Worst apologetic argument?

[Wertbag]

We all know there are many terrible apologetic arguments, from "Look at the trees!" to "Wow, this banana fits your hand so perfectly!" but I'm interested to hear which arguments you consider the absolute worst.

I'm thinking strong contenders would be Pascal's Wager (go on force belief in something you don't think exists!), "the bible proves the bible is true, therefore Jesus is God!", or "some mundane coincidence occurred which seems strange, therefore God did it!" 

 

What's your vote?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

The thing that occured to me early on was a huge inconsistancy.  People talking about the love of God, but then noticing the big difference between Old Tetament narcissistic, vendictive God, and Jesus teaching.   The answer I got for years was, "The old law was to bring us up to the new law".  And that,  "we simply cannot always understand God.  His ways are not always our ways".   It didn't make sense even as a kid, but I shoved it to the back of my mind and "went with the flow."

[♦ ficino ♦]

Quote

We all know there are many terrible apologetic arguments, from "Look at the trees!"

Haha, I was on a subway platform and two 20-somethings came up inviting me to their church. I asked why I should think Jesus exists. "Well, just look around at everything!" Oh brother.

[pantheory]

4 hours ago, ficino said:

Haha, I was on a subway platform and two 20-somethings came up inviting me to their church. I asked why I should think Jesus exists. "Well, just look around at everything!" Oh brother.

 

Yes, that's a common nonsense phrase often said. Unfortunately, it might be very difficult for those believing such ideas to even imagine a valid alternative.

[older]

Well I don’t know if this would be number one, but it is one that I find hilarious. We all have heard about how the Israelites were sent by God to kill all the Midianites including the boys and non-virgin girls, and that these soldiers were also told to keep the virgin girls for themselves.

 

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, what could an army of 12,000 men possibly want with 32,000 virgins? (This seems complicated. 12,000 men and 32,000 virgins works out to 2.66 virgins per soldier. I can't quite visualize that. Perhaps the officers got more than two and the enlisted men got two or less. But I digress.)

Well here’s the answer from Freethinkingministries.com:

 

Let’s go back to the text. Does it say what the Israelites could do with the virgins? No. Does the word “rape” appear? No. Of course my objector thought the worst, that they were to be kept as sex slaves or something. But they could have become tennis partners or platonic friends. Thus, there is nothing at face value that compels us to think these women were raped.

…
While it was common for other nations to rape female POWs, there is NO reason to think the Israelite men raped the Midianite virgins.
…
[T]hese women would have been treated with dignity and there was provision for them to become integrated into the Israelite society.

 

So let me get this right. This army, after invading the Midianite community, burning all the towns and camps and plundering all the animals, gold, and other objects, slaughtering a whole bunch of people, and capturing all the surviving women and children and then killing off all the boys and non-virgin women, are then going to treat the virgins with dignity.

 

Well silly me. Soldiers just off the battlefield never rape women. And of course, any virgin Midianite girl, whose family has been slaughtered by a bunch of marauding Israelites, would certainly become a platonic friend of an Israelite soldier. (And we all know that a virgin makes a great tennis partner.)
 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 minutes ago, older said:

Well I don’t know if this would be number one, but it is one that I find hilarious. We all have heard about how the Israelites were sent by God to kill all the Midianites including the boys and non-virgin girls, and that these soldiers were also told to keep the virgin girls for themselves.

 

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, what could an army of 12,000 men possibly want with 32,000 virgins? (This seems complicated. 12,000 men and 32,000 virgins works out to 2.66 virgins per soldier. I can't quite visualize that. Perhaps the officers got more than two and the enlisted men got two or less. But I digress.)

Well here’s the answer from Freethinkingministries.com:

 

Let’s go back to the text. Does it say what the Israelites could do with the virgins? No. Does the word “rape” appear? No. Of course my objector thought the worst, that they were to be kept as sex slaves or something. But they could have become tennis partners or platonic friends. Thus, there is nothing at face value that compels us to think these women were raped.

…
While it was common for other nations to rape female POWs, there is NO reason to think the Israelite men raped the Midianite virgins.
…
[T]hese women would have been treated with dignity and there was provision for them to become integrated into the Israelite society.

