Publication Interview Part 1

Last fall I was asked to interview for a book and give my perspective on Christian apologetics.  The interview was cut short due to personal complications, so I decided to post it here on my blog.  I have decided to break it up into sections, so it begins…

Q:

I will have a few questions about what it means to be a Christian apologetic and what it is that you believe in.  I really want regular people and not scholars or professionals so I can give my readers very accurate portrayals of these views.  Regular people just like them so that they can see what ordinary people in everyday society think about these issues.

This is not at attempt to dissuade you or persuade you into any other form of belief.  This is just an attempt to discuss the beliefs and the ideals that you have.  I will approach this interview from the position of an agnostic (that is someone who does not believe in anything). 

A:

Sounds like fun.   First off I am most certainly a commoner, not a scholar or professional.  So it seems like I can meet your expectations in that area.

I guess I will start with saying that Christian Apologetics is not a religion.  It is a method of defending your beliefs based on logic and scripture.  This is done on a topic by topic basis.  That being said, there is no core belief structure for apologetics.  It is really an art of finding the truth about disputed topics, both religiously and philosophically. 

Here is an example of the principals based on mathematics.

The proposal is that 2+2 = 5.

The arguments are that 2 in this case is not exactly 2.  It is really 2.49, but has been rounded based on the basic rounding down principal.

So, together 2.49 + 2.49 = 4.98.  This value is much closer to 5 then it is to 4.

So, then it is true that 2+2 = 5.

This is most obviously a lie, and if you base all mathematics on this truth it becomes more and more distorted.

2+2+2+2 = 10 instead of 8 and so forth.  You get further and further from the truth the more you build on this lie.

Over time religion can be distorted in this way as well.  People build beliefs based on perhaps distorted truth, and then build more on top of these beliefs.  It’s much like the whispering game played as a child.  The final message is usually not at all what it started as.

Christian apologetics will take a certain belief or topic and logically identify the misconceptions in truth based on logic instead of a “faith” that what they are told is true.

These topics have been done based on scientific theory, like proving that the big bang theory is not logical.  Also, things like statistical probability of prophecy in the Old Testament, meaning what’s the statistical probability of the things that were prophesied about and came true later in history.