Tekton Forge

The -eriority of Collectivism

2012-02-24T09:52:00.003-08:00

I am sometimes asked whether I think the collectivist society of the Biblical world (and even 60-70% of the world today) is "superior" to the modern individualist society we now have in America. My reply has been that both types of society have advantages and both have ways they can be abused. However, I would also add that in reality, individualism is always something of a phantom -- as the phrase goes, no man is an island -- or else expresses itself as the ultimate deviance which most of us rightly frown upon. I'll draw a lesson from my "other job" doing USDA surveys to make this point.

Right now I'm in the midst of the "biggest" agricultural survey -- one that effectively creates a financial profile of the business I visit for the last calendar year. The information in this survey is used for a lot of reasons, but among the most important are that 1) it helps set amounts set aside for federal aid for agriculture when there is a disaster; 2) it ensures that agricultural businesses are fairly represented in government; 3) it protects taxpayers from being ripped off by those who try to claim they need more financial aid than they do.

There are more than a few people though -- between 30-50% of those selected each year -- who don't want to participate in the process (which is not mandatory). Some say they have privacy concerns. Some claim they don't have time (and then will spend 10 minutes explaining to me why they don't). But some just don't care.

Here's the rub, though. Some of those who refuse to take part in the survey would be among those who would be first in line for government aid when a hurricane or tornado hits their business. Then they'll complain that the aid didn't come fast enough, or wasn't enough to suit them, and so on. Or, they'll claim they would never want the government's help -- as they 10 minutes later take their SUV out onto a highway paid for with government funds.

The lesson here is that in real sense, even most individualists are still collectivists to some extent. The only pure individualist is the guy who goes and lives in the woods alone. (And I'll admit -- that might have been my option had I lived in the first century.) Everyone else is still to some degree collectivist. The guy who whines sharing his "private" information with the government doesn't seem to mind using what the government provides for him -- roads, mail service, and even perhaps schools. When he uses those things, he's a collectivist. Yet ask him to provide information that will make those services better, not just for him but for everyone, and he becomes a hardcore individualist.

I was amazed by one farm owner who declared that the taking of surveys was "communism." This was ironic in part because some time later, I was chosen to represent my field answering questions from Russian government officials who were using US surveys as models for what they wanted their agricultural department to do -- and were told that no such surveys had been conducted in Russia since before the Communist revolution! It's also ironic because it isn't communism (with all its associated principles of the proletariat, etc) but an expression of collectivism. It's the same mistake fundy atheists make when they claim the Bible is "communist".

Just recently another farmer declared to me that he didn't think a survey of his operation would be "beneficial" and gave me a litany of reasons why he thought this was so. I answered each of them -- and in the end, he merely returned to the first objection on his list. (Yep -- like arguing with a fundy atheist, too.) What became clear was that what he meant was, "It wouldn't do me any good."

In the end, many people who refuse to do these surveys I work with are saying, "I don't care about my fellow farmers. I care only about myself. I don't care about making the system better for everyone. My fears/privacy/etc are far more important than the common welfare." Of course, one could argue about the efficacy of such instruments in terms of aiding the common good, but that's another matter. And I'm far from saying that system is perfect.

However, it does demonstrate this much: Living as a group is still, in a very real way, what our priorities and necessities reflect. And Christianity, when it demands that we care for the common good (agape), is also on the right track.

Ed, Edd, and Edski

2012-02-17T06:30:00.003-08:00

Ed "I'm Talking and I Can't Shut Up" Babinski, at last report, hadn't learned a thing; the latest news is that he remains intent on his ignorance. On an associate's blog, he left some of the usual "argument by outrage" tripe, as well as a mixed bag of stream of consciousness hoodoo which has become his trademark.

Initially, Edski whines about Ananias and Sapphira: "...two people are struck dead instantly for lying to Peter about how much money they gave the church." Yes, and? That's it. There's no argument, no analysis, no question asking why this might have been considered a just punishment. This is no different than saying, "One man was killed for giving away secrets" -- and not bothering to explain or understand whether it was a man who gossiped about his neighbor's lemon cream pie being stale, or a man selling nuclear bomb designs to Iran.

Of course, it wasn't merely "Peter" that was lied to; it was the Holy Spirit as well, so that the actions of these two were an effective denial of God's authority, and hence also, treasonous within the parameters of the Kingdom. It was, moreover, an exceptional and flagrant disregard for the whole of the fellowship of believers; it implied that one could engage the community on two levels, one in which one publicly gained honor and status for contributing to the common welfare (by professing to have given forth all one had promised) while also benefiting one's self secretly (thereby falsely accruing the prior referenced honor).

