I left the last post of this series as a committed, yet indifferent, non-believer – indifferent in the sense that I recognised that both factually and morally, Christianity had nothing to offer me. Yet both facts and morals are inescapably features of the world, so something is true even if something else is believed.

As school students we were encouraged, commanded even, to accept as truth things which were obviously missing from our experience or conceptually dubious. The only thing one can say for sure about God is that he never shows up. People say he does, of course, and attribute all sorts of things to his presence, but all these things have other, more plausible, explanations. Of course we’re told that if we only believe in his existence and his function as a pre-requisite, then we will somehow understand it all in that light. It’s hard to think where to begin with this nonsense, save to say that if it was anything else that we were considering, then we would dismiss it with no more than a belly laugh. No test for God outside the subjective exists, and therefore there is no convincing or plausible evidence for the existence of such a thing. Theology – otherwise known as worthless drivel – and apologetics – otherwise known as dishonest dissembling – have for centuries duly engaged the minds of some of the smartest of scholars as well as some of the most gullible or most devious or most dumb. Continue reading

Or. Why I am not a Christian. I suppose that Bertrand Russell is past caring by now.

I’m not sure who, if anyone, will ever read this. If someone does see this who isn’t familiar with the Fighting Fundamental Forum then the names and some of the arguments in this series of posts will be unfamiliar. My apologies in advance.

As I said in my introduction, I’ve spent the last five years in the enemy’s citadel, the place known as the Fighting Fundamental Forums (the FFF). I began there following an appeal in an atheist forum by a poster looking for a bit of help and stayed there for well over 4000 posts, although latterly – over the last two years – I’ve not posted as much. My last post was nearly five months ago. I suppose that the main reason for giving up were the cynical attempts by the new owner to make the forum monetising-friendly, and his clumsy efforts to do this resulted in my being unable to post using Firefox. Although it’s possible to get round this it’s hardly worth the bother, and the forum breakage merely pushed me into something I should have done anyway.

As anyone who’s debated William Lane Craig will testify, it takes one second to make an unsubstantiated claim and a hundred minutes to rebut it. I’m also the type that doesn’t make an argument in a hundred words where a thousand will do. Hence, my posts were getting to be so long that it was difficult to maintain any sort of interest –  they were boring even me. Although there are over a hundred posters with a higher post count, few have as much content. This wouldn’t have been so bad if anyone  – I make an exceptions for the unfairly-derided ALAYMAN and Stasis Point, although he couldn’t stay on topic to save his life and had a talent for addressing what I didn’t say.

This post will be a bit long and will barely mention the FFF. However, it is part of a series in which the forum will come more to the fore. I need to put my own actions there into some context. Continue reading