The End of Christian Apologetics
FreeChristians

"God exposes himself to skepticism and disbelief because he renounces anything that would compel men to believe..." Rabbi Pinchas Lapide

"A proven God is no God." Karl Jaspers

"Somebody ought to tell the truth about the Bible!" Robert G. Ingersoll (19th century agnostic philosopher)

Pt: 1. Why Apologetics is the enemy of truth and of faith
Pt: 2. The Failure of Bible Apologetics
Pt: 3 The God Beyond Apologetics

Part 1. Why Apologetics is the enemy of truth and of faith

This essay is an attempt to expose Christian apologetics as a futile enterprise and as a waste of time and valuable resources. Moreover, it is an attempt to expose the whole apologetics business as one of the worse enemies of Christianity. Being an internal enemy, apologetics does more damage to Christianity than any external enemy. 

But why am I attacking apologetics? What is wrong with apologetics?

But first, what is apologetics?

So what is so wrong with all these ministries? 
Dishonesty and Deceit. That's what is wrong with them. 

Let me explain why. Their dishonesty lies in that they assume as truth what they set out to prove. By employing a priori assumptions, (ie. "I have the truth") Christian Apologists entrap their unwary readers or listeners to their "truth". 

The Christian arrogance of having exclusive possession of the truth (while other religions are evil and deluded), is reflected in many Apologists. For example, in his Challenge to Critics  James Patrick Holding (Tekton Apologetics Ministries) dares his critics: "The challenge is simple: Pick up any essay of mine and refute it. Contact me for terms of exchange. And if I hear nothing, I'll guess I'll just have to assume that no one can respond to my material...". Apologists like J. P. Holding ( his real name is Robert Turkel ) specialize in the historical debates about Christianity. Their task is both hard and easy due to the scant data available from the first two centuries.

The interesting part is that neither J. P. Holding nor his critics can be refuted. Both Apologists and their opponents take advantage of the fact that the data from Christianity's first century is almost non-existent. The only surviving information comes to us tainted by forgeries from the third century onwards, after the "Orthodox" branch of Christianity started becoming a political force. In the absence of reliable data, any claim (or counterclaim) can be made without being refuted. This is why even the outrageous claim by some critics that Jesus didn't even exist cannot be refuted. The data is simply not there. 

This uncertainty allows for the arrogance displayed by apologists like Holding or his opponents. I invite my readers to peruse over the material of J. P. Holding ( see: Tektonics Ministry ) and compare it with the refutations by his critics (see: Tektonics.Org Exposed! ).

What these sports do is really playing a game, each scoring points here and there. They selectively pick and choose the weakest arguments made by their opponents and attack them. In this way both sides retain an illusion of victory. The believers feel relief that their champions defended the "truth" and the unbelievers feel relief that their champions have exposed the holes in the "truth". And life goes on. 

The same applies to the abstract areas of theology and philosophy, where any sort of claim can be made as long as it appears to be self-consistent and logically possible. These grey areas have provided a fertile ground for speculations throughout the long centuries, ever since Homo Sapiens became conscious of the "Other".

Every religion, including Christianity, and every worldview, including atheism, indulges in speculations about the nature of reality, turning these speculations into "truth" that "cannot be refuted". Of course there will be several worldviews available in the marketplace of human thought! In a universe as wonderful and mysterious as the one we live in, the possibilities are infinite in every direction. Just pick and choose!

How Christian Apologists "embrace insincerity as a structural principal"

Apologists use "rational" and "scientific" arguments only when it suits them. When all else fails, they fall back to the nebulous area of the supernatural. Again, there is deception involved because they assume as true what they seek to prove, ie that their spiritual experiences or "revelations" are authentic.

