This honest recognition may mean the difference between a faith that weathers the storms of life and one which sinks under sudden and unexpected doubts. If we are honest and humble, we ought to recognize that there are many difficult, troubling, and complex aspects of our faith. But what happens when a evangelical meets an atheist with really good questions? False confidence in a straw-man vision of atheism does nothing to build up the faith. We come to think that we have specific knowledge of the atheist’s perspective and can expose it easily. We become sure in ourselves and our abilities to refute the unbeliever and in the unbeliever’s stupidity. We feel like atheism is obviously stupid and evolution is a fairy-tale for unthinking adults. Stories like this can also give believers a false sense of security and superiority. Sometimes, the professor is incredibly gracious and sincerely concerned for you and the Christian is arrogant.
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It is quite possible to “lie” in a fictional story, which is what we see in the Chick Tract: the professor is both ignorant and arrogant while the Christian is brilliant and patient.įrom my experience, it’s far more likely that your atheist professor is an intelligent person, and often Christian students are only “equipped” to respond to an antiquated straw-man of Evolution or atheism. Even when they admit to being “fiction,” like God’s Not Dead, they still misrepresent the truth. Only, this narrative creates several problems for Christians.įor one, these stories often lie. It’s David and Goliath (as one Snopes article points out). This narrative of the brave, Christian who stands up to the evil liberal professor is a subset of the larger American (human?) theme of the underdog. We want to believe that atheists are not merely spiritually foolish (a clear, scriptural truth), but also haughty, stupid, jerks. These stories comprise a popular evangelical trope and reveal a collective fantasy we have of humiliating arrogant atheists. And if you think about it, aren’t most public “debates” between Christians and atheists live dramatizations of this narrative? We send our brightest male Christian into the secular forum (the university) to put the cocky, liberal atheist in his place.
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Take, for example, dubbing April 1st “National Atheist Day” or memes about how dumb and irrational evolution or atheism is. But I don’t want us to write this off so easily, because this narrative is appealing to evangelical subculture, and honestly, it’s everywhere in evangelical culture. The title, which evokes the question: God’s not-dead what? The simplistic narrative of the evangelical standing up against the evil liberal atheist professor boogie man. Hercules stiltedly quoting Shakespeare and Nietzsche. There’s lots to poke fun at in this trailer. Now, thanks to Pure Flix Entertainment, this story has come to life in a new motion picture, God’s Not Dead:Īs a friend said, this could be the first film to be based off of a chain email. We love stories of haughty atheists being put in their place. We share it through chain emails and on social media. Snopes has two enlightening articles on this narrative: “Dropped Chalk” and “Malice of Absence.” And, of course, there is a fantastic Chick Tract. Only, this never happened, at least, not that anyone can credibly verify. The story is always the same: an arrogant, frothing-at-the-mouth atheist faces a Christian student who exposes him as a fraud.
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Maybe there was a piece of chalk involved.
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Maybe it was a Physics or Philosophy class. Have you heard the one about the Atheist University Professor who was famous at his school for mocking Christianity and a belief in God? You know, the one where a brave Christian student finally stands up to the teacher and calmly and articulately reveals the irrational basis of the “professor’s” atheism and thereby causes the professor to flee the room in shame, at which time the student shares the Gospel with his whole class?