Here’s Why I Don’t Explicitly Debunk Religious Arguments
August 8, 2015
by Hemant Mehta
John Loftus had an interesting post at his site last week noting that there are very few atheist blogs that work to directly debunk Christianity (and religious arguments in general):
The reason so many atheist sites largely talk about atheist concerns is because people generally want to be relevant to their communities. If people are considered part of a particular community then in order to be relevant they must weigh in about the concerns of their community. So it’s important to have good leaders who focus on the overarching issues, while not neglecting the concerns within their own communities.
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When it comes to atheist concerns we should focus on the majors by focusing on debunking the dominant religion of our geographic locations. In my case this is Christianity in America. If you own a blog count the number of times you write or link to arguments that debunk Christianity, compared with the times you write on atheist concerns. I know, it gets boring doing so, since it doesn’t take long for people convinced of atheism to move on to other, more interesting subjects. But we should never forget that while our numbers are presently increasing we face a future of declining numbers according to polls.
Loftus didn’t single me out or anything, but I wanted to offer a response. I agree that it’s important to combat traditional arguments against religion (and Christianity, specifically, in the U.S.), so let me make my case for why it’s not my focus:
1) It’s been done in this medium
There are no arguments Christians have that I can’t find strong rebuttals to via a Google search. People have been writing about things like Pascal’s Wager for a looooong time. So doing that on this site, when those explanations already exist to my satisfaction on other sites, seems unnecessary. If I need to explain it, I can easily direct you somewhere else.
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2) More people are curious about how they should think about current events, not age-old philosophical questions
That’s not to say that one is more important than the other. But the Cosmological argument doesn’t come up at parties; modern politics does. So it’d be more useful for more people to offer them both the news and a perspective on it. One of the things I’ve tried to do on this site is offer my takes on current events because I want people to see things the way I do. (Don’t we all?) Turns out a lot of people are interested in that sort of commentary.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/08/08/heres-why-i-dont-explicitly-debunk-religious-arguments-2/
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