Is Apologetics incompatible with Intellectual Honesty?

[_sock puppet]

Ethical crime investigators go where the evidence leads them, not keeping the focus on an early identified suspect after evidence culled in the meantime has exonerated that person.

Ethical historians do likewise as they work their way through historical documents. Early hypotheses give way to explanations that take into account the building body of historical evidence.

So, can there be such a thing as an ethical apologist, one who strains and twists evidence, old and new, to allow through the narrowest strand of light of possibility for a preconceived religious notion?

Ironically, the best that can be said about apologetics is that it plays the role of the 'devil's advocate' as it hair-splits the most attenuated facts in hopes of distracting from scientific and scholarly development and advances.

[_Some Schmo]

Is Apologetics incompatible with Intellectual Honesty?

Not necessarily, but taking apologetic conclusions seriously is.

[_Yahoo Bot]

Ironically, the best that can be said about apologetics is that it plays the role of the 'devil's advocate' as it hair-splits the most attenuated facts in hopes of distracting from scientific and scholarly development and advances.

Hmm. I can see that you're thinly read. I take it you've never read Aquinas' apologia, or the apologia of other great Christian thinkers.

Instead, you want to make broad, sweeping characterizations of apologia. In fact, Christian apologia has, for hundreds of years, tried to reconcile scientific findings with Biblical doctrine. Not always successful. I think it impossible to reconcile science and the doctrine of the atonement and resurrection, much less prophets, gold plates and angels.

But, good apologists are grounded in scripture and history. Two things you aren't, really.

Instead, you're a member of the Utah Bar who lacks the courage to post with his real name. Why is that?

[_Some Schmo]

Instead, you're a member of the Utah Bar who lacks the courage to post with his real name. Why is that?

You claim to be a member of some state bar who lacks the intelligence to post with an alias. Why is that?

[_schreech]

Hmm. I can see that you're thinly read. I take it you've never read Aquinas' apologia, or the apologia of other great Christian thinkers.

Instead, you want to make broad, sweeping characterizations of apologia. In fact, Christian apologia has, for hundreds of years, tried to reconcile scientific findings with Biblical doctrine. Not always successful. I think it impossible to reconcile science and the doctrine of the atonement and resurrection, much less prophets, gold plates and angels.

But, good apologists are grounded in scripture and history. Two things you aren't, really.

Instead, you're a member of the Utah Bar who lacks the courage to post with his real name. Why is that?

Wow, so much substance from grandpa-blind-faith - I think you just need a new retirement hobby as apologetics doesn't seem to be your thing....Is yahoo-bot your real name?

I think you are correct in one sense...Sock left it too broad...He should have just discussed LDS "apologetics" considering "christian" apologists can at least rely on the buffer of time to make their beliefs/"apologetics" seem mildly less ridiculous....

[_Aristotle Smith]

Ethical crime investigators go where the evidence leads them, not keeping the focus on an early identified suspect after evidence culled in the meantime has exonerated that person.

Ethical historians do likewise as they work their way through historical documents. Early hypotheses give way to explanations that take into account the building body of historical evidence.

So, can there be such a thing as an ethical apologist, one who strains and twists evidence, old and new, to allow through the narrowest strand of light of possibility for a preconceived religious notion?

Ironically, the best that can be said about apologetics is that it plays the role of the 'devil's advocate' as it hair-splits the most attenuated facts in hopes of distracting from scientific and scholarly development and advances.

Yes, practice of apologetics can be intellectually honest, just like practice of science can be intellectually dishonest. It's all in how you approach the matter.

Part of the problem is that Mormon apologetics is almost uniformly bad. A huge chunk of Christian apologetics is too. But that doesn't mean the enterprise as a whole is necessarily bad. The problem for the Mormon/ex-Mormon is that they only tend to see the crap. They naturally see the bad Mormon apologetics. But, for whatever reason, Mormons tend to only see the bad Christian stuff as well. I think this is because the problem areas where Mormonism and Christianity tend to overlap tend to be populated by quack Christians shoveling the same BS as the Mopologists.

As just one example of what I would consider to be contemporary intellectually honest apologetics, I would recommend "Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament" by Peter Enns. Mormons tend to not know about people like Enns because he focuses on problems that don't directly affect Mormons. But, he is still addressing real issues that trouble Christians in an intellectually honest way.

[_Kevin Graham]

Comparing two thousand years of Christian apologia with what Mormons like to refer to as Mormon apologetics, is nothing short of laughable. Christians have developed a systematic theology and has developed some of the most sophisticated arguments for theism known to man, whereas Mormons seem to almost gloat about not having a systematic theology and wants to insist it doesn't have to do anything except establish "possibility", which it then tries to spin as plausibility.

Besides, sow can you claim to defend something when so very little is ever said to be "official doctrine"? That's the standard response, no matter how many Mormons believe it. "That ain't official!" is hardly an intellectual attempt at apologetics.

Those who would qualify as LDS "philosophers" are just crackpots who really have no serious following in LDS circles. Blake Ostler's stuff isn't taken seriously among rank and file members and other like James Faulconer have argued reasonable yet blasphemous things like, maybe God doesn't necessarily, have a body of flesh and bones. Pretty soon the Church will go the way of the RLDS faith, and deny the historicity of the Book of Mormon and be forced to accept some variant form of the Trinity.

There is nothing intellectually serious about Mormon doctrine or those who pretend to be apologists.

Years ago I asked Dan Peterson to point to unique truths we can pin on Mormonism. He couldn't come up with more than few, one of which relied on a misrepresentation of traditional Christian belief regarding families seeing one another in the hereafter. He actually believed this was something unique to Mormonism!

When undressed, Mormon doctrine is little more than a fairy tale that appeals to the desires of the childhood mind. Children want that Saturday's Warrior moment in life. It is what they were promised, and members struggle throughout their lives trying to attain it. They struggle because they fight against their own God's given capacity to reason. This is what Mormonism does.

This is why it is so important for people like DCP and others to keep pointing to the existence of Mormons who are technically scholars in some field. They need to reinforce this belief that Mormons aren't believing in stupid things at all. I mean, if grown scholars believe dressing up like a baker and doing secret handshakes will get you into heaven, then there can't be anything seriously wrong with that at all, right? That's perfectly intellectual, right?

[_bcspace]

Is Apologetics incompatible with Intellectual Honesty?

Not LDS apologetics. But most criticism of the LDS Church is. Same trash bin as political liberalism.

[_Daniel C Peterson]

Of course they are compatible. People with doctorates in real fields (i.e. not the humanities) do a lot of apologetic work.

Archaeologists, Biologists, Astrophysicists etc. All of them are working on understanding the world that God created. If the two were not intellectually compatible, this would not be so.

[_Jason Bourne]

Hmm. I can see that you're thinly read. I take it you've never read Aquinas' apologia, or the apologia of other great Christian thinkers.



Instead, you're a member of the Utah Bar who lacks the courage to post with his real name. Why is that?

Bot

don't you ever tire of the same swan song? Can't you find some original meanness?

Lets list em...

Thinly or poorly read
anonymous hypocrite or even just plan anonymous, oh and coward too
degenerate apostate

Am I missing something?

By the was you are now anonymous for many posters or lurkers who have come here since you no longer post under your real name. Does that make you an anonymous coward?