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?

Is that an AI summary of the thread ?

I personally would put William Lane Craig in the dishonest (ish) category.

And to expand a bit on my premise, if ok, apologetics teaches bad faith debate methodss. Gish galloping, fallacies galore. And William Lane Craig slots in there.

@BackinRed101

Cool. I am not going to fact check all that. Rather Ironic that a comment about gish gallop leads to AI generated gish gallop.

Any thoughts on it yourself ?

My thoughts - any Christian who tries to pass off statements from the bible as true knowing that there is evidence that the statements are incorrect, false, misleading or impossible is dishonest

This thread was about those who believe in using science to validate the creation or Genesis. The fact that some church’s support the evolution theory or do not dispute it although they do not endorse it-it makes the Bible creation story more easily to be accepted by people when I look at this.There are a diversity of views over the creation story being allegorical to historical that there it may be able to meet people more.

I don’t use science to validate Genesis. I use science as it’s fact and evidence. What is in Genesis isn’t relevant when we have actual facts

No it is not, and no it does not.

The thread title is "Does Christian apologetics encourage people to be dishonest ?"

I can see how your interpretation of the thread title has come about, but to use science to validate the book of genesis does require dishonesty, especially for YEC.

Science can and does account for the history of earth in the 100k years or so since homo sapiens came out of Africa. And there has been no global flood in that time. As a PP said, global floods, as in a watery earth, goes back billions of years, to the Hadean Eon. 4.6 to 4 billion years ago.

Presumably BackinRed101 and BackinRed102 are the same person.

No idea. I never noticed the different names. Well spotted.

I reckon people really should indicate if they are using AI. Other posters here manage to.

I've not posted but have been following this thread.

Why are you now @BackinRed103 (having been BackinRed 101 and 102) and why are you posting reams of rubbishy AI generated posts?

I never reported any posts. I only report spam. So not me.

You failed. Miserably.

Most of the errors and false statements in the bible are easy to spot without any research - basic common sense. I’ve never read the bible but can work out what is true v false.

Try this

abcnews.com/Technology/evidence-suggests-biblical-great-flood-noahs-time-happened/story?id=17884533

You could start a different thread on the subject of " improving oneself with AI"

As it is, I did engage with your first AI post. I pointed out an error, that William Lane Craig uses gish gallop in debates, and is not considered a good faith debater.

You replied with AI gish gallop about William Lane Craig using gish gallop.

It appears we are perfectly able to hold a decent enough discussion without error ridden AI slop given that I can correct your AI.

And this is the thing really. Fact checking. Especially given the topic. Fact checking of anything posted is of top importance. And I think it is fair to say that not everyone wants to fact check a wall of AI output. Some other posters use segments of AI output, but they indicate it as such, and as they are posting in good faith, it is very likely they fact check it all before hitting the post button. They are using AI to provide information pertinent to the thread. And very useful it can be.

Did you fact check your AI post ?

I appreciated your first one - the AI overview of the thread - and think I thanked you for it. I rarely use them, apart from reading the Google results summary, and doubt I'd have known what prompt to enter if I ever wanted a precis like that. I doubt I'd ever want one, but that's a different issue!

You and your robot proceeded to get increasingly bossy, culminating in a bunch of references with strong undertones of "DO YOUR HOMEWORK, THICKO!" It wasn't actually helpful: nobody here has suggested they're preparing for an exam question on biblical apologists. If you (person) wanted to advocate for or against one of the people referenced, you should do that instead of dropping names.

The reply at 17:15 is awful - rude, patronising and unwontedly aggressive.

No need to reply to this, and I'm begging you not to get an AI to do so.

You gave better feedback, @RedTagAlan.
Also:
Did you fact check your AI post ?
I bloody wish people would!
Really sick of people declaiming the merits of AI answers, invariably saying "It even gives you verifiable citations!" This evidences their own inability to verify, since at least 20% of the proffered sources have nothing to do with the question and another 30% don't say what the robot claimed they say.
(Percentages not verified, btw)

In the immortal and unquestioned words of Mr T/B.A.Baracus, I pity the fool.

apologies if i was harsh, but its frustrating you try to add more context to improve the debate and then it gets pulled because its AI, its like i could say the sky is pink and thats ok but i use ai to help and suddenly its omg how dare someone try to make the debate better,

thats why i was frustrated its like people dont want to learn or have better knowledge and understand it seems like they want to be the one where im the expert and learn my wisdom,

yet using ai it covered a wide range of souces in minutes it took to generate it and i know its factual but heaven forbid i added that to the debate ,

seems like society is back in the days of Galileo and the church