Agnostic husband

[AthenaC]

Hi everyone - overall, my agnostic husband and I are very happy, but of course I pray for his soul.

From time to time we discuss God and religion, and because of my background in apologetics I am usually able to answer his questions. In many cases the way he frames his questions simply doesn’t have any bearing on reality, which is very common with the agnostic / atheist thought to which he exposes himself. The most recent example was a series of questions based on the assumption that anthropomorphizing God is a valid place to begin one’s reasoning. As always, I explain to him why the base assumptions don’t make sense, but he insisted they do. We didn’t get very far into the discussion since he wouldn’t budge, insisting his assumptions made sense; I ended the discussion rather quickly, which I’m not proud of.

It’s very frustrating when virtually all of these discussions lately are along the lines of:

Him: miscellaneous assumptions anthropomorphizing God … therefore God is an unstable genocidal war criminal (or some such).

Me: Have you considered that as the Author of life, it is His to give and His to take away?

Him: God committed genocide!

And he won’t budge from that assertion, no matter how many times I have explained to him why this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense.

On the one hand, I want to encourage him to keep asking questions and I want to keep the dialogue open. I firmly believe that if he is honest in seeking truth, he will eventually end up in RCIA one of these years. On the other hand, if he insists in stubbornly clinging to the idea that it’s valid to anthropomorphize God, I end up spending my limited free time feeling like I am under assault from a line of questioning I have disarmed literally dozens of times, and frankly I have little patience for that.

Any thoughts / advice?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

Hi everyone - overall, my agnostic husband and I are very happy, but of course I pray for his soul.

From time to time we discuss God and religion, and because of my background in apologetics I am usually able to answer his questions. In many cases the way he frames his questions simply doesn’t have any bearing on reality, which is very common with the agnostic / atheist thought to which he exposes himself. The most recent example was a series of questions based on the assumption that anthropomorphizing God is a valid place to begin one’s reasoning. As always, I explain to him why the base assumptions don’t make sense, but he insisted they do. We didn’t get very far into the discussion since he wouldn’t budge, insisting his assumptions made sense; I ended the discussion rather quickly, which I’m not proud of.

It’s very frustrating when virtually all of these discussions lately are along the lines of:

Him: miscellaneous assumptions anthropomorphizing God … therefore God is an unstable genocidal war criminal (or some such).

Me: Have you considered that as the Author of life, it is His to give and His to take away?

Him: God committed genocide!

And he won’t budge from that assertion, no matter how many times I have explained to him why this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense.

On the one hand, I want to encourage him to keep asking questions and I want to keep the dialogue open. I firmly believe that if he is honest in seeking truth, he will eventually end up in RCIA one of these years. On the other hand, if he insists in stubbornly clinging to the idea that it’s valid to anthropomorphize God, I end up spending my limited free time feeling like I am under assault from a line of questioning I have disarmed literally dozens of times, and frankly I have little patience for that.

Any thoughts / advice?

Thanks in advance!

Forget the discussions that lead nowhere.
Pray for him as St. Monica prayed for her son. If you do not know, just read her biography.

 

[Myqyl]

When I’ve been in discussions like this, I found that attributing characteristics to the other person that are as valid (or invalid) as attributing human characteristics to God sometimes help to make the case…

i.e. :

Me : Now THAT was very insulting…

Them : Huh? what?

Me : You didn’t stop and sniff me when we passed in the hall. For dogs this is a wildly insulting gesture… You should be ashamed!

Them : Umm… We’re not dogs…

Me : And God is not human Have a nice day!

I usually follow it with something silly like a quick pant so no one can take offense.

May work, May not…

God bless!

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Hi everyone - overall, my agnostic husband and I are very happy, but of course I pray for his soul.

From time to time we discuss God and religion, and because of my background in apologetics I am usually able to answer his questions. In many cases the way he frames his questions simply doesn’t have any bearing on reality, which is very common with the agnostic / atheist thought to which he exposes himself. The most recent example was a series of questions based on the assumption that anthropomorphizing God is a valid place to begin one’s reasoning. As always, I explain to him why the base assumptions don’t make sense, but he insisted they do. We didn’t get very far into the discussion since he wouldn’t budge, insisting his assumptions made sense; I ended the discussion rather quickly, which I’m not proud of.

