When People Will Not Be Convinced
Posted by GreenSlugg Muse on Monday, October 17, 2016
I came across an Atheist who is a friend of the family who has been insisting on some very strange ideas that he thinks are "facts". Among these are the claim that Jesus was copied from Horus, that Jesus never existed, and that the books of the New Testament were written sometimes 300 years after the time of Christ.
I've shown him plenty of scholarly work to the contrary, and explained to him that almost no historian takes any of these claims seriously. (There are maybe 2 or 3 historians who are Jesus-mythers, but other historians regard them as being on the level of Holocaust deniers.) But he prefers to get his "facts" from Internet memes, rather than from actual historians.
I even Emailed a major university with regards to the Horus=Jesus claims and they said that they are just rolling their eyes at the nonsense.
The latest claims from this friend of the family are that Jesus did not exist, because there were not trees in Palestine and so there is no way He could have been a carpenter. Also, Jesus was copied from the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. -_-
What I am learning from this is that people aren't always rational in their beliefs, and the role of an apologist is not to convince people. Our role is to answer questions, and put the answers out there for people, but to do so in the Holy Spirit.
Also, even when people seemingly reject your clear, logical answer, a lot of times it is out of pride. They can see that your answer is valid, but they are too prideful to admit in front of you that they are wrong. (But they know.)
Even more importantly, I've noticed something with human nature is that when people are convinced by an argument that you made, they usually don't say "Oh yeah, you're right." They usually nod internally, rather than externally. So you may have convinced someone, but thought it went in one ear and out the other.
I've shown him plenty of scholarly work to the contrary, and explained to him that almost no historian takes any of these claims seriously. (There are maybe 2 or 3 historians who are Jesus-mythers, but other historians regard them as being on the level of Holocaust deniers.) But he prefers to get his "facts" from Internet memes, rather than from actual historians.
I even Emailed a major university with regards to the Horus=Jesus claims and they said that they are just rolling their eyes at the nonsense.
The latest claims from this friend of the family are that Jesus did not exist, because there were not trees in Palestine and so there is no way He could have been a carpenter. Also, Jesus was copied from the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. -_-
What I am learning from this is that people aren't always rational in their beliefs, and the role of an apologist is not to convince people. Our role is to answer questions, and put the answers out there for people, but to do so in the Holy Spirit.
Also, even when people seemingly reject your clear, logical answer, a lot of times it is out of pride. They can see that your answer is valid, but they are too prideful to admit in front of you that they are wrong. (But they know.)
Even more importantly, I've noticed something with human nature is that when people are convinced by an argument that you made, they usually don't say "Oh yeah, you're right." They usually nod internally, rather than externally. So you may have convinced someone, but thought it went in one ear and out the other.
Tags: apologetics virgin birth horus