For example, one of the leading Christian apologists, Dr. William Lane Craig blatantly states that "as long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it... I once asked a fellow seminary student "How do you know Christianity is true?" He replied "I really don't know." Does that mean he should give up Christianity till he finds rational arguments to ground his faith? Of course not! ...The fact is we can know the truth whether we have rational arguments or not..." ( Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Ill, first pub. 1984 Moody Press, revised edition 1994, p. 36-37)

Mark Smith, an atheist critic of Craig, makes the following comments: "The word "minister" means "to serve". So what Craig is saying here is that as long as reason serves Christianity, Christians should use it;  the implication being that when reason turns against Christianity, Christians likewise should turn against reason. And after Christians have rejected using reason, then what? With what will it be replaced with? UN-reason? Insanity? Illogic? Subjective emotional outbursts? The DARK AGES???... For Craig, reason, argument, and evidence seem to be just "bait" to fool people into swallowing the Christian hook. Once everyone is hooked, such tools will no longer be needed, and could easily be discarded and outlawed." (see: Contra Craig by Mark Smith)

As to Craig's advice to the seminary student, Mark Smith remarks: "Craig is admitting here to something most of us already knew, that is, people become Christians FIRST, then try to find rational reasons for having done so LATER (if at all) to justify that decision. This clearly goes against any and all principles of clear thinking. Imagine inheriting a million dollars, and then handing over every penny of it to some guy who showed up at your door seeking investors for his "anti-gravity machine" company, only because you liked the way he presented himself? You would be called a total idiot by all your friends, yet THIS is the EXACT same behavior that is encouraged by Craig when it comes to religion!!! Craig's whole approach to religion is: Don't think, just DO IT- worry about facts, reason and common sense later- just give your heart to Jesus because IT FEELS GOOD. Do first, think later. Contrast THIS philosophy of "do first, think later" with how most ex-Christians become Atheists: we thought it thru, weighed the evidence, and made a reasonable and logical decision. Atheists think FIRST- we don't just "accept Atheism" because it feels good... Listen again to the words penned by Craig, "We can know the truth whether we have rational arguments or not". Scary, isn't it? Words such as these usually come from an Islamic Mullah preaching to the Taliban, not from an American scholar..." (ibid)

Craig offers another typical example of why the whole Apologetics business is unethical. In the same book (Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, p. 48, 49-50), he argues how apologetics works: "My friend, I know Christianity is true because God's Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true. And you can know it, too, because God is knocking at the door of your heart, telling you the same thing. If you are sincerely seeking God, then God will give you assurance that the gospel is true. Now, to try to show you it's true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing to you, that's my fault, not God's. It only shows that I'm a poor apologist, not that the gospel is untrue. Whatever you think of my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately you have to deal, not with arguments, but with God himself.", and "unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem. Sometimes an unbeliever will throw up an intellectual smoke screen so that he can avoid personal, existential involvement with the gospel..." (emphasis mine)

To this sort of reasoning, Craig's "nemesis", atheist author Robert M. Price (who quoted the above excerpts from Craig's book) replies: "Craig, then, freely admits his conviction arises from purely subjective factors, in no whit different from the teenage Mormon door-knocker who tells you he knows the Book of Mormon was written by ancient Americans because he has a warm, swelling feeling in his stomach when he asks God if it's true... let no one who can read doubt from his words just quoted that, first, his enterprise is completely circular, since it is a subjectivity described arbitrarily in terms of Christian belief (Holy Spirit, etc.) that supposedly grounds Christian belief! And, second, Craig admits the circularity of it..."

it is obvious from the same quotes that he admits the arguments are ultimately beside the point. If an "unbeliever" doesn't see the cogency of Craig's brand of New Testament criticism (the same thing exactly as his apologetics), it can only be because he has some guilty secret to hide and doesn't want to repent and let Jesus run his life. If one sincerely seeks God, Craig's arguments will mysteriously start looking pretty good to him, like speaking in tongues as the infallible evidence of the infilling of the divine Spirit..."

"...Craig's frank expression to his fellow would-be apologists/evangelists is revealing, more so no doubt than he intends: he tells you to say to the unbeliever that you find these arguments "really convincing," but how can Craig simply take this for granted unless, as I'm sure he does, he knows he is writing to people for whom the cogency of the arguments is a foregone conclusion since they are arguments in behalf of a position his readers are already committed to as an a priori party line?... His is a position that exalts existential decision above rational deliberation..." 

"...I do not mean to make sport of Craig by saying this. No, it is important to see that, so to speak, every one of Craig's scholarly articles on the resurrection implicitly ends with that little decision card for the reader to sign to invite Jesus into his heart as his personal savior. He is not trying to do disinterested historical or exegetical research. He is trying to get folks saved..."

