Resources for Apologetics and Biblical Interpretation

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@Remiel-Wise

Apologetics doesn’t begin with a gap in knowledge… it begins with awe!

Unfortunately, some apologetics does arrive at gaps in our knowledge, and tries to leverage that into an argument for God.

@Remiel-Wise

I don’t look at mystery and cry “God!” because I ran out of explanations; I look at mystery and see meaning because I began with purpose. That’s the difference. You start from absence and try to climb toward significance. I start from significance and explore its depths.

Sure, you begin with a belief in God. Non-believers do not start there which is why apologetics that assume a belief in God are not that convincing to non-believers.

[St.Roymond]

@marta

@Rafal

an “apologist” who refused to answer 2 of my questions

I might regret asking but what were the two questions? Mind, I’m not promising whatsoever that I’m going to answer them myself.

Well, at least you asked!

@marta

choosing Christianity because they sincerely believe that its teachings and moral framework are more accurate, profound, or complete than those of other religions.

Little of that even entered into my search. I just wanted to answer the question – having decided there must be a Creator – of where evidence indicated the Creator had ventured to communicate.

@RichardG

@Roy

No-one needs to explain (scientifically or otherwise) what has yet to be established as reality.

Nice cop out.

That’s not a cop-out, it’s a recognition that there are as many explanations for unreality as there are unrealities – and they’re all fantasy.

@Roy

I am pointing out that caterpillars do not necessarily have the mental capacity to know what they are doing when they spin a cocoon, or why they are doing it. Asking how they know what they are doing is jumping the gun - first it should be established that they know what they are doing.

This is not avoiding a philosophical argument, it is making a philosophical argument.

Quite so.

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@Remiel-Wise

And yet, history is filled with physicists, mathematicians, cosmologists, and neuroscientists who began as strict materialists and ended up convinced that the deeper they probed, the more the data pointed toward design, intention, and mind.

Sure, people’s beliefs outside of science can change. I think we all agree with that.

@Remiel-Wise

So the real question isn’t whether science can reveal divine purpose, but whether you’re willing to let it if it does.

No, that is still the real question. I have yet to see any evidence that science can reveal divine purpose in a scientific sense. The best you have been able to do is point to things we are currently ignorant of. Do people allow scientific findings to influence their beliefs? Absolutely, but that’s not the same as science leading to a scientific conclusion of divine purpose.

[Roy]

@Remiel-Wise

You mistake the starting point.

Apologetics doesn’t begin with a gap in knowledge… it begins with awe!
…
I don’t need the divine to fill in the blanks of what I don’t know. I begin with the divine because that’s where knowing itself begins; where curiosity was born, where order made discovery possible.

I don’t think @T_aquaticus is mistaking the staring point. He just has a different starting point, as do I - a starting point that doesn’t already assume that a god exists.

Your starting point does apparently assume that. Which means you’ll never reach the same destination as us, or convince us of anything, because you’re already headed in a different direction, based on an unnecessary assumption.

[Apistos]

@Terry_Sampson

Screenshot 2022-0

Absolutely.

[Roy]

@RichardG

@Roy

This is not avoiding a philosophical argument, it is making a philosophical argument.

It is not making any argument, it is dismissing the subject.

As expected, you have nothing useful to contribute.

[Remiel-Wise (Mark)]

Think of it this way… did O.J. Simpson kill his ex-wife?

A jury may disagree, but enough circumstantial and deductive evidence existed to make the question rationally arguable without anyone having direct knowledge of the act itself. Most cases in human history, murder trials, scientific theories, even personal relationships, are built on converging lines of inference, not firsthand observation.

So why, when it comes to the question of divine purpose, do we suddenly demand a different standard? We accept inference everywhere else in life; courtrooms, laboratories, and history books, but dismiss it the moment it points beyond matter.

The absence of direct measurement isn’t the absence of evidence. It simply means the evidence speaks through pattern, coherence, and probability rather than through a microscope slide. That’s how all rational conviction works.

[St.Roymond]

@Remiel-Wise

enough circumstantial and deductive evidence existed to make the question rationally arguable without anyone having direct knowledge of the act itself. Most cases in human history, murder trials, scientific theories, even personal relationships, are built on converging lines of inference, not firsthand observation.

So why, when it comes to the question of divine purpose, do we suddenly demand a different standard? We accept inference everywhere else in life; courtrooms, laboratories, and history books, but dismiss it the moment it points beyond matter.

Great insight!

