Apologetics is essentially “defending” something as opposed to say proselytizing (in the example of Christianity). It’s frequently used for indefensible topics like rape apologists (the type to suggest the victim was asking for it or could have tried harder to say no) or Nazi’s (the usual propaganda). Christian apologists tend to hand wave or ignore the atrocities because “god is an absolute “good”” therefore anything he does is by definition “good” and us mere mortals can’t understand the divine plan. Babies dying? God is good. Babies dying and going to hell because they are unable to accept Jesus because they literally are unable to understand the concept? God is good.
I’m sorry that you felt the need to compare those who spread Christian doctrine with rape apologists and Nazis, but there are some things I don’t like about your comment. Chances are you are not interested in hearing them (at least judging from the wording you used), but someone else in this thread might be.
Yes, God is an absolute good. Yes, we cannot understand Him. Most “atrocities”, like you called them, come from men being given free will by God and drifting away from His teachings, thus doing stuff that isn’t good. God is good.
If a baby dies and is baptized they go straight to Heaven. If a baby dies and isn’t baptized we don’t actually know for sure what happens (it is never explained in the Bible), but by interpreting other aspects of Christian dogma we can hope and assume that they too would be saved. On this topic I recommend the following read, by the International Theological Commission
[There are] grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved and enjoy the Beatific Vision. We emphasise that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge. There is much that simply has not been revealed to us.
If there are other “atrocities” that you can think of and you’d like to discuss, I’d be happy to.
1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”
1739 Freedom and sin. Man’s freedom is limited and fallible. In fact, man failed. He freely sinned. By refusing God’s plan of love, he deceived himself and became a slave to sin. This first alienation engendered a multitude of others. From its outset, human history attests the wretchedness and oppression born of the human heart in consequence of the abuse of freedom.
If instead you were looking for philosophical evidence for God’s existance, I recommend reading Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways.
So your original comment asked what are apologists, then you go into typical apologetics arguments? Quite funny really.
Everything before your last sentence presupposes your personal interpretation of your god.
I’m not looking for philosophical evidence. I’m looking for objective evidence. And Aquinas is catastrophically out of his depth with his “5 Ways”. Pretty much every line has some error. Further, even if it were true, to take the end result of each of those individually and then say “Clearly this is the Christian god of the Bible and definitely not any other god humans have believed in or a coincidence or have any rational explanation.” is the height of arrogance.
The primary issue with Aquinas is that he’s essentially pairing a “god of the gaps” fallacy with philosophical ideas that predate the scientific method we would need in order to functionally claim most of what he’s talking about.
For example, he declares with confidence in his fourth way that because somethings are hotter, colder, etc. that there must also be an ultimate good just like there is ultimate heat. He begins the claim with scientific observation and then immediately rolls it into the field of philosophy and ethics. Now someone from the year 500AD might not consider that an issue since the scientific method didn’t even exist at the time and all natural philosophy was on the same playing field, but modern people wouldn’t consider those two fields to just be overlapping and logically interchangeable in that manner.
In the fifth way he claims that because certain beings have agency (or sapience, like us) and certain objects do not, that all non sapient objects must operate according to a being with said agency. This is patently untrue with modern scientific understanding as well, water flows because of friction and gravity, not because it was caused to do so by a god of some variety. Rocks fall, seasons change, etc. all due to natural processes. Not because there NEEDS to be a being with knowledge that guides it.
It’s interesting because this claim is foundless as he hasn’t proven that all objects operate based on a “plan” of some variety, he merely makes the claim that a plan from a sapient being is required for anything to happen and then begins to assess conclusions based on said claim. Moreso than that, it occurs in contradiction with his attempted understanding at potential and kinetic energy from the first way. He seems to have an idea about potential energy but then throws it out to just claim that objects or animals without knowledge operate on something else’s will.
Thus beginning a long standing religious tradition of using scientific rhetoric where its helpful and attempting to shoehorn philosophy in where it contradicts or fails to uphold.
