Christian Apologists Have A Credibility Problem

Know Them By Their Fruit.

In the past, I’ve written about philosophy of religion discourse without engaging in specific arguments. I’ve also written notes that amount to saying “I oppose these arguments because of their implications, regardless of truth content.¹

Many people respond to such notes and comments saying something along the lines of “You still have to engage their arguments!” “Just because their implication means (bad thing) doesn’t mean it’s untrue!”

I find these comments patronizing because they underestimate my knowledge of the basic arguments for theism, and why I disbelieve them.

To oversimplify, I don’t think that:

1. We can draw inferences about the causation underlying the universe based on our everyday experience of causation (Why I doubt the cosmological argument),

2. We can define God into existence or what’s true in all possible worlds based on our perception of this world (Why I doubt the ontological argument)

3. Objective moral values are real (Why I doubt the moral argument),

4. We can formulate any good probabilistic calculus about what’s “expected” of the universe, because we only have one sample (Why I doubt the teleological/design argument).²

To be clear, these oversimplifications aren’t meant to be an end to conversation, but for our purposes, it’s also not the beginning; please do not hit up the comments of this post arguing these points.My point is merely that I have studied philosophy long enough that I know these arguments at least at an intermediate level. I reject them for reasons philosophers commonly reject them. Like all arguments, every premise can be contested, and you don’t have to be a Pyrrhonian skeptic to poke holes in these arguments to render them unconvincing.

So as we get into the details of this post, please know, I am aware that I am not engaging these apologetic arguments head on! I can do that elsewhere. This is intentionally something separate.

Listen To Arguments, Even If Skeptically

Recently, Arthur T wrote a great post on Bare Theism. You should read it!

In the post, Arthur (basically) says: Isn’t it odd that there are so few Bare Theists? Doesn’t that give credence to the hypothesis that Christian Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion is at least a little bit of motivated reasoning?

Arthur’s post got me thinking about the non-argumentative reasons I don’t trust Christian philosophers and apologists. When I say that, I don’t mean that they’re bad or unintelligent people, just that they have an obvious agenda or a bias that has little to do with the actual arguments.

To be clear: I think many Christian philosophers produce good work, and just because they have biases that lead them to unconvincing conclusions doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read them. Indeed, every philosopher or smart person has biases. The key to learning from smart people, even when you disagree, isn’t to accept what they say uncritically, but to listen to as many as you can critically.

Indeed, if you listen to people you disagree with charitably, granting them their assumptions for the sake of argument, you may not be persuaded to the conclusion they are arguing, but you could learn things about other subjects related to the topic. Without getting into details, I’ve learned a lot about my personal ethics by engaging with Christians whom I disagreed with. In parsing out those disagreements, I learn more about my own beliefs, where I did agree with them, often learning something from them, if only tangential to the original argument.

Christian Apologists Are Uniquely Misleading

The problem with Christian Apologists and Philosophers (I’m going to call them “apologists” for short) is worse than merely disagreeing with reasoning or an argument. Rather, apologists often say things that are outright wrong or misleading. When I say this, I’m informed by two assumptions:

1. That academic or scientific consensus gives non-experts moral certainty that a theory or understood fact is true.³

2. Fact must inform our philosophical theories. If we do not apportion our theories to the facts, we aren’t doing good philosophy because we aren’t accounting for all of the available data.

The problem we run into is what the philosopher Paul Draper calls the fallacy of understated evidence.

According to Draper, in the context of arguments for theism and against naturalism, proponents of a theistic argument are guilty of this fallacy if they “successfully identify some general fact F about a topic X that is antecedently more likely on theism than on naturalism, but ignore other more specific facts about X, facts that, given F, are more likely on naturalism than on theism.

Put another way, some facts on the surface may support a position, but with more context, contradict it. Per Draper, this is a common fallacy theists commit.

Some philosophers of religion will dispute Draper’s argument. That’s fine! But I think it’s plausible because we can find more undisputed cases of Apologists being uniquely bad about understanding factual information. Indeed, they have a cavalier relationship with scientific and otherwise verifiable truth. Specifically:

1. Apologists regularly use data points from sources that explicitly disagree with them.

2. The most popular Apologists vocally support political candidates that spread falsehoods.

CopyPasta Apologetics

Earlier this year, I panned Ross Douthat’s book Believe. He said nothing new about philosophy, religion, secularism, or atheism. At the same time he demonstrated a lack of curiosity that can best be described as not engaging with anyone in depth who disagreed with him on the existence of God. In that piece, I labeled this tactic what I call “CopyPasta Apologetics:”

CopyPasta Apologetics is a tactic where you cut and paste arguments or points from experts without any consideration of whether or not they agree with you or if they’re qualified to comment intelligently on the issue. Or, you just cite an argument without much or any citation or elaboration. The reason why CopyPasta Apologetics is bad is because it oversimplifies something very complicated to the point of misrepresenting it.

