Layers Of Apologetics

[2PhiloVoid]

I may be misreading you, but your response to a person whose position is “I haven’t come across a definition or conception of God that is coherent or cogent enough for me to make a meaningful judgment on the likelihood of its existence,” seemed to be “Well, what is anything, really?” Forgive me, perhaps the apologetics forum has made me jaded, but this looked a lot like an opening move to a script that would have the person struggle to articulate clear definitions for life, existence, and the world, at which point you would ask why they accept those things, elusive definitions and all, but not God. This derails the conversation from “What do you mean by God?” to “How do we decide what we know and don’t know?”

It can sound like that, I'm sure, but that's not what I was doing. I was simply being honest. My response is: "So, what I've tried to say about God doesn't make sense to you? Ok. So, let's hear your version of things, such as they could be philosophically considered .... "

It's not a counter-ploy. It's just that I, like other people, am an existential sojourner in this life who is looking for 'answers' as best I can. I need help to get through this life, too, and to deal with my upcoming death.

So, if the Bible is false, or rather the skeptic who gets in my face thinks it's false, then my default position is to simply ask, "Oh, then what do you have to offer me, pray tell?" .... and then I do listen and mull over what I'm 'getting' from the other person, and if it's helpful, I keep it, and if it's not, I chuck what they say down the garbage disposal the same way they do with what I attempt to share with them.

Your further response reveals at least that you’re talking about the Judeo-Christian God, which isn’t a foregone conclusion when you’re speaking with someone who says they don’t really understand what God is. But that kind of answer is more along the lines of what such a person would be looking for, although pointing to set of scriptures and saying you can’t be any clearer than what’s already written still isn’t quite helpful enough.

Kind of. The essential question here is, "How could I possible know 'more' about God than a Peter or a Paul, or more than some guru who wants to make the claim that God visited him?"

 

[gaara4158]

It can sound like that, I'm sure, but that's not what I was doing. I was simply being honest. My response is: "So, what I've tried to say about God doesn't make sense to you? Ok. So, let's hear your version of things, such as they could be philosophically considered .... "

It's not a counter-ploy. It's just that I, like them, am an existential sojourner in this life who is looking for 'answers' as best I can. I need help to get through this life, too, and to deal with my upcoming death.

I guess that can make sense, but instead of asking them to lay out their entire worldview, wouldn’t it be more to the point to ask them what aspects of theism, as they’ve been exposed to it, aren’t adding up for them? It seems to me that way you’ll get to the part of their worldview that’s most relevant to the issue rather than finding it incidentally among a lengthy manifesto they’ve enacted the labor to produce at your request.

Kind of. The essential question here is, "How could I possible know 'more' about God than a Peter or a Paul, or more than some guru who wants to make the claim that God visited him?"

Well, it’s not so much that you’re expected to know more, but rather that you might be able to word things in a way that makes more sense to an outsider than the plain text, given your hermeneutical understanding of it.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I guess that can make sense, but instead of asking them to lay out their entire worldview, wouldn’t it be more to the point to ask them what aspects of theism, as they’ve been exposed to it, aren’t adding up for them? It seems to me that way you’ll get to the part of their worldview that’s most relevant to the issue rather than finding it incidentally among a lengthy manifesto they’ve enacted the labor to produce at your request.

Did I say anything above about specifically requiring another person to explain her entire worldview to me?

I don't think I did.

Well, it’s not so much that you’re expected to know more, but rather that you might be able to word things in a way that makes more sense to an outsider than the plain text, given your hermeneutical understanding of it.

I've done that from time to time, and it's usually a losing battle because attempting to "explain" to a skeptic (or to a fundamentalist, for that matter) a text of any kind is almost NEVER as simple a task as everyone wishes it would be or, as some do, claims that it should be.

In fact, the whole point of doing more formal hermeneutics up and above doing a simple, prima facie reading of a text relies upon the central premise that human perception(s) and epistemologies are complex and complicated and the process of understanding may very well require an ongoing, recursive praxis of communitarian assessment, one that has to go above and beyond the overly selective and limited epistemic parameters found in a debate scenario.

The irony in all of this is somewhat bitter, however, since it might just be that if and when we understand something like the Bible more fully, we won't still find there-in the promises which originally attracted us in the first place. Of course, Jesus ran into this apparently; in telling some people He was the Bread from Heaven, some folks seemingly proceeded to ask Him how many loaves He had on hand to give to them ...

