WWSD? What Would Socrates Do?

 http://whygodreallyexists.com/archives/questions-for-atheists

So I decided to try the Socratic Approach: teach by questioning.


How do you explain the high degree of design and order in the universe if there is no God?

How do you explain the low quality of design and the disorder in the universe if there is a god?

How do you account for the vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories, places, and people?

How do you account for the fact that real people, places and events are described in Captain America comic books?

Since absolutely no Bible prophecy has ever failed (and there are hundreds), how can one realistically remain unconvinced that the Bible is of divine origin?

Have you ever heard of the city of Tyre, that was supposed to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar but wasn't after a 13 year siege (Ezekiel 2:7-14)? Ever heard of Egypt, that was supposed to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar but wasn't (Ezekiel 30:10-11)? What about the Nile River that was supposed to dry up but didn't (Ezekiel 30:12, Isaiah 19:1-8)? Did those not count? Was god "just kidding?"

Besides, did you know that H.G. Wells predicted lasers, general relativity and atomic weapons? Did you know that Arthur C. Clarke predicted communications satellites? Are you convinced that Star Trek is of divine origin having predicted hand-held communication/computing devices? Are you aware that Jules Verne predicted, with a high degree of accuracy, manned flights to the moon at least 90 years ahead of time? Does that mean the science fiction classics will one day be compiled into the new bible?

How do you explain David's graphic portrayal of Jesus' death by crucifixion (Psalm 22) 1000 years before Christ lived?  How do you explain that the prophet Daniel prophesied the exact YEAR when the Christ would be presented as Messiah and also prophesied that the temple would be destroyed afterwards over 500 years in advance (Daniel 9:24-27)? How could any mere human pinpoint the precise birth town of the Messiah seven full centuries before the fact, as did the prophet Micah?
 How do you account for the odds (1 in 10 to the 157th power) that even just 48 (of 300) Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ? How was it possible for the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to have predicted the virgin birth of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14) 700 years before it occurred?

Why are you amazed by this when the writers and editors of the gospels had access to the OT prophesies and could write the story to fit the narrative?

How can anyone doubt the reliability of Scripture considering the number and the proximity to the originals of its many copied manuscripts?

How do you account for the fact that many claims within the gospels cannot be verified even by other gospels and contain inconsistencies, which are all allegedly inerrant and divinely inspired by the same god?

In what sense was Jesus a "good man" if He was lying in His claim to be God?

How do you know that Jesus actually claimed to be a god when nothing he wrote exists, and the only "first-person" account of his life was written 30-40 years after his alleged death and resurrection by an unknown author allegedly transcribing the remembrances of Jesus' alleged buddy, Mark?

If the Bible is not true, why is it so universally regarded as "the Good Book"?

If Bob Keeshan never actually attained the rank of Captain in the US Marine Corps, and was not Australian, why was he universally regarded as "Captain Kangaroo?"

Did you know that the Bible has been the number one bestseller almost every single year since the 1436 invention of the Gutenberg printing press?

Did you know that Fifty Shades of Gray was last year's best seller and that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was the best seller for the last decade? Did you also know that "most printed" and "best seller" are not synonymous?

If God does not exist, then from where comes humanity's universal moral sense?

If a god does exist, how do you explain wildly divergent claims (just within Christianity) over what its "true" message to humanity is?

If man is nothing but the random arrangement of molecules, what motivates you to care and to live honorably in the world?

If this world is just a staging area or waiting room for a "sweet by and by up yonder in the great beyond" that's supposed to be so much better than here and lasts for all eternity, what motivates you to not kill yourself (or at least not wear a seat belt) and go live there?

Can you explain how personality could have ever evolved from the impersonal, or how order could have ever resulted from chaos?

Can you explain why "magic man done it" is an acceptable answer to questions when we have no evidence of supernatural phenomena and "I don't know" is actually far more honest?

If Jesus' resurrection was faked, why would twelve intelligent men (Jesus' disciples) have been willing to face death for what they knew to be a lie?

If Joseph Smith's arrest and fraud conviction were a matter of public record, why would he and so many people who knew him personally be willing to face hostility of the communities they lived in and even death to follow his interpretation of reality?

How do you explain the fact that a single, relatively uneducated and virtually untraveled man, dead at age 33, radically change0d lives and society to this day?

