Disclaimer: the following post is sarcastic. It is not intended to be representative of the tactics used by ALL or most atheist "apologists."


plus, I came across it while trying to learn more about my former Religion annway,,.....that GOD sure is a funny mutha , Say Whaaat!!!......


Listen up Wannabeefs, here's how you do it,........





Rule #1. If any reason for doubt, no matter how far-fetched or speculative, is sufficient for avoiding the conclusion that God exists. For example, even if we don't have the first clue about physics or cosmology, posit the mere possibility of the existence of multiple universes in order to avoid the theistic conclusion of the probabilistic fine-tuning argument for God's existence. This isn't like an American criminal trial where we expect the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." We expect theists to prove God exists beyond any doubt.



Rule #2. Arrogantly assume that all atheists are freethinkers (by virtue of their atheism) and that all theists are not freethinkers (by virtue of their theism), despite the fact that there is no necessary connection between a person's beliefs and how they arrived at their beliefs. Along the same lines, claim that all theists are either stupid or uneducated about the evidence relevant to the existence of God.






Rule #3. Don't take seriously recent, pro-theistic work in the philosophy of religion. After all, if we admit that Hume and Kant did not refute all theistic arguments --including ones that were just formulated in the last 40 years--then we might be forced to consider the possibility that not all theists are stupid.





Rule #4. Along the same lines, misrepresent theistic arguments whenever it is convenient to do so. For example, if a theist presents an argument for God's existence based upon moral ontology (God is required for objective moral values to exist), respond with an objection from moral epistemology (atheists can know objective moral values) and then act as if you've said something profound and relevant.






Rule #5. Require extrabiblical evidence for relatively modest empirical claims in the NT such as the historicity of Jesus, as if there were anything extraordinary about the New Testament Jesus being based upon a real historical individual.





Rule #6. If an atheist or an agnostic accepts the historicity of Jesus, accuse them of being a closet theist. (When we say we are freethinkers, there's a limit to how much we are willing to "think freely.") Besides, we like a certain degree of symmetry between our beliefs about cosmology (the universe began to exist uncaused) and history of religions (Christianity began to exist without a historical Jesus).





Rule #7. Scientism. ('Nuf said.)





Rule #8. Define "atheism" as the lack of belief in God, not the belief that God does not exist, so that even newborns and individuals who are in a permanent vegetative state count as "atheists," despite the fact the vast majority of speakers of the English language do not use the word "atheist" in that way.





Rule #9. Deny that religious claims are testable and then present evidence for their falsity. You can have your apologetic cake and eat it too!





Rule #10. Compare belief in God to belief in Santa Claus, leprechauns, invisible pink unicorns, the flying spaghetti monster, and so forth, as if all supernatural explanatory hypotheses are equally plausible, despite the fact that considerations from inductive logic like scope, simplicity, etc. show that these hypotheses do not have equal intrinsic probability.


remember to have fun learning, there are plenty of weak minded individuals out there for you to torment........

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"He was dead just long enough for the murder rap to blow over. And then he had lunch." - Kujan

let's refresh again....the religious is winning......we need more soldiers........this is for your survival Men....Now let me see your WAR FAce (aaaaaarrrgghhhhghhhhhhh),........Yeah that's what I'm talking about

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"He was dead just long enough for the murder rap to blow over. And then he had lunch." - Kujan

Edit: Nevermind.

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I feel that time has been stolen from me.

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Awww.I'll hump your atheist leg with my atheist (censored)

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Ill have to recover from the theists blah blah theist method 9 blah smoke some more haze...I'll just be a minute miss Mc'fried.

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interesting

Here's one I found...saves me the time of typing out a response.
How to be a Bible Apologist

An Eight-Step Guide to Bible Literalism through Christian Apologetics
I began this project several years ago after meeting many Christians who did not properly know how to use the powerful techniques of Christian Apologetics. Believe it or not, I met many Christians who had been so brainwashed by today's culture that they actually thought that whole swathes of the Bible were not meant to be taken literally!
I know it is disturbing to hear, but many of them were even looking to non-Biblical sources for information on understanding life, morality and religion.
So, I created this guide in the hopes that it can lead at least a few wayward souls into the wonderfully fulfilling field of Bible apologetics.
I've recently updated it with the help of numerous fellow believers who have written to me with additional ways to take the Bible literally. With their help I've solved many more of the so-called "problems", and also found several new ways to solve the ones I had solutions for already. So please, for a better understanding of the Bible, or at least a better understanding of how apologetics works in general, follow the links.
Step One
Step One: Accept the divine, absolute, and literal truth of the Bible.

