Home » Posts tagged 'skepticism'
Tag Archives: skepticism
What In a Salvation Presentation Is the Chief Factor Toward Someone’s Conversion?
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his Complete Letters (1868-1871) wrote:
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
Just know that if you remain with Christ, you also remain with the truth. Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). That quote though makes it sound like something other than the truth is the main factor leading to saving faith. Others might echo the sentiment of Dostoyevsky, especially when one considers their methodology.
Three Categories
I will divide into three categories of argument or evidence for or vindication of the gospel message unto salvation. This answers, why should I believe the gospel?
Listening to professing conversion testimonies through my whole life, I heard different reasons for someone receiving the gospel. When I listen to apologists talk alone or in conversations with skeptics, I have heard them give varied reasons people will receive the gospel. People state epistemic, moral, and aesthetic arguments, evidence, or vindication. Thought leaders express these three, ranking them for their impact. People include them in their testimonies or salvation stories.
Epistemic
An epistemic presentation or epistemic preaching gives knowledge or information, makes intellectual arguments, trying to persuade the mind of a skeptic or lost person. This would include exegesis of scripture, using the Bible for elucidation of and authority for truth. It connects everything to history and will even show the compatibility of the scriptural account with history, science, archaeology, everything in the real world.
Moral
A moral presentation or preaching relies on the goodness of someone in the life of the skeptic or lost person. The moral quality of a friend, acquaintance, co-worker, or family member impacts him or her to the degree that they acquiesce to that influence. A person with a wrecked life sees this as the only way out. Maybe he sees it as the path away from drugs, obesity, alcohol or other harmful addictions. Perhaps he witnesses the quality and diligence of the efforts of a co-worker, making a moral impression upon him.
Aesthetic
An aesthetic presentation or preaching relies on the beauty or emotional effects of a personal testimony, a moving story, a fearful threat or warning, or just well-told, expressive anecdotes. It also may be the feeling of community or comradery of a group of individuals, how they get along, show friendship and solidarity, and experience satisfaction in all that.
Compelling Argument
Skeptics
Many skeptics would say that Christianity or the Bible doesn’t present compelling epistemic argument to persuade them. It does not provide enough knowledge to give up their present life to follow Jesus Christ. It is harder to believe that a man rose from the dead than to believe that men lied and said he rose from the dead, when he really didn’t. Even if they don’t possess great reasons for not believing the gospel account, they don’t have enough good ones either.
I heard one skeptic, still a skeptic though, report a frightening dream. He was on an airplane. The plane was crashing and in a semi-conscious state, he prayed to God for deliverance. When he woke up, it shook him. In his heart of hearts, despite his skepticism, he acknowledged the innate instinct or impulse to look to God for salvation.
Dostoyevsky
The profession of Dostoyevsky relates to either a moral or aesthetic urge or compulsion. Online Britannica gives some context to his quote that began this article:
In 1847 Dostoyevsky began to participate in the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of intellectuals who discussed utopian socialism. He eventually joined a related, secret group devoted to revolution and illegal propaganda. It appears that Dostoyevsky did not sympathize (as others did) with egalitarian communism and terrorism but was motivated by his strong disapproval of serfdom. On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested.
Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock-execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment. One of the prisoners went permanently insane on the spot; another went on to write Crime and Punishment.
Dostoyevsky passed several minutes in the full conviction that he was about to die, and in his novels characters repeatedly imagine the state of mind of a man approaching execution. The hero of The Idiot, Prince Myshkin, offers several extended descriptions of this sort, which readers knew carried special authority because the author of the novel had gone through the terrible experience. The mock execution led Dostoyevsky to appreciate the very process of life as an incomparable gift and, in contrast to the prevailing determinist and materialist thinking of the intelligentsia, to value freedom, integrity, and individual responsibility all the more strongly.
1 Corinthians 1: Greek External Evidence and Jewish Experiences
I expressed here in other articles that men offer their reasons for not believing for which Paul accounts in 1 Corinthians 1. He says, Greeks seek after wisdom, Jews seek after signs. You could say that Greeks want intellectual arguments, something akin to their arguments in the Greek city states. They want external evidence.
Jews seek after signs. They tended in that day toward wanting further experiential proof. Something needed to move them in a personal way to prove reality. Even after the ten plagues in Egypt, most of the Jews still balked at listening to Moses and following what He said, that God told him to say. Scripture indicates that experience is not a basis of faith.