"...His characterization of people who do not accept his apologetical version of the historical Jesus as "unbelievers" who merely cast up smoke screens of insincere cavils functions as a mirror image of his own enterprise. His apparently self-effacing pose, "If my arguments fail to convince, then I must have done a poor job of explaining them" is just a polite way of saying, "You must not have understood me, stupid, or else you'd agree with me." His incredible claim that the same apologetics would sound better coming from somebody else (so why don't you go ahead and believe anyway?) just reveals the whole exercise to be a sham. Craig's apologetic has embraced insincerity as a structural principal. The arguments are offered cynically: "whatever it takes." If they don't work, take your pick between brimstone ("God holds you accountable") and treacle ("God still loves you"). (see: By This Time He Stinketh: The Attempts of William Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus by Robert Price).

 So there you go, Apologetics does no service to the truth, since it assumes to posses it a priori, and the only thing it achieves is to further alienate people like R. Price, who are not wicked as Craig implies but merely skeptical to Christian arrogance. How far is this from St. Paul's vision of the Christian minister as an agent of reconciliation! Judging by their polemic methodology, Christian Apologists clearly do not function as ministers of reconciliation but as builders of a new "dividing wall of hostility", this time between Christians and everyone else. These ministers of division force people to make rush decisions about their spiritual journey, through psychological blackmailing of the worst kind. The weapon they use is a pre-packaged "evidence that demands a verdict", forcing  people into becoming Christians out of fear ("God holds you accountable", etc). But this is not how truth is served. Truth, or for that matter, spiritual truth, is supposed to be a lifelong journey for every person, not a forced decision through "full-proof" arguments. The truth of God can never be exhausted. Those who claim to have pre-packaged the truth of God into a neat religious belief system, have reduced God into an idol of their own making. When people come to believe that they have the truth, they stop searching for the truth, and as a result they do not progress in their spiritual journey, as is obvious by the immaturity displayed in Christian Churches. 

Apologetics are bad for your spiritual health

As Wendell Krossa points out, authentic spirituality has got nothing to do with being loyal to religious belief systems (as Apologists try to force people to do), but it has everything to do with becoming truly human, as God intended: "God has never demanded that anyone leave normal life to become religious. Becoming religious is not the 'will of God'. It is merely the will of controlling religious authorities- the religious bosses. God has never required anyone to separate from normal life or humanity to follow some special religious vocation. God has also never placed the obligation on any person to join some form of institutional religion or any other institution. .. We could also add that neither is there any obligation from God to adopt a religious belief system or ideology of any kind or to pledge loyalty to some institution, whether religious, state, or other. Loyalty to belief systems and institutions often creates walls between people and divides human beings from each other. It encourages people to become fixated on finding their identity in objects or institutions instead of in humanity in general. The only obligation we have regarding loyalty is from our humanity which urges us to join the party of life with the entire human race..."

"Contrary to most religious belief and practice, in Jesus we see that God would join the human race and give humanity an example of joining life with all its diversity and freedom from control and coercion. The human God that Jesus would reveal, embraced all of human life and all of humanity equally. Jesus being fully human is a bold statement by God that being human is all right. It is good. .."

"...To convert someone to a religious lifestyle often results in the destruction of essential elements of their humanity such as the freedom to question, to challenge authority, and to creatively explore alternatives. Religion is about submission to divine authority and the total control of the individual, including thought control. This is a severe distortion of the message of Jesus who consistently sought to inspire human freedom, human relating and existence. Becoming religious, in the institutional manner of most world religions, is too often completely incompatible with being human. The only obligation we need to hold, then, is to be human..."

Jesus has no need of Apologetics

Jesus has nothing to do with Apologetics. He never sought "to corner people into believing" or separate them into believers and unbelievers. That was done later by his disciples who could not tolerate the thought of anyone not believing in their new found "truth"... 

