able to overcome that terrible life and now - this is good - is a millionaire and that is proof that god can bring something good out of horror. Which I responded with god didn't do shit while she was getting raped; and he wont do shit about what will happen by the time we wake up tomorrow.

At this point he asks me what do I have to lose - Pascals wager - so to shut him down I said "I do not accept Jesus as my personal savior and I deny the holy ghost" which stopped the proselytizing.

Yesterday someone from the group stopped by and wanted to hang out so after we smoked a blunt he starts in on the religion angle, he asks me why did I say that I rejected the holy ghost as that puts me in danger. So I tell him a little story;

Lets say that I am driving and I get carjacked - the guy puts a gun to my head and tells me to drive, the first homeless person I see the gunman tells me to give the homeless person all of the cash I have - which I do because I don't want to get shot. The gunman then tells me to go to a ATM and withdraw all of my money even my savings and we drive around and I give every homeless person I see one half of the money until it is all gone. The gunman then takes me to a deserted road and jumps out leaving me alone and broke.

I ask did I do a good thing?
he says yes.
but I did it under duress did I not?
he says yes
So I did not have a choice right?
he again agrees

That's when I ask how is that different than telling me that I am putting my soul in danger?
IF I accept Jesus THEN I get eternal life and all the boring shit that comes with it
IF I DO NOT accept Jesus THEN I get punished.

Same principal - either do what the gunman (Jesus) says or get shot(go to hell) how is that a choice?
he responds that Jesus is not a gunman and he loves me. He went on to give me testimony about his 'personal relationship' with Jesus and how much he suffered for me - this lasted about 30 minuets.
After he stopped talking I again pointed out that when I die that is the choice - either accept Jesus and the doctrine of Christianity OR punishment for eternity - which is not a choice at all like the gunman analogy.

He then states that just by me saying there is a choice after death is amounts to me tacitly saying that god exists.
After I stopped laughing I pointed out that when I say god-damn I am not referring to any deity, just like when I say oh shit I am not referring to actual shit.

So in order to get the point across I changed it from Jesus to a unicorn - if a unicorn threatened me with eternal punishment OR believe in unicorns that is still not a choice.
His response was to repeat that it is a choice, I am choosing to not believe.
I said a choice made under the threat of eternal punishment takes away choice.

I tried for over 2 hours to get the point across but we went round and round with the gunman analogy.

Unless I miss my guess I'm gonna hear it on Saturday from this guy and the bible thumper, any ideas on what to expect and how to counter their arguments?