What happens when you read Atheist websites

I've been browsing Atheist websites this afternoon. I like to keep up with things and see what the other 'side' is up to. I think it's a good thing to do, as long as you don't get sucked into obsessive debating and arguments. I generally just read - responding to anything I read is generally a bad idea, because Internet debates go nowhere, fast.

Two things strike me as I peruse these sites:

1) The level of righteous indignation from the Atheists. In a way, I envy the way in which Atheism seems to have completely missed being influenced by postmodernism. They are the least tolerant people on the Internet these days. Well, perhaps Independent, KJVO Baptists still have them beat, but atheists are pretty close. I'm not necessarily faulting them for it, because I think that at a certain level we need to have an intolerance for wrong ideas. If Religion (as if one can simply lump all those ideas under one banner and treat them all the same) is truly responsible for all the awful things that atheists claim it is, it well deserves to be abhorred and not respected.
What I find most interesting is not that they are intolerant, but that they have such a self-assured sense of righteousness (I use the word loosely) about it. Read "god is not Great" and you will be shocked by the high-handed moral pronouncements about the pure evilness of the concept of God. It fascinates me that the atheist will deny the existence of absolute values, but has no problem using absolutes to disprove their very existence.
I can just hear an atheist saying "It is absurd to claim one needs to have religious set of beliefs in order to be a good, moral person." I agree, wholeheartedly. Any Christian who argues this needs a spanking. Atheists are, indeed, some of the most 'moral' people around. They will be the first to point this out. That is not the issue. The point is, they are using something the basis for which they deny.
In essence, it would be like me claiming that one does not need to believe in light in order to see. This is true. I can flat out deny that light exists and still see perfectly well. However, light is absolutely necessary for me to see. Attempting to say that God is not necessary for moral values to exist and proving my assertion by having moral values and not believing in God, does nothing for me. I still have to explain why I can see; I still have to explain why there is right and wrong in a binding, moral sense. The Phenomena of sight does not work without light; The Phenomena of morality does not work without an absolute, transcendental standard.
To sum up this point, this is not a 'slam-dunk' argument for or against Christianity of Atheism. It may be that the binding morality is actually an illusion and a product of evolution; The point is that the atheist cannot consistently claim religion is immoral all the while denying the very basis for making that claim.

2) The second, and more important observation, was the Christians. Or at best, the so-called Christians. To be fair, the current crop of atheists delight in picking up on the dregs of religious followers and setting them forth as normative. But to read the letters that Dawkins has on his website that he has received from, for the most part, Christians, is painful. There are mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, intellectually brain-dead people who think that atheists are devils incarnate. They have no clue what they are talking about, and are obviously not reflective in any way of Christianity. They are the Ann Coulter types, and they say things like, "I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell." That Dawkins et al. even bother with such people and portray them as accurately representing Christianity is embarrasing and taking cheap shots - but not entirely his fault. You see, the reason Dawkins can get away with doing this is because there is no outrage against these people from within Christianity, no distancing ourselves from their message.

Anyway, that's an aside. There will always be jerks in the world, and Richard Dawkins (and Hitchens, Harris, et al.) shows himself to not be a truth seeker by engaging the 'Christianity' of these people as if it were the actual Christian religion. If he were honest, he would ignore anonymous Internet users and engage Christianity as it has been presented through the ages.

But getting to my real point, with apologies for rambling on rabbit trails, I know that anyone reading this is not a jerk. You are not a foul-mouthed twit. You serve Christ as your Lord, and want to do your best to bring him to a dead world.
"OK, here it comes. Now he is going to tell us it is our responsibility to argue with atheists, because Christians really have the only basis for rational thought. We ought to argue with evolutionists, because science is on our side."
At the risk of seeming to contradict what I've said in previous posts, no, that's not what I am going to say. Just the opposite. I can tell you right here and now that no one reading this (or writing this, for that matter!) would have any place debating Richard Dawkins about evolution. He would eat us alive. Why? Because he is a better debater than you or I? Well, sure, but mainly because he knows what he is talking about and you and I don't. The second type of Christian you come across on the Internet in comment boxes is the Arrogant Christian. This is the Christian who feels that because he is a Christian it gives him the right to make definite statements in areas he knows very little about. And this is the one I want to talk about, because this is me. I am the Arrogant Christian. I daresay if you look at yourself, you'll see the Arrogant Christian there, too.

The Arrogant Christian is the guy who reads Answers in Genesis and thinks that he is thereby qualified to argue science with evolutionary scientists because 'He's a Christian, and he has the truth.' The Arrogant Christian thinks he is automatically qualified to make statements on complex social issues because 'He's a Christian, and he has the truth.' The Arrogant Christian feels that he is the last word on doctrine - and he has no fear in contradicting those who disagree, because 'He's a good Christian, and he has the truth.'

It seems the right way of saying anything is to make sure you clarify by stating what you do not mean. What I am not saying is that Christians are disqualified from engaging in scientific, social, doctrinal or political discussions. I believe that God is the God over all creation, and thus his dominion extends into all areas of life. I am not saying Christians are not allowed to have their opinions and convictions in certain areas. What I am saying is that being a Christian does not make you an expert in all fields and in all areas. Being a Christian makes you a child of God, privy to his eternal purpose as revealed through Jesus Christ. This does not mean you are a scientist.

