Testing The Christian Apologists

I wanted to attempt and bring this specific topic here. ringo has challenged me to discuss the apologists whom I listen to and defend (or expose) them appropriately. I will say from the outset that the argument has already been done informally through us here on the forum. It boils down to faith vs evidence, which in my mind is inconclusive because I won't allow evidence to be the only default standard used when discussing concepts that have no way of being objectively proven initially to begin with.The first Christian Apologist that I want to present is Frank Turek.

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Turek was a Naval Flight Officer in the U.S. Navy, and has a master's degree in Public Administration from George Washington University and a Doctor of Ministry in Apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary. He has also taught classes in Leadership and Management at George Washington University.

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I was listening to the following podcast this morning:
What Makes Something Right Or Wrong? In it, Dr.Turek brought up one of our old arguments which we have discussed to death here at EvC, namely that God can have foreknowledge without sacrificing human free will. It is at about the 25-30 minute mark. Dr.Turek has a passionate argument. Listen to the 5 minutes and see if anyone can spot dishonesty or logical errors...I am sure they are there. (I don't see him as dishonest, but my critics might)I dont have time to write it all out at the moment, but it can be rediscussed here. We have done it before, and I feel that there was no conclusion. Free Will vs Ultimate ForeknowledgeI may find a transcript later.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

ringo wanted me to present 1 honest apologist to him, as he claims that they are all liars. Of course, lest we have a kangaroo court here, we all need to agree what form such a lie would take. ringo thinks that I know better than to hold on to the messenger as an excuse to reject the message. I disagree. But I am honest enough to engage the counter-argument advocating shutting up, throwing Jesus away(in the sense of throwing proselyting away) becoming friendly to inclusivism and helping everyone without worrying about whether they are Christians or not. A couple of scriptures challenge jar and ringos ideology.Primarily found in John, concerning Jesus: Why would Jesus advocate being quiet and simply being a servant towards others? According to the stories, the world at large did in fact hate Jesus...perhaps because like us, He never shut his mouth. If His message was to simply help others, would He not show by example? jar will argue that He did.
(go and tell no one)In short, what is being tested in this topic is worldviews vs apologetics. One could argue that you, I and jar are all apologists and yet we don't agree on much of anything. You and I may find some common ground, and I'm glad that we do...you will always be a sister even if I don't necessarily always agree with you I am commanded to love you. Is the same command to love extended to Leftists? Muslims? Gays? or are we to love the church first and foremost...comments?

Arguably the points are honest coming from his belief. We believe in the person and character of Jesus Christ. We believe that the enforcer of justice being living and active. How is that dishonest? He may argue that people who claim that belief and acceptance are unnecessary are being dishonest because deep down they know better. Of course, he couldn't prove it. I have two more to introduce. They have an interesting podcast called Thinking Out LoudHere is one such podcast:
Alright, the Culture Is Increasingly Hostile to the Church. Now What?
Snippets from the transcript:

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So I was in Dallas, Texas and I was speaking to a gathering about of about 120 people. Now do bear in mind that location, Dallas, Texas. That's important and you'll see why.

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But increasingly the questions coming in after the talks were really along these lines. If you're a Christian, how do you hold to biblical values and theological orthodoxy while so much around you in the culture is resisting that and pushing you away from it even?

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But the tone of these questions was in some ways revealing because I think the hope was how can we basically hold onto these convictions without clashing too deeply. And what has become increasingly clear, and what I was realizing as I was answering these questions is clashing is unavoidable and we're coming to a juncture in this nation's history where it's not possible to hold on to all of our theological convictions, all theological orthodoxy in a comfortable way. It's going to come with a social cost.

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This gets back to the idea of throwing away the ideology and just becoming inclusive(meek) and living out the message. It also causes me to question why it is important to hold on to the perceived values of the faith.

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I feel the contrast there myself as a missionary kid from Vienna, Austria, which is nominally Catholic, but as it is a very secular nation. And there all of the features that you just described, Nathan, they're pretty much absent except you do have, actually you do have the fragments of Christendom still all over Europe.

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There are these beautiful cathedrals and they're architectural marvels, but they're not filled with worshipers of course. They are filled with tourists and they're looked at almost...They're museums essentially. (...) But also the practical outworking of that is just so many people don't know the language of Christianity at all. They don't know scripture. They don't read the Bible. A lot of people think they know it, but it's largely regarded as an irrelevance.

