Mucho sympathy. Were I in that circumstance, I might spell out precisely what you say: "Well, I'm in a pickle. Apparently you think it's socially acceptable to assail my beliefs, but not socially acceptable for me to assail yours. I really don't care which set of rules we use, but they have to be fair to both of us. Either it's OK for me to attack your Christianity or it's not OK for you to attack my Agnosticism. Let's have the professor pick one, if that's OK for you."
BTW, your initial opponent's position is that of Descartes' Meditations on a First Philosophy (of "cogito ergo sum" fame). He puts forth that very argument: I can't possibly know whether or not we're in the Matrix, but I can know that a benevolent God exists (hand-wave, hand-wave) and a nice-guy God would never have made a Matrix nor tolerated a Matrix to be made to put me in; that's how I know I'm not in the Matrix.
For which reason, when I took Intro to Problems of Philosophy (MIT 24.00) we were told we weren't allowed to criticise Chapter 3 -- too much like shooting fish in a barrel.
no subject
BTW, your initial opponent's position is that of Descartes' Meditations on a First Philosophy (of "cogito ergo sum" fame). He puts forth that very argument: I can't possibly know whether or not we're in the Matrix, but I can know that a benevolent God exists (hand-wave, hand-wave) and a nice-guy God would never have made a Matrix nor tolerated a Matrix to be made to put me in; that's how I know I'm not in the Matrix.
For which reason, when I took Intro to Problems of Philosophy (MIT 24.00) we were told we weren't allowed to criticise Chapter 3 -- too much like shooting fish in a barrel.