 

So let me get this right. This army, after invading the Midianite community, burning all the towns and camps and plundering all the animals, gold, and other objects, slaughtering a whole bunch of people, and capturing all the surviving women and children and then killing off all the boys and non-virgin women, are then going to treat the virgins with dignity.

 

Well silly me. Soldiers just off the battlefield never rape women. And of course, any virgin Midianite girl, whose family has been slaughtered by a bunch of marauding Israelites, would certainly become a platonic friend of an Israelite soldier. (And we all know that a virgin makes a great tennis partner.)
 

 

A truely pathetic example of christian denial of reality.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

31 minutes ago, Weezer said:

 

A truely pathetic example of christian denial of reality.

 

I don't think it was from the same website you visited, but a couple of years ago I presented a similar question to a christian answer site .  The quy who answered my question said God was justified in doing what he did because the Cannanites were so sinful.  And when I mentioned the innocent children, he said they would have grown up to be just like their parents, so god was justified.  About the virgins, he said that gods ways were not always the same as mans ways. 

 

Christians with those attitudes are a really dangerous robots.  

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I asked the same question about the girls once on a forum. I could tell there was an in-crowd on the forum that responded "Israel was forbidden from raping." Sure, they became their "wives" like the Vikings and other tribes did with raids. It's a naive attitude, and actual scholars are more "of course they raped them, and then they became wives by default". Just like in the Mosaic law, a rapist has to marry the girl. 

 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I think the Bible itself contains one of the worst apologetics. Paul, raised to be a pharisee with all kinds of religious rules, makes an appeal to nature to prove that men should not have long hair. 

"Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her pride? For her hair is given to her for a covering. 16 If any one is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practice, nor do the churches of God." 

 

In nature, females tend to be drab while males are colorful. Male lions have the big manes, while females are butch. Horses are about equal, though males have thicker manes. Gorillas all have short hair, but males have somewhat longer hair. Long hair was given to her as a covering? So what about clothing? And why does male hair grow as long if god didn't want it that way? And what is long? He doesn't really say. Pathetic argument, and then he gets all pissy about not arguing with him. Again, pathetic argument. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

7 hours ago, Fuego said:

Paul, raised to be a pharisee with all kinds of religious rules, makes an appeal to nature to prove that men should not have long hair. 

When I look back on the bible from the vantage point of objective skepticism, a lot of what "Paul" wrote sounds like something somebody made up in the spur of the moment because they didn't have a real answer but needed to be in control and sound like they knew what they were talking about. 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Putting Paul in quotes is correct, because there are epistles in his name that are probably from someone else. The whole idea of him even being an apostle when he never met Jesus outside of a mystical vision really seems to have stuck in the craw of the ones that did know Jesus in person, if that part even happened. Paul barely mentions Jesus as a man. His version of the religion seems different than the other apostles. And they barely seem to do anything compared with Paul, who kind of took over the whole thing and exported it to Gentiles. Some great vids by Ehrman and others on YT about whether or not Jesus was just a local failed apocalyptic preacher, or if he was a contrived person based on previous myths, or some kind of mishmash of both. 

[Wertbag]

20 hours ago, older said:

T]hese women would have been treated with dignity and there was provision for them to become integrated into the Israelite society.

Isn't it strange that the little boys and babies couldn't be integrated into Israelite society, but virgin girls could?  And for girls, the act of having sex makes them unable to be integrated?  If this was really about saving those who were innocent then it wouldn't have been by sex and wouldn't have mattered if they were virgins.  

[older]

Thinking some more about this virgin thing, if each soldier in the 12,000-man army got two virgins out of the total of 32,000, that would leave 8000 virgins left over. But if those 8000 were divided equally among the 12,000 soldiers, each soldier would have to share a virgin with two other guys. Somehow that doesn't seem right. Doesn't that ruin the whole idea of having a virgin? So then what criteria should be used to decide how to divide up the remainder? And isn't 32,000 extra girls suddenly coming into the Israelite society going to cause a collapse of the market for girls?

 

I think I'm going to take some aspirin and lie down for a while.

