I'd go further and say that if an argument against God can sway your children against God, you have failed.
If the Marxist atheists which staff modern colleges don't allow themselves to be swayed by apologetics to turn towards God, why should Christians allow it to turn them away from God?
To the (small) extent I've started turning back towards the direction of God, it's not because of any apologetics or intellectual exercise. It's because I see obvious good and evil in this world with clear lines being drawn in the sand, and increasingly I'd rather be on the side of good.
I agree, but if your kids have never heard anyone who hates God speak, it will be shocking and possibly titillating. They'll want to know more. You should expose them to these arguments (and frame them as retarded, evil, and stupid) well before they first hear them in the wild.
For me it wasn't the ones who overtly hated God who had an effect on me: it was the intellectuals who feigned indifference.
Apologetics is useful from a pattern recognition standpoint, where if you hear a certain argument you are probably talking to an enemy agent. But looking back to my upbringing, I think there was too much emphasis on the arguments being "wrong" and not enough emphasis on the arguments being "evil". Of course they are going to be both, but at the time you hear an argument you may lack the intelligence or wisdom to see that it is wrong. And when that happens, you need to be able to fall back on "even if this is correct, it is still evil; and I reject it on that basis alone". Even a lot of Christians are uncomfortable rejecting something purely on the basis of good/evil without any sort of intellectual justification.
I would have benefitted from learning how to say "you may be right, and I may be wrong; but regardless I will still serve my Lord".
I'd go further and say that if an argument against God can sway your children against God, you have failed.
If the Marxist atheists which staff modern colleges don't allow themselves to be swayed by apologetics to turn towards God, why should Christians allow it to turn them away from God?
To the (small) extent I've started turning back towards the direction of God, it's not because of any apologetics or intellectual exercise. It's because I see obvious good and evil in this world with clear lines being drawn in the sand, and increasingly I'd rather be on the side of good.
I agree, but if your kids have never heard anyone who hates God speak, it will be shocking and possibly titillating. They'll want to know more. You should expose them to these arguments (and frame them as retarded, evil, and stupid) well before they first hear them in the wild.
For me it wasn't the ones who overtly hated God who had an effect on me: it was the intellectuals who feigned indifference.
Apologetics is useful from a pattern recognition standpoint, where if you hear a certain argument you are probably talking to an enemy agent. But looking back to my upbringing, I think there was too much emphasis on the arguments being "wrong" and not enough emphasis on the arguments being "evil". Of course they are going to be both, but at the time you hear an argument you may lack the intelligence or wisdom to see that it is wrong. And when that happens, you need to be able to fall back on "even if this is correct, it is still evil; and I reject it on that basis alone". Even a lot of Christians are uncomfortable rejecting something purely on the basis of good/evil without any sort of intellectual justification.
I would have benefitted from learning how to say "you may be right, and I may be wrong; but regardless I will still serve my Lord".