"The Atheist Test"

[MattofVA]

I may have dinner wih my family and some family friends this evening. These friends-and old couple-want me to answer a real life paper version of this (http://ecclesia.org/truth/atheist.html). I know it is full of strawmen. For example, I know that evolution of organic matters is a much different matters than the coke can. The banana is ridiculous since many foods are not as convenient-since one edible plant out of hundreds is this convenient, big deal. IF anyone is familiar with the "atheist test" and has any more specific info-especially regarding the example of the Coke can, I would appreciate it or any links you might find. Frankly, I don't try to make my real life family, friends or co-workers alter or lose their faith, so I'm sick of them trying to "save" me :banghead: . Why can't we all just be grownups. :confused: My apologies for not posting at iidb for quite a while, but if I can just find decent answers to this particular piece of crap, then it's all I have to do for a while with regard to justifying myself a little here and there.

I must now leave the cyberlair of the EAC for a couple hourse, tah tah.

[JGL53]

I may have dinner wih my family and some family friends this evening. These friends-and old couple-want me to answer a real life paper version of this (http://ecclesia.org/truth/atheist.html). I know it is full of strawmen. For example, I know that evolution of organic matters is a much different matters than the coke can. The banana is ridiculous since many foods are not as convenient-since one edible plant out of hundreds is this convenient, big deal. IF anyone is familiar with the "atheist test" and has any more specific info-especially regarding the example of the Coke can, I would appreciate it or any links you might find. Frankly, I don't try to make my real life family, friends or co-workers alter or lose their faith, so I'm sick of them trying to "save" me :banghead: . Why can't we all just be grownups. :confused: My apologies for not posting at iidb for quite a while, but if I can just find decent answers to this particular piece of crap, then it's all I have to do for a while with regard to justifying myself a little here and there.

I must now leave the cyberlair of the EAC for a couple hourse, tah tah.

This was fairly thouroughly discussed in this thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=109785&highlight=atheist+test

[Alter]

Probably the BEST argument against this is perfection. The Coke can is a "perfect" invention. There are no flaws in it, no relics of earlier purposes. If you thought a Coke can evolved from, say, a wooden cup, you might find traces of wood in it, or a relic of the old shape. But apart from man-made relics of design, there is no wood nor cup in a coke can.

But in people, or in bananas, you can find thousands upon thousands of trial and error mistakes. For example: if you were to go out and "design" a perfect banana, why wouldn't you make it cold-resistant? Why wouldn't you make it stay at peak ripeness for more than a few hours? Why would you make it so easy to bruise? All legacies of evolving to fit it's evolutionary niche.

Same goes for people. Why do we have easily detachable retinas, that plague old people, when a better-designed retina (like that of a squid) would never have that problem? Why are we susceptible to so many diseases and birth defects? Why can't our cilia in our ears, or our spinal cord, repair themselves after damage like the rest of our body? Why do we have an appendix that serves no useful purpose, but can rupture and kill us? Why do we have a tailbone if we don't have a tail? Why do we have canine teeth if our incisors are plenty sharp enough for meat? Why aren't our main nerves for vomiting, sexual function, and digestion routed through the most logical path, the spinal cord? Why do we eat and breathe through the same tube, which makes possible death by choking on food?

An intelligent designer would've put us together in a much better way!

[MattofVA]

Didn't expect a reply that quickly, thanks. It doesn't surprise me that this lame shit has been discussed on iidb before, the posters on that thread had pretty much much the same thoughts I do, hopefully it will all be reasonably easy to get across to these people who aren't nitwits except when these subjects come up in their cxompartmentalized minds.

[MattofVA]

Probably the BEST argument against this is perfection. The Coke can is a "perfect" invention. There are no flaws in it, no relics of earlier purposes. If you thought a Coke can evolved from, say, a wooden cup, you might find traces of wood in it, or a relic of the old shape. But apart from man-made relics of design, there is no wood nor cup in a coke can.

