Pints With Aquinas - 85: How to argue without seeming like a crazy person, with Randal Rauser

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 85. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with St. Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we'll ask him about arguing, and how effective it is, and what we should watch out for when trying to convince non-believers of the truth of Christianity. G'day, welcome back to Pines with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today, around the bar table, I am joined by my good friend, Dr. Randall Rouser. Randall is a Baptist. He is a Canadian. He has his PhD. He teaches theology in a seminary up in Alberta. Really terrific guy. And this is a really fun discussion too. It's about an hour long. I've been telling those of you who support me on Patreon that I'm going to have some of these longer episodes where we can

just have a drink and have a discussion. And a lot of the stuff we talk about today has to do with arguing, how effective it is. You know, we talk about St. Thomas Aquinas' disputed questions, where Aquinas would actually pose questions and arguments against his own position, as good as he could, as well as he could. And how this is called steel manning as opposed to straw manning. That's actually a term I learned in today's interview. It's really great. I think you're really going to enjoy it. The discussion doesn't trail off. It only gets better and better. At least that's my thought. So please enjoy today's discussion and then spread

the word about Pints with Aquinas. If you want, you know, I'm just saying it's a suggestion. You can take it or leave it. Also, big thanks to everybody who supports Pints with Aquinas on Patreon. If you want to support, you should, because I'll give you lots of free stuff, like a Pints with Aquinas beer stein, which you can't get anywhere else on the web. I'll send you an upcoming copy of my new book. Hopefully I'll sign it. That'll be cool. That's on Aquinas' five ways. All sorts of free stuff I want to give you for becoming copy of my new book. Hopefully I'll sign it. That'll be cool. That's on Aquinas' Five Ways. All sorts of free stuff I want to give you for becoming part of the Pints with Aquinas tribe. So if you want to do that, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support, and yeah,

then you can donate whatever you want. That'd be great. All right. No question and answers today. Sorry, folks. It's a long episode. I think you're going to love it. Here we go. Randall Rouser. How's it going? It's going pretty awesome. Good, good. How's it going with you, brother? It's going well.

It's going well. I told you that I would only do this interview with you if you drank with me. And so tonight, I'm about to open this bottle here. Texas whiskey. Texas blended whiskey. Nice. I don't know if it'll be good or not. We're about to find out. What are you drinking? Well, I grew up in the southern Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. There was a brewery near where I grew up called Okanagan Spring, so I'm having their Brewmasters Black Lager.

Oh, that sounds good. If I'm going to drink a beer, it needs to be like stout. Is that what this is? Well, it's a lager. It's not a stout. Oh, right. You said black lager, yeah. It's like a dark ale or something. Yeah, I'm not a fan of straw lagers like Coors Light or something.

I find that to be quite bland. Yeah. Hey, we've had you on the show before, and you're one of my favorite people to speak to when it comes to these topics of God and apologetics and stuff. But maybe quickly introduce yourself to our listeners once again. Yeah, my name is Randall Rauser. I'm a Baptist Canadian evangelical apologist, theologian, professor at a seminary, and I've written several books.

professor at a seminary, and I've written several books. I like to think a lot about questions of apologetics, worldview, credible cultural engagement with skeptics, and equipping Christians for a post-Christian world. Yeah, it was very well put. Now, what's the deal with Baptists and drinking alcohol? Because over the last couple of months, I've had two Protestants buy me and ship me a bottle of bourbon. I don't know if that's their way of trying to get me to convert or what. What's the deal with Baptists and drinking? Well, historically, Baptists have tended to be teetotalers, or in other words, meaning that we abstain from alcohol, in fact. So, I actually recently spoke at the Saskatchewan, in fact. So, I actually recently spoke at the Saskatchewan, the Saskatoon Archdiocese.

They have something called Diocesan Days. And so, I was teaching to equip laity and clergy there. And one of my jokes that I opened with was, what's the difference between a Catholic and a Baptist? Well, Catholics greet each other in the liquor store. That's very good. Now, hang on, You were speaking at a Catholic diocesan event? I was. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, you said historically Baptists have been teetotalers. Historically, Catholics have been drunks.

So there you go. Maybe we can meet in the middle. That was a joke. It was a bad joke. We'll meet in the middle. We'll keep sober. Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. Well, before we talk about what we're going to talk about today,

which is essentially argumentation, which, of of course Thomas Aquinas is big on. I'm not sure if you know much about this, Randall, but Thomas usually takes, his writings take the form of disputed questions. And apparently what these were, were originally events held at universities where the professor would actually state the topic he was going to defend. And then a bunch of people came to this event and he would field questions and respond to them. And I think part of it was being able to say your opponent's position back to him before responding to it. And that's why Aquinas is so often misunderstood in the Summa Theologiae. People often quote him as if it were him saying it when he's just quoting his opponent. But often he quotes them much better than they do. And I thought to myself, how cool would have that been? Maybe in

the next presidential election, we can do that. That would totally change everything if Trump would say to Hillary, okay, so let me see if I've understood you correctly, and then rehash what she said. Would have been a different kind of debate. You're not suggesting you want Hillary to run again, are you? No, I'm not suggesting that. Okay, because you did say the next election. Only if I wanted Trump to win again would I want Hillary to run again. I'm just going to steer clear of the whole politics thing myself. Yeah, because you're big on this online.

