My approach to apologetics is to engage with theology, especially Christian theology, from the least dogmatic perspective possible. What do I mean by that? The definition of dogma that I believe represents the least favorable approach to defending the faith is:

a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds.

Why do I say that

dogmatism

is the least favorable approach to apologetics? It's my belief that the underpinning of philosophy and its various schools of thought agree that what distinguishes knowledge from belief is your ability to provide evidence for what you claim to know. Dogmatism, on the other hand, explicitly makes the case for what one claims to know without providing evidence for it, which notably places what one claims to know in the realm of unproven knowledge, or in other words, belief.

I'm not saying that belief is a bad thing. I'm not even saying that belief isn't explicitly mentioned in the Bible, or that it is a worthless endeavor. What I am saying is that defending the faith is not just a matter of belief. It can be done through logic—and yes, even empirical evidence. Yes, you read that right. I am saying that there is sufficient

evidence

for the belief in God such that belief in God does not need to be a strictly dogmatic claim.

You may have heard the statement popularized by Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." What this means is that Mr. Sagan and others who are subscribers to that philosophy believe that our claim of belief in God, or that there is a God is an extraordinary claim. Of course, this position is predicated on the notion that God is extraordinary, or unlike anything else in nature. Indeed, Mr. Sagan, God is extraordinary because there is nothing like Him.

The rub, I assure you, is not because God as revealed in the Bible claims to be unlike anything in nature. It's because the analysis that God exists is approached from a perspective that only natural things exist. It's a pity that the naturalists can't see the dogmatism in this perspective, because in order for it to be true, one necessarily must ignore the infinite regress that comes of it. Ignoring logical fallacies or unproven information is a dogmatic position, for the record.

Indeed, the claim that nature produces nature is an extraordinary claim in that, as far as I can tell, there's no basis in reality where this is proven. It seems to me that many are simply accepting the naturalist position simply because naturalists unequivocally claim that naturalism provides the most parsimonious explanation for all that exists. Who said that naturalism was the most parsimonious? What evidence is there for its ease of explanation?

Contrarily, the more you press the naturalist, the more they rely on logical fallacies, complex webs of allegedly connected empirical facts, and storytelling to create a loosely held together version of reality. The common denominator in the naturalist position is that given enough time, and enough spontaneity in a system, diversity will emerge in said system—an interesting conclusion considering that said perspective is both impossible to prove simply due to its scope of inquiry, and impossible to reproduce. In fact, I would argue that the naturalist position is the least simple explanation for reality because it requires the most explaining away of what ought to be simple answers, which contradicts the very heart of Occam's Razor.

I encourage you to read through the series on apologetics. I will walk you through why God as the Creator of all reality is the most parsimonious, or simplest explanation why anything exists at all. We'll engage with the arguments and alleged claims that theology is extraordinary and debunk that position by demonstrating that there is a simple path to proving the existence of God both empirically and logically. The apologetic will lay out a simple empirical methodology to demonstrate how humans are aware of God, and why God could not be a product of the human mind. We'll do this without weaving together a web of stories or disparate facts. At the end of this series, you can easily debunk the claim that God's existence is an extraordinary claim, and subsequently prove that naturalism is the least parsimonious explanation for why anything exists at all.

Thanks for reading!