Hunker Down

I've been watching some vids of Christians debating Atheists on the existence of God. Christians, of course, offer proof of God's existence; Atheists, of course, offer proof of the non-existence of God.

The winners of the debates were already decided before they even aired. Christians are going to side with the Christians no matter what the Atheists say; Atheists are going to side with the Atheists no matter what the Christians say. So who won? It depends who you talk to.

I personally don't like these debates as they are absolutely pointless and merely add to the futher polarization that we experience in our society. People just choose their sides and hunker down, accusing the other side of being intellectually and morally wanting. It's just slinging arrows over the castle walls.

As a Christian myself, I can tell you that no one, absolutely no one, can be argued into the Kingdom of God, nor should they be. An Atheist doesn't become a Christian simply because he or she lost the debate. Similarily, a Christian doesn't become an Atheist simply because he or she lost the debate. Both sides go back to their drawing boards, lick their wounds, and stock themselves with more ammo for the next battle.

The Bible never tries to prove God's existence. It assumes God's existence and works from there. I see no need at all to prove God's existence to anyone. I would rather talk to people, as a Christian, about things that we already know as we experience them everyday. There are commonalities among us simply because we are humans living on a little blue dot in view of an utterly massive universe. We ought to be looking to build bridges. Perhaps we can seek ways to talk about the same things using different words. Let's take sin, for instance.

In Christianity, sin is defined as incurvatus in se, Latin for "turned in on the self". In a word-- selfishness. Christians and Atheists agree, as far as I can tell, that people are inherently selfish. An Atheist would explain this by saying that we are all equipped with reptilian and mammalian parts of the brain that work solely on instinct to survive. Christians would say something like "our hearts are in the wrong place." Fine. But I think we can both agree that selfishness is a willing rebellion, for whatever reason, against something that we know to be proper and right. I'm willing to go so far as to say that we have a part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, that is the seat of conscience. This is a part of the brain that mammals and reptiles don't have. It really doesn't matter how it got that way. We have them. Can we leave it at that? Maybe we can't, I don't know. But here's my point:

We all have a conscience that has the ability to "rope in" our rebellious ways. Christians believe that this conscience is informed by the Spirit of Christ. Atheists say that we have evolved from the instinctual actions of our very ancient ancestors. Alright. But we still have a conscience that can help us overcome our selfish and destructive ways. We were in bondage to sin or to our baser instincts-- two ways of saying the same thing.

The cross shows that the instinct to survive, while very real, doesn't save anyone. If the crucified Christ shows us anything it is that suffering in this world is inevitable for everyone. It's salvific to know this. So, instead of trying to rid ourselves of sin through self-flagellation, we would be better off if we tried to own up to our sinful nature/instinctual drives and accept them as part of our makeup, and seek ways to use them for the common good. This would make salvation from sin more realized to the average everyday person, Christian and Atheist alike.

And I could be wrong, but I see this as a viable alternative to the hunker down and lob bombs mentality. What do you think?