I recently walked through a large hostile crowd that had formed around a small group of Christians holding signs talking about the evils of homosexuality.

The people surrounding the sign-bearers were largely upset about the signs -- probably a number of Christians, and definitely a number of atheists, as well.

The interactions were heated, but not mere screaming -- some actual dialogue was occurring. However, the people I agreed with and wanted to win every interaction often had terrible or irrelevant arguments that they were throwing up against the preachers. I wanted to write about a few of the missteps to hopefully head off these avenues before you trudge down them yourself.

The situation was pretty clear: preachers with signs proclaiming the immorality of homosexuality. Their view is also pretty clear -- homosexual acts are sinful actions -- therefore are immoral -- and should be preached against. (Someone asked if they would support legislation to ban or enact laws against homosexuality and they said no).

Arguments that suck:

"Jesus said to love your neighbor as your self" -- as though this means that a Christian isn't allowed to endeavor to "improve" a person. If a person is engaging in an activity that harms himself or his soul, then a Christian can adhere to the teaching and to try to help the fallen by preaching that homosexuality is a sin. Is it presumptive? Yes. Is it offensive? Yes. Is it coherent? Yes, it is.

"What harm does it do?" -- If their version of Christianity is true, then homosexuality is a sin. What harm does it do? A sinful action should be opposed for the very fact that it's sinful, not necessarily any harm that's done. The reasoning is fairly straightforward and valid -- the key point where the argument fails is in its first premise: their version of Christianity is false.

"How come you don't care about people eating shrimp?" -- Christians ignore swaths of the Old Testament (and parts of the New Testament, for example see Jesus' instructions on how to offer a sacrifice on the altar -- Matthew 5:23-24). There are enough reasons to think that the New Testament is against slavery that this charge is largely irrelevant as well.

"You hate homosexuals." -- Could be true, but 1. irrelevant; 2. I dislike telling people the "real reason" that they do/believe something. Just think of the situation with the tables turned. How compelling is it when a Christian says, "You only reject Jesus because you want to live a sinful lifestyle."

"The Bible isn't against homosexuality." It simply is (although not a major theme). Here's the situation: The Bible, when it cares about homosexuality enough to mention it, considers it immoral. As far as I'm concerned, that's another strike against the Bible.

More useful lines of argument

I would argue along two principle lines of reasoning. The first, Christianity is false. The second, Christianity has a terrible track record of answering the question "What is immoral?" -- think slavery -- and its moral guidelines consequently have to be justified on their own merits.

Let me outline the rough approach to the second line of reasoning. I'll put typical kinds of responses in parentheses.

- Ask what they use to determine what is moral and immoral.

(The Bible).

- Ask, do you believe that owning people as slaves is an immoral?

(Of course).

- Where does the Bible say a single word against slavery?

( What about the following:

Galatians 3:28 (NRSV)

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Doesn't that count?)

- You realize that that verse is talking about how, to God, the human divisions we make between ourselves don't matter to Him? God could care less whether you are a Jew or a Greek; whether you are a male or female; and whether you are a slave or not. This verse makes the point that God does not care about these kinds of distinctions -- which is opposite to the point you want to make, which is that God deeply cares that slavery exists and wishes to declare it immoral.

(Slavery was different back then, it wasn't so bad and race wasn't part of it).

- Ok, regarding the Old Testament rules of owning slaves:

Exodus 21:4 (NRSV)

If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone.

The master gets to keep the slave's wife and children!

(That's in the Old Testament and... )

- Let me read one passage from the New Testament then:

1 Timothy 6:1-5 (NRSV)

Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be blasphemed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these duties. Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words. From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

I'd be wary of getting my morality from a book that can't even figure out that slavery is immoral. As a moral guide, it simply fails. It's possible to pick out a good nugget, but you have to be able to justify it in a way besides the fact that it's in this misguided book.

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I think this line of reasoning is, at the very least, better than the arguments I wrote to avoid. Reading that one New Testament Bible aloud is worth doing in practically any argument that involves the Bible and morality. Many Christians have no idea about what the New Testament says about slavery -- and they should be reminded. Let me know any feedback you have -- questions, criticism, or comments!

I just saw an interesting YouTube video posted by TheIowaAtheists and linked to by at least The Friendly Atheist (where I happened to find it).

It was a scripted conversation between two actors: an atheist and a Christian that takes place in a coffee shop.

