Here’s How to Converse with Militant Atheists
Greg answers the question, “What’s the best approach to take with militant atheist friends who think Christianity is stupid?”
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In most of the Western world its a case of: 'Christianity–you're standing in it!'
That is, the very basis and structure of modern liberal society is given by the intellectual, social and ethical developments that spring from Christianity.
Now, Mr atheist, explain how your (presumed) materialism stands in this light, when we know that untrammeled materialism leads to tyranny, corruption and genocide and can explain no transcendent properties of mind.
Are god's commandments good because god said so or he said so because it is good? ……. Is killing babies good if god does it or commands it?
here from POZ response, "militant atheist" is completely nonsense
"militant fact advocate" would be all we are
I think that facts about the world should ONLY be explained by the world
and when scripture which has a conflict with evidence you do what you do with any passage so nonsensical as to be unacceptable, you accept it as only metaphor or story
the bible is clearly fond of story structure, not historic structure, as the trees in the garden could not literally have formed neural connections to teach you things just by eating, a process of literally breaking down one form of life to build up another form of life, essentially killing the original
why would god call it eating if it wasn't actually eating? seems deceptive to most rational people
point being "militant atheist" is about as silly to say as "married bachelor" as "atheist" is simply the "I don't accept your views of a god" where as "theist" is exactly the same with the "don't" replaced with "do"
where we get into proper words and definitions we tack on a second word that distinguishes our position on either side of the "are we convinced of god" wall
so we use "a-gnostic" and "gnostic" as "we are unsure" and "we are sure" respectively
again we use the "a" prefix to signify "we are not this thing" as the latin actually intended it
I am an "agnostic athiest" which means simply that I accept A god MAY exist but am unconvinced of any current gods proposed
nothing else is implied or even possible in that term
next lets deconstruct the "militant" part
militant is a term used to signify those who push their views or other aspects about a defined topic onto others who do not share them, so "militant atheist" would be a group of atheist's who actively go to churches and homes to make you doubt or reject god, a thing that actually never happens
maybe on youtube those who debunk pseudoscience that is claimed to be scriptural could be falsely called that because of it being confused, but it is a faulty assumption
so "militant atheist" does not exist, anyone you try to claim is such a thing is clearly addressing your rejection of a specific indisputable fact and not your beliefs about things in the afterlife, a thing no atheist actually asserts to know about
so kudos to you if you read this far and that you let me post this rather than disable comments, thereby preventing rational discussion
and I give a piece of final advice, stop saying "militant atheist" it just leads to us dismissing anything you claim as nonsense as the term describes something that simply does not exist in our world
Talking to teach them rather than to learn from them, or at least some mixture of the two, is the commencement of error.
This video was actually genuinely funny to me. It was basically "tell me you have no idea how to talk to those outside your faith without saying that you have no idea how to talk to people outside your faith". This was surprisingly comedic 😂
I recently discovered Gregory Koukl and am reading his book Tactics. A lot of atheists don't like his approach but they probably aren't going to like any Christian approach. If you read his book I think you would at least respect him even if you don't agree with his idealogy. He stresses to speak to people with respect and dignity and not to get angry or make the other person angry. I think it is great advice for life in general and not just concerning religious topics.
I find it amusing how many atheists are commenting here about how they don't like the video of 2 Christians talking to each other. As a Christian, I don't go to videos of atheists conversing and then write negative comments about what they have to say. If you don't like the videos then don't watch. There- fixed it!
…As for the caller. I think i know what happened with this fellow. I think he may been out with his friends (several of whom were atheists), and they may have brought up thesubject of religion, and he may have felt a bit outnumbered to speak up. So, he may have felt offended or even attacked, and he wanted to defend his religion, but didn't know how. I know that when atheists do converse they can be quite brutal when speaking about religion amongst themselves, but trust me when I say that so can theists. The notion that i deserve eternal torment for the mere fact that I don't feel i have been given sufficient evidence of a god is a horrible thing to say, and something i have in fact heard from friends. Well, if God is real, and that is his way of doing; then he sounds like a sounds like a tyrant and isn't worthy of my worship.
So; basically you're whole argument is: "as Christians; we own the word evil." That's not a very wise approach. However; as an atheist I'm not gonna ask you about evil. Instead I'm gonna ask what an absolute moral law is? Of course; I know the answer, but unlike you I know that there aren't any absolute moral laws.