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@Remiel-Wise

That neither divine purpose nor any intrinsic order, random or otherwise, actually underlies existence?

Not exactly, but it is arrogant or presumptuous to demand that we can ascertain or verify such ultimates.

@Remiel-Wise

where can we plant our feet and not have the ground shift beneath us?

Isn’t the point of trust in God that we are not sufficient in ourselves?

@Remiel-Wise

It’s one thing to question the nature of the foundation; it’s another to deny that there is one.

From Kurt Voonegut, Cat’s Cradle…

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@Remiel-Wise

We accept inference everywhere else in life; courtrooms, laboratories, and history books, but dismiss it the moment it points beyond matter.

All of those, courtroom evidence, laboratories, and history, are within the domain of life and familiar material. Those inferences can then be judged by the same experience by which we live. It is a category error to assert that because such inferences can apply from like to like, that they apply outside to metaphysics. It is not that inferences to metaphysics are arbitrarily dismissed, it is that they arguably are not rigorous and do not withstand analysis.

But who knows? Maybe if somebody finally figures out how to artfully arrange the words just so, 2500 years of philosophy can be concluded.

[Remiel-Wise (Mark)]

Imagination fails you, my friend. You’ve rewritten Genesis as a cosmic joke, yet in doing so you’ve confessed the very things you’re mocking: loneliness, consciousness, and the hunger for purpose. Those are not the byproducts of mud.

You speak of man rising from dust and then asking, “What is the purpose of all this?” But do you see what you’ve admitted? That purpose exists to be asked for. The question itself betrays transcendence. Mud does not ask why, only mind does.

And if all this is mere accident, then the odds that conscious life even blinks once in a universe of entropy, roughly 1 in 10^10^123, make your “cosmic joke” the most extravagant miracle of all. You call it chance; I call it mercy.

So who’s the magic sky-daddy, God, or your god of process and numbers? God is a single cause and effect; you’ve got a few digits more to contend with. LOL.

So yes, laugh if you like. But every breath of that laughter is borrowed from a fine-tuned equation that sustains you just long enough to deny the One who wrote it. And yet, you will reply, because you must. Otherwise your soul will be crushed… oh wait….. you don’t have a soul?

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

I’m a theist. Sheesh, lighten up. The quote is a challenge from Kurt Voonegut, an atheist.

[Remiel-Wise (Mark)]

Hi Ron, honestly, all these threads and the way they intertwine users is difficult to tell who’s who really… But appreciate the clarification and apologies for the friendly-fire

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@Remiel-Wise

apologies for the friendly-fire

No problem. Feel free to continue to challenge me for being dubious of most apologetic arguments.

[Remiel-Wise (Mark)]

Not so fast, Roy. I didn’t start with God… I started without Him.

I was raised Eastern Orthodox in name only, but after fifteen, faith was background noise. For nearly three decades I lived as if the divine were irrelevant, even intrusive. And what I found was that striving without meaning eventually collapses under its own weight. You can achieve, accumulate, learn, and still feel the slow decay of purpose gnawing at the edges.

When I finally turned toward faith, it wasn’t out of fear or weakness, it was because the alternative had proven hollow. I wanted my being, my ideals, and my love for discovery to be anchored in something more than chemical happenstance. If that’s weakness, then I’ll wear it gladly, because what I’ve anchored to doesn’t die with me.

You call your starting point strength, but it’s a strength that ends in silence. Everything you build, feel, or value evaporates with time in a worldview that promises nothing beyond it.

So tell me, Roy, if all purpose dissolves into entropy, what is left to live for?

[Theangeloffury (Liam C.)]

@Remiel-Wise

So tell me, Roy, if all purpose dissolves into entropy, what is left to live for?

Hello, I’m not Roy but maybe some thoughts. I would argue that there’s a good general belief that conscious intelligent life in this universe is a miracle and a lot of coincidences had to occur for us to get here. Regardless of whether you are a theist or not, I think that fact is what you live for. The fact that you even are alive is the miracle in of itself. I could posit that many atheists can live their lives with the purpose of doing whatever they can to propagate further life and give future humanity the best chance to expierence this miracle that is conscious life.

Just a reminder that none of us chose to be alive. None of us ultimately choose whether God exists or not (i.e. that fact is determined before we are born). So regardless, celebrating life, whether through atheistic or theistic means, is a choice we can make to give life purpose. For some that might lead to a healthy secular humanism. Others might find God. But my desire is regardless of your beliefs, the miracle of life in my opinion gives us a good initial starting ground with the very small time we have on this speck of rock.