Posted by:
backyardprofessor
(
)
Date: May 19, 2013 12:07AM
As a former apologist (NOT a former Mormon, I am just seriously inactive), I can say unequivocally, the PROBLEM with the assumption of apologists is that they BEGIN with the truth. Apologetics is about circling the wagons around the camp and defending the turf. It is not about learning, or discovering truth, or even analyzing new information. It is all about DEFENDING what one has, and that is simply, without question, THE TRUTH.
I was on the FAIR apologetics email list for decades, I KNOW how apologists think, and I argued with them at times about it. They can't help it, they have a specific task, and they dutifully carry it out.
As a researcher (and you CANNOT see this when you are on the inside, I swear this is the most shocking thing I have personally discovered for myself) you begin with the answer. Then you find anything and everything that simply supports your already arrived at answer. You truly for the most part, ignore anything of dissent apart from the conclusion you have already arrived at, and the carefully selected evidence you choose gets you to that conclusion as well. That is why in ANY organized religion, they all simply pick and choose which verse in the scripture is comfortable and then pretend like THAT is the whole context and whole Gospel. NO ONE SECT actually *believes* what the Bible says and means. It is always and forever self interpreted with self interest in mind, without exception, even when they deny that is what they are doing.
I was one of the VERY best in that regard. My zeal just blew my knowledge out of the water. I could put together research papers of 55 pages, with well over 400 sources cited in just 2-4 weeks. It was a snap. Read through gajillions of articles until you found something that had even a sort of similarity to what you have concluded and throw it in there. It looks mighty impressive to see a paper with 400 footnotes!!!
It's all phony though. That isn't research. That doesn't lead us to anything realistic or actual. It leads us to the goal we already are determined to arrive at and it's quite frankly, simply wrong. But, and I stress this, unless you have actually been there you cannot fathom how this works, I cannot fathom it either, YOU DO NOT SEE YOURSELF DOING THIS!
Not one apologist in ANY area of religious research (take yer pick of whatever sect you wanna name) ever......EVER simply follows the evidence and lets it lead to the truth. Not in apologetics. In apologetics, the truth is already known and all research leads to that truth, or you are booted out. It's that simple..... and that silly.
This is WHY religion will not and actually simply cannot ever agree with each other. They are all correct..... in their own eyes, and all others are false, agains in their own eyes, and they can PROVE it!......well, at least within their own apologetic bias for their own views.
So be charitable and easy on the apologists.......they cannot help it. Weird as this sounds, it's like a person who has Alzheimer's. They truly cannot help it, their brain is not functioning correctly. They have never been taught how to think accurately, correctly, or critically. They simply don't have that training. Organized religion teaches you to believe, not to think. And the apologist actually is far better at simply putting together sources that also teach you to believe in what you are told, not to get you to think through it critically, carefully, and with the full context. That's just the way I see it. This comes after decades of experience...