I am an atheist, so you can practice your debating skills right here.
Let me answer your first question real quick. What we atheists think is ridiculous about Christianity.
We live in the 21 century, we know how life actually evolved, so to have a religion that claims that we have been made out of dirt or ribs in a strange garden full of talking animals and magical plants is ridiculous. Same for a god who makes his own virgin mother pregnant with himself, to sacrifice himself to himself, for himself is beyond ridiculous.
All the bible stories are so unreal dumb that it hurts. A worldwide flood, really? Angels killing all the firstborn children in egypt? A guy with magical hair killing armies? A guy living in a fish.., the list is endless. In short, to believe in stuff like the tower of babel in a time with space stations is ridiculous.
Daniel denet never called Christians dumb, atheists don’t believe in objective morality. Your rebuttal supports the idea of a god and then we’re automatically on the same page about what god is real. The reason school shootings are bad because you’re taking something away from someone, you don’t need a grand reason of why these ideas make sense.
I have already answered this below but let me state it directly:
In the naturalistic world view, good and evil are categories of human thought, but they are not entirely arbitrary. They developed because they were of benefit to the species. They are an EFFECTIVE way for social beings to make sense of the world.
In the Christian worldview, good and evil are objective and absolute, because a god says so (never mind that that is a non sequitur). CHRISTIANS need to explain why a good god lets evil happen. This is not an issue for the naturalist.
The existence or nonexistence of God has no bearing on whether evil is objective or subjective. Is something moral because God says so or does God say so because it is moral? If the former then it is subjective even if that subject is God. If the latter then God is not necessary to determine what is moral. If you say morality is a character trait of God, then you are just kicking the can down the street. Never forget that the problem of evil is a RESPONSE to believers' claims that an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God exists.
Which is worse:
"Christians are stupid"
or
"Atheists are degenerates . . . AND stupid"
Atheism explains pain and suffering very well. The world is not "perfect" as humans think of it, and was not designed with human happiness in mind. What we call pain and suffering are adaptive in sufficiently sophisticated organisms. In sufficiently sophisticated, intelligent, social species (not just humans), intuitions about good and evil are adaptive for the species as a whole.
All you have is a story about the first humans bringing evil into the world by eating magic fruit. It doesn't explain how a benevolent, omnipotent god can stand by and let his beloved creatures pointlessly suffer.
I don't think believers are stupid but some of their claims do not bare scrutiny, like substitutionary atonement. Biblical cosmology and psychology are demonstrably wrong. Start with Job. There is evidence that the NT writers employed tropes that were common at the time. Justin Martyr admitted this in his apologies. Christianity did not really invent anything. It just took everything to the nth degree. This suggests HUMAN fingerprints all over it. .
“The Christian worldview sees the world as magical”. Thank you for admitting that. However, the world we actually experience is not. It is consistent, reliable and understandable. What we don’t experience are talking animals, pillars of fire, people hanging out inside fishes, seas parting, giants roaming the earth, angels and demons, women turning to salt, virgins giving birth, global floods, city walls falling due to walking, people with magic hair that make them invincible, and on and on. History has been a one way road of religious explanations for phenomena losing out to scientific ones, which happen to carry with them significantly more explanatory usefulness then “it was magic”.
I wonder if they are still friends after this, lol
who makes the laws?
We do, as in humans
We don't hurt people cause we don't want to get hurt ourselves….very dishonest arguments from Greg.
If the theist cannot show evidence for their claims, then exactly what is there to talk about beyond the fact of their believing some claim that is rationally fictional? Theism is totally disconnected from reality. Consider….
T: Do you believe in God?
A: What is God?
T: An all-powerful entity?
A: Where is this entity? What shows that it exists?
This is where things go nuts, since, theists will often insert all sorts of stuff, but none of what is presented is actually shown to be an aspect of reality. Stories aren't evidence. Arguments require evidence by which to be accepted and the arguments amount to being smoke screens for the fact of there being no evidence.
Why don't you read a book or two about atheism from atheists, that way you are not reading the propaganda from the people who are against them?
You are just a bad used car salesman. This attitude of saying whatever will "seal the sale" is exactly what many atheists see as the dumbness of Christians, but the mistake is in attributing it to all Christians, not just apologists.
