Updated: Brian's proof of the existence of God

Reader Brian has been kind enough to send along his proof of the existence of God. I am having a bit of a busy week, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but since I haven't posted much else and won't have time to go over it until the weekend, I probably shouldn't keep people waiting. I did glance through the first few pages, and it's clear I'm going to have to Google some terms, and/or take a philosophy course. Perhaps the second option... if only there were time.

Anyway, have a great week, everybody, and happy reading!

UPDATE, November 2nd: Brian e-mailed me a small addition he meant to include in this (Proposition 4a). I've added it in.

From here until the end of the post is Brian (Paladin)'s work.

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Notice: the following is for entertainment purposes only. The author assumes no extraordinary liability toward the reader for mental injury or facial injuries due to boredom-induced collapse into computer keyboards, nor can the author be held accountable for any program of hair-replacement therapy necessitated by the frustrated removal of the original follicles by the reader. Besides, the author doesn't have any money to pay a lawsuit; so there.
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The Necessary Existence of God?

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Definition A: By "cause", this argument will mean "ontological cause", or "that which is responsible for bringing an object into existence," or "that which bestows existence to another object." (It's true that Aristotle, Aquinas, etc., suggested many types of causes; I'll be abstracting from and/or conflating them, in general. Time will tell if such a move is well-advised.)

Definition B: By "object", this argument will mean anything which in any way holds ontological existence.

Definition C: By "eternal", this argument will mean that which is completely independent of time.

Definition D: By "intrinsic [essential] existence", this argument will describe that which exists by necessity, and by its very nature; that which is causeless.

Definition E: By "extrinsic [essential] existence", this argument will describe that which is dependent upon an ontological cause for its existence; that which does not exist by necessity.

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Assumptions (assumed to be self-evident):

Lemma #1: An object must exist in order to act.
Lemma #2: An object cannot use or extend that which it does not possess
(corollary to Lemma #1).

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Proposition #1: No object can be its own cause.

Proof: There are only two possibilities for any object, re: causation: an object is either caused, or uncaused.

a) If an object is uncaused, then Prop. #1 is trivially true.

b) If an object is caused, then its cause must (by Lemma #1) have existed in order to enact that causation. It is therefore manifestly true that a non-existent object cannot act to bring itself (or anything else) into existence.

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Proposition #2: Causation is necessarily bound to the definition of "change."

Proof: Any change is an event by which an object either loses or gains characteristics--by which an object (in one or more ways) moves from potentiality to actuality, or from actuality to potentiality. (It will be necessary, before finishing the proof, to discuss the mode of continued existence of any given object.) Since "cause" (as per definition #1) denotes an event by which an object gains ontological existence, the definition of "change" is thus satisfied. (Discussions of change regarding "loss" will be described below.)

An object's existence can be conceived as being either (a) intrinsic, by its very nature (i.e. uncaused); or (b) extrinsic (i.e. caused and maintained). It might be argued that an object could, hypothetically, be "caused, but independent (i.e. not maintained)" in the sense that it required an "initial cause", but needs no "maintenance" of that acquired existence; such a suggestion stems from a misunderstanding of--among other things--the nature of time, in that an object's existence at any given moment subsequent to its causation is dependent on its existence in prior moments (up to that moment of causation--which is then dependent on the extrinsic cause), just as surely as the existence of a 100m object is dependent upon the existence of, say, the first 99m. Such a suggestion, therefore, cannot be maintained.

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Objection #1: Cannot an object have discontinuous existence? Cannot an object exist for a burst of moments, blink out of existence, and then re-appear, for an indefinite number of repetitions?

Reply #1: Even if that were possible, it would merely push the case back to smaller intervals; the very same propositions would hold for each small "segment" of existence, and each "annihilation" would require its own cause, as would any subsequent "recreation". If an object has intrinsic existence, then (by definition) it will never cease; if an
object has extrinsic existence, then it is dependent on an extrinsic cause for that existence. No object can "cycle" between existence and nonexistence by its intrinsic nature--if for no other reason than the fact that any object which ceases to exist (a) is shown to have non-intrinsic existence, and (b) would be helpless to enact its own "recreation" (cf. Lemma #1).

