Unless You Like To Argue With Christians, Don't Bother

[chefranden]

Why you can't win an argument about what the Bible says

 

Many years ago, when I was a Psychology student, we had a lecturer who told stories of his own early life as a young clinical psychologist. One story he told was of a psychotic patient who was under his care. This man was quite normal in other ways, but he believed that he (the patient) was dead. So one day my lecturer decided to try some cognitive therapy on him:

 

Lecturer:

You think you're dead, yes? Well, do dead people bleed?

Patient:

No, of course not. How could they?

Lecturer:

(Sticking a pin in him) Well, how about that?

Patient:

Good God! That's amazing! I was totally wrong! Dead people do bleed!

 

Anyone who has tried to have an argument with a religious believer about the many contradictions and errors in religious texts will find themselves in sympathy with my lecturer. Each logical step forward seems to be met with another piece of twisted logic or wilful blindness. Typical examples can be found in many places on the web: for instance, at the Secular Web site or Ebon Musings where intelligent and dedicated people have given up hours of their time trying to pin down religious believers on the many contradictions in the Bible, only to be met by increasingly convoluted and unlikely twists of logic and inference. I don't want to disparage these people in any way, but I hope they realise that they will never convince their opponents, and the only ones to benefit from a debate of this kind are the onlookers. If there are any examples of a biblical literalist being convinced to recant by argument, I'm not aware of them.

 

Why is this? Why is it so hard to pin someone down to an agreed interpretation of what a particular phrase or sentence means? If it's any consolation to atheists, the problem is not just theirs: it besets the whole history of Western philosophy. Dozens of philosophers have stated what they considered were clear and definite answers to philosophical problems, only to have the whole thing misunderstood -- as they saw it -- in many different ways by their readers.

 

The fact is -- as Wittgenstein finally pointed out about fifty years ago -- language is not intended for debates. For pre-Darwinian philosophers like Descartes, who believed that language was designed and delivered to humans by a divine power, this must have been almost impossible to understand. Only when we recognise that language is a human invention, designed for a specific purpose, can we see that there are some things which language just can't do.

 

Here's a simple example: imagine there are two types of fruit tree that grow on Mars. They look completely identical, but one smells of oranges and the fruit is instantly fatal: the other smells of lemons and the fruit is sweet and healthy. A party of starving explorers gets in touch with you by radio and asks for your help in determining which fruits they can eat. The only problem is that they grew up on Venus and have never smelt either an orange or a lemon before.

 

How could you possibly help them? Other than saying 'It smells like...', is there any other way you could use language to convey the difference between orange-smell and lemon-smell? You can recognise it in an instant, but can you say it? Could you confidently give the explorers the instructions that would save their lives? In general, language is very poor at describing smells because that capacity has never been needed. Apart from a few specialised areas like wine tasting and perfumery, there is just no need for ordinary people to describe smells to each other, and so language has never developed that capacity.

 

The same is true of exegetical debates. Nothing in the evolutionary development of the human race has made it crucial to be able to distinguish irony from metaphor, or sense-data from sensations, so debates about terms like these are bound to be loaded with misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Even the most careful 'natural language' philosopher or theologian will eventually stray into using terms which are manufactured for the purpose, and thereby spawn a different interpretation in the mind of every different person who hears or reads them.

 

But even 'ordinary language' can pose the same problems. "I have a tree in my garden" sounds like a simple statement, for instance, but someone who wanted to interpret it in such a way as to dispute its literal truth could find lots of ways to do so:

 

* It's not YOUR garden, it belongs jointly to you and your spouse.

* It's only three metres tall: it's not a tree but a large shrub.

* It's a bonsai tree, not a real tree.

* It's not IN the garden, but on the boundary with your neighbour.

* It's a tree, but a cut-down dead one from Christmas.

* It's only a metaphorical 'tree'.

* It's a real tree, but only a metaphorical 'garden'.

 

 

And of course I could have meant any of these things, and without collaborating evidence there is no way for you or anyone else to know for sure what I did mean. But all the collaborating evidence will also take the form of assertions, and any of these can be disputed in the same way, and so on and so forth...

 

Multiply this by the number of assertions in a book like the Bible, for instance, and it will become obvious that people will be able to reach agreement about what something actually says only when they are motivated to do so. Since philosophers make progress by disagreeing, and religious believers gain status by sticking to their beliefs no matter what, any project which tries to force people against their will to agree on what a written text says is inevitably doomed to failure. That is just not what language is for.

