The Ten Commandments of Arguing with Christians
A checklist of things you'll need to get anywhere
Dall-E3
1. Don’t be Jewish or Black
Be prepared to prove you aren’t either of these, by taking photos of your hand touching a pork product and/or sharing 23&me results. Do not expect them to acknowledge having assumed wrongly. This means nothing to a people groomed all their lives to base core beliefs on assumptions.
Often, absent better options, they will simply continue insisting you must be Jewish. White skin only proves you aren’t black, Jews are often quite pale. They might ask you to renounce the Talmud. By all means try it, but from experience, this doesn’t satisfy them either. Christian goalposts have rocket thrusters attached.
2. Don’t be Gay or Trans
Nor can you believe in gender ideology (if you were inclined to) as it gives them a solid gold whataboutism trump card. You must hold an essentially Christian view of sexual morality, one of many ways in which they control the framework debate takes place in.
Never mind that none of these attributes logically preclude one from making valid polemical arguments. They’re gatekeeping; reducing to the greatest possible extent the number of people “qualified” to dispute their beliefs, on the grounds of a projected conflict of interest.
This is rotten, low down and dirty of course. But if you didn’t expect that and come prepared, you’re playing the wrong game with the wrong people.
3. You Must be Fit and Able Bodied
…Which is to say, lacking any biological qualities they can find fault with. This especially includes disabilities, which they will ridicule & attribute your nonbelief to. Somehow this doesn’t apply to their own theologians however, such as Thomas Aquinas, who was famously quite hefty.
You may have noticed the above standards for what constitute a valid human align exactly with the ideals of National Socialism. This is because white American Christians are commonly Nazis or Nazi sympathizers in their private lives. This can be confirmed with five minutes of browsing /pol/ or certain corners of X.
But they’re shy about it, and will play elaborate rhetorical games to dodge the label, not wanting it used against them. Totenkopf Pepe pfp? Sonnenrad banner image? “Those could mean anything!” (he he he, wink wink)
They don’t care that they’re not fooling anyone, they care that it frustrates you and delays or prevents their own disqualification. If you do somehow make it stick, they’ll just go mask off anyways, so it’s never worth your time to hound them on this unless you know their employer.
4. Be Concise
Like most people, Christians are naturally disinclined to expose themselves to materials that might undermine beliefs which are central to their identity. They’ll generally not read anything longer than a paragraph, if they know upfront that it’s polemic. Also, the more you write, the more potential pedantic footholds are introduced (see #7).
5. Fact Check Absolutely Everything
Christians lie as easily as they breathe, so don’t trust that anything they say is true, however mundane. A core strat of apologists is to slide plausible sounding lies under the radar, hoping you won’t notice or that you don’t know the rebuttals offhand, then building on that foundation like a castle in the clouds.
For example, attempting to pass off Josephus, Tacitus, or Pliny the Elder as eyewitnesses to the resurrection, or at least that they attested to it. In reality they attest only that Yeshua was executed, and had followers convinced of his divinity.
None were his contemporaries however, all born long after the crucifixion. Your Christian opponents may genuinely not know this themselves, never having fact checked something they heard an apologist say that sounded right. Many or most of their beliefs are like this.
6. Do Not Show Emotion
Any sign of weakness is an invitation to manipulation. If they find out that reminding you of your dead mother makes you cry, they will feel no shame about using that to force you into an emotionally vulnerable state, then begin the “come to Jesus” love bombing (ala good cop / bad cop). If they discover any sort of exploitable mental infirmity (short term memory deficits, phobias, autism) expect them to use that also, without hesitation.
Remember that in their mind, they’re fighting for their own immortality & post-mortem reunification with deceased loved ones. They really believe winning arguments can make a belief true, so everything’s on the table.
This principle also covers insults imo. Ad homs never accomplish what you want them to, however satisfying in the moment. Think of how you view people who insult you online. That’s also how you appear to your opponent when you do it.
Even if you actually are simply out to upset them, the best way to do that is concise, compelling polemic…same as if you were simply advancing truth. Conversely, be practiced in remaining stubbornly polite/neutral when they insult you, however persistently and severely. They haven’t got much else in their toolkit.
7. Lawyering
Carefully word every sentence in such a way as to prevent intentional, malicious misunderstanding. Of all the possible interpretations of what you said, they will always choose the least defensible/most absurd, then justify doing so by blaming you for wording things in a way which left yourself open to misunderstanding.
8. Be Prepared to do All the Work
This includes research, citation, transcription/excerpting. You may, at times, have to remind them of what they said mere seconds ago. Not because they don’t remember, but because adding to your workload to mentally fatigue you is one of their strats.
This is why they will sometimes strongly imply proof they claimed to have, or the rebuttal to your argument, is somewhere in an hour-long apologetics video or 300 page theology text.
In fact it’s a snipe hunt which serves dual purposes: First, to get you out of their hair for the time being, ending the argument without conceding anything. Secondly, it tricks you into watching/listening to/reading large amounts of apologetics, exposure to which they hope will change your mind (such that you no longer care they tricked you.)
9. Infosec
Do not use your real name, and make sure all other personally identifying information isn’t tied to the profiles you argue from. Good advice anyway, but don’t have any skeletons in your closet they can use for kompromat.
Kompromat is a dream come true for Christians and the main weapon they’ve used to ward off/silence detractors in past centuries, when outing someone as a homosexual (or simply casting credible aspersions) would socially and professionally ruin them.
Pastors arrested daily for CP/CSA somehow don’t count against Christianity (nothing does!); They’ll compare it to the figures for public school teachers (who are broadly Christian anyway) or turn it into more ammunition against gays.
But if they find even a single documented instance of you being cringe, that’s all they’ll want to talk about. It will be their de facto answer to whatever you say, after that. Anything at all to avoid actually attempting defense of their beliefs, which they’ve long since learned aren’t defensible by honest means.
Why do they do this? Whether you mean to or not, you’re pressing on a pain point by challenging emotionally important beliefs. They likely assume your intention in doing so is simply to be hurtful, so naturally they attempt to inflict equal pain/embarrassment in return.
It’s easier by far to channel epistemic uncertainty / cognitive dissonance into retaliatory aggression, than it is to re-examine beliefs they built their lives around. This isn’t inherently sinister, rather a common feature of human psychology, regardless of what specific beliefs one holds.
10. Give up on Shaming Them
See #3. It’s no use admonishing (American) Christians for being this way. Behind the veil of anonymity, they’ll remain forever shameless and unrepentant.
Apologists reason that anything goes, since they start out at a disadvantage (obligated to the defense of something which intrinsically cannot be proven) and they’re fighting biologically /spiritually inferior sub-humans. The only people, in their view, who would be motivated to dispute Christian doctrine, as it’s the yardstick by which they’re judged deficient.
If you believed your life was a holy battle against evil retarded perverts for control of the future, probably you’d also feel that any and all methods which might level the playing field are justified, however unseemly.
In person however, or on any platform their real identity is tied to, Christians wear a shiny clean mask. They’ll smile gently and speak politely, acting bewildered if you describe the behaviors listed thus far.
Even if you show them receipts, expect them to insist that fellow Christians they know would never act that way…despite having done so themselves whenever they could get away with it.
This goes doubly for calling out statements or behaviors contrary to Christian teaching. They will not hear it from a non-believer. You will need to find another Christian to admonish them.
Even then, they won’t be tone policed by a fellow Christian unless he meets the criteria listed in 1, 2, and 3, as well as sharing their politics. Rigged, as of course someone ticking all those boxes will only agree with them and endorse whatever they were doing out of tribal solidarity, regardless of what scripture says about it.
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