 

[Silmarien]

I may be misreading you, but your response to a person whose position is “I haven’t come across a definition or conception of God that is coherent or cogent enough for me to make a meaningful judgment on the likelihood of its existence,” seemed to be “Well, what is anything, really?” Forgive me, perhaps the apologetics forum has made me jaded, but this looked a lot like an opening move to a script that would have the person struggle to articulate clear definitions for life, existence, and the world, at which point you would ask why they accept those things, elusive definitions and all, but not God. This derails the conversation from “What do you mean by God?” to “How do we decide what we know and don’t know?”

To be fair, the two questions are not entirely unrelated. I can't speak for all theists, but my own worldview is diametrically opposed to a naturalistic one, which means that conversation breaks down almost immediately. Most atheists here seem to assume that theists work under the same basic assumptions--that matter exists, that the universe exists--and then pose God as a sort of add-on to these more foundational beliefs, and that's not always the case.

I don't have a problem giving a concrete definition of theism, but I feel like the underlying ontological and methodological differences are so severe that there's really no point.

 

[zippy2006]

I may be misreading you, but your response to a person whose position is “I haven’t come across a definition or conception of God that is coherent or cogent enough for me to make a meaningful judgment on the likelihood of its existence,” seemed to be “Well, what is anything, really?”

Although it probably does come across as legerdemain, I don't find the basic idea here problematic.

The OP wants a clear-cut two-step process: 1) give a conceptual definition, 2) probe reality to see whether that conceptual definition exists. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it is a bit naive to think that the God question will be so easily resolved. So the response you put in Philo's mouth is one way of emphasizing the fact that God is not actually like an object that natural science studies. Confusion and ambiguity about the nature of God is a real issue.

Regarding the original post, I'm not convinced that equivocation between (1) and (2) is overly common or problematic, or that if we clearly separated the two we would make significantly more progress.

 

[muichimotsu]

I would just ask that person if they think all of their own conceptions of the world, life and existence are completely and utterly cogent and otherwise coherent, and what they think "cogency" and "coherence" are, as far as they're concerned ...

... and that would be that, and I would just sit back, listen and learn in the hopes that they could help me out of my existentially inclined ignorance and in my lack of assurance in who and what I am and where I'm going as I move on into the future.

Did I say utterly and completely cogent in my initial qualifications? No, I said remotely cogent in a general sense, which is quite distinct from absolute certainty and coherence.

If you're just going to play semantical games in return, you might as well admit you don't think language means much of anything except with particular norms, if even that. Gets into postmodern rubbish, honestly, where there isn't even a veneer of stability, just a chaotic mass of interpretation

Coherency and cogency are not based in mere personal credulity and existential phenomenological aspects, as you seem to imply in some sense. But appealing to consensus is not saying that is the sole factor by any means, there's more to it than that which I cannot claim some expertise in addressing beyond various counterexamples even in terms of, say, ethics, or even metaphysics (tree, plant, rock, mountain, etc).

We have a concept of good, it's contrasted with bad, and we can present a consistent standard, only varying based on various situational aspects, but not in the qualities that are ascribed to an action or effect as being good or bad, even if that can be different depending on a subject's perspective.

 

[muichimotsu]

Yes, a discussion about the existence of "God" requires a mutually acceptable definition or concept as to what "God" means as a word.



One can discuss the issue "is God a cogent concept?" first, if not the discussion will be subject to communication failure, on account of the need for a mutually acceptable definition of the concept "God".

But what counts as mutually acceptable to some is not going to work for all, so the problem seems much more fundamental than monotheists seem to realize, even in contrast with, say, polytheists, pantheists, deists, etc. Or at most, some ontological disagreements will occur before even getting to the epistemological aspects

 

[muichimotsu]

Really? My passively being willing to listen to, ponder over and then contemplate what another person has to say .................. could be perceived as "muddying the water"? I think you misunderstand what I was getting at in my response to the other poster. I'm under no impression, and have never been under the impression, that describing God in some kind of 'clear' way is open to purely human investigation. No, the best we have is the figure of Jesus Christ to serve as an illustration; and I don't think anyone can put upon me the responsibility to elucidate more clearly, beyond, or in addition to, what little that the entire world has already been given, message wise, through the earliest Christians.

How could I possibly say "more" for the sake of clarity about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob than what has already been said? It's not like I have a hotline to God and I can just ring Him up for an interview so that I can better field anyone's random questions ...

