Why I Don't Want To Do Apologetics Anymore, or, Why Apologetics Is Too Ambitious Nowadays

Changing your mind, I’ve come to learn by accident, can be a dangerous thing. I converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, and I’ve learned a lot about people in the process. The most shocking discovery is how cruel and tribal people can be. I lost almost all my Protestant friends when I told them I thought we were wrong. Not that I was wrong, or they were wrong, but we were wrong. Many haven’t talked to me since. This is sad. But I am starting to see that this is also the case in my beloved apologetics community.

In my last post, I described what I think is a  prejudice in the apologetics community between the Protestants and Catholics. Apologetics from a Catholic worldview that support theism are largely ignored, and they do so at their own peril. As a friend from Biola said to me (and I’m paraphrasing here), it seems like the data that is employed in your typical apologetics project is just for the ends of their already held convictions, and application goes no further. This seems somewhat hypocritical. In many apologetics talks, a common point pounded is that Christianity is where the evidence leads to. Yet, if you aren’t willing to drive the information you’re using all the way to its logical conclusions and stop when it’s done meeting your objective, then you’re not being honest, and if you’re not being honest, how can one say with real honesty that this is where the evidence goes and you’re just following the evidence? You’re not following the evidence, you’re making the evidence follow you.

 I am beginning to grow concerned. My first books on atheism and theism could fit into the category of apologetics. These were the books that led me away from atheism. They were not rigorous philosophical texts from Blackwell or Oxford Press (that cost me more than a hundred dollars), but Strobel, Turek and Geisler books that cost me like ten bucks. I’m very grateful for these works. They served their purpose. I had little knowledge of the subject, and they introduced me a large field of pro-Christian information and secured my Christianity.

Being inspired by these works, I aspired to be one of them. I really looked up to William Lane Craig (and still do). I really looked up to J.P. Moreland. I really looked up to Alvin Plantinga. But what I noticed about all these guys was that they were all philosophers. They weren’t professional “apologists”. They were just professionals in their field that followed the evidence and became Christians. This is typical. Think about the project of apologetics. It’s an interdisciplinary field. You talk about history, science, art, literature, public policy, ethics, etc., but then I realized, this is just philosophy. Philosophy, as described in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, is a second-order discipline. This is why I just decided to be a philosopher and like many professionals advise, I’ve decided to pick a particular area (which is, at the moment, sexual ethics, though I might just stick to philosophy of religion as I’m trying to develop my own argument for an afterlife). So, I’m just a philosopher.

What troubles me then is that there is a distinct degree, a degree of apologetics. To me, that just really sounds like philosophy, but with a Christian presupposition. Can someone please tell me the difference? It seems like apologetics, having the aim of defending Christianity, cannot do much good as an academic program. If one wants a degree in apologetics, and they specialize in say natural theology and the Kalam in particular, why don’t they just get a degree in the philosophy of religion? There is an important difference, I think. Philosophy has no religious loyalty, but apologetics does. Apologetics will not consider that Christianity is wrong. But if so, please don’t say you’re being intellectually honest. Philosophy, on the other hand, will allow for some skepticism, but only if warranted. If philosophy is the pursuit of truth, and Christians are not afraid of pursuing truth, then why opt for a degree in apologetics rather than philosophy?

See, because I’m a Christian, I don’t believe anything in philosophy will ever muster a defeater for my belief. I’m open to being wrong, but I haven’t seen anything come my way. Consider this. A philosopher comes up with a novel argument for atheism, and it seems compelling. Obviously, the apologists will deal with it. But whom will they draw from? They will draw from other philosophers who find the atheological argument invalid or unsound. So, again, why not just stick with philosophy? With a degree in philosophy, you’re going to get the training and vigor you need to deal with the best of the best. However, I don’t feel confident one can say the same about apologetics. Do you think someone with a Ph.D in Apologetics (I think Frank Turek has one) will fare well against someone with a Ph.D in Philosophy? I don’t think so.

