An Unarmed Christian

An unarmed peasant walks into a drug kingpin’s camp and says, “You’re all under arrest and you’re all going to prison to be tortured.” This is the same virtual scenario as this Christian who calls into an Atheist show and informs them that “if they don’t change their ways, they will go to Hell.”

The Christian is totally unarmed and ignorant. He is completely unaware of the Atheist capability he is facing: rapid-fire Atheodicies which the Christian has never heard or entertained in his entire life. Arguments which purportedly destroy Christianity with the sheer weight of their “logic”. The internal contradictions of science vs Christianity.

The Christian is absolutely chewed to pieces.

Here are the arguments that were totally foreign and unanswerable by the Christian:

1. Why are you my enemy?

2. Why should anyone believe it?

3. God is a “grotesque monster who punishes people”.

4. Is the earth 6,000 years old? (Christian: Ummmm).
Science says the earth is vastly older. (Christian: Ummm, yes there is a discrepancy).

5. So Christianity is self-contradictory.

6. The Bible is copies of copies of copies by anonymous authors; no originals exist. There are no reports to justify the miracles of the Bible.

7. The Christian deity is relying on text to spread the word; no self respecting deity would do that. In fact, that is the Nail In The Coffin for Christianity, according to Atheist #1.

8. The “God of Christianity is amazingly stupid if it wants to achieve its goals by relying on text or languages or anecdotal testimony”. It is not a pathway to truth, so either God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care.

9. Christian asserts “faith”.

Atheist #1: ”Faith is not a path to truth. Reason is a path to truth.
Atheists do NOT have any faith; what they have is ”trust based on evidence”.
Faith failed the Atheist when he was a Christian. His prayers were not answered. ”Faith is NOT a virtue. Faith is gullibility. It is evidence that determines whether your perception of reality is reasonable and in conjunction with the world as it is”

10. Christian: ”The church provides community and some values.”

Atheist #1: ”So what?” It serves mostly the in-group. Besides there is no benefit that cannot be provided by secular sources.

Atheist #2: You think terrible things of us and threaten us [with torture in Hell]; we cannot be friends.

Atheist #1: I’m a good person. Christianity is divisive. Christians are ”duped” by divisive, and hateful religion. Since rejecting religion, he doesn’t have to worry about other people going to Hell.

Christians are entirely one-sided. For him, it was Christians who ended relationships, not him. Christians cannot tolerate Atheists, who are “of the Devil”. But that can be demonstrated ONLY with reason and evidence, not with faith.

Fixing people is “absolute poison”.

If faith is all there is to discuss, then there is nothing to talk about.

11. The video ends with the Humpty Dumpty snippet: Humpty Dumpty didn’t exist, so neither does God.


Now let’s look at each argument.
1. Why are you my enemy?

This is a “when did you stop beating your wife” fallacy. The Christian didn’t come forward as an enemy, he was dubbed so by the Atheist. It’s an Ad Hominem sort of disorienting attack.

2. Why should anyone believe it?

This is an excellent question and the Christian was completely without ammunition. Not a single theodicy nor a single demand for proof of their belief, nothing. Capitulation at the start.

3. God is a “grotesque monster who punishes people”.

Another Ad Hominem sort of attack that ignores any concept of, for example, a creating first cause. Guaranteed to disorient an ignorant Christian.

4. Is the earth 6,000 years old? (Christian: Ummmm).

Science says the earth is vastly older. (Christian: Ummm, yes there is a discrepancy).

Literalists should never even speak to Atheists. The New Testament is specifically against literalism, btw.

5. So Christianity is self-contradictory.

A false accusation, and not even valid if the statement is that “Christianity is contradictory to Science”. Science is never absolute. So it cannot be argued that science trumps anything.

6. The Bible is copies of copies of copies by anonymous authors; no originals exist. There are no reports to justify the miracles of the Bible.

The Christian again is unarmed. For those who choose to argue these things there is plenty of secondary evidence of the martyring of those who viewed the miracles first hand, who stuck by the evidence they knew to be valid.

The biblical New Testament texts now go back to circa 50 to 60 A.D. The letters of Paul are of known authorship. There is much else to present as evidence.

7. The Christian deity is relying on text to spread the word; no self respecting deity would do that. In fact, that is the "Nail In The Coffin for Christianity", according to Atheist #1.

This has to be one of the most arrogant statements ever: assuming to know exactly what a self-respecting deity would do – especially in light of the massive success of Christianity as a growing belief system which originated from a person who wrote nothing down himself. Atheist #1 nailed the coffin shut by asserting his own superiority to his concept of a deity, and anointed himself deity in the stead of his failed deity concept.

