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The worst mistake you can make when defending the Christian worldview

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So, this is just an advice post for doing apologetics.

Here are three situations I’ve run into while doing apologetics in the last month.

First situation. I was talking with a lady who is an atheist. I had a copy of “God’s Crime Scene” in my hand, and she asked me about it. I told her that it was a book written by the guy who solved the homicide case that I asked her to watch on Dateline. She remembered – it was the two-hour special on the woman who was killed with a garrotte. She pointed at the book and said “what’s in it?” I said, it has 8 pieces of evidence that fit better with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic one, and some of them scientific. Her reply to me was – literally – “which denomination do you want me to join?”

Second situation. I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches in a Catholic school. She was telling that she got the opportunity to talk to her students about God, and found out that some of them were not even theists, and many of them had questions. So she asked them for questions and got a list. The list included many hard cases, like “what about the Bible and slavery” and “why do Christians oppose gay marriage?” and so on.

Third situation. Talking to a grad student about God’s existence. I’m laying out my scientific arguments for her, holding up the peer-reviewed papers for each discovery. I get to the Doug Axe paper on protein folding probabilities, and she holds up her hand. One question: “Am I going to Hell?”

So think about those three situations. In each case, the opponent is trying to reject Christianity by jumping way, way ahead to the very end of the process. When you do Christian apologetics, you do not take the bait and jump to the end of the process dealing with nitty gritty details until you have made your case for the core of the Christian worldview using your strongest evidence. Let me explain.

So, your strongest evidence as a Christian are the scientific arguments, along with the moral argument. Those would include (for starters) the following:

  1. kalam cosmological argument
  2. cosmic fine-tuning
  3. galactic and stellar habitability
  4. origin of life / DNA
  5. molecular machines / irreducible complexity
  6. the moral argument

The problem I am seeing today is that atheists are rejecting discussions about evidence because they think that all we are interested in is getting them to become Christians. Well, yes. I want you to become a Christian. But I know perfectly well what that entails – it entails a change of life priorities. Both of the women I spoke to are living with their boyfriends, and the kids in the Catholic school just want to have fun. None of them wants to believe in a God who will require self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. Nobody wants God to be in that leader position in their lives. Christianity is 100% reversed from today’s me-first, fun-seeking, thrill-seeking, fear-of-missing-out travel spirit of the age.

So, how to answer all these late-game questions? The answer is simple. You don’t answer any late-game questions until the person you are talking with accounts for the widely-accepted data in your list. These are things that have got to be accepted before any discussion about minor issues like one angel vs two angels at the empty tomb can occur. When we discuss all the basic issues where the evidence is the strongest, then we can go on to discuss issues where the evidence is debatable, then finally, in the last bits before the end, we can discuss these other kinds of questions.

How to explain why this process must be followed to the person who asks specific questions about minor issues? Simple. You explain that your goal is not to get them to become a Christian right now. That you want to let them believe anything thing they want. That’s right. They can believe anything they want to believe. As long as what they believe is consistent with the evidence. And what I am going to do is give them the evidence, and then they can believe whatever they want – so long as it’s consistent with the evidence.

So, for example, I’m going to tell them 3 pieces of evidence for a cosmic beginning of the universe: the expanding universe (redshift), the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the light element abundances. That’s mainstream science that shows that the universe came into being out of nothing, a finite time in the past. And I will charge them not to believe in any religion that assumes that the universe has always been here. For example, Mormonism is ruled out, they believe in eternally existing matter. See how that works? Hey, Ms. Atheist. You can believe anything you want. As long as what you believe is consistent with the evidence. 

I think this approach of not letting them rush you to the end at the beginning is important for two reasons. First, we can get our foot in the door to talk about things that are interesting to everyone, in a non-stressed environment. Everyone can talk about evidence comfortably. Second, we show that we hold our beliefs because we are simply letting evidence set boundaries for us on what we are allowed to believe. We can’t believe not-Christianity, because not-Christianity is not consistent with the evidence. And you start with the most well-supported evidence, and eliminate worldviews that are falsified by the most well-supported evidence. Atheism actually gets falsified pretty quickly, because of the scientific evidence.

So, that’s my advice. Had a friend of mine named William try this out about a week ago. It went down like this:

William to me:

This guy I know messaged me and bragged for a while about how easy he can dismantle Christianity. He said: “present the gospel to me as you understand it. I’ll simply ask questions to demonstrate it is not worth your belief.”

WK to William:

First of all, he isn’t allowed to just sit there and poke holes in your case, he has to present a positive case for atheism. Second, don’t discuss Christianity with him at all until you first discuss the evidence for theism – start with the good scientific evidence.

And William wrote this to his friend:

The way I’m wired is that I process all competing theories and go with the best one. By doing a comparative analysis of worldviews I find that Christian theology easily explains the most about the world I find myself living in.

I’m pretty sure that a God of some sort exists because of the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine tuning in physics. From there I find it quite intuitive that if a God went through the trouble of creating and tuning a universe for life that this God likely has some sort of interest in it and has revealed Himself to humanity in some way.

