October 25, 2016 Show with Scott Klusendorf on “The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture” PLUS Joel R. Beeke on “Fighting Satan: Knowing His Weaknesses, Strategies, and Defeat”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with.

Your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 25th day of October 2016.

Scott Klusendorf’s Testimony and Seventh-day Adventist Background

I'm so delighted to have for the first hour a guest that I have not yet interviewed and I'm eagerly anticipating a fascinating discussion. His name is Scott Klusendorf and he is founder and president of the Life Training Institute.

We're gonna be talking about his book The Case for Life, Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. The second hour I have a longtime friend back on the program, Dr. Joel Beeky, president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan and he's gonna be discussing his book Fighting Satan, Knowing His Weaknesses, Strategies, and Defeat.

We're also going to be plugging a couple of Bible conferences coming up, actually a few Bible conferences coming up, that I hope many of you listening will join me in attending. But first of all, it's my honor and privilege for the very first time ever to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron, Scott Klusendorf.

Chris, great to be with you, thanks for having me. Before we even get into the Life Training Institute and the The Case for Life, your book, I'd like to know something about your own personal background briefly, a summary of your testimony, how you were raised, what kind of theological or religious climate you were raised in, and how you came to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

Wow, fascinating. Well, I was raised Seventh-day Adventist at Adventist Academy K -12, and in my sophomore year of high school, we had a week of prayer, surprisingly laid out the gospel and very clear, and then I began to have great judgment, and then I began to have serious doubts about L. and G. White as a alleged prophetess, and the bottom line was, I wandered across the street to an evangelical church and got grounded in the gospel, and eventually met my wife there, and become an associate minister myself.

I still have a license. After that became...

Well, that's fascinating. I have to have you back perhaps sometime to exclusively discuss Seventh-day Adventism, because it is a controversial issue. I know Seventh-day Adventists that I am convinced are my brothers in Christ, and I think that there are a lot of people, just like there are a lot of people in all religions, who are not consistent with the official teachings of that group, and sometimes that's good, and sometimes that's bad.

I know, and you've said it well, there are.

Adventists who clearly are believers, but there are other Adventists lifestyle commit, and it really depends on what evangelical... But yeah, that would be a fascinating... Yeah, was the, I don't know if.

You're still a Seventh-day observer, but if... I'm not. Was that a big hurdle for you to overcome? Huge, huge. It.

Took a long time, and really what I had to do, and as a result, we are working through a new covenant, and an understanding of the new covenant, having the old one fulfilled in Christ, is what really helped out a lot.

It's when you try to dice out the commandments and say nine apply, but the fourth one doesn't anymore, I found that to be a huge stumbling point, and it was recognizing that.

Christ fulfilled the entire law. Yeah, I think the first thing that got me to question the orthodoxy of Seventh-day Adventism is when I was visiting a congregation, and a visiting preacher was calling into question anyone, calling into question the salvation of anyone who would eat a bologna sandwich.

Yeah, there you go. But as I said, I'm not brushing you folks, I do, as I said, have some friends and acquaintances who are Seventh-day Adventists, and I consider them my brothers, but to undermine the serious differences that we have either.

That's correct, and if there weren't.

Adventist guys like Desmond Ford out there who were committed to a forensic justification by faith gospel, I would have never heard of them. There were a few of them. Desmond's in Australia,.

Right? Yeah. And he was excommunicated for his view? Yeah, they threw him out in 1980 for teaching.

Forensic justification, and they didn't like that. But it's interesting, La Sierra University brought him back, Loma Linda University brought him back recently to preach on that, and it's an amazing video.

Yeah, well I've got to get a hold of that video and watch that. Yep. Now let's hear about.

How you came to be involved with Life Training Institute. What were the providential steps that the Lord had ordained that led you to that position? I love the way you phrase that. People.

Say, how did the Lord lead you to this? Well, I didn't get a California, and I got invited to a Pro T90. I had been pro-life all along, Chris. There never was a time where I wasn't pro. Really not done much on the home and forget about it.

Started with a room, and the guy who wrote the bill did something all along, but I watched that video, and to make a long story short, I resigned my associate and added ever since. Well, praise God. And for anybody who would like to learn more.

About this organization that we are speaking of, the Life Training Institute, LTI, you go to prolifetraining .com, prolifetraining .com, and that's all one word, prolifetraining .com, and we'll be hopefully announcing that again before the end of the program.

You have written a book called The Case for Life, Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture, which is basically the mission statement of your organization, it seems. If you could, let us know what led you to specifically write the book, knowing that there were other pro-life books already in print.

What was missing or lacking, or something that just needed to be put in print that you didn't see.