Of course, to an exegetical and emotional nincompoop like Edski, neither this nor the equally serious dishonoring of the Eucharist (1 Cor.) is anything worthy off any sort of response or punishment; God should just suck it up and mind His own business (except when it comes to Hitler, maybe) while we excellent specimens exercise our Constitutional rights. There is never any thought of how such acts would ripple and expend into greater acts that endanger the life and health of others, nor any sense that God deserves more respect than Sam the grocer. To round off his outrage, Edski wallows in the self-pity of fiery hell, a concept he knows very well I don't adhere to, at least; but don't expect him to do any more than gawk like a touristing chimpanzee at what he finds to be a bewildering variety of Christian opinions, none of which he is capable of refuting anyway.

Some remarks are then offered on my observations that 85% of humans will end up saved. He recalls seeing this on TWeb, but apparently doesn't recall how I arrived at that figure, though chances are I gave my explanation in the same space he saw the number in. How do I know this, he wants to know? Simple, Edski:

1) Hell is shame.

2) The unborn (yes, Edski, that includes zygotes), the infant, and the very young -- as well as eg, the mentally incompetent -- cannot experience shame.

3) Due to mortality figures over history (especially infant mortality), the end result is that we must suppose that, under this rubric, at least 85% of all who have ever lived got a "Get Into Heaven Free Card".

Of course, Edski is still stuck on Connecticut Avenue while the rest of us have advanced to Park Place, so rather than answer these points with something like a serious study of the agonistic tenor of the NT world, he starts with a dumb question that has no relevance or importance whatsoever ("What percentage of them will have memories of living on earth at all?"), followed by a reiteration of the opposing view in which he recites the litany of numbers of unsaved babies that must be roasting in flames by this time.

He then closes that section with bit of self-pitying rhetoric: "But woe to people who actually engage with J.P. and don't accept a majority of his answers. " Actually, Edski, the greater woe is on turkeys like you who actually don't engage with my answers, and news flash: Extended bouts of irrelevant verbal diarrhea is not "engaging" them.

Finally, moving as easily to another unrelated topic as a greased swine on roller skates, Edski rattles on about "Evangelical Christian professors [who] have been forced to leave the Christian college where they teach (or sometimes called up on heresy charges) for questioning a creationist interpretation of Genesis 1 and moving toward interpreting Genesis 1 in Mesopotamian terms." Unfortunately Edski doesn't name any of these alleged persons, which makes it rather difficult for me to direct my ire towards any of them, as he seems to think I should be doing. Of course, although he thinks this is inconsistent with my activism with Mike Licona, it doesn't occur to Edski that with Geisler vs Licona, my ire is well informed (eg, the subject of NT exegesis and interpretation), where it would not be on issues of science and origins related to Genesis 1. As is typical of Edski over the years, he has no sense of dimension or valid authority. If I knew as much about Genesis 1 issues as I do about NT exegesis, there's a good chance I'd find a dog in one of those hunts and let it loose to war. As it is, I'll be the first to say that as little as I know, any dog I tried to hunt with there would be beaten up by Cocoa.

As it is, I've learned the lesson Edski has still failed to achieve in the 15+ years I've been observing his ramblings -- when you're not well informed, keep your big mouth shut.

Cross Fertilization

2012-02-10T02:47:00.000-08:00

My side job doing USDA surveys has me too busy for a substantial post this week, but I thought I'd share an unusual instance in which the two jobs -- surveys and ministry -- crossed paths.

Yesterday I visited one of my "regulars" I see every year, a local nursery owner. As sometimes happens, I'm asked if the surveys are the only job I have, and I get a chance to talk about the ministry work I do as well, as my "real" job.

That sparked his interest, as he explained his moral objections to "televangelists" who ask for money all the time, and as it happens, many of the people whose practices he objected to -- including Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, and Rod Parsley -- are people I've written articles on. I gave him a ministry business card, and who knows? He may drop in to the site.

I'll just add one moralizing point --- I've always supposed that teachers like Osteen and Meyer were doing more harm than good. I did detailed E-Block articles on those two, and found that their teachings were completely lacking in substance and utility. Yet of course, they thrive because they find itching ears among gullible and shallow Christians.

Isn't it past time we shed these teachers as useless deadwood?