Oh, well, it's one of my many pastimes. I mean, you tweet about it. You tweet about it. You tweet about it. You get a lot of pushback? Well, it depends what I've tweeted. You know, it is, I mean, I think we should probably segue back to the whole disputation thing, because I have to say tweeting is about the furthest you can get from the old-fashioned disputation. And if there's anything we need, it's more old-fashioned disputation and less tweeting.

Because as you said, Thomas begins by presenting the arguments of his opponent. And in contrast to dialogue today, these are not weak strawmans of his opponent. The complement or the contrast to strawmanning is called steelmanning. It's a lesser-known term. But this means to present the views of your opponent in their strongest possible form. And that's the way that Thomas Aquinas begins in his disputations, which I think is probably one of those reasons that those passages end up getting quoted. They're well stated. Yeah, I've never heard that before.

Steel manning. That's really cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know. So the disputations. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I'm just going to say, I know that... I've written your...

Yeah, you've written stuff for atheists. And what was that book you wrote recently about dialoguing with atheists? Well, the one you wrote was basically about, let's have more cordial dialogue. Let's actually try to understand each other instead of shouting at each other. And you pointed out how Christians have been, you know, just like atheists have tended to put Christians in a box and shout them down and tell them they were stupid. Sometimes Christians in the past haven't acted much better. What was that book? 2011, I wrote a book called You're Not As Crazy As I Think. And the subtitle was Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions. And if that was a problem in 2011, it's even more of a problem today.

Right. Yeah, someone recently commented on one of my YouTube videos. My podcasts come out as YouTube videos as well. I got to read this to you because it was a case in point about how Christians can be just as volatile as atheists. All right, so this guy, listen to this. I mean, and what stinks is like we talk about atheist echo chambers you can clearly have christian echo chambers as well and it looks like my youtube channel might be uh yeah might be a victim to that it says he says this as an ex-atheist i say an atheist is the dumbest most stupid most shallow and most ridiculous thing you could ever possibly be shintoism and hind Hinduism make infinitely, capital letters, more sense. And atheism makes you stupid and more prone to depression, suicide,

alcoholism, oh, sorry, alcoholism and more. And he goes on. And what stinks is five people have liked this comment and they clearly follow me. No, no, I don't want anything to do with this kind of guy. This isn't dialogue. This isn't steel manning, right? Like this is straw manning. No, no, I don't want anything to do with this kind of guy. This isn't dialogue. This isn't steel manning, right? Like this is straw manning. Yeah. If you disagree with me. I like the way that you read that because it sounded like a Black Friday ad. Thank you. It's like,

atheists are stupid, stupid, stupid, 50% off one day only. That's really nice. You know, you make a big mistake if you read YouTube comments. I read a YouTube comment not too long ago. This was actually from an atheist, but they were saying that I should be killed. Wow. So I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, I'm going to kind of avoid YouTube comments. I have to say for the comment that you just read, it is so over the top. It is, first of all, the classic example of a trolling comment. In other words, an internet troll, somebody who posts provocative things online just to get a reaction. And that's pretty clearly what that is. And we have to decide which are the conversations worth having and where are the

points where people are simply not ready to have a meaningful dialogue. And we have to be discerning about that and not throw our proverbial pearls before swine in terms of engaging in what are ultimately going to be dead end and unproductive conversations. And that sounds like at this point, it would be one of them. Right. Absolutely. The article I sent you from the Summa, because we were discussing, you know, how do we chat about arguing and why it's good and what are the pitfalls. I sent you an article of Thomas Aquinas from the Secundae Secundae question 10, article 7. And this question is whether one ought to dispute with unbelievers in public. believers in public. And Aquinas says, yes, but you have to consider two things, and we can get into that if you want. But I thought, like, you know, I'm not sure what you think about. His main point is, like, yeah, we should dispute, but we have to be aware of those around us. Like, if somebody is really weak in the faith and has never kind of encountered objections,

and those objections might eventually be unsound, but have never encountered them, that might actually rattle their faith. And it seems to me like those are the sorts of things we might say about our children, right? Like maybe when our children are like six and seven, we don't want them being exposed to say like Richard Dawkins' YouTube videos or something. But maybe we've come into a whole different time, right? Where like it's the world of YouTube. Like you cannot avoid these sorts of, you sorts of opposing arguments to whatever position you or your parents hold. Yeah, I think, first of all, I think we have to kind of always ask ourselves, who is the audience that we're trying to reach?

And is this going to be a productive medium for reaching that audience? I used to live for a couple of years in London, England when I was doing my PhD. And Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park is a famous place where people go to have interactions with one another and they will get on a bench or a stool or something. And then they'll just start shouting and bellowing out and try to attract a crowd. And you'll have Muslims and Christians there and you'll have people of different political persuasions and socioeconomic perspectives and philosophy all in this area. And they're all trying to attract an audience and say loud, provocative things. And I think in Speaker's Corner, the Internet often is like a Speaker's Corner. And there's actually not a lot of open, thoughtful dialogue.

