My quality discussions with Christians tend to focus more on comparing notes than trying to convert each other. I have rarely found Christian apologetics to be even remotely convincing, especially once I understood how to spot logical fallacies. A good deal of it consists of selective interpretation of selective data, as you noted, and always with the conclusion baked in as an assumed premise. In the end, the issue is never the issue: the issue is the revol...er, converting people to Jesus. All other intellectual points are means to that end of saving us from the "sins" of nonbelief and our human nature.
Relatedly, much of my skepticism against social justice or critical theory was precisely how much it resembled Christian apologetics. Yet even when Christians abandon the conservative Evangelical apologist route, they still ended up making those same cognitive errors: thus the phenomenon of liberal Christianity basically adopting social justice talking points for their theology. The issue is still never the issue: the issue is converting people to....er, the revolution. Jesus is now just the means to the end of "radical liberation" from the "sins" of law enforcement, the gender binary or an economy based on private ownership...so once again, human nature.
Prove it. Even if I did grant that, why would god necessarily be the beginning? Where's that jump coming from? Why can't the beginning be literally anything else?
I have a daily low credence in a lot of theistic arguments for similar reason. I freely admit I haven’t read widely in cosmological arguments, Thomistic arguments, or the anthropic argument, or most of the classic arguments for God. BUT I have read fairly widely in evidential/historical apologetics (the Resurrection, the reliability of the Old Testament, etc.) and I think the arguments there are pretty universally bad. But the same people who think that Aquinas’ Five Ways are really good and convincing also tend to think the evidence for the Resurrection is really good and convincing. But I’m pretty confident that the evidence for the latter ISN’T good or convincing, and it seems unlikely these people are really good at evaluating causal arguments for God but really bad at evaluating historical arguments for Christianity. So my prior, albeit with low confidence, is that the philosophical arguments for God probably aren’t that good either. If there WERE more bare theists it would probably raise my credence in theism because I would think “okay, here are people who think, like I do, that the historical case for Christianity is not good. BUT they think the case for God IS good. So maybe there’s something to it.”
Great stuff, Joe, and some good points about The New Atheists. It is hard not to fall into the "everyone is stupid except me" trap.
I love this story, from when our kid was in 8th grade:
That same year, the Social Studies teacher did a rather subversive unit on comparative religions.
At the end of the unit, in the one class I wish everyone would have in grade school, the teacher asked her students why they believed their particular religion. The kids, having been primed by studying other religions, eventually realized that their religion was what their parents taught them. It wasn’t because they, at age 12, had happened upon and chosen the One True Faith.
One of the kids then piped up: “I think EK would be an atheist even if their parents weren’t atheists.”
My quality discussions with Christians tend to focus more on comparing notes than trying to convert each other. I have rarely found Christian apologetics to be even remotely convincing, especially once I understood how to spot logical fallacies. A good deal of it consists of selective interpretation of selective data, as you noted, and always with the conclusion baked in as an assumed premise. In the end, the issue is never the issue: the issue is the revol...er, converting people to Jesus. All other intellectual points are means to that end of saving us from the "sins" of nonbelief and our human nature.
Relatedly, much of my skepticism against social justice or critical theory was precisely how much it resembled Christian apologetics. Yet even when Christians abandon the conservative Evangelical apologist route, they still ended up making those same cognitive errors: thus the phenomenon of liberal Christianity basically adopting social justice talking points for their theology. The issue is still never the issue: the issue is converting people to....er, the revolution. Jesus is now just the means to the end of "radical liberation" from the "sins" of law enforcement, the gender binary or an economy based on private ownership...so once again, human nature.
"Everything had a beginning."
Prove it. Even if I did grant that, why would god necessarily be the beginning? Where's that jump coming from? Why can't the beginning be literally anything else?
I have a daily low credence in a lot of theistic arguments for similar reason. I freely admit I haven’t read widely in cosmological arguments, Thomistic arguments, or the anthropic argument, or most of the classic arguments for God. BUT I have read fairly widely in evidential/historical apologetics (the Resurrection, the reliability of the Old Testament, etc.) and I think the arguments there are pretty universally bad. But the same people who think that Aquinas’ Five Ways are really good and convincing also tend to think the evidence for the Resurrection is really good and convincing. But I’m pretty confident that the evidence for the latter ISN’T good or convincing, and it seems unlikely these people are really good at evaluating causal arguments for God but really bad at evaluating historical arguments for Christianity. So my prior, albeit with low confidence, is that the philosophical arguments for God probably aren’t that good either. If there WERE more bare theists it would probably raise my credence in theism because I would think “okay, here are people who think, like I do, that the historical case for Christianity is not good. BUT they think the case for God IS good. So maybe there’s something to it.”
Great stuff, Joe, and some good points about The New Atheists. It is hard not to fall into the "everyone is stupid except me" trap.
I love this story, from when our kid was in 8th grade:
That same year, the Social Studies teacher did a rather subversive unit on comparative religions.
At the end of the unit, in the one class I wish everyone would have in grade school, the teacher asked her students why they believed their particular religion. The kids, having been primed by studying other religions, eventually realized that their religion was what their parents taught them. It wasn’t because they, at age 12, had happened upon and chosen the One True Faith.
One of the kids then piped up: “I think EK would be an atheist even if their parents weren’t atheists.”