The pre-failure of apologetic arguments

[lucent]

I'm sure most people here are familiar with Thunderf00t and his videos. Recently, he posted one on the subject of the apologist's use (or perhaps misapplication) of philosophical arguments crafted to reach a desired conclusion. He points out that one of the main problems with this line of "proof" is that the universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense and all the conjecture about the unknown can't substitute for empirical testing and research.

I've posted before that abstract philosophy, theoretical constructs and pure conjecture, even if they all seem sound, can't substitute for hard evidence and certainly don't rise to meet the massive burden of proof called for by the extraordinary claims of Christianity. The fact that apologists can only offer philosophical arguments to make their case means that they fail before their arguments can even be examined.

On that basis, there is no reason to expect the Universe to conform to the results of empirical testing and research and either. You've really just exposed a glaring weakness in your position, because you cannot arrive at it without a vicious circularity. You've created a dichotomy between philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and "hard evidence", saying that we should prefer hard evidence over "abstract" philosophy(whatever that means) because we can't expect the Universe to conform to our expectations of how it should behave. Well I am sorry to inform you but this would also apply to the results of empirical testing and research.

For science to be done, the assumption of uniformity in nature must be made. This is the expectation that the Universe will behave in the future like it behaved in the past. The evidence for this of course only exists in the past. Therefore, the results of empirical testing and research in this sense are not any more reliable than the conclusion of a philosophical argument for the existence of God. After all, the Universe is not under any obligation to conform to our concepts of what makes sense.

So, your argument fails. The reason we expect a philosophical argument to be valid is because of the laws of logic. A philosophical argument can be considered to be sound if it is logically valid. You could show it is invalid if it violated the law of non-contradiction, for instance. These laws also serve as the foundation for mathematics.

The problem for atheists is that they have no way to account for them in their secular worldview. You cannot point to them in nature. Since they are immaterial and unchanging, they do not fit into a materialist worldview, because the Universe is material and always changing. I can account for them in my worldview, you cannot account for them in yours, unless of course you invoke your Deist God, but even then you cannot say anything about them for certain, because you have no way of discerning its intentions.

In any case, I believe that God has provided everyone with sufficient proof for His existence, and to most, evidence for who He is, and people are all more or less in denial of it. You, for instance, know there is a God but you refuse to acknowledge that it is Jesus Christ. Some people may not have received the special revelation of the gospel, but I believe everyone has a clue about whether there is a God or not.