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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

I had to use an LLM to find out what a Christian Apologetic was. Apparently this means people or groups who seek to actively defend Christian beliefs (presumably against skeptics, atheists, etc) through formal reasoning and evidence.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_apologetics

In practice, I've found them to be more... convincing to the authors than the skeptics.

It's usually not designed to persuade skeptics, it's designed to persuade people who are on the fence about their faith, both the author and those who, like them, need an intellectual justification.

Nah, not even that. The only people who consume apologetics sincerely nowadays is Christians. They're not meant to convince anyone, they're meant to keep the crises of faith at bay.

I think you and I are saying the same thing. Apologetics are directed at current Christians who are on the fence and need an intellectual justification to stay.

"On the fence" is too strong a phrase for this situation, I think. They don't consume apologetics to push themselves back in, but rather to keep themselves completely immersed in the religion.

Nope, I'm speaking from personal experience with myself and others: apologetics is to keep those on the fence from jumping over entirely, and it does often work.

Apologetics comes from the greek work "apologia" which means "speaking in defense".

Imagine complaining that an LLM is hallucinating, because it's not accurately hallucinating your delusion.

Correct. Xe tried xir damnedest (pun intended) to become one growing up. It didn't take.

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