jackbauer Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 A few months ago I posted a rant about Christians completely missing the point. Lets face it, Christians are extremely good at this when it comes to understanding ex believers. We've all experienced it so we know the crap they'll say. But there are some cases where they are coming across as so ignorant, and so completely stupid that you wonder if they are deliberately being this way. Like maybe if they reinvent definitions, use psuedo intellectual jargon, play semantics police enough, or do anything to distract from the point, than maybe they can win *some* arguement. Either that or they are extremely literal minded. Example: I read a blog post criticizing a blog post on this site. The author was debunking some issues that people have with Christianity. One of them was God's obsession with blood. In other words, God demanding brutal deaths to atone for sin. The author's response, "Do you have a problem with the American Red Cross? They're obsessed with blood, but they save lives". He is not only making an apples and oranges comparison, but he is completely missing the context of "blood". One is a necessary function to live, the other is a metaphor for death and violence. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the "blood" God demanded was violence to appease his twisted sense of justice. (though it did sound like he took on a different interpratation of the sacrifice). He then rebuffed another criticism, the atonement theory. More importantly, the idea of original sin and hell being extremely bad for one's self esteem. But Mr Apologist completely glosses over the main point and assumes that because we reject God's "love", that we think being shown love is bad for our self esteem. He makes sarcastic quips about how maybe we would rather never be shown love. What he fails to mention is that God's "love" is more like emotional blackmail, never mind that the main point was the harm of being told we're unworthy and deserve hell by default, and never mind being at a constant battle with sin, the only thing this clown got from that was that we don't want to be shown love. Well I guess if by "love" he means being threatened with eternal punishment, than maybe he's right on that point. This guy was exceptionally obtuse, but I've seen others like him. It's like you have to word your arguements extremely carefully to make sure they can't find ways to twist them into meaning something they don't. I even remember one fundie on youtube devoting an entire video to try to debunk Dawkins because he said "we were not put here to be comfortable". He assumed that because Dawkins said "put here", that he secretly believed in God. Even though it was probably just a poor choice of words on Dawkins part and that this clown was most likely taking the "put here" quote out of context. No wonder I gave up trying to debate religion for a while... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Positivist Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 I think it's a matter of their being certain they are right, to the degree that atheism seems absurd and wanting. They are addicted to what they think they get out of their religion ("relationship")--imaginary love which they misconstrued as the real thing. My second theory is that if you're not smart enough to form a complete cogent argument against your opponent's views, poke little holes in them so you fool your peers that you are smart and, most importantly, right. Either way, annoying as hel! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
London Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Speaking of the apples/oranges thing... I find that they do this on purpose at times to derail you from the main point. Then you are suddenly discussing a different comparison subject and not the main debated point. It's like ninja distraction without the... Ninja! And when you try to go back to the original subject you get accused of going off topic. My rule in life now is, never expect a xian to have a logical discussion all they way through. Non-believers can think in a line, step by step. xians think in a circle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonForever Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Sounds like you found Mike Gannt... http://blogforthelordjesuscurrentevents.wordpress.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrotherJosh Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Another tactic is to combine the obtuse statements with an avalanche of obtuse statements. Say you are trying to explain evolution to someone and they just rattle off fifty inane statements about it. It takes time to deconstruct all fifty, so somehow in their minds they won. For the average Christian if you can't fit it on a bumper sticker, it doesn't make sense. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Positivist Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 For the average Christian if you can't fit it on a bumper sticker, it doesn't make sense. I love it! Yes, catchy phrases = TruthTM.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurari Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Another tactic is to combine the obtuse statements with an avalanche of obtuse statements. Say you are trying to explain evolution to someone and they just rattle off fifty inane statements about it. It takes time to deconstruct all fifty, so somehow in their minds they won. For the average Christian if you can't fit it on a bumper sticker, it doesn't make sense. I had a roomate once who would do this. She loved to use semantics and obtuse statements because she thought she was winning if her opponent gave up. I finally nailed her to the ground on what she was doing, pointing out that I knew damned well that she was using semantics and twisting these statements around because she had no idea what we were talking about in the first place. She left me alone after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackbauer Posted April 5, 2012 Author Share Posted April 5, 2012 Speaking of the apples/oranges thing... I find that they do this on purpose at times to derail you from the main point. Then you are suddenly discussing a different comparison subject and not the main debated point. It's like ninja distraction without the... Ninja! And when you try to go back to the original subject you get accused of going off topic. My rule in life now is, never expect a xian to have a logical discussion all they way through. Non-believers can think in a line, step by step. xians think in a circle. Yeah, I've seen a few debates on the main blog get clouded with "but you said x, I was only responding with Y". Instead of debating the points, we begin debating who said what. It's like they are trying to be extremely specific as to how the debate is going. Though these games aren't anything new to anyone who debated anything online. Another game is to accuse the opponent of doing the same thing you are doing. If not that, find an instance when someone on your side of the debate did just that. FOX news pulls this all the time. Ooh a well known Conservative talk show host says nasty things about a woman? Well what about that time when (well known liberal) said something nasty about a conservative?! Even though the instance is a) irrelevent to the discussion and most likely an apple and oranges comparison. It's that persecution complex that's so common in conservative thought. They act like their bigotted views somehow deserve the same protection as the minorities they want to oppress. It's enraging. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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