From there I can look at the major world religions and compare them to see which one explains the past and the present the best. Christianity easily comes out on top.

And then a few days later, I got this from William:

I finally got the agnostic to tell me what he thinks about origin and fine tuning. When I started pointing out that his views were unscientific, he blew a gasket, called me dishonest and told me he didn’t want to discuss anything further.

And that’s where you want to be. Cut off all discussions where the challenger tries to jump to the end and get you to debate the very last steps of your case. Present the strongest evidence for your core claims, and get him to account for this evidence within his own worldview. Lead the discussion with public, testable evidence. All warfare depends on picking the terrain, weapons and tactics that allow you to match your strength against your opponent’s weakness.

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Now in America: teachers, social workers, and youth shelters are coming for your kids

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So, I’ve blogged before about cases from outside the United States, like this one from Canada, where the secular leftists decide to seize a child from parents, because they know better than the parents what is best for the child of the parents. I hope you took the time to pull your children out of public schools, and move to a red state. Because guess what? It’s here now.

Consider this article from June 2021 by Abigail Shrier, posted at City Journal, the Journal of the Manhattan Institute.

It starts with this:

Ahmed is a Pakistani immigrant, a faithful Muslim, and until recently, a financial consultant to Seattle’s high-tech sector. But when he reached me by phone in October 2020, he was just one more frightened father. Days earlier, he and his wife had checked their 16-year-old son into Seattle Children’s Hospital for credible threats of [self-ending]. Now, Ahmed was worried that the white coats who had gently admitted his son to their care would refuse to return him.

“They sent an email to us, you know, ‘you should take your ‘daughter’ to the gender clinic,’” he told me.

At first, Ahmed (I have changed names in this essay to protect the identities of minor children) assumed there had been a mistake. He had dropped off a son, Syed, to the hospital, in a terrible state of distress. Now, the email he received from the mental health experts used a new name for that son and claimed he was Ahmed’s daughter. “They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction,” he said when I spoke to him again this May, recalling the horror of last October. “We had calls with counselors and therapists in the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because that’s the only way he’s going to be better out of this [self-ending] depressive state.”

Got that? So if you oppose what the “experts” tell you, then you’re exposing your child to potential self-ending. And it you don’t take their advice, then they feel justified in taking your child from you. Hospital workers, social workers, counselors and therapists.

Now, most people might be tempted to panic and show their opposition to hormone blockers, and sex-reassignment surgery.

But this father was smart:

But unlike some other parents I would later speak with, Ahmed’s cool head prevailed. Believing he might be walking into a trap, Ahmed reached out to both a lawyer and a psychiatrist friend he trusted. The psychiatrist gave him advice that he believes saved his son, saying, in Ahmed’s words: “You have to be very, very careful, because if you come across as just even a little bit anti-trans or anything, they’re going to call the Child Protective Services on you and take custody of your kid.” The lawyer told Ahmed the same: “What you want to do is agree with them and take your kid home. When the gender counselors advise you to ‘affirm,’ go along with it. Just say ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, let’s take him home, and we’ll go to the gender clinic.’”

Ahmed assured Seattle Children’s Hospital that he would take his son to a gender clinic and commence his son’s transition. Instead, he collected his son, quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington.

Was he overreacting? Here are the state laws in Washington:

Minors age 13 and up are entitled to admit themselves for inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment without parental consent. Health insurers are forbidden from disclosing to the insured parents’ sensitive medical information of minor children—such as that regarding “gender dysphoria [and] gender affirming care.” Minors aged 13 to 18 can withhold mental health records from parents for “sensitive” conditions, which include both “gender dysphoria” and “gender-affirming care.” Insurers in Washington must cover a wide array of “gender-affirming treatments” from tracheal shaves to double mastectomies.

Put these together, and a seventh grader could be entitled to embark on “gender affirming care”—which may include anything from a provider using the child’s name and pronouns to the kid preparing to receive a course of hormones—without her parents’ permission, against her parents’ wishes, covered by her parents’ insurance, and with the parents kept in the dark by insurance companies and medical providers.

But the laws are similar in other Democrat-run states, too:

Oregon passed a law permitting minors 15 and older to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries at taxpayers’ expense—all without parental consent. In 2018, California passed a similar bill for all children in foster care, age 12 and up. The California state senate is now considering an amendment to the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act that would bar health insurers from disclosing medical information to parents about their dependents, on pain of criminal liability.

Read the rest of the article, there are more frightening stories. The case of Julie and her battle with the social workers and lawyers at a youth shelter was horrifying. The second to last paragraph has some good advice for parents who have to deal with the social workers.

Going forward, parents will face challenges to from school teachers, school counselors, social workers, government workers, hospital nurses, hospital doctors, lawyers, judges and police. Any attempt to guide children with morality or wisdom will be labeled “child abuse” that could expose the child to self-ending. And then they will take the child from the parents on that basis.

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In Canada, fathers who disagree with the transing of their children are arrested and jailed

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Since we have an election coming up, and I’ve already blogged a lot about the abuse of power in the FBI and DOJ, I thought it might be a good idea for people to consider what will happen to their rights as parents if the Democrats win in the 2022 mid-term elections. In order to see what Democrats will do, we look north to Canada, to see what the secular left has already done there.

