Hypothetical Debate From Both Sides Ideas For Youth Lesson

[joshp]

Hopefully this is the right place to put this.

I'm teaching a new topic at my church for my youth (mostly high school/college freshman). They're all pretty well versed in the bible but I am trying to get them out of their bubble and present them with the questions and topics that smart atheist/agnostics (like you all) will point out to them that may will have no answer for. If other smart christians could then propose answers (I will join in too), I think it would be a great discussion. I was going to use Quora, but this seems much better suited.

I'm going to be playing the atheist and ask them different questions, and challenge their answers. I'll be starting out with one of the two points below. Probably the second one, but if anyone wants to answer the first, go for it.

Topic 1
I'm going to be pointing out how ludicrous it is to believe some man existed 2,000+ years ago, who was crucified (for sake of time constraints, I'll just assume that he did in fact die), and magically was raised from the dead a few days later. I'll ask them if, besides just pure faith, they can point out any reason I should believe in such a story.

Topic 2
I will point out the fact that the only reason that they are Christians, is because their parents are. I will point out that if their parents had been Islamic, they would be following that religion, and so on. Why then, is their religion right and all others wrong?

If anyone would like to propose new questions that they think would be good to ask, please feel free to do so.

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 1 by joshp]

Even as an agnostic, I would probably change topic 2 slightly. Might I suggest "is because they were exposed to it from their culture - parents, friends, peers, etc." You will quickly find someone who doesn't have Christian parents and everyone will cheer as that argument falls

Some other potential topics:

1) What is your faith really based on? The Bible? What your pastor/priest/parents/friends tell you? Why have you chosen to believe one particular holy book or set of stories over the myriad of others?

2) Which parts of the Bible do you consider 'truth' and/or the actual wishes of a god? How do you know this?

3) How do you reconcile the vengeful, warmongering picture of god in the OT with the loving father picture in the NT? Is the god of the OT that slaughtered first born children in Egypt to change someones mind really the same one offering salvation in the NT?

Good luck, let us know what you picked and how it went. You might want to create a 'shadow' discussion here of whatever question you pose. That way, you will get input from both sides and see how it lines up with your class.

[Hawkins]

If anyone would like to propose new questions that they think would be good to ask, please feel free to do so.

I was not brought up a Christian. What you preach is not necessarily true. The bottom line is that you need accept with consent that if you are wrong about Christianity have ever led away any souls, you are a murderer and deserve hell.

No offense, it's just a reminder.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by joshp]

What about:

Objection #1
Nobody's ever seen God so why should we accept he exists.

Objection #2
It's a proven fact humans evolved from apelike creatures, no God necessary for that process.


JEHOVAHS WITNESS








FURTHER READING:

You might find the following material useful for your class: (depending on their ages)


PRE-TEEN WORKSHEET: Why Do I Believe in God?
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/f ... ve-in-god/


Read online: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/lv/r1/lp-e/0/23459

[free download]



Read Online: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/lv/r1/lp-e/0/23467

[free download]

[Goose]

If anyone would like to propose new questions that they think would be good to ask, please feel free to do so.

I think there may be a better way. A longer harder way, but a better way.

Teaching Christians how to overcome common questions/objections is useful to an extent. But what happens when someone asks a question for which they haven't been taught the answer? It's a little like teaching students to prepare for a test by memorizing the answers to past exam questions.

In my humble opinion, young Christians would be far better equipped if taught the basics of logic and how history is done. The more advanced ones should consider at least learning the basics of Greek. With these tools they have what they need to not only answer virtually any question asked of them, but answer their questions as well.

Food for thought.

[JoeyKnothead]

From the OP:

I'm teaching a new topic at my church for my youth (mostly high school/college freshman). They're all pretty well versed in the bible but I am trying to get them out of their bubble and present them with the questions and topics that smart atheist/agnostics (like you all) will point out to them that may will have no answer for. If other smart christians could then propose answers (I will join in too), I think it would be a great discussion. I was going to use Quora, but this seems much better suited.

Religious claims are the hypothetical here. The atheist need not do him no hypothesizin' to determine religious claims are unproven.

I reject any notion here that might have atheism on a par with theism, when it is, it's theists who have them the inability to show their god exists to have him an action or opinion.

