How many times have you heard Christians use Pascal’s Wager in a debate?

Or the canard that “it takes more faith to be an atheist”?

Or the question of how we atheists can have morals or a purpose without religion?

If you’re my inbox, you come across it often. I suspect most atheists who have been outspoken about their beliefs hear the same arguments from Christians over and over.

It gets tiring responding to the same bad arguments all the time.

Greta Christina makes an important point about this, though:

These arguments are old to us. But they’re new to them. As long as there are people who haven’t heard our case — and who haven’t heard it more than once — we have to keep making that case. And we have to make it patiently. It doesn’t make sense for a teacher to get annoyed and impatient with their students for not already knowing the material. And it doesn’t make sense for us to get annoyed and impatient with believers for not being familiar with our case.

We shouldn’t get annoyed, but it’s hard not to. If the questioner is sincere, however, it can lead to some great conversations.



