Image Credit: Toms Baugis, used under CC 2.0 Attribution Generic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
A Question of Volume
“You know it’s a life!”, she screamed at me across a quiet
living room in Landsborough on Christmas morning.
I had been explaining to a close relative of mine that upon
fertilisation but before implantation an ovum is referred to as a zygote, not
an embryo. Detecting, in my minor technical qualification, intended only for
purposes of general edification, an existential threat to all foetuses in the
immediate vicinity, my family member leapt valiantly and vociferously to their
defence. Passionately held convictions often raise blood pressure and vocal
volume. When defending causes we believe in or speaking up for those we feel
don’t have a voice, it’s natural to want to ensure our point is getting across
– often as loud as possible.
In response to loud noises, the tensor tympani muscle and
the Stapedius muscle contact together in what is known as the acoustic reflex.
The purpose of this reflex is to protect the sensitive organs of the inner ear
from excessive vibration which may damage them. The reflex lowers the amplitude
of sound waves entering the inner ear, making loud sounds seem softer as a
result. Shouting, then, may literally lower the sensitivity of a person’s ears.
Persuasion, then, is not done at volume.
Assumptions: A Spherical Agnostic in a Vacuum
There’s a joke about a physicist who comes to solve a
problem for a farmer whose chickens won’t lay. After thinking for some time on
the problem, the physicist goes to the farmer and says, “I’ve found a solution,
but it only works for a spherical chicken in a vacuum.”
The point of the joke is that idealised solutions tend to
oversimplify the complexity that you will face in the application of that
solution to any real world problem. (As an engineer, I can tell you this joke
often applies equally well to our own calculations.) Any education necessarily
simplifies problems down to their simplest constituent parts to enable students
to solve problems. Agnostics will tend to think this way. Muslims tend to adopt
these positions. Learning to analyse these positions generally is vital if
you’re going to be prepared to not seem ignorant when discussing an opponent’s
worldview.
It’s important, though, when beginning to think about how to
persuade someone who doesn’t agree with you, that you don’t fall victim to
responding to the spherical agnostic in a vacuum.
In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying:
"I have never had a plan of operations." Therefore no plan of
operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main
hostile force.
- Helmuth von Moltke
the Elder
There’s a glint that
comes into the eye of some Christians I meet when they hear that I’m an
agnostic. It’s the sort of look I imagine the victims of Hannibal Lector saw briefly
in their final moments. The glint usually means, “I know a brilliant argument
that you won’t have heard.” Despite Anselm’s valiant attempts, there are no
deductive proofs of Christianity that are universally acknowledged. That
argument that is convincing to you won’t necessarily be convincing to me.
What’s worse is that in your rush to apply a one size fits all solution you
tend to miss the person underneath. The spherical agnostic in a vacuum isn’t
the human being sitting across from you at the pub.
He said you know I don't I don't really hate God
I just don't like it when people
You know assume that I don't know anything just because I
don't go to church
I said that's fair
He said yeah you know
They assume that I know nothing that I-I believe in nothing
And we talked for a while
And this is pretty much exactly what he said
Well
We sort of made it poetic
And we took out some words
This is what he said
I've no problem receiving from a God who could set me free
I've no problem believing maybe He came and He died for me
But condemnation and judgement I hate
Conversation and endless debates
But sometimes I feel I know more
All these crazy (knocking) people knocking on my door
Paul Colman Trio – No
Problem
All assumptions are equally bad, but some are more equally
bad than others. In general, you should attempt to enter a conversation with a
person on religious matters without a preconceived notion of their position.
That’s difficult and I will bear with equanimity a wide range of spurious
assumptions about my personal beliefs but there is one class of assumptions
that you should try to rid yourselves of immediately (if you haven’t already).
The most offensive assumption with which I am confronted as
a post-Christian agnostic who regularly dialogues with Christians is that my
opinion is somehow unresearched or ill-informed. The notion that I might be
wrong isn’t foreign to me. I’ve been wrong before; I’ll be wrong again. But to
begin a discussion with the assumption that I haven’t thought about what I believe
because I don’t believe what you believe displays an arrogance and a contempt
for my intelligence that I honestly can’t abide. While my opinion may not
coincide with yours, that doesn’t mean I don’t hold to it deeply or think about
it a great deal. Even if you’re convinced that someone is intellectually
bankrupt, acting that way will lose you the argument before you begin. You
can’t convince someone you’ve just insulted.
One Person – Two Conversations
I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument.
Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the
greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did
right. That truth was not worth the stake. … On the other hand, I see many
people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically
getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living
(what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying).
Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus:
An Absurd Reasoning
It’s not enough to be right; Humans just aren’t that sort of
creatures. We seldom change our minds without first changing our hearts. All
purchase decisions (including those of worldview) are emotional. There are two
conversations that you’ve been secretly having with everyone you’ve ever talked
with about anything of great import; one is about reason and the other is about
emotion.
Behind the intellectual gambits and ideological missiles,
lies a very real emotional concern for what it will mean if you are right. The
first conversation about rationality is fuelled – sustained by the second
secret conversation about the emotional and social consequences of the radical
change in worldview agreeing with you would represent.
The second conversation is the one you have to win to win
the person. Apology may make faith credible but it will never make it
convincing. Being intellectually overmatched has never stopped people from
fighting on emotionally. This is why it is vitally important that at all times
you remain human and don’t give over to your impulse for pride or
self-congratulations at an argument well fought. No one likes giving their
heart to someone smug.
Before writing this I looked in vain for a Christian author
that dealt with the concept of worldview shift as a sort of trauma. I appreciate
that this may be an unpopular analysis, but whatever the feelings of spiritual
elation associated with the actual decision to adopt Christianity, prior to
that moment of decision, the atheist may be faced with a traumatic choice.
Imagine for a moment if you were in a position of discussing
your faith with an atheist. Imagine still further that they convinced you not
just intellectually but were on the brink of emotionally convincing you that
you should abandon your faith. All your pretensions of being wise and following
your faith through thick and thin have been wasted. How do you feel?
Now, think of the faces of your Christian friends when you
tell them that you’ve lost your faith. Think of your parents’ reaction. What
about your pastor? Your teachers? What would the thought of looking a fool in
their eyes cost you?
Worldview changes can be traumatic – at least in their
contemplation. A change in worldview may lose an individual their community,
friends and possibly even family. I would sooner say that up is down than
willingly lose all of that. If you’re honest, so would most of you.
Failure to take the emotional consequences of worldview
change seriously may have led to many a convinced atheist or agnostic slipping
through the fingers of the apologist or the evangelist.
Dialogue: Winning Friends not Arguments.
The problem is that the second conversation requires
something beyond clever arguments and a brilliant mind. It requires emotional
vulnerability and intellectual honesty.
Rightly or wrongly, Christians are regarded as a corporate
monolith by society at large. Christians – oh yes, backward religious people
who don’t understand science. The dialogue you have with a non-Christian may be
the only time they get to speak to a real, live Christian rather than the ones
in the memes theirs friends share with them.
Become the counter-example. Confound expectations. In the
time after I had lost my faith what kept me from hating Christians was the fact
that I knew so many of them and I knew they weren’t (all) mad. People (verily,
even the Christian and the non-Christian) are mostly just people. Mostly, what
we want from others is for them to be people we can talk to who don’t annoy us
too much and occasionally share cake with us.
So buy a cake. Be a human being. Admit when you don’t know
something. Admit when you’re wrong. Be open to being persuaded by them. Talk
about moments when you doubt your own faith. Share struggle and not just
triumph. Share a drink and laugh at a joke. Do your best to decompress conversation
about religion from moments of tension, fraught with fear about when you reveal
your secret Christian third-eye (we know you have one – there’s no point in
denying it), to moments where they can explore their own deepest held beliefs.
In a cultural moment obsessed with the ephemera of memes and
celebrity, can you imagine a more beautiful thing to give someone than the
space and time to speak to what matters most to them? We are starved for human
moments at a time when we’ve never been more connected. Be a person that allows
them that human moment without judgement. And then don’t take advantage of it
in point scoring.
Where you must disagree, offer a competing opinion humbly
(even when you know you’re right and especially when they know you’re right).
Rid yourself of pretentions that your opinions carry the divine stamp of
approval where theirs don’t. Acknowledge that views and ideas shift, even your
own. In defeat, be gracious; in victory, doubly so. Don’t win every argument
even if you can. Make your point but allow your friend a face-saving retreat.
Your friend will love you better for a hard lesson learned easily than for a
hard lesson learned difficultly.
Win friends, not arguments.
One of the most beautiful motifs of the Christian is that of
the suffering servant; the righteous man sent to serve by suffering for the
sins of the world. Surely a conversation with a work colleague isn’t too much
to ask?
And yet, before the crucifixion and the resurrection, he
began by living with them, walking with them, talking with them. Live with
those you wish to convince. It will make you understand them better, enabling
you to convince them more easily. It will make them understand you better;
allowing them to see why agreeing with you might not be so dangerous.
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