Here’s a story from City Journal:

At this moment, a Vancouver postman named Rob Hoogland is sitting in a jail cell in British Columbia. He will be there until at least April 12, when he’s scheduled for a court date. At that time, he may be ordered to remain behind bars for a period yet to be determined.

Has Hoogland killed or robbed somebody? Is he an arsonist? A rapist? No. What did he do, then? Short answer: he tried to save his emotionally unstable daughter from self-destruction.

Social transitioning is the first stage:

It turned out that the school had been feeding her transgender ideology, and that she’d already begun “socially transitioning” to a male identity under the direction of a psychologist, Wallace Wong, who was encouraging her “to take testosterone.” To this end, Wong referred her to an endocrinologist at the Gender Clinic and Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.

Then comes the puberty blockers and/or hormone injections, despite the lack of consent from the child’s father:

At the beginning of ninth grade, A.B. had her first appointment with G.H., an endocrinologist at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, to receive testosterone injections.

[…]G.H. told Hoogland that her treatment would go forward, that Hoogland had no say in the matter, and that he’d no longer have access to her medical records.

Judge sides with the mother, the school counselor, and the hospital:

Instead of recognizing that very few, if any, 14-year-olds are in a position to understand the grave implications of sex-change therapy, the judge, Gregory Bowden, ruled that A.B. was a “mature minor” and that her consent, by itself, was thus “sufficient for the treatment to proceed.”

This part is important. In a society that has been completely taken over by “compassion” and “non-judgement”, fathers are the enemy. Fathers are no longer trusted to lead on moral and spiritual issues. Fathers have no right to lead their children:

Bowden placed remarkable restrictions on Hoogland. He was forbidden to try to persuade A.B. to stop treatment. He was forbidden to address her by her birth name. He was forbidden, in any conversation with anyone, to refer to her as a girl or to use female pronouns to describe her. If he were to do any of these things, ordered Bowden, it would be “considered to be family violence”—yes, violence—under the Family Law Act.

And if fathers try to tell their story in public, another judge will threaten them with arrest. Because transitioning children against the will of the father has to be done in a way that the people responsible cannot be named or shamed for what they are doing:

Soon after Bowden’s ruling, A.B. began gender-transition treatment, but Hoogland persevered with his legal fight. In violation of Bowden’s order, he also spoke in public and gave interviews about the case. In April 2019, in response to an application by A.B., Judge Francesca Marzari… ordered Hoogland to… stop communicating with others—including media outlets, and A.B. herself… about A.B.’s decision to receive hormone therapy.

[…]Marzari also seconded Bowden’s description of Hoogland’s “rejection of A.B.’s gender identity” as “family violence.”

Since the father didn’t quit on trying to save his child, he had to be imprisoned:

And then, on March 19 of this year, British Columbia supreme court justice Michael Tammen ordered Hoogland—who had never before been in trouble with the law—to be sent to prison. By speaking out publicly about his case, and by publicly calling A.B. his “daughter” and saying “she” and “her,” maintained Tammen, Hoogland had violated “a publication ban designed to protect the privacy and dignity of a young and vulnerable person.” Not the slightest concern, of course, about protecting that young person’s long-term medical health, physical intactness, and psychiatric well-being.

Tammen further said that Hoogland’s public statements could cause “psychological harm” to A.B. Once more, the judiciary flat-out rejected evidence that the treatments to which A.B. had been subjected could cause her a lifetime of psychological harm. Tammen warned that Hoogland, whose next court appearance is scheduled for April 12, would “definitely” face charges of criminal contempt at that time. Under a ruling issued last July, Hoogland, because of an appearance on YouTube, could remain in prison for five years.

This is the key – they have to imprison him to keep people from finding out what they are doing:

Most outrageous of all was Tammen’s assertion that Hoogland’s “detention is necessary to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.”

The case files are also closed to the public. Unprecedented in the history of Canada. But necessary to cover up what the secular leftists are doing to the father.

Keep in mind that all of these actors – the teachers, the school counselors, the hospital workers, the lawyers, the judges, etc. – are all taxpayer-funded. The father is paying all of their salaries though his taxes. He is competent enough to earn the money, but not competent enough to make decisions about how to run his home. And this is fine with the “compassion” crowd. Since fathers want to lead on moral and spiritual issues, they have to be stopped by the government. Fathers are bad for children. They make children feel bad, and so they need to be overruled by the compassionate people in the government.

Should men marry?

What message does this story send to men who are considering marriage? Marriage-minded men already have to consider no-fault divorce laws, high tax rates to pay for the social programs that support single mothers, etc. Now they have to worry about having the leadership of their own homes stolen from them by the “compassionate” people in government. How did those compassionate people in government get into government? Why by being voted in by the compassionate voters. Many of those compassionate voters are now complaining that there are no good men to marry. “Where are all the good men?” they cry. Let me answer, on behalf of good men everywhere: we have no interest in becoming slaves or prisoners of the secular left state.