There are only two ways by which characteristics can be lost: by active negation (i.e. an event, force, etc., which actively cancels an existing characteristic), or by privation (i.e. by having the "maintaining source" discontinue its maintenance). Both cases require an extrinsic cause.

Similarly, there is only one way by which attributes can be gained: by extrinsic cause (since an object cannot bestow upon itself that which it does not itself possess, as per Lemma #2).

As such, any change must necessarily require a cause or causes (since change, by definition, requires the gain and/or loss of attributes--and both require extrinsic causes). Conversely, any cause (so-called) would necessitate the existence of change--at least insofar as the object being "caused" is concerned (which changes in state from potential to actual--from nonexistence to existence).

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Objection #2: "There seem to be many types of change which do not require gain or loss; what is gained or lost, for example, by an object moving from position A to position B?"

Reply #2: Such an object would lose its characteristic of occupying position A (to say nothing of a possible loss of being at relative rest), and it would gain the characteristic of occupying position B (to say nothing of having gained--albeit briefly--the positions of all intermediate locations, and having lost the state of potentiality inherent in *not* moving). No change can possibly occur without gain or loss. (It should be noted that the subjective ideas of "degradation" and "improvement" have nothing especially to do with the strict definitions of "gain" (moving from potential to actual) or "loss" (moving from actual to potential); it is not the purpose of this specific proposition to explore advancement toward, or retreat from, any sort of perfection.)

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Proposition #3: Given any example of change(s), one must consequently posit one or more causes.

Proof: see Proposition #2. I assert that the visible universe does, in fact, offer many such examples of change (which consequently require causes), and that such a fact is self-evident.

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Proposition #4: That which has intrinsic existence in its essence must be changeless in its essence.

Proof: from Proposition #3, any change would necessitate a cause; and that which has intrinsic existence is, by definition, causeless (cf. Proposition #2); therefore, that which has intrinsic existence cannot admit of change. Or, to put the matter differently: if the statement "that which admits of change(s) must thereby require a cause" is true
(which it is, by Proposition #3), then the contrapositive of that statement is also necessarily true: "that which does not require a cause (i.e. has intrinsic existence) does not admit of change"--which is the thesis statement of Proposition #4.

Proposition #4a: Every “chain” of extrinsically caused objects must have an uncaused cause (i.e. a cause with intrinsic existence) as its ultimate source; a hypothetical “infinite regression of extrinsic causes” would be empty of content (i.e. would not exist at all).

Proof: By definition, an extrinsically caused (i.e. contingent) object does not possess existence by its nature (as would an object with intrinsic existence); it must "borrow" (i.e. "depend/subsist on") existence from its antecedent cause (see Proposition #2). If the ontological antecedent of a contingent object is itself contingent, then it must in turn "borrow" existence from its own antecedent, and so on, in turn; but if there were a hypothetical infinite string of consecutive "ontological causes", none of which possessed ontological existence in and of itself (but which was dependent on its ontological antecedent), then the total ontological content of that string would be "... + 0 + 0 + 0 + ...", without reaching a term of actual value (i.e. the total content would be "0").

Illustrations for this idea abound, but here's a popular one: picture a string of people going to see a movie, and passing the ticket booth; and picture each successive person, when asked to pay for a ticket, point to the person in back, saying: "He'll pay for me!" If the string of movie-goers were infinite, the ticket-taker would never get paid.


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Objection #3: "Cannot an object exist intrinsically in its essence, but extrinsically in its accidents and/or attendant attributes? In other words, cannot an object with intrinsic existence somehow contain accidental attributes which are extrinsic, and therefore subject to change?"

Reply #3: That question is not germane to the issue at hand; the only objection which could have weight against proposition #4 would be an instance where an object with intrinsic ESSENTIAL existence was subject to change in that essence. It is enough to say that, if there were (hypothetically) attendant accidents to an object with intrinsic essential existence, they would themselves require causes to the extent that they existed extrinsically, and certainly to the extent that they exhibited change.

