A Rejoinder to "Everything WRONG With Christian Apologetics"

MythVision's Derek Lambert has once again collaborated with Dr's Joshua Bowen and Kipp Davis on the topic of problems with Christian apologetics in a new video. I have a few brief things to say about the video and it's implications. For those of you reading this, please keep in mind that I am an agnostic bordering on atheist; I have no stake to defend apologetic methodologies or the people who engage with them. That does not, however, mean that Lambert and his guests get a free pass. No one is above scrutiny and there is indeed much that I have to say about what they have asserted in this video.

Even When They're Right...

To keep things constructive, let's start with some of the things that I agree with Lambert, Davis, and Bowen on. I appreciated Bowen's observation (one that I’ve made elsewhere in discussing the relevancy of Lambert's work on MythVision) that most laypeople do not have the time or money to delve deep into the subjects of biblical studies and comparative religion (23:58). Alternatively, such people can obtain information online in order to fill in the blanks. That being said, it's interesting that Bowen emphasises the fact that these very busy people tend to not have a good command of the data when they exclusively rely on online sources of information. Although he is clearly referring to misinformed Christian laypersons blindly adhering to online apologists, wouldn't that same criteria cast aspersions upon those who are solely dependant on MythVision for their scholarship? If it's problematic that there are some who rely on a single arbiter for information, surely this criticism also applies to Lambert and his channel, a place where they also might not get the full picture. Just an observation, though it's somewhat uncanny that Bowen's comments against religious apologists mirror my own criticisms of Lambert himself.

Furthermore, I concurred with Davis' point about whether apologists are actually addressing criticisms of their faith or instead looking to stand up for like-minded people in their community (13:24). Apologists are forced to fight a war on two fronts, both in the encouragement of the people who are already believers and in the pursuit of those whom they seek to convert. Such a hefty task that involves engaging with many different types of people is one that should be approached more cautiously, but tends to be done haphazardly for the sake of defending a perceived "in-group" from outside criticism.

Overall, I generally agree with their conceptualisation and criticism of apologetics as a whole (remember that I am referring to apologetics not apologists—this will be important later). There is little doubt in my mind that it is methodologically dubious to begin with your conclusion and then search for evidence to confirm that conclusion. This was something that I was guilty of as a Christian; it was a very easy trap to fall into when you so desperately want your conclusions to be true. Thus, on a purely anecdotal level, I have no reason to doubt their characterisation of the phenomenon of apologetics.

Assumptions and Assertions

While I appreciate the observations regarding methodological concerns, especially with a "fists up" approach that is resistant to any contrary perspectives (2:59), the burden of proof rests entirely on Lambert, Davis, and Bowen to demonstrate that all if not most of the people who stylise themselves as apologists (or those who are ab extra stylised as such) are guilty of this pitfall. This is a recurring problem throughout this video that strikes at the heart of their critique of apologist methodology: their caricature mindset of a dishonest, desperate apologist is exported to all who consider themselves defenders of the faith and it is assumed off the bat that other interpretive frameworks have not already been tried (3:10). If there is an apologist who is not trapped in a single-minded framework (hypothetical or not, it is plausible), are they still to be indicted for skewing the evidence? How can we know that? Or, rather, is our definition of "apologist" and the negative connotations it carries problematic in that it makes too many generalisations without taking into consideration what individuals actually do when looking at the data? 

Even if they have not tried other frameworks for looking at the evidence, how can we know a-priori that they are guilty of the things MythVision accuses them of? For example, Bowen observes that there are few people who are "logicked" into faith via reasoning (6:50). While this may be true, it is itself completely anecdotal on Bowen's part. It's a sentiment that rings true for my personal journey for sure, but is far beyond the capabilities of proof. The broad brush that so many people are painted with is extremely presumptuous on their part: no data aside from sporadic references to various pop-apologists are presented to back up these claims. Why are these professional apologists (whom are sometimes held in equal contempt by other apologists) representative of the whole lot?

In order for these three to properly bolster their claims, they require a substantive, systematic, and comprehensive review of Christian apologists both on the internet and in print. This is the only way for them to truly account for the claims that they are making about a fairly large amount of people. It's very easy to make feasible claims about a problematic methodology, but less so to psychoanalyse the people who are alleged to employ said method. Indeed, this is virtually impossible to do consistently: there are so many different kinds of people who wear the moniker of "apologist," each with great variance in their approaches, argumentation, and even their conclusions. If Lambert, Davis, and Bowen were intellectually humble enough to concede their ignorance regarding all these people (that they've mostly never met), they might realise that their argument would amount to little more than speculative and conjectural observations about a relatively small number of internet users. 

