Testing The Christian Apologists

This gets complicated. To a degree, perhaps. I found a good argument that mirrors my feelings in some ways. Philosophy Talk

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Do I really bear any responsibility for what the US does? Isn’t it the officials who decide our policies and/or the ones who faithfully and willingly execute those policies who bear real responsibility? Surely they do the bear the brunt of the responsibility. But I don’t think that we citizens can fully escape responsibility either especially not in a democracy, especially if we condone and support those policies. We can’t just wash our hands of what we empower the government to do in our names. And it’s not just those of us who condone and support the policies that are to some degree responsible. Even people who, say, secretly disapprove of the policies but are too afraid or lazy to openly resist bear some responsibility. Now I grant that their responsibility is perhaps more limited. They, I suspect, are only responsible for what they themselves actually did or didn’t do -- their failure to speak up. That doesn’t make them responsible for what their nation ended up doing. But it does show that they too can be morally tainted by the actions of their country in a way that an outside non-resister cannot be.

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And maybe, just maybe, things can get even more complicated. It seems plausible to me that you can be somehow tainted even by actions in which you played no part whatsoever, in which you neither did nor failed to do anything relevant to the problematic actions. Suppose that for several centuries your ancestors held my ancestors in slavery. Yours got richer and richer; mine got poorer and poorer. One day the slaves are finally free. But for decades, maybe even centuries after, the descendants of the slaves are much worse off than the descendants of the slaveholders. Finally, we get to you and me. Just because you benefited from that history and I was harmed by that history, you and your brethren may owe reparations to me and my brethren, even if you guys aren’t actively oppressing us guys anymore.

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Or maybe you do. I don’t want to say that you definitely do owe us reparations. But I don’t want to say that you definitely don’t, either. I just want to say that the issue is a lot more complicated than we were first making it out to be.

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Yeah, its a whole lot more complicated that. For one thing, the Forty Acres and a Mule never got paid out like it was promised to. Thomas Jefferson, who in principle opposed slavery but at the same time owned slaves explained the precarious predicament of abolition in many of his writings. He was quite aware that he was hypocrite and I think it deeply tormented him. Abraham Lincoln picked up the mantle but didn't get a chance to deliver since he was assassinated on account of it.The reality is that the freed slaves should have immediately been compensated appropriately -- but they never really were. An injustice to add insult to injury on top of the previous injustice. Compensation ought to be reserved for the people who actually suffered the injustice. We are now so many generations past that point that it has become so diluted. What does it mean now? All white people in America were not the descendants of slave owners, nor are all black people living in America today the product of slavery. And what of the large mulatto population -- does their check cancel out?And how much money are we talking? No amount of money can mend this and no amount of money can repair the past. Seems to me that nobody will be satisfied. Give an individual $50,000 and it will immediately be met with "Is that my value to you?" Give a million dollars and will be met with where is the 4 million more you owe me? Who foots the bill? Do only Anglo's pay in a special tax? How do you divvy out? 1 drop rule? Shouldn't Brazil pay? Portugal? Spain? England? The Netherlands? Saudi Arabians? Hell, it was African tribes capturing other African tribes and selling them to the highest bidder. Should they pay? How do you differentiate between ancient tribes?And what exactly is resolved through it? Oh, were all square with the House again? Life is just gonna be peaches and cream from here on out... Get real.This argument won't end with Reparations and nothing of substance will be resolved. Nothing.

Your quote pretty much agrees with what I'm saying.I think you're misunderstanding what responsibility means. If your parents left you a house with a leaky roof, it's your responsibility to fix the roof. That's for your own good. It doesn't do you any good to say, "I didn't damage the roof so I shouldn't have to fix it."You may not own slaves but you still have to live with the mess that slavery made. It's your responsibility - and to your advantage - to make the situation better.

