Mid-west Humanists – An Irish Atheist Community

Further to my posting of the song “I’m An Atheist (And I’m Okay)” on youtube, a lovely user by the name of wfl18 posted many curious comments on the video page to which both myself and BipedalHumanoid (a member of Atheist Ireland) replied in an attempt to coax some reason out of this person’s mind. It appears from the rest of the comments that we were unsuccessful, as you can see here.

This was the last comment I left yesterday in response to wfl18:

you can hear bible verse all you want, but please don’t be so daft as to actually believe that they are worth listening to. oh and by the way, you said you COULD provide me non-scriptural evidence for the existence of hell….where is it….?

After I posted that last response, wfl18 then sent me a message on youtube this morning that included this link http://www.av1611.org/hell.html. I followed it, and was presented with some laughable anecdotal “evidence” for the existence of hell which is itself, surprisingly enough, based upon Biblical scripture.

I replied not long ago with this lengthy response:

This is nothing but anecdotal evidence based SPECIFICALLY on a biblical interpretation. During death, the brains neurons fire in a cacophonous assault on the mind and anything can be taken from this e.g. life flashing before ones eyes, a vision of the reaper, a vision of hell or even heaven, but either way, if you think this constitutes UNDENIABLE, VERIFIABLE and SUBSTANTIVE evidence that hell exists then you are either a fool or you don’t understand the definition of those words.

I cannot prove to you that hell does not exist, but since there is little or no substantial evidence for its existence, the rational stance is to maintain that it does not exist until the required evidence comes to light, and so therefore the burden of proof for its existence lies upon you. As of yet, you have given me nothing to prove in ANY way that hell exists. It MIGHT exist, but you haven’t given me any rerason to think that it does.

Oh, and by the way, if someone, even you had ACTUAL evidence that hell existed, I would be willing to hear it. And I am open to any evidence that is reliable, verifiable and predictable.

Let me put it to you this way, if a stranger came up to to tell you that your wife was secretly dying of a terminal illness and hasn’t told you about it, just how much evidence would you need before you actually believed what this person was telling you? If he showed you a book written thousands of years ago by a bunch of sheep herders that specified that someone of your vague description i.e. hair colour gender and height, would have a wife who is keeping a terminal illness from him, would you take that as substantial evidence for his claims?

More than likely you would need him to at least confirm YOUR name, your WIFE’s name and any other relevant facts that would establish that this man does in fact know a great deal about your life and may in fact be telling the truth about your wife.

The amount of evidence, and the limits you would place on something before you would consider it evidence in that situation is exactly what you need to do when considering fantastical claims like the existence of hell or even a god.

And then a few minutes later I received the following cryptic response:

check out the moons dust

After scratching my head for a minute thinking “WTF….?!” I resorted to Google and found that the “Moons Dust” argument is an old Young Earth Creationist Argument based on the amount of dust falling on the moon, which is seriously flawed as it was based upon 1960’s research. It has since been well disproved and I found one such site disproving it here.

I have since responded to this cryptic message including the link disproving the YEC rubbish, but my main beef is still with this moron’s severe lack of critical thinking. As I mentioned in my first message response to wfl18, the amount of evidence required, and the limits you would place on something before you would consider it evidence, to warrant belief in a given proposition should be at least equal to how incredulous the claim is. Sagan Russell’s Cosmic Teapot is a perfect example of this. One would need a significantly large amount of verifiable evidence to prove that there is in fact a teapot orbiting Saturn.

In closing, I’d like to reference part of the commentary on the “The Truth About Hell” website passed on to me by wfl18. The author, a fellow called Terry Watkins, says the following:

As you leave your body — you realize something is happening. You hear a sound. . . getting louder and louder. . . screaming . . .weeping. . . wailing. Terror and fear beyond anything you could imagine overtakes you. “This can’t be happening!” you scream. Your nostrils are filling with the awful stench of burning souls. Your face ignites from the heat. Flames are now blazing from your eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth — every opening in your body, flames are roaring out. Your body is sizzling and crackling from the flames.

First of all, when someone dies, their body dies, and so if the conventional religious attitude towards death and descent into in hell is that your soul is forever in torment, then how in the “hell” could someones body be “sizzling and crackling from the flames”?? The body is dead and still physically here in the mortal realm, so how do we get a new body in hell? Does the devil provide with a body just so we can feel pain? But if the human body is a gift from God, then surely only God can give us another one….wait…does God give us a new body so that we can feel the pain?

Obviously this is all just a bunch of hokum (to put it excruciatingly mildly) but aside from that conundrum, my other question is, what exactly does a human soul smell like when it’s burning….?

Oh, yeah, now I know…my soul regularly burns something vicious after consuming a meagre portion of baked beans. Clearly baked beans are the spawn of the devil!

Please people, open your damn minds!!

Peace,
dj357

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