Bite-Size Replies to Christian “Quick Shots”

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How are arguments best presented? One approach is from the Cold Case Christianity ministry, which has a mobile app that provides brief responses to common arguments. These are mostly atheist arguments—that there are no miracles, the Problem of Evil, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster—though a few are from other spiritual perspectives—all roads lead to God and sincerity is good enough. There are 28 of these “Quick Shots,” and they’re available in blog format as well.

We’ve seen lists of “Top 10 Atheist Arguments” at Christian blogs before. What’s unusual here is the format. The attack to the Christian worldview is presented as a single sentence, and there are two or three responses, each less than 200 words long. A “click to tweet” summary ends each response.

My initial reaction was cautious, because I wouldn’t want Christians to think that, just because they’ve found a paragraph with a response, he’s necessarily answered the challenge. On the other hand, everyone has to start somewhere. Reading off a paragraph you’ve just discovered during a live argument isn’t much, but it’s something. Only by jumping into the conversation will Christians see how inadequate simple apologetic answers are. (And once they’ve discovered that, they can move on to learning how inadequate the complex answers are.)

I’d like to respond to these Quick Shots in kind—I’ll call them Bite-Sized Replies (BSR). It’ll be a challenge, because this is different than how I usually write. Lately, I often find myself writing two- or three-part posts of several thousand words total with links to posts of mine and to references outside my blog. Let’s see how it goes with this new format. (Just to be clear, I’m planning this new abbreviated format just for these 28 BSRs, while retaining the more in-depth approach for other topics.)

As this series progresses, let me know what you think.

Continue to BSR 1: There Are No Objective Truths

Confusing arguments don’t succeed,
convincing arguments succeed.
Confusing arguments usually go unchallenged.
— commenter I Came To Bring The Paine

 

That is success in apologist world.
— commenter Greg G

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Image from Daniel X. O’Neil, CC license
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Complete list of Bite-Size Replies with links

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