Are You A True Skeptic?

What arguments do you accept? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Just recently, I was in a Facebook group and I saw someone share something from Lawrence Krauss claiming that there were several divine figures at the time of Jesus born of virgins (And I do affirm the virgin birth) who died and rose again. It didn’t take long for a bunch of us to show that this was wrong. What was most amazing to me was that this was accepted.

What matters to me about this is how quickly people who call themselves skeptics will cease to be skeptics. This isn’t to say that their skepticism of Christianity is necessarily unreasonable. Some skepticism is good. The claims we make are pretty intense after all and should be backed by evidence. The problem is that a scholar says something that supports Christianity or shows an attack on i is false and that’s questioned, but show someone who attacks it and that’s an immediate Gospel truth.

I also think it’s important to point out that we Christians can do the same. There are many Christians who will share something immediately if it supports Christianity, but it turns out to be false. This is also true in the area of politics. Many people will share something that supports their political viewpoint without checking up on it.

After the Florida shooting, there were news stories going around about eighteen school shootings taking place this year. Some of you might be surprised by that news. You never heard about all of these school shootings. There’s a good reason for that. They didn’t really happen, at least not the way you would think. One such school shooting was when a man was in the parking lot of an Elementary school that was closed at the time and committed suicide with a gun. Somehow, that qualifies as a school shooting.

Many of you know that I’m a political conservative, yet I have taken enough conservatives to task for sharing false stories about political opponents. Our side is not helped by sharing stories that are false and we damage our reputation by sharing those stories.

The solution to all of this is really simple. Test everything. Check it all out. If you are a Christian, don’t damage your reputation by sharing things that are false. It shows people you are gullible and undermines your witness to Christianity.

If you are a skeptic of Christianity, you should also want to be taken seriously. It’s not going to be happening by sharing copycat myth ideas or even worse, ideas that Jesus never existed. No. Carrier is not the most awesome New Testament scholar of all time. Most of us will actually discount you pretty quickly just for mentioning Carrier.

Everyone should agree to this. Test all things. If you’re a Christian and a skeptic does disprove something you believe to be true, accept it. If you’re a skeptic and a Christian disproves something for you, do likewise. Of course, you’re more prone to accept ideas that already fit with your worldview, but watch your own bias first. If we want to have more informed discussions, it starts with us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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