Let me give you an example. I quite like Ray Comfort. I believe he has a gift for evangelism and preaching the gospel. However, he and Kirk Cameron recently challenged some atheists to a debate, in which they promised to prove God without the Bible. I honestly did not watch the whole thing – it was just too painful. They got shellacked. Neither one of them was very well qualified to discuss what they were debating. Ray attempts to prove that the universe is designed by using a banana. It is terrible. Now, am I saying Christians ought not to debate Atheists? Must one be an expert to understand atheism? No, to both questions. But one must be an expert to be an expert. You must be a scholar to give a scholarly rebuttal. If you are going to prove God scientifically, you have to be able to do it. (As an aside, you can't, so don't try!)

Christians very often mis-use I Corinthians chapter 1 in this context. I cannot recall how many times I have seen an Arrogant Christian use the following reasoning. I know it well enough, because I've used it myself.

“Well, the Bible says that God's wisdom is foolishness to man – so of course you think I'm foolish and mis-interpreting 'science'. I'm glad you think I'm foolish, because you confirm the Bible. What you don't realize is that in fact you are the one in the dark.”

Obviously, you aren't going to see it presented quite that way, but I'm sure you've seen something similar (or maybe used it yourself, as I have). It's actually a great way of ending an argument you are losing, until the validity of it is examined. There is actually a good possibility you are looking like a fool in a discussion because, in fact, you are a fool. Your arguments may sound weak and un-convincing because, in fact, they are weak and un-convincing. When Paul is talking about the 'foolishness' of God, he is talking about the message of the cross, not creationism vs. evolution. This is my point: The Christian religion lays the foundation for all knowledge and inquiry into every facet of creation. It does not make one privy to all that knowledge. There has to be a humility in our belief – Not a humility like the world has where they wonder about there is truth at all, but rather, a humility where we are honest about how much truth we ourselves know. We need to admit that reading one of Ken Ham's books does not make us an expert in science. We need to realize that because we've read one of Richard Dawkins' books we are not now an expert in answering atheism. Because we read a book by Dave Hunt, it doesn't make us the last word on Calvinism. Going to Bible School does not make you the last word on Bible interpretation.

Part of the problem is that we have accepted the world's standard for belief that unless you personally have examined the evidence relating to Science, Textual Criticism, Archeology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Physics and all the other areas of knowledge, you cannot really claim to have any truth at all. They say that belief in Christianity is completely invalid and absurd if you cannot the objections raised by Science or integrate it into your beliefs. The Arrogant Christian feels he has to be able to have a final say in all these areas before he can justify to the world his beliefs. So what we do is that we develop shallow, silly, superficial arguments and answers to these questions in order to justify to ourselves why we believe in Christianity, and thus appear to the world to be fools who babble about that which we know nothing. Of course, the world has it's fair share of fools babbling, but I'm not talking to them - I'm talking to you, I'm talking to me.

Now, again, I am not talking about going all postmodern and wondering if we can even know the truth at all. Nor am I calling for Christians to retreat from every area and stick to 'Religion' and leave 'Science' to the professionals. What I am calling for is you to know what you are talking about, and not arrogantly presuming to know more. Because you don't have to. Our faith is based not on our ability to objectively and accurately take all the information around us and process it in such a way that we arrive at certain conclusions, i.e., that Jesus Christ is Lord and died a substitutionary death in our place. It is based on the fact that while we were yet sinners, while we were turned away from God seeking our own way, Christ died for us and saved us. It is in the fact that a man dying on a tree made us alive, without our prior consent or volition. It had nothing to do with how intelligent you were or how spiritually aware you were. If you were using your reason, it was to escape from God, not draw closer to him. It is about God doing as he pleases. This is the absurdity that Paul is talking about. This is the fundamental absurdity of our religion, the weakness and humanly embarrassing scandal. If you want a religion that depends on you, there are plenty of them out there. Christianity is not the one of them. James Denney said,

“No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save”

Now here's the funny part: In spite of the conclusion you might draw from what I just said, it's a reasonable faith. It's not a blind leap of faith, one which we say, “In spite of all contrary evidence, I'm going to believe it anyway.” Although we didn't come to the faith because we were smart, if we had been smart, we would have. Christianity is reasonable. It provides the very framework to explain such things as logic, science, and philosophy. The beauty of this is that our faith rests on 'nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness', but we are also freed to look into every facet of knowledge with confidence that there, too, we shall find God. Losing the weak and shallow 'canned' arguments we tell ourselves and others removes the barriers to truly greater knowledge of God and his creation. If your apologetic research is merely a tool by which you convince yourself that you are right, you have missed the point. If the only thing keeping you a Christian is the conviction that Richard Dawkins' doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about when it comes to Christianity, you'll be sorely disappointed. He doesn't, but that's besides the point.

To sum up, what I am asking for is that we do not feel like we have to be experts in every field in order to justify our beliefs. Do not feel like you have to stand up every time you hear someone talking about evolution and rebut them – You may do more harm than good. If you can, that's wonderful, and I hope you can. I'm not asking for dumb Christians who respond to every question with, “Well, I don't know about that, I just know.” That's not a good apologetic, nor is it very glorifying to Christ. Your personal conviction is never a reason someone else should believe. The truth is out there, so go find it. And when you do, tell others about it and stick to it. All the while remembering that your faith does not stand or fall on whether the universe is expanding or contracting, but on the person of Jesus Christ. His work provides the basis from which all other true knowledge flows. This is the base that allows us to say, “I don't know, but if we study enough, we'll find the answer.”

PS – I realize this is another looong article, but it's also insufficient to cover everything I wanted to. Please, if anything is not clear, I will do my best to clarify.

PPS – Just in case there is any doubt, I do like AIG and Ken Ham.