This was especially apparent when Lambert, seemingly out of nowhere, brought up a YouTube comment from a user who was clearly an ultra-chiliastic Christian expressing his anticipation for apocalyptic retribution against him, Bowen, and Davis (29:42). They use this as a bizarre segway to discuss apologists who allegedly take sadistic pleasure out of Old Testament violence and apocalyptic damnation of atheists like themselves and Richard Dawkins. Despite their insistence that this is in reference to only "certain apologists," the criticism is framed in the context of attacking apologists (and, by extension, Christians) as a whole and subsequently takes up a third of the entire video. It therefore seems that no matter what they think of more sophisticated apologists such as Mike Jones or Rob Rowe, in Lambert's mind these are people who all inhabit the same category—irrespective of the strength of their arguments or the respectfulness of their conduct—and should be collectively criticised as such. Representative qualification or clarification is discarded for the sake of accommodating what is quite obviously an internet-drama polemic.

Sentinel and the Method

Rob Rowe is an apologist who should be mentioned again as a counter to the incorrigible generalisations in this video. Rowe has routinely endorsed the Popper method: that in order to prove your hypothesis, you must first try to disprove it, thus securing its veracity. Whether Rob has actually done this to a sufficient degree is open for discussion, but he nevertheless affirms that he is trying his best to follow the evidence and that he is not allowing his emotions to invest him in the faith (see 3:22:09 in his response to Lambert here). 

Right off the bat, Rowe's approach is in tension with Lambert's allegations. Due to the wholesale claims made by the MythVision host and his guests, they can only arrive at one of two conclusions for the host of Sentinel Apologetics: (1), either Rowe is mistaken at his insistence that he is trying to be objective and that it was, in fact, an emotional religious experience that set him on this journey, or (2), that he is being dishonest. Here's the kicker: both options require these atheists to, in essence, claim that they know more about Rowe's intellectual journey and his state of mind than he does. The fact that I need to point out that they are not privy to the goings-on of Rowe's head is indicative of the militant nature of the video and is detrimental to promoting a fairer discourse in the realm of comparative religion. 

There is a third option, however, that takes into consideration the nuances of these methodological discussions: that Rowe did in fact have a monumental experience (namely, his grandfather's passing which he has mentioned numerous times) which acted as a catalyst for a spiritual reckoning, but that he is also trying his best to understand the data about Christianity, the Bible, and these other topics to the fullest extent. One can be spurred into action by an overwhelming life event and still endeavour to be as objective as possible with the evidence. Does that necessarily mean that they will be objective? Far from it; I have on many occasions found points where Rowe is less critical than he should be and have addressed them elsewhere. But that certainly does not mean that I have the right to palm off his contributions to these discussions outright simply because of a category we can pigeonhole him into.

It is shocking to me how openly dehumanising Lambert and his guests can be, all of whom I usually hold to relatively high esteem. Their inability to see how their accusations against apologists can be turned around and used against them is almost inconceivable. More examples of this kind of bias blind-spot can be seen throughout the video: Davis asserts that emotional attachment encourages people to stay in the faith as opposed to evidence (10:31). Aside from more anecdotal evidence, is there any substance to this claim? Does Davis have actual data to back this up? Additionally, Lambert's psychoanalysis of apologists doing apologetics for the sake of self-confirmation is so beyond demonstrability it's astounding (15:04). He has absolutely no way of knowing this, yet he presents it as a factual concept. 

I am forcing myself to stay as balanced as I can in my analysis if this video. I know in my heart that Bowen and Davis understand the material of biblical scholarship well and that much of what they say about the problems of Christian apologetics rings true. But I cannot simply ignore their own pitfalls to which they themselves appear to be blind. For all the talk of evidence-based epistemology, the sum of the evidence mustered in this entire video amounts to little more than a childish "he said, she said." Their online opponents are treated like a conglomerate of automatons with little regard for individual agency or distinction between the good, the bad, and the ugly of religious apologetics.

The moral of the story is this: always be suspicious of commentators who want to expunge the nuance from a discussion. Christian apologists are at fault for doing this all the time, often treating their online interlocutors like a category to be opposed instead of people who have a case to make. But this video demonstrates that atheists have an equal propensity to be chargeable for this error. Both "sides" must recognise that this is hardly the way to approach this topic with integrity nor is it a prerequisite for healthier conversations in the future.