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Discussing atheism with religious people (III)

© Francois Tremblay

In the first two parts of this series, I have discussed what to expect when discussing religion, as well as explored emotional arguments. This is, of course, incomplete, since it excludes rational arguments.

There are some common objections which are most constantly raised by Christians in discussions. Basically, it helps to know these arguments and to be able to refute them convincingly, so the discussion can then come back to the more important issues of emotionalism. Most religious people attempt to cloak their rationalizations in the name of logical argumentation. A discussion with a Christian usually begins with vague attempts at making a rational argument, and end by the catch-all "but that's what I believe !" or "everyone must have faith in something !".


The easiest way to put one's god away from rebuttal is to make him more vague, and therefore impossible to pin down. This is a bait-and-switch strategy people use, starting by getting the person to agree that there might be "forces beyond our knowledge", and then switching the carpet to talking about gods, as if they were, by that assertion, proven. A religious person will also claim his god to be incomprehensible. But saying that "god is impossible for us to understand", or that "god is infinite", is an absurd escape. One can then easily reply that the worship of such a god is meaningless, since we cannot understand what we are worshipping. Religion becomes little more than a hollow farce, and the existence of such a god is impossible to show, by the same token.

Another way to achieve the same effect is to claim that their god is somehow unmeasurable but still exists, such as comparing him to the wind, or to an emotion like love. However, even if these things were unmeasurable, they are still bad analogies, because a god is supposed to be a being, not a force of nature or an emotion. Indeed, that is what atheists say : that gods are nothing more than emotional constructs.


Evolution is another hallmark of religious discussions, because despite the objections of religious biologists about it, it pretty much makes Christianity, and many other religions, pointless. It makes the concept of original sin an absurdity, which entails that the death of "Jesus" is also an absurdity : this undercuts the whole purpose of being a Christian.

Fortunately, most Christians have not a single idea of what evolution is. In fact, a majority of them don't even know what the words "evolution" or "theory of evolution" mean. For example, they will say things like "evolution is just a theory", or "evolution has never been observed". Such people have no idea what a scientific theory is. A "theory" is not a "hypothesis" : it is as true as a fact, except theories are made to explain and make predictions about phenomenons. Since the main thrust of my article is not about peripherial issues like evolution, I will not continue on this subject, but any cursory reading of an actual biology textbook will be sufficient to refute these lines of argument. For more information, you might want to consult the talk.origins web site.