Does Christian apologetics encourage people to be dishonest ?

[RedTagAlan]

I think it does, certainly the US version anyway.

Apologetics trains people to ignore scientific evidence presented to them. To handwave it away, and to make contorted non logical arguments in support of their belief in the Bible. Because the Bible can't be wrong.

An example here.

Global Evidences of the Genesis Flood | Answers in Genesis

"Fossils are one of the best evidences of a global flood, especially where many fossils are found. For example, we don’t find marine creatures, such as fish, clams, and corals, buried and fossilized on the sea floor where they once lived. Instead, we find most of them buried in sedimentary rocks on the continents, even on high mountains. For that to happen, the ocean waters had to totally flood the continents. And that’s exactly what the Bible describes during the global flood."

The above quote from that site was written by a Dr Andrew Snelling. Who has a PHD in..... geology. Please read the article to get the full gist. Almost every logical fallacy is in there, including outright dishonesty.

This is a big industry, with colleges and university courses etc, and I think that ironically, teaching people to ignore evidence, and to use dishonest debate methods, is destructive to society. Because it teaches people to lie in support of their theology, and perhaps more importantly, it teaches them to ignore political lies at election time, and to vote for the candidate who says "God".

What do folk think ? Agree or disagree?

Oh, you're right, Alan, and I'm a dummkopf! She said she went to a faith school. Perhaps they didn't do evolution.

I have not heard of this, I am non denominational although I attend an Anglican church today. I was baptised as a Catholic and attended Catholic schools to 19 and mass. My parents were quite liberal Christians although my father was disciplined in upbringing but kind as well. If I was looking for an answer on this question on the Bible I would I search and I wasn't here. I have studied about the Big bag theory and that it is at odds with there being a creator God and also about the dating of rocks can be useful to, but I didn't study this and it has been an area of interest. I limit what I see online so won't know what is happening sometimes. I found out yesterday through a post for example that Iran has been hit and looked online. I dip in and out when I feel like it and stopped using online much at COVID.

I like areas of interest...I like Temples and synagogues learning its history, art and more. I do use stats and evidence to. My faith has been confirmed to me through faith. I now just trust the process and let myself be guided by good teachers. Nothing is certain for any Christian though, only Jesus decides.

I meant the Big Bang theory and that it is not at odds with there being a creator God. I did this at university and not at school.

Personally I think religion should be taught in schools, but as "some people believe", not fact. This is how it was taught in my DCs school.

However, young earth/creationism etc has no place in education. I think religion and science can, and do, co-exist. So "these fossils exist, science says xyz about them. How does God/Allah/insert entity here fit with that idea?"

I don't think its evolution, or about knowing science. But I do think it was very sloppy of AIG to put that caption under a marine animal. Something that lived in the sea, and should logically be totally unaffected by any biblical flood. After all, did Noah take aquatic animals ?

Science though. DD was at school today and I was mildly excited to see we had flowers blossoming on a small orange tree we have on the balcony. I took a photo, and sent it to her phone for her to see after, because she is doing biology just now. I asked her if she was doing the whole flower to fruit thing, she mumbled affirmative, and I said we can map its progress etc. But.. she is 13 and 3/4 so hey ho :-)

I totally get it how people can go through the system and maybe not know stuff. K-pop v science... tell me about it :-)

I’m a big supporter of separation of church and state and don’t believe religion has any place in school. Faith schools of any religion should be closed down.
At DT’s school religious education was prohibited. They learned about world cultures which I think is more more appropriate.

Yes. You've told me 3 times now that you don't agree with RE. I do. My DCs (religious) school taught all major world religions and different cultures. Imagine that! No religion was taught as fact.

We’ve have to agree to disagree! I appreciate we were lucky to have DT’s in an education system where it was prohibited and aligned with our values.

the guy on youtube kent hovind was quite good debating parts etc

@RedTagAlan very true op heres the examples :

Here are the parts of the passage that are factually or scientifically incorrect, along with brief explanations for each one. I’m focusing on the errors, not rewriting the whole text.