 Again I quote from Krossa: "In his own life, Jesus set forth a new definition and standard for what it means to be human. He set forth an inspiring example of what it means to relate horizontally as equals. His example has rarely been matched... we find everything about the historical Jesus so totally opposite to the vertical orientation of institutional Christianity that it is nothing short of shocking... Jesus treated every person as an absolute equal- both women and men, old and young, both religious and nonreligious, both those from his own ethnic group and those from other groups. He adamantly refused to climb through hierarchical arrangements to occupy a position above any other person or set himself aside from others as special or different. He made consistent effort to seek the company of the lowest strata of hierarchical society and he severely rebuked those who sought to separate themselves out from common humanity as special and then climb above and dominate others. In doing this, he showed that being truly human does not involve the climbing of hierarchical institutions or the dominating of others in any way. .. In fact, Jesus took a active stance against domination or control in any form. When people tried to coerce him to become a ruling king, he refused and fled back to the company of those at the bottom of the hierarchical order of his day. He insisted that the truly human God came to serve, not to be served. If anyone would lead, said Jesus, then he must be the slave of all. If you would influence others, he was saying, then do so by inspiring example, not by dominating position or coercing command..." (Creating a Horizontal God, by W. Krossa, Article 16: The Freedom and Responsibility to be Human- Part 1)

Apologetics entraps people into accepting the religious authorities of the various Christian Churches and Institutions. It erects new walls of division between people (believers vs. unbelievers), building again something that was demolished by Jesus.

Apologetics erect a "dividing wall of hostility"

Apologetics is a hostile enterprise, exposing the hostility and violence lying at the heart of the Christian religion. I remember once again Jacques Ellul's words: "Christianity is the exact opposite of what Jesus intended"!

On a lighter note, the endless debates going on between Christian Apologists and their opponents are also quite entertaining. Everyone is into scoring points. The procedure is simple. Collect a set of supportive data and assemble it together into an air-tight package which can be used as a "full-proof" argument or counterargument. All this fascinating behavior has all the ingredients of a popular sport, with fans and all. The interesting part is that both sides of the fence feel like winners as they marshal their fool-proof arguments or counterarguments. It is this easy. Pick a side, any side, and support its views by selective use of data. Even the absence of data is useful (heard of the argument from silence?)

Because the opposing camps feel that a lot is at stake there is a lot of animosity generated. Both sides of the fence hardly make an effort to hide their hatred (or dislike) for their opponents:

• On the one hand, Christian apologists are "certain" that their opponents are agents of the evil one. In the past, when the Church held political power, Christian Apologetics took the form of violent persecutions. The opponents of the truth were deemed worthy of death. It is estimated that over 60 million people lost their lives by the Medieval version of Catholic Apologetics alone. Countless more were slain by overzealous Protestant "defenders of the truth". Being an outspoken atheist a couple of hundred years ago was not exactly the safe or smart thing to do. Today, Christian Defenders of the Truth do not burn alive their opponents, but they still loathe them, even though they claim to love them.

• The feelings of hatred are mutual as far as opponents of Christian Apologists are concerned. Atheists display feelings of intense hatred and dislike towards the bigoted Christians, "the enemies of truth and liberty". During the French Revolution, such feelings of hatred found the opportunity to fully express themselves as priests were brutally killed by atheistic mobs.

The problem is that we are all guilty of the same "crime". We all, whether Christian or atheist, or whatever, selectively embrace information that validates our chosen worldview. Just like the Christian ignores or re-interprets data that discredit his/her belief system, so does the atheist, the Muslim, the Jehovah's Witness, the Mormon, the communist, the capitalist, the evolutionist, the creationist, and every other -ist or -ian under the sun. We all suffer from selective hearing when it comes to hard data. 

How competing Memes and the Reptilian Brain fuel the animosity between "believers" and "unbelievers"

Our misplaced loyalties are literally killing us as we separate humanity into us VS them, on the basis of ideologies and belief systems. So much hatred and alienation because of ideas that compete for survival inside our heads. I am fully aware of the Meme Theory, which explains our idiotic behavior towards one another. Christianity is a meme and so is Atheism, Mormonism, Communism, Buddhism, etc. Just because Christianity is a Meme does not automatically mean that it is false. Christianity contains both falsehoods and truths, just like every other belief system or ideology. The problem with belief systems like Christianity is that they operate as aggressive memes, almost like a virus or pest out of control that seeks to infect and consume everything in its path.  

Related to the meme theory is our instinctual need to defend our territory, be it physical or intellectual. This instinctual need springs from the most ancient part of our brain, the R-Complex or Reptilian Brain: 

Apologetics is an expression of the reptilian brain seeking to defend it's territory, in this case, the belief system it holds as "truth". Thus the hostility against anyone who challenges the "truth".