Topic 1
I'm going to be pointing out how ludicrous it is to believe some man existed 2,000+ years ago, who was crucified (for sake of time constraints, I'll just assume that he did in fact die), and magically was raised from the dead a few days later. I'll ask them if, besides just pure faith, they can point out any reason I should believe in such a story.

Faith. Your argument'll fail on them that'll have 'em them a whole a bunch of it.

Topic 2
I will point out the fact that the only reason that they are Christians, is because their parents are. I will point out that if their parents had been Islamic, they would be following that religion, and so on. Why then, is their religion right and all others wrong

And you'll fail on that whole bunch that declares they was atheists who studied on it, and don't it beat all.

Conclusions?

Folks who rely on faith don't need 'em no cogent argument, that got 'em faith.

[Divine Insight]

I'm teaching a new topic at my church for my youth (mostly high school/college freshman). They're all pretty well versed in the bible but I am trying to get them out of their bubble and present them with the questions and topics that smart atheist/agnostics (like you all) will point out to them that may will have no answer for.

The problem is that you are already teaching them to be extremely biased. You are doing this in part because you are teaching them at a Church where they will be expected to come up with apologies for the religion and NEVER with agreements with the atheists.

To begin with, if they are at the church they are most likely already religious (or have been taught to be so). Therefore their mindset in that environment is to focus on destroying any arguments against the religion. And they will even encourage each other by agreeing with apologetic answers that no atheist would take seriously.

So all you are basically doing (whether intentionally or not) is to shore up their religious bias.

The problem is that also they will often just give the standard Christian apologies and feel as though that covers it. But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Christian apologies are themselves extremely problematic and don't truly resolve the problems raised by the atheists.

~~~~~

None the less, if you want to ask them some interesting questions try some of these:

1. First ask them if heaven is a spiritual or physical place.

1a. If they say that heaven is a spiritual realm then ask them why Jesus took his physical body with him when he ascended to heaven.

2. Concerning the resurrected Christ who could heal the sick and injured. Ask them why God didn't bother to physically heal Christ's body when he was resurrected. Remember the doubting Thomas and Jesus asking Thomas to poke his fingers in Jesus' wounds.

2a. Ask them if Christ had been beheaded instead of crucified would he have been resurrected headless and have to carry his head around in his hands?

Seriously. 2a might sound like a silly question, but if God doesn't bother physically restoring Christ to perfect health isn't it a legitimate question?

3. Ask them if Jesus was so convincing why did God need to speak from the clouds to insure people that Jesus was his Son. Did God himself think it was unreasonable to expect people to believe in a Jesus they actually met in person?

3a. Does it really make sense that we should need to believe in nothing more than ancient outrageous stories about Jesus when we have neither met him, or heard any God speaking from the clouds?

3b. Why should we be required to believe in Jesus as a matter of pure faith based on extremely problematic and unverified rumors from 2000 years ago, when God himself clearly didn't even think the people who actually saw Jesus in person would believe him without God having to speak from the clouds to verify that Jesus was his son?

~~~~~~

And to be honest as an ex-Christian myself I feel that it's futile to even discuss Jesus when the Old Testament cannot be resolved. If Yahweh is a false rumor, then obviously the claim that Jesus is the virgin-born Son of Yahweh has no merit either.

So to be honest, if I were going to ask your students questions I would be asking them to justify the Old Testament long before I would even consider talking about Jesus.

