Every so often there will be a debate between some Christian apologist and a popular atheist. Aside from selling books and promoting organizations, what really is the point of these things? It isn’t as if anyone in the audience is really going to be persuaded, right?
Actually, I think these debates actually are persuasive and no matter how you look at it, atheists win even if we appear to lose in the actual debate. To be honest, I have no idea why any religious apologist would want to debate an atheist in the first place. They lose no matter how they do or what they say.
Let me explain. Who are the people who attend these types of debates? Rarely do people think to themselves, “I have some time to kill, let me sit in on a religion debate because I don’t really have an opinion on the subject.” No, the people who go to these debates are generally thoughtful theists and thoughtful atheists.
While the religious in the audience tend to be thoughtful and knowledgeable about their own theology, they often have not heard atheist rebuttals to their points and have not heard any real opposition to their beliefs and ideology. This is because we live in a religiously dominated society and while theology has been around for two-thousand years, vocal atheism has not really been popularized in society until fairly recently.
So debates serve a powerful purpose for atheists. We get to present our opposition and arguments to thoughtful believers who probably haven’t been exposed to what we have to say. Atheists on the other hand are just exposed to beliefs we have already heard a hundred times over, have already thought deeply about, and found unconvincing. In fact, a large majority of atheists were at one point religious believers; so most of us grew up hearing the arguments for God and Christianity all our lives and even presented those arguments to others while we were believers.
An apologist may put a new spin on these arguments, but the arguments themselves remain essentially the same. For the theist, it really comes down to an emotional appeal, personal testimony, and when all else fails… faith. Even when an apologist does use arguments, they are generally used to point out the limits of reason & science and to make an appeal to an emotional need or intuitive feeling for God.
When the debate is over, atheists go home thinking about the various rebuttals to the standard arguments used by the apologist and we scratch our heads at the misinformation, logical fallacies, and character assassinations generally used by the apologist. Christians however are left with discussing the atheist arguments among each other (often times for the first time). Some will no doubt jump onto the interwebs and try to learn more about these new arguments in an attempt to refute them better.
Guess what they will find? Atheists dominate the internet! Thoughtful Christians will now be exposed to even more of our rebuttals of their belief system. They might also find sites like We Are Atheism and hear testimonials of how and why people left religion. Once Christians go out there onto the internet and leave their church websites and Christian online communities they are quickly exposed to the ideas of skeptics, secularists, humanists and others within the greater community of reason.
We win the debate weeks and months after the debate is over. Even if the Christian apologist is slick and is able to twist the facts and present misinformation he or she still loses the debate. All the atheist has to do is show up at the debate and we win. Our mere presence starts a conversation that religious leaders would much rather not even entertain. The fact that they have entertained the conversation at all is already a victory for reason.
Please check out the Atheism 101 series for frequently asked topics.
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