How to argue with an Evangelical?
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  How to argue with an Evangelical?
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Author Topic: How to argue with an Evangelical?  (Read 1516 times)
Higgs
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« on: September 25, 2015, 11:25:11 AM »

Just had a debate with one on a whole plethora of topics.

Every argument against Evolution or the Big Bang is just "if x is true, then how come y", no actual points of evidence in favor of their position.

He got all feisty when I made a point too, and tried to tie my position to sympathizing with Hitler (I really don't even know).

I seriously worry about the state of human intellect after this.

Any tips for future debates? It doesn't seem like logic works well
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ingemann
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« Reply #1 on: September 25, 2015, 11:32:36 AM »

If you argue with the person in question to convert him to your belief, just stop, it's not going to happen.

If it's before a audience well it depend on the audience.
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2015, 11:38:14 AM »

I seriously worry about the state of human intellect after this.

This is true about some proponents of literally every ideology, religion etc. Evangelicalism is nothing special this way.
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CrabCake
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« Reply #3 on: September 25, 2015, 11:54:40 AM »

Don't.
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BRTD
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« Reply #4 on: September 25, 2015, 12:15:11 PM »

Well I'm an evangelical so think about what you've argued with me.
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politicus
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« Reply #5 on: September 25, 2015, 12:32:57 PM »


LOL
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Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon
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« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2015, 12:41:17 PM »


That's funny, I thought evangelicals were supposed to be ultra mega socons.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2015, 12:49:13 PM »

I certainly wouldn't try arguing with BRTD.
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dead0man
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« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2015, 01:17:06 PM »

Lots of people have poor discussion skills.  Some of them start out with a "you're a bigot and should die".
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Higgs
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« Reply #9 on: September 25, 2015, 03:07:58 PM »

If you argue with the person in question to convert him to your belief, just stop, it's not going to happen.

If it's before a audience well it depend on the audience.

Yeah ik he wouldn't be convinced, and it was before an audience.
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BRTD
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« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2015, 11:10:33 PM »


You could make a case that the emergent church isn't really evangelical or mainline, but if you are forced to use that dichotomy I think it's hard to argue it doesn't fall more on the evangelical side of the line, especially a charismatic emergent like me. Unless we're defining (as the media so often does) evangelical as "conservative Protestant", which kind of renders the whole evangelical/mainline split pointless if we're just going to use them as stand-ins for "conservative" and "liberal".


See above. This is a No True Scotsman.
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Cory
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« Reply #11 on: September 26, 2015, 07:22:18 PM »

Honestly, it really does come down to final authorities.  The creationist position ultimately boils down to this:  the Bible is the word of God, and all evidence must be interpreted in light of scripture.  In this respect, the origins debate becomes a war of world-views. 

But isn't that anti-scientific in the sense that it poisons the well? Going into something with a massive baseless assumption already taken for granted doesn't seem wise.
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Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon
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« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2015, 08:04:08 PM »

Honestly, it really does come down to final authorities.  The creationist position ultimately boils down to this:  the Bible is the word of God, and all evidence must be interpreted in light of scripture.  In this respect, the origins debate becomes a war of world-views. 

But isn't that anti-scientific in the sense that it poisons the well? Going into something with a massive baseless assumption already taken for granted doesn't seem wise.

Creationists and Theistic Evolutionists don't view the whole "The Bible is True!" assumption as baseless.
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Cory
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« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2015, 10:17:49 PM »

Creationists and Theistic Evolutionists don't view the whole "The Bible is True!" assumption as baseless.

I know but.... but.... it kinda is.
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The Last Northerner
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« Reply #14 on: September 26, 2015, 10:58:39 PM »



Evangelicals are Christian too.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #15 on: September 27, 2015, 12:21:06 AM »

Honestly, it really does come down to final authorities.  The creationist position ultimately boils down to this:  the Bible is the word of God, and all evidence must be interpreted in light of scripture.  In this respect, the origins debate becomes a war of world-views. 

But isn't that anti-scientific in the sense that it poisons the well? Going into something with a massive baseless assumption already taken for granted doesn't seem wise.

You're making the assumption that what we define as "science" necessarily must be the final authority when it comes to worldview and historical issues.   What you call "baseless" is what a creationist would call faith, which we see as a good thing (and necessary for salvation) rather than something bad. This is the fundamental divide here. 

As Evangelicals, we believe that "the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord."  Would that impact our worldview and understanding of historical and scientific issues?  You bet!  Is that "poisoning the well"?  Well, that depends on your worldview.

For what it's worth,  I happen to now know personally chemists, biologists, and physicists who are all ardent young-Earth creationists at my new church (which I've started attending near my college).  I'm personally not necessarily completely on board with the YECers (though much moreso now than I was in the past) but I do very much respect the viewpoint.

Science is the most effective and accurate method of investigating phenomena and objects that make up the material world. Religion cannot, and should not compete in this field - just like science has nothing relevant to say about greater metaphysical queries. If both creationists and Dawkinsian atheists could understand that, a lot of epistemologically fruitless bickering would be avoided.
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Adam Griffin
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« Reply #16 on: September 27, 2015, 12:31:40 AM »

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« Reply #17 on: September 27, 2015, 01:18:07 AM »

Honestly, it really does come down to final authorities.  The creationist position ultimately boils down to this:  the Bible is the word of God, and all evidence must be interpreted in light of scripture.  In this respect, the origins debate becomes a war of world-views. 

But isn't that anti-scientific in the sense that it poisons the well? Going into something with a massive baseless assumption already taken for granted doesn't seem wise.

