Last time, we talked about the various ways that I got induced to believe in Christianity. I briefly made a mention of apologetics, and wanted to start talking about some of the arguments that specifically held my attention. Before that, though, I want to talk about apologetics and apologists in general.
(Series tag: The Handbook for the Recently Deconverted.)
Apologetics has a more or less official definition: “the defense and establishment of the Christian faith.” I prefer the definition given by a UU minister and seminary graduate I know, who explained it more or less like this: “the attempt to make bullshit more believable.”
What apologetics really does is try to make Christianity sound more factual without actually referring to or discovering any actual facts that support its own underlying assumptions about reality. That’s its first fundamental mistake. And it destroys everything apologists produce.
As above, so below: Apologists are to scientists what Renaissance-era historians were to modern ones
Long, long ago at the very start of the Renaissance, a lawyer in Rome was having a wine cellar dug for his villa and accidentally ran across a very famous ancient site—right in his own basement. At the time, Rome was a backwater, a disreputable and shabby little town. Lords and peasants alike crowded around the Tiber River because the city’s grand aqueducts had been almost entirely destroyed centuries ago. Lordlings hunted in the forests and fields around what had once been the Campidoglio, and everyone kinda wondered what all those ruins all over the place had been long ago.
Of course, the Catholic Church was officially centered there (most of the time). But it certainly wasn’t the glittering, glamorous, art-packed metropolitan city we know today. Shepherds led flocks of animals down the main streets at night. Those streets weren’t usually even paved. I’m sure Catholic leaders were eager to make their city more of a draw for Christendom. So this lawyer’s discovery was one of the ones that kicked off what was to become a genuine craze for archaeology and the first beginnings of Rome’s rebirth.
But these first “archaeologists” didn’t actually go digging for their finds.
Instead, they consulted ancient texts to try to ferret out where Classical landmarks might have been.
Archaeology, pre-Renaissance style
To us their approach might sound nonsensical. But then, we’re 500 years removed from that lawyer. So nowadays, we know that the only way to find this stuff out is to get your hands dirty. We examine satellite images, or we get an idea of where ancient people settled from other archaeological finds, and we go dig. If someone tried to make a case for the location of the city of Troy by just going by Homeric epics, we’d rightly think that person was daft.
That’s how I think about apologetics. Instead of actually looking at facts, apologists consult an ancient document to try to get a feel for how the supernatural world works. Then, they make arguments about what they think it’s like, all based on that document.
The first fundamental mistake apologists make is that they don’t actually refer to any facts to make their various arguments, making their conclusions highly suspect.
Indeed, apologists really can’t do that. It’s almost unfair even to make the request that they do so. After all:
There is not one single demonstrable bit of objective evidence about the supernatural to which they actually could refer.
You know what assumptions make you and me, right?
Sometimes you’ll hear this aspect of apologetics called “presuppositional,” which means the field relies on assumptions to move forward. If Christians had to demonstrate that there actually is a supernatural realm and that it has deities and demons and angels in it who can interfere with this world before they could move forward with any of their arguments, apologetics wouldn’t exist as a field at all. So instead apologists simply take for granted that their assumptions about the world and about the supernatural are true.
Not only is it much easier to go that route, it’s absolutely essential.
That’s one of the reasons why apologetics, as a discipline, doesn’t actually convince many people to convert to Christianity—unless they’re either at a really vulnerable moment or never learned how to critically examine apologetics arguments. We live in a culture steeped in assumptions about the supernatural. From daily horoscopes to ghost stories to near-24/7 religious immersion to chain forwards, even as far as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience quackery, and fad diets, many folks in this culture are primed to be at least receptive to the ideas that apologists spread.
Someone who is aware of the assumptions being made and demands evidence for those assumptions might be mocked and criticized by Christians, but such a person won’t be swayed.
Apologists need their targets to buy into a particular evidence-free worldview
But that exact same reason is why apologetics makes so many Christians more certain of their faith. They already buy into the assumptions made by these arguments’ creators. They’re already totally on board. Some might kind of understand that the arguments rest on assumptions that are never credibly supported, but the conclusions sound right so they aren’t quite as worried about that problem as they should be. Apologetics is meant for them, not for non-believers. If apologetics was really meant for non-believers, then apologists would have addressed its serious flaws long ago.
And as long as Christians don’t sweat too much why they believe what they do, everything is okay. As soon as those assumptions get challenged, trouble looms ahead as inevitably as the waterfall at the end of a river in a movie.
That’s why one of apologists’ chief tactics is—as William Lane Craig demonstrates so often—to flat-out declare those assumptions as truths and proceed from there to the shitty argument, willfully ignorant of the fact that what is created is in essence a circular argument.
By getting Christianity’s total lack of credible supportive evidence declared a non-issue, apologists are able to get to the stuff they really want to say—and their audiences can more easily dive into the topic alongside them. This strategy is a very clever one. It absolves Christians of the very question of evidence.
Back in my day, I interpreted this tactic as implying that there was no need to demonstrate the credibility of those assumptions because they were all foregone conclusions. I thought there was so much evidence that nobody needed to stop and reiterate it all, in the same way that biology takes for granted that evolution is a real thing that actually happens in the real world. That millions of experiments as well as findings in dozens of related fields all support evolution’s predictions and claims is a fact that does not have to be rehashed every single time someone writes a peer-reviewed paper about some aspect of it. When apologists I was reading didn’t dwell on demonstrating that the supernatural was real or that Jesus was divine, I took it as meaning, in the same way, that these sorts of claims had already been well-established.
If that doesn’t work, apologists demonize requests for real evidence
If that trick doesn’t work, apologetics authors and speakers can always demonize the very need to demonstrate those assumptions. Or they’ll say that they’ll do it later on and then never get around to it. Either works!
