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Thesis

Why is it important to be convinced of the Existence of God?

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It also plays an important role in understanding where the opposing point of view is coming from from. What is their mental state, etc.

For example, lots of people might have a problem with God because of some hard time they went through or because of some injustice they witnessed. If there is a God, then why do all these bad things happen. Bad things happen, therefore, there is no God.

Addressing God's existence from this angle is drastically different from addressing it from a historic angle.

But you wouldn't know that without real dialogue.

Unfortunately, we live in an environment where name calling and labelling is much easier than honest to God Dialogue. If someone doesn't agree with us, it's so much easier to call him some name to completely dismiss their point of view. We see that around quiet a bit. How people are called homophobes when they disagree with the homosexual lifestyle, or they are called anti-vaxx when they have legitimate questions about the efficacy of the vaccines, or called terrorists, when they protest against the vaccine mandates etc.

And we fall into that same trap in our church. It so much easier to call someone a heretic when he espouses a different point of view. This allows us to dismiss his argument and lump him in this category we call heresy, which we don't even have to listen to nor entertain.

Unfortunately, this attitude drives away many from the church.

It is, therefore, important to ensure we have honest and thoughtful dialogue, where we listen, empathise and understand the other point of view even if we disagree with it.

This helps us avoid the "strawman argument" trap.

A strawman is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance in order to make it easier to attack. Essentially, the person using the strawman pretends to attack their opponent’s stance, while in reality they are actually attacking a distorted version of that stance, which their opponent doesn’t necessarily support.

For example, if someone says “I think that we should give better study guides to students”, a person using a strawman might reply by saying “I think that your idea is bad, because we shouldn’t just give out easy A’s to everyone”.

Respect & Understanding

This follows from the point above. Without listening we can not have dialogue. Without Dialogue we can not truly respect and understand.

I'll tell you an example, when they decided to check vaccine passports in the church I was and still am strongly against it. I think it creates a segregation in the church which is anti-thesis to what the church stands for. God calls us to unity, not to keep a group out because of personal health choices.

I was expressing my opinion to someone and their response was, "I respect your opinion. I know lots of people are affected by the media". I'm like, dude, I didn't form my opinion because I was affected by the media. I actually gave this some serious thought.

This example highlights the lack of respect and understanding to the opposing point of view, which is a natural evolution of lack of dialogue. You don't have to agree with me, but at the same time do not belittle someone's argument even if you disagree with it.

Avoid Grand Posturing & Virtue Signalling

We all fall into this to some extent. We all love to be right. We all love to feel other's respect. But this is problematic, because if you always want to be right in a discussion, what you end up doing is trying to put down the other person's point of view. In effect making him feel dumb.

And the harder we go after the "always right" syndrome, the more we start using strawman arguments to make ourselves look better, "grand posturing", and show how good we are and how much we understand and how virtuous we are, "Virtue Signalling".

This spirit goes completely against the thesis I stated above. If our goal in discussing the Existence of God with others is to bring them to God, then we are definitely not achieving our goal.

Knowledge Puffs Up

Grand Posturing and Virtue signalling is tied at the hip to the concept of "Knowledge Puffs Up".

St. Paul emphasises this thought well.

We can be very highly educated and well read about the Existence of God, but knowledge by itself puffs up. The idea is not to show off how much we know, it is to care about the other person's spirituality and well being.

Devices not to u

Before we embark on examining the answer

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