 

So by all means engage believers in arguments about the literal truth of their holy books, but don't expect to win, or even to have them concede that you have scored a single point. Make sure there are plenty of onlookers with open minds and you may achieve something, but be prepared for intense frustration as your opponent limbers up for some bizarre mental gymnastics. What is bleeding obvious to you may be a microscopic quibble to them, and vice versa.

 

link to this article

[GraphicsGuy]

I don't think "language" is the problem...or at least not the sole problem. Sometimes Xians can be "convinced" by the words and the "evidence", but they still rely on what they've experienced through "faith".

 

I can explain my experience to Xians, but it doesn't matter. The language I use is completely understandable, but the fact is that they simply don't WANT to hear it and end up expecting me to resolve the situation for them or simply saying that it's entirely my fault.

 

It is true that arguing with them is completely useless. Don't bother doing it unless you enjoy it.

[ogilvy]

Why you can't win an argument about what the Bible says

 

Many years ago, when I was a Psychology student, we had a lecturer who told stories of his own early life as a young clinical psychologist. One story he told was of a psychotic patient who was under his care. This man was quite normal in other ways, but he believed that he (the patient) was dead. So one day my lecturer decided to try some cognitive therapy on him:

 

Lecturer:

You think you're dead, yes? Well, do dead people bleed?

Patient:

No, of course not. How could they?

Lecturer:

(Sticking a pin in him) Well, how about that?

Patient:

Good God! That's amazing! I was totally wrong! Dead people do bleed!

 

Anyone who has tried to have an argument with a religious believer about the many contradictions and errors in religious texts will find themselves in sympathy with my lecturer. Each logical step forward seems to be met with another piece of twisted logic or wilful blindness. Typical examples can be found in many places on the web: for instance, at the Secular Web site or Ebon Musings where intelligent and dedicated people have given up hours of their time trying to pin down religious believers on the many contradictions in the Bible, only to be met by increasingly convoluted and unlikely twists of logic and inference. I don't want to disparage these people in any way, but I hope they realise that they will never convince their opponents, and the only ones to benefit from a debate of this kind are the onlookers. If there are any examples of a biblical literalist being convinced to recant by argument, I'm not aware of them.

 

Why is this? Why is it so hard to pin someone down to an agreed interpretation of what a particular phrase or sentence means? If it's any consolation to atheists, the problem is not just theirs: it besets the whole history of Western philosophy. Dozens of philosophers have stated what they considered were clear and definite answers to philosophical problems, only to have the whole thing misunderstood -- as they saw it -- in many different ways by their readers.

 

The fact is -- as Wittgenstein finally pointed out about fifty years ago -- language is not intended for debates. For pre-Darwinian philosophers like Descartes, who believed that language was designed and delivered to humans by a divine power, this must have been almost impossible to understand. Only when we recognise that language is a human invention, designed for a specific purpose, can we see that there are some things which language just can't do.

 

But even 'ordinary language' can pose the same problems. "I have a tree in my garden" sounds like a simple statement, for instance, but someone who wanted to interpret it in such a way as to dispute its literal truth could find lots of ways to do so:

 

* It's not YOUR garden, it belongs jointly to you and your spouse.

* It's only three metres tall: it's not a tree but a large shrub.

* It's a bonsai tree, not a real tree.

* It's not IN the garden, but on the boundary with your neighbour.

* It's a tree, but a cut-down dead one from Christmas.

* It's only a metaphorical 'tree'.

* It's a real tree, but only a metaphorical 'garden'.

 

 

And of course I could have meant any of these things, and without collaborating evidence there is no way for you or anyone else to know for sure what I did mean. But all the collaborating evidence will also take the form of assertions, and any of these can be disputed in the same way, and so on and so forth...

 

Multiply this by the number of assertions in a book like the Bible, for instance, and it will become obvious that people will be able to reach agreement about what something actually says only when they are motivated to do so. Since philosophers make progress by disagreeing, and religious believers gain status by sticking to their beliefs no matter what, any project which tries to force people against their will to agree on what a written text says is inevitably doomed to failure. That is just not what language is for.

