One of the aspects of So The Next Generation Will Know that I was not able to cover with J. Warner Wallace was the chapter on how love trains. We ran out of time this time around, but it was the topic on one of the first interviews I ever did. In that interview, J. Warner Wallace discussed how we need to “Stop teaching students, start training them.” The acronym “TRAIN” is broken up into test, require, arm, involve, and nurture.
It is the test at the beginning that is often forgotten. Students often don’t realize how much they need to know until they have been shown how much they don’t know. We help students realize what they don’t know by exposing them to objections and alternate views from other religions and worldviews. One of the best ways to do this is by doing an atheist role-play. What does this look like exactly? Listen below as I describe the way I conduct an atheist role-play and response to some of the issues brought up from students.
Mentioned on the show:
- Are Genesis 1 and 2 contradictory creation accounts?
- WHY DO I BELIEVE IN THE TRINITY?
- Hemant Mehta: A Christian Bible Camp Brought in a Fake “Atheist” So Kids Could Stump Him
- A Response to Hemant Mehta’s Post about Stand to Reason’s Email
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think-well.org 
May 30, 2019 at 11:24 am
well, Ryan, creating an atheist strawman with such softball arguments won’t help your students much. You seem to forget, or perhaps not know, that many atheists have been Christians at one point and know their bible quite a bit more than most Christians do, as well as how to identify fallacies. For example, you seem to think that having a personal religious experience should be important, but as we know, most, if not all, theists make the same claims and even other theists don’t believe them. If you won’t accept the arguments other theists make when they are the same as your own, why would you think these work with people who don’t believe any of you?
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May 30, 2019 at 11:50 am
Thank you for the comment. Hopefully I can clear up a few things that it looks like you misunderstood.
First, you are assuming I am creating an atheist strawman based on 5 minutes out of a 90 minute talk. There is nothing that I say that creates false views of atheism. My opening comments bring up Bible contradictions that I have found on atheist websites, and I talk about how religion is based on place of birth which is an argument Richard Dawkins makes. I finish by saying there is no evidence for God which is what nearly every atheist claims, and I ask the students to give me evidence.
Second, they definitely are softball arguments. The problem is that even those intro arguments stump most students. This shows how much they really don’t know the Bible. However, I don’t want to talk forever in my intro and I try to keep it as short as possible. I focus on God, the Bible, and the nature of belief. We then spend 30-40 minutes discussing much deeper issues like morality, determinism vs free will, evolution, the big bang, and philosophy. This is not discussed in depth on my podcast.
Third, I have not forgotten that many atheists know the Bible better than Christians. In fact, I will often mention this to the students during the debrief time. They don’t know their Bible, and it is a problem.
Finally, during the role-play I point out that religious experience is NOT important. I say that everyone has a different experience and how they don’t believe others. I say pretty much exactly what you said in that they won’t accept arguments of other theists and so why would someone accept yours? So, I make the same point you do.
I hope this clears up any confusion. Don’t take my 5 minute intro that is meant just to start the conversation and assume that is the whole story. In fact, that would be a fallacy in itself.
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May 31, 2019 at 10:12 am
There was no reason to assume you do any of the things you’ve claimed you outside of your ‘cast. If you do these things, great! One thing I would suggest doing is have your students defend a religion other than their own. This is something like John Loftus’ “outsiders test for faith”, because it shows how the arguments for most, if not all religions, are the same.
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May 31, 2019 at 10:50 am
I definitely make my students defend a religion other than their own. That is what I do in my own classes. What I described here is the atheist role-play which I am invited different places to do in order to challenge Christian students.
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May 31, 2019 at 11:26 am
So, what happens when they realize that they are making the same arguments as Christianity does?
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May 31, 2019 at 11:53 am
Then they realize that they need to make better arguments. When we are claiming to have knowledge we need to make arguments that can support a justified true belief, not just a belief or feeling.
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May 31, 2019 at 12:22 pm
that’s true. The problem I see is that there are no better arguments. What do you think is the best argument to support the existence of the Christian god?
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June 4, 2019 at 7:55 am
I hesitate to give you the “best” argument for two reasons. First, which argument is better is subjective. Some people prefer one or are convinced by one more than another. Second, something can easily be rejected when only one argument is given. Think of a court case. If you only have one eye witness you can say that they are lying. When you only have the murder weapon you can say someone else used it. When you only have a video you can say it was edited. When you have all three it becomes much more powerful.
So, here are what I say are the top arguments for the Christian God which cumulatively go together to make a stronger case. I begin with the fact that you can even make an intelligent argument. 1) Argument from mind and consciousness. 2) Cosmological argument. 3) Moral argument 4) Argument from reason: laws of logic and mathematics. 5) Design argument. 6) The resurrection of Jesus. 7) Fulfilled prophecy.
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June 5, 2019 at 7:46 am
Well, then let me phrase it this way “what argument do *you* feel is the strongest for you, a believer, and what do you think is the strongest argument for a non-Christian?” Yep, the answer could be subjective.
