Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation

[RobbyPants]

Fundamentalism aside, I've noticed when talking to other Christians that most of their apologetics is about trying to make God increasingly vague and undefined to shield him from scrutiny. It tends to involve less pseudoscience and more poorly defined terms.

This is good from the theistic point of view because it helps stave off cognitive dissonance. It isn't about proving their belief right, but rather about retaining faith by making it so it can't be proven wrong. I used to be pretty good at this when I was in college. A lot of what I believed was done specifically to reconcile observable reality with my ever-changing belief system.

Of course, it also ended up being what made me ultimately reject my faith. I was in a period of time when I was trying to get it to "make sense", and one day I had this thought "why am I so focused on believing in a religion that I am making up as I go along?". That was the first time I actually felt some comfort in letting go.

[robvalue]

Yes indeed. Whenever I ask someone to define God, I usually get a long list of things he doesn't do, and isn't. All different ways in which you can't prove he's not there. Not much actual information that would pick him out of a lineup.

When people resort to this, I think you're right, they are protecting their beliefs with armour against all forms of enquiry. Sadly, they usually define it in such a way as to make it impossible for them to even know it exists without using special pleading.

When people get defensive about their faith, I think it's a mixture of fear of having it taken away and frustration at not having rational arguments. So fudging the issue avoids having to think it through.

[RobbyPants]

Sadly, they usually define it in such a way as to make it impossible for them to even know it exists without using special pleading.

Bonus points if they define it in such a way so that no one would care if it does or doesn't exist.

[Pizza]

Fundamentalists also make god vague and ill defined. Does WLC never defines god clearly in debates.

[Chad32]

One common thing I hear is "There must be a divine creator". If yes, therefore Jesus is Lord. Nevermind the chasm between the two ideas. The more vague you make your god, the less you're about to confidently say that your interpretation is correct. You may as well be worshiping Vishnu.

[robvalue]

Yup. And I despise the idea that if there is a god, I should be aiming directly for his arse hole to try and polish it.

I don't give a monkeys. Why should I? Am I to thank a divine being for expending no effort at all to make a load of crap ready for me to be born on and screw around on? Especially since I didn't even exist before or ask to be born? I think one thank you is enough, except not really because this is shit anyway. If he wants to punish me for not crawling around on the floor and trying to talk to him telepathically, that's his problem. He's obviously got serious issues if so.

[Pyrrho]

You might be interested in this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of...e_Gardener

And:

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revelatory article 'Gods'.[1] Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they, set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Mancould be both smelt and touched though he could not he seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

In this parable we can see how what starts as an assertion that something exists or that there is some analogy between certain complexes of phenomena, may be reduced step by step to an altogether different status, to an expression perhaps of a 'picture preference'.[2] The Sceptic says there is no gardener. The Believer says there is a gardener (but invisible, etc.) One man talks about sexual behaviour. Another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite (but knows that there is not really a superhuman person additional to, and somehow responsible for, all sexual phenomena).[3] The process of qualification may be checked at any point before the original assertion is completely withdrawn and something of that first assertion will remain (Tautology). Mr. Wells's invisible man could not, admittedly, be seen, but in all other respects he was a man like the rest of us. But though the process of qualification may be, and of course usually is, checked in time, it is not always judiciously so halted. Someone may dissipate his assertion completely without noticing that he has done so. A fine brash hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.

http://infidels.org/library/modern/anton...ation.html