The Argument

The true path of religion, the true way of god, is one of moderation. Extremists misinterpret the spirit of it and give religion a bad name. It’s easy to be a non-believer if you think it’s a question of extremism or nothing. But if you learn more about god and religion, you’ll realize that moderate teachings, adjusted to the current times, are the true path.

How to debunk it

1. Moderation is a subjective idea that’s applied to human constructs like law, culture, social norms and politics, not to objective truths. It’s perfectly fine, even important, to use moderation, but to apply this to religion is to admit that it, and by extension god, is a subjective human invention.
2. Objective truths don’t change over time and aren’t subject to moderation. They’re either true or not. The laws of Newton and the theory of relativity were just as valid four thousand years ago as they are today. Humanity might not yet have discovered them at that time, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t objectively true. Objective truths do not change according to societal norms. Only subjective ones do.
3. The idea that objective truth can be discovered by way of compromise or moderation—where a disagreement between a positive claim and the null hypothesis can be resolved by the two meeting halfway—commits the fallacy of middle ground or false moderation. People, or indeed entire nations, can reach negotiated compromises when it comes to human matters of policy or relationship, but the same cannot be said about objective-truth claims. The disagreement between the round-earth theory and the flat-earth theory cannot be solved with a middle-ground compromise in which we agree on the earth being some in-between shape that everyone can live with. Flat-earthers can call round-earthers extremists as much as they like, but that doesn’t mean that a path of moderation will lead us to the objective truth of the matter. Objective reality exists independently from how we subjectively feel about it, and it cannot be discovered by way of bargaining or compromise.
4. Religious moderation is a subjective idea that a person applies to their religion, not something they get from it. Where in any scripture does god tell you to use moderation or to edit his inalienable commandments to better suit the times and culture you live in? This argument just demonstrates how made up and relativistic religion is.
5. If you read the scriptures, you’ll realize that Yahweh/Allah is not a moderate deity. Thankfully, you’re a moderate person. But by claiming that this is god’s way now, you’re demonstrating that you’re inventing a subjective god that suits you.

Get the Debating Religion book now and start debunking common religious arguments in real time. This is a practical hand-book comprised of short segments that introduce common religious arguments followed by bullet-point replies that debunk them—simply, quickly, straight to the point.