Are you talking about John Belushi?

Why have so many of history's greatest thinkers been believers?

What do Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Marie Curie, Helen Keller, Stephen Hawking, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Carl Sagan and Susan B. Anthony all have in common?

Have you ever wondered why thousands of intelligent scientists, living and dead, have been men and women of great faith?

Have you ever wondered why atheists get divorced less often, go to prison less frequently, have fewer abortions, and tend to be more educated than religious people?

Have you ever wondered why states with low levels of religious fervor have higher standards of living that the more religious states?

Have you ever wondered why the most religious state in the US ranks in the top five in teen pregnancies, infant mortality, least educated, most incarcerated, and highest poverty rate?

Have you ever wondered why nations with a high level of atheist, agnostic and nonreligious people are consistently ranked among the best places to live?

If time never had a beginning, but rather goes backwards infinitely or has gone through an infinite number of cycles, then how is it possible that we are here today?

How high were you when you wrote that?

How can something as small as a brain understand extremely complicated aspects of the universe, even though it is (supposedly) just a bunch of chemical reactions and electrical signals? But at the same time, this brain can’t create another brain like itself, so how can nature, that has no brain, create a brain?

Are you suggesting that magic caused the brain because you don't understand how it could have come about through natural processes? Are you familiar with an "argument from ignorance?"

Everyone knows Mount Rushmore was the result of intelligent design. Do you think the human body is the result of intelligent design?

Are you aware that the carvings on Mount Rushmore came about through intelligent intervention and we know this because the rest of Mount Rushmore was the result of natural processes?

When you look at a lot of creatures such as zebras, turtles, butterflies, bees, lady bugs, leopards, etc., you will notice amazing color patterns designed into them. Who came up with those? Does nature have a “taste” in colors, and does it know which colors go together nicely?

Is it not possible that we perceive colors and patterns going together "nicely" specifically because they appear that way in nature?

How do you account for the origin of life considering the irreducible complexity of its essential components?

Did you know that "irreducible complexity" is a fancy way of saying, "I don't know how evolution worked, therefore magic."

How can the Second Law of Thermodynamics be reconciled with progressive, naturalistic evolutionary theory?  How do you reconcile the existence of human intelligence with naturalism and the Law of Entropy?

Are you referring to philosophical naturalism or methodological naturalism?
Since the law of entropy is also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and since the Second law of Thermodynamics only applies to an isolated system, can you explain how the planet earth represents an isolated system?

How come there are some things on our planet seem that they are especially designed for us? For example, the 2 most comfortable colors are blue and green , which happen to be the color of the sky and most of the nature around us. Who chose those colors to be there , before earth even existed?

On what grounds are you basing the claim that there was a "who" to "choose" colors for the earth and sky? Are you suggesting that the things which occur in nature aren't natural? 

Why are there so many things on our planet that seem that they are specifically designed to kill us?

Why does the Bible alone, of all of the world's holy books, contain such detailed prophecies of future events?

Why did so many of the bible's prophecies not come true when they were allegedly written by an all-knowing god?

Is it absolutely true that "truth is not absolute" or only relatively true that "all things are relative?"

Are you certain that reality is not a dream that some dolphin is having and that any moment the dolphin will wake up and we'll all disappear? If so, how do you know this?

Is it possible that your unbelief in God is actually an unwillingness to submit to Him?

Is it possible that your refusal to accept the prophecies of H.P. Lovecraft are actually your unwillingness to accept the inevitability of you being devoured by Cthulu?

Is it possible that your disbelief in unicorns is a result of your unwillingness to submit to the influence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (B.B.H.H.H.)?

Is it possible that your rejection of science and rationalism is a result of a mental illness or an unresolved childhood trauma?

Does your present worldview provide you with an adequate sense of meaning and purpose?

Scientology, Rastafarianism, Islam, selling Amway or Avon, and watching porn habitually all provide a sense of meaning and purpose that is inconsistent with reality.  How is your "present worldview," which is equally inconsistent, fundamentally any different?

How do you explain the radically changed lives of so many Christian believers down through history?

How do you explain the radically changed lives of so many Buddhist, Scientologist, Rastafarian, Wiccan/Pagan and Plexus Slim believers?

Are you aware that every alleged Bible contradiction has been answered in an intelligible and credible manner?

