Sticks and stones versus words, CMI Article

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“I’ve been doing science for 30 years; don’t you think it offends me when you say you don’t believe in evolution?”

I nearly fell out of my chair! I had been asked by an atheist group (the Center for Inquiry) to come down and speak at a meeting they were holding to discuss their recent promotion of a bus advertising campaign on the Toronto Transit line declaring “There is probably no God, so relax and enjoy your life.” They apparently wanted a “religious” view represented so had invited me.

After the initial pre-determined questions to the panel members were asked, the audience (all atheists except for one to my knowledge) were invited to ask questions. The (biologist) gentlemen’s question (above) was issued to me after I had declared I was a creationist.

Free thought (but not for all)!

The group’s mission statement reads: The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. There were “free thought” posters displayed all around the facility so I was flabbergasted to hear the man state he was offended by the fact that I didn’t agree with him!

I said “Sir, you don’t believe the same things I do, and I’m not offended by that. If you choose to be offended by what I don’t believe I have no control over that. And to be honest sir, considering the intellectual environment we are in here today (the fact that I was invited specifically to provide opposing views!) I think it’s rather pathetic that you would even make that comment.” His fellow atheists actually agreed and the crowd seemed embarrassed for/because of him and he sat down.

It was a lively session and afterwards (even though they did not agree with my position) several people came over, shook my hand and made comments like “You had good arguments”, “We should have you back” etc. Many of the group represented what I would consider honest intellectuals that enjoyed the challenge of open, honest debate. However (like the gentleman mentioned above), this is not always the case. He seemed to be indicating that the mere fact of me disagreeing with him was hurtful and offensive.

Another example occurred recently when one of our Australian CMI speakers was engaging in a discussion with an atheist from France after delivering a creation talk. Towards the end of the conversation, the atheist was defending the morality of non-Christian religions. When the CMI speaker asked; "So who was it who burnt all those cars in the riots in French cities in recent years?", the atheist became super-defensive, saying it was nothing to do with their religion but because of their poverty, lack of education and employment opportunities, and of the mistreatment at the hands of white Frenchmen.

But when the CMI speaker countered, “Then what about the wealthy/middle-class well-educated 9/11 hijackers, what was their excuse?” The atheist’s reaction was interesting. “When you speak about Islam in this way, it hurts me!” “I feel so hurt" said the atheist.

Why so hurt?

Why the declaration of “hurt” and “offence”? Perhaps to put Christians on the defense and to stop them from being effective against (by giving answers) what the world is teaching. Douglas Wilson points this out in his excellent response to the atheist Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation”. In “Letter from a Christian Citizen” Wilson notes that Harris starts off his anti-Christian diatribe by pointing out some of the most hostile responses to his book The End of Faith came from Christians. “The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism”.1

Wilson believes Harris does this as a tactical matter to “soften” up his Christian readers: “You opened your book this way because you knew (quite accurately) that Christians generally would be upset by it, would be put on the defensive, would be sorrowful over what some have done to you in the name of Christ … ”2

“The Christian Church has a problem with this kind of person in our midst. We are embarrassed by it, believing it to be inconsistent with what Christ taught … ”3

And of course, it is, but Christians cannot be held responsible for what another that professes Christ has done. However, disagreeing with someone is not the same as being offensive. But the world has seemed to have caught on to the fact that many Christians are so sensitive to being “offensive” that they have equated “disagreement” with “offense”. (This is a reversal of the fallacy of equivocation, where one word is used in two different ways; here, the fallacy is giving two different concepts the same meaning.)

So if a non-believer cries “I’m hurt”, many Christians will stop disagreeing with them. It’s a great (even though it is phony) debating tactic, and if it is effective, why wouldn’t atheists use it to their advantage? After all, if there is no God, evolution must be true, and then “survival of the fittest” becomes the only true “natural” law.

Demolish arguments

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 makes it clear that Christians are not about using the weapons of the world to reach out to the lost, but that God wants the “soldiers for Christ” to demolish arguments against God. (Note that you cannot demolish your opponent’s arguments without disagreeing with them at some point!)

I had another atheist engage me after a talk claiming he took offence because some Christians in the audience had chuckled at a quote I had shown from Richard Dawkins.4 He said Christians shouldn’t laugh and mock people. My point was that 1) I do not have control over what others do (I had not laughed) and 2) people weren’t mocking him (to attack or treat with ridicule, contempt, or derision); it was simply amusing what Dawkins said, so why not laugh? It just seemed like an emotional tactic to make me feel bad as he wasn’t able to counter my arguments.

Trying not to be offensive when debating is a biblical principle: If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all— Romans 12:18. But we are to give answers for our faith (1 Peter 3:15) as long as we do so with “ … gentleness and respect … ”

So beware the tactic of people crying “hurt” to shut you down. (This strategy has become so effective that it sometimes has Christians arguing more with one another than with the enemies of the Gospel, which ironically can cause great hurt to the body of Christ!) Do not be tricked into inaction if someone decides to be offended by what you stand for.

