New theistic chew toys wanted!

[Spongebob]

A really good online friend of mine is a philosophy professor at a Christian university. He's completely sympathetic to atheism. He just isn't an atheist. I love our exchanges. Most of the time, we don't butt heads. We try our best to see the other's POV.

There is a "charitable Christianity" that most atheists (myself included) tend to ignore when they criticize the religion. But I think it's for good reason. Most Christians don't practice this "charitable form" of the religion. THEY make all these Facebook and Twitter posts and say the stupidest things imaginable, and according to them, THAT'S what Christianity is. 

I find it best to put myself into two different "modes" when criticizing Christianity. A colloquial mode and a charitable mode. Sometimes one is appropriate, sometimes the other is. As an atheist, I think both interpretations of the religion are false. But a good criticism of one doesn't always translate to a good criticism of the other. Of course there are many more than these two modes one could adopt, but these two get the job done. There's really no sense in coming up with an infinitude of modes from which to argue. Maybe fundamentalism could be its own mode. To me, fundamentalism is the height of ignorance. Even more disdainful than "colloquial Christianity"... but, then again, fundamentalism is kinda mixed in with colloquial Christianity.

The intelligent Christians I mentioned before were quite embarrassed and disdainful of many other Christians, fundies for sure, and Catholics for that matter.  Although they sympathized with them for various reasons, I kept hearing them explain how wrong those people were about the religion they proclaimed to practice.  This was often a source of conflict between us because to me, he's describing at least 90% of all Christians, maybe more.

My favorite sport is to bring up religion while hanging out around a diverse group of Christians.  Get them going on a topic like predestination and then just sit back and enjoy.  Who needs atheists when you have other Christians around?

Second: the average person's interest in philosophy.

Didn't mean to browbeat anyone. In the final analysis, I'm kind of okay with the average person not giving two fucks about philosophy. After all, not everyone is interested in art from the Hellenistic period or 19th century literature... but such things are worthwhile to study nonetheless. Only a fool goes around thinking people should be faulted for not having interest in 19th century literature. Same could apply with philosophy. Philosophers take interest in parsing out abstract things that (seemingly) have no impact on anything anyone cares about.

But, by the same token, the average person wants to make general statements that are founded on ethical or metaphysical principles. And by no means are these principles uncontroversial. Yet folks want to brashly advance arguments using these controversial precepts as silent premises. In short, they want to say the kinds of things philosophers say... they just don't want to be careful about it. When I see this kind of thing, it reminds me how valuable that rigorous study of philosophy is.

I'm no philosopher but I'm keenly aware of my shortcomings.  I do know enough to be shocked by how little some people understand while they broadcast their homespun "logic" as if one could have mastered it by reading the editorial section of their local newspaper.