I don’t see why you need to debate this with your father. On several forums I’ve advised young atheists with religiously obsessive parents that they need to secure themselves financially so that they don’t have to move back in with these parents in our bad economy. A teenage or college-aged atheist shouldn’t announce his apostasy until he can finish college with a marketable degree, get a job, pay off all debts down to zero and then save up about a year’s worth of living expenses in case he becomes unemployed. Young atheists who do this will have the financial protection they need to tell their respective families about their atheism.
I think this is the best piece of advice overall. You are likely not going to convince your father, whose opinions probably even predate your birth. The real thing at stake here isn’t scientific truth, and trying to convince him is to fight the wrong battle.
People have a lot of beliefs they don’t feel the need to constantly justify to others, and I think it’s an accepted social convention to seek shelter in that principle. Being evasive and using relativism can help : admitting you can’t be sure about science and evolution is an acceptable compromise if you can trade it for the opposite fact that your father and people like him can’t be sure about God either.
Once swamped in such a position on both sides, you can also simply chose not to pursue the argument further, and believe your stuff “just because I feel this is the truth”, the same way they do for their own stuff, at which point it would be hypocritical for them to still try to convince you they’re right. This may not seem like a “truth seeker” thing to do, but you’re playing by his rules already anyway, and in his world, truth may not have the same meaning as it does in ours.
Also, trying to justify atheism like this feels like you’re playing a game where you’ve both already agreed tacitly that atheism is the side of the argument that has the burden of proof, which it hasn’t. Once again, don’t fight on your father’s ground with weapons adapted to your own. Either use other tools adapted to this battle ground (where truth is relative and backhanded arguments will be used), or move to another battle ground adapted to your tools.
I’m going to assume that you’ll probably ignore the above advice because it’s your relationship with your father, not the financial dependency (if any), that matters. In that case, start with framsey’s last piece of advice. Move on to the rest of it. Then, if you are still reading a book “he’s having me read,” I recommend choosing a book or article that you’re “having him read,” if you can find one that seems worthwhile. Fair’s fair.
It would be probably also useful to limit the number of books, to prevent the algorithm: “I will be giving you more and more books, until you eventually give up, because you will be too tired to read yet another book.”
For example to commit to read “five books you consider most convincing”, but not one more.
Considering that he’s asking for help on the basis that he had already come out to his father as an atheist shortly before joining the site, I think it’s a bit late for this sort of advice. From his introductory post:
After I told him about this, he handed me a book (The Reason for God by Timothy Keller) and signed himself up as a counselor for something called The Clash, described as a Christian “worldview conference”. Next week, from July 30 to August 3, he’s going to take me to this big huge realignment thing, and I’m worried I won’t be able to defend myself.
So not telling his family about his atheism is really not on the table.
He could pretend to recant, which would help preserve his father’s opinion of him in the short term, but it’s possible that this deception will make Benedict even more uncomfortable with their relationship than overt disagreement. There is also a danger that this will hurt his relationship with his father even more in the event that he comes clean about his atheism at a later date.
A teenage or college-aged atheist shouldn’t announce his apostasy until he can finish college with a marketable degree, get a job, pay off all debts down to zero and then save up about a year’s worth of living expenses in case he becomes unemployed.
(Relevant to your general idea, tough not to this particular case:) Unless he knows his parents are open-minded enough.
The fraction of theists in places such as western Europe has been plummeting in the past decades, meaning that there have been lots of atheists with theist parents, and I don’t think the fraction of those who deconverted (or announced their deconversion) before achieving financial independence is that tiny, and yet there hasn’t been any societal crisis due to that. Which means that there are plenty of theist parents who don’t burn their bridges with their children upon discovering they’re atheists. (Same applies with s/theist/heterosexual/ and s/atheist/homosexual/, too.)
I don’t see why you need to debate this with your father. On several forums I’ve advised young atheists with religiously obsessive parents that they need to secure themselves financially so that they don’t have to move back in with these parents in our bad economy. A teenage or college-aged atheist shouldn’t announce his apostasy until he can finish college with a marketable degree, get a job, pay off all debts down to zero and then save up about a year’s worth of living expenses in case he becomes unemployed. Young atheists who do this will have the financial protection they need to tell their respective families about their atheism.
I think this is the best piece of advice overall. You are likely not going to convince your father, whose opinions probably even predate your birth. The real thing at stake here isn’t scientific truth, and trying to convince him is to fight the wrong battle.
People have a lot of beliefs they don’t feel the need to constantly justify to others, and I think it’s an accepted social convention to seek shelter in that principle. Being evasive and using relativism can help : admitting you can’t be sure about science and evolution is an acceptable compromise if you can trade it for the opposite fact that your father and people like him can’t be sure about God either.
Once swamped in such a position on both sides, you can also simply chose not to pursue the argument further, and believe your stuff “just because I feel this is the truth”, the same way they do for their own stuff, at which point it would be hypocritical for them to still try to convince you they’re right. This may not seem like a “truth seeker” thing to do, but you’re playing by his rules already anyway, and in his world, truth may not have the same meaning as it does in ours.
Also, trying to justify atheism like this feels like you’re playing a game where you’ve both already agreed tacitly that atheism is the side of the argument that has the burden of proof, which it hasn’t. Once again, don’t fight on your father’s ground with weapons adapted to your own. Either use other tools adapted to this battle ground (where truth is relative and backhanded arguments will be used), or move to another battle ground adapted to your tools.
I’m going to assume that you’ll probably ignore the above advice because it’s your relationship with your father, not the financial dependency (if any), that matters. In that case, start with framsey’s last piece of advice. Move on to the rest of it. Then, if you are still reading a book “he’s having me read,” I recommend choosing a book or article that you’re “having him read,” if you can find one that seems worthwhile. Fair’s fair.
It would be probably also useful to limit the number of books, to prevent the algorithm: “I will be giving you more and more books, until you eventually give up, because you will be too tired to read yet another book.”
For example to commit to read “five books you consider most convincing”, but not one more.
Considering that he’s asking for help on the basis that he had already come out to his father as an atheist shortly before joining the site, I think it’s a bit late for this sort of advice. From his introductory post:
So not telling his family about his atheism is really not on the table.
He could pretend to recant, which would help preserve his father’s opinion of him in the short term, but it’s possible that this deception will make Benedict even more uncomfortable with their relationship than overt disagreement. There is also a danger that this will hurt his relationship with his father even more in the event that he comes clean about his atheism at a later date.
(Relevant to your general idea, tough not to this particular case:) Unless he knows his parents are open-minded enough.
The fraction of theists in places such as western Europe has been plummeting in the past decades, meaning that there have been lots of atheists with theist parents, and I don’t think the fraction of those who deconverted (or announced their deconversion) before achieving financial independence is that tiny, and yet there hasn’t been any societal crisis due to that. Which means that there are plenty of theist parents who don’t burn their bridges with their children upon discovering they’re atheists. (Same applies with s/theist/heterosexual/ and s/atheist/homosexual/, too.)