Simple Counter-evangelism 101: Open-source methods

Ok I had a few requests on youtube to post a link to the text form of the "Simple Counter-evangelism 101" series of videos that I have made.

You see, it's a a document that contains all the tips and tricks that I have made concerning WOTM's tactics and against evangelism in general.

So I have compiled it as a PDF. Now there is a fun thing that occurs with this document. Here is where you can download it.

http://www.youshare.com/view.php?file=simpce101.pdf

It's Creative Commons. Meaning? You can feel free to redistribute it and moreover ADD TO IT.

You see, as time goes by, evangelists change their tactics, or some other atheists have their own methods that are efficient as well. Those should be added to the document. I can't think of everything and while I do have plenty of experience in dealing with fundementalists, I am not alone out there.

So why not add to their experience and methods to the mix, and therefore STRENGHTEN the counter-evangelism effort? So, I have layed out a basic framework in the document, and you can all build on it.

In other words, I removed the "blank page problem". You don't have to fear the blank page, there is no blank page. So bring in your tips and tricks, bring in your ideas on how to make it better and redistribute it.

Soon enough, this simple pdf can grow into a book that brings in all the tools, tactics, and information to activists on what to expect, and what to do about it.

The truth isn't pretty, now add to the ugly!!

Why did Christ die?

I recently had the opportunity to interact with the author of an evangelical Christian blog through comments on one of his blog posts. The title of the entry is entitled "Christ Died For Sinners" which immediately caught my attention.

After reading the short entry and the enclosed quote, I submitted a question in comment form. To my astonishment, I got a reply. Not only do these bloggers seem to be amped up for evangelism but interested in apologetics as well. I welcome their arguments.

Former Follier Says: September 24th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Christ died in order to save a fallen creation by taking the sins of an infinitely wicked world against an infinitely holy god upon himself, does that about sum it up?

One question: If our sins are so abhorrent to god as to allow his “son” to be the propitiation for our sin, then what is Jesus doing sitting at the right hand of god right now? If the sins of mankind are punishable by eternal damnation, shouldn’t the sacrifice bear the burden? Three days in the ground hardly seems “just”.

Good thing it’s only a fable.

Josh Says: September 24th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Former Follier,

you obviously have your doubts as to whether or not the biblical account of Jesus death and atonement really is a fable or you wouldn’t have bothered checking our site. Jesus suffered the full weight of God’s anger for all the sins of all His people before he died, while he hung on the cross, and when he cried out “it is finished”, he signified that he had fully drunk the last dregs of the punishment that all his people deserved. It is certainly a mystery that Jesus could sustain an infinitely intense dose of God’s anger, enough punishment to keep all His people in Hell for all eternity. Only Jesus could do this because only Jesus was and is both God and man. His human nature was enabled to do what no other human nature could i.e. soak up all the wrath of God and come out the other side. The gospel is foolishness to the natural man - it is a mathematical improbability too great to fathom and yet it is the truth. God has no physical form and yet all power to create and sustain all things. Because something is a mystery doesn’t mean it isn’t true. For a simple analogy imagine God’s wrath like a tap with an infinite variety of pressure and volume settings - God says in his word that some will suffer more in hell and some less - all will suffer according to the nature of their sin. God turns the tap of his wrath to the precise measurement of what that sinner deserves. Jesus takes the place of all his people beneath the deluge of Gods wrath and God turns the tap on full bore to blast the soul of Jesus with the full weight of hell that all his people deserve. The volume and the pressure of that tap are of such severity that they fully satisfy the requirements of God’s justice. So severe was this punishment that the contemplation of it caused Jesus to sweat blood.We read it. We believe it.

Former Follier Says: September 25th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Josh,

Your assumptions that I am still wrestling with my beliefs are false. Simply looking at my online nickname (a portmanteau of “Former Follower” and “folly”) is a testament to that fact.

