#apologetic

Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#argument #arrogance #intelligence #intelligence

Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#bias #education

I wonder how appropriate it is to try to 'argue someone into the kingdom.' Many apologists hotly deny any such charge, but I don't believe them. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it plain that this is their intent. ↗

— Robert M. Price

#religion #religion

Atheists don’t hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don’t exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists — like the painting experts hated the painter — hate God because He does exist. ↗

— Ray Comfort

#atheism #hatred #ignorant #atheist

A merely symbolic religion does not threaten the ruling regime of materialistic science. ↗

— Nancy Pearcey

#creationism #faith #faith

Our Christian faith - and correlatively, our account of apologetics - is tainted by modernism when we fail to appreciate the effects of sin on reason. When this is ignored, we adopt an Enlightenment optimism about the role of a supposedly neutral reason in the recognition of truth. ↗

— James K.A. Smith

#christianity #enlightenment #rational #reason #sin

If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that. ↗

— Jesse Jackson

#colonialism #feel #proud #say #slavery

It would behoove you to have your thesis finely tuned and the logical arguments utilized in support of it tightly woven into a credible, and creatively persuasive tapestry. ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#argumentation #logic-of-thought #persuasion #r-alan-woods #scholarly

The new and needed apologetics will differ from previous apologetic models geared at convincing people solely or even mainly from a rationalistic perspective or that begin with biblical authority. People want to see spiritual power demonstrated by transformed lives expressed in community. This is the hope people harbor. They will respond to a spiritual belief system that delivers at this point. Jesus said that the proof f discipleship to the world would be his followers’ love for one another (John 13:35). Early observers were drawn to the Christian movement exactly for this reason (Acts 2: 44-47). Love expressed through community still transforms people and creates an attractive and compelling invitation for others to join up. ↗

— Reggie McNeal

#love

I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas? ↗

— Daniel C. Dennett

#philosophy #theology #love