http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9IlquMdvu8&feature=watch_response
What if I were to tell you that, contrary to popular belief, the world is in fact a flat disk, and the Moon truly is made of cheese? Would you believe me? I may be mistaken, but I doubt it. You would probably have less difficulty believing that this claim is made of cheese. What if I were to repeat it a few times? Would this make it any more convincing? Again, I may be mistaken, but I doubt it.
What if I were to bring in several friends to join me in this repetition? Would the lot of us, together, be able to repeat it enough times to suddenly render it convincing? Of course not. Why not?
Because if you can tell that a certain claim is, on the face of it, fundamentally absurd, no number of repetitions is going to suddenly render it any less absurd or you suddenly less able to tell that. You are going to be just as able to glean this absurdity after the thousandth repetition as you are after the third.
I once heard on NPR about a fellow approaching the Dalai Lama and asking if he had ever been told who Jesus Christ is.
Now I’ve never met the Dalai Lama personally, and I’m not psychic, but I think it pretty well founded to guess that, upon hearing this question, deep inside, he sighed and thought, “Yes. I’ve been told.”
Now it just so happens that there is a much clearer, more straight-forward answer to the question, “Who is Jesus Christ” than most Christians have ever realized. Jesus Christ is Santa Clause for adults; a cosmic, Jewish zombie who is His own father.
Sometimes, at the book store, I come across books with titles to the effect of, “The Christian’s Guide to Talking to Non-Christians.” This, it seems to me, and many other such answers should be written into a book called, “The Non-Christians Guide to Talking to Christians.”
Christians, many of you, in this increasingly inter-connected world, have no doubt been presented with the Muslim shpiel many times. Muslims, many of you, no doubt, have likewise been presented with the Christian shpiel many times. I know that my atheist subscribers get presented with both all the time. I don’t know if I happen to have any Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu subscribers, but I would guess that if I do, the same thing happens to them all the time as well. Does it become any more convincing as it is repeated to you over and over again? Probably not.
Yet, many a Christian and Muslim laments to me that we atheists won’t ever see the “truth” of your religion, no matter how many times you repeat it us. Here we have a kind of special pleading which I am compelled to call the ad nauseum fallacy. It’s a kind of special pleading because it only seems convincing when a double-standard of argument and evidence is applied to it. Like the ad populum fallacy, it only seems convincing when it supports a position you already hold. The only reason you find it convincing is that you begin with the assumption that it is true. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t begin with that assumption is not going to find it convincing. To these people, it’s just a petty annoyance.
Well this one has turned out to be surprisingly concise, but that’s all I have to say about that.
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