There are several reasons I'm posting it here. First of all, I think it's decently well made and entertaining. Second, a lot of the commenters on FA's site mentioned that this is what it sounds like when they have arguments and so forth. Third, I think it's pretty representative of many conversations that believers and nonbelievers get into. Finally, I think that I could use this as an example in certain places of what I think could be said differently to change what is said into something more useful.

Here's the video, I post my comments underneath with the corresponding time-stamp from the video:

2:07
Christian: "Prove there is no God."
Atheist: "You can't prove a negative, Bernie. Prove there's no dragons or unicorns..."

I hate the response that "you can't prove a negative", and I hear it all the time. First of all, the statement's false. I think the atheist is much more on track when he says "Prove there are no dragons...", but I'd be making a different point.

In response to "Prove there is no God" or to improve the challenge a bit for their sake, "What evidence do you have that God doesn't exist?"
I'd say something more like, "That's a weird way of going about things, but if that's how you operate, I'll give it a try. Show me how you'd provide evidence against the existence of unicorns, and I'll know what kind of evidence counts to you -- and I'll see if I can muster that kind of evidence against God's existence."

If you think that the theist is making an unreasonable request -- providing evidence for the non-existence of something -- don't tell him or teach him or any other thing. Have him walk into his own request and see how he gets out of it. If he can't, then you're under no obligation to answer it either.

2:20
Christian: "In your mind, if you can't see it, it doesn't exist."

I'd invite him to ask me what I thought, rather than to just assume he knows what and how I think. This is a reciprocal tactic in that I suggest that both sides observe this suggestion. For example, what he said is false for me.

Also, don't say "it can be proven to exist", it's sloppy wording and you'll get in trouble if you talk to someone who's careful. I suggest you stay away from the "prove" word in general.

The discussion about the disappearing egg was headed somewhere interesting, but the atheist never actually made an argument, so it kind of petered out.

3:51
Christian: "Why do you want everyone to be an unbeliever?"

My response: "Because the truth matters to almost everyone. Would you want to know whether what you base your life on is actually correct or not?"

4:00
Atheist: "It's not that I think you're stupid, you naive. "

I don't like the atheist telling the Christian why he believes as he does, "It's what you've been taught since you can remember." Really, I think it's really important to ask:

1. What the person believes, and
2. the most important and compelling reasons he has for holding those beliefs.

If the Christian had said, "The most important reason that I think that Jesus died for my sins is that I was taught it since I was little," then go that route, but not many people would list that as the most compelling reason they believe that it's true. And if they don't think that that reason is why it's true, you're assuming things about what and why they believe in religion, and you're going to make the conversation more difficult for everyone.

5:45
Atheist: "The main difference between you and I is that I think your religion is just as crazy as theirs."

Good! But the very next sentence, besides being a non-sequitur, changes the point into something different, lessens the blow of the previous sentence, and gives the person something much less interesting to respond to.

Atheist: "I mean look at all the people that died in the name of religion."

The responses to that are boring and predictable -- and in general, the consequences of religion are orthogonal to the truth claims of the religion. Stick with the "Why should I think your religion is less crazy than all other religions?" It's a great avenue.

6:00
Christian: "I live my belief, it guides my daily choices."

My response, "What guides your choices, specifically? The Bible?" and then go from there however they respond from that. For example, let's just say they say the Bible gives them guidance on the important moral decisions in their life. I'd say, "I doubt that's true for a number of decisions, I mean, you think that owning people as slaves is immoral, right? Where did you get that moral idea?" Then go down the slavery argument route.

6:15
Atheist: "People, the media, etc..."
I've found is that almost everyone thinks that the media influences "what other people think" -- people almost never say, "well I just believe that because the media told me." Stop assigning the reasons for why a person believes as he does, you'll only work against yourself.

6:54
Atheist: "If you want a government run by religion, why don't you move..."

Terrible, don't say that, it's wrong on many levels.

7:00
Christian: "Well you can't deny everything in the Bible, it is a historical document."

I suggest: "I'll bet that the Bible has all sorts of true facts in it -- from the location of towns, to the fact that some people wore sandals at the time it was written. Do you think that there's a particularly interesting claim that you think is true that I don't?"

Those are my impressions on a few things that stuck out to me. Feel free to disagree with my "improvements" -- but let me know which you have a problem with and why.

