Yes, Apologists Lie to Kids for a Living

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Do Christian apologists lie to children for a living? I said this in a video and it caused a lot of people to kind of push back. And when I said it out loud, like I was very intentional about saying it. I thought about it before I did the video. So I like it wasn't just an off-the cuff thing. Like I'm very comfortable standing by this statement that Christian apologists lie to children for a living. So I want to talk about that a little bit in this video and kind of like how I'm thinking about this, why I'm willing to say that and why probably a little bit more on why Christian apologetics bothers me so much. Now, I need to remind you before I start that this isn't like a hypothetical critique of some outsider looking at this phenomenon of Christian apologetics. I've actually lived it. I actually lived growing up in that Christian apologetics complex. So, I know how it works. I know how it feels on you as an individual and I know what it did to my brain. I know the brainwashing tactics that apologists use and I know how lied to I felt after I left. So, when I say Christian apologists lie to kids for a living, that's what I'm saying. I've I've lived this. I've experienced it and I'm quite comfortable um standing by that statement. So, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. Now, my engagement with Christian apologetics probably started when I was maybe 16 or 17. Um went up into my mid to late 20s.

[00:01:13]Um and you know, when I was 17, 18, 19year-old, we can quibble over definitions, but to me, like that's a kid. Like when you're when I see Christian apologists going to to college campuses to argue with 17 and 18 year olds and these men are like in their 40s or 50s or whatever, that bothers me.

[00:01:30]Like that's a grown man going to a college campus to debate with a kid. And that really is weird to me. One of the things that came up a lot in the video in the comments was a lot of people were comparing this to the idea of parents telling their kids about Santa Claus.

[00:01:44]Now, I don't think this is a perfect analogy because presumably apologists actually believe what they're saying.

[00:01:49]And when a parent tells their kid about Santa Claus, um, they know it's not true. But it is actually a really interesting analogy, I think, because on the one hand, it fails completely. Like, it's nothing like telling your kids about Santa Claus. But I want to actually think this through because it's fun to think about and I think it's actually a cool thought experiment. If I'm telling my kid about Santa Claus, they're going out into the world and they're going to face some opposition.

[00:02:11]They're going to face other kids in their class who have parents who tell them there's no Santa Claus. And fine, that's part of telling your kids about Santa Claus. If you've ever done it, you know that that's a part of it. But I want you to think about this. If if I if telling your kids about Santa Claus was the equivalent of Christian apologetics.

[00:02:28]This is what it would be like.

[00:02:29]Essentially, it's not just about telling your kids about the existence of Santa Claus who brings presents. Imagine little Johnny coming home from school one day and saying, "Dad, Kevin doesn't believe in Santa Claus." And me saying, "Yeah, Kevin's family doesn't believe in Santa Claus." Because of that, they have no hope. They have nothing to live for.

[00:02:47]They have no hope in this life. They're really sad. Their lives are really empty. And in fact, like there are lots of people on our street. If you look at the people who live around us, a lot of them don't believe in Santa Claus.

[00:02:57]Because of that, their lives are extremely miserable. They just they don't really have anything to live for because they don't believe in Santa Claus. We do, but they don't. Maybe at some point little Johnny says, "Well, they seem like good people." And the response is, "Well, no, they can't be good people because actually fundamentally there is no ethics outside of Santa Claus. Like if you don't have Santa Claus telling you what's right and what's wrong, if you don't have Santa Claus um if you're not on the good, you know, the nice and the naughty list, if you don't believe that exists, you don't have any basis for living a good life.

[00:03:26]You don't have any reason for your morality. It's just arbitrary. And then little Johnny goes to school. Let's keep imagining this. Little Johnny goes to school and comes across a science teacher who says, "Actually, it's impossible for Santa Claus to go around the world in one night and to go down all those chimneys." And little Johnny comes home and dad says, "Yeah, well that science teacher is actually biased against miracles because it's possible that this is a miracle, but that science teacher doesn't take miracles into consideration when they teach science.