Available yet? Oh, that's a great question. I'll tell you what it was, Chris. There are a ton of on-the-issue at a very intelligent level, and out of various books that give the pro-life, almost no laypeople are reading those books.

On the other end of the spectrum, you've got a bunch of pro-life books that don't really delve into the deep worldview and philosophical problems confronting us in the culture today. Rather, they tend to be more personal, more biographical.

I saw a need for a book that was what I would call a translator book, where I would take the great pro-life thinking that's out there, and make those arguments understandable, and do so within the context of the Christian gospel.

Here's how we make our case for the pro-life view in a secular environment, but here's how that pro-life case relates to our gospel proclamation as well, and here's how it relates pastorally to men and women who've had abortion and who desperately need the healing that can be found.

Oh, those were kind of the concerns I had that drove me. I'm going to let.

Our listeners know how they can join us on the air with questions of their own. The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

I fully recognize that when you're dealing with a very sensitive issue like abortion, there may be people out there that would prefer to remain anonymous. Perhaps they've had an abortion. Perhaps they are contemplating abortions and abortion.

Perhaps they just have a very close loved one like a daughter or a sister or a mother who has either had or contemplating an abortion. I understand that you would want to remain anonymous in such cases.

In fact, I would prefer that you remain anonymous if you're talking about somebody else. I'm not obviously going to identify who you are if that's the case, but if it is at all possible, if you could mention your first name, city and state, and country of residence, please do so when you email us at question at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Now, there are different approaches, even within the pro-life movement, as you are fully aware, on the issue of abortion. There are some, even conservative Christians, who are vehemently pro-life and vehemently anti-abortion, who would say that there are certain circumstances when the life of a mother is genuinely at risk when an abortion is acceptable, and there are others who would say, absolutely not, it's always murder.

From the moment of conception to the moment of delivery, to ever terminate a pregnancy is just a fancy way of murdering a baby. Is there a specific approach to this issue that you'd like to discuss as far as abortion being ever a possibility or always prohibited?

Abortion, Ectopic Pregnancy, and Defining the Pro-Life Case

Well, Chris, I think what we need to begin with always is.

Defining our terms. Put out as one, premise two. Now, notice, by defining abortion as the intentional killing of an innocent human being, we can bring clarity to the issue. And pro-lifers can defend that syllogism using science to demonstrate that the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings, and philosophy to argue that there's no essential difference between the embryo you were of development.

Differences of size, level of development, they are not good read on now. Now, once we clarify our basic argument, now we're ready to talk about the life of the mother. And let's take an exact case from medical science, ectopic pregnancy.

This is where the embryo, instead of implanting on the inner wall of the uterine cavity, implants on the inner wall of the fallopian tube. As that embryo grows, in that case, if you're a pro-life doctor, here's the choice in front of you.

Do you do nothing and lose two human beings, the mother and the child, or do you act in such a way that you save one life, even though the unintended but foreseeable result is the death of the embryo?

And my answer is you act to save the mother's life. Now, somebody would say that's the same as abortion. No, let's go back to our definitions. We defined abortion as the intentional killing of an innocent human being.

This is not the intentional killing of an innocent human being. To save the mother's life with the unintended, but that the child cannot survive that procedure. That is not.

The same. Yeah, wouldn't you say that a parallel would be a case such as twins joined at the brain or something, and when you are separating them, knowing there is a very strong likelihood that one of them is going to die as a result, you're not intentionally killing the other twin?

That's correct, in front of you. Now, there are some who say, well, that's just relativism. No, relativism is, do whatever you want, anything goes. That's not what's in play here. This is acting to do the greatest objective moral good you can, given the hand you've been dealt.

It's.

Not saying anything goes. And do you know, for instance, conservative evangelical Christians who are on the left to you that you can dialogue with and remain cordial with, or is this something that is such a heinous issue, such a heinous crime against the most helpless and innocent among us, that it's impossible to really have any kind of a meaningful friendship with somebody who would view the legitimacy of an abortion for any reason?

I have debated many people in my career,.

Most recently debating again Nadine's, and she and I are friends. And I'll tell you why I take this approach, Chris. First of all, Nadine draws an audience that I get to talk to. I want to be her friend.

Secondly, she's no more lost in her sins, Chris, than I was in mine before Christ found me. So I want to keep open doors of relationship. That doesn't mean I go after the.

Substantially nasty. I have an idea that I hope to get into the ears of more individuals, especially in conservative media. I don't know if this would ever happen. I don't know if it would require a miracle of some kind to happen, but I'm actually amazed that even conservatives in the media have never, that I have heard or seen, address this or insist upon it.