I wrote a previous entry which was based off a comment I sent to a theologian that I've been chatting with. He responded to me here.

Theologian RD says: Mathematics maps onto the world but our intuition of which mathematics maps on is not infallible. The problem is with Conversational Atheist's apparent view that mathematics does not map onto the world at all. That's the view that needs defending.

Whether mathematics maps onto the world is a very interesting question. Of the infinite number of mathematical models that are able to be constructed, a few map onto the world in very useful ways. If you come up with a mathematical model, the question immediately becomes: DOES your abstract mathematical model map onto the world?

Re-read a section from the comment that prompted this entry:

Conversational Atheist says: However, Einstein, placed in a box before the first experiments in quantum mechanics were done, would never end up CONCLUDING Quantum Mechanics. He might, given infinite time, detail hundreds of thousands of possible physics on small scales [mathematical models] that includes our modern conception of QM, but he would be in no position to choose one from the others with any confidence at all. He might even pick what he thinks is the most beautiful physics at small scales, but what counts is not beauty or arguments, per se, but whether his physics [mathematical model] matches reality. -- Emphasis and [mathematical note] added

What counts is whether your mathematical model matches reality. That's the $64,000,000 question for a physicist. Long ago a person could have come up with the mathematical framework of modern day quantum mechanics by doing math. Lots of math. Now, that person hasn't done PHYSICS unless he is either consulting data others have taken, or going out and doing experiments himself.

To answer some of your questions raised in the entry itself:

RD: How do we gain knowledge of this realm? That appears very mysterious, indeed somewhat revelatory.

Are you equally perplexed by how we gain knowledge of chess? It doesn't seem very mysterious to me. We consider the relationships and interactions between entities in chess-space. Are these relationships, rules, interactions all contained in a self-consistent chess-realm similar to the relationships, rules, and interactions in the self-consistent mathematical-realm? Yes. Does this mean that there is a supernatural chess-realm, mathematical-realm, tic-tac-toe-realm, and scrabble-realm? Um... only in the most abused sense of the word "supernatural". The chess-realm does not exist in any physical way.

Is the pawn, real? Well, you can hold a wooden piece in your hand that people call "pawn", but then you should realize that you are just holding a representation of a pawn. Does this upset anyone? It shouldn't.

Is 7 real? Well, you can hold 7 apples in a bag and call it "seven", but then you should realize that you are just holding a representation of a number. Does this upset anyone? Apparently, yes.

RD: Second, what is the ontological status of this realm?

I'd say that mathematics has the same ontological status as the game of chess.

RD: And if you accept the existence of abstract numbers and their relations which are irreducible to and independent of the physical world, what about other entities like souls, spirit beings, and God? What rational reason does Conversational Atheist have to believe the supernatural realm, like the natural realm, does not far transcend his limited experiences?

If a pawn is irreducible to and independent of the physical world, what about other abstract entities like souls, spirit beings, and God? -- Sure. I'd say they have the same status as "real pawns". Could there be a supernatural pawn out in the "vast supernature of things that I don't fully comprehend"?

Sure. He might be playing Chinese Checkers with God and the Easter bunny.

But seriously, considerations in the fully abstract might have something to do with external reality -- but you have to actually check to have any confidence that your favorite abstract reasoning maps onto external reality in a useful way.

I wrote up a response to a rather lame article that I read on BeliefNet: Atheism and our inhuman nature, and I wanted to post the ideas here.

The article criticizes the "New Atheists" because they present a Utopian view of humanity and its future.

My response:

I have read all of the popular "New Atheist" books. I'm not sure where you get this idea that they have a Utopian view of humanity's future. Perhaps you could provide a quote to give me some idea what you're referencing.

Each of the New Atheists points out that believing claims without evidence, believing you have the One True Magic Book from the Creator, eschewing rational thought in general, and welcoming the end of the world as a glorious future to look forward to -- these are definitely bad ideas. And, as nasty as human nature is already, aren't helping pull us from any potential dangerous brink.

Think of it this way. A doctor might say, "Hey, don't get hundreds of chest xrays for fun -- it's a dumb idea and you'll probably end up getting cancer..." A critic who writes for beliefnet might ask whether this doctor thinks he has cured cancer! No, he doesn't. But he has helped identify a rather dangerous way to live.

People are nasty creatures? Ok, I'll bite. How does promoting superstition help address that? Starting with the Old Testament, First Samuel 15 has God ordering His followers to kill every man, woman, child and infant of a neighboring tribe with swords.