In short, rough cataphatic and apophatic notions that only serve to illustrate the utterly incoherent notion of God in the first place? Could've just admitted that rather than trying to sound like you're being humble, which was likely the intent, but it comes across like you're absolutely certain that Jesus is the best parallel for God assessment with no real alternatives considered reasonably.

You could say, maybe, what it actually entails metaphysically, but then you'd have to qualify it to a point that it might as well not exist anyway. And no one's claiming you should answer to some absolute satisfaction, but something that isn't just constantly deflecting responsibility from the God concept to be investigated in any meaningful manner that isn't purely subjective

 

[muichimotsu]

Not really, and this is more or less what I've been essentially saying all along.

If God makes no sense, why believe in it at all when you don't even have any reasonable consideration to base the belief on that isn't rooted in flimsy emotional standards?

Not if there isn't a single one of us who is privileged enough to have a special inside scoop on God, by God. I don't have an insider's scoop; but I'm pretty sure most folks here don't either. So, to me, all this ontological guesswork that is spawned and spatted back and forth is just spitting in the wind in the hopes that........well, I don't really know what some folks are hoping for in this regard.

Not sure I remotely entailed that kind of information, but when you basically make God immune to scrutiny, it's easy to effectively dance around actually addressing the core problem: God is purely based on interpretation and a perspective that's not reliable by any stretch.

Nope; because no one can agree on what exactly epistemology is, how it works, how it should proceed, and when it provides 'sufficient' conceptual substance for our attempts to justify this or that claim toward a state of knowledge and/or truth.

Or, you can just admit that religious claims, as you've said elsewhere, are not subject to the same, if any epistemology, because they're rooted in some other standard that's somehow still reliable

Be nice to them, I guess? Some people need that as a starting point, it seems. Maybe that's part of the reason Jesus said some things pertaining to "loving others," a point He made that I will admit that I have a difficult time doing in ways that will be seen or felt or heard as "being loving."

Yes, I'm sure you think Jesus was the only one to say stuff like that, but pretty sure that's false and a myopic look at things to make him seem more unique than he really was in the grand scheme of written human history

"Being nice" sounds more to me like treating someone like a child that will eventually "get it" as they "grow up"

 

[muichimotsu]

To be fair, the two questions are not entirely unrelated. I can't speak for all theists, but my own worldview is diametrically opposed to a naturalistic one, which means that conversation breaks down almost immediately. Most atheists here seem to assume that theists work under the same basic assumptions--that matter exists, that the universe exists--and then pose God as a sort of add-on to these more foundational beliefs, and that's not always the case.

I don't have a problem giving a concrete definition of theism, but I feel like the underlying ontological and methodological differences are so severe that there's really no point.

So if the whole foundational worldview one has is such that you can just posit such things, how can you say it's anything more than internally consistent rather than being subject to genuine critical thought that could falsify it?

So instead of considering where nontheists may have a point, just hand wave the discussion away by saying there's no common ground in the slightest or any reason for you to bend in your positions at all?

 

[muichimotsu]

Although it probably does come across as legerdemain, I don't find the basic idea here problematic.

The OP wants a clear-cut two-step process: 1) give a conceptual definition, 2) probe reality to see whether that conceptual definition exists. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it is a bit naive to think that the God question will be so easily resolved. So the response you put in Philo's mouth is one way of emphasizing the fact that God is not actually like an object that natural science studies. Confusion and ambiguity about the nature of God is a real issue.

The conceptual definition does not necessarily follow to automatically assuming it can be determined to exist, when the conceptual definition can make the entity in question unfalsifiable by nature and thus essentially jump to epistemological justification rooted in special revelation and sentiments rather than remotely reasonable standards that apply to even other philosophical topics, like ethics, but "God" suddenly becomes the topic of special pleading constantly

If the idea of reality one has is arguably flawed and relativistic, then that can be a foundational problem in terms of whether one thinks "God" is cogent and coherent, because they'd just as soon think a unicorn or leprechaun or magic are coherent and they just choose to focus on "God", anthropomorphizing ethics, etc, and dismiss the other stuff as "silly"

Regarding the original post, I'm not convinced that equivocation between (1) and (2) is overly common or problematic, or that if we clearly separated the two we would make significantly more progress.

The question I'd have then, is how one remotely can say they've critically examined the idea of "God" and its existence if you're just going to take a common definition as indication that it's cogent rather than considering that "God" belief necessarily can lead to people fudging with it and defining it in other ways that aren't traditional monotheism in any sense?

