Posted: Jun 17, 2010 8:08 am
katja z wrote:I do have two minor suggestions (for now):
1)Of course, some of the results of using 'applied common sense' may seem to violate other conclusions which we've reached using common sense – but that is a different issue.
This could be confusing to some. I know you can't deal with this in any depth here, but I think a simple clarification would be useful - something on the lines of "when you look at the steps that lead to such a confusing result, every one of them makes perfect (common) sense, it's only that the issue is too complicated for our us to digest it well in one big chunk".
Yes - fair comment. It seems to apply in particular to a lot of physics.
katja z wrote:2) When you refer to Christian apologists, it might be a good idea to label them more precisely (it could well be that tactics are different in different denominations - this wouldn't surprise me since the theology varies quite a lot in some respects).
It would certainly be quite an undertaking to do a detailed survey of present day Christian apologists! What I'm really saying is that, being an moderately old bloke, I've seen, or I think I've seen, a huge change in my lifetime.
When I was a young lad, the prevailing line which Christian apologists took was that Christianity is totally reasonable, and that if an unprejudiced person looks at the evidence and the arguments, he's likely to conclude that Christianity is true. Conversely, if he doesn't reach this conclusion, either he's a bit of a silly-billy, or else he has some dark, private reason for pretending to be sceptical. (Perhaps that line was already beginning to give a bit, certainly among the 'professionals', but it was still the line which was usually presented to the laity - and particularly to the young.)
It seems to me that that line of polemic has now pretty much disappeared, and has been replaced by ... what? To me, it just looks like vagueness and obfuscation.