It’s been about one and a half year since I switched from my formerly passive deism to my current Atheism about which I am vocal on the internet. Especially in the beginning of my atheistic days I watched a few debates and while I still do that today, if time allows it, one observation among the professional Apologists consistently stood out:
They never argue for the Christian God. Ever.
The arguments you’ll often hear are the Kalam Cosmological argument or the fine tuning argument the moral argument or on rare occasions Paley’s original watchmaker argument has its prominent proponents as well.
I don’t accept these arguments for various reasons, which I stated both in my blog as well as in Twitter discussions but even if I did get persuaded by them, I’d at best return back to deism or some kind of Supernatural entity, because that’s exactly where these arguments lead me.
These arguments are not arguments for the Christian God or the Muslim God they are arguments for a god, which may or may not be the Christian or Muslim God. I’d even go so far and take it one step further and say, that these arguments serve the deistic case far better than the God who proponents of the Abrahamic religions are arguing for.
When you think about the Kalam argument (without going into other flaws) it’s mighty curious that the Abrahamic God would cause the Universe to exist 13.8 billion years ago and then wait around billions of years before we finally appear 200.000 years ago.
What would be the purpose of waiting so long. The same is true for fine tuning:
Why would an omnipotent God have to fine tune the Universe. God isn’t limited by parameters.
He could’ve created the Universe with any conditions of his choosing and still made us exist. Yet the fine tuning argument explicitly assumes, that the Universe had to be the exact way it is for us to exist.
These are polar opposites.
In other words: Not only is it the case, that Apologists use arguments, which can’t support the Christian God over the Muslim one or another deity who is unknown to man, it may also be the case, that Apologists are arguing against themselves by making a case for a deity whose case they don’t want to make.
I also don’t accept deism at the moment but I still wonder why Apologists rarely if ever make arguments for the God they believe in.
They do on occasions of course, or rather they do think they’re arguing for the Christian God, when they use Presuppositional Apologetics or make a case for the resurrection.
Both of these suffer from the same problem:
Presuppositional Apologetics, however biblical it may be, can be used by any other Theist to argue for a different deity.
Jesus resurrection while proclaimed in the Bible, doesn’t make the case for the Christian God neither, because the following argument is simply a non-sequitur:
P1:Jesus resurrected
C: He was God and/or the son of God
One may only wonder why they use the arguments they use and why they argue for deism and not their specific brand of theism.
Goodbye from yours truly,
Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation
Tarsier Renevelations 