Another common indication of non-rational objections is an observed tendency to find the person you’re conversing with is never to be satisfied even when he finds what you say to be adequate, she really has another problem with Christianity.
For examle, she shares that what she objects to about Christianity is that so-called Christians killed so many during the Spanish Inquisition and she can’t understand why Christians aren’t more tolerant and peaceful like his atheist humanist friends.
Suppose as you talk about the facts of that situation and you find out she doesn’t really know how many folks were actually executed over the three centuries of the Inquisition. And suppose she finds out from you or another source (maybe you look it up on the Internet) find out that though disputable, the loss of lives were most likely in the thousands (three or four thousand) over three centuries.
That’s three or four thousand too many, but how about but when you point out that atheists have, not 500 years ago, but in the last century are responsible for between 50 and 80 million deaths at their hands in less than a half-century (leaving out Hitler and just focusing on Stalin and Mao--two good examples of dialectical materialist atheists)?
Suppose she comes to agree with those facts and admits she hadn’t checked the details. Then suppose you ask her if on the basis of that would she be more open to Christianity and she answers no. She answers no and goes to say what really bothers her is the Bible. Suppose you identify those problems, clarify them on by one and actually adequately answer those objections to her satisfaction. Suppose she says that, yeah, sure, that helped, but what really bothers her is that he has to go to church...and so it goes on and on...
What we have here is some pretty good evidence for what experts in communication study call objection hopping....the problem wasn’t really the Inquisition...there was something else. And until you get to the bottom of that hopping you don’t really know what the real problem is and therefore you can’t address it rationally. The more objection hopping you find, can lead you to expect the weaker the rational reasons for the objection. But you have to get there first.
We suggest that it might be helpful to point out that she seems to change his mind about what really bothers her once that’s answered, but what you’d really like to know is what really she objects to. For instance, at the bottom she may just object to the whole idea of surrendering to any ultimate other than herself.
We don’t know that’s true of everybody as their bottom line reason for objection, but issues like that crop up all the time. Sometimes you can cut through that by asking, “what is that if it were answered or clarified to your satisfaction you’d then become a follower of Christ?” However, the key for you is to be able to spot this kind of response and realize that the objection may not be at the bottom rational, but non-rational. The irony of that is, she may not realize her concern is non-rational or certainly not related to getting rational answers to questions. The question for the objection hoppingh person is, how open is that person to finding and understanding what at the bottom is their probem with Christian faith? If you can patiently get there, you may be able to help her rationally appraise and deal with that objection.