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I Need Help Here

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:18 am
by Dudeacus97
Recently, I've gotten into debating people on facebook and have made the solemn pledge that whenever I see somebody posting some sort of atheistic or anti-Christian thing, I am going to comment on it and refute it. Most of the time, it ends with the person who posted it liking my comment, which I guess means that I refuted it. Recently, I've gotten into a debate with a person who runs a page called "Lesbian Butts and 80's Jeans", although it should be changed to "Logical Fallacies and 9th Grade Philosophy." I only found it because one of my friends liked a political cartoon she (I guess it's a girl) posted on her page.

Later, I found somebody posting another political cartoon and so I went onto her page and refuted a bunch of them. We later got into a heated debate over evolution. We've gone for a while, but she was mostly posting logical fallacies that I refuted one by one, however, there is one post that she put on recently that doesn't have any logical fallacies I know of and actually has some science behind it:
Any ancestral species can merge into two or more daughter species. At some point the sub species will become so genetically distinct that it is no longer compatible or able the breed with the previous one. Look at the evolution of horses for example, it amazingly illustrates sequences of micro changes resulting in macro changes. The cambrian explosion was a period of time where the Earth was experiencing massive environmental changes, this caused an imperative need for organisms to change to survive thus resulting in a large biological shift. Also keep in mind this was a period with a high number of extinctions. As for creationism, why would an all knowing deity create humans with a useless coccyx bone? Why would he create whales with leg bones? Why are over 99% of species extinct? Doesn't sound like the work of an all knowing creator. If you want a more specific in depth answer your going to have to read the above suggested books, [The Evidence For Evolution or An Ancestor's tale by Richard Dawkins.]
Oh, here's some background information I've gotten from debating "her": she posts anti-religious jokes from Family Guy (with dialogue added) and seriously defends their positions, she posted Jim Jeffries (anti-Christian comedian) in a response to me accusing her of using Appeal to Ridicule in a comic she posted, thinks Pope Benedict is evil because he looks like The Emperor from Star Wars (when I talked about it sarcastically she took it seriously), and, apparently, knows absolutely nothing about Christianity because she seriously asked what we're supposed to be "saved" from. (I waited for one of the other people that debates her, who knows his Bible very well, to post on that.)

Just recently I've gotten into OEC and anti-evolution stuff. I'm pretty sure you guys on this forum would be more than welcome and more than able to assist me further on this endeavor, although I'm starting to think that this whole debate might be pointless.

In addition, do any of you guys know any good anti-macroevolution books that I can get? I'm fairly young and haven't gotten out of high school yet, but I'm very smart for my age and know more about apologetics and the subjects that go along with it than most of my teachers and, most likely, I know more about it than any of my friends.

Re: I Need Help Here

Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 10:59 pm
by neo-x
Recently, I've gotten into debating people on facebook and have made the solemn pledge that whenever I see somebody posting some sort of atheistic or anti-Christian thing, I am going to comment on it and refute it.
2 Timothy 2:23-24
Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,

My brotherly advice, stop banging you head into walls. You will burn out, and you won't know it and then you will feel empty.
Recently, I've gotten into a debate with a person who runs a page called "Lesbian Butts and 80's Jeans"
I would not argue with such person, because whoever was intelligent enough to name that page, obviously isn't looking forward for reason and logic. It is a venting space. In the words of mark twain, never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. And I am sure if you kept on going there, you will face dead ends and frustration for not being able to get through to the other person despite your honest intentions.
Just recently I've gotten into OEC and anti-evolution stuff. I
Evolution is pretty much solid in scientific community, this board have some members who are anti-evolution. They might help you on this. My humble advise for you would be to actually STUDY evolution, then form your opinions. Don't copy paste what others believe. OEC, is not necessarily anti-evolution by the way.
I'm fairly young and haven't gotten out of high school yet, but I'm very smart for my age and know more about apologetics and the subjects that go along with it than most of my teachers and, most likely, I know more about it than any of my friends.
The thing you lack is how to use your skill. A sign of a good apologist is how he can convey the love of Christ in all he does and wants to do. My experience says you are going in the opposite direction. Apologetics does not mean, you go look for troubling insults and try to answer each one of them. Don't overestimate your passion for intelligence. I have seen apologists break down because they wind up so much in refutation that they forget about keeping a real relationship with Christ, and then one day, their defense seems hollow and soon enough their faith crumbles. It is not that they don't have answers to the question they provided defense of, it is the lack of conviction, the lack of love as the gospel commands and the lack of understanding that even we as apologists can not answer everything, that in the end it is the love of Christ we present that changes people not our wit and clever arguments.

