The Goals of Debunking Christianity
When I first started this blog in January '06 I wanted to choose a title that best described what I intended to accomplish that would also grab people's attention, so I chose the present title, Debunking Christianity. It has done it's work well. When you see it listed on another blog or website it grabs your attention. It has increased our traffic.
This title also best describes my goals. My goals are negative ones. I do not intend to defend atheism, per se, even though I am an atheist, but to argue against evangelical Christianity, which is the most obnoxious type of that faith held by the majority who are so cocksure of their views. I'm merely claiming that their type of Christianiy is a delusion, something every non-Christian and liberal Christian can agree with me about. This is my niche, and I hope I'm doing this well. To those who disagree with these goals I respond that by having narrow goals of this type I can better achieve them. Larger goals are harder to achieve, because the larger the claim is the harder it is to defend. My goals allow me to focus on one thing and to do it well. My primary goal is to knock conservative Christians off of center...to make them question their beliefs. Where they end up after this is not my immediate concern. There are other sites and other books that can take up where I leave off. But I'm doing the hard work, not that debunking evangelical Christianity itself is difficult, but that getting Christians to acknowledge that their faith is delusionary is indeed difficult. And I've been willing to take the barbs thrown my way (not with pleasure) for this purpose.
Then I began inviting people on DC who shared these same goals, and we have developed quite a nice list of contributors, beginning with exbeliever. Some contributors merely wanted to post their deconversion stories, while others have come and gone for various reasons, and I thank them all for their contributions.
But the title of this blog also leads to some confusions. One confusion is that it sounds offensive. It sounds as if we are hostile to Christian people themselves. It sounds like a personal attack. But we're not at all hostile to Christian people, unless provoked, and I have been provoked quite a bit simply because this blog exists. We try our best to be cordial and polite, although this is difficult to do in the midst of these type of debates, especially when dealing with a belief system we think is akin to Holocaust deniers and Flat Earth Society members. It's hard not to ridicule what we think has no evidence for it, but we try really hard not to so.
The title may also lead Christians to think we are ignorant, since skeptics have tried to debunk Christianity for millenia to no avail. Some Christians have shown up here, read one post, and blasted us without seeing the depth of our arguments. They in turn soon realize that we do know what we're talking about. No one can say all that he knows in one post. So because we leave out something, a Christian might retort with a Bible passage as if we've never considered that before. It doesn't take long for that Christian to see we have considered it and rejected something about it.
The title also sounds as if we are hostile toward the Christian faith, so it provokes hostility in return. Well, in some real sense we are a bit hostile to Christianity. We think it causes harm in many ways, yes. But even though this is true in varying degrees, we try to dispassionately argue against it. We are testing our arguments against what Christians can throw at us, and we have learned a few things in our debates. I personally love to learn from others no matter what they believe, and I do. No one has a corner on the truth. We admit this. If we are wrong show us, that's all we ask, although we no more think we are wrong then others who disagree.
As former insiders to the Christian faith we reject it with the same confidence that Christians reject the faiths of all other religions, even other branches of Christianity. The rejection is the easy part. We all do it. My claim is that agnosticism is the default position, which merely claims "I don't know". Anyone moving off the default position has the burden of proof, for in doing so that person is making a positive knowledge claim. When I argue for atheism I too am making a positive knowledge claim that must bear its own burden of proof. But I also claim moving from agnosticism to atheism is a very small step when compared to moving up the ladder to a full blown evangelical Baptist Christianity (as but one denomination among many), past pantheism, panentheism, deism, theism, Christianity, and evangelical Christianity itself.
This title also best describes my goals. My goals are negative ones. I do not intend to defend atheism, per se, even though I am an atheist, but to argue against evangelical Christianity, which is the most obnoxious type of that faith held by the majority who are so cocksure of their views. I'm merely claiming that their type of Christianiy is a delusion, something every non-Christian and liberal Christian can agree with me about. This is my niche, and I hope I'm doing this well. To those who disagree with these goals I respond that by having narrow goals of this type I can better achieve them. Larger goals are harder to achieve, because the larger the claim is the harder it is to defend. My goals allow me to focus on one thing and to do it well. My primary goal is to knock conservative Christians off of center...to make them question their beliefs. Where they end up after this is not my immediate concern. There are other sites and other books that can take up where I leave off. But I'm doing the hard work, not that debunking evangelical Christianity itself is difficult, but that getting Christians to acknowledge that their faith is delusionary is indeed difficult. And I've been willing to take the barbs thrown my way (not with pleasure) for this purpose.
Then I began inviting people on DC who shared these same goals, and we have developed quite a nice list of contributors, beginning with exbeliever. Some contributors merely wanted to post their deconversion stories, while others have come and gone for various reasons, and I thank them all for their contributions.
But the title of this blog also leads to some confusions. One confusion is that it sounds offensive. It sounds as if we are hostile to Christian people themselves. It sounds like a personal attack. But we're not at all hostile to Christian people, unless provoked, and I have been provoked quite a bit simply because this blog exists. We try our best to be cordial and polite, although this is difficult to do in the midst of these type of debates, especially when dealing with a belief system we think is akin to Holocaust deniers and Flat Earth Society members. It's hard not to ridicule what we think has no evidence for it, but we try really hard not to so.
The title may also lead Christians to think we are ignorant, since skeptics have tried to debunk Christianity for millenia to no avail. Some Christians have shown up here, read one post, and blasted us without seeing the depth of our arguments. They in turn soon realize that we do know what we're talking about. No one can say all that he knows in one post. So because we leave out something, a Christian might retort with a Bible passage as if we've never considered that before. It doesn't take long for that Christian to see we have considered it and rejected something about it.
The title also sounds as if we are hostile toward the Christian faith, so it provokes hostility in return. Well, in some real sense we are a bit hostile to Christianity. We think it causes harm in many ways, yes. But even though this is true in varying degrees, we try to dispassionately argue against it. We are testing our arguments against what Christians can throw at us, and we have learned a few things in our debates. I personally love to learn from others no matter what they believe, and I do. No one has a corner on the truth. We admit this. If we are wrong show us, that's all we ask, although we no more think we are wrong then others who disagree.
As former insiders to the Christian faith we reject it with the same confidence that Christians reject the faiths of all other religions, even other branches of Christianity. The rejection is the easy part. We all do it. My claim is that agnosticism is the default position, which merely claims "I don't know". Anyone moving off the default position has the burden of proof, for in doing so that person is making a positive knowledge claim. When I argue for atheism I too am making a positive knowledge claim that must bear its own burden of proof. But I also claim moving from agnosticism to atheism is a very small step when compared to moving up the ladder to a full blown evangelical Baptist Christianity (as but one denomination among many), past pantheism, panentheism, deism, theism, Christianity, and evangelical Christianity itself.