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Proposition #5: That which has intrinsic essential existence must necessarily be eternal in its essence.

Proof: Change, by its very nature, necessitates time, and vice-versa. Time is a dimension of space which has meaning (and even existence) only when some manner of change exists; functionally, time is a measure of change, and it cannot operate on that in which there is no change against which progress could be measured. Since that which has intrinsic existence is changeless by definition, it must necessarily be immune to time, and therefore eternal (by definition).

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Proposition #6: Any uncaused cause must be eternal and unchanging in its essence; its essential existence must be utterly beyond space/time.

Proof: see Propositions #4 and 5. Note that the pseudo-converse of this proposition (i.e. "that which is in eternity must have intrinsic essential existence") is not necessarily true (and is known, by Divine Revelation, to be false: e.g. angels).

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Objection #4: "These arguments depend entirely on the idea that objects are strictly simple ones--that each object is the result of only one cause. This cannot be maintained, since any composite object will necessarily have component parts which need causes--possibly from many different venues (e.g. color, shape, etc.)."

Reply #4: The above propositions are most easily applied to simple objects; that is true. However, composite objects are--by definition--reducible to simple parts, which themselves would be described by these propositions. Consider, also, that even a composite object *can* have a single ontological cause (though it need not), which would be covered under these scenarios.

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Objection #5: "Some attributes of composite objects simply can't be 'parsed' like that; how, for example, could we speak of a cause for an apple's shape, another cause for its redness, another for its rigidity, etc.? It's equivocal to say that 'the apple exists', when in fact its shape, color, rigidity, etc., all exist as well."

Reply #5: This may well be a shortcoming of my argument due to a neglect of the various types of causes; a formal cause, for example, could well differ from an accidental cause or a material cause, and so on. However, the same principle holds: every "caused" object (be that object a "physical object" as considered by common idiom, or a single
attribute of any such object--which is an "object" in the sense of that which holds ontological existence, and has a cause which answers the question "WHY is that so?") must trace itself to an ultimately uncaused cause.

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Proposition #7: Any uncaused cause will necessarily be identical with its very existence (i.e. its essence and existence must be equivalent).

Proof: First, consider three aspects of any object: (a) the object itself, (b) the object’s existence, and (c) the object’s reason for existence. When considering an uncaused cause, the reason for its existence is, by definition, contained within itself—i.e. it exists by its very nature. Thus, (b) = (c). It remains to be demonstrated that (a) = (c), which would consequently show that (a) = (b).

All objects have a "reason for existence" [hereafter: "reason"]; that reason would be either external (if the object is contingent) or internal (if the object is uncaused). Given that the reason for an uncaused cause is necessarily internal to it[self], this leaves three situational comparisons:

(#1) The object's reason exceeds the object.
(#2) The object exceeds its reason.
(#3) The object is identical to its reason.

Situation #1 would entail a contradiction of the definitions of "uncaused" and "internal", since a reason cannot be contained in (i.e. "internal to") its object if the reason exceeds that object.

Situation #2 would entail "parts" of the object which were distinct from the reason itself (i.e. which were not in the "province" of the reason); as such, those "remainder aspects" would be contingent on the (internal but distinct) reason, and would thereby "disqualify" themselves from "membership" in the utterly non-contingent, uncaused cause.

Therefore, #3 is the only situation which does not prove itself to be absurd. As such, (a) = (c), which necessitates that (a) = (b).

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Objection #6: "Could it not be possible to speak of multiple "reasons" for an object's existence? For example, would it not be valid to suggest that a biological mother AND father would be reasons for a child's existence?

