Is there a need for apologetics?

[DanieltheDragon]

Given these parameters:

God is real
God is All powerful
God is All knowing
God is Omnipresent

Apologetics seems meaningless. What I am trying to say is that the scriptures themselves should be without criticism given the parameters of the god defined above. Thus if god were real there would be no need to defend god because god and his message would be without fault and fault could not be found otherwise it would violate the parameters of his existence.

[ttruscott]

In my opinion there is no fault in the Bible, if it is understood correctly and if you find fault in the Bible, then you should re think the matter.

The extreme divisiveness of the Abrahamic religions and Christianity are proof positive that the Bible is extremely faulty. So that's not even in question. That is simply a fact of history.

Divisiveness proves fallacy? The allowance of division within HIS creation due to a need of our free will to be able to fulfill HIS goal for us is a perfectly logical reason for division and not proven false at all.

What other religion has any reason at all for the division of reality into good and evil...?...since there is supposedly no division at all between divine and not divine, GOD and creation, etc, in the 'all is one' definition of reality?

But while I reject division proves fault, I do accept that it does prove division, that is, that all is not right between YHWH and the other definitions of reality as many gurus love to suggest.

Peace, Ted

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 15 by 1213]

If you could find me the original manuscripts un altered and complete without damage then we could discuss its lack of fault. However, we do not have 1 original manuscript to go bye.

Take Mark 16:9-20 it does not appear in the earliest manuscripts but is a later addition. So we have one glaring fault in his message do we include Mark 16:9-20 or not? This is unclear since we do not have the original manuscript. Hence a god with the parameters given cannot exist.

Yet the Problem with the OT is that since the modern copies are 97% similar to the most ancient copies it is seen to prove they have been doctored to be the same...

Given we seek a GOD who hides HIMself it is only non-believers who demand perfect copies, not Christians who know the use of the words is only to convince us to find GOD and thereby realize the truth of what is written. The message is not the goal, but just part of a process. Internal telepathic communication and communion with GOD is the goal - good copies or bad copies mean nothing when you talk to the author, eh?

Peace, Ted

[ttruscott]

[Replying to ttruscott]

Do humans have free will now, in the physical realm?

IMHO,
only those addicted to sin are born on earth which destroys their free will. This would make the only ones with free will here on earth to be the ones who have had their addiction to evil broken by GOD by their being trained up into perfect righteous holiness.

Peace, Ted

[Divine Insight]

What other religion has any reason at all for the division of reality into good and evil...?...since there is supposedly no division at all between divine and not divine, GOD and creation, etc, in the 'all is one' definition of reality?

Peace, Ted

Your right that this is an extreme problem for all religions.

However, Christianity does not solve this problem. Attempting to pin the blame for evil onto humans, or free will doesn't fly.

To begin with, for those who believe in Satan, both Free Will and Evil had preexisted humans anyway.

But from whence did Satan obtain his evil? (if you don't believe in Satan then save yourself this extra step and just ask from whence humans obtained their evil)

Evil cannot be a product of Free Will, unless you are demanding that God himself has no Free Will. Otherwise God would have been evil too.

Therefore it's meaningless to pin the concept of evil on Free Will. It's also just as meaningless to pin it on Satan. And it's utterly absurd to pin it on Humans, since we know that bad things have always existed even before humans evolved.

Humans cannot be the source of Evil.

So Christianity doesn't solve the problem of Evil anyway.

~~~~

If we're talking about religions I personally believe that Taoism handles the concept of evil far more effectively than Christianity does. But since most people have no clue how this is done in Taoism I won't bother elaborating on it here because any attempt to do so would only result in confusion. People who don't understand Taoism aren't going to understand it from a single post.

~~~~~

Finally, pure secular atheism actually solves the "Problem of Evil" entirely and completely. It's simply not a problem in the first place. There is no reason to believe that the world should be perfect.

This "Problem of Evil" only comes into play when a person postulates the idea that an imaginary "ALL-PERFECT" God exists who cannot be responsible for evil. And thus they suddenly need someone to pin the blame for evil onto. But trying to pin the blame for evil onto humans simply doesn't work.

Moreover, it's a contradiction to biblical mythology anyway. The God of the Bible proclaims that he himself creates evil.

