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Viliam_Bur comments on What Can We Learn About Human Psychology from Christian Apologetics? - Less Wrong
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So, is the main purpose of apologetics generating fictional evidence that people can find religion convincing for reasons other than social pressure?
Nonbelievers don't buy this fictional evidence, because for them the "convincing" parts aren't really convincing; but that's okay, because they are not the target audience. Fresh converts find satisfaction in knowing that although they personally joined for social reasons, there were other good reasons for joining, too. Believers are reassured that it is okay to ignore all evidence supposedly against religion, because someone else can explain it all, and that the evidence is really on the side of the religion, as confirmed by the fictional stories of conversion after facing the evidence. Doubters receive guidelines for doubting unsuccessfully, which prevent some of them from finding a way to doubt successfully.
This sounds like trusting domain experts to me, and that's often a decent heuristic. Especially if the cost of finding and vetting evidence is high -- or if you know you're just not very good at correctly extracting evidence from arguments -- taking a knowledgeable and trustworthy person's word for it is a good idea.
Under that model, the apologists are just exploiting an imperfect heuristic. Intentionally or otherwise.
The heuristic becomes a bias though, when it skews in a predicable direction relative to accurate guidance. In this case, we have a significant bias towards seeking and trusting expert advice which supports what we already want to believe, rather than expert advice which challenges our current beliefs.
And the apologists themselves either really enjoy the feeling that they know what the unbelievers don't, want to protect the flock against the evidence that would break their faith, or want to make lots of money selling books and DVDs to a large and credulous market.
You could argue for any of those options depending on the particular apologist.