Indoctrination & Mental Gymnastics

[Glitch]

[robvalue]

Heya glitch

Wow, you did a pretty good job there from what I can see. You came at it from many angles, with lots of solid arguments. She is clearly really far gone, with those mental defences set up strong.

I'll have a think about any other arguments you could use. It may just be that she is unreachable. But you never know, she may absorb some of the arguments even if she appears to ignore them, and she may subconsciously think it over a bit. With someone that fundamental it will take a lot of time and patience!

I'll rack the old noggin

[watchamadoodle]

For me, history has been more persuasive than philosophy. Christians can always fall back on things like "the Lord works in mysterious ways" when confronted with evidence that the theology doesn't make sense. I've tried to learn as much as possible about the development of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity. It seems like different techniques work for different people.

[robvalue]

[Jenny A]

For me, history has been more persuasive than philosophy. Christians can always fall back on things like "the Lord works in mysterious ways" when confronted with evidence that the theology doesn't make sense. I've tried to learn as much as possible about the development of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity. It seems like different techniques work for different people.

That is a very good thought, and I highly recommend Bart D. Ehrman to the OP. He came from good Christian stock and worked his way to agnosticism through studying the OT and the historical Jesus. Of his books, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, would be best. He has a number of gooog youtube presentations, and is a Great Courses lecturer (I recommend, How Jesus Became God). All of the Great Courses series are ridiculously overpriced but about 20 % of them are on sale and therefore reasonably priced at any given time.

The thing is that he comes from what might be her point of view, rather than making a blatantly head-on attack.

[robvalue]

Yeah, getting a load of examples of how Christianity completely ripped off earlier mythologies may be good. It's just a voodoo patchwork doll of dead religions with a new coat on.

She has to say all the previous ones are false, yet obvious copied parts of them are now suddenly true in Christianity.

[Aoi Magi]

If she really thinks gawd speaks through people, show her the biblical contradictions and ask her why he is giving out contradictory and misleading info. You can use the few hundred doomsday prophecies too.

If she thinks only her true god does miracles, a quick google will give you a few million miracles from other religions.

[Minimalist]

Yeah. She sounds like a lost cause.

[Elskidor]

That pretty much sums up the majority of these types of debates. Too little too late.

[Exian]

You could have her study the origins of written language. More than likely, she probably never even considered that. She probably subconsciously assumes the Bible is so old and started somewhere near the beginning of time 6-7000 years ago. Hell, she might not even have a timeline worked out in her head. If you shine a little light on the time frame of human ingenuity, it might give her some wiggle room to actually think about how things must have come about.

I always knew about evolution an I accepted it as a Christian, but I kept the two words apart. When I started my search for God I was forced to connect the two worlds in my head. Thinking about the whole of human existence really makes the bible seem silly.

She probably isn't or won't be ready for that, though. Too far gone, as others have said.