alt Hacker News>You'll never convince someone logically of something that has to be experienced viscerally.
While you might be right, Christianity in particular is based on truth claims, including specially the resurrection, so the Christian tradition places special emphasis on rational defense. Apologetics is not just a means to persuade others; it is also a means to persuade oneself.
Edit: Responses say that all religions involve truth claims. True, perhaps I was imprecise. I only mean that the Christian case is especially stark. St. Paul: "If Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain." I'm not aware of another faith tradition that considers itself to hang upon a single boolean.
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All religions are based on "truth claims", Christianity is nothing special in that regard. Ask a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew... They all have their professions of faith, and fervently believe their teachings are the truth.
> Christianity in particular is based on truth claims
As opposed to...? I'm not aware of any major religion that openly admit their teaching is made up BS. All seem to claim to know "the truth".
>You'll never convince someone logically of something that has to be experienced viscerally
"poofy guy in the sky doesnt care about war or rape or torture because someone ate an apple. sent his kid in the form of a human. kid was killed/human sacrificed. that saved all humanity. this doesn't stop rape, war, torture but it saved humanity"
the brain has to do some gymnastics to deal with dissonance
Actually, as a Christian (Catholic), I 100% agree with your assertion. While all regions claim truth, Christianity really centers itself on this idea.
In fact, this is repeated over and over again, so much so that I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the following during Homily: "In Christianity is not true, and Christ was proven to not have been risen, we should stop practicing it".
You quoted Saint Paul which is great and one can find plenty of other examples such as Lewis's trilemma: "Lord, Liar, Lunatic". [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma