1. Point out to your respondent that he is painting with too broad a brush. Yes, some individual atheists are clearly intolerant, but atheism is not.
2. On the context issue, simply ask your respondent to explain why his/her context is appropriate, but yours is not. Biblicists use this all too often when they get uncomfortable with what are clearly statements of fact in the Bible. I mean, how is it even possible to take something like 'The priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle the blood seven times before the Lord' out of context?
3. This is almost exactly the same issue with #2 above - the most common defense that Biblicists make is that the Bible doesn't mean what it says. S/he concludes that Genesis conforms to biological evolution by simply asserting that all the bits in Genesis which do NOT so conform 'do not matter'. WHY don't they matter?
4. This is the easiest one. I'm an historian (by education, not by profession) and the evidence for the exile and Egypt is sparse at best. ASK for the evidence, and sources, and the qualifications of those sources.
Boru
2. On the context issue, simply ask your respondent to explain why his/her context is appropriate, but yours is not. Biblicists use this all too often when they get uncomfortable with what are clearly statements of fact in the Bible. I mean, how is it even possible to take something like 'The priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle the blood seven times before the Lord' out of context?
3. This is almost exactly the same issue with #2 above - the most common defense that Biblicists make is that the Bible doesn't mean what it says. S/he concludes that Genesis conforms to biological evolution by simply asserting that all the bits in Genesis which do NOT so conform 'do not matter'. WHY don't they matter?
4. This is the easiest one. I'm an historian (by education, not by profession) and the evidence for the exile and Egypt is sparse at best. ASK for the evidence, and sources, and the qualifications of those sources.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