First of all, I have my beliefs and ideas about God. I know what my critics say: That I invent the God that I desire. I will never forget the day that I honestly feel that I "met" God. The feeling was indescribable, and it had little to do with the church folks around me---I never really embraced nor accepted them into my family and circle of close friends. The only thing that knitted them to me was learning about and experiencing God. We did that together. We were, however, united only by that similarity and, as I look back, I wonder how similar we actually were? Do I even care? God was like finding my father (who had died 23 years earlier) alive again and communing lovingly with me.Obviously I have never successfully communicated that belief to any of you here. Yet I am far more honest in correspondence with EvC Forum than I ever was at church. This topic (Testing The Christian Apologists) was started by me to find what I thought had to be at least one other human who would verify that what I felt about God was in fact correct. I liked to listen to Ravi, a habit that I have since rejected. Ravi may have been to me a bit like the Wizard of Oz finally appeared to Dorothy and her companions. A man behind a curtain using gadgets and gimmicks to appear larger than life. After reluctantly accepting the EvC counter-arguments and evidence against Ravi (thank you, Theodoric) I looked at him again and realized that he said very little. It was all smoke and mirrors. And he was supposed to be one of the most gifted of the apologists. Could jar and ringo be right???? That I was determined not to prove! Frank Turek was also unimpressive, now that I was looking and listening through critical glasses. It's not that the arguments were lies, as some here seem to think. Its that the arguments seemed second hand. Divorced from experiential reality. It was evident that jar was right in that the apologists were simply engaging in business with the public. I still listen to some of them, testing their character and their content. I no longer need a perfect apologist nor was I fully impressed with the atheist counter-arguments brought up by Matt Dillahunty among others. It certainly appeared as if the man convinced himself that God was unnecessary and in fact made up.I finally arrived at my current argument. God exists, this I believe and claim to know...subjectively by necessity. Were it objectifiable, belief would not enter the equation for anyone. Mind you, I have experienced some pretty amazing things that fed my confirmation bias. I refused to sit in the outer courts with jar and freely make arguments which would effectively throw away my need for God. Which brings us to my current whining. I fight very hard to prove to everyone that I don't owe anybody anything. The weakness in my argument is that I at the same time feel that God owes me a relationship and a blank check. It is basically what my Dad would have given me, except that the check would not be blank and would involve some promises on my part.I now am faced with the question of what I owe God.

I doubt anyone here thinks that you owe anyone anything, what people are repeatedly saying is that that's what your beloved bible tells you. You're not fighting us, you're fighting your belief.Of course normal people *do* feel that they owe people respect and goodwill and so on, you know, all that 'do as you would be done by' stuff. But all your god crap is redundant. It's not an argument, it's just your personal need isn't it? Just lead a decent life, that's all you need do. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Have you ever asked yourself why you spend so much time here and, presumably elsewhere, defending your own beliefs? I mean, they're your beliefs. It shouldn't matter to anyone else why you arrived at your conclusions and you shouldn't feel a need to defend it.But you come here day in and day out rehashing the same arguments, jousting endlessly with the likes of Tangle or Jar or Ringo or whoever else and nothing is resolved. No minds changed. No hearts coming to Jesus on a bent and repentant knee.Have you had the honest conversation with yourself about who you are trying to convince at this point? Are you trying to convince them to believe in God or are you trying to convince yourself why should still be believing in this?I say none of this as disrespect. This is an honest question and one that I had wished that I asked myself when I was a professing Christian. I spent years proselytizing to my sister to save her soul... now I'm the seed that fell along the path that was choked out and she, ironically, is trying to bring me back to the faith.You have preached the word of God here for like a decade.... how many converts have you had? How many on EvC or somewhere in your private life have you guided to the Lord? Faith, an infinitely worse example.... How many souls has she saved with her fire, her brimstone, her invective, her calloused and abrasive demeanor? Better question: how many souls has she repelled because of the above attributes? If she's a representative of what the good Lord is all about then why would anybody take it seriously?You, as a Christian, are charged with preaching the gospel to the world.... EvC is a tiny microcosm of that world. But I think your talents and sincerity would probably be better utilized elsewhere, cuz you're just spinning your wheels endlessly here. Maybe go down to the local soup kitchen and offer to spend 2 or 3 hours serving your flock as Jesus did with loaves and fish... and then minister to them... not in an obnoxious or pretentious way. Just a simple summation of why you are there, why you care about these people, and why you have a hope that supersedes human understanding. That's what genuine Christianity teaches! How quickly we forgot!At the heart of it all, this is a debate forum. And we all are tempted to persuade others. But we, Christians especially, should carefully examine the motives to ensure that it is not coming from a place of ego and coming from a genuine desire to edify or wrestle with ideas... and in the case of the Christian, to see souls reaching salvation, not by your works but by you living out your faith Christ Jesus, Amen.Maybe chew on that notion a little and wrestle with the angel over it and see what comes out of it.