Moving on to the New Testament. Jesus says love your enemies -- an easy thing to say. What actions back up those words? Well, consider that I'm an atheist, and an enemy of superstition in general. How will Jesus treat me as his enemy? By throwing me in a lake of fire to burn in torment for eternity... Sure, humans might be nasty creatures -- but wow, can you come up with a nastier human than that?

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Comments?

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Tonight, I went to a three-hour meeting of Christian graduate students and professors who were discussing the "Sam Harris vs. Philip Ball" blog-debate that occurred over Ball's editorial in Nature. A full recap of the Harris-Ball interaction is available on The Reason Project's site: http://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/what_should_science_dosam_harris_v_philip_ball/

I was the only atheist in attendance, and it was held at a Christian's house, hence the post title. I was invited to listen and provide an atheist perspective to what they were talking about. It was really interesting to listen to Christians talk about what they thought the "science vs. faith" debate between the two atheists meant.

The group was entirely academics (PHDs or soon to be) in various subjects: chemistry, neuro-linguistics, anthropology, philosophy of science, biology; and from various indications it looked their beliefs in things like the scientific method, human evolution, big bang cosmology, and those kinds of issues were not in conflict with current scientific consensus. They were disheartened that such a high percentage of US adults believed in divine human creation (over 40%) in favor of darwinian evolution.

A number of comments that they said amazed or amused me:

One biologist marveled at the internal struggle a serious archeologist must have in also being a Mormon. -- As though a biologist could accept the physical resurrection of Jesus without internal conflict.

In the context of subsaharan Africa, another was saddened that the Christians there had enough faith to believe that the power of prayer could actually heal people of AIDS, because these faithful people would then stop taking their medicines...

Another lamented that Christians are calling children witches in Africa, as well.

In short, it appeared to me that as far as what a hardcore rational atheist would hope for in people who persisted in being serious Christians: these were the best you could find. And don't get me wrong, they were all serious and committed Christians (and yet far from agreeing with Bishop Shelby Spong on almost anything).

It was also interesting to me to finally hear an example of "the difficulty of coming out as a Christian" especially in context of being a professionally tricky thing to do -- and for me to believe them.

The content of the discussion was useful. Many of the people in the room had read the entire Harris-Ball blog-debate and had printed, annotated copies on their laps as we discussed it (I mentioned they were academics, right?).

In the beginning, people were convinced that Harris was being stridently scientismy or arguing something akin to: "If you disagree with me, then you're being irrational. By the way, I decide."

I worked on that impression for a while, stating what I considered Harris' main contention is intellectual honesty -- it's ok not to know something, and to mention that you don't know. And that the best method that we have for making progress on any topic is intellectually honest human conversation (and thus, should be promoted). Also, the only reason Ball's writing was on Harris' radar was that Nature (prestigious science journal) had given press, again, to obsessive deference to religious superstition.

It was a long meeting (3 hours), food was served, lots of discussion, and I convinced everyone in attendance to become atheists. Just kidding on that last bit.

At the end of the night, I think people agreed with several of the goals of the Reason Project in several ways:
1. It's useful to question beliefs that you hold and the reasons for holding them -- and this kind of thinking should be promoted.
2. Religious beliefs should not be sheltered from criticism any more than any other belief.

Tempers never flared, everyone had a pleasant evening, and I think I got across how at least I think about these issues in ways I don't think they had considered.

A good night.

Two bloggers have been going back and forth with some religious debate. Luke from Common Sense Atheism and Vox Day from Vox Day have been going back and forth via letters between their two blogs. I've witnessed 5 from Luke, 4 from Vox and hundreds of comments. [The 1st letter from Luke; the 1st response from Vox] I was going to link to each and every letter, but if you are compelled enough to read through all of them, the first salvos are enough to get you started.

I'm interested in examining an argument from Vox that I have not encountered before (at least not directly).

When asked why he is a Christian --

Vox Day: Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later.