[00:03:54]And that's why they can't believe in Santa Claus because they don't take miracles seriously. This is a miracle."

[00:04:00]Not only that, but that science teacher probably was really hurt. That science teacher is a skeptic. So that science teacher is actually really biased. And not only that, little Johnny says this dad, but when you go out in the world, you're going to come across a whole bunch of people who don't believe in Santa Claus and who are angry at Santa Claus and who will write books and who will tell you that there's no Santa Claus. But I have the these books that I got you and all of these books are defenses of Santa Claus by people who know that Santa Claus exists and they will tell you the truth. Some of them have studied the science, some of them are physicists, whatever. They will tell you the truth about Santa Claus. You can't trust any of the people out there to talk about Santa Claus because they're all biased. They're all they're all angry at Santa Claus. We know the truth. And for that reason, we only should really listen to people in our community who can tell you the truth about Santa Claus. So, you see where this is going. And on the one hand, this comparison is absolutely ridiculous. But on the other hand, as I thought it through, I thought this is actually really, really apt. It's actually a really good comparison and a good explanation for why I think apologists lie to kids. It's not that apologists lie to kids because, you know, they think Jesus raised from the dead and they tell them that. Like that's not the lie. That is, you know, some people would call that a lie. If you're, you know, if you don't believe that happened, you might call that a lie. I don't actually think that's the lie. But what I think happens is that you carefully construct a world often for children. And again, I grew up in this where certain type of questions are anticipated and kids are basically warned away from them before they can even ask them. Certain type of experts are anticipated and kids are warned against trusting them even before they can meet those experts and hear from them. They're already like they pre preemptively um got to the kids to warn them off of certain expertise.

[00:05:46]Apologetics creates a deep sense of mistrust for actual experts. And that could be biblical scholars, it could be scientists, it could be a lot of different types of experts, people who have studied for a living. And apologetics frames a lot of those people as if they just have an axe to grind, as if they're just ideologically motivated when actually the apologist is ideologically motivated. It seems perfectly legitimate that there are different points of view in the world about God, for example. But to poison the well for a teenager before they ever even come into contact with those different points of view by preemptively causing them to mistrust authority, that's lying. That's like that's a lie.

[00:06:21]That's the lie. But then it goes even further than this because the lie is embedded in the anthropological construction of a community that when you're in a community that you have to pay homage to the lie that apologetics sells you and believe that everyone outside has no reason for living and believe that everyone outside has no way to tell the difference between right and wrong and like all these stupid apologetics talking points that I hear on a fairly regular basis. This is also a huge part of the lie and again preemptively creates kids who are terrified of these like insider outsider divides and like just absolutely terrified of outsiders. I remember when I went away to university, I was warned away from philosophy classes. I was warned away from science by Christian apologetics. I never I didn't do a science class after grade 10, but I did a philosophy class in university. And it was dominated by a certain assumption that the philosophy teacher would try to make me disbelieve God. And I'm sorry to say that because I was so steeped in Christian apologetics, I went in thinking that my teachers had very little to teach me because I was preemptively like programmed to believe that they were going to try to convince me to not believe in God or convince me, you know, that Christianity was a lie or whatever. I was programmed by years of Christian apologetics before I ever stepped foot in a classroom to believe that those people were dangerous to me and that I needed to have my guard up and that I needed to be ready to answer and to fight and that essentially my undergraduate degree was a battleground for my faith. That's the way that I was raised to see the world. And when you create a world where kids aren't allowed to question, when you create a world where kids mistrust authority, mistrust especially mistrust field specific authorities, when you create a world where kids are terrified of outsiders and are afraid of them and judge them so harshly as to assume they can't even have basic ethics or basic reason for living if they aren't in your religion.

[00:08:12]That's lying to kids. Apologists lie to kids. I was lied to. I stand by it.

[00:08:18]Thanks for listening.