Recently my colleagues and I attended a debate on the topic “Does God Exist?”. The primary audience for the debate was private high school and middle school students. In our post-debate debrief one of my friends stated, “If you are going to put on a debate like this for a group of kids, you’d better be sure you win.” Unfortunately, it was none to apparent that the pro-God side won. At best it was a draw.
Dinesh D’Souza was the voice of theism in the debate. I have heard him many times and he is quite competent in such a forum. However, the voice of atheism, Dan Barker, was also quite effective in planting the seeds of doubt. And, I am convinced that many a student left the auditorium with the suspicion that Barker was what he claimed to be — the voice of “reason and kindness”.
The school planned follow-up discussions with the students in their classrooms. Hopefully, that time was used effectively in exorcising residual suspicions and fears. Even now I am praying for those who were in attendance.
That is the background, now let me get to the point. Students need to be confronted with arguments against their own beliefs and worldview. If they are not exposed to opposing arguments and claims in an environment where those arguments and claims can be effectively debunked then they become prime targets for sophists and philosophical snipers. Thus, it is a GOOD thing to expose your children to error. If you are doing so in a controlled environment you are inoculating them against many dangerous viral ideas.
HOWEVER, when attempting to inoculate the young, you must make sure that you exposing them to error in a controlled environment. Or, as my friend said, you’d better make sure you win. Truth has nothing to fear in the marketplace of ideas. But, truth poorly defended when error has a fully loaded arsenal can be as harmful when presented in a Christian environment as it is in the homeland of error.
Careful, careful, . . .
Proof is only applicable to very rarefied areas of philosophy and mathematics…. For the most part we are driven to acting on good evidence, without the luxury of proof. There is good evidence of the link between cause and effect. There is good evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is good reason to believe my mother loves me and is not just fattening me up for the moment when she will pop arsenic into my tea. And there is good reason to believe in God. Very good reason. Not conclusive proof, but very good reason just the same…. I believe it is much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than accept it.
~ Michael Green, in Faith for the Non-religious
Citing the Bible as evidence for anything is like saying that the sun is in fact a chariot of fire that races across the sky because we read about it in Greek mythology.
~ Stephen Ban
It is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.
~ Rudolf Bultmann
I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
~ George Carlin
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts of his divinity.
~ Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Ezra Styles, March 9, 1790
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
~ Sigmund Freud, in The Future of Illusion
I imagined that if a Christian had a brain cell, it would die of loneliness.
~ Josh McDowell, in More Than a Carpenter, talking about the way he thought prior to his conversion to Christianity.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself that this thing called Christianity.
~ Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason
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