The reason I think Douthat never paid attention to atheist arguments is because his oldest citation is a 22 years old (2003) work by Fred Hoyle. Hoyle was an atheist, but Douthat doesn’t tell you that. He then explains the Copenhagen Theory in a few short sentences without any citation. He continues, citing a scholar of Classical Greek literature to make a point about physics and consciousness.

Let’s use an example of low consequence to illustrate the point. Let’s say I’m the biggest fan of the Georgia Bulldogs football team in the world. You’re a fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide, and you ask me my opinion about who is the best SEC football team in the 2020s. I say “Though Alabama and Nick Saban dominated the late 2000s and 2010s, I think it’s clearly the case that Georgia is the best SEC team of the 2020s by virtue of winning 3 SEC titles in 5 years, and being in five straight SEC championships. Go Dawgs. Sic em. Woof Woof Woof Woof.”

If you’re arguing against my position to someone else, saying “Even Joe says that Alabama and Nick Saban dominated the late 2000s and 2010s,” and therefore Alabama is the best team in the SEC in the 2020s, we would obviously see this as a misuse of quotation. It’s not the full context of my argument, it misrepresents the significance of the data, and it implies I hold a position opposite of my real one. People who aren’t well informed by facts of the matter will be fooled by this argument style, but it’s obviously false to those who are well informed.

Using the example of college sports teams illustrates this point because most people understand sports. Meanwhile, it’s harder to demonstrate when an apologist is using this tactic because most people don’t understand science as well.

Example: Frank Turek’s First Ever Opening Statement

An archetypal example of CopyPasta Apologetics is Frank Turek’s first ever opening statement in a formal debate, with Christopher Hitchens, about 14 years ago:

You don’t need to watch the full debate, just Turek’s opening statement, starting at about 6 minutes. He runs the gauntlet, quoting numerous atheist scientists, from Richard Dawkins to Stephen Hawking, to make his argument for theism.

If you’re new to philosophy of religion and sympathetic to theism, perhaps his statement is convincing. If you’re not, it’s extremely suspicious. For instance, it’s odd to cite the complexity of a cell, as explained by atheist Richard Dawkins, in support of theism. If that data point was compelling, why isn’t Dawkins an atheist?

Example: William Lane Craig on the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem

Some may say that I’m using the worst example of an apologist to make a point. Frank Turek is notorious for being the snake oil salesman of apologists. He says wrong things, silly things, and mean things, all to get attention and grow his ministry. He’s not the “steelman” of apologetics.

Fair enough!

The problem is that I can find many examples of other “serious” apologists doing the same thing. Perhaps the most famous Christian Philosopher in the world is William Lane Craig and he has some very funky ideas about physics.

Most notably, he keeps citing the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem and getting it wrong in ways that the authors of those theorems (repeatedly) contradict. I am not equipped to explain this disagreement in detail, but thankfully Physicist Sean Carroll is. He debated Craig over a decade ago and wrote up a recap, which you can find here.

Here are some of the highlights

The second premise of the Kalam argument is that the universe began to exist. Which may even be true! But we certainly don’t know, or even have strong reasons to think one way or the other. Craig thinks we do have a strong reason, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem. So I explained what every physicist who has thought about the issue understands: that the real world is governed by quantum mechanics, and the BGV theorem assumes a classical spacetime, so it says nothing definitive about what actually happens in the universe; it is only a guideline to when our classical description breaks down.