❌ Incorrect claim:

“Fossils are one of the best evidences of a global flood, especially where many fossils are found.”
Why it’s an error: The scientific consensus is that fossils form over long periods through sedimentation, not from a single global flood. Fossil distribution reflects ancient environments, plate tectonics, and geological time—not one worldwide event.

❌ Incorrect claim:

“We don’t find marine creatures… buried and fossilized on the sea floor where they once lived.”
Why it’s an error: Marine fossils are found on ancient seafloors—these are called marine sedimentary formations. Many fossil beds represent former oceans, reefs, or seabeds that later became exposed or uplifted.

❌ Incorrect claim:

“We find most of them buried in sedimentary rocks on the continents, even on high mountains.”
Why it’s an error: Marine fossils on mountains are well‑explained by plate tectonics. Land that is now mountainous was once underwater and later uplifted by continental collision (e.g., the Himalayas). This does not require a global flood.

❌ Incorrect claim:

“For that to happen, the ocean waters had to totally flood the continents.”
Why it’s an error: Geology shows that continents rise and fall relative to sea level over millions of years. Uplift, subsidence, and sea‑level changes explain fossil placement without invoking a global flood.

❌ Incorrect claim:

“That’s exactly what the Bible describes during the global flood.”
Why it’s an error: This is a religious interpretation, not a scientific explanation. Scientific evidence does not support a single global flood covering all continents.

When you say you have never heard of Young Earth Creationism, I can get that, You might see an article, have no interest, and skip to the next. It's something we all do.

However, now you have heard of it, and given the subject of the thread, could you have a look at my post above where I have posted a bit of text and a photo from a YEC apologetics article, and give us your reasoned thoughts on it ?

This article is from a $40 mill a year Christian apologetics organization, with about 400 staff, and I think it is dishonest.

Your fresh eyes, as a believer, is exactly what this thread needs. And your academic background makes you superbly qualified to comment.

Go on, have a go.

it seems Creationist claims are not supported by geology, biology, or physics. Organisations like Answers in Genesis present a belief system as if it were scientific fact, but their explanations contradict all established evidence, including plate tectonics, radiometric dating, and fossil formation. Their own papers acknowledge major unresolved problems. People can sincerely believe these ideas, but the claims themselves are scientifically incorrect.

Dr Kent Hovind. Yes, I have a copy of his Phd paper somewhere.

What one of his youtube shows do you like best ? Whack an atheist ?

I didn’t study him in depth, but I remember the part about the jam analogy and how genes or molecules don’t just come together and suddenly create life. As a non‑believer, he seemed to have a point I mean, if you put all the ingredients together to bake a cake, the cake doesn’t magically appear or evolve on its own. (i guess that makes me more along the lines of freemasonary and a divine creator type being)

Thanks. That is just a sample article I posted and it is clearly dishonest in my view.

Would you agree that the Christian apologetics industry teaches dishonesty ? There are tens of thousands of such articles to be found as evidence for my proposal.

Some branches it could be said that they promote scientifically incorrect claims and teach people to defend those claims against evidence. That’s a problem with the method, not necessarily with the sincerity of the individuals involved.

And that is the danger I reckon. He is misrepresenting the study of abiogenesis. He misses out key details such as time, and environmental conditions, when he knows about them.

His decision not to mention such factors, is in my view, fundamentally dishonest.

to be fair it does seem logicall you can have all the parts but they dont magically assemble and then end up as humans even if its over millions of years personally id say theres more to the creation of humans than the science books say

Billions of years, not millions.

And this is my point. He introduces the argument of incredulity fallacy, and knowingly distorts the base facts. And he does this after countless debates with evolutionary scientists.

Millions of years is a few ticks on the evolutionary clock.

Fair point, but even with billions of years, to me and yes, I realise I don’t know the science it still feels hard to picture how the building blocks of life just assemble themselves. In my simple way of explaining it, if you put all the ingredients for a cake together, the cake doesn’t magically appear. And even if molecules did come together, I don’t see how that leads all the way to humans. Genetic information doesn’t just randomly appear, and genetic mutations don’t usually produce something as complex as a human. So it feels like there’s more to the story. I know my reasoning might be naïve, but I don’t always fully trust what society tells us.

