AKTR

@KatiePMcGrady @CNN Praying.

On @CNN in about 10 minutes. Appreciate your prayers.

@No5mallf3at I’m in this tweet and I don’t like it

I would really like to be educated in everything right now. I’m way too old for how dumb I am.

@RhyminCarly @AppalachianPoet Praying for both of these intentions.

@AppalachianPoet of course. 🙏

Can you pray for a young man who is having a hard time?

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ I mostly agree with this but don’t see how it undermines the view about the kinds of conclusions apologetic arguments can deliver that I sketched above, since the kinds of conclusions I presented are compatible with doubt.

@AKTR33 @2Philosophical_ x.com/freganmitts/st…

The problem here is that literally all parties in this conversation are writing about things they don’t know enough about.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ (Obviously I know you don’t accept this account of faith & I’m not trying to convince you of it here, just explaining why I think my qualified defense of apologetics isn’t vulnerable to this objection.)

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ W.r.t. faith, I follow Vatican I in holding that, e.g., phil & hist args can provide motives for cooperating w/the grace God offers to make the act of faith, faith itself is produced by grace, so once it exists it doesn’t depend on args in the way you’re worried about.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ What do you mean by proof here? It doesn’t seem to me like I need to hold that philosophical arguments often provide strict deductive certainty to hold that they can establish modest conclusions of the sort I pointed to above.

@AKTR33 @2Philosophical_ The only place philosophical arguments work as proofs is in logic, but most philosophical questions are not logical ones.

@PAHoyeck Also your dislike of a moment in a certain respect arguably doesn’t preclude it being magical in the relevant sense.

Me: I love you so much. Every moment with you is so magical. Girlfriend: Not every moment. Sometimes I burp and you don't like that. Me (sighing): Okay, *some* moments with you are suboptimal. *Most* moments are magical.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ inconclusive reasons to believe this?” & I think there are historical & metaphysical args that can help w/questions like that.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ I guess it depends on what you count as satisfying. I mostly agree about history & think true metaphysical demonstrations are v. rare, but I think a lot of ppl go to popapologetics wondering e.g. is there decisive reason to think this is false?” or “are there good if ultimately

@younan3000 Praying, Father.

Please pray for the new Chaldean Patriarch, Paul III Nona.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ apologetics deflects attention from the centrality of the existential/meaning dimension in a way that’s unhelpful. Btw @rk_wiggs could see you having some helpful insight on this if you wanted to weigh in!

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ I guess I’d say it can but doesn’t have to & that some people whose interest in religion ultimately comes from an existential/meaning-bases concern will often have historical/metaphysical doubts or questions that are worth addressing. But I could buy an argument that modern pop

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ It’s true that most pop apologetics doesn’t explicitly refer to the existential/meaning side of the question of religious belief but I think usually people only engage with apologetics if they have some preexisting existential, etc interest in religion.

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ on its own pwr but at giving reasons to believe that resolve doubts/make the issue more tractable. Or at least nothing in the args requires a stronger aim than this. Admittedly I haven’t read/heard a lot of pop apologetics tho so I cd easily be wrong

@freganmitts @2Philosophical_ Could you say a bit more about what you take the project to be and why you think it’s terrible?

@2Philosophical_ I mean cards on the table I think the entire popular apologetics project is terrible and needs to end. But it seems better than like Lee Strobel or something.