Counter-Apologetics

Apologetics is too often an exercise in deception. And that includes the superficial videos that you linked to in the other thread.I think that that is something that should be apologised for.

Only one? By Ravi Zacharias ? What about the series of six by Craig Parson that you linked here Message 38. Aren’t those the ones you meant ?

quote:

---

no, although those two are a counterargument, in my opinion. Richard Carrier does not impress me.

---

I find Carrier’s work a very mixed bag, but those videos are certainly not a response to his arguments. From the first two, at least, they seem to be meant for naive and uninformed believers to try to pretend that there are good reasons to trust the Bible.

quote:

---

A Response to "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story". The counter-apologists use an entirely different set of facts and I intuitively question their overall motive for what they attempt to do.

---

That article is worse than anything I’ve seen from Carrier. And really, if society is filled with dishonest propaganda for beliefs you don’t share, why wouldn’t you want to counter it ?The videos from Parson are, as I said superficial and while the audience are told they are the jury the opposing case isn’t even mentioned in the two that I watched. It’s just a recital of the usual apologetics - even starting with the standard bit about numbers and dates of manuscripts without even mentioning that that is only ever about preservation of the original text (or that the really early manuscripts are tiny scraps of papyrus). Sheesh!

Well I watched the Ravi Zacharias video. I can’t say anything good about it. If you think that there are any good arguments in it let me know so I can properly shred them.

quote:

---

Granted you see no reason for religion or belief at all so i understand your position somewhat. To me Ravi is honest.

---

My first encounter with Ravi Zacharias was reading about his attempt to blame atheism for the Holocaust. That was a vile thing to do - especially when Christianity has a long history of pogroms.But no, you don’t understand my position. I have done my own investigations and Zacharias and his colleague are making false claims and omitting facts. I know that the alleged prophecies of Jesus aren’t. I know that 1 Corinthians does not mention people interacting with the risen Jesus. I know that there are clear signs of legendary development in the Gospel accounts relating to the Resurrection.

quote:

---

Our worldviews share little in common.

---

Apparently, I care about the truth and you don’t.

quote:

---

I fail to see why his argument is bad however.

---

Which argument? I’m quite happy to take on any argument from that little video. If the points above don’t cover it just tell me what the argument says - or any other apologetic argument you think good. Text is so much better for debate than video.

quote:

---

When I tackle an opponent, my main thrust is to discern their motive for argument. Broken down, it simply means that believers want people to see why they believe and that belief is rational. You seem content with challenging this assumption. I would dare to ask you why? Do you honestly believe that people are better off believing--based on inconclusive evidence thus far--that Jesus was at best mortal and historical and that the God of the Bible...or any other religion---simply likely does not exist?

---

My motive is to get at the truth. Now I think that there is a good case that people are not better off in thrall to deceivers, but that is secondary.The motives behind an argument - at least when dealing with truth claims are not a good guide to whether the claims are true. There may be good reasons for deception, there may be bad motives for telling the truth. Your guesses as to the motives of others is even less reliable. For instance GDR may have had good reasons for claiming that Jesus was not talking about the End Times in Mark 13, but the allusions to Daniel’s End Times prophecies argue otherwise. I would question that it is true that Any point of view is exclusive of all other points of view - points of view can obviously intersect, and I see no reason why one point of view cannot be a proper subset of another. I question whether Destiny is a relevant issue at all. I certainly question whether it is possible to know the truth about it. I have to say that I think that they must be applying the first criterion quite loosely. I have to say that option 3 includes drastically different worldviews, including (at least some forms of) Buddhism and Deism - and many others - as well as the Abrahamic faiths. I don’t think you can get a coherent set of answers to their questions out of it, so how can it qualify as a worldview ?

quote:

---

Focusing on option 3, how I interpret it is that both materialism(cosmos) and spirit(gods of one type or another) exist. It is, of course, a belief in which we have no evidence for. Thus we can choose to consider it or we can choose option A.

---

I interpret it as trying to construct an argument to get to where they want to without caring about whether it makes sense. I don’t think any of the options are worldviews because all of them allow a range of beliefs on at least one of the four issues.

quote:

---

If we choose C, we then would go on to define which "God" we were talking about. Tangle limits everything to the book itself...whereas believers have described a more detailed God based on their beliefs(imaginations). So to start with, in matters of belief...why limit a character to a book? If the character being discussed is a Deity, would it not make sense that the character was larger than the book itself?

---

That’s a tangent to our discussion. If you go with Sola Scriptura and Biblical Inerrancy I think that you would have to agree with Tangle. GDR at least rejects parts of the Bible as racist propaganda (even if he wouldn’t describe it that way). So I think it comes down to theology.

And everything time you want to check a point you have to find it in the video again. For discussions like this, text is just way more efficient.