Faith Comes By Hearing the Word of God
The Bible provides the authority for what men need for salvation. In a simple way, it’s Romans 10:17: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” God will use the testimony of others, what they say and do. He might use a bad dream, smiting someone in his inner consciousness. God moves people with overwhelming beauty.
Hebrews 11:6 says that a person requires believing that God is a rewarder. Along these lines, Romans 2:4 says the goodness of God leads someone to repentance. Someone won’t receive Christ unless he thinks he’s better off with Christ as the Captain of his life.
Scripture does more than an epistemic presentation or preaching. It targets the mind, no doubt, but it reaches further than that. It affects the rebellion of a person in His will. Romans 1 says men know God (Rom 1:19). They suppress the truth though (1:18, hold the truth in unrighteousness). Their perverse natures rebel.
I believe scripture indicates in many places that the rebellion relates to human will or pride. People want their own way. They will choose their own way against their own self-interest. Men make choices that doom them, which they make so that they can stay in charge.
The Reach of Scripture
Jesus starts the sermon on the mount with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). A person must understand his own spiritual poverty, that he is not the master of his own fate. He can’t even get what he really wants on his own. He doesn’t have anything to get there. That humility doesn’t just occur. God works in a person through His Word.
When Hebrews 4:12 says that the Word of God is powerful to divide soul and spirit, that goes further than the mind. The soul includes emotion and will. God works in an epistemic, moral, and aesthetic way, all three. However, it must start with the mind. Someone must believe the gospel is true. God sanctifies through the truth.
Even with the moving of personal testimony and some stirring of emotions, everyone must receive the truth, which starts with the mind. For a person to believe, he must understand the gospel. More occurs through the gospel than just the intellectual, but that must occur.
Today I see the emotional or experiential calls for salvation as the biggest problem in evangelicalism. Evangelicals think more about what people will like or how they feel. They do not want to tell the whole truth, because people won’t like it. God saves people through the truth, not by leaving out the hard parts. Jesus never did that. Let’s do what Jesus did and then all of His apostles.
Cohesion
Agreement
The moral and the aesthetic must agree with the epistemic, but salvation centers on the epistemic. All the events of the gospel happened. Jesus is Savior. He is Lord. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it.
Moral and aesthetic presentation must cohere with the truth. You cannot separate truth from goodness and beauty. People get their view of God very often if not the most often from the aesthetic. If the aesthetic contradicts the epistemic, someone will get the wrong God. He will imagine a different God than presented by scripture. This keeps him from salvation. Even if he receives this god, it isn’t God.
Effect
A good moral example alone doesn’t save someone, but a bad one can hinder or repel salvation though. This includes a lascivious lifestyle presented as a product of the grace of God. Furthermore, regarding aesthetics, someone gets a wrong understanding of God from false worship music. He associates God with lust and worldliness. The right music doesn’t save, but wrong music, false worship, hinders or repels salvation.
The moral and aesthetic are important, but we must focus on the epistemic. Give the whole plan of salvation. Target the understanding. Don’t attempt to persuade with emotions and experiences. Use your stories to illuminate the truth to persuade in the mind. Scripture and the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.
Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte by Richard Whately & Skepticism
Have you ever read Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte by ? (view the book online for free here or here; a version you can cut and paste into a document so you can listen to it is here), or get a physical copy:
David Hume, the famous skeptic, employed a variety of skeptical arguments against the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ, and against the possibility of miracles and the rationality of believing in them in Section 10, “Of Miracles,” of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Whately, an Anglican who believed in the Bible, in miracles, and in Christ and His resurrection, turned Hume’s skeptical arguments against themselves. Whately’s “satiric Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1819), … show[ed] that the same methods used to cast doubt on [Biblical] miracles would also leave the existence of Napoleon open to question.” Whately’s book is a short and humerous demonstration that Hume’s hyper-skepticism would not only “prove” that Christ did not do any miracles or rise from the dead, but that Napoleon, who was still alive at the time, did not exist or engage in the Napoleonic wars. Hume’s argument against miracles is still extremely influential–indeed, as the teaching sessions mentioned in my last Friday’s post indicated, the main argument today against the resurrection of Christ is not a specific alternative theory such as the stolen-body, hallucination, or swoon theory, but the argument that miracles are impossible, so, therefore, Christ did not rise–Hume’s argument lives on, although it does not deserve to do so, as the critiques of Hume’s argument on my website demonstrate. For these reasons, the quick and fun read Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte is well worth a read. (As a side note, the spelling “Buonaparte” by the author, instead of Bonaparte, is deliberate–the British “used the foreign sounding ‘Buonaparte’ to undermine his legitimacy as a French ruler. … On St Helena, when the British refused to acknowledge the defeated Emperor’s imperial rights, they insisted everyone call him ‘General Buonaparte.'”