References

1. Letter from a Christian Citizen, American Vision Inc., 2007, page 3.
2. Ref. 1, page 4.
3. Ref. 1, page 5.
4. “Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.” December 2004 Interview Bill Moyers ‘Now’ transcript at: www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript34 ... ml#dawkins

So the primordial soup is down the drain. Watch "Ben Stein Expelled".
The top evolutionists admit they don't even believe they have free will,
or that there is even any reason for them or anyone else to be alive.
Yet they think they are "free" (and others oppressed by God).

Dawkins said extraterrestrials that evolved in an older galaxy must have wrote it.

Dawkins doesn't believe in Evolution anymore but still is an atheist.

I won't call you a liar because that is against forum rules. I will say you are totally wrong.

In my own experience, I have learned to take anything a committed Christian says about anything with several grains of salty. I have learned that these Bible Pounders are quite at odds with fact.

ruveyn

Is this a joke? To the scientists who work in evolution and to those who accept it, evolution is simply fact. If someone were to argue with me and not wanting to accept evolution, I could give the facts but otherwise I couldn't care less if they believed it or not. Why should I get upset over someone not wanting to believe something that there is plenty of evidence for? I think I've personally offended more people with some of my arguments against creationism. Also, this portrayal of everyone who accepts evolution as atheists is getting tiring. I'm not saying that some aren't atheists because some, like Richard Dawkins, are. I think that the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary, under Strawman Fallacy, will quote some lines out of the above article as a prime example.

There is no argument claiming what atheists say, so there is no strawman. I think you just like to call out fallacies? Shall we get a wikipedia list and just enumerate the formal and informal fallacies and then claim that whoever can spell enough of them correctly has won the argument?

Another example occurred recently when one of our Australian CMI speakers was engaging in a discussion with an atheist from France after delivering a creation talk. Towards the end of the conversation, the atheist was defending the morality of non-Christian religions. When the CMI speaker asked; "So who was it who burnt all those cars in the riots in French cities in recent years?", the atheist became super-defensive, saying it was nothing to do with their religion but because of their poverty, lack of education and employment opportunities, and of the mistreatment at the hands of white Frenchmen.

But when the CMI speaker countered, “Then what about the wealthy/middle-class well-educated 9/11 hijackers, what was their excuse?” The atheist’s reaction was interesting. “When you speak about Islam in this way, it hurts me!” “I feel so hurt" said the atheist.

I think you just like to call out fallacies? Shall we get a wikipedia list and just enumerate the formal and informal fallacies and then claim that whoever can spell enough of them correctly has won the argument?

:) I would like some people to stop whineing to. That's all this "I'm so offended you all don't do it my way" theme is. Whinneing. (pardon my spelling. It's basic)

His fellow atheists actually agreed and the crowd seemed embarrassed for/because of him and he sat down.

“When you speak about Islam in this way, it hurts me!” “I feel so hurt" said the atheist.

Why so hurt?

And of course, it is, but Christians cannot be held responsible for what another that professes Christ has done.

However, disagreeing with someone is not the same as being offensive.

Dawkins doesn't believe in Evolution anymore but still is an atheist.
After finding out that the earth isn't old enough to evolve the human genome,
never mind all the other ones,
Dawkins said extraterrestrials that evolved in an older galaxy must have wrote it.

However, he doesn't like to admit that it has more code in it than all versions of
Windows, Linux and MacOS. He would rather believe it fell out of the sky in a
meteorite after some other planet's star exploded, and that the universe is
infinite so the DNA must have formed somewhere out there.

So the primordial soup is down the drain. Watch "Ben Stein Expelled".
The top evolutionists admit they don't even believe they have free will,
or that there is even any reason for them or anyone else to be alive.
Yet they think they are "free" (and others oppressed by God).

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. That's plenty of time. We don't yet know really how evolution works, just that it does, and that it has been demonstrated to work in simple creatures like worms. A scientist got some worms, then took away an essential amino acid they needed to live. Most died-but not all. The survivors started making the amino acid. That's likely how evolution works. There's stasis, then some organism has the environment change on them, and the environment tends to change frequently. The ones that don't die adapt. The ones that couldn't adapt are history. That's why there are no genetic "dead ends" (although useless genes and appendages can be found in many animals), they all bit the dust! Panspermia (which is what is described above) is a nonstarter with most scientists.

Christians like debates, since they can fire off stuff faster than the atheist can think, and get him into a cul-de-sac, then from a superior position force creationism on him. My dad played that game with me a LOT during my teenage years, except that atheist debaters don't get beaten with wood planks for not agreeing with creationism. It's funny that serious people will argue that the earth is 6,000 years old, and go from there to "the earth was created in six days, the Bible says so" and then hop to "that means that we've had a thousand years per day, and God rested on the 7th day, therefore Jesus is coming soon, so we don't need to worry about anything, because Jesus is coming soon". How convenient that the conclusion supports what they already believe!

The premise is faulty, because the earth was NOT created in six days 6,000 years ago, and the creationists seriously argue that Adam and Eve rode brontosauruses around, but the dinos died in the Flood. I have yet to hear a creationist explain fossils. "Well, God's just funky that way" seems to be the answer most of the time. Also, the only reason why creationists don't slay the actual arguers, as opposed to the argument, is because US law prevents it. For a thousand years the Christian Church burned at the stake all dissenters. Modern Christians would too, except the smell of burning human flesh would attract the cops.