Ten Signs

It has been around for awhile, but it has been making the rounds lately on largely anti-theist blogs. It is titled Ten Signs You are an Unquestioning Christian (or something like it), and it's hailed by anti-theists as a glorious assault on Christianity.

There are so many approaches to take with this whole thing. Unfortunately, it is designed to make it impossible to do so. The idea is to ridicule, so if you respond, any response is considered ... ridiculous. The assumption is "This thing is so right on that anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot."

Stepping into the accusation of idiocy, then, there are still so many things to consider. Take, for instance, the repeated ad hominem arguments. As an example, if you are a Christian you will "vigorously deny", "feel outraged", "feel insulted", "laugh", your face will turn purple, you will "spend your life looking for little loopholes", and so it goes. There is also a series of more subtle ad hominem approaches nestled in many of the points. Intentionally using the lower case "g" for "God" is intended to minimize God. Take, for instance, the first argument. If, in truth, there is a God with a capital "G", then it is only logical to dismiss (not "vigorously deny") the existence of other gods (with a lower case "g") because the capitalized version is genuine and the lower case version is not. It's like dismissing the entire set of numbers except "4" to answer the question "What is 2 plus 2?" Another dig is in the obvious notion that anyone who believes this stuff is an idiot without actually making the argument. The frequent use of quotation marks is intended to besmirch Christians. If, for example, you claim that Christianity is the most tolerant and loving religion, it is not perceived the same as when you claim that it is the most "tolerant" and "loving". The quotation marks clearly say you're lying without actually having made an argument. And that whole thing about "with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects" is unnecessary, isn't it? Taking the outlying ideas of a few crackpots as the standard view of Christianity isn't reasonable. The whole thing is riddled with these ad hominems. Now, an actual series of arguments doesn't require the pejorative descriptions to make the point. Generally, when the descriptions designed to insult are pulled out, it simply means you've run out of logical points.

Another point to consider is the piles of purely erroneous statements. God did not slaughter all the babies of Egypt in Exodus. It is utterly inane to refer to the authors of the Bible as "pre-historic tribesmen". "Prehistoric" means "before recorded history", so if they're recording history, they cannot be prehistoric. I was also unaware of the study done where some statisticians did a careful examination on the number of prayers God answered (in the positive, I assume). I won't call it a lie, but I suspect that there is no genuine data and no scientific study that would give us a "0.01% success rate" for answered prayers. I won't say for sure, but it seems to me that this is less than honest. So when you read through these arguments, realize that there are simply false statements in them.

Then there are the whole host of false premises. There is the faulty correlation of "Trinity" to "polytheism". The two are not connected and the suggestion is false. There is nothing in Christianity that suggests that the Holy Spirit "slept" with Mary. Science, history, geology, biology, and physics have not offered evidence that there is no God or that Christianity is false. I mean, they're not even looking in that direction. Find for me, for instance, the experiments in physics that were done to test the hypothesis "There is no God". Interestingly, the #1 argument listed is based on the strange notion that a person is a Christian based on what they know about the Bible, Christianity, and church history. Now, I don't know anyone in Christendom or anywhere in the Bible that determines your status of being a Christian or not based on comparative knowledge. Logically, false premises nullify conclusions. If I build a syllogism -- "All men are dogs", "Socrates was a man", therefore, "Socrates was a dog" -- may work out logically ... until you recognize that the first premise is false. If it is not true that all men are dogs, then it cannot be conclude that Socrates was either.

All of this is just the start. The good folk over at Pyromaniacs are addressing each of these points logically. They are assuming them to be genuine arguments to be addressed. They will likely do a far better job than I will, so I'll leave it to them. There is one of the arguments, though, that really forces me to respond. Their Item 3 is this: "While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor 'speaking in tongues' may be all the evidence you need." I won't defend "some idiot rolling around on the floor 'speaking in tongues'". It's pointless. But there is an implication there that must be addressed. One of the popular approaches among anti-theists is that if God really existed, it would be easy for Him to prove it. Just do a miracle or something. This item, however, leaks their dirty little secret. No amount of miracle will do it. We know this is the human condition. When Israel escaped Pharaoh by nothing less than undeniable divine intervention, their response was to grumble. Awhile later they experienced the direct presence of God, and before the whole thing was over they were having a worship service for a golden calf. In the New Testament, the Jews witnessed Jesus calling a certainly dead Lazarus out of a tomb, and their response wasn't, "Oh, now we believe." It was to seek to kill them both. This point of theirs, then, is to affirm that no amount of genuine, observable evidence would be sufficient to change their minds. And that, they are quite sure, is good logic.

My point is not to complain about ad hominem arguments nor is it to demonstrate that the arguments are not arguments at all or to even prove a point. Sure, there are errors, logical fallacies, and other nonsense going on. You might even benefit from looking for it. I am simply saying that there are answers to objections. We are commanded to contend for the faith, to make a defense. Despite the popular notion, faith and reason are not enemies, but, properly understood, compatriots. If the attack on your beliefs upsets you, perhaps you need to examine the questions more carefully. It doesn't require idiocy to believe. There are reasons to hold to Christianity. Too often we sit there and say, "Well, I believe and that's all there is to it" as if there is no reasonable response. Don't buy the line.