Contemporary Significance
Part of the contemporary significance of Richard Whately’s Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte relates to how we evaluate historical data. We should avoid both the undue skepticism of David Hume and also undue credulity. Whatever God revealed in His Word can, and must, be accepted without question. But outside of Scripture, when evaluating historical arguments, we should employ Biblical principles such as the following:
Have the best arguments both for and against the matter in question been carefully examined?
Is the argument logical?
Are there conflicts of interest in those promoting the argument?
Does the argument produce extraordinary evidence for its extraordinary claims?
Does the argument require me to think more highly of myself than I ought to think?
Is looking into the argument redeeming the time?
Are Biblical patterns of authority followed by those spreading the argument?
(principles are reproduced from my website here, and are also discussed here.)
A failure to properly employ consistent criteria to the evaluation of evidence undermines the case for Scripture. For example, Assyrian records provide as strong a confirmation as one could expect for Hezekiah’s miraculous deliverance from the hand of Assyria by Jehovah’s slaying 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19). However, Assyrian annals are extremely biased ancient propaganda. Those today who claim that any source showing bias (say, against former President Trump, or against conservative Republicans–of which there are many) should be automatically rejected out of hand would have to deny, if they were consistent, that Assyrian records provide a glorious confirmation of the Biblical miracle. Likewise, Matthew records that the guards at Christ’s tomb claimed that the Lord’s body was stolen as they slept (Matthew 28). Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, intends the reader to be able to see through this biased and false argument to recognize the fact that non-Christians were making it actually provides confirmation for the resurrection of Christ. (If you do not see how it confirms the resurrection, think about it for a while.)
Many claims made today, whether that the population of the USA would catastrophically decline as tens of millions would die from the COVID vaccine, that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams had her election win in Georgia stolen by Republicans, that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had his 2020 election win in Georgia stolen by Democrats, that 9/11 was perpetrated by US intelligence agencies, that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, that the miracle cure for cancer has been discovered but is being suppressed by Big Pharma, and many other such claims are rarely advanced by those who follow the Biblical principles listed above for evaluating information. Furthermore, the (dubious) method of argumentation for such claims, if applied to the very strong archaeological evidence for the Bible, would very frequently undermine it, or, indeed, frequently undermine the possibility of any historical investigation at all and destroy the field of historical research.
In conclusion, I would encourage you to read Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte, and, as you read it, think about what Scripture teaches about how one evaluates historical information.
–TDR
-The Amazon link above is an affiliate link. Please visit here to learn about how one can donate to charity at no additional cost when purchasing products at Amazon and here to learn how to save on Internet purchases in general.
The Buddha Did Not Exist, According to Buddhism
Did you know that, according to the teaching of Buddhism, the Buddha (“the Enlightened One”) did not and does not exist?
“According to Buddhism … the Buddha does not exist because … nothing exists.” (Donald S. Lopez, Jr.,From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013], 220).
Why do Buddhists teach that the Buddha did not exist? According to the Buddhist teaching of anatman, “not-Self … the soul or any form of self or personal identity is an illusion.” You are just a bunch of sense impressions made up of groupings called skandhas. So, according to Buddhism, you are not reading this right now, because you are not real. Your family is also not real. Even Siddhartha Gautama—the Buddha—did not exist, if Buddhism is true. He was just an illusion, like you.
Not all Buddhists ascribe Divine attributes to the Buddha, but many do. Those who do so are worshipping someone who, according to their own religion, does not exist. Christians agree with Buddhists on this point–the divine Buddha does not exist, but for Christians, that the Buddha does not exist seems like a very, very good reason not to ascribe worship to him. That Buddhist meditation is harmful, not helpful would also seem like a significant problem for Buddhism.
The affirmation above is not that information about the historical Buddha is very scarce and unreliable. That is also true. The affirmation above is that, if one grants, for the sake of argument, that Buddhism is true–which it is not–then the Buddha did not exist. Buddhists also do not exist.
