Why aren't atheists convinced by apologists?

[Jagella]

Question for Debate: Why aren't atheists convinced by apologists?

Some possible explanations include the following:

1. "Atheists" are not truly atheists but are in reality rebelling against (the Christian) God preferring to live lives of sin and having a good time doing it.
2. Many atheists don't even know that they're atheists, don't know what an apologist is, and if they did know, then they wouldn't care.
3. Apologists aren't very convincing even to Christians much less atheists.
4. Some atheists may not have been reached by Christian missionaries and apologists living in remote parts of the world that God has yet to get to.
5. The scarcity of miracles may have something to do with it.
6. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson!

[Zzyzx]

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Promoters of Christianity discovered long ago that their sales pitch worked best on children. Convince the youth with stories, threats, promises, and rituals before the development of reasoning and discernment, reinforce regularly with weekly meetings, summer camps, Bible studies, etc and a large percentage will continue to be contributing members of the sect into adulthood. Make exiting seem daunting and some will stay even if they no longer believe the tales, threats, and promises.

See www.clergyproject.org or numerous Ex-Christian sites for verification.

[Divine Insight]

3. Apologists aren't very convincing even to Christians much less atheists.

Well, #3 would certainly be a good place for apologists to start. If they could all quit quibbling with each other that would certainly be impressive.

For me, all the Abrahamic theists would need to get on the same page before I would even be remotely impressed. This would include all Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

We know that's never going to happen. Each of these three major factions are already fractured into serious disagreeing sects and demoninations within their own factions.

To even expect all Christians to get on a single apologetic page is an unrealistic expectation.

So yeah, I don't even understand why the Christians would think they can convince anyone when they can't even convince each other.

But I'll gladly add even one more item to your list:

7. Apologists aren't even capable of coming up with a single apology that makes any sense.

As far as I'm concerned every apology I've ever heard for these religions has been nothing more than an embarrassment to human intelligence. Their apologies not only don't make any sense, but quite often create even far greater logical contradictions than the theological problems they were originally attempting to repair.

~~~~~

Finally, what kind of a divine theology should even need to be "apologized" for. And yes, I fully understand that in theology an "apology" is simply an explanation for why something that appears to be illogical at first glance can actually be seen as reasonable.

But even given that meaning a divine theology shouldn't need to be explained because it doesn't readily make any sense in its original written form. Why should a God have created a theology that is so flawed to begin with.

Think of what Christians are actually saying when they make apologies for Jesus. What they are saying is that apparently Jesus was such a lame teacher and communicator that they need to explain what he actually meant.

To apologize for anything in the New Testament attributed to Jesus is to proclaim that Jesus wasn't capable of clear communication in the first place.

So yeah, apologetics is a pretty useless and futile exercise to be sure. Despite the intention of apologetics all it really amounts to is a statement that the believers in the religion are convinced that their God is a horribly inept communicator.

The mere fact that a theology needs to be apologized for is basically a neon sign that proclaims that the theology cannot be from any all-wise creator God. Not all-wise creator God could be that inept.

So any theology that relies on apologetics is confirming its own fallacy.

[Wootah]

Question for Debate: Why aren't atheists convinced by apologists?

Some possible explanations include the following:

1. "Atheists" are not truly atheists but are in reality rebelling against (the Christian) God preferring to live lives of sin and having a good time doing it.
2. Many atheists don't even know that they're atheists, don't know what an apologist is, and if they did know, then they wouldn't care.
3. Apologists aren't very convincing even to Christians much less atheists.
4. Some atheists may not have been reached by Christian missionaries and apologists living in remote parts of the world that God has yet to get to.
5. The scarcity of miracles may have something to do with it.
6. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson!

1. Not sure how that is an answer.
2. Do you mean on forums or irl. IRL anyone that becomes a Christian must have been a non-Christian before.
3. Logical arguments can't force people.
4. Huh?
5. Miracles that would I presume satisfy you would make me redundant.
6. They wouldn't be on TV if they werent persuasive for such a long time.

Mostly i think the answer is much simpler: emotional.

[Jagella]

Promoters of Christianity discovered long ago that their sales pitch worked best on children. Convince the youth with stories, threats, promises, and rituals before the development of reasoning and discernment, reinforce regularly with weekly meetings, summer camps, Bible studies, etc and a large percentage will continue to be contributing members of the sect into adulthood.

As far as I know few if any apologists have defended Christianity from these charges. Richard Dawkins goes as far as to describe the religious indoctrination of children as child abuse. But to be fair, many people from many different backgrounds including educators seek to have an impact on a child's thinking that can affect her or him into adulthood.

So are you answering that many atheists are not convinced by apologetics because they were never indoctrinated when they were kids?

Make exiting seem daunting and some will stay even if they no longer believe the tales, threats, and promises.

See www.clergyproject.org or numerous Ex-Christian sites for verification.

Yes, many people including atheists may remain in religious groups because they fear to leave or fear to avow that they are atheists. Much of their lives including family, friends, and even their jobs are entangled with religion, and to leave the sect risks losing all these important things.

It then should seem reasonable to conclude that even some apologists are not convinced by their own arguments. They remain apologists not for philosophical reasons but for social and financial reasons.

[Jagella]

Well, #3 would certainly be a good place for apologists to start. If they could all quit quibbling with each other that would certainly be impressive.

I'm not sure if apologists quibble with each other that much, but they do seem to come up with different ways to defend Christianity. Ravi Zacharias and Francis Schaeffer, for example, argue that we need Christianity, for without it society will turn to excrement. William Lane Craig, by contrast, doesn't think that approach is very useful and instead uses philosophical arguments to try to convince people that the Bible god exists.

For me, all the Abrahamic theists would need to get on the same page before I would even be remotely impressed. This would include all Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Even if they could convince atheists that God exists, these religions would still be fighting among themselves regarding which god exists. So if any atheist becomes convinced that a god exists, she still needs to figure out which one exists. Of course, she still has the option to be a polytheist.

7. Apologists aren't even capable of coming up with a single apology that makes any sense.

As far as I'm concerned every apology I've ever heard for these religions has been nothing more than an embarrassment to human intelligence. Their apologies not only don't make any sense, but quite often create even far greater logical contradictions than the theological problems they were originally attempting to repair.

I can make sense out of most apologetics, but William Lane Craig often loses me as I struggle to follow his logic. In any case, the "sense" of apologetics for me at least is its greatest weakness. When I get their reasoning, that's when I see the fallacies.

Finally, what kind of a divine theology should even need to be "apologized" for. And yes, I fully understand that in theology an "apology" is simply an explanation for why something that appears to be illogical at first glance can actually be seen as reasonable.

This point is so obvious it often goes unrecognized. I think it's reasonable that the religion of a perfect god would not need to be defended but would be clear and reasonable to all people. Apologetics is a tacit admission that Christian theology is not clear and reasonable to everybody if it's clear and reasonable to anybody.

Think of what Christians are actually saying when they make apologies for Jesus. What they are saying is that apparently Jesus was such a lame teacher and communicator that they need to explain what he actually meant.

I recently read a book about the "reality" of hell. The author Bill Wiese claims he was actually there to see the fire. He also says that God wanted him to write his book to warn people that hell is real. I wonder why God needs another book to warn people about perdition. Isn't that what the New Testament is for?

So yeah, apologetics is a pretty useless and futile exercise to be sure. Despite the intention of apologetics all it really amounts to is a statement that the believers in the religion are convinced that their God is a horribly inept communicator.

If you Google "leading apologists" you will find a list of them. You will not find God on that list!

[Mithrae]

Question for Debate: Why aren't atheists convinced by apologists?