 

[MrsFoundit]

But what counts as mutually acceptable to some is not going to work for all

In the OP you asked specifically about two perspectives, not all "I have to wonder if many times that a person tries too hard to utilize one tactic for most skeptics they approach." and "in regards to someone who isn't convinced that God is a cogent or otherwise coherent concept in the first place?".

 

[muichimotsu]

In the OP you asked specifically about two perspectives, not all "I have to wonder if many times that a person tries too hard to utilize one tactic for most skeptics they approach." and "in regards to someone who isn't convinced that God is a cogent or otherwise coherent concept in the first place?".

There were 3 steps in a sequence of sorts that I think apologists skip to the 3rd one.

Do you think apologists have really considered the semantic and ontological aspects for God much, if at all in the case of the former? We have an ontological argument (a few variations) for God's existence, but in my experience, it's rarely used in terms of convincing skeptics so much as reinforcing some notion of a basic God existing and then leading into Christianity as further justifying the idea

It's not as if apologetics is necessarily effective anyway even if we focus merely on the epistemological justification to find Christianity compelling in particular. But if Christians just assume God is cogent, that's intellectually contemptuous towards people in the same vein as assuming they must have a sense of God because of some argument from design or that their moral sense is from God writing the law on their hearts (both quoting scripture that wouldn't be a compelling standard anymore than quoting Spiderman or Superman in regards to ethical principles)

 

[MrsFoundit]

Do you think apologists have really considered the semantic and ontological aspects for God much, if at all in the case of the former? We have an ontological argument (a few variations) for God's existence, but in my experience, it's rarely used in terms of convincing skeptics so much as reinforcing some notion of a basic God existing and then leading into Christianity as further justifying the idea

You have not understood apologetics. Apologetics | Definition of Apologetics by Lexico
It is not an attempt to convince sceptics.

 

[Sanoy]

The universe is caused, but I don't pretend to have absolute knowledge in any sense of what that cause consists of, only that the evidence we have suggests that it came to be, but not that we can go any further in investigating, so it becomes speculative and a waste of time and energy to suggest you know anything rather than merely believing it.

Causality doesn't require a creator to be a factor in things that are extant in the nature we see with the universe. Applying the anthropic principle is why you and so many others will insist there has to be a creator, because you're utilizing a common, but not universal, notion about "God" that anthropomorphizes and exaggerates qualities of a human to a point that it becomes perfect and thus can be defended against objections by special pleading, etc, without having to demonstrate it, only rationalize that it makes "sense"

How can the initial universe be caused to exist, but not caused by something external to itself? That seems incoherent. Why wouldn't we consider a mind behind the resolution of such extraordinary odds that the universe that does exist is life permitting. Is there some rule that we should prefer non minds over minds even when the odds are inconceivably minute? Such a heuristic seems incredibly biased, completely unwarranted, and having nothing to do with discovering the truth of reality. Why should anyone adopt such a heuristic?

Opps, thought I was posting in the seeker section.

 

[Silmarien]

So if the whole foundational worldview one has is such that you can just posit such things, how can you say it's anything more than internally consistent rather than being subject to genuine critical thought that could falsify it?

Internal consistency and falsification have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I'm quite happy to use falsification in its proper context--as the boundary between scientific and non-scientific reasoning, but beyond that it's not of much interest to me.

So instead of considering where nontheists may have a point, just hand wave the discussion away by saying there's no common ground in the slightest or any reason for you to bend in your positions at all?

I am a former nontheist, so I have the advantage of being pretty intimately familiar with both positions. I know what I used to think, I know why I used to think it, and since I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong, there's really not much there that is of much interest to me anymore.

My positions have bent plenty, though obviously not in the direction you'd like. Writing things off as irreconcilable differences strikes me as the most constructive option at this point.

 

[zippy2006]

The question I'd have then, is how one remotely can say they've critically examined the idea of "God" and its existence if you're just going to take a common definition as indication that it's cogent rather than considering that "God" belief necessarily can lead to people fudging with it and defining it in other ways that aren't traditional monotheism in any sense?

But any belief can lead to people "fudging with it and defining it in other ways." Approach (1) is related to essence; approach (2) is related to existence. In any epistemological endeavor there is going to be balance and mutual interdependence between essence and existence. Separation is necessary, but they also go together.

The bigger chasm in apologetics is represented by the foundational theistic and atheistic premises: "Something like God exists," and, "Nothing like God exists." Overturning either of those premises is quite difficult, and a strong focus on definitions or methodology isn't going to change that.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Did I say utterly and completely cogent in my initial qualifications? No, I said remotely cogent in a general sense, which is quite distinct from absolute certainty and coherence.