Apologetics as a tool of control by religious authorities 

The worst aspect of apologetics is that deep down, it is designed to defend the authority of religious institutions. The pious claims of apologists (ie. defending the truth of the gospel, defending Christ, etc) are nothing but pious claims. Apologists, be they Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, serve the power interests of their religious institutions. This is why the apologist of each denomination focuses on defending the power claims of his religious leaders. They all defend some external authority "icon" intending to convince people to submit to it. The Orthodox apologist defends the authority of the "Holy Tradition". The Catholic apologist defends the authority of the Pope. The Protestant apologist defends the authority of the "paper pope", the Bible.

Christian apologists aim at getting people to accept and submit to the authority of Christianity's "power" icons (Bible, Holy Tradition, Pope, Canons, Creeds, Dogmas, etc). 

Apologists have a two-fold objective. First, they seek to get people to accept the "Authority" icons of the Church. Second, they aim at defending the authority of these icons against the iconoclasts. Iconoclasts are those who seek to smash the authority of icons, or even the icons themselves. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines the iconoclast as: 

• One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.

• One who destroys sacred religious images.

Jesus was an iconoclast. He smashed, or undermined the authority, of such religious icons as the Torah, the Sabbath, the Tradition, etc. By doing this Jesus managed two things. First he got himself killed by the religious authorities. Second, he showed the way for humanity to smash all dehumanizing idols.

To quote Brinsmead: "Joshua (the historical Jesus) did not die for some sacred thing or religious idea. There has never been a shortage of people willing to die for religion. Millions have died to defend their holy places. Just as many have died to preserve their sacred practices. They have died for the Sabbath. They have lost their lives for the sake of circumcision. They have put their life on the line for religious ideas, especially ideas about God. But Joshua died for none of these things. He died solely for people: "For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45) . The word ransom in Joshua's mission statement is a simple metaphor for liberation - nothing more! At the very commencement of his public work he cited these words from the book of Isaiah: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them that are bruised" (Luke 4:18) This was a moving, breathtaking vision of human liberation. It envisaged deliverance from guilt, false views of God, distorted value systems, hunger, sickness, destitution, religious bondage and inhuman power structures. He was concerned with the whole human condition..." (see: The Scandal of Joshua Ben Adam, Part 4 )

Faith VS Belief (Jaques Ellul)

The great Christian philosopher Jaques Ellul contrasted faith to belief. While faith is an authentic spiritual experience, belief is a totally made up ideology: "Belief provides answers to people's questions while faith never does. People believe so as to find assurance, a solution, an answer to their questions to fashion for themselves a system of beliefs. Faith (biblical faith) is completely different..." (see: Belief and Faith by Jacques Ellul, Quoted by christinyou.net from Ellul's book: The Living Faith: Belief and Doubt in a Perilous World. San Francisco: Harper and Row, Publishers. 1983)

Ellul added: "Faith presupposes doubt while belief excludes it. The opposite of doubt isn't faith, but belief. The "knights" of belief comply unfailingly with the law and the commandments. They are unbending in their convictions, intolerant of any deviation. In the articulation of belief they press rigor and absolutism to their limits. They unceasingly refine the expression of their belief and seek to give it explicit intellectual formulation in a system as coherent and complete as possible. They insist on total orthodoxy. Ways of thinking and acting are rigidly codified. This leads to a very high level of efficiency; the believer is a person who gets the job done, but all this activity is hollow at the core. Believers have so little internal reality of their own that they can live and express that reality only by and in a conventional established unit. They are the people of gatherings. Believers find encouragement and certitude in the presence of others ­ the certitude that those others really believe ­ and so community life fills up the existential void. Multiplying the number of liturgies, commitments, and activities gives believers complete satisfaction ­ in the midst of them they have no need of questioning the truth or reality of their belief; activity keeps them busy. But in this situation you can imagine how intolerable the diversity of beliefs becomes. There must be neither doubt nor uncertainty, for that would be radically destructive. So diversity cannot be tolerated. Diversity is always a source of further questions, of self-criticism, and thus of possible doubt ­ so belief is rapidly transformed into passwords, rites, and orthodoxy..." (ibid, emphasis mine)

"Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge. Though it knows that God is the Father, it never minimizes His power... For belief things are simple: God is almighty. We normalize God. We get comfortable with God's power. It is faith alone that can appreciate the immensity of God, and His true nature..." (ibid, emphasis mine)

