Dr. Randal Rauser Says I Came Up With a New Argument!

I don't know whether it's new or not, but the thought tickles my fancy. A novel argument is hard to come by these days because the ancients have stolen all of our ideas! Here is what Rauser said:

John Loftus just came up with a new argument against Christianity. He summarized it like this:

1) If Christianity is true then the Christian faith will probably not die out if Christians stop proselytizing.

(2) The Christian faith will probably die out if Christians stop proselytizing.

(3) Therefore Christianity is [probably] false.

It is, if nothing else, a novel argument. Link

My argument asks What Would Happen if Christians Went on Strike?

Walter, whose Quote of the Day provoked such an argument, is defending it in the comments:

I think what John is getting at is that it might be reasonable to expect the One True Revelation from God should occur supernaturally to all people at all times, and the Christian revelation did not happen that way–it spread just like every other false religion has since man first started inventing religions.

It bothered me in my Christian days to think that the most important event in the history of man had to be spread by the glacially slow process of word-of-mouth between mere humans. It took the Native Americans some 1500 years to get the news. Seems a rather inefficient way of doing things.

A true revelation from the Creator would not need human effort to sustain it; it would propagate in a supernatural manner.

The Christian faith appears to propagate by purely natural means, and the faith would disappear if no human kept spreading the message.

An omniscient and omnipotent being who seeks to get an important message out can easily come up with a better method of communicating to humanity besides appearing to a handful of men in backwater Palestine, then commissioning these men to spread this important message to the whole world via proselytism. Such a God could easily have every person on earth experience their very own Damascus road vision. In fact, an omniscient deity could dream up all manner of supernatural means of communication that I couldn’t even imagine.

Keep in mind I never said I could convince Rauser of this. It's a thought experiment. For some people it will be convincing. For others it won't. The point behind it is stated well by Walter I think.