And

On my part, I knew that WLC liked to glide from the BGV theorem (which says that classical spacetime description fails in the past) to the stronger statement that the universe probably had a beginning, even though the latter is not implied by the former. And his favorite weapon is to use quotes from Alex Vilenkin, one of the authors of the BGV theorem. So I talked to Alan Guth, and he was gracious enough to agree to let me take pictures of him holding up signs with his perspective: namely, that the universe probably didn’t have a beginning, and is very likely eternal. Now, why would an author of the BGV theorem say such a thing? For exactly the reasons I was giving all along: the theorem says nothing definitive about the real universe, it is only a constraint on the classical regime. What matters are models, not theorems, and different scientists will quite naturally have different opinions about which types of models are most likely to prove fruitful once we understand things better. In Vilenkin’s opinion, the best models (in terms of being well-defined and accounting for the data) are ones with a beginning. In Guth’s opinion, the best models are ones that are eternal. And they are welcome to disagree, because we don’t know the answer! Not knowing the answer is perfectly fine. What’s not fine is pretending that we do know the answer, and using that pretend-knowledge to draw premature theological conclusions. (Chatter on Twitter reveals theists scrambling to find previous examples of Guth saying the universe probably had a beginning. As far as I can tell Alan was there talking about inflation beginning, not the universe, which is completely different. But it doesn’t matter; good scientists, it turns out, will actually change their minds in response to thinking about things.)

I highly recommend this video as well because it demonstrates how Craig has lost the plot. And Vilenkin’s position is even less sympathetic to Craigs than it was a decade ago!

To summarize the video, Craig constantly quotes scientists whose cosmological models rely on an eternally old universe to argue that the universe has a beginning and thus a cause. This is not limited to Guth, but also Vilenkin and Aguirre. Guth believes that the universe is likely eternal in the past, and Vilenkin believes that the inflation of the universe is likely finite in the past (not the universe itself). The BGV doesn’t prove the universe has a beginning. In all, no one really knows for sure, so we shouldn’t cite this science in these arguments!

Because of this whole ordeal, I don’t trust Craig’s formulation of complex science. Maybe Craig is much smarter than me at physics. That’s actually probably likely!⁴

But we should be immediately skeptical of someone’s understanding of a scientific theory if the people who formulated it have to continuously chime in to say that person is communicating or understanding its implications wrong. It’s concerning that Craig keeps doing this and no apologist of consequence is calling him out on it. If he’s getting this wrong and not correcting himself, what else is he getting wrong and not correcting himself?

It’s Not Just Science

This is where we get a little controversial because we’re talking about politics. I don’t like talking about politics on posts. Sure, I have political opinions, like anyone else. I think they’re well thought out. But I try to separate the philosophy I write about from current events, political advocacy, and the news cycle. The reason why isn’t because I have any delusions that philosophy isn’t political in many ways, but because bringing up politics makes people 100x dumber than they otherwise would be.

Anyway, the other reason I’m deeply skeptical of apologists is because of how cozy they are with MAGA republicans. Specifically, Michael Licona and Frank Turek have a long history of apologetics for the current president. Here’s a video (by a Christian) criticizing one of Turek’s tweets.⁵

It’s extremely silly to say that Trump’s charges were false. Indeed, one of the problems of the crimes he may have committed is that the justice department does not prosecute sitting presidents. To make matters worse, he has sabotaged any effort by the justice department to investigate wrongdoing.

Here’s a video of Turek talking about open borders and border walls.

This was from 2018, back when politics was much weirder, but it is interesting to see how boilerplate MAGA his arguments are. There’s no steelmanning the other perspective, no considerations for the shortcomings of a border wall, or what a border wall will actually accomplish.

How does a wall prevent illegal immigration, when most illegal immigrants get into the country by overstaying visas? The wall answer is just taken as self-evidently true, without examination or a cost benefit calculation. This is not the thought process of a serious thinker.

Or take this short from Michael Licona:

Some of this reasoning sounds mundane and patriotic, but the implications of it are clearly wrong-headed. For instance, what evidence do we have that the Democrats, at the federal level, would put the needs of illegal immigrants over citizens? When he says he’s voting for the one candidate who tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power over fabricated and false information about election integrity, it doesn’t make sense.

Draw The Line At MAGA

Sure, smart and weird people often have weird or silly political beliefs. It happens. But when it comes to the contemporary political environment and caring about the truth, supporting the MAGA movement is a giant red flag.

No doubt, there are good reasons for Christians to support Republicans, as the GOP aligns with their social views. There are also good arguments in favor of free market capitalism, relative to other economic policies, which the Republican Party is more likely to support than the Democrats.

The problem here is that MAGA Republicans support a man who assaults the truth and goes against political norms. In this regard, I’m just going to re-post Bentham’s Bulldog’s essay on the matter.

The Trumpian Inversion of Reality

The MAGA movement is qualitatively different from other political parties and movements sympathetic to conservative Christianity. I can understand voting Republican, regardless of who is at the top of the ticket, because you oppose the Democratic party. But there’s a difference between that and outright supporting Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, as Licona and Turek do.

