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7 Comments on “A Friendly Dialogue Between a Christian and an Atheist”; Coon Rapids, MN

Jordan Bell on Sun, 4th Apr 2010 10:22 am


I will look forward to hearing this conversation. I am also the sound tech for this event, so please contact me with any questions, comments, concerns, or needs you may have in the Audio/Video Dept.

~Jordan

Mindy Pratt on Tue, 13th Apr 2010 5:08 pm


Hi August,

Thank you for coming to our church on Sunday. It was very interesting to hear your point of view. I respect your openness, honesty and your ability to listen to other’s points of view without getting defensive or angry.
I am the person who asked you to cite the scientific study in which the scientists made RNA in the lab. I searched your website, but couldn’t find it. I’m sure I just missed it somehow. I want to see their techniques and their claims. I did, however, see the cartoon pictures of the whales in the article you have linked. They weren’t very impressive or convincing.
I use to think a lot like you do before I believed and began to follow Jesus, when I was 33 years old. I use to feel like life was meaningless. I wasn’t depressed and my life was going successfully as the world sees success, but I believed and lived lies like you do. I also thought about things very selfishly. I felt very sad as I listened to you, that you don’t have a relationship with the God that I know hears me, understands me and answers my prayers. I will be praying for you. Please spend as much time trying to prove the Bible wrong as you do rebelling against our Creator and I’m sure you’ll find the answers you’re looking for. I feel very sorry that you are so closed to the truth in many areas of your life as your website reveals. When you talk to true Bible believing followers of Jesus, I think you might see their speechlessness as being impressed by the things you’ve said. I believe many of them may feel like I did, as I sat and listened to you speak. They can’t believe how you have a “smart” and rebellious answer for everything and they feel sad about how difficult it would be for God to get through to your heart. I sat wondering what it would take to get through to your hard heart. Like I said, I care about you and I use to be like you. I hope things go well in your life. Take care.
Mindy

abadmin on Tue, 13th Apr 2010 5:32 pm


Hi Mindy,

I’m running out the door to attend a debate a friend is in, but here’s the link to the RNA story I mentioned: “RNA world easier to make: Ingenious chemistry shows how nucleotides may have formed in the primordial soup” http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090513/full/news.2009.471.html

By the way, I think I forgot to mention that modern whales have pelvis bones inside their bodies that are not connected to their spines (i.e. useless). This makes no sense from a creationist point of view but makes great sense when you realize that ancestors of whales not only had the pelvis bones connected to their spines but had legs connected to the pelvis bones because they were land mammals. There is no other reason for a whale to have a pelvis bone. We have the fossils. So you have The Problem of Unintelligent Design for your god.

If an all-powerful, all-loving god exists, who wants me to know him, then there is now way that I, a mere mortal, could prevent it. This is known as The Problem of Silence.

My Atheism 101 pamphlet details many other problems with god ideas. Atheism resolves all god problems and gives me a worldview that is consistent with my observations.

If you want to see what’s wrong with the Bible, I invite you to check out: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com.

Best wishes, August

Mindy Pratt on Wed, 14th Apr 2010 12:41 pm


Hi August,

I looked at the RNA study and, just as I suspected, they really did not make complete RNA in the lab. I copied and pasted two paragraphs from the study below that show that they made only a “building block of RNA”. It took them 12 years of intelligent experimentation to do it. I don’t know if you truly believe the half truth you told us Sunday, or if you knew it wasn’t the truth, but be careful not to deceive yourself.

The article also says that “the RNA molecule as a whole is too complex to be created using early -Earth geochemistry.”

Even if they can make RNA someday in the lab, which I doubt, that’s still doesn’t even come close to proving unintellegent design. You’d probably better start looking for another religion besides evolution.

Best wishes,

Mindy

“John Sutherland and his colleagues from the University of Manchester, UK, created a ribonucleotide, a building block of RNA, from simple chemicals under conditions that might have existed on the early Earth.”