8. The “God of Christianity is amazingly stupid if it wants to achieve its goals by relying on text or languages or anecdotal testimony”. It is not a pathway to truth, so either God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care.

If text, languages and anecdotal testimony don’t provide a path to truth, then what is left (assuming that truth exists)? No history or scientific reports or testimony from other persons needs even show up: it has no truth value. So only personal experience, presumably of an empirical nature, qualifies. This is probably scientism, and scientism is an underlying current throughout, although not specifically stated. But the repeated call for evidence is not accompanied by an evidentiary theory of what qualifies as evidence. And that point is usually a knife in the heart of Atheist theorizing, because Atheists are virtually always materialists, at least the evangelicals seem to be, and materialism has no rational basis for itself, and is self-contradictory and thus non-rational.

The assertion of #8 is delivered with two Ad Hominems and a false dilemma. First the deity is “amazingly stupid”, by doing it His own peculiar way. At the end, the dilemma asserts that the deity is either non-existent or doesn’t care, if He does it His way and not the prescribed method of Atheist #1… except that Atheist #1 doesn’t prescribe a method, he only denounces text, the deity, etc. And it is not a valid dilemma, though, because it fails to recognize several other possibilities: a) the Atheist is wrong, and there is value to text (demonstrably); b) the Atheist doesn’t actually know better than a deity would know; c) the deity communicates in non-material fashion also. It is entirely likely that the last three choices are more valid than the two choices given in the dilemma. (It’s not a di-lemma).

9. Christian asserts “faith”.

Massive fail on the Christian’s part. I see no need to say more.

10. Christian: ”The church provides community and some values.”

Massive fail on the Christian’s part. The Atheist is entirely right to say “so what?”

However, the Atheists continued to rattle off some attacks that were ripe for counterattack, for which the Christian was again completely unarmed:

Atheist #1: ”So what?” It serves mostly the in-group. Besides there is no benefit that cannot be provided by secular sources.

Look back at Katrina. Christian organizations from all over were present in the Gulf Coast region, even a year later. American Atheists? Not so much. The benefit could, indeed be secular, but generally that is minimal and late to arrive and early to quit.

Atheist #2: You think terrible things of us and threaten us [with torture in Hell]; we cannot be friends.

This is true. Christians should not spend time with hard core Atheists, other than to present their case, and leave when the invectives begin. It’s actually biblical, for the literalists.

Atheist #1: I’m a good person. Christianity is divisive. Christians are ”duped” by divisive, and hateful religion. Since rejecting religion, he doesn’t have to worry about other people going to Hell.

He fails to define what his standard of "goodness" is; it certainly is not the Christian standard, which he is not hesitant to reject. So why should we think of him as “good”? In his own words, "why should we believe that"? And when will his standard change in order to accommodate new behaviors he chooses to pursue?

Now he runs a call-in show where he calls Christians duped, divisive, hateful enemies. This he thinks qualifies him to be called good.

Atheist #1: Christians are entirely one-sided. For him, it was Christians who ended relationships, not him. Christians cannot tolerate Atheists, who are “of the Devil”. But that can be demonstrated ONLY with reason and evidence, not with faith.

The standards of reason and evidence are presumed to be in favor of the Atheist; this is never challenged by the hapless Christian, who is like a mouse in a snake cage.

Atheist #2; Fixing people is “absolute poison”.

This is true, for people who are convinced of their own perfection especially. Rabid Atheist evangelists tend to be so convicted. Yet they insist on trying fix Christians, who are their avowed "enemies".

11. Ended with the Humpty Dumpty snippet: Humpty Dumpty didn’t exist, so neither does God.

This is a very cheap fallacy: It is a reductionist, false analogy, and a category error; no one ever claimed that the first cause was an anthropomorphized egg.

Plus it was a cheap shot at the end of the discussion without any chance for rebuttal, not that the Christian had that capability.

Unarmed Christian should stay in church, it appears to me. If they wish to debate Atheists, they should become fully armed and aware of their opponents defenses. Otherwise they are meat in the Atheists maw.

There was a brief reference to Slick's TAG argument which the Atheists slid deftly to the side: "that's refuted", they claimed authoritatively. The argument then was dead to the conversation because the Christian couldn't or wouldn't refute the ambiguous claim of refutation. Any argument for God comes with an immediate Atheist claim of "refutation", and words will tend to be redefined as required to get that refutation. Then using self-important claims of refutation lends a credibility to the claim that cannot be attained logically.

In this discussion, fallacy devoured ignorance; ignorance is impotent.