New Apologetics?

[boatsnguitars]

I've grown tired of Apologists. Officially. I know many here have, as well. I know many Apologists here would just say that I'm not "getting it".

I've done this for decades. I've seen the same arguments and counter arguments over and over. There is nothing new under the Sun - not in the world of Apologetics. How could there be? The Bible doesn't change. There is no new discovery that confirms anything in the Bible.

About a decade ago I suggested we numbered the arguments:
1. Ontlogical argument
1.1: Response to the Onto Argument
1.1.1: Rebuttal to the response
1.1.1.1: Rebuttal to the rebuttal

(The actual numbering isn't important)

Then, we could just debate thusly:

3
3.55
3.55.2
3.55.2.1

5!
5.3
5.3.1
5.3.1.4!

Because, as I see it, we are now simply regurgitating. I know there are new people - new young people - learning about this, and it's important we reach the young people the Church is trying to corrupt. But when I see 40, 50, 60 year old people arguing at basic levels, it's frustrating.

Here's a thought: I challenge all Christian Apologists to go to a Muslim Apologist website and spend 10 years arguing against them. Learn all the tricks. Learn all their responses. Then, return to a site like this and try to have a good, rational debate. What I am seeing here is not rational, it's not debate and - frankly - I believe this site deserves better. As much as I disagree with the owner, I think he has done an amazing job of allowing different views. I'm just not seeing the effort from Christians here. I'm not seeing anything other than warmed over WLC, CS Lewis or worse arguments.

Debate: What new Apologetics have cropped up in the last 5 years? It must be in the last 5. Unique, specific, and solid arguments for the legitimacy of some aspect of Christianity. Prove my premise wrong. Prove that we are not simply recycling old arguments over and over - without any reference to new developments in the arguments.

I'm not saying we - non-philosophers - need to invent new angles to view the problem. I'm claiming that even theologians aren't inventing new angles - aren't discovering new angles. Sure, they may find a new analogy of an old problem, but I bet there is nothing new from Apologists that is of any concern. Even WLC - the greatest Christian Apologist ever - hasn't come up with anything.

Prove me wrong. Debate me. Bring it on. You will be allowed to pray to God and use His mighty brain to go up against me! I won't consider it cheating!

edit: I encourage people to vent. To argue! To live the dream of expressing their passion! LIVE!!!!! LIVE!!!!! Live in the moment that you feel fit! Express your beliefs in the most profound and expressive ways you can! MAKE US BELIEVE!!!!! Use the POWER OF CHIRST!!!!! COMPELL US!!!!!!! Pull out all stops!!! DO NOT HOLD BACK!!!!!!! I implore you all!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!! MAKE US BELIEVE!!!!!

Make me believe. Please!

[POI]

If we don't have much new things here, it then must mean atheists have done their best and failed to prove Bible wrong and are without new ideas.

1) This response reads that you are conceding theists have no new arguments.

2) Further, skeptics/atheists/doubters cannot prove a negative. The ultimate claim from the Bible is that "Jesus is risen". How could a skeptic prove this claim did not happen? One can't. It is an unfalsifiable claim. Just like it is also an unfalsifiable claim to state, "Muhammad flew to Heaven on a white horse." This is, in part, why both Christians and Muslims will perpetually make the kinds of statements you make here.

[TRANSPONDER]

Debate: What new Apologetics have cropped up in the last 5 years? It must be in the last 5. Unique, specific, and solid arguments for the legitimacy of some aspect of Christianity. Prove my premise wrong. Prove that we are not simply recycling old arguments over and over - without any reference to new developments in the arguments.

In my experience these debates are mostly atheists, or anti Christians trying to prove Bible wrong and then Christians showing why the arguments against Bible are wrong. If we don't have much new things here, it then must mean atheists have done their best and failed to prove Bible wrong and are without new ideas.

Make me believe. Please!

What and why?

That's a back to front way of looking at it.

Rather it is the religion and its' holy book plonked down as undoubted fact. In fact science that began with validating god found in time, it questioned it.

"The scientists of old were all creationists".

