Thanks to my public presence on social media and this blog, I frequently come in contact with people who believe they have a duty to “rescue” me from the clutches of atheism. Just today an Evangelical man asked me if I had ever read Lee Strobel? I have been asked this question more times than I can count. What follows is the brief discussion that ensued.
One of my Facebook page moderators stepped in and told this man to buzz off. I think this man is part of a cadre of Evangelicals who have set up multiple Facebook profiles so they can spread Christian propaganda. Ban one of them and a different commenter shows up and starts commenting. In this man’s case, he left a derogatory comment about gays in the military (using the word homo). I have zero respect or tolerance for such people.
Yes, zealots such as this man are e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. On a warm summer day, so are gnats. Swat!
Lee Strobel is hugely unconvincing. He claims that once he was an atheist, but he was nothing of the sort. At best he was a passive ‘not really thought about it’ who realised either he could make money out of a pretence at belief, or else seriously deluded himself, because that’s what he wanted.
Nothing that Strobel has written can possibly convince anyone with the slightest degree of reasoning ability to become a believer. The best he can achieve is to reinforce the irrational mindset of those who are already believers; much the way that Frank Morrison’s ‘Who moved the stone’ convinces anyone other than those who are already bought into the silly nonsense.
That’s exactly right, Geoff. The purpose of apologetics isn’t to convince unbelievers; its purpose is to reassure believers.
These “gnats” pretend to want to “help” you, but it all comes across to me as ego. They think they are right, and they want to tell you you’re wrong. Oh sure, they SAY it’s to save you from Hell. But somehow, their ego and lack of kindness resonate ever more strongly.
Strobel’s books were terribly disappointing to me.
I read Lee Strobel’s books on the way out. If anything, they sped my deconversion along. What a hack!
It is infuriating when Bruce has been very clear, on a decision made over years, that someone is counting the souls they saved. Even if a soul can be saved, isn’t it God who did the saving? It sickens me. This is emotional terrorism. I hope that people can just get to a place where we talk about divided opinions, listen, not come up with a way to,refute someone else’s argument, and ask questions politely. Religion, belief or logic,and politics are way beyond bad.
PS Bruce, I am so glad you have people who take some of the garbage out)
It’s clear that this is some organized effort on their part. I just caught a few on your FB page that were spamming you various links to refute what you’re saying and then immediately blocking you from replying at all Bruce. I am reporting them as abusive spammers. Assholes making their Jesus cry! They better freaking pray that what they believe in is wrong because they’re earning all sorts of bad heavenly juujuu.
I believe I might have to fashion a few new voodoo dolls, dub them with the names of your Christian concern trolls and stick sharp pins in the crotches! They are pissing off the wrong Cajun here.
Yes, it is a concerted effort to harass me. Today, one zealot left 25 cut and paste comments on Facebook before I could ban him. Just what Jesus would do, right?
Oh, beautiful. Nothing says “they will know we are Christian by our love” or “the peace that passeth all understanding” like a bunch of Bullies For Jesus(tm).
What you can do, what I’ve had to do with NLQ, is report the cut and paste spammers. They will lose their accounts.
When I’m online and they pop on your feed that’s what I do. Removes them completely from your page, prevents them from posting again and eventually gets them banned from FB
Some of Stroble’s claims (or should I say william lane craig’s claims as they use the same arguments) are reasonably convincing if you accept their ‘evidence’. But the truth is their evidence is just what is in the gospels.
E.g The stone was rolled away from jesus’ tomb and the Roman guards did nothing to stop this – must be an angel. And the women saw jesus multiple times and touched him so they couldn’t be hallucinations’
But how do we know that there was a stone or guards? Cos matthew says so. How do we know the women touched him – cos gospels written years later in locations faraway from where these women lived say so.
Maybe Jesus was put in mass grave or
a grave without a stone or a grave that the Disciples didn’t know about? And maybe some women did have visions (same as people see ET’s today) of jesus that were then exaggerated.
That’s the key. If you accept their presuppositions: God exists and the Bible is the inerrant word of God, anything and everything is possible.
Well, and having listened to a least a bit of J Warner Wallace’s stuff, the argument he’s making (eye-witness accounts! They wouldn’t make this up!) apply just as well, or better, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints… whose beliefs he explicitly rejects.
Yes but you don’t even need to accept inerrancy – just that the bits in the bible about the resurrection are accurate – which of course there is no basis for doing.
William lane craig often disingenuously concedes that difficult parts of the bible may be inaccurate / wrong in order to get non christians to focus on the resurrection ‘facts’. Of course when you are ‘in’ then you will need to change your mind about these difficult bits.
In another post you hark back to the days of “you could save a bundle on long distance!”. This also take me back to the days of spam. AOL (ha ha another blast from the past) allowed you to eliminate key words from coming in. I found if you made a list of drugs like Xanax and Vicodin as well as “enlarge your penis” you could get rid of most of it, or at least from seeing the same spam.
Maybe it would be possible to eliminate such gnats by the common things they say. “have a blessed day” springs to mind…