tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66643747911604830112024-03-13T14:07:29.585-07:00Tekton ForgeTekton Old School slapdowns.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-77354142736173826622022-10-01T12:18:00.000-07:002022-10-01T12:18:03.761-07:00The Tekton Canon Is Now Closed<p> <a href="https://www.tektonics.org/closedcanon.php">Link</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-47890067961907170492018-12-10T12:21:00.002-08:002018-12-10T12:22:29.562-08:00Christian Behrend Doscher's $20,000 Promise<span style="color: white;"><br /></span>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">One of Christian Behrend Doscher’s most egregious attempts to deceive me took place in 2008 while he was posing as “spirit5er” on TheologyWeb. It took me until 2016 to find out the whole truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">While I was engaging him in debate on TheologyWeb in 2008, Doscher challenged me to a debate in front of my church and said he would pay me $20,000 for that debate. Because of a crash, the TheologyWeb version of that thread no longer exists except for a bit of it in an archive. But Doscher preserved a version of those events on an atheist forum that same year. Here’s what he said in a message dated October 6, 2008:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I accepted Holding's $20,000 price tag for an oral debate at a location, date and time of his choosing, on a biblical subject of his choosing, in front of any audience of his choosing, then asked for the name and number of his pastor to facilitate the deal, guarantee his promise to debate and transfer the money. Nope. He refused to give the information on his pastor (like Holding really goes to church?!), unless I PM'd him with an electronic scan of my bank statement showing I had at least $20,000 in my account. When I objected that people sending bank statements to people they don't know on the internet is absurd, and they can be easily photoshopped anyway (bank statements being little more than letters, lines and numbers, how hard is that to alter?), he replied that he knows experts who can tell whether a scan that shows my name and money-amount, has been photoshopped or not. As if the prospect of meeting personally with his pastor to facilitate this deal upon his agreement to debate, was somehow more prone to deception and falsification than his ridiculous face-saving suggestions.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><a href="http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/showthreadc69e-2.html?t=253929">http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/showthreadc69e-2.html?t=253929</a></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"> (message #7)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">I had plenty of suspicions about “spirit5er” so I never told him a thing. I also strung him along about his offer of $20,000, knowing that it was likely to be false. I had no idea just how false it was until 2016, when I started collecting documents from Doscher’s old lawsuits in the midst of his libel lawsuit against me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">By way of background, in 2007, Doscher briefly worked for Swift Transportation, a leading trucking company. He resigned from that job on July 31, 2007, over an issue involving a traffic ticket and a refusal to drive his truck. In June 2009, he filed the first of a series of lawsuits related to these events. I won’t get into details on those cases here. What I want to highlight is this snippet from a document he filed in that case:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">(</span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Doscher v Swift</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">, Motion for Summary Judgment, October 2010, p. 60)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">So, let’s put the pieces together. In 2008, the same year he was often homeless and living in his car, Doscher was also offering me $20,000 to engage him in a live debate. This was in spite of the fact that he couldn’t even afford to spend the money for gas needed to turn the heat on in his vehicle in the dead of winter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="color: white;">It’s kind of ironic. In 2008, he offered me $20,000 he didn’t have to pay me for a live debate. In 2016, a judge ordered him to pay me just over $20,000 to cover my attorney fees. One way or the other, he’s destined to pay me that amount someday. It just remains to be seen how.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-90620714189329796352012-08-21T06:31:00.001-07:002012-08-21T06:31:18.029-07:00Storage Wars Parody Contest: Answers
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Here's the answer key to the Storage Wars Jerusalem contest last week. All
answers left to right.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">1:49 Peter Breitbart, who appeared in several vids; any of those titles are
acceptable. Crazypills2 the Clown, who also appeared in several vids.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">1:55 Unnamed lady robot (though I used the working name of Sephia) who
appeared in four vids related to cosmology. Gilligan and the Pett Bomber, from
Rescue from Pett Bomber Island. Obelix, appeared in Tacitus Says Christ Mythers
Have Gaul.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:01 Batman, appeared in Did the Bible Blunder 3. ReligionFreeDeist in his
jackass costume, from Plumber Under Pressure.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:10 Bart Ehrman, who has appeared in dozens of vids. Faith, from Paul's
Angels: Faith. Cult of Dusty, from ForBibleTruth and Cultof Dusty Hammered by
the Historians.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:25 Pres. Bartlett from President Bartlett Gets Pared.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:32 Dorothy from Penn and Teller's Bible Bull Ripped. William Lane Craig
from Dawkins' Dodge.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:38 Rebecca Watson and Richard Dawkins from Thunderf00t’s Strategic
Assessment (Dawkins has appeared in others as well).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">2:41 Ray Comfort from If Ray Comfort Were a Fundamentalist Atheist.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3:12 Dr. E from Dr. E: Jesus vs Attis (or Osiris would be acceptable).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3:18 Norman Geisler from Geisler's Christmas Carol or Rise of the
Ehrmanator. ChristianRoadWarrior from WYTW Raw: ProfMTH and violently graceful
Lose Their Job</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3:30 Unnamed elephant from The Tale of Jephthah. DarkMatter2525 from
several vids, though he has only appeared in that form in Dark Doesn't Matter.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3:35 Mike Licona from Geisler's Christmas Carol.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3:45 Unnamed Borg from Social Concepts 4: Submit to the Collective.
Kittenkitoko from Jephthah in the Hot Seat or Dawkins' Ironic Hypocrisy.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">3;58 Joan from Social Concept 3: Shame vs Guilt. Unnamed guy from Wah Wah
World 4.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">4:03 Unnamed clown from Plumber Under Pressure.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">4:09 Unnamed bull from Who Authored Luke-Acts? Thessalonians 2 from The Man
Who Wrote THAT!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">4:50 Troi from Why is the Man's Head Shiny? or Submit to the Collective.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">4:59 Penn from Penn and Teller Bible Bull Ripped. Scram Man, from several
vids. Barry the atheist from Symphathizes with Wolves.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">5:08 Count Blarg from Did the Bible Blunder 3. Unnamed assistant to
Confucius from Be a Moron Onto Others.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">5:12 Sheila from The Great Bombini.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Office from Tryouts for the Trinity.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Bartimaeus healing scene from Social Concepts 2.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Dumpster scene from Plumber Under Pressure.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-25040788507140442942012-07-06T07:31:00.002-07:002012-07-06T13:10:04.106-07:00PWNAGE II: The Return of the Symph-athizer<br />
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<span lang="EN">On TektonTV today, I offered a followup vid as a reply to the same emergent
Christian to whom a prior vid and Forge post was addressed (link below). There
was little in the way of new argument from him this time; what he did offer was
mostly a sustained rant, peppered with personal accusations, vacuous slogans,
and angry re-assertions of defeated premises (I spent a lot of time referring
to prior arguments he ignored or was unaware of!), but this gave me a chance to
make a few things clear about my use of harsh language towards certain
opponents, as well as address a few other issues.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>“All the Time.” </b>The emergent made the rather vague charge that I used harsh
language “all the time”. How this is rated is not explained. Obviously, since
e.g., comments on YT engage me less than a total of 15-20 minutes a day, and at
least 70-90% of those on any given day are not to fundy atheists, “all the
time” seems hyperbolic to say the least.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">In reality, most of my time these days is spent on writing projects such as
an e-book on the atonement and articles for my e-zine (the current article on
my docket is on Orthodoxy). It seems rather that the emergent is so obsessed
with the idea that it is all he thinks about “all the time.” As I explain in
the vid, though, my use of harsh language is governed by occasions brought TO
me. I don't go looking to pick fights with fundy atheists in the YouTube
comments. In every single case, they come to MY channel -- or to one my work is
hosted on -- to pick fights with ME. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN">This simple point erases a good number of
complaints from the be-nice bellowers:
Those who comment know very well from watching the vids that they're not
going to be given a free ride with a song and dance. Most (not all) of the vids
contain sarcastic humor, so there's very little chance fundy atheist commenters
do not know what they're getting into.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">In contrast, a point I do not address in the vid: Although I don't go
picking fights in comments, I do sometimes appear to do so when I produce vids.
Of the current set of 175 vids, a fair number are directed to a position held
by someone who made another vid; of that, a fair number are directed towards
persons who "threw the first punch."
Some, however, are towards persons who had nothing to do with
me before -- mostly, two YT users designated ProfMTH and NonStampCollector. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN">But
hold for the caveat: I picked those two as targets on request of YT users who
were distressed by their arrogance and the bullying. So however you look at it
-- I'm almost never, if at all, the one looking for trouble. My work is almost
completely reactionary.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">That's how it was when I wrote articles for Tekton years ago, too. Nothing
has changed. If you're an atheist who does civil discourse, and doesn't go out
of your way to do poor research or to deceive, you have nothing to worry about
and will get the red carpet from me. If you do get called down by me, and
acknowledge your mistakes and show a willingness to dialogue and improve your
effort -- as has happened with a few atheists over the years -- the same carpet
comes rolling out.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">But if you're a fundy atheist who doesn't care about the truth, who
continues to use sources like Wikipedia or Acharya S or Robert Ingersoll; who
makes excuses such as "Christian scholars are too biased so you can't use
them" -- I'll roll up that carpet and knock you over the right field wall
with it.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">As noted in that last entry, Christians like this emergent one who enable
such behavior are no better. You'll see in this vid samples of comments from
such fundy atheists, who this emergent lunatic has the temerity to say are just
"asking questions in the name of God." Which god, I ask? Loki? Eris?
(Is there an Aztec god of discord and destruction they're following, maybe?)
And I also point out a great irony: By enabling these wolves, the emergent is
actually insulting honest seekers and being a “poor witness” to them.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Offensive Christianity</b>. I allude to Christianity being profoundly offensive
in its social context. This is the sum of what I call the Impossible Faith
thesis. There’s a link below explaining some of the points made in the vid.
