Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Atheist Starter Kit #08

8. Deal with the threat of eternal punishment by saying that you don't believe in the existence of Hell. Then convince yourself that because you don't believe in something, it therefore doesn't exist. Don't follow that logic onto a railway line and an oncoming train. --Ray Comfort
Ray just accused atheists of believing that truth is subjective. Maybe some do, but I most certainly do not. Truth is what it is. Truth does not care if I believe in it or not. If I believe something other than the truth, then I am in error.

What Ray has done here is to introduce another classic example of a straw man. Here's what wikipedia says about it.
To "set up a straw man," one describes a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view, yet is easier to refute, then attributes that position to the opponent.
The truth that Ray has skirted here is that I do not believe in Hell. The position that superficially resembles my actual view is that Ray says that I don't believe in Hell to deal with the threat of eternal torment. Of course, that kind of logic is easier to refute than to prove that there really is a hell.

The second sentence can also be thought of as a straw man too. Ray seems to be saying that belief doesn't have to follow truth. I believe that way too. But, he accuses atheists of believing in subjective truth, knowing that not all atheists may believe that way. As a matter of fact, I don't know of any atheists who believe that truth is subjective. That's actually, an argument that I use against Christians.
Just because you believe that the Bible is without any error, doesn't make the Bible free of error.
At least I can prove that there are mistakes in the Bible. Ray has yet to prove that there is a hell and that atheists believe that truth is subjective. These are things that Ray can never prove.

I'll leave with this one thought.

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