To many readers of this blog, the idea that Buddhism teaches that the Buddha did not exist seems almost unbelievable. I wanted to confirm that this is accurate, so I spoke to a Buddhist scholar who teaches Buddhist studies at a prestigious institution (I sought such confirmation for most of the material in The Buddha and the Christ, in addition to seeking to cite sources properly and so on). This significant Buddhist scholar confirmed the accuracy of this information. The Buddha did not exist, according to Buddhism.
You can find out more in my study The Buddha and the Christ: Their Persons and Teachings Compared. (Note: I have updated this pamphlet relatively recently, so if you are using it for evangelism in your church, please make sure you are utilizing the latest version.)
However, just like (according to Buddhism) the Buddha does not exist, you do not exist, either, and you are not reading this right now. Neither does this blog post exist. I will therefore stop writing it right now, especially since I don’t exist, either, according to Buddhism.
–TDR
The Uncertainty of the “Textual Confidence” View of Preservation of Scripture
For those reading, next week either Monday or Wednesday, I will provide as concise an answer as possible to the question, “Which TR?” I’ve answered this question before several times, but it’s usually just ignored, never answered. I’ve never had it answered. It’s asked as a gotcha question, then I give the answer, followed by silence. I’m going to try to do the best I’ve ever done at the answer.
**************************
A group of four men calling themselves The Textual Confidence Collective recorded seven podcasts for youtube. These men posted their first on Monday, July 11, 2022. The purpose of their gathering in Texas for these recordings was to persuade people of a new position on preservation of scripture. They call it “textual confidence.” They’ve given their own new position an enticing or attractive label, but it is still new.
Confidence sounds very good. Confidence in Collective parlance is akin to the word “trust.” I believe that’s what they mean by “confidence.” Placing confidence in someone or something is trusting it or trusting in it. In the scriptural use of the word “trust,” God does not call for confidence or trust in the uncertain. Uncertainty also does not bring biblical trust. Confidence relates to God, Who is always certain.
As a label, “Textual Confidence” definitely sounds superior to “Textual Doubt.” The four men testify they want to help Christians have confidence in the underlying text of their English translation of the Bible. They say it’s not a sure, settled text, and unlike their opponents, they’re honest. This admission of less than one hundred percent surety, they argue, engenders confidence. The text of scripture is something pure like Tide detergent, not 100%, but still good.
The Collective Confidence falls short of certainty. Three of the men replaced certainty with what they call confidence. The discovery of textual variants, that is, variations in hand copies, destroyed their certainty. This shows they do not stand on biblical presuppositions. They also listened to men who contradicted certainty. Now they are confident in the text without certainty about the words. They reject certainty and also want to push their uncertainty on others, bringing every church in the world to the same position, what they call “unity.”
The Collective also says they’re just telling the truth in contrast to people with differing positions, deceived or lying. Those who take their view — according to them — are very nice, super balanced, great with their rhetorical tone compared to the others. Part of this, they say about themselves, is their focus on Jesus and the gospel rather than on the text of scripture. This implies that supporters of other positions than theirs elevate the Bible above Jesus in an unbalanced and perverted way. The latter is an example of their tone.
Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth” (John 17:17). Delivering the teaching of scripture is truth. What the Bible says about itself is true. The existence of textual variants does not change the biblical doctrine of the preservation of scripture.
Many people have suffered for believing something different than they once did, including from family. No one will invite me to the same functions as Mark Ward. Certain doors close depending on what you believe. If you believe an error, the same thing will occur. I don’t condone a kind of mean or vicious form of separation that just cuts people off. I don’t practice that kind of separation either. Many evangelicals practice like this, even though they don’t even believe in biblical separation. Facing exclusion though doesn’t make a position right.
Two of the Collective testified to suffering from parents and siblings for changing positions on the Bible. I don’t think someone should hang on to a false position because they don’t want to lose their family. The Collective, however, treats this suffering as proof their new position is true and right. It doesn’t prove either position. No one should come to a conclusion for what’s right by comparing who suffers the most. This is common, however, among modern version proponents.
The Collective distinguishes their view from what they present as two false extremes, “textual skepticism” and “textual absolutism.” The men used Bart Ehrman as an example of the former. They weren’t clear who was the former, but I’m confident they’re talking about a wide range of King James Version and textus receptus advocates, anyone who is certain about the text of scripture.
