Apologetics, of course, is the defense of a thing, as in Plato's Apology. Being defensible is the very nature of Apologetics.
Monotheism itself is trivial and largely meaningless without a detailed description of the deity.
I wouldn't say meaningless, since a true description is hardly meaningless, though I think I agree with your basic sentiment here.
When believers attempt to describe their particular god they make innumerable mistakes and are justly ridiculed for holding faith in contradiction of knowledge and logic.
As when certain atheists try to explain away religious belief.
Plantinga thinks this is permissible as long as the believers are consistent.
Plantinga, being a good Augustinian, holds the truths of faith to be the standard by which knowledge is to be judged. I don't care much for this approach myself, but I don't see why it is plainly false.
Atheism as generally expressed is not a belief. It is more often the simple knowledge that all known religions are patently false in their primary assertions about the nature of reality.
If it is knowledge, then it should be provable. Again, what proofs are there besides the apparently flawed evidentialist and geneticist rejections of theism?
"If it is knowledge, then it should be provable. Again, what proofs are there besides the apparently flawed evidentialist and geneticist rejections of theism?" -- Dumb Ox
That was the point of my very first post. The proof is always in the history and most especially the history of the origin of the religion. Religions are invariably founded on philosophical concepts that, once usurped, are always corrupted or abandoned in favor of the expedient of survival. Well established religions may become benign but this hardly means they have discovered the truth.
Religions also inspire and shed new cults constantly. Judaism depended on Zoroastrianism, Christianity on Judaism and Pagan Mythology, Islam on Judaism and Christianity. Heresies spring up and become new religions. Sects proliferate and contest with one another for adherents. None of recent vintage are connected in any way with the sort of events that believers associate with the great monotheistic religions of antiquity (a god actually involving himself in the affairs of men). Yet these upstarts don't seem to have any trouble finding adherents and growing by leaps and bounds.
A great number of religions are founded on nothing more than gross misinterpretations of some obscure passage from this or that scripture. The point is that there are other historical records than those that any particular religion uses to substantiate its claim to special knowledge of god. Unfortunately for the posturing proselytizer, history gives the lie to his claim of unique divine revelation when he foolishly copies or modifies preexisting practices and beliefs which themselves are recorded elsewhere. When the hierarchy of such a religion, realizing the mistake that has been made, seek to destroy the record of their origin, they leave an additional record of the deceit. No religion is exempt and none passes the test. They are all false.
Does that prove that a god does not exist? No, but it does prove that every god that man has worshipped so far is only an invention or, more likely, a poor copy of a prior invention. Does the earliest recorded versions of god provide anything which might support any of the later versions? Absolutely not. The earliest recorded gods were powerful and meddlesome but pretty much human otherwise. In fact, the proclivity for mating with humans was one of the distinguishing features of the most powerful. Every god to follow derives some of its qualities from the earliest versions until god finally winds up as an abstract supreme being without much in the way of human properties save for a reputed but remarkably inconsistent paternal affection (minus the sexual attraction) for his chosen ones.