Debate over world views consists in attempting to find a "weakness" in the other's world view, a chink in their mental armor, and then plunging in the sword, whether rhetorically or with the utmost calmness and precision. Neither side "enjoys" having the sword plunged in however.
It seems to me that world views once formed become linked in one's mind with so many experiences and so many interpretations of everything one has read and come to know, that they are resistant to change. Like an interconnected web stretching across a continent of thought. Therefore after a person encounters and absorbs a world view, most changes take place within that world view and are cosmetic, or moderate in extent, not simply jettisoning that world view for another and another and another.
Communication is also difficult when people have read and absorbed different books and met different people during their lives because not only do we absorb ideas, but we absorb other people's emotional reactions to those ideas as well. And the emotional bonds formed are likewise as strong as the intellectual ones if not more so.
If a person "loves Jesus" or "loves" anything, the person will seek intellectual ways to continue justifying that "love."
Lastly, children passing into adolescenthood and young adults seem to be the ones without a world view and who often pick up one and begin integrating it fully into their comprehension of the world. If you can reach the kids when they are kids, your world view has the greatest chance of surviving and being passed along to the next generation, etc.
There is an excellent article by John Cornwell in the Guardian
It constrasts the atheist rhetoric and fanatical certainty of the Hitler-and-Stalin wannabe Richard Dawkins, with the doubt of believers, who regard the resurrection as more of a symbolic than literal event.
Debate over world views consists in attempting to find a "weakness" in the other's world view, a chink in their mental armor, and then plunging in the sword, whether rhetorically or with the utmost calmness and precision.
If I were a typical Internet atheist (the type I complain about in the linked article), I'd scream from the rooftops "Edward Babinsky favors killing people with swords!" That, of course, is nothing more than rhetoric since I am twisting your words to try to make your argument seem as if you are advocating something you are not. That's my complaint.
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Debate over world views consists in attempting to find a "weakness" in the other's world view, a chink in their mental armor, and then plunging in the sword, whether rhetorically or with the utmost calmness and precision. Neither side "enjoys" having the sword plunged in however.
It seems to me that world views once formed become linked in one's mind with so many experiences and so many interpretations of everything one has read and come to know, that they are resistant to change. Like an interconnected web stretching across a continent of thought. Therefore after a person encounters and absorbs a world view, most changes take place within that world view and are cosmetic, or moderate in extent, not simply jettisoning that world view for another and another and another.
Communication is also difficult when people have read and absorbed different books and met different people during their lives because not only do we absorb ideas, but we absorb other people's emotional reactions to those ideas as well. And the emotional bonds formed are likewise as strong as the intellectual ones if not more so.
If a person "loves Jesus" or "loves" anything, the person will seek intellectual ways to continue justifying that "love."
Lastly, children passing into adolescenthood and young adults seem to be the ones without a world view and who often pick up one and begin integrating it fully into their comprehension of the world. If you can reach the kids when they are kids, your world view has the greatest chance of surviving and being passed along to the next generation, etc.
What comments?
There is an excellent article by John Cornwell in the Guardian
It constrasts the atheist rhetoric and fanatical certainty of the Hitler-and-Stalin wannabe Richard Dawkins, with the doubt of believers, who regard the resurrection as more of a symbolic than literal event.
Debate over world views consists in attempting to find a "weakness" in the other's world view, a chink in their mental armor, and then plunging in the sword, whether rhetorically or with the utmost calmness and precision.
If I were a typical Internet atheist (the type I complain about in the linked article), I'd scream from the rooftops "Edward Babinsky favors killing people with swords!" That, of course, is nothing more than rhetoric since I am twisting your words to try to make your argument seem as if you are advocating something you are not. That's my complaint.
Christian rhetoric is that it is objectively morally wrong to kill babies.
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