Do responses to the people of falsehood harden the hearts?

Question:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, do responses to the people of falsehood harden the hearts? Because there are people who keep us away from the books of the scholars that respond to the people of falsehood?

Answer:
It is the failure to respond to them that hardens the hearts, because their doubts enter the hearts and then they harden. As for responding to them and clarifying the truth, that is what softens the hearts and returns them to the truth. So do not pay attention to such false statements. They come from people who want falsehoods and doubts to spread, and who do not object to them or refute them, saying, "This is freedom of opinion; this is one opinion, and that is another opinion." This means religion has become a matter of opinions. Religion has no opinions; religion is revelation from Allah the Exalted. Allah has not entrusted us to our opinions and our minds, but He has commanded us to follow the Book and the Sunnah, to understand them, and to act upon them, and to refute the doubts and false statements that contradict them. If there were no response to the people of falsehood, the truth would not have prevailed, and the truth would not have become clear to the people.
But I say, and I continue to say, that only the scholars of knowledge respond to these matters. As for the one who is learning, the student of knowledge, and the one who pretends to be a scholar, it is not permissible for him to respond to these matters, because he may respond out of ignorance, and his response may be worse than what is being responded to.
Because if the response is not based on knowledge, its harm is greater than its benefit. So I say that only the scholars of knowledge who are firmly grounded in knowledge respond to them, responding with knowledge, arguments, and proofs. As for the one who has not mastered the knowledge, he should not respond to them, because his response may be worse than what is being responded to. Yes.