Apologetics and the Priority Pyramid

2012-02-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

Because of USDA training, I didn't have a lot of time this week to write posts, but a thought keeps recurring to me of late that I want to share.

It's great when churches have ministries like, say, a soup kitchen, or a crisis pregnancy center. A church should have whatever ministries it can like that according to its available resources.

But how can such a church have something like that, while not also in some way encouraging apologetics?

Here's the problem. All those extra ministries are performed because, at the heart of it all, we believe Christianity is true. That is our basis for compassionate acts: The fact that God acted in history to raise Jesus from the dead. So why is it that ministries that make it their purpose to prove things like that are virtually ignored by comparison?

As it is, if you ask (say) a crisis counselor why they serve in their ministry, they are apt to say something like, it is what Jesus would do. That's a correct answer to an extent but it isn't a complete one: It doesn't tell us WHY anyone should care what Jesus wants us to do. If Jesus was just some guy in Palestine, then our epistemic basis for any ministry is inadequate, subjective, or rooted in something we try to ignore by keeping so busy we don't think about it. (That's the emergent church's solution.)

At best, that person might say that Jesus is Lord, and that is why they serve. But again, the answer's not done: WHY think Jesus is Lord?

Maybe there's one other answer, usually taken to be final: "Because he lives in my heart and tells me so." Yes indeed -- rooted in subjectivity, as noted.

Apologetics isn't an expensive ministry, and it is getting less expensive to do as more and more of its tools plummet in price and/or become more freely available. Yet most churches don't spend a dime on it.

Our priority pyramid is badly inverted -- which makes it no surprise that it's on the verge of toppling over on us every moment.

John Loftus Logic

2012-01-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Been a while since we tweaked John's nose, so I thought I'd share this graphic someone sent me.

Morons and Omissional Sin

2012-01-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

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.

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 stupid or ignorant, and you may as well have announced that you made a hobby of dropping live puppies into boiling water.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

After all these years, no one’s given me a good argument against that point, either.

Tebowled Over

2012-01-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Holding household hasn't turned a football game on in at least a decade, but I've been kept abreast of some of the latest scuttlebutt concerning designated Christian superstar Tim Tebow -- not in the least because he attended college not 50 miles from me, and now as well, thanks to a reader in the Denver area who is a close follower of Tebow's professional team -- and to whom, I am indebted for many of the descriptions below.

The reader wrote me with some observations made as he typed several permutations including Tebow's name into Google. Early on, the reader noted, he was suspicious of Tebow's religious profession, for by his accounting (which I have no reason to doubt), Christianity in professional sports (especially football) has become something of a spectacle, a game in itself. Players routinely (especially in their rookie years) talk about how their "momma's raised 'em up" with the Bible, poke at the sky whenever they score touchdowns or make big plays, and thank God when they win the Super Bowl. Then next week, they get busted selling sex-slaves out of the back of trucks for cocaine. For this reason, many people roll their eyes when a player professes faith and say, "Aw, how cute. Let's take bets on how long before he's arrested."

So far, this has not happened with Tebow. He's come out playing better than expected (even I know that, as little as I watch sports!), and has walked the walk his talk professes: He bows for prayer during games, works with charities in his free time, and starts all of his interviews by thanking Jesus for his life. Not his wins, just his life.

But then there's those Google searches. Our reader plugged in everything from, "Tebow's a creationist dumbass" to "Tebow wants to kill Muslims" to "We should kill Tebow" and found these popping up in the atheist blogosphere. Then there's what's beyond the blogosphere: Everyone from Bill Maher to "Tex the atheist Quizboy" find it necessary to denigrate Tebow as much as they can.

But why?

It is not, apparently, because he claims God is helping him win games. Lots of Christian sites, and ESPN analysts, our reader tells me, make that stupid assertion for him, but he never has actually done so that he has seen recorded. Not once.

Although I have not seen any of this myself, I think our reader hits it on the head when he says that the problem is that they see a person in the midst of, arguably, the largest and most active American popular culture center (the NFL), who:

1) Fails to make stupid claims about God that they can poke fun at later, like "Jesus was there with me on the field", or, "I believe the Bible never makes an error, like when it teaches women to shut up."

2) Fails to play by the game's mockery of "I'm a Christian but I'm gonna do all the drugs and women I can get my hands on cause I know Jesus looooooves me and we all make mistakes right?"

And personally, I can relate to that. My own career in apologetics has meant plenty of atheist hatemongering. But of course, the best they can come up with is 1) "Uh, he's mean to people." 2) "He's fat." 3) "Dah. his name is Turkel. I mean, it used to be Turkel. Dah. Whatever."