Christians have been primed to think of demands for evidence as antithetical to having faith. As a result, few people nowadays of any religious persuasion have the attention span needed to remember that the apologist never did get around to providing that proof that was promised.
I’ve seen both in action.
I often get told that if I don’t accept the “truth” of these assumptions then that’s just proof that I don’t have enough faith (yet)—and that I clearly didn’t have enough faith to keep believing those same assumptions when I was Christian. Or I’ll be told that if I can’t get on board with apologists’ assumptions, then it means that “God” hasn’t seen fit to magically make me believe them. I’ll hear that people aren’t allowed to—or able to—question or “judge” this god, or to make demands for credible evidence about him. By this evasion, they mean I’m not allowed to make demands of those arrogant enough to presume to speak on this god’s behalf or to question anything regarding the myths about this god, obviously, since no god is actually speaking to anybody in the real world—and they’re likely really hoping I don’t figure that out.
If all else fails, then I can be accused of being perfectly on board with the assumptions being made but having some diabolical ulterior motive for denying the truth of them. To them, I “just wanted to sin.” If I accept that the apologists’ assumptions are true, then I apparently can no longer sin with impunity. (Yes, because Christians never knowingly sin, and someone would happily sacrifice an eternity of bliss just to have sex—since that’s what “sinning” means to almost all Christians trotting out this old chestnut.)
But if I deny those assumptions, then I am not morally bound to obey Christianity’s many behavioral rules or to constrain myself from breaking any of them. (What I would say about this one idea is a whole other blog post all by itself, but the short answer is that this sentiment is breathtaking bullshit.) So obviously, I would need to lie about whether or not I think apologists’ assumptions are true.
Why it’s pointless to “debate” religious people
“Debating” apologists seems so frustrating. We both come at the world from such different places. I learn new things so I can grow in understanding of reality and the people and world around me. By contrast, those who love apologetics assimilate and synthesize debunked and weak (but impressive-sounding, to those who don’t know better) talking points in order to regurgitate them in support of a desired conclusion.
In any other rational discussion, if people want to argue about exactly how Krypto the Super-Dog flies, they will first establish that Krypto actually exists.
Apologists, by contrast, are happy to assume there really is a Krypto in the first place and leap off from there.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m also a comic book and gaming nerd, and I know that those sorts of friendly debates can be a lot of fun. I’ve spent more hours than I want to think about arguing about exactly what elves in such-and-such gameworld “should” act like in a given situation, or how the mechanics of magic in that-other gameworld operate. It’d be beyond boorish to stop and furiously ask how we know elves or magic even exist. To have these arguments, participants all have to assume that they’re talking about the context of a particular setting or gameworld, one in which these things can or do or should exist. If that was what apologists were doing, then that wouldn’t be too bad.
But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re not arguing from the context of a shared hobby/fandom or a pretendy funtime roleplaying game universe. They’re trying to make a case for a religious idea, one that has repercussions in the real world, one that they want other people to also buy into and follow along with them, one that impacts them in their real everyday lives and that they think impacts their audience in the the same way.
Using our Krypto example, if someone was trying to tell me that my eternal fate depended on believing in Krypto’s existence or that the character could influence my everyday life, then yes, it’d matter quite a bit if he were actually a real dog and not just a comic-book character.
Because there is no more evidence supporting a god’s existence than there is supporting the existence of Krypto the Super-Dog or elves, apologists have to find some way to make people either forget to ask about that evidence or to make them think that showing evidence isn’t necessary. That’s why apologetics, as a field, is inherently dishonest.
Real stuff doesn’t need apologetics to prop itself up
Something real doesn’t need apologetics to make its case. Nobody has to argue about the moral imperative of Fuji apples’ existence, or debate about whether or not the grocery store on the corner sells them. We can see that Fuji apples exist and we can go look at the grocery store’s produce section to see if it stocks them.
I don’t need to make long, elaborate analogies about Atomic Theory. Instead, I can run experiments that demonstrate that it is true.
I don’t need to shame people into recognizing that hand-washing is important. It’s completely unnecessary because I can show them that it is absolutely necessary to wash one’s hands to avoid spreading germs and diseases.
And if a god existed, especially a “personal god” like the one Christians claim they have, our universe would be littered with objective, credible proof of that god’s existence. His existence would be obvious to everyone on the planet. It’d be as obvious as the Fuji apples in a fruit bowl. Nobody would need to construct elaborate arguments about it. Real live stuff leaves behind real-world evidence. Real stuff litters the universe with objective, credible, measurable signs of its existence.
Out of everything I wish bothered Christians, I wish it bothered them that there is no evidence at all for their apologetics assumptions. I wish it bothered them that all they’ve got is words, words, words that ultimately add up to nothing.
If they want to persuade me that their religion is based on objective facts, then apologetics accomplishes the polar opposite of persuading me of that position. Instead of persuading me, apologists remind me all over again that they are using apologetics instead of showing me the objective facts supporting their claims.
So yes, I find apologetics hugely dishonest. It not only rests on unproven, unverified assumptions but either brushes aside or ignores that it’s doing so. Not credibly supporting its own underlying assumptions is its first big error–and its worst, most egregious one. Not that there aren’t many others, and we’ll talk about more of those later. See you next week!
Related:
Has Science Buried God? A transcript of a debate between WLC and Lawrence Krauss in which Dr. Krauss flat-out accuses WLC of lying his ass off whenever he thinks he can get away with it. The only thing I admire about WLC is that he’ll put his debate videos and transcripts up on his site even though he and his religion both off looking worse in every one of them. At least he’s not trying to hide it, though I suspect that, as Robert Price has suggested, WLC knows he can’t actually demonstrate a single thing he claims and is hoping that sheer emotional manipulation and dishonest wordplay will carry him to victory.
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