If you're just going to play semantical games in return, you might as well admit you don't think language means much of anything except with particular norms, if even that. Gets into postmodern rubbish, honestly, where there isn't even a veneer of stability, just a chaotic mass of interpretation

I don't consider my own act of listening to another person and considering whatever truths may reside within their own statements and in their shared perceptions, and evaluating those statements in their usefulness to me as any kind of a "semantic game." It isn't a game, and it isn't a retort, but it does seem that I'm being interpreted in this way, as if I'm trying to secretly humiliate the skeptics who pop of here.

You skeptics here on CF need to stop working overtime in trying to anticipate (or guess) what you think I'm go to try to say or to get at. I'm not being devious here with you guys. I'm not trying to implement subversion of a skeptic's integrity. No, I'm answering honestly, even here with you, and even if where religion and metaphysics are concerned, I'm doing so existentially.

Coherency and cogency are not based in mere personal credulity and existential phenomenological aspects, as you seem to imply in some sense. But appealing to consensus is not saying that is the sole factor by any means, there's more to it than that which I cannot claim some expertise in addressing beyond various counterexamples even in terms of, say, ethics, or even metaphysics (tree, plant, rock, mountain, etc).

Which book on epistemology says what you're attempting to say here, because I don't think mine say any of this?

We have a concept of good, it's contrasted with bad, and we can present a consistent standard, only varying based on various situational aspects, but not in the qualities that are ascribed to an action or effect as being good or bad, even if that can be different depending on a subject's perspective.

I'm sorry, but I don't find this assertion of yours about good and bad to be coherent. In fact, sometimes you don't seem to be saying anything you've actually learned through your education but rather just firing from the hip ...

... again, I think you guys really need to start buttressing your arguments with some academically substantial references and documentation. If you don't, I won't be able to take you seriously and I'll just assume you're here to "mess with Christian minds."

As for you, muichimotsu, you also need to stop treating interaction with various Christians as a chess game and please stop trying to outwit everyone by using loaded language that's structured to anticipate what you think your supposed "opponents" will soon say ... because in doing so, you end up saying things that, to me, aren't very substantive and not really hitting the target of what actually will be said by your Christian interlocutor, such as myself.

As I've implied above, I'm not saying this to mess with your mind. I'm not, but I am saying this just in case you're simply here to be a gadfly and to bite folks. If that is all you're wanting to do, then the jig is up, so stop doing it because it makes you look sociopathic rather than just a person who struggles with autism, and I'd rather extend empathy to you since I know you have some hefty challenges and struggles in your life; most importantly, I'd rather by sympathetic with you than have to gear myself up (and probably waste our time) in order to tear apart what you are trying to say to me.

Have you ever seen the movie, Dunkirk? If so, being the existentialist that I am, I'm going to be "that" pilot ... if I have to.

On the one hand, I can admit that like a lot guys here, I'm always up for a good skirmish in play, just like I am when I'm playing Marvel Strike Force [like a kid] on my phone. But wouldn't it be even cooler if you and I could just talk to each other as peers, be friendly with each other, and maybe even research and discuss some things together rather than trying to beat each other over the head in defiance of what resides cognitively in the other person's brain?

 

[muichimotsu]

You have not understood apologetics. Apologetics | Definition of Apologetics by Lexico
It is not an attempt to convince sceptics.

If, as the definition points, out, it is defending the rationality of a position, its justification, then if you're incapable of defending the rationality beyond one level, it utterly fails beyond a surface level

 

[muichimotsu]

How can the initial universe be caused to exist, but not caused by something external to itself? That seems incoherent. Why wouldn't we consider a mind behind the resolution of such extraordinary odds that the universe that does exist is life permitting. Is there some rule that we should prefer non minds over minds even when the odds are inconceivably minute? Such a heuristic seems incredibly biased, completely unwarranted, and having nothing to do with discovering the truth of reality. Why should anyone adopt such a heuristic?

Opps, thought I was posting in the seeker section.

It has a cause, but I never claimed it was an absolute beginning, only so far as we can observe

You're assuming the extraordinary odds after the fact, which is post hoc rationalization of something seeming amazing to your perspective

If you're just reducing things to personal credulity at statistics that we cannot be remotely certain on beyond particular constraints of measurements, not sure you're really presenting a compelling argument.

The truth of reality is not what seems to be, but what is in spite of what we might think to the contrary, like some agency behind the universe that we can't remotely demonstrate apart from goalpost shifting of how to "verify" it