Reply #6: It is certainly possible to speak of multiple reasons for existence… provided that we are speaking of contingent objects (e.g. the child in question would have far more reasons for existence: proper temperature for survival, adequate food supply, etc.), but it's quite beside the point in this case. Even if a plurality of reasons within an uncaused cause were possible (and that will be shown to be untenable), the main issue of this idea is whether or not the reason(s) is(are)
INTERNAL or EXTERNAL to the object itself; the very same scenarios (a,b, and c, from proposition #7) would apply; the only difference would be that any multiple reasons, as a collective whole, would be identical to the object itself.

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Proposition #8: Any uncaused cause will necessarily be identical with existence itself.

Proof: By proposition #7, any uncaused cause is identical to its own existence. In addition, all contingent objects have existence which is not theirs by nature; despite temporal illusions to the contrary, no contingent object is "given" existence in any essential way, as if it were somehow given existence apart from its cause (ref: Proposition #2).
A contingent object is no less contingent (i.e. dependent on its cause for existence) during any subsequent point in time than it is at its temporal beginning.

Since the sum-total of contingent existence (as reflected in the sum-total of existing contingent objects—we can call it “C”) is within (and "borrowed from") the uncaused cause (since no contingent object has existence in and of itself, but relies on the existence of its cause), and since the totality of existence (we can call this “T”) entails the union of contingent existence (“C”) and intrinsic existence (we can call this “I”); then that totality (“T”) of existence is identical to the uncaused cause itself (see Proposition #7).
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Objection #7: Why can there not be several uncaused causes, which would entail SEVERAL sources of existence (rather than just one)? Wouldn't that undermine the equivalence of "uncaused cause" and "existence"?

Reply #7: This question anticipates Proposition #10; but again, it is beside this particular point. If, hypothetically, there were several uncaused causes, then it would still be necessarily true for the uncaused causes, as a collective, to be equivalent to existence as such, given the equivalence between an uncaused cause's reason and its existence, and given the utter lack of existence contained per se in the non-intrinsically-existing objects.

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Proposition #9: Any uncaused cause (i.e. whose essential existence is intrinsic) must be unlimited in all respects.

Proof: Limitation, per se, is the extent to which something does not exist. For example: that which exists as a 4'-radius sphere does not exist beyond that radius; or, that which occupies 1 cubic foot of space at point X does not exist thusly at any point Y beyond the boundaries of that enclosed space; etc. That which exists in every way would necessarily be unlimited in every way; and that which was utterly unlimited would enjoy the fullness of existence.

Here is an alternate way to demonstrate the same idea: it is true that all "limited" objects must be caused, since any object which is limited cannot be identified with existence as such, and cannot contain its own reason for existence (as would be necessary with any uncaused object--see Props. #7,8). This establishes the conditional statement: "that which is limited, is caused." Given that this is a true statement, then its contrapositive must necessarily be true, which
reads: "that which is uncaused, is unlimited."

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Objection #8: What of the aspects of reality which do not seem to imply lack? You wouldn't say that a male was limited in his existence to the extent that he wasn't female, would you? If so, then which one out of a man and woman would be limited by not being the other gender? In short: what about the cases where two seemingly "existing" things are mutually exclusive?

Reply #8: Again, as per reply #2, it is not the purpose of this proposition to make affective or subjective judgments about any given object. It is certainly true that a male simply does not have the faculties of a female, and vice versa... but any criticism of that state of affairs remains a subjective one; the fact that a male lacks female attributes, etc., is still a fact. It does not mean to imply that a male is not functioning properly by failing, for example, to be female. It merely shows one of many evidences that prove the limitation and non-universality of any contingent object.

In the case of a square and a circle, for example, one might say that a square could be a perfect square--and a circle could be a perfect circle--without containing the attributes of one another. While this is true, it is quite beside the point; save to give further proof of the limitations and non-universality of both.

It might help to consider the following: any order of being which holds mutually exclusive possibilities must be limited, by definition. There is no question of any circle, no matter how large, being unlimited in all respects, for example; its "circleness" requires a center and constant radius, or else it ceases to be a circle altogether. Its very
definition requires limitations.

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Proposition #10: An uncaused cause cannot admit of plurality of nature (i.e. there cannot be more than one uncaused cause).

