(June 15, 2012 at 12:42 am)FallentoReason Wrote: I think the apologists that have actually had experience will tend to do that. All my friends that haven't had exposure to arguments via forums or whatever else have pulled out the 'easy' answer at some stage to me.
Well, yeah, I think the average person doesn't tend to think too hard about justifying their beliefs or having a consistent, coherent worldview - theists and atheists alike. The arguments tend to be very ad hoc, not very consistent, and for the most part poorly supported.
People that hang around forums such as this I think tend to be atypical in that regard - we DO think about it, discuss it, debate it, etc etc etc.
Kind of getting off onto a tangent here, but something just occurred to me...
I've been on forums in one form or another since the 1980's. Oftentimes it feels like the arguments are always the same, nobody ever concedes a point, nobody changes their mind. But in retrospect, in my case, that's not really true - I've changed my position on several things (mostly political issues) because of discussions such as the ones we have here - and I looked at my beliefs, and discovered that some were held for irrational reasons I couldn't justify, or even rationalize without self-deception.