Apologetics is a minefield, be careful where you step. Go slow, go easy, most of all concentrate on your relationship with God, then man and if that is as it should be, if you have love for the lost in your heart and you can see that they need help, you will do fine, anything else and you will struggle.

"If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

Re: I Need Help Here

Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:49 pm
by Dudeacus97
Thanks for all of your advice, Neo.
2 Timothy 2:23-24
Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,

My brotherly advice, stop banging you head into walls. You will burn out, and you won't know it and then you will feel empty.
It's just that recently I've discovered the flaws in Darwinian Evolution, such as the whale charts, Cambrian Explosion, and such. As I know, whenever one first gets into an issue, they start getting rabid about it. I remember when I first saw a lecture by Dinesh D'Souza. I wanted to school every atheist I saw. I think the exception is when I first got into pro-life activism. Mostly because I'm banned from talking about abortion or homosexuality at school because that causes controversy and I need to develop social relationships with people because of my high-functioning autism.

That quote from the Bible really helped me reflect on my thoughts of interactions with others, however, what if I'm in public and somebody starts spouting stupid stuff about Christianity at my face? What should I do then?
I would not argue with such person, because whoever was intelligent enough to name that page, obviously isn't looking forward for reason and logic. It is a venting space. In the words of mark twain, never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. And I am sure if you kept on going there, you will face dead ends and frustration for not being able to get through to the other person despite your honest intentions.
That's sort of what's been happening. Whenever I get into a debate on the internet, the words never leave my head until I sit down and type down a reply. I'm just going to stick out of any sort of debate on YouTube, Facebook, or any other site like that. As you said, it's just going to drive me nuts, and sometimes I feel stupid when debating certain subjects, like "does believing in God automatically make me stupid?", "Is the Soviet Gulag and Cambodian Holocaust a lie made up by Christian apologists to make atheists look bad?" or "Has every conflict in history been the direct result of a religious conflict?." (I met an atheist who seriously thought that all fighting, from when the first caveman punched another caveman, was the result of religion. Then again, he was on XBOX Live and we were playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. His buddy also denied the atrocities of the Communist world, which is ironic because we were playing a video game about the Cold War. The game pairs me up with random people to play with. I did not consciously choose to play with him, but I did pray to God to get a chance to use my apologetic skills the night before.)
Evolution is pretty much solid in scientific community, this board have some members who are anti-evolution. They might help you on this. My humble advise for you would be to actually STUDY evolution, then form your opinions. Don't copy paste what others believe. OEC, is not necessarily anti-evolution by the way.
I think I definitely need to study this issue more. Come to think of it, I don't know the difference between OEC and Progressive Creationism, so I definitely need more research. Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg when dealing with God. How life got to the state it's in to be able to do any sort of "evolving" in the first place is a priority in my opinion. I think I might check your post on books on evolution to get started.
The thing you lack is how to use your skill. A sign of a good apologist is how he can convey the love of Christ in all he does and wants to do. My experience says you are going in the opposite direction. Apologetics does not mean, you go look for troubling insults and try to answer each one of them. Don't overestimate your passion for intelligence. I have seen apologists break down because they wind up so much in refutation that they forget about keeping a real relationship with Christ, and then one day, their defense seems hollow and soon enough their faith crumbles. It is not that they don't have answers to the question they provided defense of, it is the lack of conviction, the lack of love as the gospel commands and the lack of understanding that even we as apologists can not answer everything, that in the end it is the love of Christ we present that changes people not our wit and clever arguments.

Apologetics is a minefield, be careful where you step. Go slow, go easy, most of all concentrate on your relationship with God, then man and if that is as it should be, if you have love for the lost in your heart and you can see that they need help, you will do fine, anything else and you will struggle.
The bolded part got especially into me when I started to get more into apologetics. This was my "D'Souza" period, when I had read his book What's So Great About Christianity and used it as my main guide to apologetics. It's great in the social, political, and historical parts of New Atheism, but you can definitely find more in-depth works by William Lane Craig and John Lennox for philosophy and science. I now consider William Lane Craig to be my favorite apologist. I practically skimmed through the philosophy section because I barely understood it at age 14. Weird how at my age I'm contemplating the pros and cons of various creation models and watching documentaries on Christian apologetics while most of my friends are watching porn.

I had gotten into refuting arguments and focusing on science so much that I felt I had lost my connection to God. The closest to an apologetic experience I had at the time was when I was on a cruise ship in Alaska and I talked with a Chinese-American boy my age after I was joking about a character in a video game being an awful allusion to Jesus and he asked how I knew so much about him. I later explained to him various arguments and he turned from being an atheist to a deist. I also explained basic misconceptions to him, like that Satan had horns, God had a beard, Heaven was in the clouds, and Hell was in the center of the Earth. I also told him that I had "lost my relationship with God", which I had to explain to him because he, very clearly, did not know anything about Christianity. Later, however, I read in The Case for Faith that we all have a relationship with God, even when we don't have a "Religious High", like what happened to the Holy Rollers in Appalachia, which got their name because they had religious experiences with the Holy Spirit that literally made them roll on the ground.