Which does not seem to immediately follow. A person could easily have the same reason for being a Satanist (in the real sense of worshipping Lucifer, the supernatural creature -- not LaVey). "Why am I a Satanist? Because I believe in evil... "

VD continues --

VD: The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God's nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

Still isn't clear what having an accurate description about the pain, suffering, injustice and cruelty of the world; therefore worship whatever wrote the description? Seriously, imagine some guy on the street tells you, "So this supernatural being spoke to me last night, and he had the best grasp of the true meaning of evil. He could give a perfect account of the suffering, cruelty, injustice -- just everything rotten about this world. His name is Lucifer, and boy, I cannot tell you how AWESOME this guy was at describing evil. It's like... he's lived it! So, I decided to worship this being."

One might be tempted to say, "Sounds like you've thought a lot about this..."

I think VD's argument from evil is the worst argument for being a Christian that I've seen written in full sentences, but I may be forgetting a couple.

-----------------------

Semi-relatedly, VD goes into his idea of God's morality and chastises Luke for having a non-objective standard of evil. Fair enough, but a little inconsistent from what I can tell.

VD: I believe logic dictates that the Creator alone has the right to set the standards for His Creation. His game, His rules. In keeping with that principle, God always has the absolute right to do as He sees fit, which just so happens to be precisely the answer He gave to Job and company. The answer to Euthyphro's so-called dilemma is that the good is good because it is commanded by God, since there is no objective, supra-divine standard of Good by which His commands may be judged.

VD: I stated there that the arbitrary nature of God's goodness, which has long been a known solution to the first horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma, “can only be considered a genuine problem for those who insist that a fixed principle cannot be arbitrary.”

This is a fairly standard response to Euthyphro. There are some semi-weird consequences, but I'll save those for another time.

Vox then took Luke to task for having a subjective concept of evil:

VD: Applying the relevant definition of objective to your answer - "not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion" - regarding the nature of evil clearly indicates that you believe evil is a fundamentally subjective concept. In fact, based on your explication of desirism, it is apparent that in your view, evil is not only subjective, but dynamic and transitory as well. Unfortunately, this rejection of the concept of objective evil renders it impossible for us to compare the Christian view of evil with other accounts of it because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum.

I'll just make the observation that this criticism seems inconsistent with the earlier statements on evil by VD.

VD: "because neither of us can possibly know what your definition of evil is for any single act or individual at any given point on the space-time continuum."

But God, allegedly, has no restrictions on what He calls evil. All right. There is no restrictions or supra-divine standard which His commands may be judged. All right. So God has the right to set the standards for His creation and the absolute right to do as He sees fit. All right.

Does this mean that God could say that murder is good and it would be good?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could say that stomping puppies to death for fun is good on Tuesdays alone, and every other day of the week it is evil?
Yes.
Does this mean that God could exactly flip what was evil and what was good at whim, any time He wanted, as many times as He wanted, throughout the course of all time?
Yes.
Could God flip what was good and what was evil without telling us humans?
Yes.
Could God flip on a daily basis the moral standing of stomping puppies and keep constant our visceral reactions to the same event the same?
Yes.
Is this not a completely arbitrary conception of evil?
Yes.
So what was that again about VD claiming we could not possibly know what is evil for any single act at any given point on the space-time continuum -- non-objective?

These are some of my observations so far; depending on where the Luke/Vox discussion goes from here I may comment on it more in the future.

My last entry was about the phrasing of questions to cut off common retreats from the question itself. The last improvement left the question as:

Atheist: Why do you worship a God that allows suffering?

I mentioned that it's still not a great formulation, and a few comments commented that I was leaving a cliffhanger. What further improvments could be made? Quite a few in my estimation:

Tactic: make specific claims, ask for specific claims. Use clear examples and ask for clear examples.

This 'tactic' is a completely symmetric burden for theist and atheist alike. Add specificity to the suffering. It's much easier to dismiss or trivialize suffering when talked about in the abstract. So take a very specific example of the worst kind of suffering you can come up with: the murder of Jessica Lunsford, the 9 year old girl who was repeatedly raped and then murdered by being buried alive.

Atheist: How can you worship a god that allowed the suffering of someone like Jessica Lunsford?

Now, the question, as it's worded is confrontational, and we're going for conversational. Does this mean blunting the criticism at all? No, but it means delivering the full impact of the punch without giving the person you're talking with a bunch of things to legitimately complain about -- those would just be distractions. So, start the interaction from the right mindset. Let me say now that I have read Christian "witnessing guides" that mention witnessing to non-Christians by becoming their friend so that the target is more accepting the Christian message. I disagree with this tactic profoundly, and I am not advocating that atheists try to befriend a person they argue with the goal of sneaking in a deconversion. The goal ought to be effective communication, and with that in mind, try to keep in mind a few suggestions.

