• turdcollector69@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    19 hours ago

    I’m a strong atheist but I really hate when people cherry pick bible verses to support an argument either for or against.

    It’s stupid when Christians do it and it’s stupid when we do it.

    It’s not even that it’s a bad argument technique, which it is, it’s something exclusively done in bad faith to attempt to dunk on someone who isn’t going to interpret it that way anyway.

    By the time people are pulling out Bible verses the entire exchange has turned into a dick measuring contest from which nothing will be gained.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      19 hours ago

      It’s not a bad argument technique to pull out the actual primary document and examine it. You can take small portions of a document in a fair minded fashion and examine it without deliberately being misleading or taking it out of context.

      • turdcollector69@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        18 hours ago

        “You can take small portions of a document in a fair minded fashion and examine it without deliberately being misleading or taking it out of context.”

        This is literally what’s happening here though, there’s a whole ass comment explaining this quote is out of context that I responded to originally.

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          18 hours ago

          The explanation is bubkis historical re-imagining like when the media sane washes the babble that comes out of Trump’s mouth. He’ll spend 15 minutes babbling about how he thinks magnets work and they report hurr durr somewhere in there he said lower taxes.

          • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            7 hours ago

            It is not historical reimagining to explain what the context of this letter is. Timothy was sent to Ephesus to help the church there which was struggling with the people due to the church’s opposing position on several things that were culturally relevant to the Ephesians, like sex, monogamy, and prostitution. Paul, allegedly, wrote the Timothy letters to him at this time with this context in mind.

          • turdcollector69@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            18 hours ago

            Ok even if that explanation is bubkis it’s still to my point that using Bible quotes goes nowhere because you’re using the root delusion to attempt to disprove their personal delusions.

            You’d be better off quoting Harry potter or anything else that they haven’t already decided the meaning of or integrated into their personality.

        • turdcollector69@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 hours ago

          That’s unfortunately most interactions I’ve had on reddit and Lemmy.

          I think most people just want to comment to be right about something rather than communicate anything valuable.

    • rapchee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      19 hours ago

      every christian believes they live by the bible, which they fortunately don’t, actually
      also faith is supported by the existence ilof the “perfect”, god-inspired text, if we can show it is neither, we shake the foundations that religion relies on

      • turdcollector69@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        18 hours ago

        “if we can show it is neither”

        Not to be a dick but you fundamentally don’t understand religious people because ignoring what’s obviously in front of you is the core “faith” these people talk endlessly about.

        You can’t logically disprove religion because it’s not a logical phenomenon.

        You’re arguing with someone’s personal interpretation of the Bible when you argue the Bible with religious people, they have no objectivity to leverage.

        That’s why I really don’t like using Bible quotes, it’s just indulging in delusion to attempt to disprove delusion.

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          9 hours ago

          You rarely convince christians or any other sort of fanatic you argue with them for the peanut gallery to create a pervasive sense that among smart people its a joke so that a few people should ultimately decide to laugh instead of being the butt of it.

          It is on the overall working. Religious nones are a growing group and atheism is slightly more acceptable. Once nearly all were Christians. We are down to 62% of the pop and the youngest gen is 48%.

        • rapchee@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          13 hours ago

          I’m not saying it will work on everyone, but the fewer “supporting” arguments people have, the more questions they will not be able to reflexively dismiss
          and i’m basing this on myself, i used to be fairly religious, although i was on a “we don’t know what god really is, and the bible is not fully literal” level, so i didn’t have a problem with texts like this

          • turdcollector69@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 hours ago

            In your own words, what is faith?

            In mine:

            The denial of basic facts and the willingness to persevere in the face of all logic on instruction from a higher power for unknowable reasons.

            There’s no shot at converting these people because they already decided the outcome of any logical argument put before them.

            To them each incongruous fact is just a weird shaped puzzle piece that’ll fit their world view no matter how contrived.

            It’s why cult deprogramming is so incredibly difficult.