I believe that every time there is a major election, such as obviously the race for president of the United States, that there should be televised a live or at least a filmed actual abortion taking place.

And therefore, when people vote, they are going to have more of an education of what is going on. In fact, if Hillary Clinton believes that a baby should be legitimately aborted, quote, quote at in the ninth month, we should see that.

And when people shudder at that, in fact, I was quite puzzled years ago when Pat Buchanan, who was the poster boy for conservative politics, and perhaps in some cases still is considered that when he was being interviewed on a radio program, I called in and suggested that he was running for president of the United States for the Reform Party at the time.

And he said, no, I wouldn't want to do that. And I said, why not? And he said, well, that would be like televising an execution. I said, that's my point. And I said, the only reason why the world gasped with horror about the Holocaust and did something about it, it was because we all saw the film footage of what happened in those death camps.

In fact, we didn't even see all of it, but we saw enough of it that we realized this is one of the most grotesque stains on the planet Earth's history. And therefore, everybody involved in that must be brought to justice.

In fact, I know that the American GIs, after they liberated the death camps, they forced local Germans, men and women who were living right in the same neighborhoods, to take not only a tour of the death camps, they made them carry dead bodies to their graves and help bury them and so on.

So seeing is believing in this case. I think that people need to see that. Now, what is your opinion of what I just said? Well, I think you're onto something here,.

And I'll tell you why. We don't even need to look at the Germans resisting looking at the atrocities. The Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not believe the death camps existed. And even when he got word that they did, didn't feel it was worth his time to divert his energies away from planning to go look at one.

But Eisenhower had a Jewish aide who would not quit badgering him about going to see one of the camps. And finally, Eisenhower, in frustration, just to get rid of the guy, said, fine, I'll go look at one of your camps.

And the guy put him in the Jeep and drove him out to Ordorf. And Eisenhower gets out of the Jeep, walks into the camp. After ducking behind a building and throwing up for several minutes, he came out and said to the aide, you get every company commander on the phone you can within 50 miles of this place.

I'm told the American soldier doesn't know what he's fighting against or what he's fighting for. When he sees this, he'll know what he's fighting against. And it took Eisenhower's Jewish look at the evidence in front of him before the Supreme Allied Commander would deal with this issue.

The American public does not want to deal with abortions, do not want to deal with abortion. As journalist Christopher Caldwell points out, the American public wants to think it needs to feel bad about abortion, but doesn't want to do anything to his right.

This is the problem we face. And when people see abortion, their moral intuition, people becoming behavior, knock away some of their car. And most of the forefront of the national debate is going. Yes.

And I,.

Even though I think that Chris Wallace did an admirable job as moderator for the last debate, I was very upset at one point when Donald Trump had described the late term abortion as ripping a baby from his mother's womb.

He should have more accurately said ripping it apart. But when Hillary Clinton said, that's not what happens. Chris Wallace could have said, tell us, Mrs.

Clinton, what does happen? Yes, exactly. Exactly right. When people say your abortion pictures are fake, or that's not what happens in an abortion procedure, then what we need to say to people is, then tell me what doesn't actually make them spell it out.

And you will find out right away that they are simply hiding behind a false notion of what the truth is. And I think if someone, a political candidate wants to make this issue work, they need to be willing to quote abortionists.

Yes. Warren Hearn, who wrote the book, Abortion Practice, the medical teaching text that teaches dismemberment abortions. Dr. Hearn says that there is no longer a realistic way to deny what is actually going on in an abortion procedure.

And here's his quote. Listen to this. Quote, the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current. Does that sound like the intentional killing of an innocent human being?

Yeah, not because I say so,.

But because America's leading abortionist says so. Yeah, wow, that is something. We do have a listener, CJ, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, is it true that I've heard from Roman Catholic apologists that prior to Roe v. Wade, the majority of evangelicals in the limelight, especially in the realms of politics, were in favor of a woman's right to an abortion.

And it was the Roman Catholics who were nearly exclusively making the protest against legalization of abortion. And that it's a very good question. Is that true? Because I've heard the same thing. Yeah, there is truth to.

That. I don't know the exact numbers. For example, the Southern Baptists prior to 1980 on abortion, Ronald Reagan's campaign, we know that mainline denomination, thankfully, you do have a few mainline groups like Presbyterian Church in America and Missouri Synod Lutherans who are pro-life and who do good works to try to end this slaughter.

But sadly, prior to 1980, it's true, the Catholic Church was the leading voice. And I thank God for Catholic friends on this issue. Though we differ theologically, we do work together to save innocent human lives.

And though we don't hold co-confession, we are co-belligerents in the fight to uphold justice for the weak and.