• First, the person you are talking with probably holds the beliefs he does because he believes them to be true -- not to annoy you.
• Second, your first goal should be to figure out what the person actually believes. Think how annoying is it when you are asked, "So you believe humans evolved entirely by chance?" We don't want to be arguing against a belief that he doesn't hold.
• Third, once you know what they believe, try to figure out why they believe what they do. You actually want to know what is going on in their head. You can even word it like:

Conversational Atheist: Help me understand your mindset -- because it is honestly a mystery to me -- I cannot conceive of ever praising a god that had full power to prevent the suffering of Jessica Lunsford, yet stood by and watched it happen. If such a god existed, I might understand withholding condemnation out of deference to some kind of unknowable reasoning. But it is truly inconceivable to me that you could actually praise such a creature. Do you see where I am coming from?

We are getting close to the best approach that I can think of from the starting question, "Why does God allow suffering?"

Few more nuances: So, as I say elsewhere, fight for the argument that is easiest to defend that is contrary to a fundamental belief. I suggest that it's unthinkable to praise such a God without knowing the specific reasons for allowing it, and that it's possible that a person could remain a "is god moral" agnostic. Could I argue that if such a god exists we ought to condemn it? Sure, but there are ways out that the theist has available that take time to wrap up.

Here's how I would deal with the most common response. Notice that I chose a phrasing that anticipates the response, "But, isn't it possible that somehow, God has some kind of plan where... greater suffering was averted by this seemingly atrocious event?"

So many ripe targets from such a response, but don't take the bait. Many atheists are very good at identifying every single logical fallacy and error. They honestly could wrestle every single misstep to the ground, but I'm suggesting that there is considerable argumentative strength in not pursuing every possible argument. Concede as much as you can while retaining a rock solid case on your main point.

Conversational Atheist: Sure, it's conceivable that a creature that had this power could have a good reason; it's also conceivable that a creature is a sadistic and evil being. So, I could imagine withholding judgment, and I can imagine condemnation for allowing what appears to be an unfettered evil occur, but, seriously, how could you praise such a creature without knowing the specific good reasons?

Comments, questions, and suggested improvements welcome! As are, especially, if you have tried this approach out yourself: report and success or failures you've had.

My approach to religious debates aims at making the conversations as effective as possible.

What does it mean to have an 'effective' debate or conversation?

At minimum, an effective debate has to have actually engaged the real thoughts and beliefs of the participants. In what I've witnessed, most religious arguments fail at achieving even at this meager goal.

Beyond a minimal 'meeting of the minds' -- an effective debate will involve real challenges to the real thoughts of the participants.

And, of course, the most effective argument or debate concludes with one side convincing the other of something they had not accepted before.

I have encountered many people who think that any kind of religious debate or conversation is a waste of time.

As I said before, I aim to make religious conversations between people as effective as possible. I am not expecting my ideas to become dogma -- it is almost certain that I have not formulated the perfect recipe that yields the most effective conversations possible -- and so I welcome suggestions, challenges, and improvements on all aspects of my approach.

Over the years, I have had hundreds of conversations with pleasant people from every faith -- the ideas that I share come from my dissecting these conversations and thinking about what worked, and why; what didn't work, and why.

Let me give you an example. Imagine two people, one a committed Christian, the other a committed atheist secular humanist. Let's start with a plausible broadside from the secular humanist.

Atheist: "Why does God allow suffering?"

I have come to think that there are several reasons why this question is phrased terribly. First of all, the atheist is asking the Christian to explain God's behavior. All other considerations aside, if every other piece of the ensuing argument completely destroys every possible reason that the Christian can think of for God allowing suffering there is a huge retreat still available. Namely, the 'why should I know why God does that' 0r some other variation.

Rule 1: Do not let your argument hinge on asking a Christian to explain something he could conceivably say, "I don't know" as a legitimate answer to an argument.

So, how do you tweak the question to ask essentially the same thing, but to close the "I don't know" loophole? Ask the slightly improved question:

Atheist: "Why do you worship a God that allows suffering?"

It's still not great, but notice that answering, 'why should I know why I do that' is not a legitimate answer to the question. You may still hear that answer, but even the Christian will feel uncomfortable about such a lame answer.