This thesis formed the basis for one of the sections in my book Defending the
Resurrection. It’s been criticized by a couple of atheists (including one who
was paid $5000 by another atheist to write a refutation of it!), and I have
replied in turn.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Personal Testimony. </b>There’s a link below to a series on my other blog about
evangelism and apologetics, and how Christians have placed themselves in a trap
of sorts by making personal behavior a judging standard for the truth of the
Gospel.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Reading Lists. </b>The emergent coddled a fundy atheist who refused to do
assigned reading I offered so that they could comment more intelligently. I
should note that I did this specifically to this critic precisely because they
were not willing to learn and be inquisitive. Most viewers will not have done
the reading before commenting; but most readers will also not rail off with
misplaced objections, either. There’s a difference between the way I treat
willing learners and those who steadfastly remain willfully ignorant.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">To address a related point: I don’t attack disagreement. I attack willfully
and stubbornly unintelligent, misinformed, tendentious disagreement. And fundy
atheists specialize in that (as is to be expected, since that was their mode as
fundies, too).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Seeking Weak Christians.</b> One thing the emergent fails to grasp – being too
ensconced in his role as an enabler of bullies – is that the set of fundy
atheists I deal with are “anti-evangelists” who are specifically seeking weak
victims. Very few openly state that they are out to deconvert Christians; John
Loftus is one of those who does. This set of fundy atheists has a strategy set,
which includes the “guilt trip” of declaring that you sure are unloving if you
don’t just accept their manipulative ways and become their doormat. They also
tend to use “reason, logic and evidence” – the words, not the actual products –
as a bludgeon. Used their way, this becomes an insult in itself (as it
indicates to the Christian, “you are oblivious to reason, logic, and
evidence”).</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">There’s no basis for doormat Christianity. Even acts like giving your
clothes away to someone who sued you was in fact an act designed to shame your
opponent – just like Gandhi shamed the British with his non-violence (which I
expect escapes the emergent sorts as well). The emergent uses the Message
“translation,” which, as the vid notes, offers the ridiculous rendering that
you are to “gift wrap” your item of clothing and make it a present. That not
only adds a great deal of words to the text, it also adds our cultural
presuppositions.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">As part of their anti-evangelism, I noted, these fundy atheists will even
leave comments on vids that are just devotionals. Now I imagine it will be said
that Christians will also evangelize on vids that have to do with eg,
evolution. And that’s true. But it’s also just as inappropriate and not an
excuse.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><b>Millennial Change.</b> In close -- as TektonTV approaches 1000 subscribers, I
have decided on a solution to the problem, one that will shut down the
complaints once and for all -- though not in a way you might expect. You can
look for that once TektonTV passes the magic number. My final note on this is a
clue – I design my riposte such that those who take themselves least seriously
will have the least problem with it. That’s all I’ll say – those who have ears
to hear, will hear.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2012/05/all-about-pwnage-supplement.html"><span lang="EN">Link: Prior vid</span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html"><span lang="EN">Link: Resurrection defense</span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN"><a href="http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Evangelism">Link: Evangelism series </a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><a href="http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2012/05/all-about-pwnage-supplement.html"><br /></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><a href="http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html"><br /></a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><a href="http://tektonticker.blogspot.com/search/label/Evangelism"><br /></a></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-20129459907767478712012-05-24T07:51:00.002-07:002012-05-24T08:18:46.118-07:00All About Pwnage: Supplement<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K0RHqgotUes?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Today on TektonTV, we've added a vid laying the law down on a species of
professed Christian which is set to bury the Western church as it lays on its
deathbed. We've had many occasions to answer the denizens of the emergent
church (Brian McLaren, Carl Medearis, and others) but this is the first time
(apart from a few comments on Amazon to Medearis) I've addressed any directly. This one objected to my use of "pwnage" against fundy atheists and those who destroy the truth. Nothing unusual there. (I'd better add here for qualification, since otherwise it will be assumed: I don't mean here reasonable atheists. I mean open, bold, deceivers and profaners.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Since there's nothing particularly unusual about any emergent -- seen one,
seen them all -- we won't bother to name them, but will present here their
(typical) responses for commentary. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">"We have to made God and Jesus attractive!"</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">We do? That's funny. God did all he could to make Jesus UNattractive in the
first century: A crucified man (the highest form of shame known, in a society
where honor was highly valued and shame desperately avoided), who came from
Nazareth in Galilee (from the wrong side of the tracks, and a land known for
being the Afghanistan of the day), and was resurrected (when pagans thought the
idea of resurrection repugnant, and Jews thought no one would be resurrected
until the end of the age)...need I go on? I compiled a huge list of reasons
precisely why God and Jesus were NOT attractive in the first century; and a
minor league arrogant, or any emergent, is going to say we need to make Jesus
"attractive"? What do they want us to do, add lipstick to the crucified Christ?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">The fact is, the Gospel is not "attractive". It is not personal
therapy. It is not for the purpose of making you feel good, or so you can have
"experiences" in church (most of which are self-induced euphorias
anyway). It is not an "I Can Only Imagine"
song where we get to dance and sing. It is erasure of sin for sinners; it is
eternal service and work on behalf of the Kingdom. The faithful servant didn't get ten cities so
that he could go on vacation in them.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">"We need to listen to the grievances of these fundy atheists!"</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">No we don't. For one thing, they're all old news. For another, they've all
already been answered. Fundy atheists -- not "regular" atheists
necessarily -- aren't raising these objections because they want an answer.
They are raising these objections to annoy, frustrate, and anger Christians.
They are raising them as a way of undermining Christians' faith and in turn
undermining their support for causes they (the fundy atheists) support --
whether it be abortion, same-sex marriage, or keeping the Ten Commandments out
of their offended vision.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">The fact is that these “grievances” have been postulated since Ingersoll,
since Paine, in some cases since Celsus. The answers have been around just as
long. It does not take a great deal of effort (with most of them) to discover
that they are bogus. However, fundy atheists as a whole have an aversion to
reading. I have offered to buy three of them a free book – only one has taken
the offer, and that was one who I’d consider right on the cusp of rational (as
opposed to fundy) atheism. So we don’t need to listen to their grievances –
because they’re not looking for solutions.</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">"These fundy atheists are people who have been hurt by the
church!"</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Oh really? If we allow in trivial or manufactured offense, including that
willfully exacerbated by a refusal to look for answers (as above), then that
might work out. As for REAL offense, well -- when I did an article on
witnessing to apostates, I found a survey on a leading fundy atheist website (a
forum, though the thread is now defunct), and the largest portion (28.5
percent) of atheists cited “theological/doctrinal problems” as their reason for
questioning their faith. Another 27 percent claimed that their faith “no longer
made sense” or that they “grew out of it.” Ten percent cited “Bible
contradictions” as their reason to initially question Christianity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Where did "hurt by the church" come in? Fourth. <i>Way </i>fourth. About
6 percent. Not that this is an excuse to spread crap like "Jesus didn't
exist" or "the Inquisition killed 24 million people." </span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">"We need to show the love of Jesus!"</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Ah yes. Love. Now that’s an error not unique to the emergents; like most of
the church today, they define love in terms of sappy sentimentality and
universal politeness to even the most despicable despot. It’s not that; and that
is nothing at all like the agape understood by first century peoples, in which
the greatest good was always at the fore – even if that meant having to crack a
few noggins for the sake of the whole. Emergent love would send Saddam flowers
and gently (so as not to offend) ask him to repent. Agape love would depose
Saddam, put him on trial, and justly execute him – for the greater good of his
people, and the world at large. That’s the difference between modern
individualism and collectivism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Not surprisingly, with that sort of view of love, emergents have no idea
what to do with Biblical passages where God says he'll smear dung on people's
faces, or where God orders the Canaanites destroyed. They wring their hands and
profess to be disturbed by them and to be trying to figure it all out, but the
traditional hell will freeze over before they arrive at a real solution. The
only solution they have, as Medearis says, is to keep pointing at Jesus and
hope no one notices. (McLaren tried some sort of incoherent approach that
claimed some sort of misunderstanding, but it is awful hard to misunderstand,
"these people must be evicted from the land, or die.")</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">"If you don't know a person, you have no right to tell them they are
wrong."</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Ah yes. There's another of those made up emergent rules. Last I checked,
right and wrong was determined by accordance with facts and truth, not whether
you "knew" a person. The emergent church is obsessively relational,
insisting you need to become close to and familiar with a person and earn their
“respect” to be able to have the "right" to correct them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">The problem
is that the sort of personal familiarity they describe has been unknown until
the modern era; in agonistic, collectivist societies like the world of the NT,
people did not "get to know" each other save in rare circumstances,
and “respect” as we know it was unknown; honor was the closest analogue, and by
that reckoning, an inferior could not correct a superior, but a superior was
free to correct an inferior, and equals could correct each other only with
caution. Which means, by the emergent view, almost no one had the right to
correct anyone else until around 1867.</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">“You can’t judge someone’s heart. Jesus could, and that is why he was
allowed to insult the Pharisees! You’re not Jesus, pal!”</span></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">By this reckoning, as Douglas Wilson has noted, we also can’t do anything
else Jesus did – because who knows what’s actually going on? We can’t help
people either – how do we know they’re not evil, and going to abuse us or
others if we help them now?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Beyond that, if we want to appeal to Jesus, let us remember that he also
said that we could know people by their fruit, and Jesus himself didn’t call on
any divine knowledge to judge the Pharisees – he said that by the overflow of
their hearts, their mouths spoke (Matt. 12:34). He didn’t have to dip into the
divine knowledge well to get that – so why would we need to?</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">I’ll add a side note. It seems emergents are especially enamored of Bible “translations”
like “The Message” which are actually pretty poor paraphrases, because they
find in them the sort of relational or sympathetic twist they’re looking for.
That’s typical of their mistakes. As John Kohlenberger sums it up, in a
Christian Research Journal article on The Message:</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">So how are we to view The Message? It is an expansive paraphrase that is not
so labeled, as is The Living Bible. Beset with inconsistencies, its idiom is
not always “street language”; its terminology is often idiosyncratic to its
author. Compared by noted literary figures to the groundbreaking translation of
J.B.Phillips, I believe The Message often lacks Phillips’s creativity and
conciseness.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">In the introduction, Eugene Peterson compares his pastoral ministry to his
work as a translator: “I stood at the border between two languages, biblical
Greek and everyday English, acting as a translator, providing the right
phrases, getting the right words so that the men and women to whom I was pastor
could find their way around and get along in this world” (p.7). Much of The
Message reads like a sermon: text plus interpretation and application. Unlike a
sermon, however, the reader does not know where the text ends and the sermon
begins.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></i>
</div>
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<i>Because of its interpretive and idiosyncratic nature, The Message should not
be used for study. If read for enlightenment or entertainment, the reader
should follow the advice of Saint Augustine, as quoted in the original preface
to the KJV, “Variety of translations is profitable for finding out the sense of
the Scriptures.” Acts17:11 commends the Bereans for evaluating Paul’s teaching
with the Old Testament Scriptures. In the same spirit, The Message needs to be
evaluated against more consistent and traditional translations, especially when
its renderings evoke a response such as, “I didn’t know the Bible said that!”
or, “Now I understand what it means.”</i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">In sum: while the phrase “the Message” is Eugene Peterson’s translation of
“the Gospel,” not everything in The Message should be treated as gospel.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">I’ll say this in close. Emergents, with regard to fundy atheists, have a
parallel in the secular world. Our school systems are enduring what some have
called an epidemic of bullying, as the weak are preyed on by the strong, and
the strong receive nothing but slaps on the wrist, counseling, and
“understanding”. To enable a bully is far more despicable, however, than the
bullying itself. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Emergents who insist on being nice to fundy atheists and other
destroyers or deceivers are enablers, and their act in so being is therefore more wicked than
the first. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN">Appeasement doesn't work. The emergents need to learn a lesson from Neville
Chamberlain.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-49976369503122136192012-05-15T08:46:00.002-07:002012-05-16T07:22:44.294-07:00Test Answers<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AfuXk1HPgPA?rel=0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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We'll get to the Forge post early this week as I'm using it to post answers to a "test" I offered on TektonTV to arrogant fundy atheists who think they're hot stuff because they aced the Pew religious knowledge test. This vid is not a challenge to my Christian readers, so feel free to watch and check the answers if you're one of those.</div>
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Answers:</div>
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<span lang="EN">1) b) </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">probatio</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">2) c) Jesus was a created being</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">3) b) Quintillian,</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">4) a) Ma’at</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">5) b) F. C. Baur</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">6) Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Cassius Dio</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">7) b) beheading</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">8) d) Theodosius</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">9) b) John Yoder</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">10) d) The Wise Man, the Artisan, and the Slave</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">11) b) the timing of the resurrection</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">12) a) Robert Gundry</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">13) c) codex</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">14) d) Sejanus</span></div>
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<span lang="EN">15) b) musical instruments</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-2052339503716155342012-05-11T09:25:00.000-07:002012-05-11T09:42:23.594-07:00Waaah Waaah World<center><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BOwISiv2Gb4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Today’s entry is a companion to a YT vid I just loaded in which I highlight examples of Skeptics and fundy atheists who make absurd demands of God based on the premise that if He’s omnipotent, He ought to just go ahead and do whatever they find convenient. This post explains where each of the four real-life examples I gave came from.
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Example A</b> – the source for this is J. E. Hill, who had said, precisely:
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>When I read that "lack of paper" defense, I just shook my head, and wondered why Yahweh didn't give them enough writing material to eliminate all the confusion.</i>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fundy atheist Farrell Till added to the idiocy with this comment:
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>…why would an omniscient, omnipotent deity, who had performed for the Israelites such wonders as the parting of the Red Sea, the sending of manna down from heaven for a period of 40 years, the gushing forth of water from rocks, etc., etc., etc., just so that he could get his "chosen ones" from Egypt to Canaan, not have lifted a finger to make sure that "John" and the others who were recording his "plan of salvation" for all mankind throughout the rest of human history, had adequate scroll materials to tell everything about that plan that was necessary to make it credible and understandable, but he doesn't seem to be too eager to answer that question.
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Example B</b> – this one comes from a Skeptic of the Acharya S variety, J. B. McPherson, who, in her <i>Holey Bible – Old Testament</i> affected the part of a Mark Twain and said several things like, “Why not just zap the whole kit and kaboodle over to the land where he wanted them and save all the time and trouble involved?” throughout her book.
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Example C</b> – happened right on YT recently at the time when I was doing my responses on Elisha on the bears.
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Example D –</b> this example came to me by way of a personal email, so I will not disclose the name of the source. But you can see at <a href="http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100528200529AAPhxQe">this link</a> that there are people who think this is God’s obligation.
