Pondering Apologetics ~ Why do all the canvassers have such terrible arguments?

[KingsGambit]

I think Adrift is onto something when he talks about zeal and newfound faith.

Having said that, I remember driving through the bar district of Kansas City on a Friday or Saturday night a couple years ago (no, I was not out drinking, just passing through) and when I was stopped in traffic, I overheard a street evangelist with a bullhorn. He was arguing from the anthropic principle (and actually in a winsome tone). I found this interesting, though I also don't think it would be more than seed planting, as drunk people are probably not the best audience for complex issues.

ETA: I have a somewhat related thread I'd like to start but it'll probably be for the Christian only areas, sorry.

[Sea of red]

All I see here is anecdotal slander.

You expected something different?

[Jaecp]

Yeah, I might need to start having a list of people pre-emptively banned from my threads. I hate the idea of that, but having like 2 good, solid on point posts in the first 10 is sadness

[Irate Canadian]

So,

Evangelists are pretty bad at their jobs.

By "Evangelists", for the purpose of this thread, I mean the people who are actually going out and doing grunt work of going out in public to try to convert people, save souls, whatever you want to call it. I try to keep definitions open when precision isn't super important.

Basically, every single person I've come across who had the motivation to actually get outside of their comfort zone and do the street team thing has been woefully unprepared for anyone who isn't a lapsed Christian ready to be cajoled into going to church.

Why is this?

From what I recall from my church when I was looking into missionary work as a teen, and from talking with people who have shown up on my doorstep or met on the street (I used to live in San Diego and would run into people from out of state coming to do stuff at the creationism institute there while on the light rail) the whole point of these kinds of outreach efforts are supposed to be about saving souls.

OTOH, 3/4ths of the US is explicitly Christian. These people are, by the tenets of evangelical's, already saved. So if the goal is to save souls, they need to actually go after people who don't already believe, but their entire arsenal is, again as far as I've seen, woefully inadequate.

This isn't, incidentally, just a problem with Christianity. I ran into this a little with wandering Buddhist monks in rural China, but not with the ones in the temples (who mostly just wanted to chill, talk about ethics to the extent we could since I don't speak much Mandarin, and explain the relationship between a belief in reincarnation and vegetarianism). Or, oh my, the Hari Krishna's I ran into while in Australia were just laughably bad at their job, but aside from the differences in content, it was not particularly any better or worse to describe Vishnu (or whatever) having the entrails of his enemies around his neck than to reiterate basic, evangelical protestant dogma to a non-believer. The strange thing for me is the process for why all the various people I've talked to (predominantly eva. Protestents, JW's. Mormons, HK's, some Buddhists [the ones in Hong Kong at least had some street magic sleight of hand that suckered in one of my Navy buddies while we were on shore leave] and a few minority religious [I used to leave near Portland, Or... so, yeah]

So, I suppose, the gist of this thread is the title.

"Why do religious canvassers have such terrible arguments?"

It's mainly young faith zeal Jaecp... I've noticed that over time, I've become a bit more mellow. Young (at-heart) members want to go out and spread the word, not realizing that they need to prepare themselves before doing so. I'm essentially repeating what Adrift said.

[Sea of red]

To be fair, I've seen atheists that make horrible arguments that they should feel embarrassed to repeat. Some theologians I've debated have been worthy adversaries, and I respect their point of view. The trick is to to find people that haven't simply read a few popular works and think they know everything, and instead look for those that actually read deep literature on the subject.

I'll take John Lennox, Ken Miller, Francis Collins, and Tim Keller over Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell.

[Irate Canadian]

To be fair, I've seen atheists that make horrible arguments that they should feel embarrassed to repeat. Some theologians I've debated have been worthy adversaries, and I respect their point of view. The trick is to to find people that haven't simply read a few popular works and think they know everything, and instead look for those that actually read deep literature on the subject.

I'll take John Lennox, Ken Miller, Francis Collins, and Tim Keller over Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell.

I understand Josh McDowell, but Lee Strobel?

[Bill the Cat]

No. Edmond Dantes' statement to Vampa is of the same nature as you needed. If you really think that "all" street evangelists are unprepared, then your sampling is quite poor. And you should get out more and increase your perspective.

[Sea of red]

I understand Josh McDowell, but Lee Strobel?

Same guy, different decade.

[Cow Poke]

In other words when you are young in your faith, you really don't know what you're talking about, but somehow you want to share your ignorance with others anyway.