It seems like apologetics just cannot be that great of degree. I don’t think you can be a professional apologist, but you can be a professional philosopher or scientist or historian. The furthest an apologetics degree should go is probably just a B.A. Anything past that, it’s just useless. You just stop there, and pick an area you want to be in, be it microbiology or philosophy of mind, if you choose to continue your education for Christ. But you stop with the apologetics. It also seems that apologetics is useful for the uninformed or the laity. I may have a Ph.D in Modern History but doubt god exists on the basis of the problem of evil. The project of apologetics will suffice. Or, if you have a congregation that should just be informed and encouraged that their beliefs are not unfounded and without reason, and can discuss matters pertaining to their faith intelligently, then apologetics is good for them. But there comes a time when it’s time to put on the big boy pants, and apologetics is simply not that sophisticated.

Now, I don’t mean to say apologetics has no place. I hope that’s clear. But, in my view, apologetics is not something you should specialize in to the point you get a Ph.D. in it, but something that every Christian just simply is. J. Warner Wallace calls these the one dollar apologists. Every Christian is commanded to be a one dollar apologists. To refuse to do so is simply not an option. But if you’re more than a dollar apologist, then, you’re just a scholar. And if you have a specialty, say science or ethics, then you don’t get a degree in apologetics, you get a degree in science or ethics. The fundamental flaw of apologetics is that it only serves a singular purpose, a purpose that is not shared with any other academic degree, and so for this reason, I don’t look upon it with much favor.

I came to this conclusion very recently. I realized this due to my conversion. I’ve heard many atheists dismiss what I’ve had to say as “just apologetics”, as if I were being dishonest. Actually, I wasn’t. Having found my love of philosophy because of apologetics, I thought I was just doing philosophy. It always annoyed me that they would dismiss me as not being truly scholarly. I thought such a dismissal was unfounded. Until I became Catholic. When I decided that Catholicism was true, I started hearing the exact same line and attitude, “Oh, that’s not history, that’s just CATHOLIC APOLOGETICS” or “Scott Hahn is just a CATHOLIC APOLOGIST” as if their scholarly work had no relevance! Why is it that my Protestant friends were all dismissing me the same way atheists were? Don’t they decry over and over again that atheists aren’t taking them seriously? Yet they do the exact same thing to me! When I wrote my previous post then, I began to realize there was something to the accusation. Maybe Christians really do play favorites and we, who swear we’re intellectually honest, don’t really follow the evidence where it leads, only so far as we’ll allow it to lead us. Vanquish the thought! I would like to think that I don’t fit in that category, and evidence of that is my long standing skepticism of the teleological argument, which just about every Christian apologists swears by. And as a Catholic, I’ve really discovered the power of Thomism, which is a strong field of philosophy yet totally ignored by many of my fellow apologists. That seems like a prejudice, and apparently, not the only one, I’m discovering. The modern state of apologetics begins to crumble before my very eyes.

The nail in the coffin though was just a few hours ago (of this original draft). It was the Craig v. Carroll debate. It’s still to early for me to pass judgment on it, but in the reviews from my fellow Christian apologists, I have to say, they attributed many things to him I don’t think he meant. His closing speech I thought was very touching, but many apologists jumped on him saying he got off topic and they counted this against him. Yet, I’m positive if Craig had done something like invite Jesus into Carroll’s heart after having finished discussing the immediate relevant topics, no one would have thought twice about it (and I'm sure atheists are tempted to say he's just getting off topic now). But that’s all Carroll did. Some of the reviews I read said that he was saying theism doesn’t have to be true or because cosmology doesn’t prove God therefore he doesn’t exist, or since people believed in god 2000 years ago but don’t now due to the progression of science, he must not exist. But honestly, when he started talking about these things, he was done arguing. It sounded like an honest to God attempt to be bipartisan. What he sounded like he was saying was, “Hey, I don’t think cosmology will help you obtain a belief in God. However, I can understand why people back then believed in God, and I can understand today why, apart from cosmology, people can believe in God. Maybe they think religion makes them experience the transcendent. That’s cool. But the lack of implications in cosmology doesn’t mean God does not exist, and I’m just trying to give you a friendly reminder of that.” But no, apologists didn’t hear that. All they saw was a target, and they were looking for an argument when the arguments were over. I found a terribly polite atheist, and all my apologist friends declared a victory when the opponent stopped fighting.

It is not just Protestants that are tribal I see. It’s the apologetics community as well (which is, as I pointed out in my previous post, dominated by Protestants). As much as they preach about being committed to truth and winning people, they seemed more focused on being committed to apologetics and winning arguments. In this case, Carroll is more Christian than some of his online critics.