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-76702030747766684652012-04-06T08:35:00.002-07:002012-04-06T08:41:25.128-07:00The Secular Web's Great Tinfoil Age<span style="font-family: verdana;">Someone wrote me the other day about <span style="font-style: italic;">The Jury Is in</span>, asking if I could refute it.<br /><br />Ha ha. Of course I can, I already did. TJII, formerly the showcase project of infidels.org, was my second major online refutation project back in the late 90s (the first being a comparison of Lincoln biographies), and from it grew much of the content of my books. You'll still see remnants of it here and there on the site, too.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I still check infidels.org now and then to see if there's anything worthy of attention. Uploads seem to be a lot less frequent there than I remember, though, and it seems quality control over there has gone clockwise down the loo.<br /><br />A good example of this is an item by one Daniel June, a professed former Assembly of God believer -- and still one mentally, to judge by his performance -- who offers an extended rant on Revelation and the horror of dispensational end times scenarios.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I can't do much more than laugh at most of June's extended rant, for more than one reason. To start, of course, as a preterist, I don't hold to the position June is ranting about, so my own refutation could stop at, "YAWN -- what else you got?" There's a lot of argument by outrage, which as usual seems to comprise at least 50% of any presentation by your average run of the mill Skeptic who believes that there's no reason to waste time arguing rationally when there's a chance to throw blood and guts in the reader's face. I'm especially amused inasmuch as June also whiffs past me with the whole "eternal torture" in hell tango.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />So, of course, June's miserific paean over allegedly wholly innocent people (eg, "elderly men and women, who have worked to put their children through college, and are enjoying their golden years spoiling their grandchildren", blah blah blah -- all we need is for Fred Rogers to waltz in and change his socks) being ransacked by Jesus on his white horse pretty much falls on deaf ears for lack of relevance. One would hope that infidels.org would someday get enough quality control to sift out people like June who still carry this kind of emotional baggage. But as I've said, a fundy atheists hasn't really changed from being fundies; it never occurs to them that their idea that Revelation preserves a doctrine of only "a few thousand Christians" being saved (!), and their absurdly literalistic reading of apocalyptic language (so backwards that it would warrant a collection of high-five noogies from the Essene community) was a joke when they believed it and is even more of a joke now that they're critiquing it. Maybe the reason infidels. org doesn't filter such people out is because it would leave them with only enough writers to count on one hand.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />One might also have hoped that June would have checked out some scholarly commentaries on Revelation to set him straight, but his first source is...er...Harold Bloom. On the virtue of his being someone who "has probably read more books than any man living, and published more literary appraisals than any scholar I have heard of..." That probably speaks more to June's lack of exposure to scholarship than to any virtues Bloom may actually have, but the fact is that Bloom remains a patent ignoramus on the interpretation of first century Jewish apocalypse, and his opinion of it -- which assumes as grossly literalistic a reading as June does -- deserves little more than a laugh track.<br /><br />It doesn't get much better later, as Jung and Nietzsche (!) are called in for comment; obviously neither expense nor time was spared by June in engaging the most reputable Biblical scholarship available. Harrumph. NOT.</span><br /><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">From there it doesn't get much better in terms of content either. June engages an extended screed on end times movements and their failures; on supposed parallels between Revelation and Genesis which he apparently swallowed as a Christian (and which owe far more to homiletics than to contextualizing scholarship); and a series of frankly dumb statements like this one:<br /><br style="font-family: verdana;"></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">The gospel of John calls the Jews "sons of Satan," and this John calls the Jews "the synagogue of Satan," though Yahweh had put a curse on anybody who cursed the Jews...</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Um....no. The Gospel of John does no such thing, actually. It calls <span style="font-style: italic;">certain Judeans</span> (natives of the nation of Judaea), whom Jesus specifically addresses, sons of Satan; and that's the sort of riposte folks back then used without being the least bit sensitive about it (read: Jesus to Peter, “Get thee behind me, whatsyername!”). So likewise the "synagogue of Satan" reference in Revelation; the modern ignoramus like June gets into hissies over such language, but for the first century reader, this is raindrops fallin’ on their head while they take a few moments to think of a better riposte to throw back. June is walking straight into a contest of the dozens and having a cow over these guys making such offensive comments about each others’ mothers. His gross literalism, a rebound from his ignorant fundamentalist past, erupts like a geyser of pus from the overinflated pimple of his mind; and to grasp the depth of his absurdity, try to imagine him taking what I just said literally, too.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />June further laments a "confused young man" he knew who "wouldn't touch anything electronic because 'Computers are the Beast.' " What he fails to grasp is that he has become no more grown up in his exegetical skills than those people have. He amuses himself with all the variations made upon 666, but had he more of a mind than to quote someone as ignorant of such matters as Thomas Jefferson (!) and Thomas Paine (!!) he might have discovered that -- golly! -- Nero does indeed fit that bill quite well, thanks. And it doesn't take the Riddler to figure it out, either.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Seriously, folks. This is meant to be the cream of the crop at infidels.org these days? This is what they allow to write for them? It's almost enough for me to demand that James Still and Jim Perry come back. Or maybe even (gulp) Stevie Carr. Stupid as they were, not even they were bozo enough to rant about Revelation as the product of a "half-wit, no-talent writer". Nor were they of such childish mind as to think that a yards-long blood and guts rant substituted for the legwork of textual analysis. (On the other hand, Stevie did sometimes think quoting someone of the level of Paine was a good idea.)</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I guess the Golden Age of the Secular Web has been given over for the Tinfoil Age. It’s too bad they don’t have better hats than that.</span><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;"><br style="font-family: verdana;">Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-34429274532721076202012-01-20T06:47:00.000-08:002012-01-20T06:48:59.582-08:00Morons and Omissional Sin<span style="font-family: verdana;">I received an email this week, typical of a handful I have received over the years -- fewer of late than earlier -- objecting to harsh language used on a commenter at the Ticker blog who had been making a set of the usual foolish arguments we've seen from American churchgoers these past few years -- the sort which insinuate that the Spirit is one's own personal instructor and sometime therapist, and makes any pew sitter as competent to exegete and interpret Scripture as (say) N. T. Wright. I also got a YouTube PM from someone who made similar objections to harsh words accorded to YT atheists, using the standard emotional claptrap and poor exegetical reasoning. When I pointed out that I had heard all this before, and linked to my article, the complainer merely reasserted his arguments as though nothing had been said.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">After all these years, there's nothing in the mindset of such complainers that seems at all comprehensible. It seems that they're quite tolerant of those who spread error, or bully the innocent, or even cravenly devour the faithful with falsehood; but call one of these wolves a name like <span style="font-style: italic;">stupid </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">ignorant</span>, and you may as well have announced that you made a hobby of dropping live puppies into boiling water.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's an ironic sort of sickness that considers harsh words the greater sin. It isn’t, but let’s just grant the premise that is it, just for the sake of argument. I would like to ask such people a simple question.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Let's say you were transported back to 1958, and were brought face to face with a young pastor named Jim Jones. Yes, that one: He who would in 1978 caused over 900 of his followers to kill themselves. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Let's say also that you knew that to halt that career from happening, all you had to do was berate and mock Jones to the point that he became unnerved, lost his confidence, and from them on would become nothing more than a minor cult leader that few people paid any attention to.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Would you call him names? Or would you decide it was sinful because Jones was a human made in God’s image; or because you had been insulted once yourself and felt bad about it? (That was the two main arguments used by my detractors – bad as they are.) </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Complainers of this sort lack the perspective this story implies. No, I am not saying that every fundy atheist wolf, or ever wacky Christian who thinks the Spirit is a personal hotline, will end up being a Jim Jones. I am saying, however, that we have foolishly convinced ourselves that harsh and confrontational language -- the sort of thing that can and does effectively break down such people before they can reach their prime -- is a sin, and a worse sin than what such wolves and Spirit-mongers go on to do.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Can anyone honestly say that we'd have been worse off had someone confronted and berated an insecure and foolish young Joyce Meyer so that she never got to the point today where she teaches to millions such nonsense as that the Spirit instructs Christians to do things like make fruit salad and open their eyes during sexual intercourse, but instead remained an obscure nobody who taught nothing greater than a home Bible study – which is frankly the most she really deserves to be?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I expect the whiners will say that not everyone I call an idiot will have such influence. Assuredly, that is so -- but let's reduce the stakes and see if it gets any better for them. Is it better to allow even ten people to be deceived out of eternal life just because you're squeamish about telling someone they're being -- well, stupid? How about five? How about one?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I also expect the complainers to say that well, maybe you will turn someone INTO a Jim Jones by insulting them. I rather doubt that; the arc of behavioral psychology doesn't make that very realistic. But even if it were possible, odds are far better you'd create a Jim Jones by ignoring him or being nice to him than by berating him. Do spoiled children get spoiled because they've been spoiled -- or because they've been disciplined?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Wake up, folks. We're in this mess we're in now because – among other things -- for too long we've turned insults into something more to be avoided than letting wolves run amuck. And the problem is still the same – either Jesus was a hypocrite, or else it is indeed not a sin in certain circumstances.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />After all these years, no one’s given me a good argument against that point, either.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-65958490561701132842011-12-23T11:50:00.001-08:002011-12-29T12:48:19.727-08:00Pastor Tim Rogers, Godly Man in Authority<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wNuNNb9LhG0NoeJh5Xx2e9Qhrq7VEVphFJFugQzINRCudxMYfjmvmeaKclNc3QU_rJJAjpzTvoVO9y5cNcf7N4pC5BD8b22xnOhCkYIcFQE257GF-mMJV0Nqc-s-av7ISQ7CoFUl8pM/s1600/rogers.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 232px; height: 193px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wNuNNb9LhG0NoeJh5Xx2e9Qhrq7VEVphFJFugQzINRCudxMYfjmvmeaKclNc3QU_rJJAjpzTvoVO9y5cNcf7N4pC5BD8b22xnOhCkYIcFQE257GF-mMJV0Nqc-s-av7ISQ7CoFUl8pM/s400/rogers.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5689413700155435458" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">Today’s post requires background from the Ticker.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Relating to the Licona-Geisler controversy, Dr. Thomas Howe issued a blog entry of interest. For reasons unknown at the time, the blog entry was removed some days later, and then returned, updated.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In between, another Geisler supporter, one Pastor Tim Rogers (of a small church in NC) took it upon himself to reprint Howe’s posting <span style="font-weight: bold;">in full.</span> I’ve watched Rogers for a while and have been duly unimpressed; his support of Geisler earned him a spot in my vid <span style="font-style: italic;">Geisler’s Christmas Carol</span> (see pic), and he’s a guaranteed chicken when it comes to being confronted with his errors, as shown below.</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (By the way, he also refuses to allow Nick Peters to post on his blog, and gives varied excuses for that as well.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Those that know me what came next.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I posted as a comment on Rogers’ blog:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >Do you have Dr. Howe’s permission to reprint his entry?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >If not, do you know what “intellectual property rights” are, or is that sort of moral concern beneath your radar as a “godly man in authority”?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">I knew the answer, of course. “Godly men in authority” like Rogers don’t respect the intellectual property rights of others, especially when they think that some higher purpose of theirs is at stake. In what followed, Rogers hemmed and hawed and dodged the issue, with such pointless questions as to whether I was asking for myself or on Howe’s behalf; he responded at one point to my detailed exposition on why he was wrong with nothing but a “Merry Christmas” greeting. That's a Santariffic way to dodge the issue, isn't it?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">To be fair, though, Rogers in reply comments demonstrated a dismal ignorance of copyright law as well – which is just a further hallmark of the ignorance of such “godly men in authority”. Among other things, Rogers:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">1) Implied that it didn’t make any difference because Howe had taken the blog entry down. (Wrong. Howe is still the owner of the intellectual property of his blog entry.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">2) It was “in the public domain.” (No, it was not. This manifest ignoramus<br />apparently thinks that “public domain” means “it’s publicly available.” It does not. It means a work where the copyright has either expired, or the author has freely released the work to be used by the public. The music I use for my TektonTV vids is an example of the latter. Neither of those descriptions applies to Howe’s post. And though I corrected Rogers on this point, he later reiterated the same asinine understanding of “public domain” to another commenter.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />3) He gave full credit to Howe as author. (Also does not matter. “Fair use” means credit is a good idea – it’s not always required, depending on the circumstances -- and it also means you can’t reprint the whole work, as Rogers did.</span>)<br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />4) Later, he also suggested that it was Howe’s responsibility to contact HIM and let him know he didn’t want it used. That too is false. Copyright law is quite clear on this <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html">matter</a>:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >How do I get permission to use somebody else’s work?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >You can ask for it. If you know who the copyright owner is, you may contact the owner directly. If you are not certain about the ownership or have other related questions, you may wish to request that the Copyright Office conduct a search of its records or you may search yourself. See the next question for more details.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" ><br />How much of someone else’s work can I use without getting permission?</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" ><br />Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" ><br />Somebody infringed my copyright. What can I do?</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" ><br />A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" ><br />Could I be sued for using somebody else’s work? How about quotes or samples?</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">By the way, the Government's stuff isn't covered by copyright...so I can quote THAT all I want. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Additionally, one of Rogers’ airheaded supporters – also a pastor of the same mold – arrived at the ludicrous conclusion that the same objections ought to have applied to eg, 2 Peter and Jude (whoever copied whom). Not only is that absurd because it applies laws and concepts that did not exist for another 1800 years at least; it is also oblivious to the point that the Bible, ultimately inspired by God, is God’s property to freely inspire others to use – or, even if you are not one who believes in the inspiration of the Bible, the Bible is itself the property of the community (Body of Christ), and so its members are free to reproduce it. Morever, if the Bible’s purpose is to evangelize and exhort everyone (in line with the Great Commission), that would be the equivalent of a “public domain” purpose.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">The same airhead also professed that it was not as simple as I made it out to be with the Internet in the mix. That’s true – the Internet makes it much easier for moral indigents like these pastors to get away with, and engage in, such wholesale intellectual theft. But has it made it any less immoral or illegal? Nope.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the end, Howe’s updated reposting of his entry saved this poor schlep the moral question of what he ought to do and enabled him the ultimate dodge on the central issue. But it didn’t save him from exposure as a moral failure. All he had to do, really, was say, “Oh. OK. I’ll ask Howe by email/phone. Be right back.” That wouldn’t have been that hard.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />But no, that is not how it is with “godly men in authority.” They are godly, so their rule is law. They can’t be troubled to make sure they’re doing right, or to look up things like “public domain”. Everyone else can take the rule of law and stick it somewhere dark and comfy when they’re busy with their work for the Kingdumb.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Shut up, you idiot, I'm preaching the Word of God.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">If you ever wonder why I’m so insistent on making an issue of authoritarian bullies – look no further. They’ll help kill the church in America faster than even John Loftus can.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update: </span>Hours after this post, Rogers professed to have in hand the permission I requested to reprint. Notably, he very carefully failed to indicate that he only got this permission AFTER being called down for his moral failures.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-43981510889299066602011-11-15T03:17:00.000-08:002011-11-15T03:20:05.169-08:00What Is Atheism? Part 7<span style="font-family: verdana;">Nick Peters now has this portion ready for us, and since I'm still stoned (ha ha -- <span style="font-style: italic;">kidney </span>stoned) we'll use it this week.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> We return again to our study of Krueger and “What is Atheism?” Krueger is going to attempt to answer the charge today on “Wouldn’t someone need to know everything in order to say that there is no God?” Granted, this is not the kind of argument I’d use, but Krueger does attempt argumentation here, so let’s see what he says.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger starts off with ECREE, which is “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” and that someone needs strong evidence to show that God exists. He tells us most people believe it is common sense that an extraordinary claim is false until evidence is shown for it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Well, no. It’s just not proven true. That’s a long ways from saying that it is false. Has it been proven true that X committed the crime in the court? Well, no. Therefore, we ought to believe it is false? No. I have no problem with skepticism. It will not work to say that because one side has insufficient evidence, then the other side must have sufficient evidence.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger also defines extraordinary claims as those that would require us to drop a common sense belief. What is a common sense belief? Considering most people today and throughout history have believed in some form of theism, then it would seem that Krueger is the one who has the extraordinary claim. Upon what basis can he say “Common sense says there is no God.”? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I could point to what most people believe in order to say that this is a common belief. This does not make the belief true. Many people can believe something and be wrong. Many people could have terrible reasons for believing in God, and in fact I’d say they do. That also does not make it wrong.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />To the atheist, that God exists is an extraordinary claim, but to someone like myself, the claim that God does not exist is an extraordinary claim. Why should Krueger’s common sense belief not be considered an extraordinary claim, but my claim should be considered one? </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />And here we have the problem with ECREE. ECREE is way too subjective. Besides, what is considered extraordinary evidence? Does it glow? Does it leave you feeling minty fresh? Does it provide a burning in the bosom? Would it not be best to say a belief should not be believed without sufficient evidence instead?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger decides to defend God’s existence by saying it is an extraordinary claim according to Christians. Pascal is said to have implied that some people needed to dull their reason to become Christians and Luther is said to have said that reason should be destroyed in all Christians. I would love to respond to these, but unfortunately, as expected, Krueger gives no citation. In what writing did Pascal and Luther say this? Who knows? What is the surrounding context? We don’t know.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />There’s even a problem on the face of it. This is talking about becoming Christians and not becoming theists. One can be a theist without being a Christian. Is Krueger trying to claim all non-Christians for the side of atheism? Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, etc. would all be interested in knowing they’re atheists. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Furthermore, what is meant by reason? Luther used reason in a number of ways and he didn’t necessarily mean the thinking facility. Pascal’s usage could have been the same seeing as in their own right, both of these men were intellectuals. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger then tells of a book by Michael Jordan (Not the basketball star) called “The Encyclopedia of Gods” and asks why Christians don’t think about those gods and wonder if they exist. The problem is that Krueger assumes the reason we don’t believe in those gods is the same reason that he doesn’t. His reason is because he has already ruled out the belief in any gods. Our reason as Christians is that we know that there is only one true God and we have strong evidence He exists, thus eliminating any competing theories.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger claims that the criteria for evidence is different for Christians with their God than with other gods. This could be the case, but this needs to be argued for and not assumed. Can Krueger tell what my criteria is? Krueger thinks the atheist alone is being consistent. I will say the atheist is being consistent with regards to how he treats all theistic claims, but not with how he treats all claims. If he accepted evidence for the historical claims of Christianity and metaphysics, the way he accepts other claims, I believe he would be a Christian. It is because he raises the bar when it comes to other beliefs that he does not accept them.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger now wants to show that the concept of God is incoherent. Krueger starts by saying that all religions disagree on their claims and they cannot all be true. True enough. The conclusion he reaches is there can be no being described by these religions. It does not follow. They could all be seeking to describe the ultimate being, but some of them are describing him wrong. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />He says the same is true of Christians. Some Christians say that God knows the future and therefore there is no free-will. (Krueger overlooks that a lot of us do believe God knows the future and that we have free-will.) Some Christians say God does not know the future. Both of these views cannot be true. Certainly. No problem with that. Saying both cannot be true does not show that both are false. Let us look at it this way.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Either mankind is here by a purely naturalistic process or mankind is here by a process of creation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Both of these views cannot be true.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Therefore both are false.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger would not accept such poor argumentation in any field. Are we to say that because contradictory things are believed about something, that that something cannot exist? Could it not be the simpler explanation that someone is just wrong?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Of course, Krueger tells us about the other great contradiction in Christianity, namely that 1 = 3, meaning the Trinity. Had Krueger actually read someone on the Trinity who was informed, he would have not made such an embarrassing blunder. See link below on the Trinity.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />What about omniscience? How could it be that God knows some things that supposedly have to be known by experience? To begin with, it is an assumption to say one has to have experience to know something. There is a subjective knowing and an objective knowing here. My main stance with omniscience is simply that God knows all propositions that are true. God could know all experiences however by knowing all persons. All this would show is that omniscience is a difficult concept. It does not show it is false. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />With omnipotence, Krueger asks the classic “Can God create a rock so big He can’t lift it?” Yes everyone. Someone wrote a book with an objection that’s high school level as if it was a powerful argument. Well, Krueger: If you’re reading this, I’m going to give you a simple answer to your question.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />No.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />And I say that saying God is omnipotent because power cannot do contradictions.<br /><br />God is able to do anything that power can do and nonsense does not cease to become nonsense because one adds the words “God can” before it, as C.S. Lewis said.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />What about God being eternal? Can God act in time if He is eternal? Yes. God’s actions just take place eternally. God does not progress on the timeline but rather God is always acting in all things at once as He is not limited by time. Right now, God is creating man and judging the world both. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger goes on to list that the Bible says God is male, but He cannot be if He has no body. To begin with, I think the body is an expression of maleness, but that is a reflection of an aspect of man that is male. (At least in men.)<br /><br />Furthermore, the Bible does not say God is male (In fact, it explicitly says in passages like Hosea 12:9 that God is not a man.) but rather He is described in male terms. One might as well think our planet is female since we think of Mother Nature and ask where her female parts are. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Finally, Krueger goes with the problem of evil. I have written on this before in my review of John Loftus’s usage of the Problem of Evil. See link below.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger returns to the Bible now to support nonbelief assuming the Bible is the only reason for believing in God with the objection of “Why did God not cause Bibles to rain from the sky.” JPH has written extensively on thinking like this with examples of the blue fairy and such. See link below.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />From this point on, I don’t consider the arguments against the Bible relevant as it is a dismissal of the theistic arguments I do not believe Krueger has dealt with.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Next time I write will close up this topic.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/why-i-rejected-christianity-review-natural-evil/</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/trinitydefense.html</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/uz/vector01.html</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-84003094656850828492011-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:002011-10-12T03:11:53.823-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 6: What About the Theistic Proofs?<span style="font-family: verdana;">Nick Peters continues his review.<br /><br />***<br /><br />As we continue our journey through Krueger’s work on atheism, we come to his chapter on theistic proofs. Keep in mind that Krueger has an allergy to citing in this book. Who are the people giving the arguments? We don’t know. Where do they say them? We don’t know. How do they defend them? We don’t know.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Krueger starts with the design argument. I won’t say anything about the science aspect of this. I am not a scientist and if someone wants to read that side, there are plenty of books on the topic. In some ways, I agree with Krueger. If all you have is “The universe is designed” it is not enough to establish classical theism. Philosophy has to take over at that point. I do agree that it can be a good start and that would be fine.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger does say that God in Genesis uses magic words to create the universe, a comment laughable in itself. No surprise that he uses the argument of “Who designed God?” The argument assumes God is designed, something I dealt with in my argument of Dawkins and the 747 Boeing. (See link.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger does have some criticisms as well on what the argument does not show. It does not show that this God is the Christian God. It does not show that there is only one creator. It fails to show that God still exists, is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, or omniscient. I agree with all of those. However, I do agree that it establishes likely some kind of theism and that is all that is needed.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Next we move to the cosmological argument. At least at this point he does mention Aquinas, but like Dawkins, Krueger does not understand Aquinas. One hopes that there is some glimmer of light coming through when Krueger says that a contingent being is that which is caused to exist by something other than itself. A necessary being is not caused to exist by another. I could disagree with some aspects of that, but I will explain that soon. The problem is that Krueger states that a necessary being is caused to exist by its own nature. If he is speaking of God, God is not caused by anything. I do agree that something could be necessary but always be dependent on another. I don’t think this is the case, but I am open.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger says that it does not follow that there is only one first mover. With this, Krueger shows he does not understand the argument and likely is thinking motion refers to physical motion when it refers to any change whatsoever. There can only be one being who is being itself for if there was another, they would have to differ in some aspect of being and how could pure being differ from pure being? </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />How can it be sure that God still exists? Because the first mover has divine simplicity and cannot change and going out of existence would count as a change. He is eternal and outside of time. The same kind of thing can be said for all of Krueger’s other objections and had he actually read the Summa Theologica, he would have seen that Aquinas argues for the love of God, the knowledge of God, and the power of God from reason.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger also says that Aquinas assumed an infinite regress was impossible. He did no such thing. In fact, he was open to an infinite regress. He would disagree with Craig today in saying that the universe cannot be proven to have a beginning by an infinite regress argument that is horizontal. This is stated in Question 46, article 2, of the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologica. Aquinas believes the universe had a beginning because Scripture says so. He says philosophy cannot show that.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />But some of you are saying “But in his divine proofs, he does say we have to avoid an infinite regress.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />You are correct, for there are two kinds of infinite regresses. The first is a per accidens. In this one, the existence of that which is present in no way requires the current existence of that which was past. Suppose my wife and I want to start having children and while deciding this, in a horrible tragedy, our parents die in car accidents. Does this mean we cannot have children? In no way. Our ability to have children does not depend on our parents.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Now suppose a chain of gears is moving and they are all being moved by one big gear. This is going on for eternity. Then all of a sudden, we find a way to remove the big gear. Do the little gears stop? Yes they do. Their motion is dependent on the big gear and this is a different kind of regress called a per se regress.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Aquinas’s classic example is a hand moving a stick that is moving a rock. If the hand goes away, all movement stops. This is the kind of regress he is speaking of in his divine proofs. There has to be something that is the cause of motion in all other things to explain their motion, yet it itself is not in motion.