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An annoying issue in online debate

I recently came across a post online that said: "The concept of hell makes no sense, why would the devil punish people for disobeying the same God that he disobeyed himself?". If you're familiar with Christian theology you'll immediately notice that this objection is based on a very flawed understanding of hell and Satan. I don't expect everyone to be totally informed about Christian beliefs and I'll admit that this conception of hell is very prominent in media, especially cartoons, but if all your knowledge on a topic comes from cartoons, you probably shouldn't be debating about it. This idea that the devil is represented as, essentially, the prison warden of hell, could most easily be traced back to Milton's Paradise Lost, especially in the iconic line "better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n". A lot of the stereotypical qualities of Satan come from this work, much like how the Western view of hell was heavily shaped by Dante's Divine Comedy. This idea of Satan having dominion over hell, as well as this caricature version of him as this troubled, rebellious and misunderstood anti-hero that people see in Paradise Lost have no direct biblical basis. The truth is, the Bible doesn't actually go into too much detail at all on the origin of Satan (maybe I'll write a blog post about this in the future), and Milton's work, while a literary masterpiece, is not something we should be getting our theology from. If you want to see where Satan's dominion truly is, look no further than 2 Corinthians 4:4. But that's beside the point. I'm not here to actually discuss theology per se. Instead I wanted to point out a major problem that uninformed people have across all fields. It's extremely common in religious debate, but it really is something that you can see anywhere. Now, the post that I mentioned earlier was very likely not a sincere question, and rather a snarky dig at Christianity, since it began with an assertive claim that the concept doesn't make sense. Not 'the concept of hell doesn't make sense to me', which could easily be an earnest admission of a gap in your knowledge, but 'the concept of hell doesn't make sense' which is an outright assertion followed by a rhetorical question that's supposed to make you agree, rather than an uninformed person sincerely petitioning for an answer. It's this sort of intellectual ignorance where someone has a misconception about something that they find troubling, and instead of trying to rectify it by doing research, they already assume that their understanding of the concept is already completely correct, and it's the concept itself that's flawed, and they use this as an argument against the concept, or in this case, the entire system that the concept is a part of. You can't critique Christianity, or any system really, based on your own misunderstanding of what it actually teaches. If you're going to engage in debate, you really should ensure that you're familiar with the position that you're attacking. A common thing I see in online atheist vs Christian debate is that the atheist has a fundamental misunderstanding of a Christian concept, and when this gets pointed out, their only retort is something along the lines of "Sorry for not knowing the intricacies of your fairytale book", which is just sooo lazy. If you are an atheist and you want to engage in actually honest debate about Christianity or religion in general, I implore you to please actually research the topic. Who knows, maybe you'll find an answer to something you didn't realise you were looking for. Also, I'll admit that this goes both ways. It's obviously not an issue exclusive to atheists, and like I said, it can appear in any debate about any topic under the sun, but it also appears in Christian arguments against atheism. Many atheists have real metaphysical objections to Christianity or theism in general, and when an apologist doesn't address these properly, it comes off as equally silly. Make an effort to understand your opponent's position. It's the only way to have a healthy discussion, guys.

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