{"id":42740,"date":"2014-08-23T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=42740"},"modified":"2015-03-19T22:17:34","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T05:17:34","slug":"quick-apology-you-dont-believe-in-thor-do-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2014\/08\/23\/quick-apology-you-dont-believe-in-thor-do-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Apology: You don&#8217;t believe in Thor, do you?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Up until now, all of the &#8220;Quick Apology&#8221; posts have dealt with Catholic-Protestant disputes. Today I would like to address a Theist-Atheist issue. I wrote this post several weeks ago, but I heard this specific objection was just a few days ago&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2>Objection<\/h2>\n<p>Probably as a result of the writings of the &#8220;New Atheists&#8221;, I&#8217;ve heard with increasing regularity the statement:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;You don&#8217;t believe in Thor do you? You&#8217;re almost an atheist &#8211; I just believe in one less god than you&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Response<\/h2>\n<p>The suggestion here is that Christians are, in fact, <em>basically<\/em> atheists since they don&#8217;t believe in the gods of other religions. The atheist is just like the Christian except that she rejects the Christian God as well.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s the suggestion that, since Thor doesn&#8217;t exist, then neither does the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, this doesn&#8217;t really follow, does it? After all, does the existence of counterfeit money mean that real money doesn&#8217;t exist? I hope not, otherwise I&#8217;ve worked 40 hours this week for nothing! Does the existence of counterfeit love mean that real love doesn&#8217;t exist? The recently dumped may think so, but I think generally we can agree that counterfeit love doesn&#8217;t disprove real love.<\/p>\n<p>So, in conclusion, the non-existence of Thor has no bearing on the existence of Yahweh. The evidence for each must be weighed independently&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Thor-the-Dark-World.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-42742\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Thor-the-Dark-World.jpg\" alt=\"Thor-the-Dark-World\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Thor-the-Dark-World.jpg 500w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Thor-the-Dark-World-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/captain-american-one-god.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-42743\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/captain-american-one-god.jpg\" alt=\"captain-american-one-god\" width=\"500\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/captain-american-one-god.jpg 500w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/captain-american-one-god-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Up until now, all of the &#8220;Quick Apology&#8221; posts have dealt with Catholic-Protestant disputes. Today I would like to address a Theist-Atheist issue. I wrote this post several weeks ago, but I heard this specific objection was just a few days ago&#8230; Objection Probably as a result of the writings of the &#8220;New Atheists&#8221;, I&#8217;ve heard with increasing regularity the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[1172,2753,503,2969,2762,2758,2754],"class_list":["post-42740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-atheism","tag-avengers","tag-captain-america","tag-featured","tag-gods","tag-quick-apology","tag-thor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42740"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44138,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42740\/revisions\/44138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}