(April 16, 2014 at 6:22 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I can find nice motifs in Harry Potter without believing little boys fly around on brooms. Tell me, if you have read any of that series does it do any credible job explaining scientific air flight by way of broom? Do you waste your time writing entire books claiming Harry Potter was real?
Because essentially everyone who has even heard of Harry Potter knows why it isn't to be taken seriously: Because it is known to have intentionally been a work of fiction. Nor was Harry Potter even written for that intention (explaining flight), whoch is why your point about apologetics books not being science is silly aa can be.
Quote:As soon as a writer of any book says "In this following book I will prove the existence of Allah/Yahweh/Jesus/Vishnu/Ra, they are not making arguments for a provable reality, they are making arguments for their pet fictional deity.
And your evidence for this is? Clearly, several apologetics arguments are intended to demonstrate God's existence via a proof. To say they aren't trying to do that but just arguing for a fiction is either a) impugning motives on them you can't prove or b) to just assume the non-existence of God without hearing the argument. I hope that isn't your idea of skepticism? Skeptics are supposed to have good reasons for not affirming something.
Quote:It is extremely stupid of you to expect me to buy a comic book because someone else wrote a book defending that comic book.
Comparing a known work of fiction (known because it was written as a work of fiction and it doesn't correlate with reality) to something not like that is absurd. And terribly unskeptical. Surely you want to believe and disbelieve things for good reasons?
Quote:The first few pages of that comic book tells me all I need to know. Creates the earth in 6 days. BULLSHIT. Pops men out of dirt. BULLSHIT. Pops a woman out of a man's rib. BULLSHIT. Treats the sun and moon as separate sources of light. ALSO BULLSHIT. That is my very short list, but the entire book is full of crap like this.
Even in the history of Christianity, the literal reading of Genesis is rather a recent event. Even Christianity's heaviest intellectual thinkers in history (St. Augustine and St. Aquinas) rejected this view. Nor does that even have to do with a book on apologetics, which rarely are predicated on the idea that the Bible is inerrant.
Quote:The fact that someone else writes elaborate crap to defend it, does not and will never make those fantastic claims true.
And bad reasons for rejecting something does not give you anything like the intellectual high ground. Surely it shouldn't be too hard to unveal the best apologists have if it's all bullshit?
Ah, the day I have to defend apologists and apologetics from [presumably] an atheist. Irony?