But it's not hard to see how Tebow is a threat even if he's devoted his life to throwing touchdowns instead of atheists. How terribly threatening to a place (pop culture) where atheist/secularist ideals have had free reign for so long, for there to appear a popular Christian who is both outspoken and -- so far at least -- not able to be pegged with some moral indiscretion or some exegetical wackiness.

Little wonder criticisms of Tebow are so vitriolic (even for online atheists). If you're of a mind, check some of those Google results -- it's screwball city.

And one more thing. Pray for Tebow -- there's a lot of temptation in the world he's in.

Tekton Tenure: 1st Half of 2004

2012-01-06T08:35:00.000-08:00

It’s now time to look at past foes from 2004 and what they’re up to. We’ll move faster through the years right now because we’ve covered so many repeat opponents already, so this round we’ll look at the first half of 2004.

Wayne Dyer – he’s still around, and still peddling the same contrived self-help lit. You’d think eventually someone would catch on and realize that all you’d need, if this crap really worked as he said, is one book.

Alan Colmes – so likewise, still around, though it seems he never set foot in Bible commentary again.

Jacob Spinney – originally praised by James Randi, Spinney has gone on to a career in magic himself, and is still around, even with his own YouTube channel – where he discusses politics, diet, economics, and – only very rarely – religion. Maybe that means he’s learned his lesson.

Anton Thorn – as far as I can tell, no longer actively writing online, though he may have a Facebook page.

Christian Crimeline – in 2010 a nutcase named Hans Atrott presumed to comment on about er….01% of this feature we did. See the Ticker for details. Atrott was also used for a few other additions, but as can be seen from the Ticker, he’s not a reliable source. Otherwise it’s still being thrown around with the same crap, by the same guy.

And that’s all that’s new.

"Apologetics Through Internet Videography"

2011-12-30T05:46:00.000-08:00

After being sick for almost a week, my writing muse isn't healed yet, so I'll close the year with a note about an article I have in the latest Christian Research Journal titled, "Apologetics Through Internet Videography." It's a how-to for Christians to learn the ins and outs of producing videos (and for doing so for YouTube specifically). Hopefully this will get a few more good apologetics minds participating there in a place where there are way too many fundy atheists without a semblance of intelligence running their own shows.

See you in 2012!

Pastor Tim Rogers, Godly Man in Authority

2011-12-23T11:50:00.001-08:00

Today’s post requires background from the Ticker.

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.

In between, another Geisler supporter, one Pastor Tim Rogers (of a small church in NC) took it upon himself to reprint Howe’s posting in full. I’ve watched Rogers for a while and have been duly unimpressed; his support of Geisler earned him a spot in my vid Geisler’s Christmas Carol (see pic), and he’s a guaranteed chicken when it comes to being confronted with his errors, as shown below. (By the way, he also refuses to allow Nick Peters to post on his blog, and gives varied excuses for that as well.)

Those that know me what came next.

I posted as a comment on Rogers’ blog:

Do you have Dr. Howe’s permission to reprint his entry?

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”?

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?

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:

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.)

2) It was “in the public domain.” (No, it was not. This manifest ignoramus
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.

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.)

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 matter:

How do I get permission to use somebody else’s work?

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.

How much of someone else’s work can I use without getting permission?

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.

Somebody infringed my copyright. What can I do?

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.

Could I be sued for using somebody else’s work? How about quotes or samples?
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.

By the way, the Government's stuff isn't covered by copyright...so I can quote THAT all I want.

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.

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.

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.

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. Shut up, you idiot, I'm preaching the Word of God.

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.

***

Update: 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.

Tekton Tenure, Oct-Dec 2003

2011-12-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

It's time for a look at what's up with our past opponents, this time from the last quarter of 2003.

Mike Ledo continues to be active in the Atlanta area and is still publishing nutty books. He's not short on egomania either, as this description of his latest book shows:

This is a landmark book that will change forever how the scholarly community views the Bible, history, and myth. In spite of what appears to be a New Age title, this book is built upon scholarship. There are three major tenets to this book.

1)The current notion of Wellhausen’s document hypothesis and the unified text theory are both wrong. The Bible was constructed as a “living” document using the same identical techniques already known to us via Tigay’s work on Gilgamesh.