In watching other people debate or talk, it's much easier, of course, to be critical of a missed opportunity or a wrong step.

There is frequent noise made about the "New Atheists" and others who refuse to argue against the sophisticated faith of the Theological-Einsteins whose faith is subtle and nuanced. There are many responses that are possible -- among them that the majority of believers do not believe in gods in some sophisticated way.

I have had many conversations, arguments, and debates with ministers, pastors, clergy of different types, and even philosophy professors who happened to be religious. But, I have not had a chance to have an extended interaction with a professional Christian Theologian, and I have been itching for the chance.

I itch no longer.

I have been interacting with a professional Christian theologian who is a professor of historical theology at a Canadian seminary. His name is Randal Rauser -- and goes by RD. He has a blog on christianpost.com: The Tentative Apologist.

On that blog I comment under the handle: ConverseAtheist (because, like so many other sites, ConversationalAtheist is too long to be a valid username -- sigh).

My interaction with him started when he insisted that an atheist is making a positive knowledge claim about the universe, and that as such, requires evidence and justification.

I asked him if he believed in Zeus; or if by being an azeusist he was making a positive knowledge claim about the universe -- and since this requires evidence and justification; what evidence does he have?

After more back and forth than it was worth the response was:

"I am an agnostic about whether Zeus exists as a lesser-spirit being; but an atheist as to whether Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe."

-- Let me fill in some background --

RD has posted some essays that argue for the existence of a being greater than which cannot be conceived. He further posted about how when he prays to Yahweh, coincidences happen; when he stops praying to Yahweh, coincidences stop happening. When asked if these coincidences could hold up to scientific scrutiny, or some kind of rigorous statistical testing -- he wisely concedes that they would not.
I'll let you into my mind as I planned out my interaction with RD.

When dealing with a trained obsfucator theologian, he may employ a vast array of tactics and techniques to evade answering difficult questions.

First, I set up a situation that mirrored, in every relevant way that I could imagine, a parallel religious belief to what RD believes. I also wanted to make that hypothetical belief be intentionally ridiculous. (I wanted motivation for RD to defend his cherished beliefs from being equated with nonsense.)

I proposed a hypothetical person, Bob, who followed a sort of reasoning to get to his religious beliefs.
Bob starts with something like the ontological argument, and believes that the most perfect being exists necessarily.
Bob, while sitting in his car at a stoplight, prays to Zeus to change the light to green. It eventually turns green.
Based on this evidence, Bob believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe that necessarily exists.

I then asked RD whether his Christian beliefs were indistinguishably well-justified as Bob's belief in Zeus.

Why did I try this approach? Well, for one, I was hoping to actually get an account from a supposedly sophisticated believer about why he believes in specific supernatural claims. I actually thought that I might learn quite a bit from the guy. However, the other alternative is, failing that, I would have the admission from a professional theologian that his religious beliefs are as well justified as believing in Zeus because streetlights turn green.

Win-win for me as far as I could tell: I would either learn some impressive justification for Christian beliefs, or get an admission that Christianity is indistinguishably well-justified as pure nonsense.

The first hurdle, though, seemed to be that RD could not view this challenge as anything but a famous previous argument that has an answer written down somewhere. I honestly could not believe the answers that RD gave.

RD started with essentially: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from evil! -- Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous argument from arbitrary belief! -- Here is my response to that!

RD followed up with: Ah, you must mean the famous ontological argument applies to Zeus! -- Here is my response to that! (his actual quote from that one: "A being that owes its existence to other beings cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived. Zeus owes his existence to other beings. Therefore, Zeus cannot be the being than which none greater can be conceived.")

Here is a representative note from me on August 17, 2009 -- Me: "... you have missed the question entirely. I was not asking if YOU would be equally well justified for believing in either Yahweh or Zeus; but whether bob-Zeus; you-Yahweh is as justifiable for each of you."

And again on August 20, 2009 -- Me: "In fact, you apparently cannot even distinguish the justification for your belief in Yahweh with Bob's belief in Zeus...And I beg you, if you believe that you have a slightly better justification than this, to state it."

And again on August 23, 2009 -- Me: "I am not asking you to believe in Zeus. I am not asking whether it makes sense for you to believe in Zeus. You have never prayed to Zeus for the light to turn green and witnessed the miracle. Thus, you do not have the same reasons as Bob to believe in Zeus -- I agree. I am talking about a guy, who believes that Zeus is the perfect creator of the universe because Zeus answers his prayers about street lights, and because Zeus punishes Christian churches. And I am asking whether you can come up with a defeater for his beliefs. And if not, to at least distinguish the justifications for each of your beliefs. Or, to admit that your Christian belief is indistinguishably well-justified as Bob's."

