How to ‘Handle’ an Atheist
Last Saturday night driving home from Meredith’s house, I was letting my radio scan through the local stations. Little did I know that Way of the Master Radio played every week (maybe even every day) on one of our local stations. Todd Friel is one of the hosts, along with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (of Growing Pains fame), and Todd happened to be hosting this particular segment.
I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to find the segment on their website. If someone can help me locate this broadcast, I would be grateful :-)
As a side note, I’ve been losing respect for the effectiveness of the entire Way of the Master organization for a while now. When I first saw their television show, I was impressed. But after seeing the banana video, then watching Ray and Kirk make a literal fool of themselves on the great atheist debate, I really just don’t much care for their stuff anymore. Then I heard them devote an entire segment of a recent show to contradicting themselves over and over again in their attempt to “correct” Steven Furtick.
Anyway, evidently a guy who is presumably not of the Christian faith submitted himself for an interview with Todd (this was not a phone call). I don’t remember his name, but I do remember not being terribly impressed with him. Nevertheless, the exchange went something like this.
The young man, in spite of the many efforts from Todd to get him to “just assume for a minute” that God is real, simply wouldn’t let it fly. This angered the host very much it seemed :-) His frustration was evident in his speech and I think he let it get the better of him. Even though the guest wasn’t terribly articulate or informed, he at least knew enough to not let the host “assume” anything.
Essentially, the young man asked very pointed questions that Todd didn’t seem to be able to answer. The old “come on man! Of course Jesus existed!” to which the young man might respond “prove it”. Such a question ends up with a “No, no, no, I’m not going to go down that road with you…” kind of thing.
For a show and organization that claims to want to reach atheists, he didn’t exactly do much in the way of debate and reasoning.
At the end of the segment, he basically kicks the kid off the air. The young man never used profanity, never said anything mean or spiteful, and never said anything out of line. His crime, not “assuming” something. Todd and the WOTM crew like to use the “here are the 10 commandments. Have you kept them?” evangelism method. I personally think it’s a good method of evangelism, but it seemed like his entire goal for the conversation was to get to the 10 Commandments part. He never listened to the guy, he just wanted to preach at him.
That’s not apologetics. Worse than that was the last comments made in the interview. Todd, after essentially losing the argument, said something like “ok, I think we’re done here.” The young man, seeming a little surprised, said “What? No, I want to stay and talk more about this.” Todd responded “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
WHAT!?
I guess the way to “handle” and atheist is to do your best to verbally “manhandle” him.
Sad.
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Gee, doesn’t tthis sound a little familiar?
As for the “prove Jesus existed,” thing, that’s easy. The the Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman historian Jospehus, and the Talumd records the existence of Jesus the son of Joseph, one who claimed to the the King of the Jews, as having been put to death by the Roamns and Jews in the first century.
The Jesus seminar for years attempted to deny the existence of the person of Christ, but having seen their faliure to dissuade the 2 billion Christians on the planet of this fact, they changed their tactic to make Jesus insignificant by elevating his borther James, to the position of the founder of Christianity and the most imortant figure of historical Christian Church. Read “James the brother of Jesus” by Robert Eisenman (1997). If the enemies of Christ in the modern age, the so-called experts on the life of Christ and the early Chruch through the revelation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, acknowledge his existence by attempting to switch the locus of imortance of his life to that of his verifiably living brother, then I guess that question of his existence is a mute issue then, isn’t it?
I guess Cameron, et al, just didn’t read those books. But that shouldn’t stop them from acting like apologists, just because they don’t know a freaking thing about their topic should it?
One way we have found to easily share our faith is through lifestyle evangelism. We wear a lot of Chrstian cloting, like Christian T-Shirts and stuff and that almost always restuts in a conversation about Jesus. These are natural opportuities and not forced. people are curious when they see us wearing our witness. They say the average Christian T-Shirt is read by 3,000 people before it wears out. So we are glad to be walking billboards for Jesus :-)
I struggle to believe that Todd Friel didn’t listen to someone. Shocked. Next you’ll be telling me that Al Gore really did invent the internet, and FRODO is make believe.
@Joe Martino
Oh Joe, you just made me laugh out loud. I’m glad I didn’t have anything in my mouth :-)