This great Christian thinker hit the nail on the head when he said: "The doubt that constitutes an integral part of faith concerns myself, not God's revelation or His love or the presence of Jesus Christ. It is doubt about the effectiveness, even the legitimacy, of what I do and the forces I obey in my church and in society. Furthermore, faith puts itself to the test. If I discern the stirrings of faith within me, the first rule is not to deceive myself, not to abandon myself to belief indiscriminately. I have to subject my beliefs to rigorous criticism. I have to listen to all denials and attacks on them, so that I can know how solid the object of my faith is. Faith will not stand for half-truths and half-certainties... faith acknowledges the Ultimate in all its irrefragable truth, and so it depreciates and attaches little importance to whatever offers itself as a substitute for that Ultimate. It is not a matter of looking to some external ultimate reality; the Kingdom of heaven is (at present) in you or among you. As of now it is you who constitute it. Faith is the demand that we must incarnate the Kingdom of God now in this world and this age..." (ibid, emphasis mine)

Apologetics is an effort to support belief, not faith. In other words, apologetics works against faith. Apologetics is not interested in truth, it only seeks to defend the ideology of belief. 

Apologetics is the enemy of faith precisely because it has to do with belief. As Ellul warned: "One never moves from belief to faith, whereas faith often deteriorates into belief. You can't get to faith by way of any old religion, or belief, or some vague spiritual exaltation, or aesthetic emotions. It is not "better" from a Christian viewpoint to "believe" than not to believe, to "have religion" than not to have it. There is no road from belief to faith. You can't transform a conviction of the value of rites into the act of standing alone in the presence of God. The reverse is true: every belief is an obstacle to faith. Beliefs get in the way because they satisfy the need for religion, because they lead to spiritual choices that are substitutes for faith; they prevent us from discovering, listening to, and accepting the faith revealed in Jesus Christ..."

"...Belonging to Christendom and to one of its churches is the main obstacle to becoming a Christian. There is no path leading from a little bit of religion (of whatever kind) to a little more and finally to faith. Faith shatters all religion and everything spiritual. On the other hand, the passage from faith to belief is always possible and always a threat. It is the downhill slide to which the church and the Christian life are always subject. Faith is constantly degenerating into multiple beliefs. No phrase expresses this imperceptible change better than "to have faith." When we take possession of faith and claim to be the proprietor of faith, we naturally think we can dispose of it as we wish. The only thing we are really entitled to say is that "Faith has me." The rest is mere belief..." (ibid, emphasis mine)

 Apologetics tries to give people "evidence that demands a verdict", as the title of an apologetics best-seller proclaims. This proclamation however is really a threat, a blackmail, an entrapment. It implies that "there is no excuse" for those who won't accept the apologist's belief system. But such a mentality can never benefit people. It produces belief, not faith. Faith, as Ellul said, is only experienced in freedom, without "intellectual" coercion or threats: "There is no objective reason for faith; you have to live it. Faith has no origin or objective. The moment it admits of any objective, it ceases to be faith. If you believe in God in order to be protected, shielded, healed, or saved, then it's not faith, which is gratuitous. This will prove shocking, especially to Protestants, who have talked so much about salvation through faith, about faith as the condition of salvation, that they end up saying you believe so that you'll be saved. But we have to keep coming back to grace and its gratuitousness. If God loves and saves humankind without asking any price, the counterpart to this is that God intends to be believed and loved without self-interest or purpose, simply for nothing. It is scandalous, and yet so easy to understand when you think of love. The moment that a man and a woman love one another for something, whether it be for money or prestige or beauty or job, it is no longer love. Love is without cause and selfish interests; love is without reason..." (ibid, emphasis mine)

Finally, Ellul explained why Christian Apologetics is a waste of time: "Apologetics tries to prove that Christianity is true, that it is superior to other religions (which of course leaves us arguing on the religious level), and that it answers all human questions. We can show that Christianity makes a reasonable case, but these debates among intellectuals are utterly sterile: nobody ever succeeds in persuading anyone else. No apologetics have ever brought any unbelievers to faith, even when they could see that they had been beaten by their adversary's rhetoric. There is no intellectual road to the attitude (and more than the attitude ­ the life) of faith. The logical, intellectualist approach winds up in a ditch. The intellect does not call forth or show the way to faith..."