I don't think Phat is trying to convert or convince anyone here, he's trying to convince himself of something.His difficulty seems to be in reconciling his hallucination/delusion/revelation of years ago with his personal circumstances and his inability/unwillingness to actually follow the messages in his belief system because it would make things worse for him.

You are right for once. And what's worse is the realization that God's magic isn't working on my behalf.If ringo is right in that I am expected to follow God and deny myself fully...on my own power...and without God's help....I'm screwed.

It may be that your perception of what the Christian god is all about is just wrong?He's not about helping you in this life - in fact the opposite - he's telling you what you're supposed to do to get an entry pass into the next. Of course he's right! Jesus said it himself. It doesn't seem to bother any other Christians though, they make excuses for not following the strict guidelines because it's totally impossible unless you're mentally ill. If the organised religions followed the teaching of Christ they would be a poor as a church mouse, not as rich as Croesus.It's a fatuously stupid requirement so it's never done. Instead people do the best they can given their circumstances. It's called pick-and-mix Christianity and it's just living a decent life with a bit of - to my mind totally redundant - churchgoing and grovelling. Job done, go fishing.

I had an experience myself during my conversion years. Began my life as an Agnostic, was in a bad period of my life and was searching for deeper meaning. It was such a profound experience for me that I recorded it in a book that I wrote years ago but never published:

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I had opened myself increasingly to the possibility of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent presence. I wasn’t entirely sold on the notion just yet, but I was allowing the possibility to flourish instead of stifling it as I had done for so many years. I began to listen to sermons on the radio and started to read the Bible with understanding. I was able to discern that which I could not recognize before. The Word became a catalyst to a consuming flame. I began to pray to God, that if He truly was there, that He would reveal Himself to me. And a few weeks after the walls were let down, it happened.

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I was on a routine patrol getting ready to secure a building on the base. For the life of me, I cannot recall what the sermon was about or what exactly it was that effected me so greatly, nonetheless, like a clarion call, it came to me. Have you ever looked at something for so long that it becomes obscured to you? Have you ever looked at something for so long that you come to realize that it never truly made any sense to you to begin with? Suddenly and inexplicably, it dawns on you what it is. I was sitting in the patrol unit with my jaw to the floor. Incredible emotion swept through me like a shock wave. Emotion washed over me as I was enveloped by grace. I literally fell out of the vehicle, prostrate, in a semi-fetal position. Tears began to well up in my eyes, so heavy and full of burden. There on the ground, in an unguarded moment, I wept bitterly to my Lord. Amid the sobs were guttural groans, interrupted by a feeble attempt to express the ineffable. I begged for intercession and pleaded forgiveness. In that once-in-a-lifetime moment, I understood that which had vexed me for so long. And because I asked, I received. That was the day that I met the Holy Spirit of Almighty God! After being so sick and tired, of being so sick and tired, I was saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus.

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Powerful stuff. Many years later, of course, I have had to wrestle with the notion of whether it was a genuine experience or one that I manufactured during a period in my life where I was very vulnerable and susceptible to fuckery.Its not lost on me the profundity of an experience like that has on the psyche and, possibly worse, this being the only real experience like it to hang on to as some kind of semi-tangible "proof" of God's existence. And even then what assurance do I have that any of it was real? The emotion was real. The fact that I was actively looking was real. The experience was real in the sense that the events I described happened. But was the experience one that I wanted to have or was it one that was divinely appointed? So I know a little something about this reconciliation that you speak of regarding Phat's current state of affairs. I hope he reads this so that he knows that he is not alone. It is okay to question.I have gone through many years since this time and while I had a go of it, I have ultimately come full circle back to being an Agnostic. What matters to me is the truth. Having this gentle, loving God watching over me is obviously a preferable thought than a short life that is ultimately cut short. But I refuse to believe in something for the sake of comfort. At this point in my life I have no compelling reason to believe in Christianity or any other religion. I still remain open to it -- I am not hostile towards it, but I'm not going to shy away from calling bullshit if I see it.That is a truncated version of where I am currently.... which is always subject to change. The only true constant is change, after all. You are not the same person you were two years ago and you will not be the same person you are two years from now. We all evolve. Beliefs evolve over time. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