Koukl’s deceptive tactics are just going to ruin this friendship. Manipulating the conversation down a specific pre-planned path, with the end goal of checkmating your opponent never works.
What is irrational about Christianity? (3:00)
It is irrational (in the context of reality) to accept a claim about reality when there is no evidence (demonstrable cause/effect linkages) supporting the claim. This is the case for God claims (ideas entailing the idea of a non-contingent intelligent agent). Thus, this is a point of irrationality with regard to theism in general which of course includes Christianity.
This gets worse when the textual material has demonstrable falsehoods such as what is present in the Abrahamic texts and the claim supports the idea that such should not be the case.
Does it make sense to you that an entity that supposedly wants acceptance doesn't present itself such that there can be rational acceptance? This strikes me as irrational and the idea of people accepting such an idea also strikes me as irrational.
—
The problem of evil is considered a problem for various theistic claims due to the expectations associated with the claim. IF X is denoted as good, then there are actions the would correspond to such a designation. Failure to act dismisses the designation.
Would you consider the individual who watches a rape (or other horrid act) that they could stop without harm to either party (but especially the victim) – good? I wouldn't denote such an individual as being good. They could be a best apathetic, but the label good would not be applicable. This kind of thinking would apply to the idea of a God, since a supposed all-powerful entity could address such issues, but we have no such intervention such that the idea of a God as often presented can be considered supported. This results in the second issue (divine hiddenness as it is commonly labeled) which in combination with the problem of evil rationally relegates the idea of a God to fiction. Since, there is no state of reality which supports the claim.
The fact of there being all sorts of horrors which occur without intervention is expected given the current understanding of nature. The fact of there being all sorts of cognitive impairments are also expected.
The state of reality insofar as we observe makes the idea of a God as often claimed an absurdity.
sad. the "problem of evil" certainly is specifically and definitionally a problem for tri-omni theists. so yea in atheist materialism, morality is subjective. if a lion eats a child that's not evil from the lion's perspective, the kid was just easy protein. humans can agree as a species/society that some things are good, some things are bad.
I love how most of the comments here are just saying how dumb this was 😂 I was completely expecting the opposite
Just came over from a response video and frankly what they show in that one tells me that you never answer the question and instead of showing that God exists you simply reverse the burden of proof. This is not how you argue. You have obviously never been part of a official debate. Youre argument isnt an argument its equivilant to "i know you are but what am I"
Greg, you have no idea what a atheist would say….perhaps you should actually try your arguments with an actual atheist, you would find the discussion does not go the way you had planned.
According to this video ALL of his atheist friends: Are militant. Thoughtlessly spout off cliches and rhetoric. Think religion is stupid. Think religious people are irrational. Are all moral objectivists. Believe that morality exists independently from humans. Are materialists. Won’t understand basic questions. Haven’t thought much about their own worldview.
And at least some of them believe that evolution gave rise to objective moral values even though that makes no sense.
Here's How to Converse with Militant Atheists: if you are claiming a god exists, show the atheist evidence for that god. If you do that, they will no longer be an atheist.
How are these theists defining an atheist as militant?
Is it any atheist that disputes what the theists are claiming? Is it an atheist that won't accept the theist claim unless the theist provides actual evidence?
Greg lives in a bubble of American Evangelicals and it shows.
Simple answer:
Talk to us like a normal person.
I'm a militant atheist. In 25 years of doing counter-apologetics, not once have I ever observed any Christian justify leaping from "god required it of 1st century people" over to "god requires it of 21st century people". That is a non-sequitur. You Christians NEVER make even a slightly convincing case that anything in the bible "applies to us today". You just blindly assume that if the NT is historically reliable, then it surely does apply to us today. Which is sort of like saying if Tacitus is historically reliable, then it applies to us today.
As far as Christianity being "stupid", I wouldn't be able to say that because "stupid" usually connotes apathy toward demonstrable truth or inexcusable ignorance. However, that Christianity is 'false" is pretty reasonable: Mark 3:21 proves that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. After all, if his own family thought he was insane, they certainly didn't think his miracles were genuinely supernatural. If they didn't think his miracles were genuinely supernatural, its probably because in that honor/shame culture, they checked out a few such "miracles" and decided they were fake, before taking actions such as "arresting" him that would debase him. It's a very small leap from "Jesus couldn't do real miracles" over to "God likely would not premise his Second Covenant upon the words and works of a deceiver". Thus god was not likely to raise Jesus from the dead.