A strong statement of the first podcast is that skepticism and absolutism come from the same place or are closer than what the audience may expect. The Collective says that an absolutist perspective turns people into skeptics more than skeptics do because of their defense of “every iota across the board.” I’m skeptical about this point, because the certainty that brings trust in scripture comes from what the Bible says about itself. Jesus defended every iota across the board.
Should people belief in the words of scripture as absolute, what someone might say is without variableness or shadow of turning? In other words, does the Word of God reflect the nature of God and its immutability? That is what scripture says about itself and it is what our spiritual forefathers passed down to us.
Modern textual criticism does not and has not increased trust in the inerrancy and authority of the Word of God. Since I’ve been alive, as the prominence of textual criticism grows, trust in scripture diminishes. Scriptural presuppositions on the other hand provide increasing spiritual strength through believing what God said, trusting in the Word of God as absolute authority. Greater faith proceeds from certainty, not uncertainty.
Dealing with Typical Atheist Arguments Against God As Represented by the Late Christopher Hitchens
At one point about a decade ago, before he died at age 62 of esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens was included in a group of atheists titled, the four horsemen, ironically after the characters in Revelation 6. They were also associated with what was termed, new atheism, still around today. Hitchens had written a book, God Is Not Great, mainly a contradiction of a misstatement of an expression in Islam, God is great, which is actually, Allahu Akbar, “Allah is Greater.” With his book title, Hitchens was more poking the eye of the religion of Islam than Christianity.
To boost the sales of his book, Hitchens toured the United States to debate all comers, especially in the Bible belt. In a short period of time, he debated every one of the most well known evangelical apologists of theism, including William Lane Craig and John Lennox. Someone of less prominence in debate, Douglas Wilson, also took on Hitchens in a series of debates from which a documentary film was made, Collision. To promote the film, Hitchens and Wilson appeared on a television talk show hosted by Joy Behar. The two made a nine and a half minute appearance on her show for a brief mini-debate, moderated by her.
The short interchange between Wilson and Hitchens offers a nice sample of arguments in particular coming from Hitchens, the professing atheist. Someone will not get much different or even more from him if he had spoken two hours on the subject. Even by his own assessment, Hitchens, one of the four horsemen, is not giving proof that God does not exist. Wilson represents Hitchens’s arguments in this snippet in the sense that they’re only persuasive to someone already an atheist. They’re already atheists and he says things they want to hear. I want to take us comment by comment through the interview by Behar for the purpose of evaluation.
Behar introduces the two men, explains why she wanted this interview, New York City subway ads confronting belief in God, informs of the Collision documentary, hopes they won’t just rehash their debate, to which Hitchens says they won’t, and then she starts by asking Wilson for a nutshell case for God. Hitchens does rehash the debate, because what he says is the same as he always does.
To begin, Wilson does not give a case for God. He says that one of the things he would want to do is ask what you’re starting point is, who has the burden of proof. He asserts that since the existence of God is self-evident, that burden is upon the atheist, the one denying. Between the two points of view, both sides will assume their person has won. Maybe Wilson preplanned his opening no matter what she might ask, because he doesn’t answer her question. I wish he had instead given a nutshell case for God like she asked. I think it is true that the burden of proof is on the atheist, but that isn’t how you win the debate. You take the burden of proof upon yourself, even if you are a presuppositionalist, which Wilson is confessing. God is self-evident in this world, but Wilson could take the role of a travel guide, explaining self-evidence.
Then Hitchens enters to call Wilson circular reasoning, and that atheists have no burden to prove God’s existence until there is extraordinary evidence of this extraordinary claim of the supernatural. He says he doesn’t want to shirk a burden before he goes ahead and shirks it completely. This may be what Wilson anticipates, that Hitchens isn’t attempting to prove God doesn’t exist. Wilson believes neither are neutral and both operate based upon presuppositions, just that the burden of proof is on naturalism, not supernaturalism. Wilson’s anti-theism then voices scattered, cherry-picked mockery of the biblical record.
Mockery works as a means of persuasion. Naturalist apostates, who don’t want God as their boss, mock to make their point (2 Peter 3:3). It’s not evidence. It’s a kind of emotional coercion, taking advantage of people, who either don’t want to be stupid or just want the ridicule to stop. In order, Hitchens references the biblical teaching of “eternal punishment,” “snakes talk,” “virgins bear children,” “and dead men walk.” He says there’s never been evidence or a convincing philosophical argument, the latter of which can’t be true, since Hitchens was sent packing by the cosmological argument of William Lane Craig in their debate (watch it here).
