Answering Another Fool (Another Ungrounded Premise)

I recently published a blog entitled Answering a Fool (The Ungrounded Premise), which you can check out here. In it, I addressed an inciting meme put up by an atheist, which I had come across on Facebook. It needed to be addressed because of its blatant sarcasm and its utter lack of verisimilitude.

This time, I am writing about a post (which I also came across on Facebook), written by another atheist. Just as with the the meme that I responded to, this Facebook post also presumes a false premise. (In all fairness, it didn’t carry the same sarcastic quality as the meme had.) The intent here is to provide another example of how we (Christians) might answer a fool when challenged.

The Facebook post read as follows…

“Question for Theist ??
If Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Astronomy, Biology, medicine and genetics, Ecology are all science related. Why is it then, when we mention Evolution which is science related, it doesn’t count because of God and creation ? Hope my question made sense.”

The Bible tells us…

Proverbs 26:4 (HCSB)
“Don’t answer a fool according to his foolishness
or you’ll be like him yourself.”

What’s foolish in the Facebook post is the false premise hidden within the question asked. In order for something to qualify as scientific, such would need to be testable, repeatable, observable, and falsifiable. Evolution, as assumed by the poster, is not scientific. If it was, it would not fail any of these tests…

But, it does.

Here was my response…

“Change over time is not an issue from the Christian perspective. Neither is adaptation in biology a problem. What is a problem is considering something which is not observable, nor even testable, as being “science related.” The lack of these two elements means that such is not even within the purview of science, so why do you presume that it is with your question?”

Do you see what I did?

I did not “answer a fool according to his foolishness,” being like him myself. Instead, I followed the advice of the very next verse…

Proverbs 26:5 (HCSB)
“Answer a fool according to his foolishness
or he’ll become wise in his own eyes.”

Keeping Proverbs 26:5 in mind, I instead…

1) destroyed the notion that Christianity denies concepts such as change over time and adaptation…

2) addressed the false premise directly…

3) and then turned the table with a question, pinning the challenger under his own method of attack.

Whenever challenged by the unbeliever regarding Christianity, just pause a moment and work through it in your mind as scripture dictates before giving an answer. I want to encourage you to never respond hastily, possibly giving the fool an opportunity to “become wise in his own eyes.”

Proverbs 15:28a (HCSB)
“The mind of the righteous person thinks before answering…”

I hope this helps!

Godspeed, to the brethren!

FOLLOW theidolbabbler.com ON TWITTER!!

Follow @theidolbabbler