It's also been my experience that the Old Testament cannot be justified. Therefore there's no point in even talking about Jesus or Christianity at all.

~~~~~~

You see, I was born into Christianity. I believed on "Pure Faith" as I was taught to do. So much so that I decided that I wanted to preach the Word of God. But to do so I would need to learn the word of God inside and out. I could also see that turning to preachers was useless since the preachers themselves could not even agree on the answers. In fact, in many cases they would toss their hands up in the air confessing that they cannot even explain many things in the Bible. That's when they turn to popular cop-out, "We just need to have faith that God has answers to our unanswered questions".

Well, that wasn't good enough for me. If I was going to teach "God's Word" I need to know precisely what it say and understand it fully. Otherwise I could not teach it with confidence. It was because of this need to understand God's Word that I looked into the Bible. And during that journey I quickly discovered that the Bible cannot possibly be true as it is written.

In fact, never mind the New Testament and Jesus, even the Old Testament cannot be justified.

I was also extremely open-minded. I felt that if the Protestant denomination I was born and raised into cannot be true, then perhaps some other version of Christianity could be true. After looking into other Protestant demoninations and finding nothing compelling I turned to Catholicism. Perhaps Catholicism is true and it's just the protesting Protestants that have it all wrong.

I quickly discovered that Catholics fairs no better. So I even looked into Judaism thinking that perhaps Christianity itself is wrong. But that didn't pan out very well since many of the problems were already associated with the Old Testament. It's wasn't Jesus or the New Testament alone that was the problem. So I quickly realized that Judaism couldn't be true either.

I even turned to Islam, but that was extremely short-lived since it quickly became vividly apparent that Islam is based on the same basic flawed stories.

I finally came to the conclusion that none of the Abrahamic Religions could be true.

I didn't even become an atheist at that point. From there I turned to other religions just to see if anything was making any sense at all. I found sanity in various Eastern Mystical religions such as Buddhism in particular. Buddhism at least makes sense and doesn't contradict itself.

However by that time I also began to realize that perhaps no religion is true.

Today I consider myself to be agnostic with respect to the overall question of whether or not there might be a supernatural aspect to our reality. I still view Buddhism as being the most promising of man-made religions. Although even it has some disturbing problems.

I have also finally come to the realization that pure secular atheists (or naturalists) might actually be onto the truth of our reality. I certainly can't rule that out either.

But the Abrahamic religions? I'm totally convinced that they cannot be true as written. There are simply too many self-contradictions, immoral principles, and a God who behaves more poorly than a barroom drunkard IMHO.

And I hold this to be especially true in Christianity. The very idea that a God would orchestrate the brutal crucifixion of his only begotten son as the centerfold of his religious paradigm is simply a behavior that I could never condone as being wise or divine.

For me today, Christianity actually represents one of the most reprehensible of all man-made religions.

Do I think it represents the behavior of a "God". No definitely not.

Let me instruct your students for a week. I'll have them questioning Christianity to the hilt.

And I won't even ask them to become atheists. If they all became Buddhists I would be tickled pink. At least they would have moved over to a religion that has decent moral values.

[Mithrae]

If anyone would like to propose new questions that they think would be good to ask, please feel free to do so.

It sounds like this is intended to be a "How to answer these objections" session, suggesting that any points which are unlikely to be answered are unlikely to be introduced. You can hardly contribute to 'misleading' these young folk after all.

That said, like many agnostics and former Christians my concern over mainstream/traditional Christianity is not so much whether it is strictly 'true' or 'false,' but the points on which it is irrational, backwards, harmful to society and (if and when they learn better) harmful to those who have been indoctrinated: Some obvious examples being creationism, gender equality, marriage equality, and the seeming efforts by some (amongst Christians, Jews and Muslims alike) to provoke the vast war in the Middle East which their scriptures say must precede the coming of God's kingdom on earth.

Since these issues are almost always chained to to the notion that the bible is the 'inerrant Word of God' - dragging believers back to perspectives which might have been progressive back in the bronze age - if I had a single topic to raise with those young folk that'd be it: Not to persuade anyone that Christianity is wrong, but to explain that worshiping the bible is an outdated relic of the old covenant, which the bible itself rejects. Jeremiah, Paul, John, the author of Hebrews and Jesus himself all in their various terminologies taught God's law on his people's hearts and minds rather than ink and stone, a "new covenant of the spirit, not of the letter," an 'anointing of the Holy Spirit' to teach them all things (John) and a 'kingdom of God' growing like a seed in the heart and making the least of believers greater than anyone under the old covenant.

Of course, preachers paid to shepherd a flock have a vested interest in avoiding passages like "no more shall every man teach his brother saying 'know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," which perhaps makes it all the more of an issue for others in a church to discuss.

