Not A Blog™

I am very much excited and slightly overwhelmed at the response I’ve gotten from my post on Bad Atheist Responses to Christianity. The discussion has been swift and deep—just the way I like it. The Lolcat Bible was fun, but this stuff, I believe, is important.

In following the myriad threads and posts on the Bad Atheist Responses post, I’ve noticed there are a few things which are commonly called out as problems. I’d like to take the time to address these here, rather than trying to post the same responses all over the internet.

1. I overgeneralized.

I know did this. Was it the best course of action? Probably not. Atheists hate it when Christians overgeneralize. I should have realized it would be a problem, despite the paragraph of disclaimer.

However, I did not do it without reason. One was for simplicity in writing. I should have used weasel words in the post (e.g. “most Christians say” or “from what I’ve seen”) but I thought that might be difficult to follow if I did it too much. At the risk of alienating people with differing views, I’ve said just “Christians” are this way, implying all Christians are this way, when they’re clearly not. Weasel words have value; I’ll use them where appropriate.

I know all Christians are not the same, and there are many variations of Christianity. Anyone debating has to tailor their argument to their debate partner if they expect to have a decent discussion. If the Christian you’re talking to doesn’t believe other gods may have been demons, the argument as to how they don’t believe in them may very well support your case. If it does, go for it.

That being said, I have heard every one of positions from Christians more than once. Of course, the area in which I live, Lancaster, PA, is heavily conservative. The majority religion is Anabaptist: Amish and Mennonite groups, and also a more liberal version of these groups known as “interdenominational”, which was what I was raised as. This is similar to fundamentalism, but with more of the Amish “be in the world, but not of it” mindset.

We could talk about whether these sort of people are “typical” Christians, but then again, there are so many different versions of Christianity that you can’t really compare one group as being more or less typical than another. I need to go with what works in my area. The justifications presented in Bad Atheist Responses have all been presented to me by someone, so even if you are a Christian who doesn’t believe them, some Christians do. Besides…

2. These are things to avoid.

It doesn’t really matter whether the Christian you’re talking to has these rationalizations lined up or not, or even whether they believe that way. The idea was that, generally speaking, I’ve found that these responses to a Christian’s argument are unlikely to be effective. I was not trying to defend the “Christian” mindset (not all Christians), although I think it’s imperative to understand it. The point was to give a list of arguments that can be avoided altogether, thereby saving everybody time, and improving the overall quality of discussion.

On the Friendly Atheist site, a commenter named John put succinctly what I was hinting at:

I think the biggest mistake that atheists make in discussing religion with theists is to assume they understand exactly what that theist believes.

Exactly. Many atheists were raised in a religion, but there is a growing population that was not. (Or they never seriously practiced it.) The Bad Atheist Responses are supposed to be like a shortcut for atheists who, quite frankly, don’t understand Christianity. As I would browse atheist websites, I would see these same arguments popping up again and again, and it irked me because I would immediately think, “well, if I were a Christian, I would just say [argument].” Which brings to me to…

3. I never claimed the Christian’s rationalizations were logical, rational, or likely to stand up to scrutiny.

A few people said, “well it doesn’t make sense that Christians would believe x because [argument].” It doesn’t matter whether or not the atheist thinks it makes sense because they’re not the ones believing it. Along the same lines, a few people said, “You say Christians believe x, but that doesn’t matter in terms of the argument.” Unfortunately, it does, regardless of how absurd it seems. An atheist does not get to define what does or does not matter to the Christian anymore than the Christian can do this to the atheist. If the Christian brings it up, it’s important to them, and to dismiss it as unimportant (without honest discussion) because it makes no sense to you is genuinely offensive.

That being said, are the Christian beliefs rational? Obviously not, at least not by any usual definition of the word “rational”. Do they have rationalizations? Yes, of course. You can try to reason the irrationality of their beliefs with them, but again, this is unlikely to be effective because the rationalization is Christian doctrine and, unfortunately, the doctrine always wins. More importantly, the atheist needs to be aware of rationalizations which are internally consistent with Christian doctrine (there are many of them), and also recognize that these things, generally speaking again, will not be successfully undermined by logic. You could say this makes the entire discussion moot, but I don’t believe this is the case, which is part of what I plan to write about for Friday.

The things in Bad Atheist Arguments, then, can be defined as arguments which leads to one of the Christian’s brick-wall rationalizations which, regardless of logicality or even plausibility, the Christian is unlikely to budge on. After all…

4. The “Bad Atheist Arguments” are not bad arguments.

A few folks mentioned how they thought these “bad” arguments have merit and aren’t bad at all. You’re absolutely right; they do have merit. They’re great arguments! They are perfectly logical, and quite convincing to the logical minded—and utterly ineffective against many Christians.

If you’re an atheist, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you find these arguments to be because you’re not using them against other atheists. In the same way the unconvincing Christian arguments don’t work against atheists, but seem perfectly valid to the Christian (reason notwithstanding), these arguments are perfectly valid and convincing to the atheist, but don’t work against most Christians. If, as an atheist, you think these so beautifully convey truths about the world that no one could possibly argue, absolutely use them. I just don’t see them working because the Christian rationalizations aren’t based on logic, they’re based on doctrine.

I expect they will work against some people. But with other tools and arguments available to rationalists, and considering all the confusion and spinning-wheel arguments that invoking these may lead to, I think they’re poor lines of reasoning to use in any serious theological debate. They’re not illogical and they may even work sometimes, but they are not as convincing as many atheists think they are, and better courses of action exist.

5. There are only five in the list, I there are probably more.

Absolutely! Much like this post, I like to collect a list of items neither too short or too long, and five seems to work nicely. I’d love to see the list expanded. Someone already suggested including arguments that are ineffective against theists and the generally superstitious, which would be a more broadly applicable list.

But even more importantly than this, I am curious as to what explanations other Christians have that differ from what I’ve listed. The only one that seems to have generated significant controversy is “false gods = deceptions of Satan”, which even as a child I thought was somewhat suspicious. If you’re a Christian who has differing rationalizations for any of the points I mentioned, explaining how they’re consistent with Christianity would be valuable to the atheist—not because the atheist will accept them as rational, but because it (hopefully) demonstrates that arguing against them probably won’t help.

So now the question becomes, if you can’t argue against the doctrine—if the Christian is so set in their ways that logic, of all things, does not work—what’s the use in even bothering to talk to these people?

Discussion can be fruitful, but it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. To both sides: too many people enter theological debates with the intent to change someone’s mind. I believe this is the wrong approach. On Friday, I’ll talk a little bit more about how I approach theological discussions: not expecting to get anyone to change their mind, but trying to get them to start using it.

[Follow up edit to Friday’s entry, Why I Debate Theology]

-Ted

« Previous Page — Next Page »