 

So by all means engage believers in arguments about the literal truth of their holy books, but don't expect to win, or even to have them concede that you have scored a single point. Make sure there are plenty of onlookers with open minds and you may achieve something, but be prepared for intense frustration as your opponent limbers up for some bizarre mental gymnastics. What is bleeding obvious to you may be a microscopic quibble to them, and vice versa.

 

link to this article

 

What a brilliant analysis. Ive saved the link and plan to read more of the articles.

I was finding it hard to understand why Christians couldn't grasp the simple concepts i was trying to present.

One of the reasons is ,and i understand because i was exactly lke it myself, is that they don't WANT to admit doubts to their consciousness, there's too much at stake.

Another thing is that when a debate or argument is going on, neither side usually ever wants to concede a point to the 'opponent', no matter how reasonable. Its natural to get defensive when 'attacked', nobody likes to 'lose face', which they would seem to do by agreeing. so its really not likely either party is going to be objective and fairly assess the other's arguments..

However its a good point that the onlooker to the debate might pick up something useful. And also, the onlooker can see which side is being the more reasonable.

[chefranden]

I'm not to sure about the "Want To". When I was loosing my faith I didn't "want to" loose it. I wanted to keep it. In the early years there were times when I wanted it back. My wanting didn't preserve the faith. I think it is something like viewing a necker cube. One can only see one face at a time.

 

If one is only seeing one face over a long period without ever seeing the other, one is pretty sure the other face is not there. On the other hand once one sees the other face it is difficult to deny it is there. I notice in myself that there is a little discomfort when trying to switch views in the illusion. There certainly is a lot of discomfort when the view of religion changes. That discomfort also works to preserve the view of faith.

 

In addition I think that we have to admit that people are wired to see the religious face of life. Seeing the other face is relatively rare, which is born out in the small minority status of atheists.

[PocketAces]

Why you can't win an argument about what the Bible says

 

Many years ago, when I was a Psychology student, we had a lecturer who told stories of his own early life as a young clinical psychologist. One story he told was of a psychotic patient who was under his care. This man was quite normal in other ways, but he believed that he (the patient) was dead. So one day my lecturer decided to try some cognitive therapy on him:

 

Lecturer:

You think you're dead, yes? Well, do dead people bleed?

Patient:

No, of course not. How could they?

Lecturer:

(Sticking a pin in him) Well, how about that?

Patient:

Good God! That's amazing! I was totally wrong! Dead people do bleed!

 

Anyone who has tried to have an argument with a religious believer about the many contradictions and errors in religious texts will find themselves in sympathy with my lecturer. Each logical step forward seems to be met with another piece of twisted logic or wilful blindness. Typical examples can be found in many places on the web: for instance, at the Secular Web site or Ebon Musings where intelligent and dedicated people have given up hours of their time trying to pin down religious believers on the many contradictions in the Bible, only to be met by increasingly convoluted and unlikely twists of logic and inference. I don't want to disparage these people in any way, but I hope they realise that they will never convince their opponents, and the only ones to benefit from a debate of this kind are the onlookers. If there are any examples of a biblical literalist being convinced to recant by argument, I'm not aware of them.

 

Why is this? Why is it so hard to pin someone down to an agreed interpretation of what a particular phrase or sentence means? If it's any consolation to atheists, the problem is not just theirs: it besets the whole history of Western philosophy. Dozens of philosophers have stated what they considered were clear and definite answers to philosophical problems, only to have the whole thing misunderstood -- as they saw it -- in many different ways by their readers.

 

The fact is -- as Wittgenstein finally pointed out about fifty years ago -- language is not intended for debates. For pre-Darwinian philosophers like Descartes, who believed that language was designed and delivered to humans by a divine power, this must have been almost impossible to understand. Only when we recognise that language is a human invention, designed for a specific purpose, can we see that there are some things which language just can't do.

 

Here's a simple example: imagine there are two types of fruit tree that grow on Mars. They look completely identical, but one smells of oranges and the fruit is instantly fatal: the other smells of lemons and the fruit is sweet and healthy. A party of starving explorers gets in touch with you by radio and asks for your help in determining which fruits they can eat. The only problem is that they grew up on Venus and have never smelt either an orange or a lemon before.

 

How could you possibly help them? Other than saying 'It smells like...', is there any other way you could use language to convey the difference between orange-smell and lemon-smell? You can recognise it in an instant, but can you say it? Could you confidently give the explorers the instructions that would save their lives? In general, language is very poor at describing smells because that capacity has never been needed. Apart from a few specialised areas like wine tasting and perfumery, there is just no need for ordinary people to describe smells to each other, and so language has never developed that capacity.

