10 Questions Every Christian Needs To Answer.

[Neo-Scholastic]

1. How is the method by which you became a Christian reliable?

If reason applied to experience were not reliable then knowledge would not be possible. Nevertheless, I am human and prone to error.

2. Apart from church dogma, how can you know what happens when we die?

I consider the spiritual things Swedenborg saw and heard credible. YMMV

3. What if you and your silly bible are wrong and there is no heaven, hell or afterlife of any kind?

Whateverist, calling the Bible “silly” is a cheap shot. Even if the Holy Scriptures were fabricated by human imagination, they are still endlessly fascinating. Besides, answering the question requires clarifying exactly what you mean by wrong. Complete veracity about everything? Only fundamentalists, including atheist fundamentalists like Bart Ehrmann, hold that position. Most Christians consider it a sufficient guide for spiritual instruction and some, like Swedenborgians, look to the inner meaning below the surface.

4. If you are God's unthinking lacky, how can you call yourself moral? Do you really think morality is simply a question of rule following?

Straw man! moral behavior requires the exercise of reason.

5. Even if there is a God, you are obviously free to do what you want. The prisons are full of Christians. Do you or do you not believe God gave man free will?

There is no escape from freedom; the burden of choice is part of the human condition. In fact, choice, along with intellect, is what makes us human. Some people, including Christians, being human, choose poorly based on flawed reasoning.

6. If all you do is follow God's rules, how does your life have any meaning? What makes it your life?

Strictly speaking, meaning refers to the relationship between a sign and that which it signifies. So the marks C, A, & T can form the word the word “cat” that points to a certain type of animal. “C-A-T” is the sign that signifies all types of actual felines. Thus obedience to a principle can make someone’s words and deeds a sign that refers to some value. For example, a soldier’s valor refers something beyond himself, perhaps love of country or, if less noble, his ambition. For a Christian, a life of piety serves as a sign of God’s Grace. His life’s meaning comes from the relationship between the sign, his life of piety, and that to which it points, God’s Grace. "Preach the Gospel; sometimes use words." In the case of atheism, there are no transcendent principles, thus atheists cannot believe without contradiction that their lives have meaning (all protesting aside.)

7. Where did that which you believe created the universe come from? (And if anything can always have existed, why not the universe and all its prior conditions?)

Reality is eternal. The physical universe, on the other hand, displays accidental and contingent properties.

8. What about miracles? Aside from the most ridiculous claims, wouldn't most of what technology makes possible today have seemed miraculous to the ancients? So what's the big deal?

Miracles are not important as mere violations of physical law. Something odd and rare is simply something odd and rare. What IS important is what the miracles signify. Take any miracle and ask yourself what it contributes to the narrative.

9. What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris? Do you read anything else but the bible?

They’re a bunch of clowns. Hume, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus are more challenging. Are you assuming that Christians are ignorant of contrary opinions? Kinda prejudiced don’t you think? How many atheists have seriously studied Plotinus or Aquinas?

10. If there is but one God, then why does every society have a different religion? [Props to Jenny.]

A single bright light reflects of the various objects of a room in different ways. It all depends on the ability of a culture and individuals within that culture, to receive Divine Light.