There's a lot of shouting going on, trying to get attention. Did you ever do that? I never did that. Are you kind of tempted to? No, no, that's I would say that's not me. I did. I did like listening, though, sometimes, especially to the Muslim guys. They were really into it. And then you get the really fundamentalist Christian anti-Muslim guys. And that could that could be interesting. But I'll tell you, there's not a lot of bridge building usually in those contexts. Now here's the thing though is so who am I trying to reach when I'm in a conversation or dialogue and if I'm I could be trying to reach the person I'm in dialogue or

debating with or I could be trying to reach the people who are listening into this debate and depending on whether I'm trying to reach that guy or reach the audience that's listening in or all of them, I might reason differently. I might try to be a little more persuasive to that individual if I was trying to reach him. Or if I'm trying to reach the audience and not him, I might be less worried about persuading him and I might be more inclined to show that he's got some real fundamental inadequacies in his position. So I think that one of the things we need to ask at the outset is who am I trying to persuade? Yeah, I think of like public debates, you know, William Lane Craig, classic debates,

and I know you've done debates yourself. I imagine very often when you go into a public debate, your intention isn't to help this person change their mind. That's not the first foremost thing on your mind. You're trying to maybe expose the flaws in this person change their mind. That's not the first foremost thing on your mind. You're trying to maybe expose the flaws in this person's argument for the audience that's watching you, right? And to make your case in a rational way. Yeah, it's just to leave, Greg Kokel would say, to put a little pebble in a person's shoe. So, if they're going to leave that interaction and weeks or months later, they're going to have this little nagging thought about some issue that was raised during that conversation. That's the most likely what's going to happen.

I mean, this is something I had to learn over time is that people don't change their worldviews overnight. I remember you telling a story about the bloke you were running with, I think maybe inging beside this guy and we struck up a conversation, discovered that he was an atheist. So I dropped this three-step argument on him, which is, I think, a logically valid argument with plausible premises. So in other words, well, it says everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. And for an atheist to accept that there has to be some cause, some reason why the universe exists, would be a pretty big concession, I would think. So I was aiming for that. And he didn't dispute or deny the premises. He agreed that everything that began to exist had a cause and the universe began to exist. So I said, well, there's your conclusion.

Yet he wouldn't accept the conclusion. And I was at the time befuddled and frustrated that my argument had come up short because he accepted the premises but wouldn't follow me home to the conclusion. And it was only later on that I began to realize what should be obvious, which is that people don't become atheists or theists typically because of one argument. It's a process or a journey. Has that ever happened to you, Randall, where someone, where you've agreed with the premises but couldn't accept the conclusion, just like this bloke did with you? Oh, I think there have been many things like that. Me too.

Me too, I think. Yeah, I've had to work them out on my own. Sometimes it's been a matter of me trying to, again, steel man the objections to the faith on my own, and then work them through. Try to be a better advocate for atheism than the atheist is. That's right. So that you don't have to worry about any atheist you're going to meet because you've already thought through those arguments. Yeah. Yeah, I think if people have ever tried to convince me against a position I held,

I think my default reaction to that internally would be something like, I'll speak to so-and-so, and he'll be able to answer that. And I just sort of like prolong it. It's my way of sort of diffusing the tension and not really having to deal with that question then and there on the spot, if that makes sense. Well, it reminds me of Augustine, right? When he was a Manichean, before Augustine became a Christian, he kept having all these objections rising to the Manichean view of reality. And all the Manichees would say to him, would talk about this great teacher that would come. And when that teacher came, that teacher would clear up all Augustine's questions. And when Augustine finally met the

teacher, he was disheartened to realize he knew more than this teacher did. And that was the steps he took to move away from the Manichean religion. And I always think if there had been a Manichean apologist that could have met his questions, can you imagine how history would have been different? Yeah, absolutely. Here's another question for you. Have you ever changed somebody's mind in an argument, like right then and there where they haven't had to go away and think about it? Well, I can't remember specific examples, but I do remember people that I persuaded people. It's happened in my blog, for example. a face-to-face interaction with other people listening in is that on a blog, here's someone anonymously commenting and they don't have to feel threatened in the same way that they would if they were in a live setting. So, it's more disarming. That's what I think is great about

these podcasts as well because we actually have like Protestant listeners. We have at least a few atheist listeners because I get comments from them. There's something like super personal about a podcast because I mean, you put in those earphones, you go for a run or whatever you're doing, and we're right there in your world. But as you say, you don't have to be defensive. And so it allows you perhaps to hear it in a way that you wouldn't be able to hear it if we were right in front of you. Which brings us back to the disputation and as valuable as a disputation is for laying out arguments for a position and just helping you to begin to digest and move into it in a deeper analytical way, disputations are not great persuasive tools generally, but they can lay a foundation for persuasion.

