Bamboozlement obstructs conversion

I’m not entirely sure Christians know what they have to do to convince atheists of their position. I suppose this makes sense because, before the 19th century, all Christians had to do was burn the heretic at the stake, rather than have a debate with them. So the entire argument is a relatively new one with very little practice. 

I am therefore going to outline what a Christian must do to convince me that batting for Christ’s team is the way to go. These steps will go a long way toward eliminating the silly and often repetitive statements Christians make when they hand me a pamphlet and engage in an hour-long, fruitless conversation.

The first thing I need to be convinced of is not theological, but must be done if I am to listen to any argument. It is, simply, that I must be convinced the Christian is not a con artist. That is to say, that they are not trying to bamboozle me out of my money, my happiness, or any of my possessions, or my friend’s happiness, money, etc.

The second thing you must convince me of is very much tied to the first, and that is you must convince me that you are not being led by a con artist. This is a good deal harder, as I am now questioning your minister. 

If you listen to TV evangelists, you are going to be out of luck because there is no way you can make me believe that those fat, loud, psychotic pricks are in religion for any reason other than to line their pockets.

Now, you have real work to do. Because you have to convince me of the validity of your position. There are several ways to do this. The easiest would be to have God tell me he exists. Because this is impossible both in a theological worldview (a man calling God on a whim is absurd) and in an atheistic worldview, most Christians fall back on either an argument of design or on appeals to mortality and morals.

The Bible cannot be used in this debate because I do not view it as valid. This is something Christians need to understand. I do not care what the Good Book says any more than I care about what the Quran says. So stop trying to use it to convince me. I don’t believe it is the Word of God. If I did, we would be killing each other over our interpretations of the Word rather than whether it is divine.

Telling me that I wouldn’t have morals without a creator is absurd. Being young, I’m not particularly swayed with the threats of hell or by Pascal’s cheap gambit. And even if I were, that’s still not a good reason to believe, and may indeed be the worst reason to believe, given what Christians keep telling me about Yahweh’s character. Instead, the argument for design is the most logical way to go, even if fairly weak, if only because when going this route, the Christian now has to know more about genetics and cosmology than I do and that is extremely doubtful. Yet, this is probably the easiest way to go.

Let’s say you’ve convinced me that the world is designed. You, however, are not done yet. There are more than 1,000 religions and spiritual traditions, most of which have a creation myth of some sort. To get me to accept that it was Yahweh the ancient Hebrew sky-god who created the world, you now have to disprove every single other religion, and even if you convince me that it’s Yahweh I should be praying to, you now have to stop me from going over to the Jews or the Muslims.

If you can do all that, then I will be a Christian.