William Lane Craig, The Last Great Christian Apologist We’ll Ever See

@ Peter
I believe credulity  is hard to eradicate because atheists use facts.

As a former christian, I know that using facts is useless, because I did not respond to facts. And everything I have ever seen in other christians tells me this is true.

What made me begin to question things was the anger I felt at the expressed opinions of other people that did not believe as I believed. I did not know where that anger came from. Trying to figure out the reason(s) for this anger is what drove me to ultimately break that mind-control program that people call christianity. It’s not that I tried to break out of that prison, but that I tried to understand it. Ironically, my trying to understand it is what led me to leave it. Leaving it was not the goal I had in mind.

Instead of using facts, I think a better tactic would be to ask why that christian is so angry. Then perhaps they will reflect on some of these issues. I don’t believe it will work for everyone, but it is better than using facts to refute a religion like christianity.

@ psusa
That’s an interesting perspective. I never thought about the anger I cause by disagreeing as an avenue to getting people to think about their beliefs. I suppose because religious beliefs have an emotional rather than a rational basis that we have to approach it from that point of view.

Using my own experience:

I think that once a person has been led to question themselves, then and only then are they ready for facts. This is because, in my opinion, facts are too easily ignored. Showing someone the writings of Ingersoll will do no good in removing their religious programming. But, when that person is emotionally shocked into questioning themselves, the scales fall from the eyes (in time) and only then will the writings of Ingersoll remove the last bits of programming.

I use Ingersoll as the example because he is the only one I am familiar with. I’m sure there are others. I just like his style. He was an excellent thinker and writer.

There was a peculiar form of blindness that I suffered from. I knew something was wrong with what I was taught, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. For example, I knew that the word translated as “hell” was wrong. It still took a long time to understand how and why it was wrong. I had no one to lead me. I had to do it myself. I basically had to recreate myself from scratch.

It’s like a kid that is being abused, believing that this abuse is normal because he has no other frame of reference. I had to create another frame of reference.

Those that aren’t raised in christianity probably don’t know how fortunate they really are.