How have I rigged the game? I came up with ten common ideas that a variety of religious people hold to. None of them are esoteric or outlandish. Sure, I suppose there are others to consider, but those ten make a good start. Remember, my essay was a “sequel” to my previous essay where I responded to ten things that a believer posed. No doubt that person could have asked different questions, but I dealt with the ten that were offered.
As for your “sinking ship” comment, I would be able to take down any theist because all theistic views are akin to standing in quicksand (sorry for the mixed metaphor). As a generalization, my comeback to almost anything (everything?) would be the same: “How do you know?” Consider some of the “greatest hits” of theists that are easy to swat away. “How do you know?” would be a reply to the assertion that life was created (i.e., that we didn’t evolve); that we have “souls” (no evidence for this); that “Adam & Eve” existed (they did not); that parthenogenesis occurred for a certain woman (it did not); that winged cherubim are real (they are not); that corpses can come back to life (they cannot); that some schmuck had a presumably harrowing weekend inside a whale (heh); and so on. Nearly everything, it seems, a theist asserts amounts to what they believe, whereas nonbelievers will always point to an answer with evidence — Earth is billions of years old, not a few thousand years old; life evolved, and was not created; a global flood never happened; horses don’t have wings (to point to a crucial detail of another religion); and so on. And if evidence can’t be provided, they will say “I don’t know” (which, for example, is what an atheist would say if asked by a theist how life emerged). “I don’t know” is a tough answer for theists. They much prefer saying “God did it” (or a variation of it).
Morality is subjective. No objective “directive” has been given to us from some Great Beyond or from On High or from some Celestial Being, and a person who refrains from killing another person doesn’t act in this manner because of a “command” inscribed on a stone tablet. A close examination of evolution can account for our sense of good and evil, and right and wrong. Robert Wright discussed this in The Moral Animal, and it appears that Patricia Churchland discusses this as well in her just-published book, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition.
Yes, in a debate it would be an intellectual joy to destroy the arguments that any well-known theist would raise. At the end of the evening, there would be only one intellectual survivor: me.