Well, I know in rough summary some of their beliefs. I have stated that I believe in the flood story which is shared in three Abrahamic faiths, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. I don’t know for sure what extent this flood was, but it sounds quite an event in the Bible and that is what I can go by. Nobody will find the exact details for how big it was and knows except God. I think trying to measure this will result in a waste of time, just like looking for Bible errors when it was them who inspired the Bible themselves. Nobody knows the exact details to me or could claim them except the father. May be he didn’t want us to know. I don’t mind if others who are Christian believe otherwise, but if they can justify their beliefs to themselves, I would let them get on with it. Do they say it is definitely this or they think it to be true which is not the same.

For me my faith has been confirmed for me and I know that the Bible is inspired by God or as the 10 Commandments written by God. I say that if my take on some stories is different, I leave it to God as he wanted it to be and accept his version and trust him. For example Acts 5 there is a diversity of thought, only God knows it His version is acceptable to me if we haven’t arrived at the true answer.

I've been thinking about this, and I think its an interesting question. I just hope I can explain my thinking.

I don't think Christian apologetics are teaching dishonesty as such, because that implies they are teaching that it's OK to lie. And they don't think they are lying, they are teaching something they genuinely believe.

So to others (myself included) they are teaching a lie. But they don't think they are, does that make sense?

I don't think Christian apologetics teaches people to be dishonest. Apologetics is a huge subject and lots of writings. People say all manner of stuff. Some of it wrong.

I have found apologetics useful in the past (thanks CS Lewis!). I apply my own judgement rather than just accepting what these authors say as gospel.

There's many strands: people reasoning out a belief in God and people reasoning out everything in the bible as fact. Then there's reasoning out Christ himself and elements of doctrine.

I think trying to state everything in the bible is hard fact might be a bit oversimplistic. It's more nuanced Than that.

I'm not personally a fan of trying to pretend that
genesis is fact and I don't think Christians who labour this point are doing themselves any favours.

Conversely I really don't think atheists cherry picking from the bible to "disprove" it is the gotcha moment they think it is.

Agreed, @BackinRed101, it's so hard to understand that scientists are still experimenting to find exactly how it happened. Shysters and scammers - including those selling snake-oil philosophies - leverage our ignorance by going "It can't have happened, can it?! I mean, where's the evidence? It's so ridiculous, it clearly isn't true. Look at this nice, easy solution already packaged up ᴺᴮ:ᴳᴼᴰ ᴾᵃᶜᵏᵃᵍᵉ ᴺᵉᵉᵈᵉᵈ for you to understand! Lovely, innit? Yours for only a fiver!"

[Solution only works after installation of GOD package v1 or higher]

Scientists are much more clever than you, me and snake-oil philosophers. They know how to do unbelievably complicated maths to work out what probably did happen or will happen, then they conduct incredibly precise experiments to find out if they're wrong.

I'm more inclined to trust their process than salesmen with shiny briefcases full of easy answers.

Regarding the biogenesis problem, your timing's perfect! New Scientist, December 2025 (archive copy) ... Proteins:

Prions constantly fold and unfold into many thousands of unstable shapes, lasting just milliseconds each. To fold properly, they need to interact with a partner that is usually a different protein. For prion proteins, though, the partner is another copy of the same prion protein that happens to be in the same unstable shape. The two bind together and form a stable pair that persists. It also recruits more copies of the unstable protein in this same shape and stabilises them.

This process, called self-templating, creates a stack of identically folded prions or prion-like proteins. Eventually, it will form into long fibrils, which can be seen with an electron microscope. When a fibril fragments, it creates “seeds” that will initiate the formation of more fibrils. The protein is making copies of itself – it is reproducing.

Can't just happen by accident? Indeed, it does! Happens all the time everywhere, and laboratories have easily proved it happens in Early Earth conditions. The story isn't complete yet, but read on ...
(had to delink this due to weird formatting: copy & paste)
web.archive.org/web/20260102041651/www.newscientist.com/article/2505167-a-sinister-deadly-brain-protein-could-reveal-the-origins-of-all-life/

There is a difference whereby you use your own judgment as opposed to those accepting the bible as true without thinking, challenging or even applying common sense.