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Notes -
Pinging @Eetan, might as well.
The question was prompted by this thread, and particularly this reply. If we argue the point, we're preaching. If we don't argue the point, there's no valid arguments.
Briefly, then:
*Rationalist Materialism made a great many significant promises. Among them, that it could bridge the is-ought problem, that it could build stable, functional societies, and that it could secure objective truth better than its predecessors. It has failed at these three promises, and at many besides. Societies founded from the ground up on Rationalist Materialism have not been stable or functional, and often have not been survivable for significant portions of their population. Societies founded on Christianity did much better, and as those societies have drifted toward Rational Materialism, they've done considerably worse in terms of stability and functionality.
*Rationalist Materialism's current dominance has come largely from social factors, not objective results. Those social factors largely boil down to the promises it made and has failed to deliver on, and a variety of lies it has coordinated to conceal the failure of those promises. Rationalist Materialism continues to dominate for precisely the same reasons that Psychology continues to be regarded as a valid and reliable scientific discipline.
*Contrary to the dogma of Rationalist Materialism, abstract beliefs are not forced by evidence, but are chosen through exercise of one's will. Another way to say it is that we draw conclusions for reasons. This process can be directly observed and verified by each individual, should they choose to do so. Rationalist Materialism itself plays arbitrage by ignoring this fact, pretending that it will admit only that which can be verified on Rational Materialist grounds, and then simply ignoring those standards for claims that seem consonant with its general vibe. The entire history of modernism is replete with examples, with the history of Psychology as a science again being one of the most glaring.
*Due to the above, Epistemology is not a solved problem, and while Rationalism and Materialism are quite useful within relatively narrow fields, they fail utterly as soon as one exits those fields into the world as a whole. The basic problem is that they need specific constraints to operate, and the complexity of the wider world denies those constraints. You cannot, in fact, "trust the science" for actual questions of science, let alone questions of metaphysics.
*Christianity endures. Even by Materialist standards, it delivers significant results, such that Materialists keep trying to figure out how to get the juice without the squeeze. It has not died off, and does not seem likely to any time soon. The conditions that have pushed it from its dominant social position are now a memory, and do not seem likely to return even by the expectations of many Rationalist Materialists. One could argue that it is superstitious, but I defy you to claim that it is more superstitious than "structural racism" and "trans women are women" or "wreckers and kulaks are sabotaging our production quotas" or "dialectical Marxism is the inevitable outcome of the laws of history" or "free will does not exist" or any of the other dominant shibboleths that inevitably emerge from Rationalist Materialism. You can hate us all you like, but what you see around you is the alternative, and the fact that these outcomes are not what your ideology predicted for the policies it advocated and secured should give you pause.
...That would be a start, anyhow.
And that would be also an end, end of Christianity. This long effortpost was the perfect illustration of my point.
You do not say "Christianity is good because it is true. God is real, the Bible is true word of God, Jesus is true son of God who died for your sins and rose from the dead. Follow him as the only way to save your soul from eternal fire that awaits you for your sins."
You say: "Christianity is good because Christian society is better than "materialist" one, because it delivers 0,46% higher GDP growth, 7,91% lower crime rate and scientific papers that replicate at 6.38% better rate. Go dilligently to church every week, it will somehow make everything better."
Indeed I do not. You do not need me to, as you have just demonstrated by making the statement yourself. It did not persuade you when you heard it last, and it would not persuade you if I repeated it to you an additional time myself. I do not think it is what you or any of the other atheists here need to hear.
You have armored yourselves against such an appeal, and battering uselessly against that armor is pointless. That armor is constructed of "Rationality" and "Reason"; if it is to be breached, one must do so through the gaps, pointing to the irrationality of that "Rationality" and the unreasoning of that "Reason". I think this can be done, and I mean to do it.
Cargo-cult Christianity is a stupid, pointless idea, and it won't work now any better than it has in the numerous times it's been suggested previously. There is no getting the juice without the squeeze. I am not arguing that Christianity is useful to non-Christians. I am pointing out that Christianity continues to stubbornly falsify non-Christians' predictions, theories, and explanations. We aren't supposed to have anything you could possibly want, and yet we do, and you yourselves admit it. I have not claimed that Christianity's value consists of the things you are still capable of recognizing. I am claiming that you do, in fact, recognize value, when your dogma says you should not.
[EDIT]
That was not an effortpost. It's barely, what, 3k characters?
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Thanks for ping.
This past thread was about preaching - compulsive, but counterproductive preaching at the wrong time and place.
TL;DR: Jewish Republican representative was so annoyed by simple expression of Christian faith that he unleashed Xer storm at fellow Republican and pro-life activist.
In related news, podcaster Daryl Cooper was so annoyed by rabbi lambasting Christianity, that he replied with attack on Judaism, especially Jewish faith in Messiah.
He hadn't noticed that rabbi with webpage full of rainbow flags would not be rabbi who every day awaits literal coming of literal Messiah and even less he noticed that many of his fans and subscribers are Jews who believe in literal Messiah and literal rebuilding of literal third Temple.
As this poster said, he was returning fire, except at the wrong adress, at his allies instead at his enemies.
Well, it depends what you mean by Rational Materialism (RM).
If you count RM beginning at the Enlightenment, then your baseline is Europe around year 1700.
And it is very low baseline. Compared to it, our societies far more stable, functional and are securing objective truth by several orders of magnitude. RM succeeded beyond any expectations.
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Christianity posits the existence of a God, a being of very particular description, history, and the progenitor of a whole host of moral facts. This is a claim of much higher power than to argue the existence of sabotaging kulaks or whatever. That people can believe in God or the proposed kulaks with the same fervor is a mark of human irrationality, not evidence that both claims are equally superstitious.
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I don't call it preaching to say that non-Christians go to Hell when you're making points about Christianity, in a context where argument is welcome.
I do call it preaching, or worse, if you do it in front of non-Christians outside such a context. And I think that's what Amadan is saying too.
Threatening someone with hell would be seen by most people as hostile act, but the original Xeet that started it all was not agressive fire and brimstone sermon, it was talking about hope, not about eternal fire.
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