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Religious people love to preach and tell you all about their god. Is there a way to nullify their evangelizing and make them tuck their tails between their legs? Yes. Here are five sure-fire arguments that will make even the most aggressive evangelist change the subject or run away.

Does god answer your prayers?

Theists are notorious for singing the praises of how god answers their prayers. It's very easy to put them on the spot. The dialogue goes like this:

ATHEIST: Does god answer your prayers? Do you feel he listens to you?

THEIST: Yes.

ATHEIST: Ok, do me a favor, pray for god, right now to change my heart and make me believe in him. I'll wait while you pray.

THEIST: Um, I can't do that. Uh, it doesn't work that way. It's up to you to let God into your heart.

ATHEIST: That's not what it says in Matthew 21:22: And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. That's what Jesus says. So I'll wait right here while you pray and ask god to change my heart. He is all-powerful right?

THEIST: (walks away)

ATHEIST: WAIT! Where's your faith? Isn't your god powerful enough to do this? Isn't the bible true?

The Abraham argument

This is a great way of turning the tables on Christians. They're fond of talking about how great god is. So let's put them in the place of one of god's most famous disciples:

ATHEIST: So you completely trust and have faith in god?

THEIST: Yes

ATHEIST: So if god told you to take your first born child out to the woods and slit his throat like Abraham, you'd do it?

THEIST: Umm...

ATHEIST: Because I don't know about you, but any god that would tell me to murder my own child is not someone I'd worship. I would not do such a thing. Would you kill your own child?

THEIST: But god didn't let Abraham's son die...

ATHEIST: Oh yea, he waited until the last moment and then went, "Psyche! I was just joking dude!" That excuses it? Seriously! Would you kill your own son or daughter if you heard a voice in your head? You think that's acceptable? You want to worship a guy who would tell you to do that in order to prove your loyalty?

Your god created me, the atheist

Christians are fond of distinguishing themselves from atheists, suggesting atheists are somehow lost or sub-human. But the reality is, if they believe god is the creator, then god put us on earth and gave us the ability to think critically for a reason...

God's obsolete moral standards

One sure-fire way to undermine the Christian mindset is to dissect the very essence of Christianity:

ATHEIST: You believe Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross to forgive you of original sin right?

THEIST: Yes.

ATHEIST: Ok, I've got a few questions, I hope you can answer for me, 'cause I'm curious.

THEIST: Sure.

ATHEIST: Do you hold your children responsible for bad things you've done? Should a grand-child be held accountable for something their great-great-grandfather did? If this is such an important issue, why do we not hold our descendants responsible for our own sins nowadays? If it's good enough for god, it should be good enough for us right?

THEIST: Um, but...

ATHEIST: Also, if ritualistic sacrifice is a suitable method of repaying a debt, why don't we practice this today? Why can't I pay my electric bill for example, by beheading a small woodland creature and sending the blood to the energy company? How exactly does murdering one innocent creature pay for the debt of another creature? If that's good enough for god, why don't we practice this today?

THEIST: Well...

ATHEIST: One more thing... about Jesus' "sacrifice." If Jesus died and then he came back to life, how exactly is that a sacrifice? Doesn't "sacrifice" mean to lose something of value? Exactly what was sacrificed if Jesus was god and "died" and then came back to life and ended up back in heaven? Exactly what payment was made?

THEIST: um...

ATHEIST: It seems to me the whole Jesus-sacrificed-himself thing was just a dog-and-pony show. There was no real sacrifice, and nobody inherits sins from their ancestors and nobody nowadays thinks ritualistic sacrifice is a suitable way to appeal to any powerful entity. So why do people still believe in these bronze-age, outdated, obsolete practices? You don't believe in inherited sins; you don't murder innocent creatures to pay debts, so what are you doing?

Nobody knew Jesus

One of the biggest secrets in Christianity is the reality that nobody who was alive when Jesus supposedly lived ever knew anything about him.

ATHEIST: You believe Jesus was a real person who existed historically right?

THEIST: Absolutely, there's plenty of evidence that Jesus existed.

ATHEIST: Oh really? What evidence?

THEIST: There are the four gospels which chronicle the life of Jesus, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

ATHEIST: Do you know who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were?

THEIST: They were Jesus' disciples.

ATHEIST: Actually, nobody knows who they were. Those are arbitrary names assigned to those books. The true authors are not actually known. Did you know that? Nobody knows who wrote any of the gospels.

THEIST: Really?

ATHEIST: Yes. And furthermore, did you know that there are no eye-witness accounts of Jesus in the gospels? Not a single writer ever saw or met Jesus. The earliest copy of any of the four gospels is at least 30-40 years AFTER Jesus supposedly died, so nobody who wrote any of that scripture ever had any first-hand experience with Jesus. That's a fact.

THEIST: That's not true. There were definitely people who knew Jesus and wrote of him. Like Josephus and Tacitus.

ATHEIST: Josephus Flavius was born in AD 37. He wrote "Antiquities of the Jews", the text that supposedly mentioned Jesus, around 94AD. Jesus supposedly die around 30-33AD, so even if Josephus' writings were considered true (which they're not - most scholars consider the text mentioning Jesus to have been later added by Christians) at best, he never knew Jesus and was only writing what he had heard. The same thing goes for Roman historian Tacitus, who was born in 56AD, at least 20 years after Jesus supposedly died. These are the only two historians anywhere near the time that have any writings mentioning Jesus and neither one of them are contemporaries. What's even more interesting is that we do have writings from historians during the time Jesus was alive, but NONE of them mention him, at all. For someone so important, who supposedly performed miracles and rose from the dead, NOBODY at the time appeared to know anything about him.

THEIST: I can't believe that. You're lying.

ATHEIST: Research it for yourself. You will find that is the 100% truth. There are no contemporary writings backing up the notion that Jesus actually existed. Everything written about him is at least 30+ years after the fact. This is one of the biggest secrets most Christians don't know. There's actually no evidence that Jesus ever existed. All the evidence that has been discovered to date is circumstantial, hearsay, and dated decades later. This might not seem unusual for an average person, but someone as influential as Jesus of Nazareth, it's simply does not make sense, unless the whole Jesus thing was made up by the early church.

See also: A Silence That Screams

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