@RandalRauserAtheist Jason Long writes: “religious followers have been inoculated from skeptical arguments because they have been forewarned that skeptics are not trustworthy people. This poisoning of the well...
It's funny how some people view themselves as well as how they imagine others view them.
i) To begin with, I haven't been forewarned about atheists–as if my knowledge of atheists (whom Long euphemistically dubs "skeptics") is secondhand. I read a lot of atheists. I go straight to the source.
ii) It's true that I regard a consistent atheist as untrustworthy. That's because a consistent atheist is a moral and existential nihilist. Of course, many atheists are inconsistent in that regard.
iii) That's not my Christian impression of atheists. Intellectually candid atheists admit that their position commits them to moral and/or existential nihilism. Some even brag about it.
iv) More to the point, it's usually irrelevant. In general, we don't evaluate arguments based on whether the proponent is trustworthy. Trust is germane to testimonial evidence. And it's germane to expert witnesses. But in general the way to evaluate an argument is whether it's logical, and not whether the proponent is a trustworthy person. An element of trust can be a salient consideration if his argument depends on evidence, and he's not a reliable source of evidence. But many atheistic objections to Christianity aren't based on evidence, or not on specialized evidence, but how an atheist construes the evidence. Atheists aren't privy to evidence unavailable to Christians.
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