Persuading a christian

[miniboes]

Hi everyone, it's been some time. I hope you're all doing well.

I have recently made a devout christian (and vegetarian) friend and he seems quite open to talking about religion. He enjoys having his beliefs challenged because he thinks faith should be able to withstand criticism. We've talked about the problem of evil and he says that although he can't answer it, it doesn't really bother him, but he acknowledges that's irrational of him. Do you have any idea of what kind of arguments or avenues of conversation might be particularly productive? I could try venturing into stuff like evolution and the age of the earth, but i'm not very well versed in the science. Moral and philosophical issues are more up my alley, but I don't really know if there are any arguments that are actually persuasive to christians.

[brimstoneSalad]

He enjoys having his beliefs challenged because he thinks faith should be able to withstand criticism.

That's awesome. Not sure how useful the conversation is unless the friend is doing something bad and justifying it with religion, but it may be a stimulating discussion and if your friend wants to believe what's true you would be doing him a favor.

We've talked about the problem of evil and he says that although he can't answer it, it doesn't really bother him, but he acknowledges that's irrational of him.

The problem of evil isn't very compelling because it's usually not too hard to imagine somewhat satisfactory answers based on the vagueness of good and evil.

More crucially, focus on the problems of omnipotence itself. Like can God do logically impossible things? And if not, is that still omnipotence?

What is it for something to be logically possible or impossible?
Can't *everybody* do anything that's logically possible for them to do?
Are ants omnipotent? They may not be able to lift an elephant on Earth, but perhaps that's because it's logically impossible for them to do so based on their muscles and the forces involved and the limits of physics which --arguably-- derive from simple logic on the quantum scale. We're talking about things like attraction of charged particles vs. opposing forces.

You'll see once it's probed that the idea of omnipotence tends to break down. What powers does God have exactly and what are the limits?

If God is not omnipotent, or if omnipotence is nonsense or meaningless, then is that a deal-breaker and does that mean God doesn't exist?

I could try venturing into stuff like evolution and the age of the earth, but i'm not very well versed in the science.

Empirical arguments will easily disprove a particular God that relies on something clearly false like young Earth creationism, but not all concepts of God do. Even the catholic church generally accepts the scientific age of the Earth and evolution today.

Moral and philosophical issues are more up my alley, but I don't really know if there are any arguments that are actually persuasive to christians.

It more depends on what the person believes God wants. If the person believes God condones something you can show is evil, then there's a strong argument there. However, again if this person isn't using God to justify anything terrible, and God's morality is in line with rational morality, then there's not really an argument there.

We could imagine a being that was actually good, and plenty of reasons that being would be unable to act against evil.

If there is a belief that this God condones something you can show is evil, start with Euthyphro.

[miniboes]

Thanks for the suggestions! You're right that the problem of evil is somewhat easy to dismiss. There's some extremes of evil that everybody can kind of agree on though (e.g. the black plague, the holocaust) that christians have a lot of trouble explaining away.

[brimstoneSalad]

It's usually easy for them if the evil was clearly human caused (holocaust), because free will, but it's harder when it's not (like childhood lukemia).

That said, they can appeal to pretty much anything as having unknowably maximally good consequences, like childhood disease inspires people to be better or something and the kids go to heaven anyway.