But in people, or in bananas, you can find thousands upon thousands of trial and error mistakes. For example: if you were to go out and "design" a perfect banana, why wouldn't you make it cold-resistant? Why wouldn't you make it stay at peak ripeness for more than a few hours? Why would you make it so easy to bruise? All legacies of evolving to fit it's evolutionary niche.

Same goes for people. Why do we have easily detachable retinas, that plague old people, when a better-designed retina (like that of a squid) would never have that problem? Why are we susceptible to so many diseases and birth defects? Why can't our cilia in our ears, or our spinal cord, repair themselves after damage like the rest of our body? Why do we have an appendix that serves no useful purpose, but can rupture and kill us? Why do we have a tailbone if we don't have a tail? Why do we have canine teeth if our incisors are plenty sharp enough for meat? Why aren't our main nerves for vomiting, sexual function, and digestion routed through the most logical path, the spinal cord? Why do we eat and breathe through the same tube, which makes possible death by choking on food?

An intelligent designer would've put us together in a much better way!

I just got your reply, alter, right after I posted in response TO JGL53. Indeed, the so-called argument from design falls quite short when we simply take a look at our own bodies and realize they are hardly up to the standards of deisgn that a perfect, omnimax God would hold to. In addition to the flaws inour bodies design you mention, walking upright takes quite a toll on our knees(which are too small) and back. Wouldn't it be nice to have the keen senses of smell and hearing that our dogs do? Why is a healthy weight so hard to maintain? The logical answer is that our modern diet and lifestyle has not been around for long enough to compensate, yet. We evolved for different living conditions. I could go on forever.

[JGL53]

Or merely ask your christian friends if Adam and Eve had navels (belly buttons). That should make for some lively entertainment for a while.

[Amanda Hugginkiss]

I guess I don't understand why you feel the need to answer their little test? It was a childish, uneducated thing for them to ask you to do, so why are you obligated to play along?

[Jennie]

Just say "No, thanks, I already know I'm an atheist, I don't need a test to confirm it." If they insist, then have a print-out of the other thread ready and give it to them.

[Alter]

Even better, give THEM a bible test to work on while you're working on the atheist test. There's loads of bible-contradiction sites out there.

Do a math quiz, too, there's loads of math errors in the bible.

Make sure to quiz them carefully on whether or not they agree with slavery, putting unruly children to death. And be sure to check to see if they are wearing clothing of mixed fibers!!

[Amanda Hugginkiss]

Even better, give THEM a bible test to work on while you're working on the atheist test. There's loads of bible-contradiction sites out there.
... And be sure to check to see if they are wearing clothing of mixed fibers!!

Ooh, this is better than what I said! Do this one, do this one!

[apocalypsecow]

I guess I don't understand why you feel the need to answer their little test? It was a childish, uneducated thing for them to ask you to do, so why are you obligated to play along?

Second this.

My god, if I was one of those manners and etiquette columnists, I'd be aghast at such a proposition: "Okay, you come to dinner with us, and we'll test your belief system, alright?"

How fucking rude.

Take the test. Tear them a new one.

[Writer@Large]

If you do actually take the test, be sure to critique their dinner for all the sub-optimally designed foods. After all, if God meant for us to eat the banana, he must have meant for us to leave pineapples and coconuts alone!

In all seriousness, I'm in the "how rude, why would you ever agree to this" camp. If they want to invite you to dinner, then invite you to dinner. But using it as a pretext to convert you is just nasty.

Frankly, I don't try to make my real life family, friends or co-workers alter or lose their faith, so I'm sick of them trying to "save" me . Why can't we all just be grownups.

Tell them this. Be upfront and honest. You'd love to have dinner with them, but are upset at the thought that they're just inviting you over to convert you. If they still insist ... I say go with the counter-test idea. Be as rude to them as they are to you. Then see if they "get it."

--W@L

[braces_for_impact]

Don't be their monkey. It's that simple. If you wish to discuss, then go ahead. But I would make it a point that there are many reasons not to believe in god. That is not a requirement of 'evolutionists'. Many theists understand and accept evolution.

