Four arguments are typically given, and specifically offered by Robert Blatchford, for the rejection of Christianity as false and absurd. But the critical facts cited wihin each argument can just as easily buttress a sincere belief in Christianity.
1. The legend of a divine savior is common among many ancient and contemporary cultures, and is not unique to Christianity. Answer: This does not suggest the impossibility of a divine savior, but rather that human existence is aimed toward its own redemption by a divine savior. Just as a long and varied pedigree of tales of love and tales of revenge do not suggest the absurdity of such a thing as love and revenge, but instead highlight the centrality of such emotions and actions to genuine human existence.
2. Ascetic devotion to Christianity abandons its practitioners to a barren existence empty of other human pleasures. Answer: It certainly must be a powerfully attractive force that would draw the absolute attention of its devotees in such a way as this. In a crasser, but parallel example, we recognize that the destruction caused by alcoholism is due to the powerful hold the drink has on the drinker. We don't conclude from the addiction that the alcoholic is hallucinating his own intake of drink, but that the feeling of drunkenness is entirely, frightfully real.
3. Commitment to religious tenets has produced terrible war, abject suffering, and the worst forms of cruelty. Answer: Humans being what they are, our worst offenses always emerge out of our attempts to protect what we love best-- nearly every murder and robbery in history is undertaken in pursuit of a "noble" goal, and human religion cannot be immune from the flaws of humanity. In a more recent analogy, the terrors of the French Revolution grew from devotion to Liberty, Egality, and Fraternity. Terrible actions don't undermine the truth of their central goodness. And what is more, the injection of such a greater Truth into human society would well lead to even harsher responses from us weak humans who are ill-equipped to deal with such greatness.
4. Hebrew and Christian religions trace back to particular, local, tribal groups and simplistic primitive events. Answer: How else could human beings experience the divine, and then communicate that experience, except through the same means and patterns as their experience of their familiar local world? A human who expresses a full-formed, logical conception of the infinite goodness of God full stop is surely making it up, for humans are not wired to gain knowledge in this way.
These arguments that were offered against Christianity, then, were not arguments at all, but mere observations. And mere observations can always be used to lead to opposing conclusions. The Secularists have entirely avoided, however, the most powerful arguments in favor of Christianity-- they will follow. Furthermore, those who won't be swayed by the four arguments above only remain unmoved due to their steadfast devotion to the central tenets of their own secularist orthodoxy. Ironically impressive.
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Time to get back on the Chesterton horse. I'm re-reading the chapters in Heretics that I read months ago, but it's worthwhile to also get a handle on the background arguments that led to him write the book in the first place. The Blatchford Controversies are the third selection in the Collected Works Volume 1.
The biggest difference between the use of the cited facts by Chesterton and their use by the secularists is Chesterton's willingness to observe human behavior as its own whole, ontologically basic thing. In all four cases, the secularists argue away human responses as the mere agglomerated, non-meaningful end results of unthinking, unfeeling physical and material processes-- processes whose bizarre end results obviously can tell us nothing about some weird spiritual realm that doesn't really exist in the first place. It is central to the argument of determinism that human existence has no genuine purpose, while Chesterton takes the purposefulness of human existence (and the personal internal experience of that purposefulness) as absolutely central and reads the reality of spiritualness back from that. And then experiences great joy out of his conclusions.
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