It’s very frustrating when virtually all of these discussions lately are along the lines of:

Him: miscellaneous assumptions anthropomorphizing God … therefore God is an unstable genocidal war criminal (or some such).

Me: Have you considered that as the Author of life, it is His to give and His to take away?

Him: God committed genocide!

And he won’t budge from that assertion, no matter how many times I have explained to him why this line of reasoning doesn’t make sense.

On the one hand, I want to encourage him to keep asking questions and I want to keep the dialogue open. ** I firmly believe t**hat if he is honest in seeking truth, he will eventually end up in RCIA one of these years. On the other hand, if he insists in stubbornly clinging to the idea that it’s valid to anthropomorphize God, I end up spending my limited free time feeling like I am under assault from a line of questioning I have disarmed literally dozens of times, and frankly I have little patience for that.

Any thoughts / advice?

Thanks in advance!

I don’t think you are going to win this argument. He’s not open to listening, is he…His mind is made up, don’t try to change it with facts!

It doesn’t sound like he is honestly seeking truth. If he were seeking, he’d listen to what you have to say, read other points of view than atheists, try to understand things he’s had trouble understanding.

Try not to approach him with apologetics. You just take your position against him and you two square off for the fight. I suggest next time he says something provocative, you say quietly, “You know, you may be right.” Smile, and walk away…

Pray a lot. Try not to argue with him. You are not going to convert him by arguing with him. It’s the Holy Spirit he needs first.

 

[timotheos]

Try not to approach him with apologetics. (…) I suggest next time he says something provocative, you say quietly, “You know, you may be right.” Smile, and walk away…

You know RealJuliane, this is a really great suggestion. It puts the burden of of the entire reasoning process, not just his limited materialist/reductionist reasoning, squarely on his own shoulders, right where it belongs.

Along a related point, I heard once that St. Thomas Aquinas believed in debating these topics by first making the opposition’s point *even better than your opponent can *… then later systematically deconstructing it. Sometimes I think that we Catholics could articulate what a world without God would really look like, better than most agnostics.

 

[AthenaC]

You know RealJuliane, this is a really great suggestion. It puts the burden of of the entire reasoning process, not just his limited materialist/reductionist reasoning, squarely on his own shoulders, right where it belongs.

Along a related point, I heard once that St. Thomas Aquinas believed in debating these topics by first making the opposition’s point *even better than your opponent can *… then later systematically deconstructing it. Sometimes I think that we Catholics could articulate what a world without God would really look like, better than most agnostics.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

One thing I remembered the other day, is that if I prove him wrong in the middle of a discussion, he won’t admit it to me. He will (attempt to) drag the discussion on and on, clinging to ever more ridiculous ideas rather than admit that he’s wrong. I learned early on to just say “I’m done” and walk away when he gets like this.

When he’s had a chance to think it over, he may come around, but of course he won’t tell me about it. Back when he was still pro-choice (that didn’t last long), we had a good knock-down, drag-out, very passionate discussion before we had to walk away. A couple weeks later I threw a barb at him along those lines and he basically responded indignantly that he agreed with me. That he was now pro-life, too. So he does change his mind sometimes. Same thing happened with him being politically liberal when we got married (yeah … that didn’t last long either).

In some ways, he kinda didn’t know what hit him when he married me, in a good way. Part of it is that he’s 6 years younger than me - he was 20 (!) when we got married. Plus, I have a job where I evaluate evidence all day long, so my reasoning and discussion skills are pretty good. Overall, I see someone who is young, but more grown-up than he was a few years ago, and in any event more grown-up than many people I have met who are a decade older.

I saw TheRealJulianne’s thread about converting from being atheist, and the consensus seems to be that it takes an open heart, “Seek and ye shall find” type thing. So I guess that’s what I pray for.

Thanks again for all your thoughts.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Maybe part of the reason he fights so hard on this topic is that he does feel “one down” because he’s so much younger than you. It can be hard for a man to feel that way about his woman. And hard for someone very young to have the kind of confidence to take a stand without oversteering (so to speak), so he goes too far in one direction and then has to correct course.

Let him win sometimes. Your intellect probably intimidates him to some degree too.