Proof: It is a truism in logic that any two objects which fail to differ in any way whatsoever are, in fact, the same object. If we can show that any two hypothetical "uncaused causes" do not differ in any way whatever (or if we can show directly that the two are identical), then that will suffice to show the uniqueness and singularity of the uncaused cause. (Note that this method can be extended to cover an arbitrary number of uncaused causes.)

Suppose (A) and (B) are uncaused causes. This implies that (A) is identical with existence (E) as such, and (B) is identical with existence (E) as such. It cannot be true that two objects which identity with existence, per se, admit of any differences whatever. Thus, since A = E and B = E, we conclude that A = B.

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Conclusion: Here is the argument, thus far:

1) No object can be its own cause.
2) Causation implies change, and vice versa.
3) Any uncaused object is necessarily eternal.
4) Any uncaused cause is equivalent to existence per se.
5) Any uncaused cause must be unlimited and unique.
6) Our universe contains examples of changeable, non-eternal objects.
7) Ergo, an uncaused cause is required, as per #3-5.

Since it is self-evident that there exist both instances of change and
limited (i.e. contingent) objects, there must necessarily exist a cause
for these (i.e. to cause the change, and to be a source of existence for
the contingent objects) which is itself uncaused, eternal, unlimited,
unique, and identical to existence itself... and this we call God.

Paul's response to "conscience comes first"

Ok, as I said in my last post, I'm no longer a big fan of Paul. But, I did say I'd discuss his response, if I could get him to give one. This post was written on Tuesday, before he started suggesting liberals should be killed, so it's less biased than it would be if I wrote it later in the week.

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As I said I would, I asked Paul what he thought of the idea that conscience might guide us to what's right, rather than what feels good. His response was to tell me to read some of his more recent posts, and the comment-conversations in those posts would make his position clearer. I have started to do this, and found one which qualifies.

In a post called "It's really very simple", in May of 2008, Paul is talking about how some famous supporters of abortion have been allowed to receive communion in a mass conducted by the pope. To him, this means (I think...) that either abortion is in fact correct in the eyes of the church, or the bishops are negligent. Not that the bishops might genuinely act in a way that is wrong (impossible), but that it must be that either his understanding of "wrong" is wrong, or the bishops just didn't realize what they were doing.

His response when pressed on this by a commenter who was not familiar with how the Catholic church works was interesting. The question was:

3. If your current bishop appears to violate cannon law, are you obligated to follow that bishop? Or can you follow a bishop with a different diocese that you consider more faithful?

and Paul responded:

3. No. My bishop is my bishop. The only appeal from my bishop is to the Bishop of Rome.

But the important question is not who best conforms to what I "consider more faithful". The question is what's true. I am not competent to judge the compliance of my bishop with canon law, much less the compliance of the entire national bishops' conference. As a layman and a regular guy, I look to them, not my own conscience, to be taught the truth. And what I am taught by them is that there is no conflict between support for abortion and being in full communion with the Church.

Because if there were such a conflict, to do so would place in jeopardy the soul of the person receiving unworthily, and would give scandal to the faithful. Surely my bishop, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago (who also happens to be President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops), nor any other bishop would not tolerate such an occurrence to be repeated every Sunday within his jurisdiction.

Therefore, since even the Holy Father tolerated the reception of communion by famous pro-abortion politicians at masses at which he was the principle celebrant, clearly there can be no conflict.

So, Paul and I have a fundamental disagreement. Paul trusts his church leaders more than his conscience. Question to anyone for whom this is true: If you can't trust your conscience, how can you know you've chosen the "true" church, and should accept the positions taken by its leaders? I don't get it, and the fact that you have no basis to question your leaders seems to create a rather large opportunity for abuse of power.

I will give him one thing, though: if he has another way of determining the truth of the church, his position that conscience is not primary would be logically consistent (not necessarily correct, but not inconsistent). Many people would waffle, and he doesn't. I just wonder what his non-conscience truth-finder is...

