The Star Trek Rule and Argumentary Efficiency.

The Star Trek rule is generally a rule described by Russell Glasser on the Atheist Experience™ blog:as asking theists to keep in mind:

Before quoting the Bible to atheists, always ask yourself whether the same statement would be just as effective in your mind if you were quoting Captain Kirk.

The problem I have with the rule is argumentative efficiency. Due to the sheer mistake per word ratio of creationists and theists and other general wrong people it become critically important to have efficient arguments. That ultimately if you take a minute to refute each wrong claim and they can make four wrong claims a minute, you are going to lose to the sheer divergence of wrongness and leave some claims unrefuted or require four times as much time as they took to make said claims. The problem with the Star Trek rule is that it violates the general brevity required for refutations.

I recall a fairly good video on youtube that took seven minutes to say what I know how to say in a fourteen words, which is largely a refutation to the argument that atheism says something about God and therefore is a faith position and therefore makes atheism a religion. "If I not buying, what you're selling, it doesn't mean I'm selling something else." I believe there was a caller on the atheist experience which called in just to give that great one line rebuttal. And it's the best rebuttal I've seen for that particular argument.

The issue with the Star Trek Rule is that you have to explain yourself and it's not worthwhile. The better answer is to appropriate something Robgene (About Atheist Forum, Twsh Quotes) said: "Trying to prove God with the Bible is like trying to prove Superman with a Comic Book." Which I turned into a demotivator and got some quasi fame. I think this is better than the Star Trek Rule.

I think you can forgo the long explanation and initially undercut the comment by saying:

If you want to relate a nugget of wisdom, ask if I'd be compelled with that same nugget of wisdom taken from a comic book. If you want to try to prove God exists by using the the Bible, please note that it will be about as effective as trying to prove Superman exists with a comic book.

It's not about proof, it's about evidence.

It's not about proof. It's about evidence. Is there evidence to believe in an an afterlife? If there is none, and I'm pretty sure that's the case. Then we should not live our lives with respect to that idea. Without an actual and existing belief in the afterlife, who would die for religion? If you are losing the rest of your life and if your life is all you have, then that decision is unreasonable. However, if you believe that by giving up your life it will slingshot you directly into paradise and you and your family will be saved, then it's the unreasonable choice not to do such a thing.

The fact that there's no evidence in favor of the proposition is entirely the reason why you shouldn't accept it. The heterodox nature of skepticism is that you should not believe a proposition for which you have no reasons to suppose that that proposition is true. Even with ideas like the afterlife, which on the surface seem to have no impact on our world, are actually sources for great mistakes and dire problems. You are mistaking the fact that there is no evidence in favor of them to conclude that, they have no effect in reality. For the actual thing this is true. There is no afterlife and therefore afterlives don't permeate our reality, by definition we are unaffected by the non-existent. However, belief in the afterlife does exist in our world and can do great harm.

Advocating for things because they do no harm, while the beliefs in them can do harm, and using that to justify the beliefs is a recipe for belief in a plethora of nothings. We should condone belief in leprechauns because there are no leprechauns, and therefore what can it matter? While some people might *really* believe in leprechauns and spend all their waking hours chasing rainbows to find a pot of gold.

While, this may see alien to us and amusing, it is no less absurd than spending 1/7th of a notably short life in church and a solid 1/2 of the days we tend to have free, praising non-existing self-sacrificing deities who died and rose from the dead fewer times than Xena: Warrior Princess. The beliefs themselves torture the minds of children and poison the minds of adults, they raise the specters demons, spread hate and bigotry and consume the lives of millions with superstitious nonsense.

The fact that believers have no proof is entirely the reason not to accept those claims.