And yet still, on August 24, 2009 RD says: "ConverseAtheist has been hammering on this point for awhile now, focusing in particular on Zeus. That is, if I believe in the Christian God, why not believe in the Greek God as well? Or why not the Greek God instead of the Christian God? It would seem that from ConverseAtheist's perspective, the basic problem, I suppose, is arbitrariness."And then, after much arm-twisting, RD claims to have more justification that hypothetical Bob.

Ready?

Christian theologian's belief in Yahweh and his life and professional livelihood is more justifed than nonsense because of the following fact: the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus is larger than the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh.

Take a second to let that sink in.

I asked whether I could use his reasoning as illustrative of the kind of thinking that gives intellectual vindication to Christian faith.

September 4th, Me: "I'm pleading with you to make the case to the ideal disinterested rational listener that your religious beliefs are more justified for you to believe than a person who thinks Zeus is the creator of the universe because the streetlights turn green when he prays to Zeus. Whatever you think an ideal disinterested rational listener should take into account as evidence, present that evidence as though he will take it into account."

I think this is a generally useful idea: write to what you expect would convince the ideal disinterested rational listener. It's win-win -- either you convince your primary target, or other rational people should be able to read the account for themselves and see that the primary is being irrational.

I continued: "When you mentioned that the majority of people who do not believe in Yahweh is not as large as the majority of people who do not believe in Zeus, I gained valuable insight into precisely what a professional theologian counts as a distinguishing justification for his personal religious beliefs over nonsense.

But -- and this is important -- you have free reign. List defeaters to this guy's Zeus beliefs. List evidence for your beliefs. Or not -- I personally do not have an opinion on this apriori. I want to see what you, a professional Christian theologian, think would count to a disinterested listener that is considering the justification that you have for your beliefs versus the justification a Zeus-believer has for his beliefs."

I was explicit in highlighting the fact that RD has free reign to call in whatever justification/evidence/whatever that he wants.

I finished: "I'm not asking you to convince this listener that one or the other has the correct beliefs. What evidence do you have that supports your personal belief? What do you think counts? What do you think counts in favor of your belief and against this hypothetical nonsense?"

Conclusion: A theologian apparently has an absolutely terrible time claiming justification for his religious beliefs from nonsense. The single justification that he claimed gave his Christian beliefs more validity than nonsense was to argue from popularity.

So far, RD has written 4 entries since that last comment and no response to me. I'll update this post if anything happens.

UPDATE:

You won't believe how RD responded to my entry...

Ok, so in this entry, I criticize RD for not responding to my challenge and insisting that I must be making some previously discredited 'famous argument'.

In fact, I list 3 times, where I say RD says, essentially, Ah, you must mean the famous argument ... blah blah blah!

Here is part of his response that he leaves in a comment on his blog: "To put it another way, it sounds like you are aiming for the Great Pumpkin reductio ad absurdum that Plantinga raised in "Reason and Belief in God" and which atheists like Michael Martin have since taken up."

Ha ha ha! I am meaning the famous reductio-ad-absurdum-argument-mentioned-by-Plantinga-and-which-Martin-has-defended! He guessed it, finally, after all these wrong guesses, he finally got the CORRECT famous atheist argument with a canned theist response! </mirth>

RD alludes to the great time and effort that I've put forward as though this interaction is work or something ... I'm having a blast. The only thing I'm regretting is having taken so long to find a theologian to debate!

Many Christians who have apologetics in their head have a bizarre standard of evidence that they want people to accept.

I find that they do a weird back and forth -- look at the historical and scientific evidence -- until it goes to zero, and then switches to faith. But there is this weird notion that they have made most of the progress with science and history, and are only making a small hop of faith.

This new essay addresses the specific claim that a letter that claims that over 500 people witnessed an event is some kind of AMAZING evidence -- and ties in with my the essay I posted yesterday on the resurrection of the Zeus incarnate.

Hopefully every time people bring up the evidence for "The Resurrection" we could invoke the evidence for "The Levitation":

My new essay:  The Levitation that proves Zeus real.

Let me know what you think.