3 Questions that gets them Every Time!
I recently had the opportunity to debate several people….at the same time. It’s easy, really: simply post a totally reasonable question on #Twitter and wait for the #sharks to show up! My mortal sin was asking them the following question:
Q1: is there ANY evidence u would accept as proof positive of A god?
If you can imagine, I got lots or replies, just none that actually answered the questions I was posing. I can say that what I did get was lots of attacks on religion, my religion, my personal beliefs, my intelligence and my dignity. I put my very best foot forward and kept soldiering on. I have to say that after engaging with a few people that seemed genuine, I quickly got the gist of the situation: none of them were interested in debate, especially one they would lose. A few, after having given it some thought accused me of circular reasoning, without having said a word!
I took a break; it was my oldest 9th birthday yesterday and it wouldn’t have been nice being on the phone with all those guests there. After sleeping on it overnight, went to church and spoke to a pastor friend of mine. He showed me that I was going about it all wrong: I was trying to show them my reasoning. “Atheism is not about reasoning” he said “it’s an evil demonic spirit. be careful. They don’t attack your ideas, they attack your core, your inner-man”.
With this new found knowledge, I returned back home and spread my net out again to see what I would catch. I asked again:
Q1: is there ANY evidence #atheists would accept as proof positive of A #god?
Immediately I had more bites, not just some of those from the day before but new names and approaches quickly fired back. As you can predict, many were insults but two seemed sincerely interested in the conversation. I restated for them again, hoping to clarify and try to use neutral words like “validate”, “prove” and the like: I didn’t want them to accuse me of language or syntax bias or bias of any kind. With all my good mannerisms, they could not distinguish God from religion and could not give me a straight answer. So I decided to stroke their egos a bit and change my approach. So, here it is! You’re ready? How I check-mated #atheists on #twitter with 3 simple questions, of which 2 were ego-stroking freebies:
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- Do you believe in science?
What self-respecting auto-proclaimed master of the universe would say “no” to that? Of course! Science is the breadbasket of their ego; it’s where they go to feed from and reinforce each other in the belief that there is no need for a God since all they need is science. They will gladly take the first step into your lion’s den.
2. Do you believe in the “Big Bang”?
Are you joking? Of course! It is the quintessential substance of being a good, secular, science-proves-all-things atheist! They will answer yes, but the more astute among them might object to this line of questioning: not because it’s wrong but because they might sense you have something up your sleeve; they can feel you forcing them in a corner and they’ll cry “foul play” even before you get all “religious” on them.
So far, these two questions were the “gimmes”, the easy bonus questions meant to give them a certain sense of calm and that the conversation is going in their favor. Even as I write this post, I’m fending off at least 10 people on #twitter all attacking the “God of the Bible”, attacking the Bible itself, the stories in the Bible, how they contradict and so on and so forth: if you’ve been a Christian longer than a week or have been conversing with non-believers at any point in your life, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Now, the question that deserves a “thinker’s” answer. The first two are reflex reactions, even Christians can answer “yes” to those first two questions and not break with their worldview. No, the last question forces anyone with strongly held believes that claims to have reached them by reason to go deep and give a legitimate answer not based on sarcasm or stereotypical beliefs about the other side of the conversation. The last question proposes that idea of a “creator” in a language that is not your typical language that atheists are used to hearing when asked about a “un-caused cause”. So here it is:
3. Please explain your answer to question #2.
it seems a very low-ball question that you can easily and simply over-step and dismiss. But not so quickly! You see, you can believe is science and you can believe in the big bang but “something” started the Big Bang. Whether they say that it came from a “previous” universe that “collapsed” or quantum physics or the Spaghetti Monster, it doesn’t matter: whatever their answer is, that IS their god. Whatever idea we have of God, or which god is God, or whether your tradition is polytheistic, monotheistic, deist or pantheist, it doesn’t matter, the baseline definition, the lowest common denominator of the definition of “god” is somewhere between “un-caused cause” and a entity with nothing that is superior to it.
If Quantum Physics created the universe, God is Quantum Physics, if the Big Bang and the Universe created itself, the Universe is God, if the Spaghetti Monster created the Big Bang, then he’s god. In effect, an atheist, cannot be an atheist: what we have just shown is that the opposite of theist/deist is not atheism but agnostic. Atheists can only claim “who” or “what” or “which” god is god, but they cannot claim there is no god. Even more metaphysically “reason” can be god: if they believe, as they often do, that “one day science will give us an answer” they have just given us the definition of who their god is…science.
Ultimately, everyone believes in a higher power: some of us call him Jesus, others YaHWeH, still others by various other names. There are others, however, who call him by a more familiar name with a much more familiar face: the image staring back at them in the mirror.
This is not, of course, meant to insult anyone but to show that, in the end, all of humanity has a built-in belief in a higher power, we all believe there is something greater than ourselves, greater than all of us. The Bible says that “God has set eternity in the hearts of Man” so that we would search Him out. We all are looking for Him. want to find Him, want to know Him and desire a deep and personal relationship with the Maker of all things.
It is our most sincere and genuine prayer that, all of us, in our searching for Truth, find Jesus Christ and come to know Him as our personal Savior. The Bible teaches us that “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart“. Also, Jesus taught that “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free“. We belief the Truth is knowable and it is discover-able and it is in the person of Jesus Christ. We encourage you to search, study, question and draw your own conclusions. We trust that an honest search will discover the honest Truth. Please share this article with anyone you feel may find it interesting and thought-provoking. Feel free to comment and we look forward to hear from you.
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