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And so when you actually press into the specifics of Christianity, the message Jesus is Lord is always, always deeply counter-cultural. If you're total and complete allegiance and fidelity is to Christ, it's certainly going to put you at odds with any culture in which you find yourself. Whether that culture is like the United States where it's fiercely individualistic or if it's a culture that's more along Eastern lines where fidelity to the family and tradition is highly cherished and honor occupies a huge seat. It's always going to clash with all of those notions.(...) We(humans)just don't like to be told what to do.(...)"Wow, that's just a fascinating line that sums up America so well." So we're still hanging onto this kind of like pseudo-religious, it's a totally religious idea to say that people were created to be equal. All right, let's balance that as a divine dictation as it were, or pronouncement.(...)

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But then we've added the American autonomy into that. So we were created to be equal to pursue our own version of happiness. And so we want the right to be autonomous, not the ability to be obedient to the authority. I believe in God, but I don't believe my personal beliefs, and there's some weird grammar in here, okay, so just bear with me. But I don't believe my personal beliefs of which we can't confirm should override scientific facts and what we can confirm.

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And it's funny because, so essentially what this person is saying is I believe in God and I love God, but that's just my personal opinion and I don't want that to be forced on anyone. And I don't want that to cloud anybody else's sort of day.

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But it's a funny sentiment because if Christ is Lord, by definition that cannot be just your personal opinion. I mean, that's where I love Lesslie Newbigin's phrase, the gospel is public truth. That would mean it's true for everybody and he's King of all, whether you acknowledge it or not.

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But Americans, we love to hold on to stuff but we all want it on our own terms and we want it in these small manageable units that really will prevent all conflicts.

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I like these two despite their obvious bent towards conservatism. Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

OK I get your point. You basically accuse the apologist of conflating the issues in order to make his point. If so, I can see your concern.
Turek attempts to answer similar questions here:
Upon watching this video, I will say that Turek is bad at science...his arguments are PRATTS. Watch and see what you think.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

One apologetic defense is this:

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When the serpent first speaks in Genesis, the woman is eager to correct him. His opening speech is probably best construed, according to many modern scholars, as an incomplete subordinate clause: in Robert Alter’s translation Though God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden (Gen. 3:1). And then the woman jumps in to tell him there is only one tree that is forbidden. So far, so good!

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But she is a bit vague on which tree is actually forbidden, so the serpent responds by tacitly correcting her, directing her attention away from the tree in the midst of the garden (Gen. 3:3), which is the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) to the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:5). She is so far from disobedience at this point that he has to instruct her how to disobey by picking the right tree.

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The serpent is thus not simply a purveyor of ignorance and falsehood. Like every clever liar, his words contain many elements of truth. Indeed, falsehood is unintelligibleand therefore impossiblewithout a whole landscape of truth in the background. How could any evil exist without a world of good things to hide in, deform and corrupt? Without the good of truth, you wouldn’t even know which fruit to eat in order to sin.

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So the serpent points out that the forbidden tree is the one that will give knowledge of good and evil. It will in that sense make her like God, he says (Gen. 3:5). True enough.

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But he starts by saying: you shall not surely die! (Gen. 3:4). That is the great lie. Yet even this lie is a half truth: she does not die the very day she eats the forbidden fruit. Some scholars, amplifying the serpent’s point, have noted that God said, on the day you eat of it , you shall surely die (Gen. 2:17). What both the serpent and the scholars leave out is that this will be the day she is condemned to death. The phrase, shall surely die (or more literally, will die, die, a reduplication of the verb for emphasis) is legal terminology for the death penaltyoften translated as shall be put to death (e.g., in Exodus 21:15-17 and Leviticus 20:10-16).

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So the serpent gets the facts right about God’s word (the commandment is about the tree of knowledge, not the tree of life) but twists its meaning (as if it did not announce a death penalty). The upshot is that his lie is fundamentally about human death (you shall not surely die!). He leads her away from the tree of life and brings her to precisely the death he denies. For to believe his lie is to disbelieve the word of God, and that is death indeed.

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I know that you stick to your guns about a plain reading, but there are ways to dance around a bit. The question is are they honest ways or not.I might add that in your defense and to your credit, apologetics assumes a few things to be true apriori.

That the serpent is evil.

That God cannot lie...therefore the need to dance.

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I happen to agree with those two assumptions. Is there any reason to question them? Because if we question those premises, anything is permissible.