Apologetics were then produced by the religious to argue against the doubts and questions. Rather it's the Christians trying to prove the Bible right when the science intended to validate it, questioned it. In MY experience the Christian apologetics consistently fail, but they go into denial., or pretend they win when they don't. Which is why you can say 'failed to prove the Bible wrong' when proof is dismissed or denied (1). I know the believers think they win if they deny everything. Which is why we have to hope to get views and the views are from people whose minds are still open.

The rest was pointless attempts to score cheap points. There are always new things coming up, just for example the validation of feathered dinosaurs - for many decades hotly denied by Bible believers. On the Theist side, though there is little new, just the old, repackaged. Like the argument from morality, which is just the old one, with some fancy pants on.

(1) just look at the monumental denial of what's in the Bible recently with defending slavery, denying that what genesis says was daylight was daylight because the sun hadn't been made yet and the contradiction about the women seeing Jesus. Any reasonable person would have put their hand up "Looks like that, yeah" but Bible apologists are denialists, not reasonable people.

If we don't have much new things here, it then must mean atheists have done their best and failed to prove Bible wrong and are without new ideas.

1) This response reads that you are conceding theists have no new arguments.

2) Further, skeptics/atheists/doubters cannot prove a negative. The ultimate claim from the Bible is that "Jesus is risen". How could a skeptic prove this claim did not happen? One can't. It is an unfalsifiable claim. Just like it is also an unfalsifiable claim to state, "Muhammad flew to Heaven on a white horse." This is, in part, why both Christians and Muslims will perpetually make the kinds of statements you make here.

More so an apologist (may be our pal here' ) gave the argument away by saying they didn't believe ET alien abductions. There is no question that ET aliens are true until 100% disproved and the believers stop believing. But Bible -faith works that way. It is an absolute exhibition of Christian special pleading and double standards, and i'd bet they'd look confused. "But..Christianity is true, Flying saucer pilots aren't".

[historia]

I am not seeing anything necessarily new, other than a repackaging.

New angles or new developments within any field of study are going to necessarily entail looking at previous evidence and arguments from a new perspective, and so can always lamely be called "repackaging" by those intent on dismissing any development as new.

But consider the third article above from Chan as perhaps the clearest example here. He's using Bayesian theory as an evaluative framework for assessing what impact the Multiverse proposal might have on the Design Argument.

Have you previously seen cosmologists or philosophers covering that ground already? Have you conducted a literature review to be able to say Chan is simply "regurgitating" previous arguments in this peer-reviewed journal article? If the answer is no, then clearly you have no grounds on which to make your above assertion.

Before I accept that you have risen to the challenge, I'd like to see what these - alleged - new arguments look like, not how they are described on the box.

Then you should read each of the articles in full.

[Data]

Why would you want to believe? Other than the formidable task of making someone like me not look silly? This is, to me, a sort of academic hobby. Mostly intellectual egotism. I have no ulterior motive. How insulting it would be for someone like me to assume my mission involved getting to the young people before science corrupts them. I think that goes beyond ideology and into the realm of religious fanaticism. And I know, there are those who "think" like that. Wouldn't you be better suited and more productive promoting your own interests. I know I certainly have no interest in going to a Muslim or Science forum to tell them all where they are wrong about something I know little about.

I find it helpful to take a break every once in a while, and come back to it when I feel compelled to do that. Sometimes days, sometimes months. Also, I find the formal debate tedious and boring.

[1213]

"The scientists of old were all creationists".

So, we must thank for the creationists for science and its development?

(1) just look at the monumental denial of what's in the Bible recently with defending slavery, denying that what genesis says was daylight was daylight because the sun hadn't been made yet and the contradiction about the women seeing Jesus. Any reasonable person would have put their hand up "Looks like that, yeah" but Bible apologists are denialists, not reasonable people.

It is interesting that all you can give is poor contradictory interpretations, not anything from the Bible that would really be a contradiction, regardless of readers opinions. It must be annoying for anti Christians that still after thousands of years, they fail miserably and in that way make Bible look even more impressive.

[1213]

2) Further, skeptics/atheists/doubters cannot prove a negative. The ultimate claim from the Bible is that "Jesus is risen". How could a skeptic prove this claim did not happen?

If it can't be proven wrong, why do you even try? You could just simply say, "I don't believe" and then let it be.

[1213]

...
The existence of your God. So you don't look silly believing in something that you can't demonstrate to be true.