It is time the whole enterprise of Christian apologetics came to an end. This whole Apologetics Industry does more harm than good. It perpetuates immaturity among Christians and anger among non-Christians. 

The worse kind is the Protestant Apologetics, which is really Bible Apologetics, the impossible task of defending the doctrine of Bible Inerrancy. This ridiculous doctrine continues to plague Christianity, even the Catholic and the Orthodox branches. It is about time it got dropped because the embarrassment caused by it has become unbearable.

To have to defend the historicity or infallibility of stories and doctrines contained in ancient sacred texts is simply a waste of time and of valuable resources. Instead of apologetics, the various Church institutions (including "Bible Colleges"), would do well to redefine their role and to reformulate their goals. 

Is the role of the Church to "faithfully" preserve a body of religious creeds and doctrines? To use Biblical jargon, is the role of the Church "to hold on to the faith once delivered to the saints"? 

Or is it to participate and contribute to human progress?

The first case involves loyalty to an ideology, a "belief". The second case involves loyalty to humanity, something that requires "faith". 

Since the whole "apologetics" business is concerned with loyalty to an ideology, if the Church chooses to follow the path of evolving humanity, it will have no use for such a futile enterprise. Finally the Church will join the human race! Also, atheists will find better things to do than waste their time refuting Christian Apologetics and Apologists . In other words everyone will be a winner!

And speaking of atheists, agnostics and skeptics, they have caught on and now denounce the whole apologetics enterprise of Christianity, (especially the Protestant/Evangelical branch) as unethical. 

A former Evangelical, Robert Price, points out three major ways in which Christian (Evangelical) Apologetics are unethical:

 "...First, 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 the,. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it plain that this is their intent. Just look at the title of McDowell's catalog of apologetics: Evidence That Demands A Verdict. Similarly, Clark Pinnock writes concerning the resurrection that, "Its evidence is sufficiently impressive to demand an answer from every non-Christian.". Fans of the Evangelical apologists delight in reciting the stories of former skeptics like John Warwick Montgomery, C. S. Lewis, Lew Wallace, and Frank Morison, who were "dragged kicking and screaming into the Kingdom of God" by the sheer weight of the evidence. It is apparent that such people would just love to drag in others the same way! But how biblical is all this? If one is interested in following the lead of the Apostle Paul at this point, and generally Evangelicals are supposed to be interested in this, one must question these tactics. Doesn't such evangelistic polemicizing amount to resorting to "wise and persuasive words" instead of the "demonstration of the Spirit's power"? Won't a faith established on such apologetical arguments "rest on man's wisdom" instead of "on God's power"? (I Corinthians 2:4-5). And what happens if one day these arguments no longer seem to be so compelling? Good-bye faith!..."

 "...Second, I suspect that most apologists do not really know whether their arguments are inherently convincing or not, since they themselves came to faith on different grounds entirely. To hear them tell it, some were persuaded by the arguments of, for instance, Montgomery and Morison. But in my experience, apologetic arguments are used for propaganda or legitimation purposes by people whose faith comes from a Christian upbringing or a conversion based on existential factors. I doubt that they themselves believe in, e.g., the resurrection of their Savior because of supposedly cogent arguments. I think this implies some subtle but real dishonesty. More importantly, it would help us understand how it is that such bright people can be caught using such a raft of absolutely terrible arguments..." 

 "...Third, a qualm about the method of argument used by apologists. I often have the feeling that apologists, whether scholarly or popular, are willing to use any argument no matter how dubious as long as it stands a chance of convincing an unbeliever. Whatever the evidence might suggest in and of itself, the apologist's faith make him subconsciously assume that the truest interpretation of the facts must be the one which bests fits his convictions. However, he proceeds to offer this interpretation as the one which makes the best inductive sense of the facts themselves. This ground-shifting no doubt goes unnoticed by the apologists themselves, who have sincerely good intentions..." (see: Beyond Born Again by R. Price, Section II-- The Evangelical Apologists: Are They Reliable? See also Contra Craig (Dr. William Lane Craig))

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Continued:

Pt: 2. The Failure of Bible Apologetics
Pt: 3 The God Beyond Apologetics