[MattofVA]

I wiggled out of that particular conversation indicated in the OP for the most part, and they were good about it. They didn't invite me over just to try to convert me, they only tried to broach the subject because of I used to be a believer(or at least wavered between being a believer and a closet agnostic pretending to be a believer :Cheeky: ). It was mostly the usual pleasant things I have always done with these people-like a somewhat exotic dinner and a couple rounds of scrabble and chess :) . I do agree with some of the posters that I shouldn't feel obligated about these things, but I wanted just a little ammo, thanks for pointing to that other thread. Anyone else been faced lately with silly little things like this by people who are otherwise usually more mature?

[epepke]

I may have dinner wih my family and some family friends this evening. These friends-and old couple-want me to answer a real life paper version of this (http://ecclesia.org/truth/atheist.html). I know it is full of strawmen. For example, I know that evolution of organic matters is a much different matters than the coke can. The banana is ridiculous since many foods are not as convenient-since one edible plant out of hundreds is this convenient, big deal.

It's probably not random that it's convenient, though.

A banana, or most fruits, evolved so that animals would eat them. They have all sorts of fruity goodness, most of which is unimportant for the seed. However, what is important for the seed is that it gets to be eaten by an animal and come out the other end with some nice fertilizer, which is terribly important.

That a fruit should have evolved for eating, even eating by a particular order of mammals, is no big surprise.

[pairadocs]

The Coke can is a "perfect" invention. There are no flaws in it, no relics of earlier purposes.

Two words: New Coke. Clear evidence of an evolutionary offshoot that didn't make it. :Cheeky:

[Duck!]

Note that the banana:
Has a point at top for ease of entry
Yup, haven't you noticed that once you've bitten the top off a banana, the rest of it is really difficult to eat because it's no longer easy to get in your mouth?

This is why I eat bananas in a single mouthful...


Duck!

[jester2459]

Actually, the fruit god designed the banana to be eaten curved to the left side of the mouth, not curved towards the eater. It is a sign of a heretic to eat with the banana curved toward oneself.

[Julian]

Tell them you will take their test (it should be easy to destroy those moronic points) but only if they will take a test of yours, such as this one:

http://ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php

Julian

[Ebonmuse]

It's probably not random that it's convenient, though.

A banana, or most fruits, evolved so that animals would eat them. They have all sorts of fruity goodness, most of which is unimportant for the seed. However, what is important for the seed is that it gets to be eaten by an animal and come out the other end with some nice fertilizer, which is terribly important.

That a fruit should have evolved for eating, even eating by a particular order
of mammals, is no big surprise.

This is all true, but there's an even more effective rebuttal to this bit of Ray Comfort nonsense: The banana you can buy in supermarkets is a human invention. It is a product of many generations of artificial selection by human breeders, intended to enhance the traits that we humans find desirable. The wild banana is small, bitter, and full of hard seeds. Of course domesticated bananas are convenient for human use: we made them that way, just as we domesticated dogs from wolves to better suit our purposes. In fact, this is true of most varieties of edible fruit and vegetables - watermelons, strawberries, corn and apples to name a few. Most people would find the wild versions of these species all but inedible.

[Albion]

That test needs a two-word answer: "theistic evolutionists."

This business of equating evolution with atheism is really tiresome.

[JGL53]

That test needs a two-word answer: "theistic evolutionists."

This business of equating evolution with atheism is really tiresome.

Well, yeah, sorta, kinda, maybe. But I've been studying evolution for a few decades now, and it seems to me that once a person develops a proper appreciation of what evolution is all about, a supposed theistic evolution actually seems more preposterous than ye olde out-and-out creationism so much favored by the saved.

E.g., god actually caused that asteroid/meteor to strike the Yucatan area some 63 million years ago in order to wipe out 70 per cent of all species, including dinosaurs, in order to make way for hand-sized mammals to evolve into new species like horses and hippos and humans, etc.? A guy who is omnipotent and omni-everything else chooses this Rube Goldberg way of creating lifeforms - what, just for kicks?