Are you though? If being a Christian and believing in this wholesale makes you a better person, whether any of it is real or not, I am not opposed to it. My sister believes in it. She is clearly comforted by it. I am obviously sympathetic to it based on my own experiences. I know what it feels like and, truth be told, I sometimes miss it. But she is very young in her faith -- almost infantile and as Paul would put it, she's still on milk. She knows about some of the squishy and sentimental parts of the bible.A part of me likes the fact that she has something to hold on to. If it makes her or makes you a better person, then so be it. As for me, I just want to know what the truth is -- the good, the bad and the ugly. Truth, even an inconvenient one, is preferable than a delusion. But I speak only for myself. I don't want to believe in anything for the comfort or convenience of it.The problem becomes when a religion does not make people better and in fact makes them much worse. Often it makes them disgusting and filthy. There is something particularly odious about people who use religion to justify atrocities or greed. It is amazing that people can in one breath talk about the love of God while in the next moment saw a human's head off in the name of God... and genuinely believe that's what a supposed benevolent God wants. To instill terror and inflict incredible pain on another human being and to actually believe they are doing God's work.Life is full of complications... religion is just an extension of how complex this world is and how our feeble minds are trying to process the flood of information -- the difficulty of parceling through to separate fact from fiction -- reality from delusion.Whether you are on a walk with God or not, you are on a walk nevertheless... this journey will never end. You could live to be 1,000 years old and never come away feeling certain that we've definitely got it figured it out now. My best suggestion is just enjoy the walk.

Well, you became similar because you were steeped in the same culture. You call your God "Jesus" and you believe He rose from the dead, etc. but that's only because of the stories in the book. It has little to do with whatever "experience" you had.

Hi PhatIMHO it isn't about God's magic working on my behalf. And again IMHO, you do have the God's spirit, His still small voice or that God meme in all of us that does nudge towards having hearts that choose the loving thing as opposed to the selfish thing.The problem with all religions is that they are so often marketed for lack of a better term, as providing a better life in the here and now. I also disagree with Tangle when he says that the point is to give us as individuals a better life in the world to come. If someone believes that being a Christian is about gaining a benefit for the self then I suggest that just maybe they have it backwards.If we use Jesus as a model we can see that He lived a life born as an illegitimate child to a lower class family, lived a life, (from what we know of it), that was largely dependent on others for food and shelter. He was despised by many, and He was tortured and died a slow excruciatingly painful and humiliating death. His early followers ,as I’ll show, often suffered similar fates.There is no reason to believe that by being a Christian we’ll live lives that are easy. I forget where but the Bible even says that the rain falls on the good and the bad.Christianity is not a religion that is based on what is in it for us as individuals. It is about us as individuals serving God’s good creation.
It is a religion founded on the progressive understanding of the nature of God by the ancient Jews and the belief that God resurrected Jesus and with that, we can then have confidence in the life, message of Jesus. There is a line that we sometimes use in church about our faith which is so complex so simple, so clear so mysterious. It is so simple and clear in that it is all about loving others and all of creation. However, when we look at the philosophy and theology of the faith it is complex and mysterious. We can understand that when we look at the variety of views that are presented to us.I suggest that if you want to understand how the Christian life was supposed to be led that it is best to go back to the early church before Constantine legalized it in 313 AD and then became the religion of the Roman Empire in 380AD. That of course screwed the up whole Christian message as Christianity then became a road to political power,a nd also allowed in a lot of Greek mythology.I quoted this in another thread but here it is again from a book by Alan Kreider about the first 300 years of Christianity.