“The start of something special?
Although Sutherland has shown that it is possible to build one part of RNA from small molecules, objectors to the RNA-world theory say the RNA molecule as a whole is too complex to be created using early-Earth geochemistry. “The flaw with this kind of research is not in the chemistry. The flaw is in the logic — that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth,” says Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University.”

abadmin on Wed, 14th Apr 2010 7:35 pm


Hi Mindy,

You’re right, I may have overrepresented what the article stated because I read it too quickly. So, I am glad to be corrected.

Nevertheless, it still seems to me that your belief in creationism is a god-of-the-gaps argument. You find things that science hasn’t explained yet, assume that science will never explain them, then declare “my god did it” with zero evidence.

You demand complete evidence from science for every little nook and cranny, refusing to recognize the most obvious patterns that are 95% complete, but accept zero evidence from your god. So, your standards are not consistent.

How would you explain the fact that humans have pointed canine teeth, when flat teeth like all the rest would have made more sense? Can you explain why we get goose pimples? Can you explain why some whales and snakes still have pelvis bones?

Best wishes,

August

Mindy Pratt on Thu, 15th Apr 2010 12:08 pm


Hi August,

The reason I’ve been focusing on the RNA experiment so much is not because I demand complete evidence from science for every little nook and cranny. It’s because I’ve noticed that people who believe in unintelligent design, to explain God away,often use an evolution-in-the-gap argument for many things that they really can have no clue about. They also tend to embellish fossil and scientific finds hoping that people will just believe them without questioning. I see why scientists who have your point of view will spend their entire lives trying to recreate RNA, which is very complex, but only makes up part of the very simplest creature, the virus. They think they can explain God away if they do. Then they won’t have to be accountable to Him now or after they die.

I believe that the one true God of the Bible made life so complex, so that we could never recreate it by ourselves and we could never rationally explain it away by chance. He knew we would want to be our own god. Which is the religion of secular humanism.

I do have evidence for God in my life. Like I said, before I was 33 years old I didn’t have any evidence. I believed in evolution, that abortion was right and didn’t cause any problems, etc. At that time I began to seek God and talk to Him. I started to realize He existed because He began to answer my prayers in ways that could not be coincidence and too often to be coincidence. He has never stopped since that time. Very suddenly, He gave me a new way of looking at the world. It was actually very amazing. My husband noticed it right away and he liked the changes he saw in me. He later began following Jesus also.
God showed me how to love other people without being so selfish. He helped me to stop being so rebellious. I was “born again” like Jesus talks about in the Bible. I’m not claiming to be perfect, just growing as I follow Jesus, I just want to try to expain what evidence I do have for God’s existence instead of just discussing scientific points. I hope someday you can have this amazing experience too. You’re never alone again.

I hope you’re having a great day and that you’ll just try to humble yourself enough to take a breather in your life and seek God. Just talk to Him without that rebellious attitude. If you truly want to seek and find Him, you will. If you continue to harden your heart, God will be completely silent toward you and you will never realize His existence.

Possibly to your relief, I’m not going to be posting here anymore. I don’t have the time to take away from my family.

I’ll pray for you whenever I think about you.

Best wishes,

Mindy

Janet on Fri, 23rd Apr 2010 3:39 pm


Evolution is only “unintelligent” to those who don’t understand it. In fact, evolution demonstrates the logical interconnection of all life. Let’s face it, the real reason christians are afraid of evolution is because it places humans in nature, rather than above it. We are part of the interconnected fabric of nature. Christians fear or have little respect for nature and believe it must be dominated. But humans are of nature; we are members of the animal kingdom and cousins of the great apes. Religious denial and magical thinking only allow christians to relinquish their personal responsibility for the earth and put all their hopes in some mythical higher power and future “kingdom of god.” In the meantime, the believers in power–and most politicians and corporate heads are believers–are destroying the earth along with communities and families. Either you must admit that your christian ideals are flawed, or the individuals who supposedly adhere to them are hypocrites.