A good acid test of this is whether or not you believe the 2020 was rigged or stolen. It wasn’t! There was literally no evidence. To the degree one could say there was evidence, it was based on conspiracy theories, falsehoods and lies. All lawsuits challenging the outcome failed because there was no evidence or legal theory of the case Yet apologists like Licona imply that it was.

If these philosophers use such poor reasoning for easily-verifiable events, how can we trust them to have good judgment when evaluating complicated philosophical arguments?⁶

If you’re a philosopher who values truth, evidence-informed reasoning, democratic values, free speech, functioning institutions run by experts, virtue in public life, and opposes bad things like corruption, it’s hard to see you could support Donald Trump. Any diligent assessment of the Trumpian arguments fail under basic scrutiny. And yet, these are intellectually permissible in apologist circles!

But The New Atheists!

Finally, I anticipate some people will object to my suspicion and dismissal of apologists and counter: What about the New Atheists? After all, Richard Dawkins wrote some pretty bad arguments against theism in his book the God Delusion.

There are many problems with this retort, not least of which is that half of the “four horsemen” of New Atheist publishing are dead. The remaining two are, quite frankly, bad at philosophy.⁷

I’ve written before about how atheism - even popular atheism - is more than the “Four horsemen.” If you want to criticize popular atheists for being bad thinkers, you won’t get a counterargument from me, if the alleged thinking is, in fact, bad.

The problem I’m trying to highlight isn’t about people making bad arguments (everyone does it on occasion, even me), but how bad, misleading arguments are seemingly normalized on the apologist side.

Contrast the degree of public disagreement between atheists among atheists and theists among theists. I don’t think any of Craig’s colleagues in the Christian philosophy circles call him out for his misunderstandings of the BVG theorem. At the very least, no one with a sufficiently large platform has done so.

Meanwhile, it’s a meme on atheist social media to dunk on Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens when they get something wrong. One could argue it’s normal to actively dislike the supposed Four Horseman of New Atheism.

This Is Not A Problem For All Christians

I want to be completely clear here when I say that the criticisms I have of apologists are not applicable to all Christians. Many Christians accept the conclusions of scientific consensus, don’t support anti-intellectual populist movements, and are careful to understand scientific arguments when they use them, not creating the false impression that a non-believer’s argument or data is in agreement with their own argument.

In fact, there are many Christians who do apologetics and public theology that runs counter to the figures I criticize. I accept their Christianity as more credible.

Still, I find Christianity less credible overall because these vices are so common among the most zealous, popular, and “intellectually serious” Christians.

To make matters worse, Christianity’s culture of orthodoxy and public condemnations of heresy encourage conformity. In Christian circles, there’s strong social influence to agree with these people, or be condemned as “Not a Christian.”

In this way, this is a species of problem of evil for me: If God is real and Christianity is the truth, why are the most famous people making the case for Christianity so obviously wrong on so many things, demonstrating awful judgment about science and pushing for the least truth-seeking and virtuous politics?

To believe in Christianity, why must I ignore the evidence for evolution and how unapologetically bad apologists are at portraying physics?⁸ Why must I fool myself into thinking these MAGA cheerleaders are only hilariously bad motivating thinkers in politics and not philosophy?

Jesus said we’d know false teachers by their fruits. Even if I found these apologists’ arguments for God plausible, the fact that I smell something rotten would still make me suspicious.

1. Footnote: sorry, couldn’t be bothered to link them here. I’m writing this on the eve of my honeymoon and want to get this sent soon!

2. I think there are Humean reasons to reject theistic formulations of the probability of the universe being as it is on naturalism.

3. As a good Humean, I’m open to scientific theories and facts being proven wrong, but as a general principle I accept the consensus of experts on subjects I don’t understand.

4. That’s a low bar for Low Bar Bill!

5. I’m not citing the tweets because I don’t have a twitter. Again, I’m on a tight timeline, and I’m just accessing the most readily available citations.

6. I know that I only went into detail about two apologists, but I also want to reiterate that I only took about two minutes of research. The fact that I could find it illustrates how MAGA is normalized in these circles.

7. Richard Dawkins basically doesn’t care about philosophy, while I think Sam Harris’s comments about philosophy are outright contemptuous. I’ll admit this comment is a zinger and not much for nuance, but I’m okay with it.)

8. Pun 100% Intended