From the first time I heard the word "apologetics" I didn't like it. It sounds like we are apologizing. I know that's not what it means in its more academic sense, but I still don't like it. Apologetics is the inquiry and response to questions of truth. And, I suppose, as a person who has always wanted to try to "get to the bottom" of truth, I find myself sometimes being considered an apologist. See how the word feels weird? Would you want to be considered an apologist?
Rather than talk today about dialectical polemics and competing world views, I want to start before that. In a sense, those debates and discussions are the conversations once you have begun the race. What I'd rather talk about are things that happen before you even get to the starting line, before you even start the conversation. These are not "what you think" ideas, they are "why you think what you think" ideas. And I find myself frustrated often with the way people enter the race or the discussion. What I mean is that in the idea of enlightened debate, many people do not question their starting premises. They take de-facto their ground of reason and then enter the conversation without ever questioning their reasoning methodology or their prevailing mindset that has taken hold in them even before they entered the conversation.
Let me be frank. Unless you think at a higher level, your thinking will only be the result of all of us being rats in a maze, who's decisions and directions are dictated by the prevailing influences in our culture and in our world. This is what you've been taught to think, and like a rat in a maze, this is what you will think. Unless... Unless you question those things, the foundations of the thought culture you were raised in (the air you breathe as far as reason is concerned) you are starting the conversation completely predisposed to already believe something. In other words, you are not open to truth and weren't open to it even when you began the race. You entered already thinking a certain way about things, because that's the way you were taught to think about them. What I'm saying is, before you start trying to discern truth by asking questions, you have to ask more basic questions. You have to ask, "how am I predisposed to think, and why?" The unenlightened person will say, "I'm NOT predisposed, I'm rational and open." Nonsense.
Most of us, you and I, have been raised in a secular philosophical world view that is humanist at its core. If you don't know that, you've lost touch with the air you're breathing. From the start, the academic culture of our contemporary western world, teaches a culture of humanism and secular and scientific rationalism. This is a method of thinking, it is a "school of thought," it is not truth itself. Do you know this? To be an open thinker, you must begin by questioning not first what you think, but the culture that taught you what you think and how you think. Most people never do this. What this means is, when they ask questions of truth, they will challenge many things, but they will never challenge their own basis of thinking - the very mode of thought that they use to try to think. Without challenging this, we are never open to truth in actuality, we are only rats going for the cheese that we have been enculturated to eat. Said another way, we will always only believe what we WANT to believe, regardless of whether it's true or not because it's what the system trained you to do. And what we want to believe will be what is consistent with the cheese we've been taught to find by the systems and assumptions of thought that were fed to us from our earliest days. It means that without questioning the mode, the culture, and the assumptions of how you think and what the premises are, you are likely to be the least objective person in the conversation.
Said another way, you can only measure something with a measuring instrument that is independent of the thing you are measuring. If you want to measure the length of a board, you must use a ruler that is a distinct measuring device from the board itself. This is the only way to get an objective measurement. Otherwise you are only left with one possible conclusion of your measurement and that would be to say "my board is about as long as a board." This non-objective measuring is the way I observe most people thinking in the realm of apologetics. They are measuring questions of truth (their board) with the same reasoning system. They are measuring a board not with an objective measuring instrument, they are measuring their board with their board. What this means is that the "quality" of their measurement (their search for truth) is poor because their premise of measuring is unquestioned at the start. They never undertake a "quality search" because they don't know that they are predisposing their search to find what they want to find, not to find what is true.
Ultimately there are only two basic platforms of reasoning. One is a secular humanist platform - with man being the center and the highest. The other is religious, with God being the center and the highest. Both sides are at risk of this non-questioning non-objectivity. Both are at risk of running their every thought through their filter that is predisposed toward their bias. But the one who's at much greater risk today, are the secular humanists because secular humanism is the "lingua franca" of western intellectual culture. We've all been raised in it - which means we are all predisposed to this side of non-objective thinking.
Four and five hundred years ago, it was the other way around. The religious mindset governed most intellectual explorations, so the religious person was more at risk of non-objectivity. I suspect that's what spawned much of what is called the enlightenment - although moving away from God can only be called "endarkenment."
If you're reading this and thinking, "well David, as a religious person, you are just as at risk of this non-objectivity," that would be a fair criticism. However, in my case, this religious position is a complete reversal from what I was raised in and what I was taught to think. And, probably not a day goes by that I don't question it.
None of us will be totally enlightened. But to get closer rather than farther, if you want truth, you have to start by challenging the ways you have been taught to think and the presuppositions that you are inclined to advance. Said another way, "the person who comes to believe what they didn't want to be true, is the person really worth listening to." The person who simply advances or embraces an ideology that is consistent with the framework they were raised in, is less persuasive.