Presumably for pretty similar reasons why theists aren't convinced by atheist apologists. Folk tend to stick with their existing views unless there are reasons - intellectual or otherwise - strongly inclining them to change those views. If they're happy with their life and philosophy, that's going to be a nigh impossible hurdle intellectually even if they're manifestly wrong. If they're not so happy, they'll likely be more willing to consider other views, possibly even less rational ones. I read that Islam is gaining converts among Western folk, for example, but I'd assume that has a lot more to do with disillusionment with Western culture than the reasonableness of Islam!

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 1 by Jagella]

We, the religious, are progressing.
1. With OR gate testing and other measures we aim to make a 100 % true Bible.
2. "Inquisition" has a similar possibility in order to clean the ranks. More credibility, hopefully no, none, pedophilia at all.
3. The police catalogues by New York City and London, and else, are now taken more seriously. See insurance desecrated buildings, bank code white and black money, all other fantastic phenomena and freak nature events, "voodoo" some would say, and regeneration with people, instant healing, and reincarnation, all the way from the Persian Immortals and 5 corrupt kings reincarnated by crucifying Jesus on the cross in the Bible, all the while information spreads rapidly among people.

Please, young people, look again!

[Divine Insight]

I'm not sure if apologists quibble with each other that much, but they do seem to come up with different ways to defend Christianity. Ravi Zacharias and Francis Schaeffer, for example, argue that we need Christianity, for without it society will turn to excrement.

Those aren't theological apologies. Those arguments are simply sociological arguments for why they think a religious belief is useful whether it's true or not.

William Lane Craig, by contrast, doesn't think that approach is very useful and instead uses philosophical arguments to try to convince people that the Bible god exists.

Craig is right. Arguments that a religion is useful does nothing toward establishing its truth. But then again Craig's arguments fall far short of accomplishing that goal as well.

For me, all the Abrahamic theists would need to get on the same page before I would even be remotely impressed. This would include all Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Even if they could convince atheists that God exists, these religions would still be fighting among themselves regarding which god exists. So if any atheist becomes convinced that a god exists, she still needs to figure out which one exists. Of course, she still has the option to be a polytheist.

All of the Abrahamic religions are based on the same God myths. So there's only one God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Allah and Yahweh are the same original mythological God.

I can make sense out of most apologetics, but William Lane Craig often loses me as I struggle to follow his logic. In any case, the "sense" of apologetics for me at least is its greatest weakness. When I get their reasoning, that's when I see the fallacies.

If their reasoning contains fallacies then its not making "sense".

When I say that their apologies don't make sense I'm not saying that I don't understand their apologies. I do. I simply also understand why are they are necessarily false.

So when I say they don't make sense I actually mean that they aren't addressing the theological problems in a way that produces a resolution. Instead they often times create even greater contradictions than they were originally attempting to repair.

Finally, what kind of a divine theology should even need to be "apologized" for. And yes, I fully understand that in theology an "apology" is simply an explanation for why something that appears to be illogical at first glance can actually be seen as reasonable.

This point is so obvious it often goes unrecognized. I think it's reasonable that the religion of a perfect god would not need to be defended but would be clear and reasonable to all people. Apologetics is a tacit admission that Christian theology is not clear and reasonable to everybody if it's clear and reasonable to anybody.

Exactly. They are basically proclaiming that their God is so great and perfect with the one extreme flaw of being totally incapable of being able to effectively communicate with the objects of his very own creation.

This is an extreme flaw in their entire apologetic game. "Our God is great until it comes to communicating with humans, then he's a becomes a clueless idiot and we have to desperately try to fix up his extreme failures in this area."

This is a dead giveaway that the theology is nothing more than extremely bad man-made mythology.

I recently read a book about the "reality" of hell. The author Bill Wiese claims he was actually there to see the fire. He also says that God wanted him to write his book to warn people that hell is real. I wonder why God needs another book to warn people about perdition. Isn't that what the New Testament is for?

Exactly. Not only this but then we have other theists like Bishop Carlton Pearson who proclaims that God told him there is no hell. So once again, we have theists who make vastly different claims about what this God supposedly wants us to know.

Moreover, this takes us back to square one. If there's a God who wanted us to know something why didn't he just make it crystal clear to begin with. Why would he need to privately ask individual humans to try to convince all of humanity about it now?

Again, these are just dead giveaways that the theology is clearly false.

If you Google "leading apologists" you will find a list of them. You will not find God on that list!

Not only this but if you go and study them you will see that they are all making up their own stuff.

Just like we've already seen. Some will proclaim there is a hell. others will proclaim there isn't.

In other words, they are all desperately making up their own stuff in an attempt to try to create a theology that doens't self-contradict. But that task is impossible.

This is one reason why apologetics is such an easy field to get into. All you need to do is claim that you speak for God and you're in. No one can claim that you're wrong.

There is no academic foundation beneath apologetics. There's can't be. Their may be institutions that have passed as academic institutions that claim to teach apologetics, but in truth, it's an empty subject that has no meaningful basis. They may as well be teaching abstract art. That's all apologetics amounts to. Any opinion goes.

As they say in abstract art "It's all Art". You can do no wrong.

Same thing holds in apologetics, "It's all Apologetics". You can do no wrong.

If you want hell to exist, just argue that it exists.

If you want hell to go away, just argue that it doesn't exist.

Easy peasy.

[Divine Insight]

We, the religious, are progressing.

The apologists on the ground are demonstrating otherwise.

Christian apologists have only become far more divisive over the centuries, and they continue to create more and more diverse denominations, etc.

So they aren't progressing. They are becoming more and more divided.

The disagreeing demoninations and factions of Chrsitianity are growing, not shrinking.

So no, apologetics is not "progressing" toward any unified apology. They are doing precisely the opposite and dispersing into greater and greater disagreeing factions.

In fact, those who try to predict the future of humanity point to this dispersion of religious views as an indication that religions are indeed dissipating and will soon evaporate to become a thing of the past.

Ironically, even Jesus recognized that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And this is exactly what Christian apologetics is. A house divided against itself.