Yeah. Well, I want to do two things as we go throughout this podcast. The first thing is I want you to tell us of this analogy that I heard you use once, which has stuck with me. And it's that analogy of those deep-seated beliefs we have as opposed to the trivial beliefs and the analogy to the vacuum cleaner. It's brilliant. I love it. And then I want to get on to this topic of how sometimes, we'll talk about it, but that video that you did recently about the 9-11 conspiracy and how you made that analogous to the Christian apologist. But I want to get to

that as well. But before we do, do you mind if we talk about the deep-seated versus trivial beliefs? I do not mind. Good. So, the illustration to which you refer, it is in fact a way of trying to illustrate why it is that people are generally resistant to changing their beliefs on major issues like worldview issues. And I make the illustration with respect to an analogy. So imagine that your spouse asks you to go get the red vacuum cleaner from the storage locker. Well, if the red vacuum cleaner is in the front of the storage locker, you're not going to be particularly resistant to getting the vacuum

cleaner. But if that vacuum cleaner is in the very back of the storage locker, that would require you to remove most of the items in the storage locker in order to access the vacuum. And if that's the case, you're going to be much more resistant to retrieving that vacuum. In fact, you'll probably suggest to your spouse, can we borrow a vacuum from someone else? Can we use a broom instead? Is there some other way that we can avoid having to empty the entire storage locker? Well, when it comes to this atheist that I was jogging along with 20 years ago, here I'm presenting an argument for God's existence, which is akin to challenging him to go get the vacuum cleaner. And he's going to

be resistant to the conclusion of that argument because for him to change his belief on such a fundamental issue in his worldview would require him to pull out most of the beliefs and re-examine and refit most of the beliefs in his worldview, in his belief system, and then put them back into the storage locker. So it's no surprise that he's going to be pretty resistant to changing his belief on theism until he can begin to work some of this out and become convinced that he really does need to retrieve the vacuum cleaner at the back of the storage locker, or in other words, change from being an atheist to a theist. So that's a way of just conveying that worldview transformation is a complicated matter. These are beliefs that are at the fundamental core of what

philosophers would say is our noetic structure or a structure of beliefs about the world. If you change something there, usually people are resistant. And that's not an irrational response. I mean, that is a rational response. Let me give you like a couple of examples of how that might play out in my life as I just trying to apply this to myself personally, right? So, like the idea, the example of a trivial belief, so the vacuum cleaner at the front of the storage locker belief would be, suppose I thought that, since you're a Canadian, if I thought that Toronto was the capital of Canada, and you corrected me and said, Ottawa, I'm not going to put up any resistance, right? I'm like, oh, okay, it's Ottawa. Whereas,

if you gave me compelling arguments to think that, you know, while the Catholic Church has a lot of truths that it teaches, but that I should really side with Protestantism or however you would define your position. And suppose I felt myself really inclined to agree with you. All of a sudden, I would be bombarded by the realizations that, you know, a lot of my, quite frankly, a lot of my income depends on me being a Catholic sort of commentator and speaker and these sorts of things. What would I tell my parents? You know, what would that do to my kids? So, all of these obstacles immediately rear up before I can even, perhaps, and I hope this isn't true of me, but I think it's plausible to think, but before I've even been able to assess the arguments sort of rationally and clear-headedly.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think that that shows an admirable degree of intellectual honesty and self-awareness that we can recognize the social implications of changing our worldview on a particular issue can be really impactful. They can be existentially significant, and that's going to be one reason why we're particularly resistant to doing so. There's just one example that haunts me to some degree, which I mentioned in one of my books, and this was a case where a two parents uh the fbi did an investigation on their children and recorded their children talking to an undercover fbi agent in which the children were wanting to hire this agent who they thought was a undercover assassin wanting to hire him to murder their parents for money. And the FBI recorded this

conversation. They took these two sons to court, and the parents refused to listen to the recording. And, you know, on the one hand, I can say, well, that's so irrational that they would insist their sons are innocent, and they would refuse to listen even to the recording. But on the other hand, I have to think, what would it do to my worldview to realize that my own flesh and blood, my own sons were planning to kill me so I can understand and at least have some sympathy with the reaction of the parents, even if I don't think that they were being rational in their response? Right. Now, the one thing you and I aren't saying, Randall, is that because people are deeply invested in particular opinions and beliefs, we should therefore give up, right, apologetics and

argumentation. That's not what we're saying, is it? No, what we're saying is we should have a proper expectation of what apologetics can possibly do. I mean, it's the same thing like when people want a miracle cure for something, when they're always looking for that magical weight loss gimmick, that they can lose weight and be healthy without having to control their diet and exercise. Well, you're probably going to be disappointed. And it's the same thing with apologetics. I had unrealistic expectations 20-some years ago about what apologetics does. Now I have a better recognition. What apologetics does is it allows you to be clearer in your thinking of what you believe, to be able to articulate it hopefully winsomely and charitably

to others, to be able to address objections that can satisfy the intellectual questions of the Augustans out there, and also answer the skeptics, thereby strengthening the faith of those within the community and hopefully removing obstacles to faith for those outside the community. Yeah, that's really well put. Now, I want to get to this video that you shared with me recently, and I want to let you explain it. But the basic gist of it is we can know, you know, everything. We can know scripture back to front. We can know all of the arguments of all of the philosophers. We can be completely, even charitable, right? We can be as charitable as we need to be,

