Years ago, before I became a consistent, thorough rationalist, I used to look up to many Christian apologists: Frank Turek, William Lane Craig, Nancy Pearcey, and so forth. The unfortunate truth is that these men and women are often simply not as rational as they like to present themselves as being, and sometimes downright fallacious in very obvious ways. Aspiring apologists need to look to reason to discover truth and not to these apologists in any area where they contradict reason.
For instance, William Lane Craig admits--openly--that he is not a Christian on evidential grounds, but because of the so-called inner witness of the Holy Spirit. He has even said that if all of his arguments for theism and Christianity (and there is only one argument for God that is both sound and valid, making it a logical proof and not a mere argument) were refuted, he would still believe in Christianity because of this alleged sense of God's presence. This means that his worldview ultimately rests on a private emotive experience, with the conclusions drawn from it by him unable to be verified or falsified. As terrifying as it may be to some, a seeming sense of God's presence proves nothing except to the experiencer that he or she is experiencing a seeming sense of God's presence. It doesn't mean that God exists or that the experiencer knows just which deity exists. Begging the question, circular reasoning, a non sequitur, the anecdotal fallacy, and an appeal to emotion all in one place? Yep!
William Lane Craig also says that because he has no proof that he is a brain in a vat, he is justified in believing that he isn't a brain in a vat. He claims that in the absence of a "defeater" for the alleged reliability of his senses he is justified in believing that they are reliable. But something isn't true just because it can't be falsified, much less because an alternative can't be verified. This is basic logic! I could name several fallacies that are present here. For instance, it does not follow that because there is no provable "defeater" for a claim that it is true, so to claim so commits the non sequitur fallacy. Craig also begs the question. He simply assumes that his senses are accurately perceiving the external world because he can't prove that they are not! The truth is that I am only justified in believing that I have some sort of body with senses, that I experience sensory perceptions of specifics objects, and that there is an external world, because that is all that I can prove. I cannot prove anything more [1], and thus I cannot know anything more, and any being with my limitations who pretends to know more is lying!
Another example of the fallacies of apologists is what most Christian apologists I know of teach about moral epistemology. Many of them are not theonomists, and many of them seem to treat conscience as a major part of moral epistemology, when conscience is utterly subjective and useless when it comes to verifying or falsifying moral claims [2]. Craig, like many other popular apologists (J Warner Wallace, Frank Turek), credits "moral experience" with informing us that morality exists, but he never defines what criteria make something just or good beyond conforming to God's nature. Yes, if there is no God then there is no moral authority in the universe, but it does not follow from me or anyone else having a conscience that there is such a thing as a single moral obligation. I am not a telepath; I cannot know God's nature unless he reveals it to me or unless I am God. The moral experience these apologists cite as authoritative is purely subjective, utterly incapable of being logically established as true, and is not at all uniform from person to person. Logic reveals that conscience proves nothing more than that a being with a conscience has a conscience. Conscience doesn't prove that someone knows what moral obligations exist, or even that morality exists at all! People do not even agree about the specifics of morality, and if they did, nothing is established except that they agree.
I won't even go into detail here on why the design arguments for God put forth by these apologists are logically flawed [3], why the transcendental argument for God defended by apologists like Matt Slick is erroneous [4], or on all the legalism and contra-Biblical moral ideas that come about when someone looks to "moral experience" for moral knowledge. I'm sure my disdain for the error-filled arguments and conclusions of many apologists is quite evident by now. But there is also the flawed epistemic tendency for them to leap from "There is evidence, even strong evidence, for this claim" to "This claim is true and we can know this". Wherever this approach appears, the apologist using it cares more about defending Christianity than accurately representing epistemology. I don't claim to know that Christianity is true in its entirety--because I can't know.
Claiming that Christianity is true and that I can know this and claiming that there is a great deal of evidence for Christianity that have incited me to commit my life to it are two dramatically different claims. But apologists commonly assert that they know Christianity is true, and, when pressed for proof, retreat behind some variation of the bullshit epistemological claim that "you don't have to prove something to know it is true". Being honest about epistemology and human limitations would save them from using many fallacies. The conclusions of popular Christian apologists do not always follow from their premises, their premises can be very flawed, and they sometimes misrepresent the nature of knowledge and rationality in order to promote ideas that at least some of them admit they would believe independent of any proof or evidence. That is not rational. That is deeply fallacious.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-external-world.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html
[3]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/why-design-argument-fails.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-loving-designer-erroneous-natural.html
[4]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/refuting-transcendental-argument-for-god.html
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