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Could the first cause have been the universe itself as Krueger says? No. The universe is material and that which is material in Aquinas is that which is always in a state of potential and thus cannot be purely actual. Again, this is really basic Aquinas and that Krueger writes on this shows he does not understand the basics of Aquinas.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />These are the only kinds of arguments dealt with. Krueger might think he’s dealt with other arguments like the moral argument or the argument from the resurrection, but he does not. He also seems to coalesce all of Aquinas’s arguments into one, but they are each different in their own way.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Chapter 7 next time.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/who-made-god/">Link</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-48407730420790368202011-09-30T03:09:00.000-07:002011-09-30T03:12:15.947-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 5: Krueger and Miracles<span style="font-family: verdana;">Nick Peters continues his series:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> In our continuing look at Krueger’s “work” the fifth chapter is about miracles. Do they prove that God exists? You know that it’s going to be a highly errant look at the topic when the first sentence is just wrong.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature because of supernatural influence.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Well, no. A miracle is what happens when God intervenes in a situation that disrupts what would normally happen had He not intervened. It is not a violation of the laws of nature as the laws of nature still remain intact. The loaves and fishes were miraculously created, but the digestion process went on as normal. God created a sperm in Mary for the virgin birth, but the birth process went on for the same nine months.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Such a way of phrasing the topic poisons the well. Unfortunately for Krueger, he cites no theological or philosophical dictionary that gives such a definition. Make it a point readers to watch the way people define terms. Often they can set it to win at the outset with just how they define their terms.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Of course, the argument is Humean (see link below) and has been dealt with. By this point, most every Christian philosopher and their mother has answered Hume. Still, his ghost keeps coming back. (Hmmm. Perhaps that should be considered a miracle.) </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />As an example of the idea, Krueger says that if we hear about a man who was holy and floated in mid-air because he was in a trance, we must either believe everyone has been mistaken about gravity, or that the report misunderstands or is lying. Instead, it could simply be that if said case was true, God was working but not violating a law of nature as gravity still holds throughout the universe. One can believe in gravity and also believe a higher power can cause something to float that normally wouldn’t.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Interestingly, Krueger goes on to say the laws of nature are not known completely. While I agree with this tentatively (I still hold out questions on if we can really speak of laws of nature), I see this as a great weakness in the argument. It means that whatever happens, Krueger can just say “Well that’s not a miracle. We just don’t understand the law yet.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />So if Krueger is presented with evidence that he cannot deny that Jesus rose from the dead, he’s really going to try to look for a law of nature that will explain one resurrection that took place at one point in time rather than thinking about eschatological fulfillment, the honor-shame dynamic, etc.?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Keep in mind, we theists are the ones who are supposed to examine our claims. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger says there are also always alternative explanations. Sure. So what? That doesn’t mean they’re right. One shouldn’t go with an explanation because it’s an alternative to one you don’t like. You should go with it because it is true. In a revealing sentence at the end of the page on this part he says “Almost any other proposed explanation for a seeming miracle would be more likely to be true than theism because the other claims would not assert the existence of a supreme being, a situation which would place the theistic proposal at a great disadvantage.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />In other words, we have to assert any possibility that could be true except theism and since we cannot accept the theistic claim, that puts theism at a great disadvantage.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />No joke. Really?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger also says that even if the laws were violated, it would not show God’s existence since gods are usually thought to bring about events by magic powers or uttering certain words and that it could never be established that one god chose to do a miracle instead of another.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Well, maybe unless we could do something like establish that only one God exists which has been done….</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Krueger also dismisses any biblical testimony since he thinks he’s shown the Bible to be unreliable. (See link to previous blog post on that topic)</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Finally, Krueger says all such claims outside the Bible have not held up under examination. He tells about CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. An example worth mentioning is the Shroud of Turin. I have not seen word yet of this being refuted. Even if one does not accept it, there are a lot of unanswered questions about it. I wouldn’t use it in an apologetic argument, but it is something fun to think about.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />I conclude that Krueger is simply dismissing every miracle claim too fast not also aware that even the Catholic Church has its own branch to investigate miracle claims thoroughly.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> <br />Not much here today folks. We’ll see what chapter 6 has next time.</span><br /><a href="http://www.tektonics.org/gk/hume01.html"><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">On Hume</span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-18962243837216530532011-09-15T09:14:00.001-07:002011-09-15T09:25:02.948-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 4<span style="font-family: verdana;">We're back to Nick Peters taking on this dreary little tome. Maybe we could make Krueger more entertaining by drawing him in a monkey outfit.</span><br /><br />***<br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> For our fourth installment, the argument Krueger wishes to look at is if the Bible proves that God exists. This is not often an argument I see being used although I do think if one can establish prophecy, that counts for something, but that can turn into debates on textual criticism and hermeneutics way too easily. If there was any argument I’d use, it’d involve the Bible as a historical document and use it to establish basic facts about the resurrection of Jesus and from there show that God exists.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger starts with prophecy and says that before we show a prophecy is truly what it is, we must rule out every other hypothesis. In a revealing statement on page 95 he writes “Given the extraordinarily strong claim about the nature of the theistic god, however, it would seem that almost any other explanation would be more likely than that of theism. Time-traveling human beings, amazing coincidences, carefully planned hoaxes, all would be more likely explanations for the supposed fulfillment of a prophecy than the god hypothesis because these claims are weaker than the theistic claim.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Such a statement says much about Krueger. Because of the nature of the God claim, he is ready to believe anything else other than that. Do we have evidence of time-traveling human beings? No. They’re more likely however. Do we have any evidence of a major hoax the Jews had been planning on humanity for thousands of years? No. It’s more likely though. Krueger will say that we also lack evidence for God. We will deal with that later.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Kreuger then lists five criteria for prophecy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#1-It must be clear and contain sufficient detail to make fulfillment by a wide variety of possible events unlikely.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> On this one, I’d have some concerns about what is meant by clear. Does Krueger want everything to be spelled out? I would consider it sufficient to show it was understandable to the people of the time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#2-The event that can fulfill it must be unusual or unique.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I really don’t have much issue with this one.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#3-The prophecy must be known to have been made prior to its fulfillment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Obviously no problem.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#4-The event must not be what could be the result of an educated guess.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I would think it less likely to be divine, but in some cases, I could accept such an event. To have an educated guess fulfilled hundreds of years in the future however seems quite unlikely.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#5-It cannot be staged or manipulated by those aware of the prophecy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> No problem with this either.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Before we get to this point, Krueger has some statements about the Bible. In the midst he says that most of the books of the Old Testament were written centuries after the death of the person for whom it is named. Krueger states this as “known” but he gives no source whatsoever for this claim. He goes on to state the same of the NT saying the gospels were written decades afterwards.</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />Now of course in a sense, that’s true. 30 years later for some would count as decades. What Krueger does not state however is that in the ancient world if you had an account written decades after the event, scholars of ancient history would be drooling with excitement to see such an account so close to the events. </span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />For some false prophecies, Krueger cites 2 Kings 22:20 and Ezekiel 26:3-36. (See links below) Krueger also thinks Jeremiah 31:4 could only point to 1948. It is doubtful that Krueger is aware that this event was fulfilled much sooner by the return of Judah from captivity. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">For the New Testament, Krueger points to Jesus being supposedly in the heart of the Earth for three days and three nights. (See link below again) Next is Jesus being born a Nazarene in Matthew 2:23. (See link below) Of course, there’s Isaiah 7:14 being misunderstood. (See link below)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Krueger is unaware of preterist interpretations as he cites Matthew 16:28 and Matthew 10:23. It’s odd that he’d do this seeing as he believes the gospels were written late. Does he believe that they were written afterwards and with prophecies in them that would have been known to be false? Of course, there’s also that Jesus got the time of His second coming wrong, something I would most certainly disagree with. Of course, to make it most hilarious, Krueger recommends Callahan’s book on Bible Prophecy for those doubtful.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Krueger next wants to show that the Bible is unreliable and says that “The best unbiased bible scholars hold that there are good reasons to believe that the books of the bible are unreliable sources.” To begin with, this seems like a No True Scotsman Fallacy. How do you recognize the best unbiased scholars of the Bible? They hold that it is unreliable. Second, who are these scholars? What are their books? Where can I read their arguments? Your guess is as good as mine. Krueger gives no information.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Well what are Krueger’s reasons?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#1-Almost all the books of the Bible are anonymous. (Tekton has several articles on this issue according to book.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#2-They were written decades after the events recorded. (Likewise, and note that this is still a blip in the ancient world)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">#3-We have no original documents. (Likewise)</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />#4-The NT was written in Greek. (This isn’t a problem, and note that Krueger begins this part saying “If Jesus did exist.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#5-At some points in church history, lying to promote Christianity was not only not discouraged but encouraged. There is unfortunately no source on this.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">#6-Documents critical of Christianity were sought out and destroyed. (See link below and how this relates to textual criticism is anyone’s guess. Note his source on this is Joseph Hoffman.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#7-Some manuscripts are different from copies of the same book. Krueger doesn’t say that this is the same for any ancient work and seems to think he’s ripped a hole into Christianity by pointing out that 1 John 5:7 is an interpretation. (See link below)</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#8-Most NT books are known to be forgeries. There is no source here given. It is simply assertions. (See link below)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#9-The gospels are not independent accounts. This is amusing since he complains so much of contradictions, but if there was literary dependence going on to this level one would think there would be no contradictions. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#10-The development of the Bible undermines its reliability. For this, we have troubles with canonization saying that the first attempt to canonize the NT text was in 367, unaware there was for all intents and purposes an accepted canon at the time. Ironically, Krueger says this while on the very next page mentioning the Muratorian Canon and references to other fathers. His dispute of some is along the lines of “But they did not include Hebrews.” That the topic was even being discussed however shows that canonization was being attempted and that there was criteria.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#11-Biblical accounts contradict facts about nature and the ancient world.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">For this, he has a few subheadings. To start with, he questions the credibility of the destruction of Ai based on an article in <span style="font-style: italic;">Biblical Archaeology Review</span>. Second, Darius the Mede becoming king when Cyrus conquered the throne. Third, Daniel was written in the second century B.C. Also, that the conquest narratives are unhistorical with only a citation of William H. Stiebing Jr.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">For other errors, there’s Leviticus 11:6 and Deuteronomy 14:7 stating hares chew the cud, the usual canard about bats being birds, Leviticus 11:23 about insects having four legs, (You think no one in thousands of years ever picked one up and counted?) and the events of Genesis 30:37-42.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Then, there are events such as the sun standing still in Joshua and the verses used to condemn Galileo. Finally for the OT, there are counting discrepancies between Ezra and Nehemiah. No shock that Thomas Paine’s opinion is cited. (Needless to say, Tekton's had articles on all these issues for quite some time; sample links below.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">For the NT, there’s the lack of mention of the atrocity of Bethlehem, and the darkness over the Earth and the mass resurrection in Matthew 27. Krueger states that historians like Philo-Judaeus lived in Jerusalem at the time but don’t mention Jesus or resurrections. There is no source that shows he was living there at the time. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">#12-The Bible contains many contradictions.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Of course, this is a favorite one. What do we have? The following, all of which are again old news (sample links below):</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Does God repent?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Does God punish children for the sins of their parents?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Is anyone righteous?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Are we justified by faith or works?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Does God keep his promises?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Is everything possible with faith?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Will all who call upon Jesus’s name be saved?</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Will god always be there in times of need? (Hard to believe Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 10:1 are used here.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Was Jesus God?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">This last one needs to be expanded on. To begin with, Krueger says that in John 8:42, Jesus says he is sent by God. Krueger tells us that if he is sent by God, he cannot be God. He also reminds us that he admits he did not send himself as he did not come on his own. Krueger has done two things here. First, he has given us a good argument against modalism. Second, he has revealed his own ignorance. Note to atheists out there wanting to write a book against Christianity. Make sure you get the basic information right. I can easily say Krueger is an unreliable source on Christianity at this point due to mistakes such as these.