Thank you for this reminder, Neo. I really needed it. I think I've got to read Tactics by Greg Koukl again and try to memorize the tactics he uses. A lot of it is cold, technical stuff, but it's mainly on how to do it lovingly and courteously. I should also get to reading the Bible more. I've already read all of John and I'm moving on to Mark. As somebody who's name I forgot said, "Apologetics is not about refuting arguments, it's about leading others to Christ."

Re: I Need Help Here

Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 11:50 pm
by SonofAletheia
Hey Dudeacus97,

It's great to see you passionate about apologetic s and serving Christ. You honestly remind me of myself a few years ago. That was when I first started really looking into Christianity and how it relates to science, philiosphy and history. I do have some suggestions for you that I would have loved to hear before I jumped into apologetic's
1. Your aim is to lead people to truth, not to win arguments and beat people down. This can be tempting, especially when tempers flare. Stay away from ad hominem attacks and red herrings and focus on the issues at hand. Paul, in Ephesians 4:15, says to speak the truth in love.
2. Keep an open mind with issues. Socrates said to "follow the evidence wherever it leads." This quote completely changed how I approached difficult issues in and outside Christianity. Don't be afraid of the truth.
3. Finally, continue to ask questions, read books, ponder difficult topics etc. Don't lose the fire of seeking truth and getting closer to Christ. It's so easy to slip into the daily repetition and not truly embrace the day.

Justin

Re: I Need Help Here

Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 12:16 am
by neo-x
It's just that recently I've discovered the flaws in Darwinian Evolution, such as the whale charts, Cambrian Explosion, and such. As I know, whenever one first gets into an issue, they start getting rabid about it. I remember when I first saw a lecture by Dinesh D'Souza. I wanted to school every atheist I saw. I think the exception is when I first got into pro-life activism. Mostly because I'm banned from talking about abortion or homosexuality at school because that causes controversy and I need to develop social relationships with people because of my high-functioning autism.
A lot of people quote whale charts as evidence for evolution and when they find problems in it they discard evolution. BUt what they fail to realize is that evolution happens by DNA, not fossils. We may not have the whole fossil record, we may not ever recover all of the fossil record. But DNA spells itself out into everything we see. Most anti-evolution people think that fossils are the back bone of the evolutionary theory that if we dont have fossils then evolution has no evidence. This is simply wrong. Its true that fossils may help understand evolution but they certainly are not required for the validity of the theory itself. I would even submit that if all of the fossil record on earth went missing, evolution still would be true becuase of the mechanism of life as we see.

I would recommend you read "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" by Dr. Francis collins, and then read "the selfish gene" by Richard Dawkins, despite the type of image Dawkin carries, "the selfish gene" is basiclly a book on evolutionary biology nothing else. Also I would recomend reading "The ancestors tale" by Dawkins and "A brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking.

These books will give you a head start on the science of things itself. Will give you a better understanding of the issues you are trying to explore.

Progressive creationism actually is a under OEC. OEC cover almost all creation models, including theistic evolution, the only exception being YEC. Where as thiestic evolution makes a case for God somehow using evolution as a tool, progressive creationism says that God created life in order, one era of certain organisms and when they went extinct then the next and so on and so forth untill it reached man.
That quote from the Bible really helped me reflect on my thoughts of interactions with others, however, what if I'm in public and somebody starts spouting stupid stuff about Christianity at my face? What should I do then?
I would try to ascertain whether I am talking to an adult or just a kid in an adult body. And if its the latter, I won't argue. All arguments that carry insults are personal to us because faith is a very personal and intimate feeling. And when our faith gets insulted, in one way we ourselves feel insulted too because it indirectly questions our intelligence. It has happened to me. But belive me, there is nothing wrong with leaving an argument, even if it sounds like you are "defeated", if the argument in question is just silly and stupid and is getting on your nerves for the wrong reasons. Instead of cursing yourself for not handling it properly later, I would suggest you don't lose sleep over it, come home, pray and thank God for the peace of mind we have in Christ Jesus and start to look at avenues from where you can productively tell people about Christ and even engage in apologetics.

