Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 3:12 pm
Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Mon Aug 04, 2025 9:06 am
As I said, you lost me, with your non sequitur post, with its opaque first clause,
First, everyone of the relatively few who both to write on this forum are coming here for a set of reasons. Most of the reasons are not actually explained so we'll never know. You get a sense of what motivates people over time of course. But one fact is that most people who write here do not have objectives. Nor really 'reasons' to be here.
That may be. But I'll tell you why I came here, so you won't have to guess.
I came here several years ago, labouring under the impression that if I were going to find intelligent skeptics anywhere, it was most likely to be on a philosophy site. Several other sites that had started out promising, in that regard, had folded or degenerated into petty sniping, without any serious issues ever being addressed. I was here to hear about serious issues, so that was no good.
I was looking for interesting, insightful, fresh critiques of Christianity that might challenge my faith. And at first, I found a few. But they weren't world-beaters, by any means; a little thought helped me see through them fairly quickly. And then the recycling began...all the same old canards, the same misunderstandings, the same objections kept recycling. I went through the Euthyphro Dilemma, it seems to me, countless times. And there was the "evolution is science" objection, the "how could God allow evil" objection, the "there are many gods" objection, and so on. But interesting, insightful and fresh were soon long gone. And I came to see that maintaining one's unfaith is usually done not by people who are searching for truth and run into some serious problem that destroys their faith, but rather by them having decided rather early on to reject the idea of God, and having found the first simple criticism that appealed to them, having clung to it like a life-raft. You could argue people down to the ground, and they'd rebound to their initial unfaith every time.
And I've come to see, from that, that Blaise Pascal was right: people don't disbelieve because they have reasons; they find reasons because they disbelieve. The God-hatred comes first, and then the explanations that people cling to come afterward. And just about anything will do, so long as it saves people from having to reopen the question and face God again.
So I'd say my time here has rejigged my view of apologetics. I came imagining that people wanted reasons to believe, and that unbelief might be the product of some serious struggle with some kind of sophisticated problem. I'm now convinced, at least for many here, that that is not the situation at all. There are actually no critiques sufficient to warrant any confidence at all that God does not exist -- at least, not here, not that I've seen, not yet. What apologetics can do is not lead a hard heart to faith, but only clear the ground of superficial debris. That has two salutary possibilities: one, it strengthens and deepens the faith of those who already have a faith in God; and two, is clears the ground of debris for any genuine and open-minded truth-seeker who's being stumbled by the road blocks the skeptics are so desperate to put in the road.
One thing I heard recently, AJ, that seems an apt description of my exception to your style of contribution. And somebody said, "The conservatives debate in order
to understand or convince; the Left debates
to diagnose. That's very telling, I have found. There are people who discuss in order to process information in one way or the other -- such as defending a view or understanding an objection -- and those who debate only long enough to say, "You're racist/sexist/a homophobe/a Nazi," and so on. But it isn't one ounce better if the
diagnosis is, "You're paranoid," "You're indoctrinated," "You're insecure," "You're white," and so on. In both cases, the
self- appointed diagnostician is behaving in very bad faith, ignoring the intellectual content of their interlocutor's utterances, and lapsing into the
ad hominem fallacy. And sometimes, as in the present case, the whole point of the
pseudo-diagnosing is really to reposition the
pseudo-diagnostician as superior -- as if he's some Sigmund Freud, diagnosing one of his neurotic women, and totally secure in his own feeling of having superior knowledge and insight all the while.
This, it seems to me, is also the point of your feigned
diagnostics. How could it be otherwise, since you have no knowledge of the actual person on the other end of the conversation, whether it's me or any of the other people? You can't actually know to what extent he or she is sincere, to what extent trolling, or a bot, or composed of two or more individuals under the same name, or using multiple aliases and trying out different personas, for example. And your return to attempted irony with things like "sign up for my course" actually just confirm that impression, rather than generating the air of superiority.
It's a shame. You're smart enough to do better. That much, people can see. But the bloated ego, the false diagnoses, the constant return to an unearned tone of superiority, they're all transparent, really.
So what was I up to? I came here for challenges. I found a few, but not serious ones, not original ones, and not new ones. And I came, unabashedly, as an Evangelical Protestant, onto a field of debate calculated to be challenging. I didn't pick a site filled with agreeable voices, but one almost certain to be rife with opposition, and hopefully the kind of opposition that would seriously stress my beliefs and either allow them to be revised or to provide reasonable grounds to rethink them.
And here I am, years later. I'm feeling as if the PN forum is a fruit from which all the skeptical "juice" has long ago been drained. And on the "Christian" thread we are left with a parade of non-Christians, people who have no actual grasp of Christianity at all, for the most part, endlessly recycling obvious fallacies and silly allegations, rather than any serious objections. And I find myself increasingly bored and unchallenged here. So my thought is to participate less, in future, and perhaps not at all anymore. It's beginning to look like a waste of time. People here don't want to face any of the real nature or actual claims of Christianity. They just want enough skepticism to be preserved that they can continue not to think about it.
So now there's no mystery. Now you know why I came, and if I become less present, you will be able to understand why, too. No doubt you'll manufacture some other pseudo-diagnosis to explain away such a decision, probably incorporating some blandishment about the terrors of your superior intellect or the vicissitudes of a Christian dealing with (rather routine and naive, if I may say) skepticism. None of that is of much concern, since my motives for being here have thinned out to the point where I think you're welcome to continue in any fashion you deem appropriate. You seem to me to be a missed opportunity for serious, and even potentially fruitful dialogue -- but missed on your side, not mine, and by your own choice.
Carry on as you see fit.