On the basis that Mark is the earliest gospel (the majority view among Christian scholars) and originally ended at 16:8 (same) showing no knowledge that Jesus ever actually made good on his alleged resurrection appearance-predictions (even though we might have expected that in writing around 50 a.d., Mark would want to convey such knowledge of the most important Christian event no less than he wished to convey less important traditions about John the Baptist), I "explain" the resurrection appearance stories in Matthew, Luke and John as little more than embellishment and an apologetic need to upscale what were originally visionary experiences to make them seem more concrete and life-like.
Paul's resurrection testimony was that he had "seen the Lord" (1st Cor. 9:1), a fact nowhere expressed or implied in the NT's three most explicit accounts of Paul's experience on the road to Damascus. Go ahead, read Acts 9, Acts 22 and Acts 26. If the light was bright enough to blind Paul, I am well within the bounds of reasonableness to deny that he could have physically viewed the being producing this light, i.e., Jesus. Thus Paul does not deserve the label of "eye"witness, and to that extent, whatever force there is in appeal to Paul's experience is significantly reduced.
In Paul's "creed" of 1st Cor. 15:3-4, check 11:23…when he says what he received, he passes on to you, he likely means he received it from "the Lord", meaning he was unwilling to simply credit his dependence upon the earlier human tradition from the apostles. Therefore the "creed" is reasonably taken not as showing the conveyance of human apostolic tradition, but Paul's need to credit his gospel origins in claims of divine telepathy (Galatians 1:11-12). This is consistent with Paul's absurd comments elsewhere, such as his inability, even 14 years after the fact, to figure out whether his flying up into heaven was physical or spiritual (2nd Cor. 4:1-4).
DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE! This is atrociously bad advice for talking with your friends, especially if they are "militant" (which is a pretty absurd descriptor for a non-belief in the first place) atheists.
All Greg is doing here is giving you a script. One in which your conversation will almost certainly deviate and leave you hanging. Like as soon as they say "I don't believe in objective evil, I believe what we consider as 'evil' is actually completely subjective" and then you're cooked. A lot of Christians think being gay is evil because God said so. Lots of other Christians have no issue with it at all. How can you say God is an objective arbiter of evil when even His followers don't agree with each other on what's evil?
Or any of the numerous other ways they can point out contradictions and huge flaws in the Bible and beliefs attached to it.
Don't try to preach to your friends, especially not like this. At best they'll just think you're being weird, then they'll give you the nod and "Oh yeah, you gave me something to think about" just to get out of the topic. Whenever you hear someone say that to an apologist, they're just trying to get out of the conversation without being rude. I know, because I've done it. At worst, they won't want to be friends with you anymore because you're infuriating to be around. So please, for your own sake, don't listen to his advice.
It's not the problem of "evil", it's the problem of suffering. We are basically biological organisms that can be harmed. This alleged God would be responsible for the fact that we can be harmed. Evolution chugged along for billions of years without anything being harmed. About 500 million years ago sentient beings that could be harmed came into existence. Evolution didn't know what it was doing when that happened. It just happened. The subjective experience of being harmed cannot be explained by science. Saying that a God is responsible for the fact that we can be harmed makes no sense. Saying that we are responsible for the fact that we can be harmed makes no sense. Saying that crude forces are responsible makes sense.
I hope against the odds the caller reads this. IF not then anyone who thinks to preach to atheists using apologetics.
The long and short is, these arguments will not convince an atheist. The whole purpose of people like Koukl is to make you, the theist, not question your beliefs. The church is bleeding membership and the only way they get new converts is through children growing up in very religious households. So they need to ensure that as few people drift away from religion as possible.
All of your friends who don't believe have already thought of everything you are going to tell them, and those arguments don't hold up under the least bit of thought.
If you want to be a good friend, then accept them for who they are just like they accept you for who you are. Thinking of your friends as "marks" means you don't care about them at all. Wanting to force someone to your way of thinking is not being a friend. Everyone has their own will and will choose their own life. The best you can do for them is set a good example. Because if you try these arguments on them at best they will laugh you out of the room. at worst you will find yourself having fewer and fewer friends.