[chatpilot69]

I think the absolute worst argument for God is the teleological argument or the argument from design. Mainly because it ignores all the disorder in the world and the universe. God did it in my mind is always the wrong answer. I remember my sister referring to the so called "miracle of birth." I replied there is no miracle there that is entirely a natural process that is well understood by science. She insisted that I was wrong and continues in her ignorance to this day! 

[older]

In regards to the question of the 8000 left over virgins, I passed this on to my sister and here is her answer:

 

"The extra women go to the men who finish fastest AND are able to go for a two-fer and then a three-fer."

[♦ ficino ♦]

On 3/16/2023 at 1:03 AM, Weezer said:

It didn't make sense even as a kid, but I shoved it to the back of my mind and "went with the flow."

Yeah, pretty much. Kids see through BS. It's almost to the Joey Nichols level from "Annie Hall":

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=joey+nickels&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS893US893&oq=joey+nickels&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i390i650l3.5278j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:327e4644,vid:TOSM0LoP8Ec

 

 

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:35 AM, Fuego said:

 

In nature, females tend to be drab while males are colorful. Male lions have the big manes, while females are butch. Horses are about equal, though males have thicker manes. Gorillas all have short hair, but males have somewhat longer hair. Long hair was given to her as a covering? So what about clothing? And why does male hair grow as long if god didn't want it that way? And what is long? He doesn't really say. Pathetic argument, and then he gets all pissy about not arguing with him. Again, pathetic argument. 

I wonder if Paul never read about Sampson? His strength was in his hair. When it was cut God took away his strength. Then when it began to grow back his strength returned enough to avenge himself. 

 

DB

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

I think the "We'll know/understand when the Lord comes back" argument is pretty bad. And they act like that is acceptable. I guess I probably said it too at some point. Or atleast accepted it. 

 

My old church had a weird apologetic about the flood of Noah that I never was able to accept. They accepted that one family couldn't populate the world without major issues with genetics. Their apologetic teaching for that was to relate people to animals using various scriptures through the bible. Like when Jesus related the pharisees to vipers. 

 

They then went back to the story of Noah and explained that some of the animals on the Ark were actually people.

 

They taught that, not even realizing that the whole reason for the flood was to wipe all of those people out. 

 

They had a lot of apologetics that I accepted after having it was explained to me. Like there were more than just Adam and eve in the garden. Or here is a good one. How the Devil was a man and not an angel. 

 

But that one..... thats the one I got hung up on with them. I never would teach it myself when I preached. And I don't think they liked that. They preferred their bishops to be fluent in teaching all their various apologetics. 

 

Their were other issues I'm sure they didn't like either tho. I was raised Baptist and I don't think we always agreed what was acceptable. Like my wife cutting her hair or wearing dress pants instead of dresses. Which most women of the church wore daily. Not just on Sunday. I guess I was a little to liberal for them. I'm glad I didn't go all the way down that rabbit whole tho. 

 

Dark Bishop

[Wertbag]

7 hours ago, DarkBishop said:

They then went back to the story of Noah and explained that some of the animals on the Ark were actually people

Wow, that's a new one.  I wonder how many people they would need for it to be a stable population?  I've tried looking up minimal viable populations, but estimates seem to vary wildly.  Seems to depend on whether you go with a perfect situation (plentiful food, no disease, no accidents, no disasters etc) then you can get it as low as 100 people, but if you have a real-world situation where some percentage of the population won't make it then estimates climb up to 4000.  I would think a bronze age family in a devastated world, when life expectancy was ~40, would have to be on the higher end of the scale.

 

The apologetic I've heard for the inbreeding problem was that Adam and Eve were genetically perfect, and it was only after sin entered the world that life span began dropping until it ended up around 120 years.  Noah was still with special magic genetics, hence why he lived to 900, so therefore he didn't have any problems with inbreeding, cos reasons.

Of course, you still have the whole question of how the family split into black, white, Asian, Hispanic and all the variations in between, founded empires in opposite corners of the world, started unique languages and cultures and did all of that within a ridiculously short period of time.

 

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

28 minutes ago, Wertbag said:

Of course, you still have the whole question of how the family split into black, white, Asian, Hispanic and all the variations in between, founded empires in opposite corners of the world, started unique languages and cultures and did all of that within a ridiculously short period of time.