None of Hitchens’s references relate to the truth. Hitchens says everything comes about by accident and he says this is more beautiful than supernaturalism. Why? It defies science, because it violates second law of thermodynamics among other scientific laws. Once someone can receive Genesis 1:1, everything is downhill for all the points to which Hitchens refers. Someone can reject eternal punishment, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s harder to believe all of this order came about by accident and there is proof that isn’t true in DNA, irreducible complexity, and the fossil record.
Behar sides with Hitchens by asking Wilson if he really does believe in the talking snake and all the animals on the ark. I don’t think Wilson believes people are animals, but his answer is, we’re animals and we can talk. That really stumps Behar, which is why Wilson used it, but it’s not true. Wilson borrowed from her view to illustrate absurdity. I don’t think it was good, even as seen how Hitchens retorts with the recent acquiescence of Presbyterians to this view and the Big Bang, which also contradicts what Wilson says next about splitting the difference between faith and unbelief, muddling both. Wilson should accept that supernaturalism means animals could talk, like Balaam’s ass, another example.
Joy Behar asks Hitchens about Jesus, and he says Jesus was not the Son of God, not virgin born, did not raise from the dead, and even if He did, it would match other mythological figures. It is tough to answer these claims in less than nine minutes, but it is worth it to be able to do that. It’s worth it to develop a few sentences that can answer the skeptic, like Hitchens came armed to shake up the Christian. I believe the best route of attack is to go on the offensive against the impossibility of everything being an accident, and dovetailing that with the plan of God recorded in scripture.
When Behar asks Hitchens about Einstein’s belief in God, he deflects by saying that Einstein did not believe in a biblical type of God, but a pantheistic or deistic one, not one that we be involved in the details of one’s life. Einstein is a bit of a red herring, not worth going down that road, but deism doesn’t mean that God wasn’t in charge of the details of someone’s life contrary to Hitchens. Someone could make that come back, but God isn’t of the deist or pantheist view. He just isn’t, so it’s not worth taking that tact even though some ground might be gained there.
Then Behar asks Wilson about the sky god, who might be interested personally in her television show. Wilson takes a good path of quoting Jesus and explaining how that someone could believe in God’s omniscience or omnipresence without it being self-absorbed.
Hitchens ridicules Moses and the ten commandments, saying they’re more ridiculous than a talking snake, and that the teachings were around before then. Wilson does well with this in explaining the ten commandments compared at least to the secular laws of other people. He adds the argument of the necessity of police departments and armies to enforce them. Hitchens just ignores those to say that the laws go on to treat women like animals and to justify genocide. These are difficult to argue in a short period of time, but they aren’t representing what the Bible says. One would need to start by denying that what Hitchens says is true, and give just as succinct version of the truth as Hitchens does error.
I’m not writing to say that it’s very important to win these short debates with atheists. I am saying that it’s a good exercise to be prepared for what they have coming and give the best answer possible in the shortest period of time. That’s what occurred with me for over thirty years going door-to-door in the San Francisco Bay Area. To win the debate, you’ve got to go on the offensive. Wilson didn’t do that. Hitchens did. However, what Hitchens reports is not true and given enough time, easy to swat away. It isn’t easy in just a few minutes, so it would have been better to have kept him occupied with enough strong argument that Hitchens couldn’t have answered it in the time he had. Instead, the reverse came true.
Are there grounds for going on the offense? Yes. Look at the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. All the pieces are offensive. They are not meant for retreat, but for battle. The Word of God is used as a sword. Jesus was not a mythological figure and you should develop a statement from the Bible that is persuasive that He lived, He lives, and He’s coming back some day. The shots that Hitchens takes are not proof for atheism, but an emotional appeal very much like what a school yard bully would use. You can’t bring a knife to a gun fight. You’ve got to take an aggressive approach and keep him so busy with your points from scripture, that he doesn’t have time to bring his emotional coercion.
It isn’t very likely that someone like Hitchens would ever engage you other than in a public debate, where he thinks he might be able to embarrass you and make Christianity look bad. He probably wouldn’t even talk if you met him door to door or in some other forum. The goal, despite the unbelief, is to preach the gospel, not win a debate. However, the points that Hitchens brings with his arguments are not close to enough to detract from or undermine the truth of scripture.
Recent Comments