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Of course, Krueger compounds this by asking who Jesus prayed to if he was God. Does he honestly think no one in thousands of years of church history notice that Jesus prayed? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Krueger goes on to state about how enlightened Christians don’t take the Bible literally because of this. Well some of us don’t take it literally in some parts simply because we pay attention to genre.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">After this, there is nothing new and worthwhile in this section. It would help Krueger to actually cite what his opponents say and show some understanding of the text. He does neither.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/TK-2KIN.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/uz/zeketyre.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/af/bucknerj01.html#days</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://christianthinktank.com/fabrach.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://christianthinktank.com/fabprof2.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christianthinktank.com/qburnbx.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/af/comma.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christianthinktank.com/pseudox.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/af/danieldefense.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/af/batbird.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.html</span><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jamesvspaul.html</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-15150186088095019642011-08-30T03:54:00.000-07:002011-08-30T03:56:46.161-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 3 (Can Atheists Have Purpose?)<span style="font-family: verdana;">Nick Peters continues his review.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">While in a sense I do agree that to say there is purpose in the atheist universe is false, it is not the argument I’d use. I’d instead focus on an argument based on goodness, of which morality is an offshoot, and instead ask the atheist why he thinks X is good. I notice that atheists often have a hard time defining goodness while saying their system can produce it. Despite having said that, this is the question Krueger has raised so let’s look at what he says.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger starts by saying that it’s not clear what Christians and other theists mean by the term. At this point, I have to wonder, “If this is unclear, then why are you writing about it?” Of course, most of us have seen that lack of knowledge is no reason for an atheist to not write on something.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger also says the predestination robs life of purpose. He does at least state that not all Christians agree with predestination. Yet even if one does believe in it, Krueger does not give an argument thinking that if it was already determined before birth, there can be no purpose. Anyone I know who holds to such a view of predestination would simply say “the glory of God.” Krueger ends this section saying that if predestination is the case, then no theologian has ever shown how life could have meaning. It’s quite a strong claim. It’s also an amazing claim to make in light of the fact that he never cites or even names a theologian throughout the book and it would require him to have done exhaustive reading on the subject. </span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Next Krueger goes after the doctrine of original sin saying that many Christians promote the view that man is basically evil. This is not the same however as saying Christianity promotes this view and again, there are no sources given. I think man’s inclination to evil, but man is good ontologically in that he bears the image of God. It’s worth noting that Krueger also starts this section with loaded language by saying that because of this doctrine all people are condemned to eternal torture.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Ironically, he also goes after salvation by grace in one of the most bizarre looks at it I have ever seen. To start with, Krueger says on this view, one is saved not by works, but by God’s arbitrary decision, which has not been established, although some followers of predestination could hold to something similar. For Krueger, if you have done nothing to deserve salvation, why be moral? The answer is simple. Because one loves God and wants to promote His glory and that this is our correct nature as human beings to seek the good as the good and act accordingly.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Next, Krueger says that following God’s will does not bring purpose since this is slavery. This is assuming that slavery is understood as Krueger understands it, a major assumption. I have no problem saying I am a slave of Christ and I have great purpose in life as I wish to promote my master’s glory.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> He also argues that God’s will cannot be determined. It is unclear what he means on this. If he means the sovereign will of God, then I agree. That cannot be known without word from God, such as in prophecy. If he means morality, that can be known to a degree, but even then there are still gray areas. Krueger again points to areas of disagreement as if this establishes a lack of truth. (Question. Does that mean then that areas of agreement should be taken as truth?) One wonders if when atheists disagree that that means atheism is false. We could say “But all atheists agree with macroevolution and that there is no God.” The answer could be “So what? Christians all agree that God exists and that Jesus rose physically from the dead, but they’re still wrong because they disagree on secondary issues.” The sword cuts both ways.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Finally, to close one part, Krueger says the theist cannot show that there is a God. This will of course be dealt with later.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger next says that the purpose of life to some Christians is to avoid Hell. I agree this is not the purpose. I also wonder about some Christians who think the end goal is to get to Heaven as they understand it. Our purpose is the glory of God, the greatest good. Heaven is going to be the realization of that greatest good so that in that sense, Heaven is our goal. However, I see Heaven as being in the manifest presence of God exalting Him for all eternity and enjoying His love. Heaven is defined by God. Our end goal is not a place but a being, the being of God.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger next says that many Greeks led purposeful lives without knowing that God exists, but this is just a misunderstanding along the lines of the moral argument. One does not need to know their purpose for them to have a purpose. One does not need to know the source of morality to know morality.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger does get one thing right in this chapter saying “Whether or not there are no gods is an issue that should be decided on the basis of its truth, not on the basis of whether it is pleasant or useful to believe in gods.” I agree entirely. It would be nice if Krueger treated the question as seriously throughout the book.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger also says that the question of the meaning of life is misleading. It assumes that all people have the same meaning. I agree we should avoid assumptions and it would be good to have them established. Krueger does not spend time interacting with them at all unfortunately. He just throws them out and leaves them for the reader to consider. That’s fine for a teacher in a classroom, but for one making an argument for his position, he needs to deal with them. </span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger does give a definition in the next part for meaning when he says “Let us define a purpose of life as that part of life which productively shapes the course of one’s life and the selection of goals according to certain criteria.” This is too vague however. Is there any way one could argue on this definition alone that Hitler’s purpose was not to kill Jews for instance? This does boil down to relativism.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger in fact on the very next page argues that “the aspect of creative, positive contribution can be found in any activity.” He quickly makes an exception for criminals, but why? What are they doing? They believe they are living productive lives and are doing so according to one’s criteria. The key word is productively. What does that mean? Productively for who? If it has to be productive for the whole, why should I care?</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger also says that an accomplished logician once told him that “the secret to happiness is to find something you liked doing and then find some way to get paid doing it.” Would the same work for a criminal? Krueger would obviously think otherwise, but then I could say to him “So what if I treated this statement of yours the exact same way you treated Jesus’s statements?”</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I also believe Krueger gives a wake-up call for the church in saying that purpose
<br />can often be difficult for some theists as they don’t want to change. It’s easier to sell Bibles an raise donations. Krueger has pinpointed a tendency in the church to just go to a worship service, sing a few hymns, listen to a sermon, and then think that you’re doing good. He is absolutely right in this. If we believe our purpose in life is the glory of God, we ought to be living like it is. That will not be easy, but it will be worth it.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> On page 84, despite all Krueger has said, he says the meaning of life is what we choose to give it. Again, if that is the case, then we can put Hitler and criminals in the camp of following their meaning to life. Hitler’s meaning was to make the world a better place by eradicating all Jews. Who is Krueger to say he was wrong?</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> In conclusion, once again, Krueger doesn’t deliver. While there are points made, these are only incidental to his argument. The sad reality however is that so many churches are not fulfilling their purpose that the average Christian is unaware of how to answer Krueger. If we believe in purpose, let us live like it is so.</span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-68882617655946280742011-08-23T02:59:00.000-07:002011-08-23T03:16:08.695-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 2<span style="font-family: verdana;">Nick Peters continues his review:</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span><p style="font-family: verdana;" class="MsoBodyText"><span style=""> </span>Now we get into something more entertaining. It’s Krueger’s look at morality. At the start, Krueger says “The view that atheists cannot act according to a legitimate system of ethics is, while erroneous, quite common.” Let me reply with my own position. “The view that the moral argument states that atheists cannot act according to a legitimate system of ethics is, while erroneous, quite common.” Yes, Krueger. You have started off with a straw man. The moral argument is not about if one can be good without God, but if one can have an ontological and epistemological basis for goodness without God.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger says that most theists say that atheism should be abandoned since it cannot account for morals. He contends that theism on the other hand cannot account for morality. If he is right, he believes that theists can no longer raise the charge against atheists. The problem is that theists could very well do that. It would not be the strongest argument and be a tu quoque, but if both views are unsatisfactory, then both are unsatisfactory.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger’s plan is to show that God is not the source of morality and that the Bible is not an adequate basis for morality. The first we will deal with when he presents it. Of course that will be done for the second, but let us state at the start that the Bible teaches morality but it is not to be seen as the source of morality. One can have morality apart from the Bible.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>What’s Krueger’s great argument? Why it’s the Euthyphro dilemma! </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Because we know in 2,500 years of thinking since then that no theist has addressed this dilemma….</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger presents the two horns. Is something good because God wills it? This is a view I do not hold as I agree that it becomes circular. The good is what God wills. That does not tell us anything more about the content of goodness itself and what it means to be good. It is just a tautology. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>The same problem applies to saying the good is God’s nature. I agree that God’s nature is good and in fact I agree that what God wills is good, but what I seek to know is what the good itself is. Krueger states that one must then state they have no standard of ethics or that God is not the source.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Or one could go with a more Aristotlean view of Natural Law theory and describe goodness as that at which all things aim and go from there realizing that God is goodness to the full. A good metaphysics based on Thomism could help with that. Krueger embarrassingly says about his argument that, “No theist has ever been able to overcome this strong objection to the view that God is the source of ethics.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger obviously knows this after going through a round of interviewing Sunday School teachers….</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Next, Krueger goes after the Bible. First, he points to a system of rewards and punishments in the Bible stating that this is about self-interest and not ethics.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Unlike modern America where we reward people with bonuses on the job and such for doing good and punish them with jail time for doing evil. Obviously, a truly ethical system says nothing about the consequences of the actions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger also speaks about the vagueness of the Bible. The commands are too vague. The problem is that Krueger is thinking all of the texts are absolutes in every case and there are no general principles.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger also faults the Bible for not speaking about many issues we have today: Like abortion, contraception, and organ donation. Also pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, right to privacy, etc. Thus, an ancient document is faulted because it doesn’t tell Krueger everything he wants to know. That’s not the role of the Bible, however. It is not meant to teach men how to be good, but to teach them about Christ, and from there, they will want to be good hopefully.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger then lists unethical teachings of the Bible, such as how the Bible says to resist not evil. (See links below for this and other issues noted here.)<span style=""> </span>Also of course, there’s slavery.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>There’s also the charge that Jesus was racist since when speaking to the Gentile woman he said it is not right to take the children’s bread and give it to dogs. Never mind that he did heal the woman.'s daughter as asked . <span style=""></span>Krueger adds that today, compassionate people consider racism immoral. Why? No reason given. They just do. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Next we have the typical rants on genocide with Genesis 7, Deuteronomy 20:16, Joshua 10:40 and 11:20, and 1 Samuel 15. (Sample links below)<span style=""></span>Then references to God punishing people by forcing them to be cannibals. (See links below again)<span style=""></span>hen more teaching that since we should obey all authorities, Martin Luther King Jr. could be suffering eternal agony then for standing up to the government and God obviously appointed Hitler and Mao.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Then we get to kidnapping and rape. First on the list is Numbers 31 where Moses supposedly tells the soldiers that they may rape the daughters. (Chapter and verse please Krueger?) There’s also Deuteronomy 21:10-14 as expected. Finally, Judges 21:10-24.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger also says the Bible sanctions killing innocents during war time (Since we all know the Geneva Convention was in place back then) using Isaiah 13 as an example.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Next, we have verses on women. There’s the common headship passages from Scripture. Also, Krueger states that Leviticus 12 has childbirth as a sin and obviously having a girl makes one twice as sinful.<span style=""> </span>Krueger tells us that scholars tell us that the idea of clean or unclean does not refer to hygiene but one’s relationship to the divine. Which scholars? Beats me. He never cites them. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Next is Leviticus 19:20-21 and Deut. 22:23-24 and 28-29. Krueger describes the test for virginity in Deut. 22:13-21 as barbaric. (Obviously) Numbers 5:11-31 reportedly has an agonizing adulteress test. Finally, the Ten Commandments include a wife among one’s possessions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Once again, Krueger tells us that today, compassionate men and women believe that men and women should be considered equals. Upon what basis? Well, none is given.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger also says the Bible is contradictory on ethics. Can one love one’s enemies and send them to Hell? In essence, yes. God gives people what they want and is for their best good.
