The recent dramatic increase of smart-phone software has created entirely new dimensions in the common everyday religious debate sector. What do you do if you happen to be sitting in a coffee bar with a group of friends and someone challenges you with a faith question you don’t have the first clue how to answer? Well, the answer is now as far away as your cell phone! All you need to do is download an app and it will tell you how to deal with the issue at hand.
Publishers of Christian material have begun developing iPhone apps that guide the average user in quick comebacks and rhetorical strategies for believers who need the help.
“Say someone calls you narrow-minded because you think Jesus is the only way to God,” says one top-selling application introduced in March by a Christian publishing company. “Your first answer should be: ‘What do you mean by narrow-minded?’ ”
Interestingly enough, there are also a competing group of apps which arms atheists for battle.
For religious skeptics, the “BibleThumper” iPhone app boasts that it “allows the atheist to keep the most funny and irrational Bible verses right in their pocket” to be “always ready to confront fundamentalist Christians or have a little fun among friends.”
In a dozen new phone applications, whether faith-based or faith-bashing, the prospective debater is given a primer on the basic rules of engagement — how to parry the circular argument, the false dichotomy, the ad hominem attack, the straw man — and then coached on all the likely flashpoints of contention. Why Darwinism is scientifically sound, or not. The differences between intelligent design and creationism, and whether either theory has any merit.
Users can scroll from topic to topic to prepare themselves or, in the heat of a dispute, search for the point at hand — and the perfect retort.
(To read the full article, please go to http://nytimes.com).