Granted, if bibliolatry turned out to be necessary for the church, it could be said this guidance of the Holy Spirit was therefore disproven and the religion false. But I think it'd be more productive to encourage young Christians to view their bible as useful records of the thoughts and opinions of earlier believers, a starting point for enquiry rather than a final word which absolves them of personal responsibility. Why claim it to be the Word of God when even the authors themselves did not say so?

Related thread: Did apostles think they were writing the 'word of God'?

[Divine Insight]

- if I had a single topic to raise with those young folk that'd be it: Not to persuade anyone that Christianity is wrong, but to explain that worshiping the bible is an outdated relic of the old covenant, which the bible itself rejects. Jeremiah, Paul, John, the author of Hebrews and Jesus himself all in their various terminologies taught God's law on his people's hearts and minds rather than ink and stone, a "new covenant of the spirit, not of the letter," an 'anointing of the Holy Spirit' to teach them all things (John) and a 'kingdom of God' growing like a seed in the heart and making the least of believers greater than anyone under the old covenant.

I would agree that this can be argued from the teachings of Jeremiah, Paul, John, and Jesus himself.

The only problem is that these scriptures always contain contradictions as well, and that would be Matthew.

Matthew has Jesus decreeing the following:

Matthew 5:
[17] Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
[18] For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Here Jesus is indeed supporting every jot and tittle of the law until heaven and earth pass. So this can be used to support the letter of the law of the Old Testament.

Please note: I am not making this argument myself, I'm merely pointing out that this argument can be made in Jesus' name (or at least in the name of the Gospel of Matthew).

This reason I point this out is that back when I was a Christian my greatest adversaries in terms of arguing Christian doctrine was not with atheists, but with other disagreeing Christians.

There are many Christians that will argue that Jesus stands by the laws of the Old Testament, and they will often point to Matthew 5:17-18 to support this position. I've had this verse thrown in my face by other Christians back when I was a Christian and trying to argue for a more progressive view of Christianity.

So there are problems with the Gospels in general. They contain conflicting decrees.

I've often said that it would be pretty easy to set up a stage with two Jesus marionette dolls and have them basically arguing against each other using nothing more than quotes from the Gospels that have been attributed to Jesus.

There are enough contradictory quotes in the Gospels that Jesus could have a pretty heated argument with himself.

[Tcg]

I'm teaching a new topic at my church for my youth (mostly high school/college freshman). They're all pretty well versed in the bible but I am trying to get them out of their bubble and present them with the questions and topics that smart atheist/agnostics (like you all) will point out to them that may will have no answer for. If other smart christians could then propose answers (I will join in too), I think it would be a great discussion. I was going to use Quora, but this seems much better suited.

I'm going to be playing the atheist and ask them different questions, and challenge their answers.

It may be a little late to implement the suggestion I'm going to make, but you should strongly consider it for future lessons if you truly desire for your class to understand atheists. Don't play the atheist yourself. In fact, don't have anyone play the atheist. Find an atheist, or even better yet, a small number of atheists who would be willing to join your class for a few sessions.

Topic 1
I'm going to be pointing out how ludicrous it is to believe some man existed 2,000+ years ago, who was crucified (for sake of time constraints, I'll just assume that he did in fact die), and magically was raised from the dead a few days later. I'll ask them if, besides just pure faith, they can point out any reason I should believe in such a story.

This would very likely lead to a scholarly discussion of some sort. If that is your goal, it should work.

If I were interested in determining the reason members of your class have faith in Christ, I'd ask them to describe what initially lead them to their faith. This would more likely lead to the heart of the matter. Almost without exception, this will uncover some crisis or perceived crisis that caused them to make a leap of faith.

Apologetics rarely lead to faith and are usually tacked on after the fact. Any discussion of faith that did not include the situational aspects of that decision would ring hollow, and at lest for me, would be totally unconvincing. In fact, I would suspect they were attempting to hide something.

Topic 2
I will point out the fact that the only reason that they are Christians, is because their parents are. I will point out that if their parents had been Islamic, they would be following that religion, and so on. Why then, is their religion right and all others wrong?

As has already been pointed out, they may have been lead to their faith by someone other than the parents. But this isn't the biggest problem I see here. You state, "...that the only reason they are Christians...". Many people have been exposed to Christianity through friends, family, neighbors, etc., but remain unconvinced. There has to be something more than simply exposure.

As I have already mentioned, there has to be some motivation for a person to take a leap of faith. Some perceived crisis or felt need. They also have to be convinced that the faith as presented to them, Christianity in this case, has an answer to the crisis or need. Based on this, I'd never state anything as the only reason someone is a Christian.

If you really want to create a debate from both sides, you need to have representatives from each side that actually hold the position they are representing.