I mean, I don’t believe it but bible believers do; how about the global flood? Various plagues in Egypt as well as ending the whole party with killing off all first-born sons? Commending genocide (multiple times)? Enabling chattel slavery? Obliterating Sodom and Gomora(sp?). Ooh, on that same point, didn’t he just turn Lot’s wife into salt because he looked at her? All the stuff he did to Job to win a bet? And I think Jesus set a wild bear on a bunch of kids because they were bullying some guy?
Those are off the top of my head, but I know there’s more.
There are some protestants who believe the literal words (usually in the King James Bible) are all literally exactly true, but I think the majority of Christians including Catholics and Orthodox believe that it can be metaphorical or mythical in parts. This is often couched in disclaimers saying it’s true, but the truth is it didn’t have to be literal or something like that
Those who believe everything literally happened have a much harder time defending all the “evil” stuff God did, while those who don’t can at least say we probably just don’t understand that bit.
Everyone believes it to be metaphorical or mythical “in part” the difference is where they draw that line.
Outside of YEC Flat Earthers everyone believes that passage in Exodus where the sun stopped moving to be a metaphor, but most evangelical Christians still take the creation story to be literal.
That is spot on. Contrary to Protestant (and in particular Evangelical) belief, the Catholic Church teaches that there are four senses through which one can read Scripture: one is literal, while the other three are spiritual (allegorical, moral and anagogical) and can help us interpret Christ’s message and how we should or should not behave during our earhthly lives. This is the relevant section from the Catechism.
I am not familiar with Orthodox theology, but I would assume they would have a similar position on the topic.
So which sense do we use to interpret the rules set out on how to get/treat slaves? How is that interpreted? Is it a metaphor? And how do you know which is which?
What it sounds like is you have lots of leeway to account for what you choose to believe is truth or fiction to fit your needs at any given moment. And if you’re not sure what, if any, is literally true, how do you know there’s a god at all? And you’re defending Catholicism, which is in for an even more uphill battle than most because it’s been around longer and has to account for all the beliefs that have had to be updated as knowledge and culture had changed.
Apologetics is essentially “defending” something as opposed to say proselytizing (in the example of Christianity). It’s frequently used for indefensible topics like rape apologists (the type to suggest the victim was asking for it or could have tried harder to say no) or Nazi’s (the usual propaganda). Christian apologists tend to hand wave or ignore the atrocities because “god is an absolute “good”” therefore anything he does is by definition “good” and us mere mortals can’t understand the divine plan. Babies dying? God is good. Babies dying and going to hell because they are unable to accept Jesus because they literally are unable to understand the concept? God is good.
I’m sorry that you felt the need to compare those who spread Christian doctrine with rape apologists and Nazis, but there are some things I don’t like about your comment. Chances are you are not interested in hearing them (at least judging from the wording you used), but someone else in this thread might be.
Yes, God is an absolute good. Yes, we cannot understand Him. Most “atrocities”, like you called them, come from men being given free will by God and drifting away from His teachings, thus doing stuff that isn’t good. God is good.
If a baby dies and is baptized they go straight to Heaven. If a baby dies and isn’t baptized we don’t actually know for sure what happens (it is never explained in the Bible), but by interpreting other aspects of Christian dogma we can hope and assume that they too would be saved. On this topic I recommend the following read, by the International Theological Commission
If there are other “atrocities” that you can think of and you’d like to discuss, I’d be happy to.
All of what you just said has zero evidence to support it.
I literally quoted a source. Want more? This is the Cathechism of the Catholic Church on the topic of free will:
1730
1739
If instead you were looking for philosophical evidence for God’s existance, I recommend reading Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways.
So your original comment asked what are apologists, then you go into typical apologetics arguments? Quite funny really.
Everything before your last sentence presupposes your personal interpretation of your god.