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger also looks at name-calling such as calling someone a fool which supposedly goes against Colossians 3:8<span style=""> . </span>
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>What about lying? We have the hilarious notion that Jesus says in John 18:20 that he always taught in synagogues and the temple, but this is false since he taught a sermon on a mountain. The text also says he said nothing in secret, but obviously he did teach things in secret. Of course, there’s John 7 as well and Luke 23:43 is a source of lying since Acts 2:31 says Jesus descended into Hell. Also mentioned are 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 and 1 Kings 22:20-23. Ezekiel 20:25-26 is used to show that God gave the people bad laws. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Should we honor our parents? According to Krueger, Luke 14:26 says we shouldn’t. His source on what the word miseo means in that verse is Darrel Henschell. (Who??) Most horrific of all however is that in John 2, Jesus refers to his mother as “woman” twice. GASP! THE SCANDAL!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Krueger looks at possible objections. The ideas are modern entirely. I agree that we should not appeal to feelings. I do think however that the atheist needs his own system of ethics, which Krueger will get to now.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>What are they? Well there’s Kant. Kant believed in a good will and Krueger says that what is important is one’s motive then. Fair enough. If my motive for torturing children is that it brings me pleasure, is that good? To be sure, motive is a part in ethics, but it is not the only part. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Kant also said that one should only will as a principle what they think should be universalized. So let’s look and see what I could do with this. I will it as a principle that I treat myself as the highest good. I think everyone else should also treat me as the highest good. Krueger could say that I am not treating the principle rightly. I could respond saying I just did the exact same thing he did with the biblical aphorisms. I think there is some truth to Kant’s idea, but there are problems as well as there are with any aphorism.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Then of course there’s Utilitarianism, which is also vague and then has some problems. Consider the case of an island with 51 stranded people. 50 are men and one is a woman. The men decide they will increase the maximum pleasure of themselves by raping the woman regularly. Her unhappiness will not outweigh their happiness. Would this be immoral on Utilitarianism?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>The problem with the Utilitarian ethic is that it only looks at consequences. It does not pay attention to the other aspects. Consequences are part of a system, but not the whole. Also, pleasure and pain are quite vague. We all know of pleasures we ought to avoid, and we all know of harms we ought to allow. Wine can be a good pleasure, but too much makes you drunk, a bad outcome. Pain is generally to be avoided, but we all know we’d have a painful but necessary surgery. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>Also, in listing all of these, Krueger does not give a criterion for goodness. Note that this was the objection of the Euthyphro dilemma. Krueger himself must answer it. How is he to define good? If he cannot, he is just taking ethical systems and saying that they are good, but upon what basis? What is this goodness? Krueger never tells us. There is no interaction with Natural Law thinking whatsoever. No theistic sources are ever cited.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;"><span style=""> </span>I conclude that Krueger has not made his case and even granting other ethical systems, they still need a basis for goodness and that is only in theism.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; font-family: verdana;">(JPH note: Here's just a sample of links answering Krueger's silly claims. Since I know this is all over his head -- having dealt with him before -- we'll leave it at these, because if he ever sees this, they'll keep him busy for years.)
<br /></p><a style="font-family: verdana; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://www.tektonics.org/qt/smithg01.html#lk627">http://www.tektonics.org/qt/smithg01.html#lk627</a>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christianthinktank.com/qcrude.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/TK-C.html (entry under Cannibalism)</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/lp/obeylaw.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christian-thinktank.com/midian.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.christian-thinktank.com/femalex.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/af/ancientmores.html#dt2228</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatlove.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/lp/namecallfool.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/qt/secretteach.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/lp/lyingghosts.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesussayshate.html</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesusrudemom.html</span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-52659237444494309262011-08-17T07:51:00.001-07:002011-08-17T07:55:15.459-07:00What Is Atheism? Part 1<span style="font-family: verdana;">For this week's Forge entry I'll turn the reins over to Nick Peters, who will present us with a multi-part critique of one of my old whipping boys -- Doug Krueger.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">***</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">In our modern age, we have the plethora of new atheists writing against religion. While it could have been thought that poor research was something that would belong to the new atheists, it turns out that Krueger back in 1998 had already set the standard. While one would expect to see argumentation against the other side, keep in mind that in this work, Krueger cites ZERO apologists in this one. </span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />However, let’s see what his case is and to be fair, he does start off with the right place by asking the question of what atheism is. The sad reality is that apparently, he doesn’t know.
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<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger gives two definitions. The first is that one does not assent to theistic belief. The second is that the theistic belief is false. The reality is that the second answer is the correct one. Many atheists have been trying to hedge their bets lately by saying that not holding theistic beliefs makes one an atheist. </span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />However, that would mean that this computer is an atheist. My cat is an atheist. A rock is an atheist. If not having theistic beliefs makes one an atheist, then all manner of unintelligent beings are atheists. (Okay. That might not differ too much in some cases, but there are some obvious absurdities.)
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<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> A belief should say something about reality rather than the belief itself. Saying “I do not hold theistic beliefs” tells me something about you, but does it say anything about your view of reality. Are you saying “I believe the views of theists are false?” If so, then are you not an atheist since the a before the word theist stands for negation?</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />It’s just a lot easier to not really assert anything and leave the burden of proof to the theist. Does the theist have a burden of proof? Of course, but so does the atheist. Anyone making a claim has one. Fortunately, Krueger does take the route of affirming that there are no gods.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Krueger goes on from there to list a number of statements about what atheism isn’t. Again, no sources are given. Who are these people raising some of these objections? No idea.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> The first is that people become atheists so that they can do whatever they want. Krueger rightfully says that people should adopt beliefs because they are true. Of course they should, but one would hope that Krueger would realize that this isn’t always the case. To say it should is not the same as to say it is. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;"> I, for instance, would not deny that I am sure that many Christians become Christians for emotional reasons. That does not mean that their belief is false. Some are Christians because they were raised that way. That also does not make it false. I also believe there are some atheists that do want to live the way they wish and if God is real, they realize that that cannot be the case. </span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Krueger also says that atheists do not hate God. Well in the sense that they think He is not real, they don’t. However, there are some who do despise the Christian concept of God and give thanks that He is not real, such as Christopher Hitchens. </span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />The next is that an atheist is one who worships satan. For this, I would really like to know the source. Now as a Christian, I do believe that an atheist is in fact doing his work that in the end serves the cause of satan, but I do not believe he is actively worshipping the devil.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Krueger also says the atheist does not worship anything. While he thinks the idea of having something viewed as ultimate in one’s life is vague, what is vague about it? What does Krueger really want in life? It could be anything. It could be pleasure, sex, money, happiness, power, etc. Whichever one it is, that could be said in a sense to be the one Krueger lives his life in devotion to.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Krueger also says someone is an atheist because they had a fight with a religious authority. Let’s keep in mind that in Loftus’s autobiographical portion of his book, he mentions the way the church treated him as having an impact on him becoming an atheist. Now of course, this is not a rational reason to become an atheist, nor do I think it’s common, but it can happen.
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<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> The last is that all atheists believe the same thing, whatever X is. Now in a number of cases, atheists believe different things. They can have different stances on politics, morality, philosophy, science, etc. However, they are all united on one thing. They all deny God’s existence.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Krueger says that it is common for Christians to assume someone is a spokesman for atheism and then criticize that person. He does list Nietzsche, Marx, and Sartre as people who have been attacked. He also says some have gone after Kierkegaard, who was a Christian. The only thing he doesn’t mention is who these Christian writers are. Not one is mentioned. For something common, one would think he would take the time to show an example. </span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Krueger goes on to state that atheism is not a worldview or a philosophy of life, but just a part. After all, you don’t believe that there are unicorns. Is that your worldview?</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Because we all know the existential relevance of unicorns and God are exactly the same.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />God is seen only as the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, creator, provider, sustainer, and judge of the universe and the ground of all being. Unicorns are seen as magical horses that have a horn coming out of their heads. Obviously, these two are quite similar.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Of course, many Christians do not take God seriously and many atheists sadly take Him more seriously than Christians do. Unicorns are not the same because there is not as much relevance to one’s view of reality with that question as there is with the God question. If you find out there are unicorns one day and you’re an atheist, well you’ll have to rethink your worldview, but you could still find a way to be an atheist. If you find out there’s a God and you’re an atheist, you do have to change your worldview. Everything else has to be reevaluated.</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">
<br />Next time, we shall have some fun looking at Krueger on morality.</span>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-84458161046239894972011-08-11T07:22:00.000-07:002011-08-11T07:38:03.427-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 7<span style="font-family: verdana;">In this last part, Lindtner goes off in all directions talking about everything from Bolsheviks to genocides in Asia to Jewish "ethnocentrism". Then for icing on the cake his credits include references to people who refute Holocaust deniers.</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">So that's it for now. If you want to join in on the fun, though, one of Lindtner's groupies -- who has posted here in comments -- is taking a shellacking from me at TheologyWeb (link below), where after 3 days he still can't argue for a pre-Christian date for any Buddhist source and still can't seem to use a (pseudo-)scholarly source that wasn't published when Kersey Graves was in diapers.</span>
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<br /><a href="http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?147614-Debating-Buddhist-sources-to-Christianity-with-J.-P.-Holding"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Link</span></a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-28598386477624089542011-08-09T09:13:00.001-07:002011-08-09T09:23:42.550-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 6<span style="font-family: verdana;">This part was interesting inasmuch as Lindtner was asked why he changed his mind on these issues. The short-winded answer is that he claims to have looked into it more. Kind of funny that this all happened just as we were publicly crucifying him.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another hilarity is that he offers the standard misreading of "eye for an eye" as a warrant for revenge when it was actually intended to stop blood feuds (though by the NT era, it was abused as Lindter describes).</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">One more part to go - at least I haven't needed any nausea medication yet.</span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-49668244433666991962011-08-05T06:18:00.001-07:002011-08-05T06:22:54.911-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 5<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Flip...flop</span>...<span style="font-weight: bold;">clunk</span>.<br /><br />Turns out Linthead is not an <span style="font-style: italic;">entirely </span>reformed character. Yes, he does flip flop from his prior pose on the gas chambers; now he says they existed. But, er, that darned "Holocaust religion," he says, has inflated that number of Jews killed. Not 6 million, as the real historians say. Some lower number, which I think he did offer, but which I couldn't quite hear for sure since he has this tendency to mumble or trail off, and though his English is good, either his heavy accent can make him hard to understand in English...or maybe the sound quality was not that good.<br /><br />At any rate, he blames the Bolsheviks for initially inflating the numbers, and everyone else for going along with it. I'm obviously not expert enough to defend the six million figure on my own, but it takes a lot more that paranoid suspicion to rebut it. Will he have more than that in Parts 6 and 7?<br /><br />You already know <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>answer.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-52314226018640192062011-08-04T03:01:00.000-07:002011-08-04T03:03:05.184-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 4<span style="font-family: verdana;">Lindtner continues to pose himself as a reformed character, but in Part 4, he does an end-around and a flip flop at the same time, which is an anatomical feat only he could perform. Note first his previous denial of gas chamber:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Are we to believe, like most people do, in the rumours about some physically and technically impossible gas chambers in which millions of Jews were killed - even though no one to this day has been able properly to locate such places of horror on the map?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Near the end of Part 4, Lindtner indicates there it is “universally accepted” (!) that there is no “physical evidence” of these gas chambers, but…er…it would still be a “huge mistake” to say there was “no mass murder”. Because they <span style="font-style: italic;">shot</span> people en masse.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Uh HUH. I didn’t deny the <span style="font-style: italic;">Holocaust</span>, I just denied how they did it. Riiiight…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Part 5 will apparently have more on this, so we may have a lot to report Friday. There’s also in Part 4 another historically fascinating (frightening) original speech, this time from Heinrich Himmler. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">I think matters are summed up well by a reader also following this situation:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Why did Lindtner solidify his position against the holocaust for so long without doing an in-depth study of the issue in the first place? Should he not have made sure of what he was saying before he said it? If he was so incredibly ignorant of data against his position regarding the Holocaust, a series of events which occurred not even one hundred years ago in his own backyard (Europe), why should anyone trust his analysis of ancient Christian (or even Buddhist) documents?