 

The same is true of exegetical debates. Nothing in the evolutionary development of the human race has made it crucial to be able to distinguish irony from metaphor, or sense-data from sensations, so debates about terms like these are bound to be loaded with misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Even the most careful 'natural language' philosopher or theologian will eventually stray into using terms which are manufactured for the purpose, and thereby spawn a different interpretation in the mind of every different person who hears or reads them.

 

But even 'ordinary language' can pose the same problems. "I have a tree in my garden" sounds like a simple statement, for instance, but someone who wanted to interpret it in such a way as to dispute its literal truth could find lots of ways to do so:

 

* It's not YOUR garden, it belongs jointly to you and your spouse.

* It's only three metres tall: it's not a tree but a large shrub.

* It's a bonsai tree, not a real tree.

* It's not IN the garden, but on the boundary with your neighbour.

* It's a tree, but a cut-down dead one from Christmas.

* It's only a metaphorical 'tree'.

* It's a real tree, but only a metaphorical 'garden'.

 

 

And of course I could have meant any of these things, and without collaborating evidence there is no way for you or anyone else to know for sure what I did mean. But all the collaborating evidence will also take the form of assertions, and any of these can be disputed in the same way, and so on and so forth...

 

Multiply this by the number of assertions in a book like the Bible, for instance, and it will become obvious that people will be able to reach agreement about what something actually says only when they are motivated to do so. Since philosophers make progress by disagreeing, and religious believers gain status by sticking to their beliefs no matter what, any project which tries to force people against their will to agree on what a written text says is inevitably doomed to failure. That is just not what language is for.

 

So by all means engage believers in arguments about the literal truth of their holy books, but don't expect to win, or even to have them concede that you have scored a single point. Make sure there are plenty of onlookers with open minds and you may achieve something, but be prepared for intense frustration as your opponent limbers up for some bizarre mental gymnastics. What is bleeding obvious to you may be a microscopic quibble to them, and vice versa.

 

link to this article

i think this makes perfect sense personally.

 

i remember two sets of multiple times that my faith for example was at a critical moment.

 

the first set of times, the language that the religious use was suffice to take away the worries. why? the language itself represented a reality that was not part of the reality i was experiencing in that moment, and the language itself represented a reality that i lived in/believed.

 

the second set of times, the language was not suffice. it represented a world that i didn't care about anymore and i wanted to find more, or lost all the meaning towards. which the inevitable outcome was what i am now, atheist.

 

so to me, this makes perfect sense, assuming i'm interpretating this article correctly.

[par4dcourse]

Xians always hold the trump cards. The most common two are 1) The lawd works in mysterious ways (always spoken with a slow head shake and look of awe) and 2) humans can't possibly understand the mind of gawd (again, a look of bewilderment, or at least indigestion).

They claim an invisible friend that they communicate with telepathically, and who controls every aspect of their life, and think we're weird.

[godlessgrrl]

Very good article. I think the problem is compounded by the xian habit of redefining words. I don't mean Christianese™, which is a form of jargon, and I don't mean to suggest that the definitions of words don't change or are set in stone. I'm thinking of the habit a lot of xians have of insisting that the only true definition of a common word is the one that supports their point of view.

 

It makes it mighty difficult to talk to someone about abortion when you use the term "pro-choice" and they think "baby killer", for instance. Or to talk about homosexuality when you use the term "orientation" and they use the term "lifestyle". Or when they think that the word "tolerate" means "promote". Or when they insist that the only TrueAtheists™ are strong atheists, and everybody else is really an agnostic.

 

Gets a bit frustrating.

[Etchison]

Excellent article. Thanks. However, I think it states as absolutes things that are only generalities.

 

The fact is, people ARE dissuaded from their Christian arguments. It's extraordinarily rare, but it does happen. Many of us here on this forum are examples. It might not happen during the debate, but the cognitive dissonance does wreak havoc in the intelligent Christian over time. Every soul you save is worth the effort. (LOL!)

 

Still, I think the article is primarily correct. It's why I try to stick with emotional arguments when debating Xtians.