Vulnerable. Now, you mentioned some groups that are liberal Protestant, because even the Southern Baptist Convention was saturated with liberals at one point. Were there strong conservative Protestant voices who were equally opposed to abortion, along with the Catholics that.

You haven't mentioned? Yeah, there were some. You had Francis Schaeffer, for example. You had C. Everett Koop. You had Carl F. Henry. You had others who did speak out against this, and who did put their views known.

But let's be fair here, that oftentimes, it was a Catholic voice that was leading on this. And in some cases, that's still true. Now, I will say this. Evangelicals have stepped up their game in those.

We are doing conferences. I just did two conferences, one with 1 ,800 students in Los Angeles, and one with 800 students in Dallas this last weekend, where we taught pro-life apologetics as part of a larger Christian apologetics conference.

And the students are eating it up. We are stepping up our game, training people how to make a case for the pro-life view, and to do it persuasively in a skeptical world. But while we're leading in that area, in terms of being the public witness against the pro-life view, or for the pro-life view, I don't think we can argue that the Catholics are anything but, for their help.

On this issue. By the way, CJ, you are getting a free copy of the book. We are discussing The Case for Life, Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. Just make sure you give us your full mailing address, and that will be shipped out to you.

Compliments of not only the publishers, Crossway, but also compliments of CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. CV, as in Cumberland Valley, BBS, for BibleBookService .com, a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, who ships out all of our winners' free Bibles, books, DVDs, CDs, and everything else they win by submitting questions.

So keep your eye out in the mail, but please give us your full mailing address. And we are going to a break right now. If you'd like to join CJ with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we will be right back after these messages with more of Scott Klusendorf. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show, Iron, Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called. Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang-up conference called the G3 conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com.

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Story. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned in, the guest for the first hour is Scott Klusendorf, founder and president of Life Training Institute. We're discussing his book, The Case for Life, equipping Christians to engage the culture.

Our second hour, we are honored with Dr. Joel Beeky as our guest, the president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reform Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's going to be discussing fighting Satan, knowing his weaknesses, strategies, and defeat.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Scott Klusendorf on the abortion issue, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we do have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, I have heard from a doctor who has come public, Dr. Lawrence K. Koning, who is an OBGYN physician, who after the debate made it known that there is no medical reason that requires aborting or killing a baby in the third trimester that can possibly be of any benefit to a pregnant woman.

And he wants to know what your opinion is on what Dr. Koning has said. And do you know Dr.

Koning, or have you heard of what he is speaking about? I don't know him, but what he has stated is consistent with what I have read elsewhere. And what that literature seems to indicate is that by the third trimester, we could just as easily look toward an early delivery in many cases, rather than intentionally killing the child.

There certainly are cases where we may need to remove the child in the third trimester. But to say that the only way we can save the mother is to kill the child, that does not seem to be supported in the medical literature.

Well, guess what, Arnie, you are also receiving a free copy of the book that we are offering today, The Case for Life Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf. We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who asks, what is the best pictorial aid that you can recommend to show women who are considering abortions in order to prevent them from making that horrific.

Choice? Well, it would depend on what the context is, but I'll tell you what we use when we speak on abortion, when we speak in churches, in Catholic and Protestant high schools, and when we speak in small groups.

Our team uses a clip that is available. If you go to the LTI video section of the website, it's a 55-second clip called This is Abortion. And this clip, it's graphic, it's disturbing, and there's a warning screen so people aren't caught off guard by it.

The meaning on the word abortion, my colleague Greg Cunningham puts it well, when you show pictures of abortion, abortion protests itself. That's why I've never considered myself an abortion protester.

I don't have to protest abortion. When I show pictures of it, it protests itself. It is an intuitive evil that people can recognize when they see it for what it is.

Yes, and in fact, don't you agree that most people, especially those who are the activists in favor of abortion or abortion rights, don't you think that the age-old question about when does life begin never really mattered to them?

Because obviously, now you have late-term abortions occurring and you have a presidential candidate pushing for a woman's freedom to kill a nine-month-old baby. This is really, isn't it, vivid proof that no one in that who has aggressively been fighting for abortion rights really ever cared when life began.

Anyway? Yeah, they don't care. In fact, they simply assume the unborn aren't human. They don't argue for it. They just assume it without having to state their reasons. Let me give you an example from history and then I'll give you one that's a little more current.

Many of your listeners have read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In chapter 32, there's a remarkable exchange where Huck Finn is going to visit Aunt Sally and Aunt Sally actually thinks that Huck is Tom Sawyer, but that's a side issue.

Here's the main point. Huck shows up late for supper and Aunt Sally says, why were you late? And Huck says, well, ma 'am, as he stammers to come up with an excuse, we were on a steamboat and it blew a cylinder head.