If I prove (=demonstrate) something, it is not anymore belief, it is knowing. The reason why I say I believe is, that I can't prove.

[TRANSPONDER]

I am not seeing anything necessarily new, other than a repackaging.

New angles or new developments within any field of study are going to necessarily entail looking at previous evidence and arguments from a new perspective, and so can always lamely be called "repackaging" by those intent on dismissing any development as new.

But consider the third article above from Chan as perhaps the clearest example here. He's using Bayesian theory as an evaluative framework for assessing what impact the Multiverse proposal might have on the Design Argument.

Have you previously seen cosmologists or philosophers covering that ground already? Have you conducted a literature review to be able to say Chan is simply "regurgitating" previous arguments in this peer-reviewed journal article? If the answer is no, then clearly you have no grounds on which to make your above assertion.

Before I accept that you have risen to the challenge, I'd like to see what these - alleged - new arguments look like, not how they are described on the box.

Then you should read each of the articles in full.

There is a difference. I gave an example of a new perspective - feathered dinosaurs have added much more evidence to Archaeopteryx - at one time the sole evidence for dinosaurs to bird evolution.

But the moral argument was just what was said - the old argument repackaged; dressed up in different words, but nothing new.

And when one twiggs that, there is no point in reading the whole article; we have seen it before.

[TRANSPONDER]

Why would you want to believe? Other than the formidable task of making someone like me not look silly? This is, to me, a sort of academic hobby. Mostly intellectual egotism. I have no ulterior motive. How insulting it would be for someone like me to assume my mission involved getting to the young people before science corrupts them. I think that goes beyond ideology and into the realm of religious fanaticism. And I know, there are those who "think" like that. Wouldn't you be better suited and more productive promoting your own interests. I know I certainly have no interest in going to a Muslim or Science forum to tell them all where they are wrong about something I know little about.

I find it helpful to take a break every once in a while, and come back to it when I feel compelled to do that. Sometimes days, sometimes months. Also, I find the formal debate tedious and boring.

The whole question of why we do this is long since done. You do not get why we do it (at least it seems you don't try to guess) and frankly we don't care (I say 'we' based on what atheists have said before) whether you know or not. Just know there are good reasons why, apart from it'soften quite good fun. :

"The scientists of old were all creationists".

So, we must thank for the creationists for science and its development?

(1) just look at the monumental denial of what's in the Bible recently with defending slavery, denying that what genesis says was daylight was daylight because the sun hadn't been made yet and the contradiction about the women seeing Jesus. Any reasonable person would have put their hand up "Looks like that, yeah" but Bible apologists are denialists, not reasonable people.

It is interesting that all you can give is poor contradictory interpretations, not anything from the Bible that would really be a contradiction, regardless of readers opinions. It must be annoying for anti Christians that still after thousands of years, they fail miserably and in that way make Bible look even more impressive.

This is the second example of fingers in the ears denial in the last day or so. The plain examples I referenced you just dismiss as you certainly haven't been able to counter any of those cases or any others, but just said 'I disagree' or some such. You have no case, only denial. I know (and have said) that you think all that is needed is for you to deny everything. No, you have to make a case to have a case. That is what this forum is about, whether you do it that way or not.

[TRANSPONDER]

2) Further, skeptics/atheists/doubters cannot prove a negative. The ultimate claim from the Bible is that "Jesus is risen". How could a skeptic prove this claim did not happen?

If it can't be proven wrong, why do you even try? You could just simply say, "I don't believe" and then let it be.

Because the logic (and evidence) indicates that not believing is logically and evidentially correct, and those who believe in spite of that are logically wrong. That is why Theist Faith is irrational

...
The existence of your God. So you don't look silly believing in something that you can't demonstrate to be true.

If I prove (=demonstrate) something, it is not anymore belief, it is knowing. The reason why I say I believe is, that I can't prove.

Exactly. That is the point. Theism treats faith (in one particular faithclaim and ignore the others) as a virtue for Believing something in spite of evidence and logic. It isn't. But because Christians (and to an extent other theists) operate on a priori Godfaith, they cannot see that Faith is a fallacy and not a virtue. They are trapped in that mindset and cannot get out of it, it seems.