Don't know if a lot of you share this perception, but around the 2000's and 2010's (hard to specify when) but I recall a period when there were so many forums and websites (including this one) that hosted so many intense debates between Atheists/Agnostics and Christians, debates that got incredibly heated. I, like many, it was the time I became interested in Christian apologetics, and examine critically the claims of Christendom. It was the time when folks like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett (Atheist side), William Lane Craig, Norman Geisler, and Ben Witherington III (Christian side) duked it out on public debates. Coinciding with that era, it was also, what I would consider the golden era of Theologyweb.
But in time the debates seemed to me have withered down overtime, and hard for me to say exhaustively what factors drove that if not a gradual loss of interest on both parties. The challenges of Christian and/or Non-Christian claims aren't as common as they used to be, almost as if we've reached a sort of "truce" in regards to a good chunk of our beliefs. One analysis caught my eye, and one with a very interesting argument with plausible explanation as to how it happened. It's called the "Apologetics Death Spiral", a term coined by a Political Science Youtuber called PresidentSunday, the one making the analysis, and part of an overarching critique he is preparing towards the Christian Apologetics Movement that became a powerful cultural force around the late 2000's and early 2010's and how it whittled down. It is derived from this twitter thread in a discussion with Prof. Matt McManus :
https://twitter.com/MattPolProf/stat...03723731791873
This is something to consider, because in the case of TWeb itself, I argue it more or less fits on what I have observed (since I returned about a 2 months ago) as to why threads involving theology are few but the ones involving civics are rampant, and at lowbrow quality. It is part of a much wider trend observed in the latest waves of tensions and fighting amongst the various manifestations between Left and Right wingers of all kinds of stripes in the Western World and her peripheries.
The analysis goes like this:
1: When ideological partisans assume bad faith on the part of their opponents, they don't argue the points carefully according to their merits but focus on a "reciprocal" fostering of prejudice against them in the minds of laypeople and kids.
2. These are then encouraged to engage in that activity of ideological seeding themselves, with the result that the major intellectual presence and most reliable source of cultural strength for these positions is the intimidation factor of the rabble.
3. You can't fight a hooting rabble by reasoning through their arguments with them like you might a student. You reply in kind. You seed the ground with prejudicing messages against the other party and generate a rabble of your own.
4. Eventually the rabble is all that's left, and since the conversation has now become dead ended and boring, the world passes it by while the competing rabbles obsessively fight each other in some forgotten and neglected corner somewhere.
I (PresidentSunday) call it the apologetics death spiral because this is exactly what happened with the New Atheists and the apologetics movement.
For those of us who involved in Christian Apologetics in any measure, wether in lay form or in full time ministry, I don't think this is something to be ignored, especially when the quality of the debates started to drop in poor quality, case in point; the Bill Nye vs Ken Ham debate (Who remembers that cringefest of an exchange? ).
I eventually want to take a look at PresidentSunday's critique of the apologetics movement as soon as it comes out (for the record, he professes to be a Christian, I think non-denominational) and discuss it here in TWeb with you guys, especially with you fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as to the current state of online Christian Apologetics entering the 2020's.
What do you all think of this analysis? Think the Apologetics Death Spiral is an explanation as to the current state of TWeb and our respective societies in general?
But in time the debates seemed to me have withered down overtime, and hard for me to say exhaustively what factors drove that if not a gradual loss of interest on both parties. The challenges of Christian and/or Non-Christian claims aren't as common as they used to be, almost as if we've reached a sort of "truce" in regards to a good chunk of our beliefs. One analysis caught my eye, and one with a very interesting argument with plausible explanation as to how it happened. It's called the "Apologetics Death Spiral", a term coined by a Political Science Youtuber called PresidentSunday, the one making the analysis, and part of an overarching critique he is preparing towards the Christian Apologetics Movement that became a powerful cultural force around the late 2000's and early 2010's and how it whittled down. It is derived from this twitter thread in a discussion with Prof. Matt McManus :
https://twitter.com/MattPolProf/stat...03723731791873
This is something to consider, because in the case of TWeb itself, I argue it more or less fits on what I have observed (since I returned about a 2 months ago) as to why threads involving theology are few but the ones involving civics are rampant, and at lowbrow quality. It is part of a much wider trend observed in the latest waves of tensions and fighting amongst the various manifestations between Left and Right wingers of all kinds of stripes in the Western World and her peripheries.
The analysis goes like this:
1: When ideological partisans assume bad faith on the part of their opponents, they don't argue the points carefully according to their merits but focus on a "reciprocal" fostering of prejudice against them in the minds of laypeople and kids.
2. These are then encouraged to engage in that activity of ideological seeding themselves, with the result that the major intellectual presence and most reliable source of cultural strength for these positions is the intimidation factor of the rabble.
3. You can't fight a hooting rabble by reasoning through their arguments with them like you might a student. You reply in kind. You seed the ground with prejudicing messages against the other party and generate a rabble of your own.
4. Eventually the rabble is all that's left, and since the conversation has now become dead ended and boring, the world passes it by while the competing rabbles obsessively fight each other in some forgotten and neglected corner somewhere.
I (PresidentSunday) call it the apologetics death spiral because this is exactly what happened with the New Atheists and the apologetics movement.
For those of us who involved in Christian Apologetics in any measure, wether in lay form or in full time ministry, I don't think this is something to be ignored, especially when the quality of the debates started to drop in poor quality, case in point; the Bill Nye vs Ken Ham debate (Who remembers that cringefest of an exchange? ).
I eventually want to take a look at PresidentSunday's critique of the apologetics movement as soon as it comes out (for the record, he professes to be a Christian, I think non-denominational) and discuss it here in TWeb with you guys, especially with you fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as to the current state of online Christian Apologetics entering the 2020's.
What do you all think of this analysis? Think the Apologetics Death Spiral is an explanation as to the current state of TWeb and our respective societies in general?
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