The first inchoate retreat of the Philosopher-Apologist is the concept of non-overlapping magisteria popularized by palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 1997. To bolster the idea that religion is a reasonable worldview to have, he will insist that religion and science never, ever conflict because they answer different questions. Most often, he’ll explain that science answers the “how” questions of the world, whereas religion answers the “why” questions, or that science deals with testable claims while religion occupies a higher plane inaccessible to worldly processes. This view is particularly common among religious scientists.

The first problem with this otherwise intriguing idea is that religions make testable claims all the time. Earth at the center of the universe? Testable. The sky is a solid dome with all stars a fixed distance from the earth? Testable. Fossils were all laid down in a single flood event? Testable. The prophesied end times begin on December 21^st? Testable. An immortal soul makes the brain do what it does? Testable. Immodest women cause earthquakes? Homosexuals choose this lifestyle of their own accord and could just as easily choose to be straight? Prayer has medical applications? Testable, testable, testable. And every time one of these ideas fails its test, it blows a hole in the “religion” theory underlying it, just as failed tests undid the spontaneous generation theory that preceded germ theory.

The Philosopher-Apologist approach to this fact is to quickly add another term to the failed idea, with hilarious results. Fossils were laid down in a single world flood in such a way that it looks exactly as if they were instead laid down over billions of years in numerous different environments. Prayer has medical applications as long as it’s within God’s plan. The prophesied end times began on December 21^st, but it was an invisible judgment. What this kind of person is hoping their debate partner won’t notice is that most of these additions have no knowledge value whatsoever. All of them have built-in conditional branches that enable them to encompass literally any possible result. If the world ends on the 21^st, I was right; if it doesn’t, I was also right. Once an idea takes this form, it has no predictive power, since literally any conceivable outcome fits within its framework. Taking such an idea to be true offers exactly no insight into any other aspect of the world, while offering the appearance of infinite insight. This is a technique of intellectual dishonesty specifically designed to inveigle passably intelligent passers-by into an explanation with no factual grounding. They are the logical equivalent of mathematically unsolvable “two equations, three unknowns” problems.

But the problem with non-overlapping magisteria is even more systemic than that. As the assorted testable claims that every religion makes show themselves to be false, the Philosopher-Apologist feints. He doubles down on his insistence that science and religion answer different questions, this time repeating the “how” / “why” false dichotomy. This one, too, falls away, though with more difficulty.

Leaving aside how there are many more kinds of questions than those, the only reason this dichotomy is even possible in the Philosopher-Apologist’s mind is because he has already assented to religion. Recall that this gambit usually appears after the Philosopher-Apologist has been confronted with the many testable claims that religions make, and how none of them ever work out in religion’s favor. The next step is to ask, simply, why religion’s answers to its favorite “why” questions—Why are we here, why should we behave ethically (more on this one in a bit), why do natural disasters happen—are to be trusted, when absolutely no reason has been provided to trust religion in this or any other matter, and when, in fact, religion has already shown itself to be a piss-poor guide to what is and isn’t true?

By now, the Philosopher-Apologist has retreated so far into non-falsifiable claims that the “religion” he is trying to promote is little more than “there’s a being out there that doesn’t do anything in the physical world but judges people based on how they live up to its standards.” He is correct in pointing out that, by defining his deity out of the physical universe, and removing from it even the smallest ability to affect or communicate with the physical world, he has indeed defined it out of the purview of science—but he has also defined it out of relevance, and made it utterly incompatible with the gods of any real-world religion. With this kind of deity, the only reason to even acknowledge it is Pascal’s Wager, itself a logical fallacy that can be invoked to defend every conceivable religion alongside this one.

This version of God, popular among Philosopher-Apologists and no one else, also brings up the questions of ethics that often fill dealings with Philosopher-Apologists. In defense of their insistence that there are questions religion answers better than science, Philosopher-Apologists often invoke the tired canard of religious morality being somehow superior to atheist morality. Some even go so far as to claim that religion is the sole source of morality in the world, and that if religion’s dominance in the majority’s minds were to fade, anarchy would result.

Aside from being a deeply insulting view of the human race, this contention is extremely naïve. Indeed, the fact that atheists and similar nonbelievers are approximately 10% of the United States’s population but less than 1% of its violent prisoners would suggest that religion has nowhere near a monopoly on ethical behavior—if anything, the evidence points to religion being just as bad a source of morality as it is a source of facts.  Indeed, the idea that religion is a necessary component of morality falls apart in every direction at once. The world’s anarchic hellscapes are not the largely atheist countries of China and Sweden, but extremely religious places such as Afghanistan and Somalia. Religion’s record as a motivator for acts of astounding violence includes the Crusades, Muhammad’s wars of conquest in Arabia, centuries of bloody infighting in England, and the modern monstrosities of Ireland’s famously understated Troubles, the Taliban, the Wahhabis, the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Family International, Boko Haram, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (all sides), the Branch Davidians, and hundreds of burnt abortion clinics, while atheism can claim…one or two footnotes during the Cold War, if that.

This is where the Philosopher-Apologist really shines. With all of his might, he will insist that, because all of the above events and organizations are complex and human enough to be motivated by more than one thing, their religious motives are irrelevant. Like a Catholic physics professor I debated once, he will shout until he is blue in the face that the Crusades were about money and territory, never mind the name. He will ignore the exhortations to war that pepper the Quran and claim that the Caliphates were founded for purely secular reasons, at most using Islam as a tool. He will insist beyond all logic that every war that ended with the forced conversion of the losers was actually about territory or resources or politics. He will try with all of his might, in the face of all of the world’s history, the stated goals of dozens of evil organizations, and the rhetoric of all the most morally abhorrent modern politicians, to insist that religion does not in fact motivate horrible actions.

What he fails to realize is that, by taking this path, he has already conceded that religion does not in fact make people morally better, that it’s in fact extremely possible to be a devout adherent of any ideology and still be an unmitigated psychopath or led into evil by someone who shouts the right religious terms. From there, it’s quite obvious that whatever non-religious motivator for goodness exists must apply equally to nonbelievers, and the whole idea of religion being essential for morality disappears. One can also note the Philosopher-Apologist’s hypocrisy, since he will never, ever show that much zeal for the counter-claim of religion not motivating good actions.

All of this leaves aside the fact that the Philosopher-Apologist’s god is itself a psychopathic, abusive monster. By the Philosopher-Apologist’s own admission it offers no reason whatsoever for anyone to believe it exists and no communication of its capabilities or desires, yet it still condemns people to metaphysical punishment for failing to live up to its standards. This deity is a force of random metaphysical destruction and psychological torture, not goodness and truth. One can see the evidence of the concept’s iniquity in the evils that various believers call good, from the torturing-into-suicide of gay teenagers to forced births to the likening of nonbelievers to Nazis.

Ironically, for all his sophistication, the Philosopher-Apologist can be one of the easier opponents to deal with, partly because he’s so very predictable. More than that, though, he is one of the few opponents that one can expect to attempt to follow the rules of logic during a discussion, certainly more than a Bad Sorter or Militant Agnostic. Depending on his motives, he may also be less likely than a Baker or a Fellow Traveler to emotionally shut down when pressed and only realize the truth of the atheist position later in life. Still, the fact that not every atheist has the command of philosophy required to address a Philosopher-Apologist’s talking points can make this kind of opponent particularly vexing, and he may confuse a fair number of freethinkers with his sophistries before he is apprehended by one who does.