Isa.45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Right in the dogma you have this God confessing that he creates evil. So pinning the creation of evil onto men in order to preserve a flawless perfect God who could not possibly create evil is not compatible with the biblical fairytale anyway.

~~~~

Like I say, Taoism actually has a far better explanation for "evil" that doesn't self-conflict with the rest of its own philosophy. So Taoism trumps the Bible in terms of being self-consistent.

But still the pure secular atheists have everyone trumped on this issue because they have no reason to defend a "Perfect" anything.

There is no such thing as a "Problem of Evil" for secular atheists.

[dianaiad]

Given these parameters:

God is real
God is All powerful
God is All knowing
God is Omnipresent

Apologetics seems meaningless. What I am trying to say is that the scriptures themselves should be without criticism given the parameters of the god defined above. Thus if god were real there would be no need to defend god because god and his message would be without fault and fault could not be found otherwise it would violate the parameters of his existence.

I think that the answer is: He may be all the above (and I personally have a quarrel with the standard 'critic' definition of at least a couple of them, but let that be) but we are not.

Apologetics is the explanation of one's own belief system to someone else. Apologetics does not equal evangelism, by the way. Apologetics is not about God's attributes, but ours.

Assuming, of course, that another 'given' is there; free will.

Of course, if there is no such thing as free will, then the question is ludicrous; if there is no free will, then apologetics is, perhaps, God's way of explaining Himself to Himself. We are just the typewriters.

[EduChris]

...fault...would violate the parameters of his existence...

What if God chose to create self-determining, self-actualizing, responsible moral agents? It seems to me that if God had chosen to create such beings, there would necessarily be a process of moving from an initial state (i.e., something less than absolute perfection and knowledge) which allowed or even invited the process of self-actualization and self-determination to occur.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to dianaiad]

reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.

this is the definition of apologetics that I am familiar with.

Regardless of whether we have free will or not an all powerful all knowing god could construct his message in such a way that it would not need to be justified or defended.
We would still be free to reject whatever is being offered by the message but the message itself could not be misinterpreted.

[dianaiad]

[Replying to dianaiad]

reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.

this is the definition of apologetics that I am familiar with.

Regardless of whether we have free will or not an all powerful all knowing god could construct his message in such a way that it would not need to be justified or defended.
We would still be free to reject whatever is being offered by the message but the message itself could not be misinterpreted.

I'm confused: I didn't write what you put in quotes. I think you meant to include that as a definition you prefer, but it looks like you are responding to it as if I wrote it.

The definition I see is this one:

1
: systematic argumentative discourse in defense (as of a doctrine)
2
: a branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity

the above is very close to the one you use...and you are correct. However, so was I when I wrote that apologetics is the explanation of one's belief system to someone else, and that it does not equal evangelism. By the definitions we both agree on, apologists respond to attacks; apologetics is the 'defense of,' not the 'attack others with.' stuff.

Apologists 'man the fort,' in other words...they don't head the front lines going after someone else's positions.

In my view, defending a religious belief system is, and should always be, restricted to explaining what it actually is. As soon as one crosses the line and says 'and you have to believe this or else,' you become something else and are no longer an apologist.

I've been an apologist, and I've been a missionary...and the goals are very different according to which one you are.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 27 by dianaiad]

Yes sorry I was not quoting you I probable should have made it more clear. I put that definition in quotes to isolate it from my words.


Now to quote you:

In my view, defending a religious belief system is, and should always be, restricted to explaining what it actually is

An all powerfull All knowing Just and Omnipresent god would not need to have his message explained or defended. It would be crafted in such a way that would be understandable,clear, and unambiguous to everyone. Hence apologetics would not exist with a god given those particular parameters.

[Divine Insight]

...fault...would violate the parameters of his existence...

What if God chose to create self-determining, self-actualizing, responsible moral agents? It seems to me that if God had chosen to create such beings, there would necessarily be a process of moving from an initial state (i.e., something less than absolute perfection and knowledge) which allowed or even invited the process of self-actualization and self-determination to occur.

If there was such a God it wouldn't be the God of the Christian Bible.

The God of the Christian Bible is a self-confessed jealous God who demands that he be the focus of worship. He also condemns anyone to hell who refuse to believe in him. Jesus himself proclaims to be the only way to get to this God. John makes it clear in 3:18 that anyone who does not believe in the name of Jesus is condemned already.

Therefore the description you just gave of a God is not compatible with the Biblical picture of God anyway.

A God who condemns people for not believing he exists would himself be guilty of not providing them with sufficiently convincing evidence.

This also applies to the apologetics that claim that we are all in a covenant with the God of the Bible and that the biblical God is supposedly keeping up his end of that covenant. However, the problem with those apologies is that people who don't even believe this God exists clearly never made any covenant with this God that they are aware of. Therefore they have not vowed to keep up their end of this imaginary covenant.

Any apology that claims that humans have a covenant with God in which they are not keeping up their end of the covenant cannot be applied to people who don't even have a reason to believe that this God exists, much less that they are supposedly involved in a covenant with him.

So all of these apologies fail.

The points that DanieltheDragon makes are clearly the truth. Any God who is supposedly all the things he's cracked up to be would have needed to make things crystal clear with no need for any further explanation of apologies.

And on top of that he shouldn't be playing hide-and-seek either.

The fact that this God plays hide-and-seek whilst simultaneously making jealous demands of people is a dead giveaway that it's a fraudulent mythology.

The fact that his supposed message is also extremely ambiguous and self-contradicting, and needs to be apologized for is simply additional proof.