Apologetics as Warfare?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Dear reader, indulge me in a little speculation:

A man approaches you with the intent of forcefully stealing your wallet.

You not only disagree with the man himself, you disagree with his entire worldview. In a no-doubt convoluted series of reasons, this man has concluded that it is perfectly ok to steal your wallet.

Here we are presented with two opposing worldviews (yours, and the thief’s). While the two ideas are different in a conceptual “abstract” sense, they will have immediate results in the “real” world.

You will fight off the thief in order to keep him from getting your wallet!

Did you just engage in apologetics?

If you say “no” then you have to draw the line at speculative “non-physical” actions and admit that only abstract thought processes can be rightly called “apologetics.”

But, that doesn’t make sense does it? Apologetics by nature involve an interaction with the world via some physical means…usually by voice, or by letter. But is this a necessary distinction? Do we just arbitrarily deny the title “apologetics” to other actions?

Now, we can obviously agree that certain forms of apologetics at certain times are unethical. But then, if we want to claim that violence is a valid tool of apologetic methodology, we only need to appeal to a proper system of ethics.

My point here is…perhaps apologetics is more than just writing and speaking, but can also be a physical clash of ideas on the battlefield?

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

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  1. Action is not only prompted by belief. So in fighting back you are not necessarily fighting back some perspective of reality through unconvential, and illogical means (note: not alogical, as in in the absence of logic. Illogical, as in engaging in logic which is fault, because you appeal to violence to prove your point and that’s an ad hom.)

  2. Apologetic comes down to using cold hard logical principles to defend one’s “abstract” position, and bashing the skull of the guy questioning your beliefs is not much of a defense. He may still be right, and you may still be wrong even though you’re physically left according to some ground rules to be layed out for rightness and wrongness…good ol’ logical principles presumably.

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Action is not only prompted by belief.

What else prompts it? I suppose you could be one of those strict behavoristic determinists that say all action is caused by antecedent phyiscial processes, but then the nature of apologetics would still be in question.

Illogical, as in engaging in logic which is fault, because you appeal to violence to prove your point and that’s an ad hom

Any logic book will tell you that not all ad hominem appeals are fallacious. My suggestion here is perhaps more analogous to the “ad baculum” fallacy. But, just as not all Ad hom’s are fallacious, couldn’t it also be true that not all ad baculum appeals are fallacious?

Either way…fallacious or not, the nature of the physical action is still in question.

There are many apologies that are fallacious, but that doesn’t disqualify them from being apologies.

bashing the skull of the guy questioning your beliefs is not much of a defense.

I disagree. I think it is a very effective way to win an argument. Here again…the fact that it may be fallacious isn’t the issue.

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Are a dog’s actions prompted by belief?

My bad…I meant to say appeal to the stick.

An appeal to the stick is an effective factual counter example to some arguments. That is, only arguments in which the argumenter states that he will defeat you in a fight via premises and conclusions could be shown to have a false conclusion if you then appeal to violence and defeat him. Such a counter argument would be effective because it is possible for this type of argument to work in destroying the other argument. A counter argument that can’t possibly put a dent onto the argument isn’t effective, and a majority of arguments don’t conclude with “I would win against you in a fight,” so an appeal to the stick isn’t at all effective in the majority of cases.

True, one can use bad apologetics in one’s defense of one’s own position…the implication being that logic is involved; it’s just is bad logic.

It still seems a bit odd to say one engages in logical debate when wrestling with another person when the nature of the debate has nothing to do with physical strength, though I suppose it’s not technically incorrect to say so, since such a tactic would be valid in other circumstances. sheesh…

So you think that I, an atheist, would have put forth an ‘effective’ counter-argument to your theistic position if I killed you? I don’t think it’s ‘effective,’ at all, given that it’s impossible for such an argument, in a majority of cases, to be successful. You wouldn’t be incorrect in saying I engaged in apologetics by killing you, I guess, but I don’t think your position would be in any risk of being shown inconsistent or false if you, the argumenter of such a position, were murdered by someone who disagrees, me. A philosopher’s positions aren’t invalidated the second they are killed…less said philosophers positions said “I won’t ever die.”

Winning an argument as I understand it requires that the winner have won in accord to the principles at play. A game of football can’t be won by a team if the team kills the other team members. It can only be “won” if a team abides by the rules of the game, in that they score more points. An appeal to violence in the overwhelming majority of arguments, isn’t a winning argument nor is it an effective apologetic attempt.

I think your point in this thread is to show through modus tollens that any position which implies violence can be shown to be false if one negates the implication of such a position, violence, through violence…so I’ll just roll with this assumption, and try to show why it fails.

  1. Violence is not necessarily prompted by belief.
  2. Even if violence is necessarily prompted by belief, defeating a person in a fight doesn’t negate the consequent of their argument, and as such their argument would still stand.

Let’s suppose a person’s belief system, X, implies that violence is good, Y (X–>Y) To show that x is false, you could go about it by showing Y is false, (~Y, therefore ~X, MT) viz by showing that violence isn’t good…that it’s bad. But by fighting and defeating such a person, you would only be showing that, a)violence is also implied by your own system of belief, and b) you’re stronger than him. You wouldn’t be showing that x is false. In fact, even if you did show that x is false via a negation of y through an appeal to violence, then you would effectively negate your own system of belief which implied violence.