 

That is probably all explained with the 'Tower of Babel' story. Another one of the most ridiculous stories in all Christendom.

 

1 hour ago, Wertbag said:

The apologetic I've heard for the inbreeding problem was that Adam and Eve were genetically perfect, and it was only after sin entered the world that life span began dropping until it ended up around 120 years.  Noah was still with special magic genetics, hence why he lived to 900, so therefore he didn't have any problems with inbreeding, cos reasons.

 

They give a lot of credit to the whole sin entered man story. I guess that the fall back for everything hard to explain. When all else fails, " Its because of the sin in the garden".  

 

DB

[older]

Wow, Dark and Wert, reading your posts above cause me to shake my head in incredulity. Never having been that deep into it, I can't fathom the pure insanity of it. In a rational wold such folks would be institutionalized. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

13 hours ago, DarkBishop said:

My old church had a weird apologetic about the flood of Noah that I never was able to accept. They accepted that one family couldn't populate the world without major issues with genetics. Their apologetic teaching for that was to relate people to animals using various scriptures through the bible. Like when Jesus related the pharisees to vipers. 

 

They then went back to the story of Noah and explained that some of the animals on the Ark were actually people.

So, then, did Adam and Eve also have sex with animals to create the original population of earth?  Is that how Cain and Seth found "wives"?  

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

2 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

So, then, did Adam and Eve also have sex with animals to create the original population of earth?  Is that how Cain and Seth found "wives"?  

 

No, like the apologetic for the flood, they had a similar apologetic for the Garden of Eden. They separated the two tellings of creation. And the book of Ezekiel was key in their teaching. Ill go over the basics of that one. This is one that I actually came to believe because it answered several of my questions about creation. 

 

So, in Genesis 1

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

 

I underlined the key part of this verse. The way they taught it was that first God created multiple male and female humans. "Created he them" plural. 

 

Like I said it was similar to their apologetic with Noah in that as they likened humans to animals in the flood myth. They likened humans to trees in the creation myth. For instance the 1st  psalm. 

 

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

 

Another key verse for their doctrine is found in the book of Ezekiel chapter 31.

 

3 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.

 

(So here we see that the assyrian (a person from assyria) was a cedar)

 

4 The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.

5 Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.

6 All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.

7 Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.

 

(Obviously God had made this tree (man) great. In the next verse was where I really started to get caught up in their teaching of this)

 

8 The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.

9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.

10 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height;

 

(Here it appears that Ezekiel is flashing back talking about a great man of high stature who lifted himself up above God in the Garden of Eden. It is this man that they believed was the original "devil" who taught Adam and eve good from evil. But that is another subject that this scripture is used to support as well. For this apologetic about multiple people in the Garden. We can see that the Cedar is a person, an Assyrian specifically, and there were multiple trees/people that envied him. Ezekiel says that all of these trees are in the Garden of God. Specifically in Eden.)

 

After it was established that people are referred to as trees multiple times in the bible, then this verse was read that pretty much literally likens a multitude of people to trees in the garden of Eden, then they would circle back around to the 1st chapter of Genesis to drive the point home. 

 

For me this apologetic answered an old question of mine. When Cain kills Abel he is banished and goes to the land of Nod where he finds a wife. Where did this wife come from if Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel were the only humans in existence. According to them they weren't the only humans. They believed that Adam and Eve were created separately after the others and that God chose them to be his "chosen" people. They were to be the ones that kept his commandment. The only one being to not eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. A commandment they failed to keep. Which caused sin to pass upon everyone. 

 

It was probably this apologetic teaching that convinced me to convert to "The Church of God of The Gospel Assembly". At the time I felt that they had figured something out that no other church I had ever attended had. Now I realize that this is probably a result of thousands of years of changing ideology. I believe at one point the Adam and eve story was absent from Genesis and that originally the story was about God creating humans. Multiple humans. And I think that the story of Adam and Eve may have even been added after the time of the writer who wrote Ezekiel. 

 

Dark Bishop

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I really just wanted to work goat fucking into the thread.

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

49 minutes ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I really just wanted to work goat fucking into the thread.

Nah we didn't practice islam lmao  

 

DB