People need to learn how to argue better on the internet, especially about religion, Catholic media personality and Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron said in remarks at Facebook’s headquarters on Sept. 18.
“Seek with great patience to understand your opponent’s position,” he advised, adding that it can be “very tempting just to fire back ‘why you’re wrong.’”
Instead of going after what’s wrong, he said, one should seek also highlight what your opponent has right. This is an “extraordinarily helpful” way to get past impasses.
Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire website and media content reach millions of people each year over the internet. The bishop spoke to Facebook employees Sept. 18 at the company’s Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters on the topic “How to have a religious argument.” The event was live-streamed to around 2,500 viewers.
“If we don’t know how to argue about religion, then we’re going to fight about religion,” he said.
For Bishop Barron, argument is something positive and “a way to peace.”
If one goes on social media, he said, “you’ll see a lot of energy around religious issues. There will be a lot of words exchanged, often angry ones, but very little argument.”
Bishop Barron praised the intellectual tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas and his time’s treatment of disputed questions. A professor would gather in a public place and entertain objections and questions.
“What’s off the table? Nothing as far as I can tell,” the bishop summarized. He cited the way St. Thomas Aquinas made the case for disbelief in God before presenting the arguments for rational belief in God.
“If you can say ‘I wonder whether there’s a God,’ that means all these questions are fine and fair,” Bishop Barron continued. “I like the willingness to engage any question.”
Aquinas always phrases the objections “in a very pithy, and very persuasive way.” In the bishop’s view, he formulates arguments against God’s existence even better than modern atheists and sets them up in the most convincing manner, before providing his responses to these arguments.
Further, St. Thomas Aquinas cites great Muslim and Jewish scholars, as well as pre-Christian authorities like Aristotle and Cicero, always with great respect.
Bishop Barron said authentic faith is not opposed to reason; it does not accept simply anything on the basis of no evidence.
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
This is where Bishop Barron is at his best. Don’t always agree with His Excellency, but here, in this venue, he is in top form.
“If you can say ‘I wonder whether there’s a God,’ ” but you really do not, that is a lie. Say the truth, “I do believe that there’s a God.”
Joel,
If someone were to have such a disposition, I wouldn’t judge it too harshly. It could be an atheist who’s making their first step towards acknowledging God’s existence.
Also, the authentic Christian is always on a journey towards deeper belief in God, greater surrender to His will, and living as God wishes us to live.
The last section (Book IV) of C.S. Lewis’s short work “Mere Christianity” provides a truly excellent analysis on why judging others can be folly.
Oh, right, another condescending “Don’t quarrell, children!” from the schoolmarm.
Meanwhile the church is going to hell in a handbasket.
I was temp banned from Catholic Answers for pointing out accurately problems with Islam, accused of having a “disdain for a religion.” Wonder how Barron would react to that!
Be be direct and to the point. It’s not about winning an argument, it’s to present truth and win souls to heaven. What people do with truth is on them, giving it to them is on you!
The proof should be in the pudding. Instead of writing columns, recording videos, traveling the world giving lectures, Bishop Barron should provide an example of how the new evangelization he touts can be effectively implemented in a local church. He is the regional bishop of the Santa Barbara pastoral region in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Let him concentrate his catechetical efforts on the front lines of parish work in his territory. It’s very easy to be an itinerant preacher. It’s rather hard to do the grunt work of parish catechesis. Stop telling and start showing, Bishop Barron.
There’s plenty of opportunity in comment sections to educate about Catholicism, on both liberal and conservative websites.
Seems you can’t read through a series of comments without seeing some sort of Catholic bashing.
The best spin you could put on it is that perhaps some of the critics are genuinely interested in saving Catholics’ souls and feel that we are deeply deluded.
Other than Pope Francis, Bishop Barron is simply the best spokesperson for the Church in the modern world today! With his Word on Fire work, particularly his series, Catholicism, Bishop Barron has been an effective evangelizer for the faith. Hopefully, he’ll be made a cardinal someday!