Intellectuelle

Intellectuelle is very classical lately. I like it. ;) Cool stuff, Hannah.

Classical?...as in apologetic methodology? :-)

Haha, no, I meant classical in the historical sense. Or were you kidding...?

I never kid about apologetics ;) As you get to know me (or as friends tell on me more) you'll know that I love a good apologetic methodology debate. I've actually eased up, but I'm not eclectic.

N.T. Wright's New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God are two books in which theology and historical methods are combined. He explicitly uses historical methods to examine the 1st century Israel and examine what happened. Josephus is a major source (I don't recall if the Tacitus quote is referenced). I'd highly recommend those books.

This is great point. I, too, have been dealing with these sorts of claims that Jesus never existed as I've recently done a "blog swap" with an atheist site.

FYI - It's evolved into a new blog carnival open to atheists and Christians and will allow for a great opportunity for just this type of case to be made to some skeptics that may not have heard it. I hope you'll consider contributing.

Chad, This sounds very interesting to me. I will certainly consider contributing. Thanks for the link!

Hannah,

You have pointed out some strong evidence for the fact that Jesus existed, and as you well know, there are many other proofs for His existence.

Like Chad, I was arguing with an atheist for almost six weeks. We called it quits, just a couple of days ago. I only started blogging a little over two months ago, but I noticed something while arguing with this atheist. He would ask me a question, (like the one on this post) and while I was in the middle of answering him, he would throw another question at me. I started to realize after a while that he really had no desire to discover the truth or draw a conclusion from the facts I was presenting. I believe, he had already determined in his mind that atheism was true. He never had any intention of looking into the possibility that the evidence presented to him could have been true.

I feel like I wasted six weeks of my time trying to give him the best possible answers I could. The answers I gave were well researched. I didn't want to give poor answers, just for the sake of giving him a qwick response, so I burnt the midnight oil to give him the best answers. I deleted five posts on my blog that I used to answer him with and I'm thinking about deleting the entire blog.

What do you think of this type of situation? Have you dealt with people like this before? Is it best, just to stop dealing with them and go on to something else? I guess what I'm wanting to know is this, do you think these type of people can be reached?

I know this isn't a Q&A forum, so if you don't want to answer my questions, I will understand.

Thanks,
T.E.

T.E., I appreciate you question and I'm happy to answer it. I'm no expert, so you can just take what I say for what it's worth.

I just visited your blog and look at the one post that you didn't erase, and I enjoyed it. My strong recommendation is that you not erase your blog. If you feel the need to take a break, fine. But there is no need to approach blogging with an all or nothing attitude.

In your debate with the atheist, you have had an experience that most of us face sooner or later. Some of the people who are most interested in debating you are also the least interested in finding out the truth. This is discouraging, but it is no reason to throw out apologetics or blogging. Rather, next time you encounter such a person, try to determine what their objective is before you invest too much time and emotional energy into answering their question.

There is no shame in flat out asking them, “If I satisfactorily answered this question for you, would you then be inclined to believe in Chirst?” If they say, “No,” then you may gently want to ask them, “Then what is the point of us debating this? I’m comfortable with my faith and I’m happy to share my reasons with you, but I’d rather not spend time debating if there is no benefit to either of us.” Of course, if they say, “Yes, this is a barrier to my belief,” than do your best to answer.”

If a person is seeking truth, they won’t object to being referring to other sources. There is plenty of excellent material on apologetics and Christianity on the internet. You don’t need to rewrite everything yourself. Do a Google search and point them to some of it. Or tell them to do a search. If they are unwilling to invest any of their own effort, I would question whether they truly desire an answer..

You mentioned that the person you interacted with kept on bring up additional questions before you had finished answering the first one. There is a name for this kind of logical fallacy—and it escapes my mind. (Anybody remember?) Anyway, when that happens, call them on it. Refuse to move on to the second (or fifth or tenth) question. Say, “You seem to be changing the topic. We are addressing one issue here, and I’d prefer that we wrap this up before we move on.”

I've a few more thoughts, but I've got to go make dinner for my DH. God bless!

Thanks Hannah,

That puts things in a better perspective for me.

To tell you the truth, I didn't think arguing with people on the internet would be all that difficult. I thought the seperation that the computers provided would take away most of the emotional connection. But after weeks of debate with the atheist and getting to know him in a personal way, the debating became stressful and emotional. Does any one else go through this or is it just me? I feel better now, but just a few days ago I felt like giving up.

You said, I need to make sure they are actually seeking truth before going further into the debate. You are right. I let something go on for six weeks that I should have ended in six hours. I have learned from this experience. He was just trying to trip me up, hoping I would see that the Bible has flaws. I have been researching the Bible for nearly twenty years, and have yet to find a (so called contradiction) that couldn't be cleared up or at least shown to the critics that their accusations lack the evidence to prove that the Bible is wrong.

What he didn't realize, when we first started arguing, is that, I have a room full of Apologetics books, answer books, commentaries, history books, culture books and many other Christian books, plus, like you said, there are many resources on the web for anybody that wants the truth and are willing to dig in and find it.

Thanks again for your answer.

T.E.

Hey, T.E., I'm glad you feel better now. I haven't actually engaged in any prolonged debate on the web, but I have had a few run-ins that upset me a lot. I think everybody has some emotional connection to what they are writing/blogging even if it is though the internet. So you are normal!

Hope to see you around here again. God bless.