Thursday, January 5, 2012

Concerns about religious apologetics

As a general rule of logic, any investigation conducted by someone who intentionally limits their results to only one outcome is fundamentally flawed and biased. After many months of thought I have slowly been concluding that religious apologetics perpetually exercises this logical flaw in their research, and it makes me question its validity. Let me expand:

Because of the nature of the apologetic argument – because of the infinite and perfect nature of the source of that perspective (God is right, period) – the only option one has is to be correct. If any evidence is ever discovered that would prove untrue any of said religious doctrine, it must be immediately rejected as untrue because the answer is immoveable. When all evidence absolutely and necessarily MUST coincide with one theory, there is a permanent bias on the entire investigation and it should be completely discredited. If one discovers contradictory evidence while working under this bias, they cannot explore it and its possible different outcomes; however they have no choice but to selectively overlook it, falsify it, or otherwise regard it as false. If one does accept such contradictory evidence to be true, it risks altering the immaculate nature of the immoveable answer, which undermines the entire concept of religion.

Until apologetics accept that their research can possibly have another outcome other than proving the unquestionable truth of their doctrine, than they are not doing true research. A true investigation waits to make its final decision until all possible evidence is collected, and then makes an unbiased conclusion as to where that evidence points. One must accept the answer of their research even if they despise it. One must be prepared to be proven wrong. And even after that point, any new investigations at any time have the possibility of revising the conclusions of the old, if new and provable evidence is discovered. This is never the case for religious apologetics of any kind, as they are beginning from their pre-established answer and selectively finding evidence to uphold it (whether deliberately, unconsciously, or by any other means).

I'm not saying that every apologetic argument is untrue, nor that any scientific evidence that may coincide with a religious doctrine is false. In fact apologetics has some very interesting and rational arguments to support their claims. I'm just pointing out the logical fallacy perpetually performed by any investigation where one already has a predetermined outcome, specifically in this example of religious apologetics.

1 comment:

  1. I disagree pretty strongly that apologists care about the truth, or reality - all they care about finding/making up/poorly interpreting what they consider to be evidence. But all your points are strong ones here.

    It also won't be long before you get a reply in the vein of "but-but-but science and atheists do the same thing", at which point someone's gonna have to explain what science is, again.

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