Medieval timewarp

On Facebook I've had a few impromptu debates with a homosexual biomed student. Here's one exchange:

Piotr

Not entirely, children are typically not threatened with hellfire for not believing in the latter two fictional characters."

Hays

What makes you think children are typically threatened with hellfire? What's your sample?

What about atheists telling children there's no afterlife. If their mother dies, they will never see her again. Or telling a dying child he will cease to exist. Is that supposed to be comforting to a child who's afraid of death? What if that's what he's afraid of–oblivion?

Piotr

Zounds of innocent people have died gruesome deaths, take unbelievers or LGBT at the hands of medieval Christians for example, so what?

Hays

There were openly transgender people in the Middle Ages?

Piotr 

Raising from the dead would require strong demonstrable evidence as it is biologically impossible, to current knowledge.

Hays

He keeps repeating the same inept objections. Of course raising the dead is naturally impossible. That creates no presumption against God raising the dead.

Piotr

Threat of eternal punishment for not following discrete laws is obviously one of the foundations of Christianity, your no true Scotsmen because you may belong to one of many denominations do not change that.

Hays

Another textbook case of Piotr's constitutional inability to keep track of the argument. The question at issue wasn't the general proposition that Christianity has a doctrine of eternal punishment, but Piotr's specific claim about Christians typically threatening children with hellfire. Once again, where is Piotr's evidence that Christians typically threaten children with hellfire? Where's his evidence that that's typical. Typical everywhere? Typical at all times? Where's his evidence that children are typically subjected to these threats? For instance, many contemporary Christians believe in universal infant salvation. 

Piotr

I also know it from firsthand experience from living in Poland, and a little less so in England (because it's more secular, thankfully).

Hays

So his sample is primarily based on a single traditionally Catholic country, in the 21C. What a ridiculously unrepresentable sample from which to declare something "typical". 

Piotr

Appeal to emotion is irrelevant when we're talking about facts…

Hays

Notice, once again, Piotr's incorrigible inability to keep track of the argument, even when it's his very own argument. He's the one who appealed to emotion by framing the issue in terms of "mental terror". 

Why is Piotr simply incapable of being logically consistent for 30 seconds straight? Because everything he says is driven by his need to rationalize his sex life. 

Piotr

…and there is simply no evidence for an afterlife, regardless of how comforting it may seem to people.

Hays

Sure there is. Take crisis apparitions, including veridical cases of crisis apparitions. Same thing with well-confirmed hauntings. Piotr is simply ignorant of the literature. 

Then, of course, we have evidence for the Resurrection. But Piotr has a closed mind because, by his own admission, his deviant sexual lifestyle runs counter to Christian ethics. So he won't consider evidence for Christianity. 

Piotr

There are secular means of comforting loved ones in said situations…

Hays

What's the secular means of comforting a dying child who fears oblivion? What's the secular means of comfort a child who lost his mother or father? 

Piotr

Same as doctors cannot lie to patients about their condition just to 'spare their feels'.

Hays

Suppose a teenager suffers irreparable injuries in a traffic accident. He will die in a few hours, but he doesn't know it. He assumes he will recover.

But an atheist will rob him of hope by telling him he's going to die. From a secular standpoint, what's wrong with playing along with his belief so that he dies happy? 

Piotr

A little child in Poland has committed suicide not long ago because they were told they'd be reunited with their mother after death - I think I'll pass.

Hays

Atheists commit suicide too. 

Piotr

Of course there were transgender persons across history and the globe, though they will have been interpreted differently. LGBT is an umbrella term for non-heterosexual people…

Hays

Now he's having to backpedal on his original claim. Moreover, he's stuck in the Middle Ages. But that's a diversionary tactic. We're not living in the Middle Ages. So that's irrelevant. 

Piotr

You are NOT allowed to base your argument on a deity and then claim they're outside of natural/physical laws just because it's convenient for you. So unimpressive and a very tired fallacy indeed.

Hays

i) There are many different lines of evidence for God's existence.

ii) However, my argument doesn't require me to begin with God's existence. Piotr said, "Raising from the dead would require strong demonstrable evidence as it is biologically impossible, to current knowledge."

Take a comparison: What are the odds of winning a state lottery? If the lottery is fairly drawn, the odds are astronomical. What are the odds of winning the lottery twice or thrice? Magnitudes of order more astronomical. Virtually impossible.

Does that mean it demands extraordinary evidence to show that somebody won the lottery twice? No. Ordinary evidence will suffice to establish the winner.

If, however, he won the lottery twice or thrice, that would point to a rigged lottery. Since the "natural" odds of winning the lottery twice or thrice are virtually nil, evidence of winning the lottery twice or thrice would in turn constitute evidence that an outside agent intervened to manipulate the results.

By the same token, the existence of God needn't be a starting-point in arguing for the Resurrection, but the end-point.