I’m not looking for philosophical evidence. I’m looking for objective evidence. And Aquinas is catastrophically out of his depth with his “5 Ways”. Pretty much every line has some error. Further, even if it were true, to take the end result of each of those individually and then say “Clearly this is the Christian god of the Bible and definitely not any other god humans have believed in or a coincidence or have any rational explanation.” is the height of arrogance.
The primary issue with Aquinas is that he’s essentially pairing a “god of the gaps” fallacy with philosophical ideas that predate the scientific method we would need in order to functionally claim most of what he’s talking about.
For example, he declares with confidence in his fourth way that because somethings are hotter, colder, etc. that there must also be an ultimate good just like there is ultimate heat. He begins the claim with scientific observation and then immediately rolls it into the field of philosophy and ethics. Now someone from the year 500AD might not consider that an issue since the scientific method didn’t even exist at the time and all natural philosophy was on the same playing field, but modern people wouldn’t consider those two fields to just be overlapping and logically interchangeable in that manner.
In the fifth way he claims that because certain beings have agency (or sapience, like us) and certain objects do not, that all non sapient objects must operate according to a being with said agency. This is patently untrue with modern scientific understanding as well, water flows because of friction and gravity, not because it was caused to do so by a god of some variety. Rocks fall, seasons change, etc. all due to natural processes. Not because there NEEDS to be a being with knowledge that guides it.
It’s interesting because this claim is foundless as he hasn’t proven that all objects operate based on a “plan” of some variety, he merely makes the claim that a plan from a sapient being is required for anything to happen and then begins to assess conclusions based on said claim. Moreso than that, it occurs in contradiction with his attempted understanding at potential and kinetic energy from the first way. He seems to have an idea about potential energy but then throws it out to just claim that objects or animals without knowledge operate on something else’s will.
Thus beginning a long standing religious tradition of using scientific rhetoric where its helpful and attempting to shoehorn philosophy in where it contradicts or fails to uphold.
I mean, I don’t believe it but bible believers do; how about the global flood? Various plagues in Egypt as well as ending the whole party with killing off all first-born sons? Commending genocide (multiple times)? Enabling chattel slavery? Obliterating Sodom and Gomora(sp?). Ooh, on that same point, didn’t he just turn Lot’s wife into salt because he looked at her? All the stuff he did to Job to win a bet? And I think Jesus set a wild bear on a bunch of kids because they were bullying some guy?
Those are off the top of my head, but I know there’s more.
There are some protestants who believe the literal words (usually in the King James Bible) are all literally exactly true, but I think the majority of Christians including Catholics and Orthodox believe that it can be metaphorical or mythical in parts. This is often couched in disclaimers saying it’s true, but the truth is it didn’t have to be literal or something like that
Those who believe everything literally happened have a much harder time defending all the “evil” stuff God did, while those who don’t can at least say we probably just don’t understand that bit.
Everyone believes it to be metaphorical or mythical “in part” the difference is where they draw that line.
Outside of YEC Flat Earthers everyone believes that passage in Exodus where the sun stopped moving to be a metaphor, but most evangelical Christians still take the creation story to be literal.
That is spot on. Contrary to Protestant (and in particular Evangelical) belief, the Catholic Church teaches that there are four senses through which one can read Scripture: one is literal, while the other three are spiritual (allegorical, moral and anagogical) and can help us interpret Christ’s message and how we should or should not behave during our earhthly lives. This is the relevant section from the Catechism.
I am not familiar with Orthodox theology, but I would assume they would have a similar position on the topic.
So which sense do we use to interpret the rules set out on how to get/treat slaves? How is that interpreted? Is it a metaphor? And how do you know which is which?
What it sounds like is you have lots of leeway to account for what you choose to believe is truth or fiction to fit your needs at any given moment. And if you’re not sure what, if any, is literally true, how do you know there’s a god at all? And you’re defending Catholicism, which is in for an even more uphill battle than most because it’s been around longer and has to account for all the beliefs that have had to be updated as knowledge and culture had changed.