and yet still be completely ineffective in changing a person's mind. And that's where this video comes in. Great, great setup. One thing I want to say as well before I get directly to the video, but I think it relates to it, is how important we need to, 1 Peter 3.15 is all the time to have a reason for the hope within, but to share it with gentleness and with respect. One of the biggest objections to Christianity, and I'll give you an example here, is the problem of evil. But I've said to my students, if I had the choice to give you every argument for theodicy, in other words, every argument to answer intellectually the problem of evil, or to give you emotional intelligence and compassion to be with those

who suffer. Ten times out of ten times, I will give you the compassion and emotional intelligence to be with those who suffer, because that will be far more transformative in most cases in bringing people into the faith and strengthening them in the faith than simply having arguments. So whatever we want to say, if we want to be persuasive to people, we can never underestimate the importance of character. Now, and love. I mean, you could have, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, if you have every argument for God's existence, but have not love, you are a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Now, with that said, let's segue to that video. What I've observed over the years is that you can have, as you've said, all of these arguments, and yet you present them, and there is this wall you meet with some contemporary skeptics outside the church.

And so this short video was a way of contextualizing and interpreting this response. And I give it an analogy, which is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. So I talk about how I got into conversation a few years ago with a fellow about 9-11 conspiracy theories and how I was quite dismissive of them. And this fellow responded, he says, well, actually, there is good evidence that 9-11 was an inside job from the American government. And I made the mistake of saying, oh, really, what kind of evidence? And dismissively, and then he launched into this 15-minute argument where he talked about nanothermite traces and the collapsed pattern of the buildings and some shady foreign interests that were behind, as he thought, behind this and connections with government and foreign policy, X, Y, Z. And at the end of it, I mean, I didn't know how to respond to any of this, and I still don't know really what nanothermite is. But the interesting thing was at the end of

that, he had presented what seemed to be a coherent presentation of a 9-11 conspiracy truther position. But where it left me was even more incredulous, even more skeptical, even more incredulous, even more skeptical, viewing him as even more crazy, to use the colloquial term. And the reason was because I was already initially not in a place to consider that as a live option. Right. Let's define that, would you, Randall? Yes. So, I use the term, the familiar term in sociology, which is plausibility structure. Now, plausibility structure is just the set of background beliefs that we hold, a person holds, by which they judge the face value plausibility of a truth claim. So, for example, if you are a Christian, then if somebody tells you that their father-in-law

was healed of a disease, that's within your plausibility structure. You'll say, okay, that's possible. I'm open to that as a possibility. If you're an atheist and this person says their father-in-law was healed by God through prayer, you'll be very skeptical because that's not part of your plausibility structure. You don't believe God exists. You don't believe God answers prayer. So when you want to present arguments for a particular worldview, you have to be attendant to the background plausibility structure. Because the danger is, if you start dropping arguments on a person, but they're not yet in a position even to consider your worldview as a plausible option, then the arguments you make can make you look even more ridiculous, implausible,

crazy, just like my response to this 9-11 conspiracy theorist. Or fanatical might be a word too. I haven't told you this yet, but my dad is actually something of a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. I remember being at home and he's got a pile of books and it was just like you said. I thought, come on, dad, this is crazy. But that was the mistake I made because he is far more invested in this issue than I am. And therefore, if we were, let's say my dad and I, or your friend and you were to get into a public debate about this, you know, like your friend might win, unquote that is to say they might have all the arguments you don't know how to answer and all of the objections you come up with they could answer

and yet you still don't find yourself moved at all and and nor nor did i when i chatted with my dad same kind of dilemma that for example the young earth creationist finds themselves in yeah they will they will have all these arguments for their view, critiquing evolution, the age of the earth, or whatever else. And whatever we think of their arguments is really neither here nor there for this conversation. My only point is, those who are not young earth creationists are going to not just consider that as an option. It'll just be implausible. Let's make it easier, though. There's people on the internet who think the earth is flat, It'll just be implausible.

Let's make it easier, though. There's people on the internet who think the earth is flat, right? Like they actually have reasons that they give to think the earth is flat. Have you heard of these people? Yeah, yeah, the Flat Earth Society kind of people. Right, so we're not going to, I'm pretty sure there won't be too many people listening to this podcast who are part of the Flat Earth Society. But let's say, like I think to myself, oh my goodness, like Aristotle, you know, refuted this in his work on the heavens, you know, like this isn't, this isn't. So, I think, well, let me get into an argument with them. But I might be absolutely trounced.