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">It seems to me that in his heart, Lindtner is the kind if person who just enjoys stirring up controversy. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn someday that he doesn't actually have any real beliefs about any of these things.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-46598579222426226232011-08-02T06:35:00.001-07:002011-08-02T06:39:55.777-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 3<span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Flip, flop. Flip, flop.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">In part 3 of his 7 part series, Lindtner has the appearance of having gone full circle -- from denier to debunker of deniers -- as he spends all of this one discussing and affirming evidence for mass murder of Jews by the Nazis (and refuting claims of one denier).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">It might be nice if it weren't so transparently self-serving.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">On the side, if there IS any reason to watch these too-late <span style="font-style: italic;">mea culpas</span>, it's for the strictly historical interest of listening to the recordings offered in a couple (at least) of Hitler making speeches. You really can't grasp the evil power of Hitler as a speaker until you've actually <span style="font-weight: bold;">heard </span>him speak. Personally, such charismatic speakers don't make an impact on me at all, but I can see how easily he'd have influenced some of the dumb bells around these days -- like the ones on YouTube.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-90329133368143330792011-07-29T10:31:00.000-07:002011-07-29T10:41:01.191-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 2<span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Are we to believe, like most people do, in the rumours about some physically and technically impossible gas chambers in which millions of Jews were killed - even though no one to this day has been able properly to locate such places of horror on the map? <span style="font-weight: bold;">Even though not even one victim can be mentioned by name? Even though there be no Hitler order?</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">I wanted to put this atop again, not only so search engines will get it...again...but also to make the sound of Christian Lindtner flip-flopping come out as loud as it can.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">In Part 2 of 7, Lindtner specifically denies the last statement in the above, acknowledging that there was an "order" by Hitler to destroy the Jews -- and he says, not so much as in a direct order to his goons, but inasmuch as his speeches called for Jewish destruction, and his goons took that to heart.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Flip. Flop. Flip. Flop.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">We have 5 more parts to go, so it remains to be seen what else he has to say. It remains, though, that this sudden backpedal has the scent of someone realizing his butt is in a rather enormous sling.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-72516380182450121622011-07-28T07:27:00.000-07:002011-07-28T07:37:36.284-07:00Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTcLboIZYMs3bJ3ggJ-inPc53DuO2TJD7kYKexFL8HnEfp4Ri0mHO_ZMmqXu8QF3IZqppKkhkhpMwnwD83bZA1yMtzVllRGEpWgr04kS75uN8CTXXJjRgXgR_OsDSxIIjawa5Xqxvf7bc/s1600/lint.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 195px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTcLboIZYMs3bJ3ggJ-inPc53DuO2TJD7kYKexFL8HnEfp4Ri0mHO_ZMmqXu8QF3IZqppKkhkhpMwnwD83bZA1yMtzVllRGEpWgr04kS75uN8CTXXJjRgXgR_OsDSxIIjawa5Xqxvf7bc/s400/lint.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634410233051327058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">Our next seven entries will be devoted to observations on Christian Lindtner’s latest crap on the Holocaust. Back in January, we laid down the law on Ken Humprheys for using this idiot as a source for his Christ-myth crap. It’s apparently stung Lindtner in the butt pretty badly, and there’s a couple of glaring evidences to show this.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />The first is the following quote from Lindtner’s “jesusisbuddha” website:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >A final problem: If Christianity is a gigantic hoax - how has it been possible to deceive so many for so long? How did the priests, the bishops, the popes manage to pull it off? All the professional liars?<br /><br />Are there any modern parallels that prove helpful? </span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >Are we to believe absurdities such as those of some unidentfied towelheads in the backwaters of far-away Afghanistan, or their impotent likes elsewhere, who are to be held responsible for the 9/11 events?</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >Are we to believe, like most people do, in the rumours about some physically and technically impossible gas chambers in which millions of Jews were killed - even though no one to this day has been able properly to locate such places of horror on the map? Even though not even one victim can be mentioned by name? Even though there be no Hitler order?</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />Well actually – you won’t find it there any more. He’s removed it. Unfortunately for him, it’s preserved in a number of locations, including a TheologyWeb thread and a thread on Brian Flemming’s Danielle forum. There’s also a forum at a place called “Faith Freedom” that documents the place it originally appeared, which was http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/links.html That page now has some mostly harmless drivel, though it does link to the material we discuss below.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Lindtner evidently hoped that quote would slowly die off after he removed it. It won’t. I’m keeping it alive.</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />The second evidence: Lindtner has posted a 7 part series on YouTube (!) in which he explains himself. We’ll discuss each of the 7 parts over the next 7 entries – I can only stand to watch so much of him. In Part 1, he’s evidently quite nervous, mostly refusing to look at the interviewer and never looking at the camera that I can recall. Thankfully, not even YT’s wacko community seems to think much of him; Part 1 as of this writing had 500 views, but Part 2 had only 233, Part 3 only 155, and down from there. There are also no comments. And no, I won’t be providing a link to his trash. I’m sure even Farrell Till would approve of that. </span> <span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />So what of Part 1? Not much to it despite a 14 ½ minute run time. Lindtner tries to explain that there’s a difference between the term “Holocaust” and the phrase “Final Solution” as used by Hitler, which ranks pretty well in the Who Gives a Crap Award category, and doesn’t enlighten anyone a great deal. He also says that the Holocaust has become a sort of “secular religion” and even terms it...snort...<span style="font-style: italic;">a new form of Judaism</span>. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle. Has Ken got this message yet? (Of course not. He’s still using Lindtner as a source.)</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />As a reminder, Lindtner isn’t exactly worthy as a source even in his commentary on Jesus. A reader noted his comment that, “Only Buddhism and Christianity have made extensive use of parables - and the Buddhists came first!" Their reply hits the nail:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >How can this be substantiated!?</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >Hinduism/Judaism/Shintoism/Daoism/Islam/Paganism havnt made "substantial use of parables"?! Did parables originate with Buddhism?! How much Christian and Buddhist literature needs to be compared before one can say they have made "substantial use" of parables?!</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br />We’ll see what else “Dr.” Christian Lintball has to say, with Part 2 tomorrow. Meanwhile here’s a bunch of links that preserve that quote, and our earlier Forge entry for reference. Click on them lots and keep them atop Google.<br /><a href="http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2011/01/ken-humphreys-and-holocaust-deniers.html"><br />Forge entry</a><br /><a href="http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?16839-www.JesusIsBuddha.com"><br />TWeb thread</a><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /><a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33798&start=45&sid=337858be6c624d4e0fa9c15ff99eba18">Faith Freedom forum</a> -- </span><span style="font-family:verdana;">see post by Norseman at the bottom of the page<br /><br /><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cVjxRSA_Y_oJ:debate.atheist.net/showthread.php%3Ft%3D185+%22rumours+about+some+physically+and+technically+impossible+gas+chambers+in+which+millions+of+Jews%22&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com">Cached quote</a> from atheist forum<br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><a href="http://shivaisme-du-cachemire.skynetblogs.be/archive/2006/03/06/les-evangiles-chretiens-sont-ils-derives-des-soutras-bouddhi.html">Quote on a blog</a> that seems to be French</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6664374791160483011.post-7341746115805402852011-07-05T11:08:00.000-07:002011-09-10T11:36:48.631-07:00Beastly Bomber Blowups<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfj1xJUO2i2srU-icEMAQ49skaHZhu3fOH4aWz-SF0KPcC5sLZQdqRopn8LCrIHHNjwHsxyLLwBl0OM8CLZ-tq6-tZM06JJe194XxLYgErDOnzAWsoUsrX1c6fSWEu0KxGITupF5mx08Q/s1600/bombstunned.gif"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 208px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfj1xJUO2i2srU-icEMAQ49skaHZhu3fOH4aWz-SF0KPcC5sLZQdqRopn8LCrIHHNjwHsxyLLwBl0OM8CLZ-tq6-tZM06JJe194XxLYgErDOnzAWsoUsrX1c6fSWEu0KxGITupF5mx08Q/s400/bombstunned.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625932057896759298" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">I've written this post as an accompaniment to a TektonTV vid launched today that's branded as part of a series titled Beastly Bomber Blowups. It requires some background explanation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The subject of the series is a fundy atheist who is one of that select breed (like Farrell Till once was) who loves to see their name in lights, so to counter that, I grant them some sort of substitute identity. (It's appropos, too, because this fundy atheist used to be one of Till's groupies.) So I had designed a character to represent this fundy atheist that i call the "Pett Bomber" (pictured here) -- a tiny, tempramental, arrogant fuzzball with a puny voice and a chihuahua bark. His signature move, as it were, is that at the end of an episode, the little fuse attached to his head lights, and he explodes like a bomb -- representing his failure as an anti-apologist.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">I've had an off and on history with this non-entity, who over the years has figured that he might win some attention by going after me. It's failed him miserably, even though he tried a couple of different venues for getting famous enough to earn a living off of anti-apologetics, including the Secular Web. He had a website at one time, but in the past few months, it disappeared, and it's not hard to see why: According to statistics sources, it was getting as many visits a month as my article on Mithra alone gets every 15-30 days. No wonder these guys always whined for me to link to them, as I always say. (He's also playable like a violin: Since I made this post, he's restored the site, and has done other things that are clearly reactionary to this and other things I have done. Dance, boy, dance.</span> )<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">In YouTube, he did find some of the attention he craved, though that doesn't mean much either, in a context where a conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones can have as many as 127,000 subscribers, and a low-talent, low-scholarship hack like NonStampCollector can have as many as he does. Summed up, it's not hard to grab an audience at YT when so many lowbrow elements reside and subscribe there, and as I once noted, fundy atheists in particular would be expected to flock to a venue where everything is in pictures.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Back to the Bomber, though: he decided to take on my vid on 2 Kings 2:23-5, and I just recently finished a series in reply, which he says he intends to reply to after a month-long vacation in July. Um hm. Well, I've started this new series in part to make sure he returns to find a lot more to do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Blowups series will pick through his vids addressing claims that are both brief and within my area of study. Today's release was on the subject of Tacitus -- one of my specialty areas of study. And yes, he put his foot in it big time there. The purpose of the series will be to demonstrate the depth of both his ignorance and his critical thinking skills -- even with regards to quite simple matters -- as well as make life harder on him. Which frankly, needs to be done for more than one reason: As a producer, he's not only an academic fraud, but also a creative failure. His own vids are almost entirely composed of film clips, music, and graphics lifted -- often beyond what could be reckoned as fair use -- from other sources, including commercial films by major studios that would likely have his wallet in their pockets for the next 30 years if YouTube ever appeared more prominently on their radar.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The point on his thievery raises another explanation. In this new series, my "fursona" interacts with what is a mechanized version of the original "fuzzball" I created. This substitute is not there just to represent that the "real" fundy atheist is on vacation, though that happened to fit it with what I was doing. It also highlights another instance of his thievery. The mechanized version reflects a stolen version of the original "fuzzball" that he instituted. Back in mid-May, he produced a short "news" vid for his subscribers announcing his vacation plans, and the announcer was a parody version of my "fuzzball".</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">It wasn't his sole thievery in the vid. He has also used a background graphic from a news graphics site that he should have paid for, and with which he obscured his thievery by covering up a watermark on the graphic with other props. I made light of this in one of my own reply vids in the Elisha series, a day after he released the bowdlerized "news" vid. Interestingly, his "news" vid then disappeared a day or so later -- without any explanation. Nothing says "guilty conscience" quite so eloquently.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">At any rate, since the Bomber is MY creation, I took the liberty of taking it back for the new series. His own version was itself a sort of animated freak, that had apparently been created not with any real effort, but by applying to a service (or software) like goanimate.com. He had hinted to tease his subscribers that he planned to use the bowdlerized Bomber in his responses to me. (Note that this is in spite of the fact that just a few weeks before, this fundy atheist had accused me of using a "juvenile" cartoon format to "soften" the Elisha story. Apparently once you become a hypocrite, it's no longer a "juvenile" or "softening" format.) </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">His version of my "fuzzball," though, had a computerized, unnatural voice, and didn't move at all other than the mouth -- and one of the two mouth positions looked absolutely idiotic, as though it had grown a trumpet. So my own re-parody has it depicted as a mechanized rendition, with the same mouth movements -- quite suitable to the lack of care shown by his own composition.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Sure, it was intended as a parody of my character. But that's not the point. The point rather -- as I state at the end of the vid linked below -- is that this combined with his other thivery of material shows that it's not because of parody that he made the bowdlerized version -- it's because he's too mentally ossified to come up with his own ideas.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Adding to his public disgrace, several of his subscribers praised him for inventing the character -- which is demonstrative on two counts: 1) he never corrected them (that had to be done by other users, one Christian, one a less hostile Skeptic); 2) his own subscribers, who praised him so heartily for allegedly defeating my original Elisha vid, obviously were unaware of my own replies using the character. That certainly says a great deal for the backwards and oblivious mentality of his subscriber base.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">I'll still have plenty of other TektonTV projects over the next month, and all of my treatments of this shameless craven will be brief and relatively simple compositions. They will, however, have plenty of bang for the buck, and will leave him squirming for many months to come -- and longer, as he'll find out I've designed my vids to be easily added to, so that if he ever does reply, I'll have my own responses up within 48 hours...or less.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Hey, it's how I drove Farrell Till into relative silence -- why not do it to one of his groupies, too?</span><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FSX19Zym8I"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hub link</span></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0