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Christian apologetics
"Christians have gone to great lengths to develop a set of arguments defending themselves from what would otherwise be a damning indictment of history.
One is Cardinal Baronius' famous remark that "the Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." But this is demonstrably false. From the writers of the Old Testament to the popes and prophets of the modern Christian Church, the authors of Judeo-Christianity have attempted to explain just about everything that piqued their curiosity. This ranged from disease (a possession of devils) to the earth's origins (a six-day Creation week), from rain (an opening of water windows in the sky) to the arrangement of planets (hung like ornaments from the giant tent covering that formed the earth's sky). These explanatory efforts were real enough that Church elders could feel threatened by the appearance of rival scientific theories. Baronius' often-quoted remark is both historically and Biblically incorrect.
Another defense is that the Church cannot be blamed for everything done in its name. Granted, humans are not perfect, but one would certainly expect the Church leadership to be more divinely guided than the rest of us. The fact that popes and saints alike could promote slavery for 1,500 years without a single overt correction from God strongly suggests that they did not enjoy the access to him that they boasted.
And this highlights the central problem with Christian apologetics. If the Church were truly the source of All Truth, then it would have been on the cutting edge of science, not the persecutors of it. Instead of a vast field of theology entitled "apologetics," there should be something like "celebritics," a field celebrating all the scientific vindications of the Bible. But this field doesn't exist, and that is something else the apologists have to defend." |