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Candidates for baptism came from differing backgrounds — Jewish and pagan, Greek and Roman. They also were of both sexes and a range of social classes. Most were poor and some were slaves, but a few were comfortably well-off. Some of the candidates were illiterate. Somehow the church’s teaching was meant to reach all of these, for all were important in the Christian church. The teachers conveyed to the candidates that, although they valued education, refined learning was not the point; the instruction was not designed to produce sophisticated thought but character and virtuous living.

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The church’s growth was the product, not of the Christians’ persuasive powers, but of their convincing life style.

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This was the model of the early church in the face of persecution. Here is a quote from Tacitus.

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Nero punished a race of men who were hated for their evil practices. These men were called Christians. He got a number of people to confess. On their evidence a number of Christians were convicted and put to death with dreadful cruelty. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and left to be eaten by dogs. Others were nailed to the cross. Many were burned alive and set on fire to serve as torches at night.

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We also know that Christians were often put to death simply for entertainment. Maybe we don’t have it all that bad.The one thing that we can hold on to as Christians is a faith that ultimately we will be part of a world that is based solely on love, peace and with perfect justice. In the meantime we are called to live that out in the present life as per my signature.

OPEN TRANSCRIPT:QUESTIONER: When you are at Ohio State you had someone ask you a question I think they asked you were you Catholic and you explained that you know you're Protestant and then you made a comment about how we have more likenesses than we have differences and I would totally agree but then you said something along the lines talking about I think he used the word salvation but talking about the doctrine of justification and how you wouldn't part on that issue and you called it a secondary issue and the only reason I bring it up is I pushed back on that thinking ... it's a number-one issuebut you know my in-laws are Catholic and I love them deeply. So where do you draw the line with ...how you separate that out and and and how you don't? TUREK: I went to Catholic HighSchool.
I went through the whole thing but at the end of it I didn't even know who Jesus was I didn't have a good maybe that was my fault you know I'm going high school you know what do I know it was until I was in the Navyand I met the son of a Methodist minister and he took me to a Baptist Church and I started to learn doctrine it seemed better from a 40-minute sermon than a seven-minute Halawa homily right and then I had so many questions for him he said you know you just need to get Josh McDowell books evidence demands a verdict and more than a carpenter so - I became a Christian through apologetics now when it comes to the situation with Roman Catholics and Protestants isI'm a Protestant a lot of times I get questions from Protestants that say to me - you think Catholics can be saved? and I usually say I even think some Baptists can be saved okay because it's not where you go to church that determines whether or not your sins are forgiven it's whether you've accepted the free gift of salvation now technically there's a dispute obviously between the Protestants and the Catholics over the difference between what's known as justification and sanctification.Protestants believe the justification is a one-time only event where you accept Christ and your sin forgiving after that sanctification takes place whereby you're progressively hopefully becoming more like Jesus through the Holy Spirit.Catholics tend to put those two things together they say the justification and sanctification go together and there's no distinction there (now) they would admit that was the thief on the cross saved yeah did he do any good works no but they're saying that if you're going to be a true Christian you're going to do good works and I agree with that I just don't think the good works are salvific.I think that you're saved by faith alone but your faith is not alone that you're going to do good when Paul says this and the most famous probably verse on this in the new testament in Ephesians chapter 2 . he says that you're saved by faith, not of works so that no man should boast It's grace through faith and then the very next verse talks about but you're created in Christ to do good works so it's a dispute over how we unpack salvation.Are we just talking about justification are we talking about justification and sanctification together now can I have fellowship with a Catholic that believes that they're saved by grace, of course, I can if they're gonna say I've got to do good works in order to be saved I'm gonna have an argument with them( a friendly argument) but I'm gonna say look the Catholics agree that you can't be saved without Jesus... they agree with that right?
That's the most important thing you've got to have Jesus in order to be saved but I'm gonna have a conversation and say look the Scriptures seem to indicate that no you don't need works to be saved but if you are saved you will do good worksEdited by Phat, : spacing

The real question is what are you being "saved" from?