The real give-away when it comes to the bad intellectual conscience that seems to permeate modern apologetics is the shift, adopted by so many believers (but not really Chad, as far as I can tell), from trying to provide affirmative arguments for the existence of a god to a weird kind of zone-defense style of apologetics where the believer is really trying to affirm that belief is not unreasonable -- a la Alvin Plantinga. We've had several examples of this type of argument in recent months, and it always strikes me that such people (the unlamented late Delicate comes to mind) are simply desperate to avoid being thought of as irrational fantasists.
In the end, though, all that is gained from their arguments is the notion that it might be reasonable to provisionally believe in an unfalsifiable deist god. They have nothing more than appeals to personal revelation and other sleight-of-hand gambits to make the jump from that to their particular god. And of course that's where they founder.
In the end, though, all that is gained from their arguments is the notion that it might be reasonable to provisionally believe in an unfalsifiable deist god. They have nothing more than appeals to personal revelation and other sleight-of-hand gambits to make the jump from that to their particular god. And of course that's where they founder.