This is by far the most important step: If the Bible isn't the literal and absolute truth, we might as well just give up the whole game right now.
Step Two


Step Two: Redefine "literal" when needed. Yes, the Bible is a the literal word of God. We all know that from step one. But does this mean that every word is supposed to be taken literally? The answer is yes, except in those cases where it isn't.
For example, the Bible clearly says that God hates homosexuality. That part is literal. The bible also says that God hates mixing different fibers in clothing. That part is not literal.
Now, critics will ask "Ok, but how did you decide?" If this happens, do not panic. A few simple rules of thumb will help:
Shortcut Before applying these rules, ask the questioner if he or she is an atheist. If so, mention that some famous atheist writer or another is a god to them and then you don't have to proceed any further. It's in the rules, I checked.
a) Everything in the Bible is literally true until it is questioned.
b) If the section is question is not in contradiction with anything else in the Bible, it is most likely literally true.
c) If the section is question is in seeming contradiction with something else in the Bible, it is a possible candidate for requiring interpretation.
d) If the section is question is in seeming contradiction with something in the outside world, it is a possible candidate for requiring interpretation.
e) If the section is question would lead to ridiculous or uncomfortable conclusions if taken at face value, it is a possible candidate for requiring interpretation.
Note the words "possible" and "candidate" on these last few: the preferred situation by far is to have everything be literally true. In cases where this is unfortunately not possible, your job as an apologist is to properly interpret the nearly literal statements to make them figuratively literal and relevant again.
Many non-apologists incorrectly assume that since God wrote the Bible, it should be clear, concise, and without the need for interpretation. We apologists know better. The real skill is to know when the Bible is clear, concise and not needing interpretation, but also to know when it does. Following the rules above will show you the way.
So, God hating homosexuality is literal. God hating mixing diverse fibers in clothing is not literal. Perhaps it is a metaphor for not mixing with other races, or possibly it has to do with the way the ancients divided their world into categories, or following the practice of not mixing fibers was a sign of love for God, or it only applied to the ancients and not to modern people, etc. Which one you choose is not important. The important part is that you can now wear wool and linen at the same time without being sent to hell, but still know that Liberace is there.
Important Note Some "newage Christians" might try to use this step to say that Genesis allows for evolution if you read it just right. For reasons I won't go into right now, this is incorrect.
In a similar manner, when God says to keep some law "forever", it may or may not mean a literal "forever". To find out if it was meant literally, just look around:
Is the law still practiced by Christians today?
Do you think it should be practiced today?
If the answer to either of these is "yes", then it probably meant "forever" literally. If not, check to see if a later passage says something which would lead you to believe it wasn't a literal "forever". Chances are it was not a literal "forever". It could have been just a metaphor for "a good long time" and only said "forever" as a kind of hyperbole to show He meant it really good and proper.
There is one caveat though: while it may be all well and good to interpret large portions of the Bible as metaphor and hyperbole, you should still know that those sections are still literally true and not at all the same as saying the Bible should be read as an allegory today.
And always remember, it's you, the apologist, who gets to apply these rules and interpretations; not the critics. So if someone else's interpretation of a section makes the Bible say something you personally disagree with, you can simply discard it. You must always keep in mind the purpose of this whole project is to make the Bible literally true and relevant for today: so, anything that makes it worse is obviously not a proper interpretation.

Another, more advanced, technique in re-interpreting so-called problem sections takes a bit of practice: pretend to learn ancient Hebrew and Greek better than almost anyone else so you can re-translate a section to know what was "really meant" instead of the meaning from the more common translation that is causing the problem.
An example of this would be the global flood in Genesis. If you think this is causing a problem because of a (supposed) total lack of evidence of such an event, just say that when it said "all" the world was flooded, the word that was used in the old text was really not intended to mean "all" like it is commonly translated, it really just meant "some part of" the world. But again, this is optional: You could take any number of angles to make it literally true.

Many many "problems" can be set straight by interpretation. However, I cannot stress enough that you should only attempt to re-translate and interpret those sections being questioned. You would not want to go to a random passage and see if there are any mis-translated words or areas that can be taken as hyperbole. So do not, under any circumstances, interpret or re-translate a section which no one is questioning, those are by definition already literally true!

The best part of re-interpretation is that you can still believe in the common meaning when you want: you only have to acknowledge the re-interpreted meaning when someone questions it, which is the subject of our next step:
Step Three.........

