Tautology of Christian belief

Just recently I had a small talk about Christian beliefs with my friend, who incidentally is a christian. She wasn't raised as such, she was turned to christianity a few years ago by some small and otherwise very uninteresting christian church. You know, like.. They're all the same, anyway. Maybe except Mormons, because you don't seem to find lot of christian churches, that believe, that God lives on another planet.

We talked with my friend a little about Bible, Holy Spirit and basic stuff like this. There's a bunch of beliefs regarding origins of the Bible so I just wanted to be sure, I know what is her belief on this matter. She presented me quite popular belief of today's christians; According to them Bible was of course written by mortal man, but this mortal man was guided by God.

Well, of course this alone should one make skeptic and jump out and say something like: Are you out of your mind? And in fact, in my mind, it was my first reaction, but I kept my cool and continued with asking questions. I wanted to know how it is possible, that different people claim that they were commanded by God differently. How does one come out and say: Okey, I believe you were commanded by God and point out on the other one and say,you're the idiot, you obviously know nothing about what God wants. Or what Jesus wants us to do. Well those people probably never struck out the very idea. They don't seem to wonder, how it is that they somehow know, what Jesus would do. They're some kind of underworld mind readers, they just can read minds of dead people.

I offered an quick example of previous popes of catholic church. Like.. Most of you reading this article are probably familiar with the information, that the previous pope proposed, that the theory of evolution and christianity are not in conflict at all. But it took only one pope ago, that they all went like: Evolution theory and science are evil, they're Satans work. In fact, all of those previous popes before John Paul the second wished ill long-dead Darwin and wished him ethernal burning in hell in which they were sure, he already suffered for his sinns. Now they even appraised Satan's work, but that didn't seem to bother them, either.

The problem is, that every of these popes claimed to be guided by God. God revealed to them, what is right. But that means, that at least one of them must have made the story up and they simply lied about God revealing to them, what is right and what is not. First of all, why SHOULD I believe, that some person is better suited to be God's messenger, when God is almighty and can talk what he wishes to anyone. Why is it, that only a few "chosen" ones are the ones who just have it right, because they were born and I am just a stupid idiot who doesn't get it? But then here they come, two different popes, one says Evolution is Satan's work, the other one says it's perfectly fine. So now God seems to be hesitant? I don't think so and in fact, most of the people today believe, that previous popes were just wrong. About the evolution anyway. Some of the people don't even think that. And they don't consider much the option, that the current pope might be wrong, either.

So here it is. you only believe PEOPLE when they say anything about God. Not the concept of God, not the God. Only the people claiming they're commanded by God himself. This should just scream out just because of how riddiculous this is, but it gets even further than that. So I asked, how does my friend know, what's real about God and what's not. How does she know, the Bible is real for that matter. And she came out with one of the most typicall christian answers. One of the wrongest answer ever possible. She told me, that the Holy Spirit is her guide. She knows Bible is real, because the Holy Spirit told her so. So I asked her, Ok, but how do you know about it being the Holy Spirit? How do you even know, such thing as Holy Spirit exists? What is your source of the knowledge on this?

She continued with her great fallacy and answered, that she knows about the holy spirit from the Bible. Some of you probably grasped the concept of what I want to present here. For those of you, who don't just continue on reading on. So let me repeat it a little different way, now. She read the Bible, she learned about the Holy spirit. She asked herself if this is real. If the Bible is real. And she answered to herself, yes, it is real and the holy spirit just confirmed it with her. She knew, that what she read is real, because holy spirit told her so. Still don't get it? Well to make it short, she basically said, that she proved to herself that the holy spirit exists by believing that the holy spirit told her so. So you would ask her: Does the holy spirit exist? And she would answer: Oh, yes, indeed he exists, in my mind he just told me so.

Well this is one of the most basic logical fallacy. You see, what she says is this: Holy spirit exists, because he says so. If he says so, he must exist, so what it means in shorter form is this: Holy spirit exists, because it exists. Well but this is a tautology. You could say this: Singing bottle of milk exists, because singing bottle of milk exists. You could say Unicorns exist, because they exist. Yetti exists, because he exists. You haven't proven anything. You only stated, that if let's say Holy spirit exists, well.. yeah.. then... he exists. But the question if he exists wasnt answered by this sentence. The sentence only assumes that something would be true if he would exist. That 'something being' that he exists. This is in mathematics called as stated above a tautology. It's well known fallacy in arguments to use this tautology to prove existence of something.

This is something lot of christians do. They all seem to fail to grasp on the concept and if you are in a debate with a christian and he points out this very same tautology, it should be even your moral duty to warn him about his fallacy, about his argument being invalid and that he should see to it, he wouldn't make mistakes like that in the future. And that was something I've done. After kindhearted warning like this, you'll probably be praised by ignorance, which is another issue for one of my next entries. Until then I hope you will be able to point out more of mistakes in simple logic of arguments of that believing folk and explain it to those less educated folks. Good luck with that.