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There is a problem in your logic. The man has certainly “reasons” for stealing, but I wouldn’t immediately assume that he concludes that “it is perfectly ok” to steal. If this were the case he would assume that everybody is stealing to some degree, which would raise the question whether this is a reality in his experience. If he doesn’t think it is ok, he is acting against his own convictions – probably out of need or because he feels forced to do so. I wouldn’t want to ignore this perspective because if I deal with this one person, others will follow, so my interest must be to get rid of the problem, not just a symptom.

Do we have different world views? I don’t know. If we both believe that we identify ourselves and our status in society by what we own, that it is desirable to own nice and perhaps expensive things, that it should be normal that everybody has some money in a wallet, then it isn’t a case of two opposing worldviews but two people attempting to realise their world views from different positions.

If we, on the other hand, do not believe that we identify ourselves and our status in society by what we own, that it is desirable to own nice and perhaps expensive things, that it should be normal that everybody has some money in a wallet, but the thief does, then it is a case of two opposing worldviews. We could give the thief the wallet and tell him that he needs a different outlook on life.

Your description was of the defence of a position, but it wasn’t systematic, so I’m not sure whether you can speak of apologetics.

So, you would rather have seen that the Christian apologetics hit opponents of their doctrines over the head? Well, Rome did have a number of people imprisoned, tortured and killed to “defend the faith”, so perhaps you are keeping up the Roman Catholic position.

This does raise the question of why you would want to have ideas clash on a battlefield, although my imagination does suggest several possibilities. It is really the same as what Pharisees throughout the centuries have always done, tacking and turning, trying to find another way to enforce “God’s will” on others. But, if the kingdom of God is about “righteousness and peace and joy in Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17b), it wouldn’t be fitting to defend Christianity in that way, would it?

Shalom

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Apologetics? I don’t see this as anything but a clash between someone defending his rights against another who has set up his own personal double standard. Most people like that don’t think at all, they just react as their emotional wants drive them.

And if you wait for a situation of self defense to try to work all this out in your head, or worse, argue with him, the best that will happen is that you only loose your wallet.

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I think XZC gets what I’m saying.

For the purposes of this thread, I could care less if the apology is ethical or even logical, I’m more interested in its actual classification.

(I’m interested in this because I’m currently trying to build a Christian Just War theory. If I can classify physical actions as “apologies” then I can systematically apply the ethics of evangelism to apologetics, which can be used as a guide to our warfare.)

That being the case, then Bob…your nit-picking at my illustration doesn’t really help. I’m sure I could have come up with one that is more systematically consistent with what I’m trying to figure out, but as far as it goes, it gets the job done.

Your argument against calling warfare “apologetics” is this:

Your description was of the defence of a position, but it wasn’t systematic, so I’m not sure whether you can speak of apologetics.

A few points about this.

One…I’m not trying to dogmatically defend the idea that “warfare can be classed as apologetics” so please don’t misunderstand me. I’m simply trying to see if this idea “works.”

Two…I would disagree that the violence involved is not systematic. It may not systematically or consistently defend the idea that you think it should be defending, but suppose a punch is the physical manifestation of the idea that “I will hit.” A block would be a defensive apology against the idea “He will hit.”

Three…Even were you correct about the violence not being systematic…why would that disqualify it from being an apology?

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Hi Shotgun.

that wasn’t nit picking, I saw where you were going before you actually said it:

This is what appalls me the most about you and you kind. You have the gall to talk about being Christian but want to find a justification for war! These positions are opposed to each other. When will you understand that!

Shalom (for God’s sake!)

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So says the guy who is acting out based on his own Just War Theory.

Perhaps instead of focusing on “you people” you should try to contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way?

I would love to know why physical actions should not be classed as “apologetics.” The reason you’ve given so far doesn’t satisfy my curiosity.

Also, I think your view of what constitutes a Just War theory is a bit narrow. As my opening statement alluded to, you are obviously responding to me in this thread along the lines of SOME sort of ethic of engagement that you hold to.

Hope this helps clarify my position some for you.

God bless

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Are you considering ‘the ethics of evangelism’ to be the conversion of non-believers to Christianity? How would resorting to warfare to achieve that be determined a ‘just cause’? Killing some people without converting them and thus condemning them to eternal damnation as a means of ultimately saving others from that same eternal damnation?

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Well, don’t misunderstand me here.

I’d like to avoid any “nightmare” sort of scenerio that keeps many non-Christians awake at night…(and even some of the more humanistic modernists like Bob…)

I’m not trying to launch any sort of new crusade or anything.

You see in my view, apologetics is a sub-class of evangelism. When we do apologetics, the Christian has to keep in mind certain things like “loving attitudes” etc. (I’ll not delve into an ethic of apologetics.) So you see, the goal of evangelism affects your desired goal of apologetics. And if warfare can really be defined as “apologetics” then so to would the ethics behind it be easier to untangle.