Stop arguing with atheists!

The Evangelical Liberal

(Actually that should probably read ‘Let’s stop arguing…’ as it’s addressed partly to me, and probably doesn’t apply to a lot of my readers!).

I’ve been on more than a few blog comments forums where Christians and atheists have squared up to one another and engaged in full pitched battle. In these fights no-one dies of course, but no-one wins either. And what generally does die is respect, reasonableness, kindness, humanity and mutual understanding.

I just don’t see what’s usefully achieved by these kinds of debates. There’s generally little or no genuine dialogue or engagement with other people’s views. Instead there is attack and insult, accusation and counter-accusation, mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation. At the end of them we all still believe what we believed at the start, we all just feel scarred, and we all think that everyone else is an idiot or worse.

This is particularly tragic when what…

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