Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 28, 2024, 3:00 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
#1
Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
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.
Reply
#2
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
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.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
Reply
#3
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
(May 8, 2015 at 1:51 pm)robvalue Wrote: 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.
Reply
#4
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
Fundamentalists also make god vague and ill defined. Does WLC never defines god clearly in debates.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. - Denis Diderot

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing. - Gore Vidal
Reply
#5
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
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.
Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

10 Christ-like figures that predate Jesus. Link shortened to Chris ate Jesus for some reason...
http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/

Good video to watch, if you want to know how common the Jesus story really is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88GTUXvp-50

A list of biblical contradictions from the infallible word of Yahweh.
http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_m...tions.html

Reply
#6
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
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.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
Reply
#7
RE: Non-fundamentalist apologetics is about obfuscation
You might be interested in this:

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

And:

Quote: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

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Credible/Honest Apologetics? TheJefe817 212 19757 August 8, 2022 at 3:29 pm
Last Post: The Architect Of Fate
  Man claims to hunt non-binaries Ferrocyanide 10 1188 April 6, 2022 at 8:47 am
Last Post: onlinebiker
  [Serious] fact finding mission for non-Christians tackattack 52 4165 March 7, 2019 at 7:31 pm
Last Post: The Grand Nudger
  Lyle Jeffs, Fundamentalist Mormon Breeding Colony Finance Wizard ARRESTED !!! vorlon13 6 2188 June 17, 2017 at 11:11 am
Last Post: vorlon13
  Why are the "laws" of physics so different as conceived by many xtian fundamentalist? Whateverist 22 4831 November 13, 2016 at 1:35 am
Last Post: Funky_Gibbon
  Let's see how many apologetics take the bait Joods 127 18070 July 16, 2016 at 10:54 pm
Last Post: Foxaèr
  What do non-fundamentalist Christians actually believe? Fromper 66 24129 June 30, 2016 at 7:08 pm
Last Post: vorlon13
  Ignorant apologetics aside, your god does not exist. Foxaèr 10 2474 April 16, 2016 at 12:26 pm
Last Post: Mystic
  Priestly apologetics in a sermon this a.m. drfuzzy 13 3134 April 1, 2016 at 2:08 pm
Last Post: Drich
  a brilliant description of growing up fundamentalist female drfuzzy 12 3553 March 4, 2016 at 9:09 am
Last Post: robvalue



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)