Did you mean to say "every alleged Bible contradiction has had an excuse made for it by a believer?" Isn't that a little more consistent with reality?

What do you say about the hundreds of scholarly books that carefully document the veracity and reliability of the Bible?

What do you say about the "scholars" and "scholarly works" that can carefully document the veracity and reliability of the Quran, the Baghvad Gita, the Kojiki or the Tripitaka?

Why and how has the Bible survived and even flourished in spite of centuries of worldwide attempts to destroy and ban its message?

Why and how have non-canonical gospels and texts survived despite a robust effort by Christians and Christian authorities to wipe them out?

Have you ever considered the fact that Christianity is the only religion whose leader is said to have risen from the dead?

Have you ever considered that Osiris, Odin, Ganesha, Tammuz, Krishna and Mithra were all religious figures who are said to have risen from the dead prior to Jesus?

How do you explain the empty tomb of Jesus in light of all the evidence that has now proven essentially irrefutable for twenty centuries? If Jesus did not actually die and rise from the dead, how could He (in His condition) have circumvented all of the security measures in place at His tomb? If the authorities stole Jesus' body, why? Why would they have perpetrated the very scenario that they most wanted to prevent? If Jesus merely resuscitated in the tomb, how did He deal with the Roman guard posted just outside its entrance? How can one realistically discount the testimony of over 500 witnesses to a living Jesus following His crucifixion (see 1 Corinthians 15:6)?
If all of Jesus' claims to be God were the result of His own self-delusion, why didn't He show evidence of lunacy in any other areas of His life?

Why do you assume the truth of texts which have been heavily-edited for style and content by mostly unknown individuals working for politically, socially, economically and philosophically interested parties for the better part of 2000 years?

Is your unbelief in a perfect God possibly the result of a bad experience with an imperfect church or a misunderstanding of the facts, and therefore an unfair rejection of God Himself?

Is your belief in a god the result of an imperfect education or an ignorance/denial of the facts?

How did 35-40 men, spanning 1500 years and living on three separate continents, ever manage to author one unified message, i.e. the Bible?

How did one god, who created life the universe and everything, manage to get so much information wrong?
Why did he call bats "birds?" Why did he tell his messengers that the earth was a flat disc sitting on four pillars and that the sky was a dome? Why did he let the gospel writers mix up what Judas did with his 30 pieces of silver? Or who Joseph's father was? Or whether Jesus was crucified before Passover or on the first day of Passover? Or how Judas actually died? Or when and where Jesus' ascension actually took place?

Because life origins are not observable, verifiable, or falsifiable, how does the theory of "evolution" amount to anything more than just another faith system?

Why do you insist that evolution is a life origins theory when it only describes how life diversified? Have you ever heard of "abiogenesis?" Why do you insist that evolution is not observable when it has been observed in species with life spans short enough to observe? Why do you insist that evolution is no verifiable when the human genome confirms it? Why do you insist that evolution is not falsifiable when any number of things (the spontaneous creation of a living organism with no biological ancestor, a panda fossil found from the Jurassic period, no evidence of a fusion of chromosomes in human DNA) would sufficiently falsify evolution?

What do you make of all the anthropological studies indicating that even the most remote tribes show some sort of theological awareness?

What do you make of the fact that the theologies of these remote tribes is wholly inconsistent with Judeo-Christian theology?

If every effect has a cause, then what or who caused the universe?

What or who caused the cause of the universe? How could the effect of the universe follow the cause of the universe in time when time did not exist until the universe did?

How do you explain the thousands of people who have experienced heaven or hell and have come back to tell us about it?

How do you explain the thousands of people who claim to have seen, encountered or been abducted by aliens and have come back to tell us about it? How do you account for the fact that what one experiences in a near-death experience is closely related to the culture or religion that person was brought up in (Jews seeing Abraham, Christians seeing Jesus., Muslims seeing Mohammed, Buddhists seeing Buddha, Native Americans seeing their spirit guides, My grandma seeing Liberace)?

How do you explain the countless people who have received miracles from God?

How do you explain those who have received miracles from Shiva, Gaia, Allah, their dead ancestors, Elvis, aliens, goji berries, Slim Fast or Oprah Winfrey?

Is there any evidence that would satisfy you and persuade you to become a believer, or are you just going to believe what you WANT to believe?

Seen any gods lately?