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Step Three: Learn to believe two or more contradictory ideas simultaneously.
Helpful Tip Use this step to believe in the Trinity.
You, as a Bible apologist, should be able to believe any number of mutually contradictory ideas. For example, you should have no problem believing that the Old Testament is the unchanging word of God, and, at the same time, believe that the New Testament is the unchanging word of God. This seemingly impossible feat is easily accomplished.
Let us take the above as an example and look at each section in detail:
The Old Testament is the unchanging word of God.
This is obviously true. Since the Bible is the divine word of God, the Old Testament is literally and absolutely true. Therefore, all the stories, conclusions, and moral lessons of the Old Testament are still valid and are valuable and relevant for today.
The New Testament is the unchanging word of God.
This is obviously true. Since the Bible is the divine word of God, it is literally and absolutely true. Therefore, all the stories, conclusions, and moral lessons of the New Testament are valid and are valuable and relevant for today.
If anyone were to intimate that these two collections of stories are mutually exclusive and incoherent if viewed as one treatise on God, religion or morality, you can quite properly inform them that they are both true and do not contradict each other.
So to the ancient Hebrews, God was a angry cloud who demanded sacrifices and rituals and had myriad laws and statutes from which the slightest deviation could result in the deaths of thousands. To the early Christians, God was a transcendant being who required next to nothing but private prayer and actively worked to prevent the punishment of people who had committed moral crimes what would previously have required stoning. The glory of this step is that both of these are true... They are both accurate representations of one unchanging God.
This is true for any number of reasons. You could, for example, let them know that the important moral lessions and knowledge of God gathered from the literal stories have a deep dependence on the time, place, economy and culture where they originated. So, if viewed through the lens of those dependencies, both accounts point to the one overriding theme or something (Please see step six if the idea of culturally-dependent moral lessons sounds realistic). Or get creative: invent one of your own! A liberal application of step two will help greatly.
Step Four

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Step Four: Ignore or re-interpret the last 600 years of scientific knowledge
Many of those who attack the Bible will try to use science to show that parts of the Bible aren't literally true. When someone does this, you have several courses of action available. You can:
Helpful Tip A good rule of thumb is to try to re-interpret science before you try to re-interpet the literal Bible.
a) Claim science is wrong.
b) Claim that the attacker believes science to be a god.
c) Claim science has always agreed with Bible.
d) Redefine "literal" (via step two) so you can claim the Bible doesn't actually say what the attacker claims.
While many apologists automatically choose the first option, the others are equally valid.
Shortcut Before you bother to refute a critic, simply see if there is someone with a Ph.D with views similar to yours. If so, you win. The field of study doesn't matter: a Biblical apologist Ph.D. wins automatically in any argument on any topic (see step one).
For example, when a Bible attacker tries to attack Genesis by saying "it isn't possible that there was a global flood because of scientific reasons x, y, and z," you can:
a) Claim that science is wrong and can't explain anything, and therefore reasons x, y, and z are just designed to mislead people into thinking there are problems with the Bible.
b) Claim that the attacker believes science to be a god. It doesn't actually address the issue, but it's fun.
c) Claim there is plenty evidence for a global flood and science will one day prove it and answer x, y, and z, and therefore science totally and completely agrees with the Bible.
d) Claim that the Bible doesn't say the flood was global, therefore reasons x, y, and z don't apply.
As an apologist, you are free to choose any of these, depending on the objections raised. (You should also be willing to accept all of them if the situation dictates.)
For example, we know that evolution simply does not happen; the literal reading of Genesis tells us that. But we can still also believe that evolution does happen in cases where it will help support the Bible.
"Really?" You say? Yes. During the global flood (if you read it that way), Noah built a big boat to hold all the different "kinds" of animals. The "problem" is, if you define a "kind" as a species, there wouldn't be room (if you acknowledge that). So if you define "kinds" as genuses or families, there just might be room possibly. So after the flood, all the animals evolved into the various species we have today on their ways back to their native lands. (See step three)
Another fun technique is to mention that some miracle depicted in the Bible is explainable by scientific means. However, you must be extremely careful when applying science to the miracles of the Bible. If you do it occasionally you can win an argument that such and such miracle was possible, and it just might quell some doubts in the semi-faithful. But just because a miracle can be explained by science, actually doing so to all of the miracles of the Bible would not be desirous: there'd be no miracles left!
Step Five

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