Debate with a theist

Please read here for some interesting correspondence between myself and a fellow blogger named, David Smart, aka, Ryft, who challenged a comment I made on one of his posts. I invite you to read his original post (too long to quote here), and what follows is my initial comment to it, which was chided for its brevity (didn’t know that was a bad thing). Here is the paragraph to which I responded:

And we certainly ought to be ready to give an answer or a defense (pros apologian) when we are asked about the hope we possess—and that hope is nothing other than the faithfulness of Christ Jesus, whose perfect atoning sacrifice redeemed us from death and brought us to the eternal light of reconciliation with God. As those purchased by Christ in the covenant of grace we overflow with love and praise for God and all his handiwork, glorifying his name in everlasting thanksgiving. And all of it, that love and gratitude and hope, rests upon our sovereign Lord and Savior. And this should not be unfamiliar to someone like Oxley who has devoted so much time to the study of Scripture, especially in reference to this very passage which begins with the following statement, “Set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts.” In other words, not only is Jesus Christ the hope we possess but he is also the reason for it; so when we as Christians give an answer or a defense to those who ask, we will do so by setting apart Christ as Lord in our hearts in defending and confirming the gospel. Everything begins and ends with Christ Jesus, including our very reason; that is, we will not reason apart from him, but in everything set him apart as Lord.

And my response:

The third paragraph here (beginning with “And we certainly ought to be ready”) is a garbled mess of question begging and wishful thinking. Explaining the “hope” you possess in Christ isn’t good enough, since Muslims aren’t going to convince me of their hope in Allah either. And you admitted it here that Christ is your reason for hope. So you actually should provide a reason for why he’s your reason for hope. And good luck with that. Outside of your own desire for it to be true, there is scant evidence that Christ existed at all, much less that he was anything other than a peasant roaming the countryside. There is not a single contemporary source that confirms his existence. Base your hope on a guy for which there is no evidence outside of the Bible all you want.

He then proceeded to create a new post based on this titled, “Who said I am supposed to convince you?” After one round of posting, I felt he was taking awhile to respond to one of my replies, and he said church, work and family activities had tied him up. He finally replied. I replied back, he replied, I replied again, and after that, tumbleweeds wafting through cyberspace. In my last post, I even asked questions hoping to spur continued discussion, but just got silence. He will likely claim that he didn’t see a point in continuing the discussion for some reason, but my Spidey senses alert me to, perhaps, the real reason: that he had no argumentative foundation on which to stand.

Here was my last, debate-stopper reply:

Ryft,

I was actually responding to “arguendo,” not “non-sequitur.” I didn’t see anything remarkable about your use of the latter.

I think you missed the point. I mentioned Zeus as a hypothetical. I grant the fact that you personally may be different from other believers, in that you won’t attempt to help someone understand why Zeus does not exist. Kudos, I guess. But, am I to understand you correctly, that even when she approached you and wanted to tell you all about Zeus, you would let her to continue on in her infidelity to Yahweh? You wouldn’t mention a word about Jesus to her?

No, I don’t actually believe in Zeus, but I can pretend that he might exist to make an argument, if we assume Zeus has the same powers, attributes, etc., as Yahweh supposedly possesses. You actually do believe in God, however, so you don’t enjoy that liberty.

And some of us can’t read, “If Jesus is my Lord and Savior, then he is the reason for the hope I possess,” and automatically leap to the next statement.

I’ll concede the point that the passage from 1 Peter takes it for granted that Jesus actually exists. Fine. I’ve made the point about Jesus’ historicity (or lack thereof). But the first statement above assumes that there is something intrinsic about Jesus that would give someone reason for hope. Believers may say that that is (a) what the gospels demonstrate and (b) how Spirit does his “salvific” work. Having studied their claims carefully—their contradictions, historical inaccuracies and embellishments—I don’t trust the gospels as a thorough or trustworthy account of the events of the life of Jesus, nor as documents on which to base one’s life. You do, for some reason, so I’ll leave it at that.

As for the Spirit operating apart from the preaching of the gospel, in Acts 19, Paul in Ephesus comes across “some disciples” and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They had not heard of the Spirit, but only said they had received “John’s baptism.” Paul then said for them to believe in Jesus Christ and: “On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.” Here we have people believing in Jesus and being baptized in his name before the Holy Spirit came upon them, and it was only after Paul placed his hands on these twelve people did the Spirit work.

In Acts 8, in Samaria this occurs as well. The people believed and were baptized in verse 12, and it’s not until Peter and John arrive and lay their hands on them that the people of Samaria received the Spirit. I realize that baptism is a symbolic act—a public profession of faith, as the church often terms it—but these passages clearly say that the people believed in Jesus and were then baptized as an outward expression of their salvation.

Further, in Luke 11:13, Jesus says that people can receive the Spirit by asking the Father, without the necessity of preachments or hearing the word. And in verses 9-10: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” I realize believers, upon making this next statement, might (and have) say something like, “Well, you didn’t really believe,” or “did not wait long enough,” or “your heart was not ‘receptive’ or ‘ripe’ enough” or something similar. But I assure you there was a time when I took Luke 11:9-10 literally and asked repeatedly for a good decade. And like many, I did not find.

Does this prove it’s bogus? Perhaps not to you. But it suggests the following: that this reception of the Spirit was, at the least, illusory for someone who truly wanted to believe but simply could not for (a) lack of any personal testimony to its truthfulness and (b) lack of evidence that the Bible can be trusted.

I don’t say “debate stopper” with arrogance. Presumably, if Ryft had a reply he would have made it, or maybe it was his Christian honor that allowed him to let me get in the last word, and maybe he simply bowed out of the conversation. How noble. But nobleness, while  I appreciate that, doesn’t prove a thing as to my former points.