Judo Logic

Someone once described to me his ardent desire that his new born son would, in the fullness of time, attend University and would be healthy and smart and would have the intellecetual acumen to be able to withstand the onslaught of the smirking, sneering, liberal Dons or Fellows or Professors who demean Christianity and would try to send all their students down the easy path to perdition. He said his son should be able to withstand their logic. His son would be tutored in the philosophical ways to fight and demolish error. I said that it would be a whole lot simpler if you taught him not to let his opponents choose the battleground. Or, if the battleground is the Secular University and we have no other choice for matriculation, then we should not allow the enemy to choose the weapons, nor the ground rules, nor anything else, for that matter. Having been a student myself, I know how it goes: the Professor has authority and learning and logic; in short, he has everything on his side, including our feeling of being subordinate to him, since he controls our grade. However, I recently learned one ought to do Philosophy just as one does Judo: let your opponents thrust cause him to overreach and we use his own efforts against him. For example, if one argues God's existence, one cannot accept the Scientific Method as a touchstone of Truth for the existence of something. God does not fit into a test tube, so one must find some other way to assert the Truth of God-propositions. Thus, one must attack the opponent's very basis of logic: assigning truth values to propositions. You do not neeed to defend your beliefs until the opponent has demonstrated that his criterion of Truth is acceptable to your debate. Now the ball has been tossed back into his court. Now he will propose various criteria. Shoot them down. Make him do the work. There is no good and transcendent way to assign Truth. Truth is belief, pure and simple. The opponent will wear himself out trying to come up with an iron clad definition of Truth. Stake out you own battlegrounds; don't let others define them for you. You will only fall into their traps if you do. This is why I refused to answer when people asked me whether Jesus was my savior. Whether I answer yes or no, I am immediately in the midst of combat on their terms, on their battleground, using their logic. They will use their things better than I. So I did not answer. Instead I wrote their sins in the sand on the beach with my finger. That's a joke. But...if you do not let others define things for you, if you do not let society define your being, then you must do it yourself. In this process you will come across an old pal, God Himself. You will say, "Haven't seen you in a month of Sundays." He will say, "I have been here all along. You just did not recognize Me. You had someone else's glasses on."