[Yrth]

Thanks chef. This article stands alongside another article you posted, 'Why Bad Beliefs Won't Die,' (or something similarly titled) which basically says that beliefs are kept and discarded based on their usefulness for one's continued survival -- as opposed to whether or not the beliefs make sense.

 

-pockets

[R. S. Martin]

Xians always hold the trump cards. The most common two are 1) The lawd works in mysterious ways (always spoken with a slow head shake and look of awe) and 2) humans can't possibly understand the mind of gawd (again, a look of bewilderment, or at least indigestion).

They claim an invisible friend that they communicate with telepathically, and who controls every aspect of their life, and think we're weird.

 

What I don't get is that god is so mysterious and beyond comprehension when "things don't make sense," but when the Christian is out to make me do his/her will, the Christian knows EXACTLY what God wants and likes.

 

It becomes somewhat confusing when God absolutely wants opposite things depending which church the believer belongs to.

[R. S. Martin]

I disagree with the argument of the article, i.e. that the problems of philosophy apply to the problem we have in talking with Christians in general. The two are similar insofar as both depend on the intricacies of language. But there it ends. For philosophers, it's an intellectual word game as seen and interpreted through their own personal minds and life experiences. However, for religious people it's a highly charged emotional life experience hanging by a thread. In other words, break the thread of this emotional experience and the Self crashes into the Void, into nothingness, into NonBeing. For the philosopher it's just a word game; for the religious person it's literally the difference between life and death on a cosmic scale.

 

I don't know if I'm right but it's the only thing that makes sense to me, based on people's reactions.

 

Each logical step forward seems to be met with another piece of twisted logic or wilful blindness. Typical examples can be found in many places on the web: for instance, at the Secular Web site or Ebon Musings where intelligent and dedicated people have given up hours of their time trying to pin down religious believers on the many contradictions in the Bible, only to be met by increasingly convoluted and unlikely twists of logic and inference. I don't want to disparage these people in any way, but I hope they realise that they will never convince their opponents, and the only ones to benefit from a debate of this kind are the onlookers. If there are any examples of a biblical literalist being convinced to recant by argument, I'm not aware of them.

 

I get something out of arguing with Christians that is not mentioned here. I have had a driving need to learn how the mind of these people works. I could not have written the above paragraph six months ago. I have since then spent many an hour wrangling with Christians, experimenting with every and all means possible via the written word. Days after deciding that some means were not working I got a warning from staff that I needed to change my behaviour. They have no rules posted and I did not know about that rule. My point is, ethical or not, I was able to experiment to my scientist heart's content the use of "any and all means." And I was able to find out that even "all means" do not work. For me, that was very important. Since it wasn't working, I stopping expending so much emotional energy--and this was what they wanted so it was a win-win situation for all involved, I guess.

 

I encounter a number of different personalities and use various strategies depending on the personality. I enjoy the intellectual challenge in sorting these things out. When they start accusing me of underhanded tricks, I am quite sure that they are talking about themselves, out of their own unconscious. I am not quite sure, but I think there is a way to subtly push home the message so that "in the stilly hours of night" it will come home to roost in their own minds that there is something not quite right with what they profess to believe, or with what they accuse atheists of. It might take awhile, such as five years, or a certain life situation, but I think the potential is there.

 

With others, who overtly twist my words out of context and distort my meaning, sometimes I just tell them to their face how I see the situation, i.e. that they are twisting my meaning and that further discussion is beside the point. I do this so that they know that I know what they are doing, and so they know that I am not giving in when I leave the thread. For me, this is VERY IMPORTANT. I don't care if they call me arrogant but I will do what I can to avoid looking scared or guilty in the face of their god.

 

Also, I keep telling myself that there will be on-lookers who benefit from the content of my posts even if I never know about it.

 

Okay, I'm rereading my first paragraph of this post and I'm asking myself what are the ethics around challenging the religion of people when their very being hangs by such a fragile thread. The reality of the matter, as I see it, is that they are so well insulated by sheer will-power and blind belief that nothing I say can or will dislodge anyone. It's not as though a person were precariously balanced on a tight-rope and someone touched them to throw them off-balance. Indeed, it happens occasionally that people on Craig's forums post in a crisis of faith. Atheists invariably respond gently and empatheticaly. I cannot for the life of me encourage them to leave their religion; it just seems wrong. And it seems the other atheists on there feel the same. However, we do gently present alternatives and inform them that life holds options. One young man opted for what he considers a more liberal form of Christianity.