This caused me to laugh so hard I scared Jake!

Jimmy -- you are the very POSTER CHILD for "sharing your ignorance anyway".

Here..... let's try another version....

In other words when you are a wild-eyed liberal, you really don't know what you're talking about, but somehow you want to share your ignorance with others anyway.


(Sorry

I just found this incredibly ironic.)

[Jaecp]

I understand Josh McDowell, but Lee Strobel?

Oh, eww, quite possibly one of the most embarrassing apologetics books I ever read was while I was active duty military and I'd stocked up on a bunch of books before the 2007 surge was one of his. C4F or C4J, whichever one came out second. It had the token atheist/agnostic interview at the front and then a bunch of softball interviews for the rest.

Myself and two other atheists just had a field day color coding the book with some highlighters that I'd gotten from Borders beforehand. I'd bought them for the bible, snagged a copy of the NSRV (section headings <3) before I left, along with a copy of the Koran, a handful of books from the prominent atheist writers in 07, some of the prominent "counter" books, and some books of apologetics.

I'd rather read the Koran again than something by Strobel.

Incidentally, I wish I had that particular copy of the bible still. One of the other two people that helped me go through with the highlighters gave it to his wife since he had recently deconverted from Catholicism and was trying to save his marriage.

dumb atheist arguments

Sure, although I'd say that its pretty rare to actually see that kind of stuff in person. Threads about in person evangelism.

I've had engaging discussions with Christians before as well. The chaplains, in particular, except for the southern baptist one ("Admiral's derive their authority from God" -Lt. CMDR blowhard :-/) were always a good talk on the boat. I was a deckhand for awhile and there was about a 50% chance during any given 20-24 watch that I'd be able to spend 10-30 minutes chatting with the chaplain before he did the evening prayer and since this was 2006-8 during my deployments the nuAtheism was a pretty popular discussion topic

[Jaecp]

Oh, and regarding the whole "young believers have more passion than sense" response, yeah, Adrift/KG/etc I get that, but what I don't get is if this is such an obvious response and, well, people have been at this evangelism thing for awhile then why isn't there either

1. Some temperment by other members of the church, ie, its not good for soul saving to have unqualified people possibly bias others away

or,

2. A guide of some sort that isn't the exceptionally boring/bad microwave dinner of evangelism stuff like Liar/Lunatic/Lord or "have you ever sinner" stuff that people come out when they step off their gut and go mass market.

[Adrift]

Oh, and regarding the whole "young believers have more passion than sense" response, yeah, Adrift/KG/etc I get that, but what I don't get is if this is such an obvious response and, well, people have been at this evangelism thing for awhile then why isn't there either

1. Some temperment by other members of the church, ie, its not good for soul saving to have unqualified people possibly bias others away

That does happen. I went to a church where the pastor was vocally against it, and mocked it as bad form. He encouraged evangelism in other, less hokey (in my opinion) ways.

or,

2. A guide of some sort that isn't the exceptionally boring/bad microwave dinner of evangelism stuff like Liar/Lunatic/Lord or "have you ever sinner" stuff that people come out when they step off their gut and go mass market.

Those guides do exist. I've seen them. Some of them are even relatively popular. But we have something like, what, 60 million evangelicals in the U.S.? It'd be an impossible task to get them all on the same page. Honestly, you should be more surprised that the type of canvassers you're complaining about in your OP aren't more common.

[Spartacus]

That does happen. I went to a church where the pastor was vocally against it, and mocked it as bad form. He encouraged evangelism in other, less hokey (in my opinion) ways.



Those guides do exist. I've seen them. Some of them are even relatively popular. But we have something like, what, 60 million evangelicals in the U.S.? It'd be an impossible task to get them all on the same page. Honestly, you should be more surprised that the type of canvassers you're complaining about in your OP aren't more common.

Catholics have an authoritative structure- a Pope and a hierarchy- and even we can't get everybody on the same page. I can't imagine how hard it is to manage evangelicals in large numbers.

[Adrift]

Catholics have an authoritative structure- a Pope and a hierarchy- and even we can't get everybody on the same page. I can't imagine how hard it is to manage evangelicals in large numbers.

Well la dee da, mr. fancy pants Catholic.

[Spartacus]

Well la dee da, mr. fancy pants Catholic.

My 2000th post in the new TWeb was a very brief rant against Jack Chick-style proselytizing. I figured I'd make my 2001st a mildly pretentious one about the general superiority of Catholicism