And that's in part because it is so implausible to you at the outset that you have not invested the time to understand the evidence and arguments that could be given in favor of the position. That's exactly right. So, that is the challenge for the Christian apologist, especially in some contexts, I put it by describing our contemporary age as the age of the flying spaghetti monster. And for those of your listeners who are not familiar with that, Bobby Henderson was a physics student back in 2005. He first of all published a satirical letter criticizing intelligent design theory by saying, well, if you're going to invoke a designer, why not invoke a flying spaghetti

monster? And then he ended up writing an entire book on this back in 2005, which became a New York Times bestseller. And it's a critique of intelligent design theory, but not really a critique. It's a satirization. It's a parody. It's just making fun of it. But it also becomes a broader critique or parody of religion generally. And when you're in an age where the apologist and the beliefs they represent are parodied, are made fun of, like the flying spaghetti monster, well, that makes it almost impossible just to leap into serious apologetic dialogue and debate because people are not taking you seriously.

You know, William Lane Craig discussed this in the opening chapters of his book, Reasonable Faith, if you remember this. He says that, you know, evangelization happens within a milieu. And, you know, you think of the Hare Krishna people that you see in the street, there again, you know, like, I am not open, quite frankly, to any evidence they propose because they kind of seem crazy to me. And it's just like you're saying, we're just secularism, but I should say a sort of a non-committal religious perspective where I'm spiritual but not religious, the religious nuns, in other words, N-O-N-E-S, people who have no religious affiliation, they don't really have any doctrine, but they believe maybe there's something out there. When those kinds of

perspectives become more widespread, and there is a general skepticism toward dogmatic doctrinal religious claims, the claims of Baptists or Catholics, then it just creates a background skepticism and increasingly. So it's not just the atheists, in other words. This is a general cultural skepticism. And I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is sort of emblematic of the challenge. Some of the other challenges, well, comparing God to Santa Claus or Thor, Odin, or some extinct religious perspective, those are all just ways of making the religious perspective look implausible and even ridiculous. Yeah. So, to our listeners right now, hopefully they've made the connection that when we're

talking about this 9-11 conspiracy theorist, you wait, Randall, I'm sure we do have 9-11 conspiracy theorists listening to this who will never listen to again, listen to this again after the show. But we're basically saying that the Christian, you know, as well informed as he is, can appear like this. And so, yeah, speak to that. And then what is one to do? Well, and let me just say one thing, because since I posted this video, I've had 9-11 conspiracy theorists as well come out to me and say, hey, don't diss me. The point is, however, that 9-11 conspiracy theorists can hopefully benefit from this analysis as much as anyone, because this is simply a recognition that we all need to be attendant to the role of

plausibility structures when we want to persuade people of our perspective, whatever that perspective is. Now, how we go about addressing – But we can't be open to everything, obviously. I know you're not saying that because, I mean, people could come out and say the Holocaust never happened. I mean, like how much time do I need to invest in listening to the arguments of Holocaust deniers? You know what I'm saying? It's almost like just like a part of being a rational function human being is deciding what's worth investigating and what isn't. Oh, sure. We all have to make those decisions. And we have a variety of ways of making them.

For example, we generally defer to experts. So if there is a consensus of experts in the field, and consensus doesn't mean unanimity, but usually we're talking 90 or 95 percent. If 95 percent of experts, recognized experts in a given field, say a particular view, endorse it, then all things being equal, it's more reasonable than not to go with that view. And that general kind of principle where you defer to a consensus provisionally, that's a pretty good rule of thumb. Obviously, it's not infallible. Now, it's interesting that you raise, for example, Holocaust denial. Why would you ever bother with that? Well, I think you would bother with that if there was someone you cared about

that was involved with those kinds of perspectives, for example. That would be a context in which you would invest time to try to winsomely persuade that person that what they were viewing, what they were believing or getting sucked into was not helpful and healthy. Pete Right. So, analogously, the atheist might now take a concern in Christianity because he has friends or family members who he believes have been brainwashed, to use lack of a better word, by Christian teaching or Christian apologists? Yeah, well, certainly one would hope, and one would hope that the atheist or the Christian, with that interest in people from the other belief community that they want to reach out to, that they would be committed to steel matting their intellectual products.

Right, and this is why, like, I've never understood mocking the opposition. Because, I think to myself, like, I listen to some atheists and I think, okay, maybe I'm completely deluded, right? And you're right. In which case, shouldn't you have compassion on me? Because you do talk a lot about compassion and humanism. So shouldn't you want to reach out to me and love me since I am this deluded? And of course, mocking me just turns me completely off.

And conversely, if I'm a Christian, like this person on my YouTube channel mocking atheists, my goodness, like, isn't your whole point to like, to help convert them, help bring them into the truth? And if that is what you're trying to do, why do you think that would work by yelling at them and calling them stupid? There is an interesting phenomenon psychologically, which we've actually seen recently in Alabama. When the charges, now as we talk, we're in the midst of this controversy about Roy Moore, who's running for the Senate in Alabama. And the interesting thing is at this point, I don't know if I've lost track, I think eight women have come out saying that he was interested in them as teenagers. Now, here's the interesting thing. in the Washington Post, but also in Alabama-based newspapers that have been doing investigative reporting, one would expect that the response would be at least somewhat of a modified conviction in support for Roy Moore. But what's interesting is that many people have expressed a retrenched commitment to supporting him, an even deeper commitment in light of these allegations.