Yeah, that coulda happened. But me, I would have just pointed my finger, spoke the magic words, and zapped it all into being, like, in six days or so. But, hey, I guess that's why I didn't get the god gig - I'm just too dull and unsexy, too much of a wham-bam-thank-you-mam kind of guy. :D

[Darren D]

Tell them you will take their test (it should be easy to destroy those moronic points) but only if they will take a test of yours, such as this one:

http://ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php

Julian

Brilliant link - thanks :thumbs:

[SLUGFly]

Don't be their monkey.

I love doing things like this... consider it sparring or training... lol, this is some of the silliest stuff I've ever heard. But it uses all of the Devil's tools, deception through a limitation of answers, degradation for using the "wrong" answer, fear and uncertainty. I'm going to answer the test here, but as a point for point conversation, not limiting myself to the answers they provided (since they provide answers that only lead to either God or humiliation)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Theory of the Evolving Coke Can
Sure it had a creator... a team of them who had knowledge passed on to them and who passed their knowledge on to ancestors when they died... God has a lineage? This example would make us think so.

The Banana, the Atheists fantasy.
They forgot number 11, the banana is the most phallic thing found in nature. So this is to lead us to believe:
A) The designer is perverted and has an obsession with phalluses.
B) The designer intends us to practice using a banana.
C) Our own phalluses were intended to be removed and consumed at some point. (perhaps after a time of dwindling birth rates this was changed to simple circumcision)

TEST ONE: The person who thinks that a Coke can had no designer is:::

Intelligent, the can had a team of designers who worked together and (important to add) completely independant of the team who worked together to design its contents.

Charles Darwin said:
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

(but it continues... ha ha, "removed details" are explanations or reiterations of what was already said)

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, (removed details) can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; (removed details), then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, (removed details) can hardly be considered real.

The end of what he said (the part they had cut out) was that if one looks at the greater picture then there can be no difficulty (the difficulty can hardly be considered real) believing that it happened by natural selection.

TEST TWO:::
Building with no builder:: Any cave will do (or the team makers theory)
Painting with no painter:: Grand Canyon colors
Car with no maker:: Again with the team of makers and independant designers

TEST THREE:::
Yes there is an order
Yes it happened by accident
No there wasn't an intelligent designer
If I dropped 50 oranges every few seconds for a few billion years I'm sure I would get all sorts of perfect rows, perfect circles, triangles, stacks...

The statement "There is a God!" is a positive statement and bares the burden of proof. If I make a statement, "There are no jellybeans on the sun" I don't need perfect knowledge of both, I need only partial knowledge of the origin of Jellybeans and their constitution and only a child's knowledge of the heat of the sun. If I say "There are jellybeans on the sun" then I'm faced with the burden of proving what I say.

TEST FOUR::
Do you believe there are Jellybeans on the sun?

TEST FIVE::
The man who sees a building and knows WHO the builder was, is::
A) an architect themselves (or an aspiring architect)
B) interested in architecture as a hobby
C) knows the builder personally, as in met the builder and had a (two-way) dialogue with them
D) A liar or a propogandist of rumor and hearsay.

Any answer could be correct, this was not a trick question.

So, based on this "test" we come to the following conclusions-

1) We live in a polytheistic world. There must be teams, lineages, births and deaths of gods and also battles between gods for power. (this point is repeated vigorously throughout the test)

2) God (or at least... the fruit god) intended us to be active felatio artists, and judging by the peach, cunnilinguists too.

3) There are jellybeans on the sun, and since you can't go there and jellybeans are far too small to be seen with telescopes... you'll just have to accept my claim.

4) All Christians are either architects or spreaders or rumors (I honestly don't beleive there are, and haven't met, many Christians who are "lie" about God)

5) Conversion is imminent, felatio and jellybeans for everyone!!! :)

[fr8trainman]

If bannanas are so perfect, then why are coconuts so dad-burned hard to open?!!! Just exactly what do coconuts prove about a "creator"?

Or pinworms?



happiness,

fr8trainman