If it’s happened once, it has happened 25 times:
1) Atheist comes to my blog.
2) Atheist seems intelligent and amiable enough, so I engage in discussion, unassuming and in good faith.
3) Atheist gets honestly disagreed with . . .
4) Atheist then makes it crystal-clear that he or she has zero interest in a dialogue, where there are any disagreements, or (horror of horrors!) where they might even actually (gasp!!!) be shown to be wrong about anything having to do with Christianity or logic or science or anything else.
5) At length the fangs come out and the usual pathetic condescending panoply of insults against Christians and Christianity come out.
It happened again, folks. This person’s name is Ann: by her self-report, a “lifelong atheist.” She was quibbling with my reply to a liberal / skeptial “Bible scholar” who is obsessed with alleged “Bible contradictions.” She commented underneath my post, Golden Calf & Cherubim: Biblical Contradiction? (11-23-20).
Readers can see for themselves how it starts out normal enough and then the “polemical factor” gets ratcheted up 100 times by the end. Her atheist “true believer”™ preaching made no impact on myself and other commenters, because there was never any interaction with my article at any time: let alone be convinced by; only raw assertions about it.
Now I shall simply cite her words, in order to illustrate the type of rhetoric that invariably comes out when anti-theist atheists appear in Christian venues. All the words below (minus one footnote of mine in blue) are Ann’s:
***************
In your case, you have come to a conclusion about what God means, and your support is in other parts of the Bible. New information will not be added in the future, unlike the resources of Biblical scholarship. Your conclusions are not based on “evidence” — only on “argument.”
*
Because they are so familiar with its human origins, no Biblical scholar imagines for a moment that it even had a supernatural origin. Instead, contradictions and revisions are used as evidence of the historical evolution of the fables of the Bible and how and why they assumed their present form.
*
Your pious beliefs refer to things that are not objectively, empirically, demonstrably true. In fact, they are objectively, empirically, demonstrably untrue.
*
The assertion that the Bible full of claims and anecdotes that are not true is not a BALD assertion. It is an assertion that is demonstrated with hard physical EVIDENCE.
*
I don’t want to get into a debate with you that I have been through hundreds of times.
*
[H]e [Dave: i.e., the skeptical “Bible scholar”] simply KNOWS that the Bible is a confused jumble of copied material, self-contradictions, factual and historical errors, and so on. He isn’t even addressing people who think otherwise. His work is not aimed at the lunatic fringe. . . . You can’t help having your delusions, but they do not intersect with Biblical scholarship.
*
It appears that you really CAN’T distinguish between arguing about a “Bible study fantasy” – vs – findings in scholarship. I’m sorry for you, but I’m not interested enough in you to try to improve your mental status.
*
I don’t have the slightest intent to debate this topic — or any other Bible Studies topic. That is as foolish a project as arguing with you about the color of Superman’s wallpaper, based on the gleanings of fan fiction. I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you over such a pack of nonsense like that, and the same goes for arguing with you over the countless number of Bible errors. . . . A fan fiction argument about nonsense . . . I’m not interested in your fantasies about the fictions of the Bible and what they mean . . . the nonsense of “Biblical inerrancy” . . .
*
Dave, try to keep up. I have never responded to your fantasies about Biblical inerrancy. I never read a single word of your arguments, which must necessarily be laughable. I am merely interested in how disconnected from reality you are. You think that people are — or should be — engaging in your moronic view that the Bible is inerrant. . . . such a load of crap. . . .
I simply IGNORED your views. Your views have always been nothing but incoherent babble to me, too senseless to discuss. That’s why I never even bother to read them, never mind address them. In my opinion, your mental status is the problem. I judge it as “not fixable,” and even it if were, I’m not interested enough in you to try to improve your mental and emotional problems. . . .
The scholar quite appropriately ignored you because you are not competent to remark on it. You didn’t even UNDERSTAND it. YOU think people are contradicting your nutty ideas about Biblical inerrancy. But in reality, everyone is IGNORING your ideas, just dismissing them without even reading them. Try to focus, David. Try to keep up. Your irrational perseveration is almost starting to sound a little bit like trolling.
***
Photo credit: Lara604 (3-28-08) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license]
***
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In