{"id":4853,"date":"2011-08-17T11:55:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T15:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=4853"},"modified":"2011-08-16T16:20:21","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T20:20:21","slug":"on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","title":{"rendered":"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a column titled &#8220;Atheism, Despair, and Envy: A Case Study,&#8221; American Vision columnist Joel McDurmon confesses: &#8220;I normally don\u2019t get into online debates in comment sections, on Facebook, or even via email. I have too much work to get done.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But once in a while I\u2019ll engage someone if I think there\u2019s some larger benefit to it. This post is an example of that, and I was encouraged by others to make a post of the email exchanges below. I have done this at least once before, here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The following exchange took place after a 73-year old atheist emailed to the author in regard to an article critical of the Social Security program.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The man desired to express to me his despair in regard to the future of the Social Security system\u2014from which he derives his sole source of income\u2014but mostly to poke at me with this atheistic cane. While his expression of the standard old atheistic arguments is hardly the best I\u2019ve seen\u2014it reaches about a ninth-grade level\u2014it does carry with it an interesting vignette into atheism that I deemed worthy to set forth as an example.<\/p>\n<p>What this man revealed as I led him further into his own irrationalism, was the utter despair to which his worldview leads, as well as the angry expression of pure envy which develops from one\u2019s own embrace of pessimism. Rarely do these things come out so clearly in an exchange with an atheist.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/americanvision.org\/4855\/atheism-despair-and-envy-a-case-study\/\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a column titled &#8220;Atheism, Despair, and Envy: A Case Study,&#8221; American Vision columnist Joel McDurmon confesses: &#8220;I normally don\u2019t get into online debates in comment sections, on Facebook, or even via email. I have too much work to get done. &#8220;But once in a while I\u2019ll engage someone if I think there\u2019s some larger&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[674],"tags":[2232],"class_list":["post-4853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheist","tag-atheist"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a column titled &#8220;Atheism, Despair, and Envy: A Case Study,&#8221; American Vision columnist Joel McDurmon confesses: &#8220;I normally don\u2019t get into online debates in comment sections, on Facebook, or even via email. I have too much work to get done. &#8220;But once in a while I\u2019ll engage someone if I think there\u2019s some larger&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-17T15:55:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-16T20:20:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author","og_description":"In a column titled &#8220;Atheism, Despair, and Envy: A Case Study,&#8221; American Vision columnist Joel McDurmon confesses: &#8220;I normally don\u2019t get into online debates in comment sections, on Facebook, or even via email. I have too much work to get done. &#8220;But once in a while I\u2019ll engage someone if I think there\u2019s some larger&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-17T15:55:46+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-16T20:20:21+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author","name":"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-17T15:55:46+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-16T20:20:21+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/on-line-debates-with-atheists-usually-a-waste-of-time-says-author#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On-line debates with atheists usually a waste of time, says author"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4853"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6083,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853\/revisions\/6083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}