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Randal Rauser

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Here’s a Thought: Why Don’t We Not Strawman Each Other?

January 13, 2020 by Randal

In my experience, atheists and Christians commonly strawman each other. For example, the atheist criticizing Christianity assumes Christianity includes a narrow exclusivism with eternal conscious torment so that, for example, the 10-year-old Jewish girl who dies in Auschwitz goes straight to hell. Such a view has nothing, per se, to do with Christianity.

To be sure, the Christian regularly returns the favor by assuming that atheism entails a bracing nihilism and metaphysical reductionism such that life has no meaning or value and human beings are only hunks of data-processing meat.

Each of these views represents the most implausible and problematic expressions of their respective positions and thus to reject Christianity or atheism on such grounds is classic strawmanning.

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: atheism, Christianity, strawman

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