Let me try to convince you that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairly are real. Would any arguments work? Let me lend you my copies of The Book of Santa Claus and The Book of The Tooth Fairy. Would reading them convince you?
You shouldn't speak for atheists, nor pontificate about their thought processes. You couldn't be more off base regarding how an atheist would respond or what precepts an atheist would agree to. For example, I don't believe in an objective evil, or that any law was broken. We have subjective morality. No timeless, spaceless mind necessary.
I'm an atheist who has met hundreds of atheists and never met a "militant atheist". Atheists insist upon rationality, and that conflicts with Christianity, and it makes Christians want to start wars, not atheists. See: History, ancient, medieval and contemporary.
If you can demonstrate God's existence, do so. You would be the first.
If you can't demonstrate God's existence, admit your faith is irrational and stop bothering your friends.
This is unfortunately really bad advice, because none of it will do anything to convince an atheist. Atheists DO NOT believe in evil, evil is STRICTLY a problem for christians, because that is what they believe in – evil. Believing in a magical world won't convince atheists, because they don't believe in magic. None of these arguments are even remotely close to even slightly convincing an atheist.
Greg, have you ever actually had a conversation with an atheist? I have had plenty of conversations with religious folk and that is never how any of our conversations have ever gone. It seems to me as though you only have these pretend conversations, thats called a strawman.
Hey Greg, if you aren't too much of a chicken shit, why don't you debate Jeffery Jay Lowder, who is one of the best atheist debaters there is. He already destroyed Frank Turek and Phil Fernandes. If you got the balls, why don't you step up to the plate? He is such a good debater that William Lane Craig has been shitting his pants at the thought of debating Lowder. In fact, he has been ducking a debate with Lowder since the late 1990s. If you aren't too much of a chicken shit, why don't you step up and debate Lowder?
The difference between atheists and these sorts of theists is, atheists believe evil exists, because it represent tangible, demonstrable harm.
The theist of the Koukl variety will instead only consider something evil because God said it is in a book.
Which of the two positions do you think is more reasonable and empathetic ?
How can I determine if something is "evil" from a atheist perspective? Easy, would it be something that I would like to be done against me and is that something detrimental to human flourishing. It doesn't require a god to figure this out, just logic and empathy.
I wonder why these "militant atheist friends" are so militant? Couldn't be because this person keeps trying to force his own belief onto them, could it? I wonder…
Nothing magical or supernatural has ever been demonstrated to have happened, so yes, claiming that is is a "magical world" does make a person look silly. But that's far from the only reason Christian claims look silly to atheists.
Right, the problem of evil makes sense in the Christian world view, there's absolutely no self-contradiction in the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful and infinitely-loving god who allows evil. That's not a dishonest attempt to steer the conversation in a totally different direction at all. Not to mention that saying "why god allows evil is a totally separate issue", when talking specifically about why god allows evil, shows Greg's colors to the fullest.
Christianity is entirely irrational. It is irrational to believe that something exists in objective reality that has precisely zero verified objective empirical evidence of its objective existence. It is irrational to believe that humans can be resurrected from being truly dead, Once the electrochemical processes that take place in a living brain cease they cannot be restarted, and even if they could the result would be an entirely different person. It is irrational to believe that anything of the 'self' can persist after brain death since the self is a subset of the electrochemical processes that take place in a living brain. It is irrational to believe that anything that is not made of the same particles and forces as everything in our solar system is can have any effect on anything that is made of those particles and forces. It is irrational to think that anything "supernatural" is objectively real. It is irrational to believe that the gods of the bible are objectively real since they are self contradictory. It is irrational to believe something that has been claimed for thousands of years, yet no one has ever even been able to show is possible. It is irrational to think that any top-down origin scenario (gods or the like first) works because all top-down origin scenarios necessarily include the infinite regression issue. It cannot be defined away without committing a special pleading fallacy. This means that there can be no 'first cause' that is an 'intelligent designer' or a 'supreme being'. Top-down origin scenarios (gods or the like first) simply do not work, they are inherently irrational.
Bottom-up origin scenarios (quantum fields or something similar first) can work because quantum theory, supported by innumerable empirical experiments, shows that there are hard limits to how small and simple things can be. All of our available objective empirical evidence points to an objective reality that is built from the bottom up. No available objective empirical evidence points to an objective reality that is built from the top down.