I’m afraid, Ted, that logical thinking does not seem to be your strong suit. I suggest that you think over your ideas a little more carefully. Just because something is emotionally appealing to you, doesn’t make it true.
I trust that you will read this post, consider it carefully, and recognize your mistakes.
Let’s begin with the easiest point: what does "No True Scotsman" mean?
I'm not particularly familiar with scotsmen, although I think my family tree does include a few, but I went back and reread my posts and I don't think I ever accused anyone of not being a christian. Jesus spoke about how unfaithful 'many' christians would be found. What I tend to say is that the person must not have truly believed that God existed.
Here, you are committing a logical fallacy, commonly known as the “no True Scotsman”. Please read this (the first few paragraphs only should be sufficient):
Muslims, Christians and No True Scotsmen • A Tippling Philosopher
The No True Scotsman fallacy is a well-used fallacy in debates about religion with religionists. As wiki
defines:
No true Scotsman is an
informal fallacy, an
ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.
[1] When faced with a
counterexample to a
universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.
In point of fact, accusing Dan Barker of never having been a Christian is exactly what you did. You said:
If you were led to be an atheist, then you know that what you believed wasn't the truth. No one who has been born again can then believe that there is no God. They can always refuse to declare that Jesus is Lord at some point in their life, or just refuse to follow the Spirit with which they have been given, but to claim that there is no God simply means that they never knew the truth to begin with.
Implication: Dan Barker was never actually born again. Therefore: he wasn’t really a Christian.
I understand what you're saying about Dan Barker. However, wasn't he wrong once before? How do you know that you know that it's not me that's wrong, but him. He's offered up a palatable explanation that on the surface seems to have a ring of truth to it. Especially to someone who denies that God exists. It's a sad but true Scriptural truth that we tend to want to surround ourselves with people who will tell our itching ears what they want to hear. That truth seems to be playing out daily in our political arena.
I don’t know that it’s you that’s wrong, not him. I mean, it’s true, I very strongly suspect this is the case but, logically speaking, either or neither of you could be right. But that’s not the point.
The point is, you are saying he was never a real Christian. This
may be true, but we can’t know it. Nor, technically, can we know that you yourself are a real Christian.
Dan Barker believed that he was a true Christian for many years. Read his autobiographies. He was a sincere believer. He was totally and utterly convinced of God’s existence. He was a born-again preacher who talked with God daily, prayed to God, and converted others. If, as he says, he wasn’t a true Christian, nobody is.
And now you say “he can’t have been a true Christian, or else he wouldn’t have stopped believing in God.”
And I hope you are now familiar with the NTS fallacy to see your error in saying that.
So, if you know that you know that something exists, but then come to a point where you know that you know that same thing doesn't exist, then you've just been deceiving yourself. If one position is true, then the other can't be. Something cannot both exist and not exist. That's not a fallacy, that's a truth.
Sure it’s true. Dan Barker
thought that God exists, and now thinks that he was wrong to think that.
However, in our minds we can jump from one position to another, but that doesn't have any bearing on the actual existence of the one in whom we place our faith. For a born again believer, that person has the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Or thinks that he does.
I’ll say it again:
Dan Barker was
you.
He spoke exactly like you.
He thought exactly like you.
If there had been internet forums around a few decades ago, he would have been typing your exact words, and believing them.
But he changed his mind.
The Scriptures also warn us of people like Mr. Barker. Wolves in sheeps clothing. He probably went to seminary and pored over the curriculum of what it takes to be a pastor, but his head knowledge was apparently never transferred to his heart.
If you read his biographies, you’ll find this is not true. He was a passionate believer in Christ. He prayed, he spoke to God daily, he went on missions, he worked hard at his preaching, and he led many people to become Christians.
Name me something that can both exist as a physical form, but not exist. Ideas and thoughts can exist in one form and then exist in another form, but actual real physical things cannot share that same idea of existence. So, Mr. Barker at one time had convinced himself in his mind that this God that is described in the Scriptures did actually exist. That the Son of this God did also exist. Then he later, for whatever reason, decided that neither of these entities exists. If they did exist at one point in his life as real actual beings, then they cannot 'not exist'. So, if today they don't exist, then he was wrong in his first claim and they never existed then either.
You know, recently we had a thread on here asking if Christians could prove that Santa didn’t exist (it turned out they couldn’t). Well, some things got out of hand, and there were harsh words said, and hurt feelings, and I’m afraid the thread got shut down. But it made its point. And you’re making it again here.
Because the argument you just made works perfectly for Santa Claus.
“Santa
must exist. People believe in him. How could they believe in something that’s not real?”
And the answer, of course, is this: people believe in things that are not real all the time. You think God is real. You think that Jesus – who probably was a real, living human being – was also a divine entity. So did Dan Barker. But he later decided that he was mistaken about this.
In point of fact, you made a couple of errors there which are worth noting.
First, God does not exist in physical form. He's well known for it. God is immaterial, even if He sometimes chooses to manifest Himself in physical form.
It is quite probable that a man called Jesus (Yeshua) actually existed, but that doesn't mean he was actually God incarnated. He could just have been another radical Jewish preacher.
Saying "If they did exist at one point in his life as real actual beings, they cannot "not exist" is flawed thinking. It's really quite simple. Dan Barker thought God existed - he even talked to Him! - but later realised he was wrong.
The only explanation for someone who knows that they know that something does exist, but then later knows that they know that something doesn't exist, is that they themselves, while they may have expended great effort to tell others that the entity did exist, hadn't really settled the matter in their own heart.
Of course it isn’t. Do you not see that it’s quite possible for someone to sincerely believe something to be true, but to later change their mind about it? So why should it be any different with God?
I’ll say it again: you say you believe in God. You say you know God exists. You say that nothing on earth could ever change your mind.
But Dan Barker said exactly the same things, and believed them too.
And then he changed his mind.
