Don't Bother Arguing With a Fundamentalist Christian

Arguing with a Christian fundamentalist is like hitting your head against a wall. Or climbing a rope drenched in baby oil. Or investing money in a pyramid scheme.

You lose every time.

The more you point out the Earth could not possibly be only 6,000 years old, the more they insist dinosaurs are actually pretty young or—even more bewilderingly— that fossils are a PLOY BY SATAN HIMSELF.

The more you question why a “loving father” would constantly threaten and test his children—all whilst requiring them to lavish him with melodic adulation—the more they will inform you that god’s threats are motivated by love and NECESSARY, GOSH DARN IT, to steer his people toward the true and narrow path.

The more you suggest gays are NOT terrible, immoral, world-destroying pedophiles, the more they twitch in the eye, flecks of foam on their lips as they sputter things about faith and Satan and hell and that the END OF DAYS ARE COMING, HE WILL JUDGE YOOOUUUUUU.

And if you happen to say something that penetrates their defenses and makes them, you know, briefly question their faith? That questioning does not open new perspectives and open-minded discourse—it triggers the panic button, treating you to the final and immovable “WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE MYSTERIES OF OUR ALMIGHTY FATHER IN HEAVEN! IF I AM CHOOSING BETWEEN YOUR WILY WORDS AND THE PROMISES OF HE WHO IS THE FIRST AND THE LAST, I WILL ALWAYS CHOOSE MY GOD!!!”

And then the conversation is done.

Why am I talking about this?