I once attended an apologetical talk given by the Christian Union at my college. (They were offering free food.) The invited speaker presented a version of C. S. Lewis’s trilemma: liar, lunatic or lord? (a kind of proof by alliteration).
I spoke to the speaker afterwards and took him to task for presenting such a silly argument, which I said was hardly likely to convince anyone not already a Christian. He freely admitted the logical flaws in the trilemma argument, and said that his own personal justifications for belief were quite different—he appealed, if I recall correctly, to his personal experience and to William Paley’sargument from design—but he said that these kinds of justifications didn’t go down so well with the members of the Christian Union who had invited him to speak, and that the trilemma was “the kind of thing people expected to hear” at these events. So this one speaker was quite clear about the nature of the audience for an apologetical lecture.
I once attended an apologetical talk given by the Christian Union at my college. (They were offering free food.) The invited speaker presented a version of C. S. Lewis’s trilemma: liar, lunatic or lord? (a kind of proof by alliteration).
I spoke to the speaker afterwards and took him to task for presenting such a silly argument, which I said was hardly likely to convince anyone not already a Christian. He freely admitted the logical flaws in the trilemma argument, and said that his own personal justifications for belief were quite different—he appealed, if I recall correctly, to his personal experience and to William Paley’s argument from design—but he said that these kinds of justifications didn’t go down so well with the members of the Christian Union who had invited him to speak, and that the trilemma was “the kind of thing people expected to hear” at these events. So this one speaker was quite clear about the nature of the audience for an apologetical lecture.
Hey, are you the same Gareth Rees I remember from the IF Community, years back? If so, cheers. Nice seeing your name again.