And Aunt Sally says, well, was anybody hurt? No, ma 'am. It killed a Negro, but nobody was hurt. People do get hurt. Notice what was just assumed about the black man, that he wasn't one of us. Now, fast forward to a couple of years ago to the president of the United States, Barack Obama, celebrating Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that gave us abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy.

Here's how the president coined his support for that Supreme Court decision. He said to the public at a national conference on TV, it deserves the right to pursue their own dreams. Wait a minute. Everyone, unquote, include the unborn.

Notice he just assumed the unborn weren't human. He didn't argue for it. And this was precisely the point that C .S. Lewis was getting at when he said the most dangerous ideas in our culture are those that are simply assumed, not those that are spelled out.

Warren Hearn, the abortionist in Colorado, is not the guy doing the most damage to the pro-life movement, though his behavior is truly evil when he kills children. The guy that's doing the damage is the one who has the mouthpiece and can simply assume the unborn aren't human and convince millions of.

Americans that the question doesn't matter. Yeah. And I'm amazed that there are people who still are completely unaware. In fact, most people that I speak to, especially if they're not Christians or not conservative or involved in the pro-life issue, they are completely unaware of what the Infant Born Alive Act was all about.

They were unaware of what was going on and perhaps still is going on. And of course, Barack Obama voted against that. And he, a senator in Chicago before elected president, was in a state where this first came out, that babies were being put in boxes and put in storage closets to starve to death if they were born accidentally alive during an abortion attempt.

If you could explain a little bit more about that.

Three times the future president, while he was a member of the state house in Illinois, voted against a bill that did not, or that this is something that is appalling. But let's make no mistake, Barack Obama and the Democrat party is absolutely committed to killing unborn children wholesale.

Make no mistake about it. And if anybody takes offense at that, they just need to go read the party platform statements and it will clear it up for them. I'm not saying this because I want to be partisan.

I'm saying it because it's a matter of fact. You have one political party in America that wants to promote the evil of abortion wholesale. You have another political party that does a so-so job protecting unborn children, but doesn't promote evil wholesale.

It's the sad political reality that confronts pro-life Christians today. And it's why more than ever, we've got to be able to defend our view in a persuasive and gracious way with people who think there's no logical argument that can be brought to bear on the issue.

Yes, I have been for a long time very disgusted at the cowardice of professing conservatives and Republicans over this issue who claim to be pro-life. And I can even remember when John Kaine was running against Barack Obama and Senator McCain basically brought up the Infant Born Alive Act during the debate, which evoked a chuckle, I can remember, from Barack Obama.

And McCain did not even bother to define exactly what that meant to the audience, which was infuriating. You bring up a subject like that, which at least that was a starting point of being admirable. And then, after he chuckles and explains it away, meaning Obama, he don't pursue it any further?

And you don't make him explain in vivid detail.

What was occurring? I'm just astonished. Well, here's why that is. Our politicians are not trained how to make a case for the pro-life view. They're given talking points. And one of two things is true about these conservative politicians who are allegedly on our side but appear not to be able to defend our view, if their life depended, escape the issue rather than really deal with it.

The other side of this is you have people on our side who do believe what we believe, but they don't know how to articulate their views persuasively, which is what led me to write the book that I did, The Case for Life, because I want people to know how to make that case.

And you know what, Chris? Your listeners need to know how to make this case. It's no longer going to be the option of leaving the defense of life to a handful of professional apologists. Every one of us needs to know how to step up and, in a minute or less, make a case for the pro-life view.

So let me do that. Let's say it's Thanksgiving, and your listeners have an aunt. And over turkey and stuffing, she looks at you and says, now tell me again why you're pro-life. Here's your answer, minute or less, and your listeners can tie me if they want.

Aunt Betty, I am pro-life because the science of embryology says that from the earliest stages of development, you were a distinct... You weren't particles on the back of my hand. You were already a distinct whole member of the human family, even though you were immature and had yet to grow.

And you know what else, Aunt Betty? Between that embryo you were and the adult you are today that would justify killing you back then, differences of size, level of development, degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you could be killed then.

But I think I got that done in a minute. And I didn't just make... I actually made an argument. Now Aunt Betty has to deal with my argument. Now make no mistake, she will try to change the subject. Well, that's just your religious view.

Wait a minute, Aunt Betty. Arguments are true or false, valid or invalid. Calling an argument religious is a category error, like saying how tall is the number five. You can't just dismiss my argument.

And the beauty of that is that you actually hear the case we're making, and then we're in a position to gently point out to them that they haven't refuted it,.