However, I still fail to comprehend how a god could send himself in human form to die for the sins which he allowed to enter the world in order to appease himself. It not only seems self-serving, it seems to be superfluous. Especially taking into consideration the fact that there was no good reason for him to supposedly create us in the first place. According to Christian theology, we are here to serve and glorify him. He already had a “heavenly host” of created beings (with free will as is evidenced by the fall of Lucifer and his demons) with no other purpose but to glorify and praise god (as the story goes).

Regardless, for god to send his “son” (himself in human form) for the sole purpose of dying to absolve a contrite mankind from its sin, doesn’t that equate to suicide? Whether or not Jesus killed himself is irrelevent; the fact that he came to earth knowing full-well what would occur meant that he submitted to and pursued his own death. It’s akin to the “suicide by cop” phenomenon on a cosmic scale.

The problem lies in your the last sentence of your reply: “We read it, we believe it.” I certainly hope mankind will have moved beyond such mental lethargy two thousand years from now at which point the Harry Potter chronicles could be considered diviniely inspired holy text.

Former Follier Says: September 25th, 2007 at 3:43 am
To clarify things a bit, I did not actively seek out your site or even your content, necessarily. I did a generic Google search for “Way of the Master” (which my website is devoted to countering) and stumbled across your blog. Divine providence, perhaps?

Anti-Testimony: A Brief Deconversion Story

I was raised in a very strict fundamental Baptist home and was "saved" at five years of age while eating my breakfast cereal before kindergarten one morning. From that point on, I was "in rebellion to God," as my parents liked to put it. Nothing I did seemed to be good enough: I was an honor roll student, bilingual at a young age, a prodigious illustrator , a budding actor and, above all, was involved in all the affairs of the church and the associated school (which I attended from the age of four until my high school graduation at seventeen) such as puppet ministry, nursing home ministry, church and school choir and band, bus ministry, youth group and all associated activities and even door-to-door witnessing on Saturdays.

It was on a Saturday morning when I was "calling" on the lost that I had my first run-in with an atheist (cue scary music). He lived in a ramshackle old house in a wooded cul-de-sac in a neighborhood not too far from my own. He was gruff, unpleasant and impolite; not necessarily the way I'd like to be perceived as an atheist. From that point on, he was the embodiment of the evil atheist in my then-Christian mind.

As the years passed, what I was being taught of the Bible became absolutely unfulfilling and I had no desire to study it further for my own understanding because, well, what would be the point? I was still a piece of shit to my parents, regardless of what I did or did not do. This is when I began to "backslide." I turned to secular friends, secular music and everything else that was abhorred by my parents and their church. I would still attend with them and was still involved in all of the extra activities but only nominally.

By the time I was fifteen I was smoking, fooling around with girls, using "filthy" language... all the things that good Christian boys and girls ought not to do. And I loved it all. A couple years later when I graduated high school I decided to remove myself from my parents' oppressive rule and place myself in another equally oppressive environment but one that would later prove to be more rewarding and personally beneficial. I enlisted in the Army at seventeen years of age (with parental consent).

I served six years and climbed the ranks, declining several promotions allow the way for fear of leadership. While I was in the military, I was first confronted with secular individuals that I didn't know personally (ie. neighborhood friends, cousins) and was impressed by their ability to reason. Growing up, I was rarely given choices yet in these people I saw that they made dozens of choices daily and revelled in it; they were leading their lives, not merely living them.

Due to my upbringing, these events brought me back to the Bible to search for hidden meaning and truths. Perhaps my pastor had been skipping over nuggets of knowledge all those years. It was my duty to find those bits of wisdom and apply them.

Well, I don't need to tell any of you that I didn't find them. I studied and prayed but to no avail. I was forced to a conclusion much to the detriment of my faith: God was not in the Bible. In fact, God wasn't around at all. Further, He never had been around.

The open and honest reading of "God's Word" had crushed my faith, destroyed my world-view and, as a result, given me the best gift imaginable: The ability to think. And live.