Clarifying my position on millitancy

I'm a middle-ground kind of guy. So when I see people in attack mode, my first response is to say "Now let's just calm down" or something similar. It doesn't make sense to me for people to be angry or frustrated with one another. I think generally it's my responsibility as an adult to exercise some self-control, rather than taking things out on other people. And I think if you put up with a little bit of flak from other people when they're frustrated, and respond calmly, you're a lot more likely to get listened to.

So the fact that I immediately had people go on the offensive on the Why Won't God Heal Amputees site put me off. I didn't get it. If you're trying to make a case for something, why immediately put the person you're talking to on the defensive? Why not assume they're a human being, like you, and accept that reasonable people can reach different conclusions legitimately? It seemed to me that not doing so was silly. It just didn't make sense.

But here's the thing - usually, when you can put yourself in other people's shoes, and see the world as they see it, their behaviour becomes a lot more understandable. I didn't see how it was possible that what I was reading could at first. But if you've already tried to talk to the people around you, and been told you're going to hell for thinking what you think, and if that's consistently happened for a while, from most or all of the people you talk to, then talking reasonably starts to make less sense.

Myself, I've lost a good friend because he decided that since I didn't believe in God the way he did, he couldn't be around me any more (although he would give up his "violent" Spider-Man comic books "when he had the strength"). Because he wanted to deepen his faith, he cut me off. And so, since I believe it's always important to try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, I thought about what it would be like if it wasn't just one good friend, but my family, and my community that I got cut off from. And if most of the people around me believed some really extreme form of religion, like I only see on TV, so instead of just being cut off from people I cared about I was also genuinely scared of how they might react. And if at first (because many of these people had been Christians at one point) I had believed the same things as those around me, so when I gave up that I didn't know what else there was to believe. When I looked at it that way, the way they were acting made sense. Objecting to using analogies and insisting on perfect rationality doesn't really make sense most times. But when you see even a little bit of irrationality as the start of a slippery slope and you've seen first-hand exactly what's at the bottom of that slope, because you've lived in it, well, then it makes sense to object to an analogy that might seem harmless to me.

So no, I don't approve of militancy, on either side of any debate. I still think it's not an effective approach, and I will insist that all discussion on this site be respectful and open. But I think someone in a different situation might say to me "Well, that's all very nice of you to say where everything is sunshine and roses, but in the real world, in my world, your approach doesn't work, I've tried it." Which makes me feel lucky to be where I am.

Last night I just had a "Wow" moment, where another perspective I didn't understand became clear to me, that's all. And although I don't agree with the viewpoint, understanding where it comes from helps me to talk to people who hold it, and that's a good thing.

And I understand too that it can go both ways. I guess being a person of faith can make you feel cut off from people who don't believe the same. But I've got to say it doesn't make the same kind of sense to me (yet). People moving away from others who don't share their beliefs makes me a little scared, because it cuts off dialog, which seems like a step in the wrong direction. So I hope nobody takes me saying what I think as an indication that they're not welcome to think differently. All you have to do is be willing and able to explain to me how your position makes sense.

Second Response - From Why Won't God Heal Amputees.com

Wow.

Earlier I said that I didn't get a response from the website Why Won't God Heal Amputees, where I also posted my idea. Until this morning, the only objection anyone on that site had been willing to post was "First prove God made the universe and exists outside of time. Hell, just prove he exists. And also, shorten your paragraphs, they're too long."

Not the most promising introduction. "Wow", I thought, after reading some of the other threads. "These people seem really bitter, and angry. Why not just let people be? I mean, sure, there are fundamentalists out there, and it does seem like there are a large number of religious-to-the-point-of-clinical-insanity people on this site, but it's the Internet. When you get to make up your name and not show your face, many people's sanity goes out the window (which is the reason comments on this blog are moderated, and anonymous comments are disabled). Why is it such a big deal to convince someone who believes in God that they're wrong?"

I have since gotten several intelligent critiques, and a much better appreciation for truly millitant atheism.

