Apologetics is....

Apologetics is bullshit. Yep, I said it. If anyone has read a lot of my writings, I commonly call apologetics the art of bullshitting, or B.S.ing when I'm not on a censor free forum. Now, apologetics does not mean in this instance to apologize for something (though with the many examples I've seen of the absolutely pitiful attempts by christian apologists to use apologetics, I think they should apologize...to everyone for exposing them to their mind-numbing stupidity and illogical excuses for there being a god), but "defense." Therefore, apologetics is simply a defense for a particular position against criticism.

I realized quite some time ago that instead of wasting my time reading more books about christian apologetics and their counters, and the counters to the counters, etc. there is a much simpler method one can use. All of this bullshit hinges upon the existence of the supernatural, so if theists cannot prove the supernatural then all the apologetics in the world mean nothing. This is the reason I wrote my two papers called Evidence Against the Supernatural Parts One and Two. I even issued a challenge to anyone who could prove to me the supernatural exists (or debunk my papers), which there were some takers, but no real rebuttals.

A related point to both my challenge and apologetics is the fact that so many people accept beliefs on bad or flimsy evidence. They will often claim as evidence their personal experiences, stories told to them, video of ghosts, "proof" of prayer, etc. of course I expose several of these in my papers debunking the supernatural.

I can understand how people can feel that this criteria is very limiting for their beliefs in the supernatural, but that's how it's supposed to be! If science didn't exclude many irrelevant factors in its conclusions we might still be trying to use reflexology as a form of reliable medicine!

One argument that I got was probably better than most others, and that was, "How can you prove or disprove the supernatural using purely natural means?"

Good question.

I think that even purely natural means could detect supernatural causes in some cases where, if such supernatural claim were true, there should be some effect even if the supernatural cause could not be detected. One example is prayer. If there was truly a god (and in several places the bible says explicitly that you will get whatever you ask for in prayer, Matthew 21:21 for example) and he answers prayer then there should be some measurable difference between those who are prayed for and those who are not.

Several prayer studies I came across (see Evidence Against the Supernatural, Part 1) showed that prayer had no effect from long distances, though in one study I found they worked when the one doing the praying was in the same room as the person being prayed for. I attributed this to the placebo effect and you can read my reason why in my paper.

Another test you could try for those people who claim so vigorously that the supernatural exists and that they have a pipeline to their god (or as I like to call it, their imaginary friend) is to have them kindly ask god to lift you off the ground, or materialize directly in front of you and perform a set of actions that you dictate. A lot of people mock this answer but why is it so far fetched? In the bible god interacted with people all the time so why not now? If god is all powerful then this small request should be no big deal. Of course, here is where all of the rationalizations and apologetics come in: "god doesn't want you to have absolute proof; that's why you need faith" (of course this contradicts many apologists, such as David Marshall, who insist that faith does use evidence!), to "well, god just doesn't feel like granting your request right now."

Apologetics, when looked at rationally, is simply peoples' defense mechanism against criticism and oftentimes contradicts other defenses they use at other times (like the example of needing faith, while others claim faith uses evidence).

An interesting phenomenon occurred when I was watching Richard Dawkins' documentary The Enemies of Reason. When these believers in the occult and supernatural would fail in the testing of their abilities they would try to explain away their failures, using most of the excuses (rationalization, apologetics) that many theists use. Seems to me that the brain latches onto some idea and basically uses the same defense mechanisms to protect that idea regardless of what it is.

These excuses rebut nothing. They prove nothing. They're all bullshit.