Monday, November 03, 2008

Fantasies, Legends, and Heroes

I mentioned logical fallacies in my last post, Framing the Conversation: Dr. Baird & Big Love. The best explanation I've ever read of logical fallacies, particularly as they apply to dealing with religions, cults, sects (not "sex" - sheesh, get a life, people!) and like, was written by Bob Passantino.

I ran into it thanks to Cornerstone Magazine... and while doing web research for the previous post, I found a complete copy of it online at the Answers in Action website. So, here's the link to Fantasies, Legends, and Heroes: What You Know May Not Be So and How To Tell The Difference - and a short quote to wet your appetite.
...at stake is our credibility outside the Church as people who tell the truth, even if the non-believers don't always respond to the truth. I had an agnostic friend and we used to spend hours talking about anthropology, his field of study, and Christianity. Despite the arguments and evidence that I gave him for the truth of Christianity, he didn't become a Christian. However, he respected me as someone who had integrity. When his sister, who was a Christian, became confused because of college classes antagonistic to Christianity, he asked me to talk to her, to, as he put it, "straighten her out so she doesn't lose her faith because of what ignorant philosophy professors say." Responsible apologetics is one way of speaking to the world. Peter says we are to have "our conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against [us] as evildoers, they may, by [our] good works which they observe, glorify God."

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