commitment to supporting him, an even deeper commitment in light of these allegations. And that is an example of a well-known and common psychological phenomena where people, it's often called the backfire response, where people will respond to evidence against their views by retrenching into those views even more strongly. Now, why is that? Explain that to us. One psychological reason would be a desire to remove the existential instability that is created by the thought of having a wrong belief. Excellent. But you have to appreciate, however, just how irrational that really is. I give an illustration in one book I wrote. I say,

you know, imagine a person is driving down the road. And I don't know if you've ever been in this situation. I know I have. You're driving down the highway and then you get a sinking feeling at some point that you made a wrong turn somewhere and you're going in the wrong direction. Yes. I know where you're going with this. Yeah. What you do in that moment is you pull over, you look at your map or your phone and your satellite navigation, whatever it is, and you figure out whether you're going in the wrong direction. But imagine somebody, when that feeling hits, they start driving faster in the same direction. I've done that. You have done that?

Yes. Oh, no. Have you not done that? Well, maybe not faster, but I think to myself, it's like the hassle, not just the hassle, but the embarrassment, the two together that would lead me to pull over to the side of the road, you know, maps, who uses maps that aren't electronic, but to pull out my map and realize that I'm wrong,

I think to myself, well, I'll just keep going because maybe I am right. So it's like rationally I know I'm probably wrong. But it's the hassle and the embarrassment that's like, well, I'll just keep driving and maybe I'll eventually realize that I am right after all. Does that make sense? Well, it makes sense in terms of being the backfire response. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That is it. That's what I'm saying I'm exhibit A of in that situation. I mean, I'm sure I'm not immune to that. I suspect that that's a common human response. And so we have to be prepared.

And if you mock somebody, to come back to the question of mockery, what you're going to do is just lead them to double, triple and quadruple down on the backfire effect. And they'll be even more committed because the last thing a person wants to do is admit that a jerk is right. We are, and we're all, again, like you said, to avoid the politicization, just to say that we are all liable to this confirmation bias where we want to look for evidence to support our views or to support our political person, and we want to screen out and ignore or downplay evidence that goes against it. So again, we have all of these psychological biases. We're hardwired with these things and they can really lead our reasoning to go askew. And so one of the challenges of

persuasive dialogue and apologetics is just to become aware of how our reasoning gets set off kilter by these really innate and learned psychological biases, and then to be able to accommodate for that. Right. How do you accommodate for it? I think for one thing you do as an individual, I can commit to, for example, steel manning, as I've said, the views with which I disagree, rather than to resist the backfire effect, I disagree, rather than to resist the backfire effect where I retrench into just my beliefs,

to resist the predisposition to select evidence that supports my beliefs and downplay evidence that goes against it, to be intentional as a discipline about rejecting those impulses and seek to present the beliefs that go against mine in the strongest way possible, which brings us straight back to the disputation. Now, in terms of persuading others, I think to go back to the storage room locker experience, I think the most important thing, apart from being loving and gentle with people, is to recognize we have to be in it for the long haul, that we have to plant those seeds and build relationships with people. And we don't build relationships with people just so we can persuade them of our views at the end of the day, which would essentially reduce Christianity to Amway.

Rather, we want to have relationships with them as an intrinsic good because we are formed by those relationships because these are people made in the image of God. But along the way, we also want to share with them our beliefs and our convictions because we value who they are. Yeah. So, going back to this analogy with the 9-11 conspiracy theorist, what could have he done, if anything, to help you at least be open to the possibility that it was an inside job? Does that make sense? Yeah. I would say the first thing is, just like 20 years ago, I was trying to build Rome in a day by persuading an atheist that God exists based on one argument on a run. So this guy was trying to build Rome in a day by persuading me that 9-11 was an inside job with a 15-minute battery of arguments. And I think rather than that, he should have really ratcheted down his expectations.

than that, he should have really ratcheted down his expectations. And when I express dismissive credulity or incredulity, in other words, skepticism toward the 9-11 conspiracy view, all he needed kind of conversation would be, you know what? Fair enough. But sometimes the conspiracy theorist turns out to be right. Maybe not always, but sometimes. And maybe it's worthwhile to take a look at why certain people are so adamant 15, 17 years after the fact that this was in fact an inside job. And you know what, I could say, well, okay, yeah, I can see, you know, there is possible. Maybe it is worth taking a look. And that might be all he could do in 15 minutes, but that would be more productive than trying to drop all these arguments and win me over in one fell swoop. Yeah, one of my good friends, Jimmy Akin, who's a Catholic apologist with Catholic

Answers, said he just made a decision a long time back where he said, I will never expect somebody to change their mind, you know, in a conversation that I'm having with them. I thought that was quite good, you know, like to recognize that this is incredibly unlikely that someone's going to change their mind when it comes to one of these back of the storage room, you know, scenarios. And just to be gentle with people and not just gentle in our language, but gentle in our sort of expectations of leading them from one premise to the next, I suppose. Yeah, I think it's good to articulate, to be intentional as he does in articulating, reminding ourselves of that. I cannot have the expectation that I'm going to persuade somebody in this conversation, but I'm going to lay a foundation.