Head over to my blog sometime, you may find it helpful or not, but when I started that blog I was angry at theists and I bashed them a lot. Then with time I realized that I was being the same jerk I have seen most people be. And with time I started making athiests followers who won't agree with me but because of the light mood of the conversations would always chime in and everyonce in a while I get to tell them something they don't know but there is no downside to it. I am giving respect and getting back respect, and in exchange I get to tell them something true about faith. Its not much but its better than fighting with them. Its hard sometimes, some people openly insult but I just don't lose sleep over it now. In the end I can't change their thinking by spouting hate back. I love what Martin Luther King once said "love is the only force which can transform an enemy into a friend ".

Its not that I don't challenge atheists, I do but I try to do it with a persistent friendly tone. If someone starts insults, I tell them plainly that the discourse is finished. I have tried to let go of the feeling that I should always have the last word on everything; its agood thing if you can achieve it.

So bottom line is , I will stay friendly but I won't take insults, I will challenge but won't insult. And if my argument seems like a dead end, I respectfully leave.
That's sort of what's been happening. Whenever I get into a debate on the internet, the words never leave my head until I sit down and type down a reply. I'm just going to stick out of any sort of debate on YouTube, Facebook, or any other site like that. As you said, it's just going to drive me nuts, and sometimes I feel stupid when debating certain subjects, like "does believing in God automatically make me stupid?", "Is the Soviet Gulag and Cambodian Holocaust a lie made up by Christian apologists to make atheists look bad?" or "Has every conflict in history been the direct result of a religious conflict?." (I met an atheist who seriously thought that all fighting, from when the first caveman punched another caveman, was the result of religion. Then again, he was on XBOX Live and we were playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. His buddy also denied the atrocities of the Communist world, which is ironic because we were playing a video game about the Cold War. The game pairs me up with random people to play with. I did not consciously choose to play with him, but I did pray to God to get a chance to use my apologetic skills the night before.)
When I was a teenager around 15-16, I kept my Bible in my school bag, and then later in college, I would read it and take it everywhere with me, I read it all teh time, on the bus, in the coffee break, during lunch and sooner or later some one would ask me what I was reading and that gave me a chance to tell them what I thought. But You don't get successfull all the time. I have learnt that the best way to approach is to be open, be honest, be fair, be challenging, don't give into a false argument but don't insult the other person either. Be friendly, be approachable. Someone should not think of you as someone who will lash out if you hear something against yourself or your faith. With time you will see that you will get across people and people will respect your love and humbleness.

This works for me mostly.

Most of the internet athiests on facebook and youtube are not serious people, most are trolls who just put a one liner and then have you scratch your head on the topic for two hours writing down pages and pages of response and then afterwards when you respond with great clairty and length they just put out another one liner like "you sky daddy is crap and so are you." This is clearly a waste of time of yours. And I would suggest you aviod conversation like these entirely.

The religion is the cause of all violence is an easy card to throw so every second atheist I know throws it but don't take the bait. Tell them plainly that you will only accept what he says if he can cite studies. Without ecidence nothing holds. I mean I often quote hitchens' famous line "that which can asserted without evidence can also be discarded without evidence."
I think I definitely need to study this issue more. Come to think of it, I don't know the difference between OEC and Progressive Creationism, so I definitely need more research. Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg when dealing with God. How life got to the state it's in to be able to do any sort of "evolving" in the first place is a priority in my opinion. I think I might check your post on books on evolution to get started.
I have given a few in the top section. P.m me if you need those.
I read in The Case for Faith that we all have a relationship with God, even when we don't have a "Religious High", like what happened to the Holy Rollers in Appalachia, which got their name because they had religious experiences with the Holy Spirit that literally made them roll on the ground.
I am not sure about this one, I would not call it the work of the holy spirit unless I see the fruits of the spirit somewhere in there or a testimony. Its true we all have a relationship with God but Christ is the only mediator and without him, we only have an intellectual relationship and that is not enough.
Thank you for this reminder, Neo. I really needed it. I think I've got to read Tactics by Greg Koukl again and try to memorize the tactics he uses. A lot of it is cold, technical stuff, but it's mainly on how to do it lovingly and courteously. I should also get to reading the Bible more. I've already read all of John and I'm moving on to Mark. As somebody who's name I forgot said, "Apologetics is not about refuting arguments, it's about leading others to Christ."
I would suggest you read C.S lewis "Mere christinaity", and I won't advise reading books on "tactics" alone. Be a natural find your own style and response. You will feel much better and you will do much better. Its true we all learn things from others but that is the first stage. This forum is very helpful, constantly enagage in discussion with good people, like here on this forum, keep sharpening your skill as you go along.

Most of all keep asking questions if you feel troubled yourself. An apologist with serious doubts about faith is likely to do more harm to himself then benefit others.

You are doing good, and there is nothing more pleasing then seeing someone finding God in a young age. Keep the lamp burning :)

Re: I Need Help Here

Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:06 am
by Dudeacus97
Thanks for the help, Neo!