You're making the assumption that what we define as "science" necessarily must be the final authority when it comes to worldview and historical issues.   What you call "baseless" is what a creationist would call faith, which we see as a good thing (and necessary for salvation) rather than something bad. This is the fundamental divide here. 

As Evangelicals, we believe that "the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord."  Would that impact our worldview and understanding of historical and scientific issues?  You bet!  Is that "poisoning the well"?  Well, that depends on your worldview.

For what it's worth,  I happen to now know personally chemists, biologists, and physicists who are all ardent young-Earth creationists at my new church (which I've started attending near my college).  I'm personally not necessarily completely on board with the YECers (though much moreso now than I was in the past) but I do very much respect the viewpoint.

Science is the most effective and accurate method of investigating phenomena and objects that make up the material world. Religion cannot, and should not compete in this field - just like science has nothing relevant to say about greater metaphysical queries. If both creationists and Dawkinsian atheists could understand that, a lot of epistemologically fruitless bickering would be avoided.

Unless you totally reject the first few chapters of Genesis (creation, god turns perfect world into world of sickness, sin, etc.), which most Christians don't do, you can't separate science and religion totally.

(FTR, I believe in theistic evolution. I believe evolution happened, but that god helped it happen and also created the big bang. I believe that the 'six days' thing doesn't mean days in the usual sense but instead is a term used for a division of the time between scientific beginning of earth to the birth of Adam and Eve into six equal parts.)
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dead0man
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« Reply #18 on: September 27, 2015, 05:43:35 AM »

(FTR, I believe in theistic evolution. I believe evolution happened, but that god helped it happen and also created the big bang. I believe that the 'six days' thing doesn't mean days in the usual sense but instead is a term used for a division of the time between scientific beginning of earth to the birth of Adam and Eve into six equal parts.)
I don't understand why more intelligent Christians don't think this way.  You can believe in a literal bible AND evolution.  Remember, a day is like a thousand years to God, and a thousand years is like a day.  All the sh**t that happened before the flood could have taken billions of years and it wouldn't make the bible untrue.  Evolution is real, denying it is like denying gravity.  Humans can be "special" and still have evolved from something else.
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Frodo
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« Reply #19 on: September 27, 2015, 09:30:38 PM »

You can't.  I learned that lesson when I was in college.  Tongue

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TJ in Oregon
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« Reply #20 on: September 27, 2015, 11:03:23 PM »

As for the argumentative tactics, I can't help you much there other than to try and calm the person down and make sure you let them hear you out as you argue. Remember, any time you are in a religious argument, your aim should not be so much to win the argument but to make them understand your position very well. People are far more often convinced by slowly warming to a view than by getting defeated in a shouting match. You want to make them understand because they need to understand before that can begin to see that the argument is true.

As for evolution and biology, I would say the short answer is that the creation story in Genesis is literally true only in the elements of it that were meant to be taken literally. Not all of the Bible was intended to be literal; it has tons of metaphors, parables, and symbols. The key elements of the creation story that are should be taken literally are that God created man and woman "in his own likeness" (ie. with a rational component), gave them free will, and that humanity exercised its free will to fall. The Bible is extremely important, yes, but do not forget it was written by humans and that particular part was written by humans who lived centuries after the described events. It is also quite likely that the authors then would not have anticipated the gravity given to details they may have considered unimportant.

More broadly, a mutual belief in both faith and science (by this I particularly mean hard sciences) does require a self-consistent universe and given that framework we should not expect our religious views and scientific findings to contradict each other. If they do, that ought to be a sign that our understanding of one or the other is mistaken in some way. Some folks like to say that science answers questions of "how" and religion answers questions of "why"; I would agree most of the time but also think that saying is more an accident of language than anything else. Science answers questions that can be tested via falsifiable hypotheses. It does not necessarily follow of course that only falsifiable hypotheses can be true and it also doesn't follow that whatever the current theory is is true. However, in the case of evolution, the evidence we have a very substantial and cannot simply be ignored, nor can it be argued away. The alternatives from the religious point of view are something along the lines of God creating the world and humans from nothing with partially decayed fossils already in the ground or something of that sort, which is plausible but also not the conclusion anyone will reach from science alone. Few people also will accept that argument from the Bible's self-evident perfection either, since it is also uncertain exactly which parts are intended to be taken literally. I would also caution as a fellow Christian that there is a significant danger in using the idea of God as an explainer of the the unexplained (a so-called 'God of the Gaps') because it runs the risk of destroying faith as people explain the previously unknown. It is important to see God instead as a prime mover who creates all, including science, and that simply because something can be explained by science does not mean it does not come from God, nor does it mean that same thing cannot also be explained by God.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #21 on: September 28, 2015, 12:07:46 AM »

Honestly, it really does come down to final authorities.  The creationist position ultimately boils down to this:  the Bible is the word of God, and all evidence must be interpreted in light of scripture.  In this respect, the origins debate becomes a war of world-views. 

But isn't that anti-scientific in the sense that it poisons the well? Going into something with a massive baseless assumption already taken for granted doesn't seem wise.

Even atheists begin with assumptions. The question isn't whether the axioms someone has in their worldview conflict with yours, it's whether they make logical sense when combined with the physical evidence.  Young earth creationists have to go thru an extensive amount of assumptions, and they don't bother to explain why the very hyperactive God required to cram what the standard scientific geology and  cosmology says takes millions and billions of years into just a few thousand has become so quiescent, but they do have a theory that makes internal sense, despite requiring a lot more complexity than the standard scientific model of how the universe works.
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