In a court case, witnesses are always backed up by other evidence. it is never a one item or one claim process.
The things I find problematic with evidence is that most if not all religions present the same evidence in 1 through 5. Number 6 has no evidence supporting it e.g. no one noticed a day where there was a major earthquake, the sky darkened, and the dead walked around Jerusalem. Number 7 can be questionable since the supposed prophecies are very vague and some verses claims that Christians say are prophecies aren’t at all, some prophecy something entirely different and the Jews are sure that you are entirely wrong, with no more or less evidence than you have.
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June 5, 2019 at 8:22 am
The first five arguments are in order of my preference.
Not all religions present the same evidence in 1-5. These arguments would lead only to the theistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. This doesn’t create a problem because it gets one step closer to theism and evidence against atheism.
You say that #6 has no evidence, yet that goes against almost every scholar in a related field. Jesus’s death by crucifixion, burial, and believed appearances are evidence and they are accepted by the majority of scholars. How would the earthquake, sky darkening, and dead walking prove the resurrection false?
You say the prophecies are very vague? What about a virgin giving birth, being called out of Egypt, born in Bethlehem, ministry would begin in Galilee, none of his bones would be broken, they would cast lots for Jesus’s clothing, and be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver? Are these vague prophecies? Of course the Jews think I am wrong, does that mean I am?
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June 6, 2019 at 7:30 am
No, the argument would not and does not only lead to the “theistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity”. I’m not sure how much you know about Hinduism, Wicca, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, the religions of the Hopi, and other Native American tribes, etc, but they all have gods e.g. theism, and they all believe that their gods created the universe e.g. the cosmological argument and humans aka mind and consciousness, that they are the source of morality, source of logic and mathematics (only a version of the design argument), the design argument itself, and many of these religions claim fulfilled prophecy and prophets, and many of them claim miracles e.g. actions done by their god/s in response to humans.
You seem to be trying a common Christian claim that “all” people are “really” worshipping your god. That is just trying to claim that only good comes from Christianity, and since the gods are quite different, it doesn’t make any since what is okay with one god isn’t for another. That they do contradict each other is another bit of evidence to the position that humans have created the gods.
There are indeed some history scholars who think that there was a human who thought he was the Jewish messiah, but there are few historians who think that Jesus Christ, son of God was real or was resurrected. Many Christians try to cite the theory of a human Jesus but they don’t worship that character. What you need is evidence for the magical one. You have none. What you have are claims from one source, the bible, and historical mentions of what Christians believe, no evidence for the actual events. No one noticed the a major earthquake, the sky darkening and the dead walking around Jerusalem happening on one day as the bible claims. You weirdly seem not to know that is what your bible says was happening around the cruxifiction. That they would notice such major events would be supporting evidence that the resurrection happened as the bible claims. The fact that Christians disagree on even where the tomb is, is another piece of evidence that indicates that the story was made up. Do you think that the Roman occupiers would have noticed the Jews celebrating that their dead patriarchs were wandering around Jerusalem?
There is no virgin birth mentioned in the bible. The actual words are “young woman”, this is why Jews don’t believe in Christians attempts to change their stories. There is no evidence of a massacre, or of Mary and Joseph going to Egypt. Only one gospel, Matthew, mentions this, Ryan. It’s an attempt to try to draw analogies between the exodus and this supposed messiah. There is no evidence for the exodus either.
You also mention the “broken bones” prophecy. It’s not a prophecy, it’s from Numbers 9 where this god supposed tells Moses not to allow a few Israelites who were dealing with a dead body to break the bones of the lamb they were eating for Passover because they are “unclean”. Nothing about this is predicting anything at all. It’s an invention by Christians who want to make it seem that their messiah is the Jewish messiah. Retconning a story is easy when you are just making it match with something already written. This holds the same for the supposed “prophecy” of the casting of lots from Psalms 22. It’s also no a prophecy, nothing is being predicted. Christians often pick and choose things to try to create prophecy, but they ignore what they want when it doesn’t match. For instance, the Psalm also says “my bones are out of joint”. Where is this in your cruxifiction story? How are JC’s “bones on display” like the Psalm says? Why does the Psalm ask for rescue when that doesn’t happen in your story and your story *needs* a blood sacrifice? We have other problems that the claims of “piercing” hand and feet don’t work with how cruxifictions are actually done and this isn’t a consistent part of copies of the bible.
As for the thirty pieces of silver, again not hard to add things to a story to make it seem like prophecy. This verse from Zechariah is also not a prophecy since it predicts nothing and is about the split between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. This god of yours also says that it will raise up a shepherd which is quite a twit for a shepherd; do you want to claim that as your supposed savior since at least it is kinda like a prophecy claiming an action in the future? We also have the differing stories about what Judas did with the silver. He hanged himself after giving it back to the priests in one story, and kept the money and fell and burst open in another. How does one keep the silver and give it up at the same time?
Since you have no more evidence than the Jews there is no reason to think that either of you are right.
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