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Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith

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You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo

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As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.
? R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith

Basically the snake's message is to go with your own intuition. Did Jesus do that in the wilderness? NO. He questioned what was whispered to Him. (by using scripture)So should we. Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

If so, it was a valid fear. God feared that His own pet project of free-willed beings would be sabotaged. Just as some of us now fear that if people simply throw God away and go with their own intuition, they will also fail. Perhaps God created satan to give Him fear...sort of like a scary movie. God may have been bored.

No, but they got kicked out of the house and had to work. They also did die eventually. If a convict gets sentenced to death on one day and finally dies several years later by the sentence being carried out, he still legally died the day he was sentenced. Right?Their intuition was what it was. God likely knew it would happen. It was part of the overall plan. Jesus was in the beginning, according to scripture...and through Him all things were created, so Jesus created Lucifer long before Lucifer even fell and became satan. They call Jesus the 2nd Adam but Jesus not only created the 1st Adam, He was Plan A from Day 1.The only part of the plan not strictly foreknown is how many will follow their own intuition and throw God away and how many will accept that Father Knows Best?Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

To me, the story is not finished. It is a story being edited every day by millions. Sorta like Wikipedia. After all, even you edited it enough to bring in Mark Twain and Mencius.

I don't believe that the Bible has only one objective meaning. Besides, ringo doesn't believe that a supernatural messenger wrote (or inspired) the words. Therefore, who cares what human authors may or may not have intended? The book would only become as important as a room full of other books. I happen to believe that the book was inspired, and believing that I am aware of the inspiration, I question those who show me that the book says something that I don't agree with...or that doesn't feel right. To me, it does not feel right for god to "lie". It is patently ridiculous, in my opinion.If that's the way they insist that the book must be presented, I reject it. It is the ideology of not needing God and relying on human intuition. Well and if that is so, I am also relying on my own intuition to reject what is attempting to be taught. You do the same thing, after all. Are we not free to question anything that is taught? Are we not free to question our teachers? After all, it could be argued that Adam & Eve questioned their teacher initially. Out of innocence perhaps. Hopefully, we will get the same break, though we are not as innocent as they were.

No, but you use them to present the case for your argument concerning what Christianity and Christian philosophy is and should be about. As I have said before, you based your Christian beliefs on sacred studies of all religions and what you logically, rationally, and reasonably concluded about what the message essentially was and is. The fact that you simply show the Bible to say certain things is not questioned. It is done in a way that adds support to your own belief statement.I happen to reject the idea that God could lie. I don't care what the book can be shown to say. The book can be shown to say a lot of things. What concerns me is your motive for passing it on as teaching. No wonder you threw God away...I would throw away such a bumbling incompetent creation of human wisdom myself.

I have no problem with His communication. I have issues with others who tell me what I don't want to hear regarding what He says in the book. After all, I can read the book for myself. All that I do with the apologists is to test what they say against what I already think that the book means.

Well, He gave me a brain. He also gave me free will. I believe that within the context of my perceived relationship with Him I am allowed to question many things. I see what blind obedience does to people. When they refuse to question their books, they blow themselves up, die for ideology, and cause harm to society. I wouldn't want to ever be faced with doing that.

Numbers 23:19: God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? 1 Samuel 15:29: And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor relent. For He is not a man, that He should relent. Psalm 92:15: To declare that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him. Malachi 3:6: For I am the Lord, I do not change. Romans 3:4: Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. Titus 1:2: [I]n hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began. Hebrews 6:18: [I]t is impossible for God to lie. James 1:17-18: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.What does the book actually say, jar? Have you ever read the Bible?

And no doubt those authors believed that what they wrote was true.You are being dishonest in selling the point that "the Bible says what it actually says" on the one hand, and then "the author of this passage believed it was true" in another context. The passages which you emphasize in your posts represent what YOU take from the Bible. You cant simply declare that it is not what you say but what is actually written and remain honest in criticizing me for quote-mining.The picture that you paint in your posts to us represents what it is that you want to teach and/or share.And to dismiss the apologists as a bunch of carny barkers while presenting YOUR choice passages as an example of what a Christian *should* believe needs to be exposed. People are of course free to take from the Bible what they need if anything. I am pushing the agenda that God exists, is knowable through the character and life of Jesus Christ, is larger than simply multiple characters in a book, and is as great of a character as people believe Him to be, for them. GOD may well be far more complex and dynamic than any human can imagine Him as, but it is this that should be emphasized, rather than emphasizing a god character who lies, is uncertain, learns on the job, and is portrayed by some as a human teacher.