Discussions with Atheists #1 (Redlands Market Night, 11.10.16)

Since moving to Redlands in May, I have been meaning to make it to Market Night when the Inland Empire Atheists & Agnostics (IEAA) and the Freethinkers Around Redlands (FAR) has their monthly booth. I finally made it on 11/10/16. I arrived in Redlands coming from a late departure from work in Rancho at 7:30 PM. By the time the conversation I had with 1-4 booth operators was over, it was 9:27 PM.

Now, I am partially sympathetic and empathetic to the atheist movement, not only because I was an atheist once, but, I am genuinely open to listening to their best argumentation. I am very much interested in the reasons why people believe whatever they believe. I am also interested in observing the sociological and psychological processes that is manifest in my interactions with the varied groups I encounter. 

Just to reflect on this experience in brief... The first 30 minutes or so was calmly paced and calmly discussed. But the remaining hour and half quickly became a bit heated. I'd like to think I was not heated at all, but I'm sure I contributed to it since we covered so many passionately held and argued positions and topics. 

Here are my main points:

1. Being pro-life or pro-choice (on abortion) is a moral issue and not a scientific one. Science can only answer the question of whether the fetus is life or not, human or not, but it cannot answer the question of whether the fetus is a person, which has the right to be protected from murder according to the constitution. Personhood is an issue of philosophy, namely ethics. 
2. Everything cannot be subjective, because that assertion itself is a claim to objective (not subjective) truth or reality. 
3. If you can say that you are against abortion beyond 24 months, on what basis do you make such an arbitrary decision? How do you justify personhood being only valid after 24 months? (The danger to this approach is the opponent can change their mind and become pro-abortion for the entire period in utero. The take home message however is their standard is emotional and not rational). 
4. If your operational maxim for the moral law is whatever provides the least pain and the most pleasure, and therefore killing is wrong (with no need for God to tell us so), then how do you justify, as you stated, that you think it is OK to kill a pedophile? That is a position based on emotion and so also not rational.
5. I don't agree with the theory that was presented to me that if one were to imagine a society in which there is no concept of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious, social, or economic standing... there would be radical egalitarianism, that is to say, radical equality, and so, no socio-economic distinctions among the citizens... that most, if not everyone, would agree and want to live in such a society. I offered to poll my college students on this and generated a survey, but I was accused by two of the folks I was talking to of intentionally engaging in confirmation bias and intentionally skewing the data by not formulating the question as it was originally intended by philosopher John Rawls. I rebutted by asserting that I agreed to test the theory as it was formulated to me in the verbal discussion, not to test the original exposition of Rawls' theory. Besides if you look up the "veil of ignorance" according to Rawls, I would argue that Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative is a much simpler way of formulating the argument that you would want the maxim of law to be those prescriptions which you would will to be universal. Here is the survey as I originally formulated it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzb8s1zUN8qOcmF4SUI1empqZEk/view?usp=sharing
6. If an atheist wishes to engage a Christian in a conversation on Biblical interpretation and alleged contradictions, the atheist needs to understand that the Bible is not necessarily viewed in the same way they viewed it when they were a Christian, or in the same way among practicing Christians. They need to recognize that the majority of Christians are Catholics, and likely the majority of Catholics do not view the Bible in a monolithic way. The Catholic view can only be that which is the official doctrinal view, and that is very different from all of the Protestant views and likely most Catholics' view. 

I'm not sure if these conversations will continue. I suspect they were not prepared to encounter someone who thoroughly understood their best philosophical arguments already. I make it a point to never use the Bible in my conversations with atheists. I don't feel the need to defend the Bible. I think that's how atheists end up overpowering Christians in street debates... The Bible is hard to defend on the spot, especially when atheists fall back on the alleged contradictions points.

My focus is on challenging the philosophical foundations of the atheist critiques. We have to stay focused. The debate with atheists and Christians is not about the truthfulness of the Bible, it is and must be only on the question of the rationality of belief in a singular creator God. At least, that is my opinion.

Thank you,

Laurence Gonzaga, MA

11.14.16