One of the critiques was as follows:

I'm just going to focus on this one little point. Yes you are correct in saying that the analogy over simplifies things, and most analogies it turns out are traps (unless they are mathematical analogies). Most analogies used in apologetics like C.S. Lewis's are obfuscation, smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand (but not necessarily maliciously so). The problem with this analogy is that book is at least two different things, a physical object and a collection of ideas. Both things however exist in the same universe and are composed of the same "material" as the author.

Which is an entirely valid criticism, the analogy isn't literally accurate, and doesn't accurately represent the relationship between God and the universe because they're fundamentally different things. And it will strengthen my work if I make sure this is 100% clear. I assumed people would get that it was just an analogy, and I said something to the effect of "Excellent point about the analogy not being accurate. But I think that analogies can be effectively used to convey complex ideas so long as people understand the difference between an analogy and an actual situation."

And then I continued to lurk on the WWGHA forum, just getting the style of the debates that were going on there. I started to read one particular thread, where the person who started the thread asked what people got out of debating here. Seemed a reasonable question, because as I said, some of them seemed really bitter, and I don't think they were making a lot of progress with the fundamentalist Christians who were the main representatives of the Christian religion on this forum. And the person who asked the question said they got initially marked as a Troll by a moderator (meaning the moderator thought their question wasn't genuine, but was just posted to start a fight). So the original poster had gone into more detail, to explain that he actually was honestly interested in the answer, and he was an atheist himself. And still two people out of the first few said they thought he might be lying, and might actually be a Christian.

But this is where giving people the benefit of the doubt comes in. Because I kept reading, and once people figured out that the question was genuine, they started giving genuine answers. And some people, quite a few of them, said they were from the Bible Belt, and in the place where they lived, you had to be religious. If you weren't, you were shunned, and told you were going to hell. And as an atheist, you couldn't get away from being blessed all the time. There were "five or six churches within sight of your house". If you didn't believe, you kept quiet because you didn't know what else to do, until you saw this forum and that other people had been able to get out. Religion just surrounded you, and a surprising number of the people there said they had no non-religious friends to turn to in their local communities. No social support, and they were just looking for like-minded people to talk to.

I learned an important lesson about how lucky I am to live where I do, where thinking for yourself is encouraged, and it's perfectly OK if you don't go to church on Sunday. It's OK if you do, too, and lots of people do, but you have the choice. And so when the person who posted that critique came back and said

The problem with that is that many people accept the analogy, and stop thinking any further. Those who seek to confuse, influence or control others will relentlessly exploit this regardless of whether the analogy itself is malicious or benign.
...
This is why most people on this forum favour precise, well defined explanations, and why I personally regard analogies with enormous suspicion. Anyone who is seriously discussing these topics should avoid using them when possible.

I understood, and just said "Fair enough, no more analogies." Because in certain situations, millitant atheism, I mean really millitant atheism (but still trying to make a statement with words alone, and on your own forum) is fair. If you're a religious moderate, thinking "rational people can be religious, I don't get why Atheists don't understand that sometimes", I'd reccommend going to the forum and asking one.

UPDATE (August 1st): The more I think about it, the less of a good idea it seems for religious people to ask questions on that forum. I just recently posted "No good or clarity will come from there - they aren't interested in finding answers, only taking yours away" on a Christian's blog. And that's about accurate. But if you live in a place where fundamentalism is rare, and you'd like to see its effects, that's where you'd go.

That's it for me for tonight.

First response

Ok, so... Now that I've got this up, I e-mailed the site to a few people I know, just to see what they'd think. One of them, an extremely religious person, basically told me it's wrong because it contradicts the bible, end of story. The fact that I didn't even get a "that's interesting, I don't agree, but at least you've put some thought into it" is... just indescribable. This person is relatively nice, too, just absolutely unwilling to permit the idea that someone might hold different beliefs with some level of legitimacy. It's such a contrast with the wonderful open conversation I was able to have on "Et Tu?". That gave me hope. This... doesn't.

But, such is life. You talk to the people who will talk with you, and cross your fingers and hope something good comes from it, I guess.