About a year ago I reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook. While we have some common interests, it became quickly apparent that we did not agree on religious, social, and political issues. The social and political issues which we tended not to agree stemmed from religious beliefs - he is an atheist and I am a Catholic. I entertained discussions with him because it gave me a chance to grower deeper in my faith.
The discussions would be on the role of religion in the government and moral issues. We would have a few good exchanges on a topic and then insults were thrown at me because he perceived a comment of mine to patronize him. He did not like it when I would remind him of something from history in response to his criticism of something the Catholic Church has done. His response would be something like "don't patronize me, I've studied history for the last 10 years and have a Masters Degree in History" or "I studied the Bible and Church Fathers and learned a lot." I do not doubt that those statements are true, but that does not excuse his comments or even suffice as a logical response. Rather than giving me a reasonable or logical argument, he chose to give me his credentials and expected me to give up. If one really has the credentials the cite, then they should be able to give an answer rather than shoving the credentials in another's face.
For a while I ignored this and tried to continue with the discussions. He would either drop out of the discussion or come back to the beginning of the discussion. Either way, the discussion basically came to an end. Then another topic would come up and we would go through the same discussion points. I really tired of this as he would continue with the same comments that I already refuted. Without fail he would bring up priest sex abuse and make that out to be a problem unique to the Catholic Church. Despite many refutations regarding the frequency of allegations compared to the general population, the time period from which most of the alleged abuse occurred, and the Church following the norms of society when dealing with abusers, he continued to use this as an argument against the Church (Note that I do not think any actual abuse by anyone is acceptable). He even went as far as claiming that the real reason the Church opposes abortion is because every abortion is one less child for a priest to molest.
Despite having to restate my arguments, that is not why I chose to "unfriend" him today. About six weeks ago I was in a political discussion with him and he reminded me that the President of the United States is elected by the people. I know that is code for some people that believe that Congress should approve anything the POTUS wants simply because he is elected by the people. I reminded him (and anyone else using that argument) that Congress is also elected by the people and they have a responsibility to their constituents, not the POTUS. He does not like it when I remind him of that and feels that I patronized him by doing so. If he really know how the different branches of government work, he would not think that the POTUS should get whatever he wants. Anyhow, during this particular discussion he chose to deactivate his account. This is a habit I had noticed of his when he would get upset about a discussion. Perhaps he has another reason to leave Facebook, but it always seemed to be in the middle of an especially heated discussion, one in which he felt it necessary to throw his credentials at me rather than continuing in discussion. If you are going to claim there is no God, make attacks against my religion, claim to use logic and reason instead of God, refuse to give logical arguments to defend your beliefs, and even runaway or hide instead of continuing a discussion, then I have no use for you. This happened too many times and I had decided to "unfriend" him when I realized he deactivated his account. I could not do this at the time because I cannot "unfriend" someone whose account is not active. Since I saw some posts from him today, I knew this was my chance to "unfriend" him as I intended.
This is part of what I have noticed with many atheists online, Facebook or elsewhere. They claim to be the group of people that use logic and reason when it comes to god and morals. Many of them focus their attacks on Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. They have canned responses to many issues and I have come across many of them. When it comes to morals, they will eventually bring up a Levitical law. They do not understand how certain laws no longer apply because of the new covenant given to us by Jesus Christ. Any claim to that will question why some laws still apply and they simply will not accept that moral laws from the Old Testament still apply. They just state that they do not interpret the New Testament that way and will not give a reason why. If these people are really the people who use logic and reason instead of god, they should be able to give an answer to this. They would rather point out where they think religious people are not following the teachings of their religion rather than understand the basis for such teachings. When it comes down to defending their interpretation of the Bible, they fail because their logic and reasoning is wrong.
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