1:53 "I can't think of a single instance off the top of my head of someone coming to theism because of the arguments being used"
I can think of quite a few. Daniel Howard-Snyder, Edward Feser, Peter Van Inwagen, William P. Alston, and CS Lewis all converted from atheism to Christianity. Yujin Nagasawa also became a theist, though he is not a Christian at the moment.
2:14 "...apologetics is giving people who already believe in god reason to hold the view more than just this feeling they get"
1. On face value, this is not even an issue. It's just a talking point. Should you not have reasons to believe in what you do? Should you not seek answers to questions you have? Why would I want anyone to leave the faith, especially for inadequate reasons?
I'll grant some people may do this, but it is quite disingenuous to shoehorn most apologists into this one small category of the community.
2. Dave does not have access to everyone's motivations, I, along with the other bloggers here, write in hopes that we will lead non-believers to Christ, but we also want believers who have questions. Apologetics is for both the believer and non-believer, it cuts both ways.
2:37 (paraphrased) "If you read Craig's conversion story, he is very candid he's very candid about it he talks about...how he had an experience at school and he saw people who seemed to be on a different realm that him...and he developed a career coming up with arguments to say it's more than a fuzzy feeling"
This is severely mistaken.
1. The moving of the holy spirit is predicted on Christian theism, this is not some foreign idea.
2. Craig was not a philosopher at the time, nor did he study it. He was most likely unaware of the rigorous philosophical defenses of Christian theism.
3. Craig defends reformed epistemology, which cuts deeper than just a "warm fuzzy feeling". This is easily accessible information. As someone who claims to be a counter-apologist AS WELL as trying to do a PhD by publication, I expected Dave to know better.
8:09 " It is so often the case that you hear the same two, three, four, five arguments that there are"
1. All it takes is one theistic argument to be sound, no matter how many times it is repeated.
2. There are quite a number of theistic arguments out there, such as the argument from embodied moral agents (See Blake Giunta's beliefmap.org), the argument from collections by Menzel, The argument from numbers by Goldschmidt, I could go on and on, but I think my point is clear.
8:58 "They've read William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga or whoever their favorite pop apologist is"
This is quite shallow. It seems Dave doesn't know the field, nor it's history well.
1. A 'pop apologist" is someone like Frank Turek or J. Warner Wallace. To shoehorn 3 of the most influential philosophers of the modern era into that category shows a lack of knowledge in the subject.
2. Has he read these men's CV's? Take a look at Craig's, Swinburne's as well as Plantinga's. Is that really "pop apologist' to you?
3. All of Craig's publications speak for themselves. Swinburne has worked rigorously his whole academic career bridging his work from the philosophy of science, religion and philosophical theology together. He is widely regarded as one of the most well read men in the field. Alvin Plantinga revived philosophy of religion in the 60's from the shackles of logical positivism. Plantinga broke new ground in religious epistemology as well. His work there will be talked about so long as the field is still around.
I highly recommend Trent Dougherty's channel on the work of Swinburne. As for Plantinga, check out the work of Andrew Moon and Tyler McNabb.
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