I'm going to plant some ideas in their head. And maybe they'll do the same for me because I don't to lay a foundation. I'm going to plant some ideas in their head and maybe they'll do the same for me because I don't have everything right either. I suppose here's a difference though like you I could see you having this conversation with your friend and thinking to yourself look look okay let's say you're right I am not at all interested in investing the time necessary to find out that you're right. Because how many books would I need to read? How many debates would I have to watch just to come to a conclusion that what can I do about it anyway?

Does that make sense? Yeah. Whereas with Christianity, it seems like the consequences of believing that or not believing that might be eternal. Well, and one thing too that I, I mean, there are many belief systems about which getting it wrong could have eternal consequences, but still we just don't consider them to be live options. Zoroastrianism, for example. I mean, Zoroastrianism for example I mean Zoroastrianism has a pretty terrifying image of hell but I don't think that we stay up at night worrying about Zoroastrian hell

it's just not a life option speaking of Zoroastrians the only Zoroastrians I know I'm totally going off on a tangent here is Freddie Mercury's parents did you know that? from Queen? yes actually I do remember that

and you know what it's i think it's the 25th anniversary of his death in about a week bless him what a brilliant singer what a brilliant artist i love queen yeah i actually do a pretty good queen impression do you well yeah no i just kind of at the beginning of of somebody to love he goes hey anybody that's a book oh it's so good you know when my wife was uh in labor with our firstborn liam i was singing don't stop me now to her just to kind of cheer her up and to get her through it don't stop me now i'm having such a good time my gosh that's a good song well it's a good song it's well it's kind of a libertine in the the lyrical worldview i will say well that's a philosophical way to look at it i just thought i had a sweet beat well yes it's very danceable all right look dude we might have

people who are really offended at us right now, especially if they're the sort of people who write those sorts of YouTube comments, but I'm okay offending those people. But look, let's wrap this up with something practical, okay? So there's people listening, they're on the treadmill, they're laying on the couch, they're going for a walk, they're cleaning the dishes, and they think to themselves, well, these have been good points that Randall has made. I have atheist friends and atheist colleagues that I've been dialoguing with, and you're right, they kind of look at me like I'm a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. Now what? Now, I know you began to address this, but as we wrap up, maybe flesh that out a little for our listeners. I will say that really what I was talking about, again, to come back to this idea of time.

First of all, it takes time to change people's perspective and being loving. And I would add to that a third thing, because those are the things that we can do. The third thing is, for most people, there will come a time in their life when they have questions. There will come a time in their life when they want to ask the big question. It might be when there's a crisis or some other precipitating factor. And it's at that time maybe that the objections will not be so obvious. Their pretense will be stripped away and they'll be open to a conversation, and they'll come to you. So, one of the things that I grew up back in the 1980s was that we had to evangelize people all the time, and we had to go out and accost people in the street and hit

them over the head with tracts. And what I've realized since then is what is far more powerful is living in a Christlike way and being attractional by the way you live and bringing people to you where they want to know more about who you are and why. And if we're living like that from day to day, and then we have arguments and answers ready for when people are ready to hear, then there'll hopefully come a time, and this is God's work, right? We don't have to worry about changing people's hearts, but there'll come a time when they want to hear more about this God, and they're not going to be so worried about the flying spaghetti monster stuff that seemed so persuasive to them at one time. And that's, in fact, at the end of the video, this is maybe a good thing to end on. I give an example that in our backyard, we have this apple tree, and we just got our first crop of apples this year, and it was actually like four apples. So we're starting small. But I was excited about this. So I kept going out there every day,

and I would tug on one of those apples. And it was always firmly attached to the branch. But then one day in early September, I went out and put my hand around that apple and tugged, been one day in early September, I went out and put my hand around that apple and tugged and it just gently fell off the branch into my hand. And that's an analogy or metaphor for planting those seeds in people's lives. And there will come a time when they're ready to listen. So we just great analogy. We just have to be ready. Hey, as we wrap up today, tell people where they can find your great material where they can buy your great books. And I know you crank out a book like six times a year. So maybe the latest book that you've recently cranked out. Yeah, my name is Randall Prowser, and that is my website as well. Books are available on Amazon. I've written at this point, published 11 books. My most recent one

is what's so confusing about grace. And that is a account of my faith of 40 years, which explores the concept of grace, the nature of salvation and the meaning of the gospel. Excellent. Hey, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for being with us and blessing our listeners. Thanks for having me, Matt. We'll do it again soon. That'd be great. God bless. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this entire episode of Pints with Aquinas. You rock, and I hope you've benefited greatly from it. As I said in the show, be sure to go check out all that Randall's doing. Even though Randall's a Baptist and we disagree on lots of stuff, we also agree on lots of stuff as well. And that's always nice, I think, to focus not just on where we disagree, but also where we agree. Big thanks again and an

invitation. If you haven't yet supported Pines with Aquinas on Patreon, thanks if you have. But if you haven't, consider doing it by going to pineswithaquinas.com, clicking support, and that's how you can do it. Also, if you like the show, we really do appreciate your reviews on iTunes. I know it just takes you a couple of minutes, but it means a lot for us to carry you.