I had actually been planning to write a post about apologetics, inspired by a conversation I had over the holidays. Dave beat me to it, but maybe my recent experience can add something to the already great discussion going on here over the last few days.
While waiting in line for a Christmas family photo—I’m sure you are sympathetic—I was talking with my brother-in-law about Nobel prizes. The guy behind us in line, named Ken, figured out that I was a physicist and asked if he could buy me a cup of coffee and ask some questions about cosmology. I found out over coffee that Ken was both pleasant to talk with and very knowledgeable about a wide range of science and philosophy. He teaches a youth Sunday School class devoted to apologetics, and he is a big fan of a website called reasonstobelieve.org. Ken’s primary interest in apologetics lies in “removing barriers to belief”, and he is especially interested in letting Christian kids in college know that aggressive atheists are not the only ones with evidence and good arguments (similar to a recent comment from Evan).
I tracked with Ken on those goals, but we diverged somewhat from there. He was interested in discussing an argument about fine-tuning—that there is likely to be a God, because the constants of nature (speed of light, Planck’s constant, etc.), which could in principle be anything, instead seem tuned in a very precise way in order to make life possible. I disappointed Ken by sharing my impression that fine-tuning arguments were on their way out, since most modern cosmologies allow for constants to be very different elsewhere in the “metaverse”. True, we exist in a special pocket, but it’s no real surprise that such pockets exist. The difference between Ken’s disappointment and my shrug was quite notable. In the end, Ken was interested in finding some answer about God or Reality at the end of a rational argument, whereas I would leave a discussion completely unruffled if my faith still seemed plausible. (If Ken were writing about our conversation, he would probably say, in a friendly tone, that I was smart enough but a little wimpy when it came to claiming ground which was available for the taking.)
Another point of departure for us was that apologetics plays an important role in Ken’s own sustained faith. He explained that a family member’s unexpected health problems recently brought him to a crisis of faith; it was only certain arguments about design in the universe that gave him strength to hang on to God. It was interesting that he has had plenty of experiences with God (he happens to be part of a charismatic church), yet that his experiences were just not enough in the face of a severe crisis. For me, things seem somewhat different. When I hit a crisis of faith, I do sometimes turn to a sort of apologetics for help—but my version is to recall personal experiences which are hard to convincingly explain away as coincidences. Most important for me, though, is that while my whole life ten years ago was one extended crisis of faith, nowadays I only seem to have these crises on weeks that I haven’t spent much time with God. If God and I are getting time to interact, all those unanswered questions are still interesting and important, but they don’t seem to have much deal-breaking weight.
What are your feelings along these lines? Are rational or historical arguments for God or for Jesus important in maintaining your faith? If apologetics are helpful for those or other reasons, which flavor works best for you—finding your way to answers or finding space for plausibility?



Recent Comments