2)Knowing the techniques used to expand texts, one can do some deconstruction of the text in order to uncover the original or proto-Bible text. Why this has never been done I don’t know. It would be the logical net step to do once we discovered exactly how it was done to Gilgamesh.
When this is done what is left is an Middle Bronze Age text, about 1000 years older than what is currently believed by “accepted” scholars. This text dates to circa 1930 BCE..

3)This proto-text is a huge cosmic myth. It follows the constellations in a contiguous fashion leaving no doubt that this is indeed an ancient cosmic myth.

4)There are interesting corollaries to this also. The stories are not entirely fictional, nor were they intended to be. They combine history and myth. I have been able to positively identify Biblical characters with known historical figures and events including Moses, David and Solomon.

And even worse, he can't count, either.

Darwin Fish: Speaking of nuts, he's still around, and these days he has a blog called The Wrath of the Gods (!) where he highlights bad things like the air crash in Reno, or a child being run over in China, and posts them with Bible verses predicting God's judgment. I guess that's the sort of thing that entertains small minds.

Kevin Graham: My friend Kevin, who used to be Mormon, has long since abandoned that faith after a public tussle with leading Mormon apologists over the Book of Abraham, and last I heard is in a sort of spiritual limbo. I suspect he's more concerned with spending time with his family these days.

Tracy VanWyngaarden: This hyperpeterist's work still gets cited, but as far as I can find, he has written nothing new since 2002 and the article I critiqued by him.

PTET: This nuisance is still around; he has a blog (though last updated May 2011, and rarely used at that). He seemed to run in spurts before and I'd guess he still does.

Liberated Christians: These free-sex loonies still have their site but haven't updated it since 2007.

And that's it for 2003.

How You Should Use the Internet

2011-12-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

This week's been busier than I'd like, but it ended up with two object lessons we can use for today's entry.

Case #1: We're happy owners of a Prius -- one of those nifty gas-electric hybrids. After 2 1/3 years and 88000 miles, we'd had no serious trouble with it until this week, when we went out to find it essentially "dead" -- the electronics would not respond, and the car could not be started.

Until we waited about 30-60 seconds. Then the car would resurrect itself, and we could be on our way.

It's not Easter Sunday, so this was obviously some sort of electrical problem. I brought it to the mechanic, who had a hard time figuring it out. To aid the process, I put my search skills to work looking for similar problems with a Prius by other owners. I also signed on to a Prius owners' forum and related the story (in an area reserved for such stories).

I found one account that seemed close to what had happened, I shared it with the service adviser, who carefully and intently read it. However, based on the evidence, he said it wasn't quite a match. The quest continued as other owners made their own suggestions and I related them to the service adviser. They were able to eliminate each suggestion.

In the end, by process of elimination, the problem was discovered and fixed. The solution hadn't matched anything I found online, but now there's a record of the problem and the solution -- a short in the Prius' 12V starter battery (not the large hybrid battery) which required it to be replaced. From here on, the story is available for any other owner with the same problem to find.

Case #2: Last month, readers may recall I had a personal encounter with a kidney stone -- my third in 7 years. Unfortunately, unlike the last two, this one doesn't seem to want to follow Elvis out of the building. It's been stuck for the last 4 weeks at a place called the uterovesical junction (you can look that up if you're morbidly curious). It's causing no pain or discomfort, but it's apparently not a good idea to leave it there. Unfortunately, the only option other than waiting it out is a rather unpleasant surgery.

In coordination with my doctor, a Tekton reader who is a doctor, and my own online research, I've sought out ways to get rid of it, in addition to prescribed medication and exercise (which so far hasn't done the job). Someone along the way recommended a herbal remedy -- marshmallow root tea. I conferred with my Tekton reader and did online research, but found only anecdotal evidence; thus far there have been no scientific studies.

In the end, I found that the tea was cheap enough that I had nothing to lose by trying it. If it had been too expensive, I wouldn't have bothered, but since both anecdotes and my physician reader agree that it certainly can't hurt, and it's available for a low price -- why not?

And so the object lesson. These are two examples of how the Internet -- and personal experience -- are supposed to work: As a balanced network of sources, governed as needed by expert advice (eg, my service adviser and physicians). Not with one at the expense of the other. Not by just taking one or the other at their word and walking away down Wikipedia Lane as though that's the end of it.

One of the Christian goombas I've been tormenting lately is making one of those mistakes right now with respect to the issue of whether agonistic, collectivist peoples experience what we call conscience. In his little mind, because he finds such a notion hard to believe, it must not be true; it's outside his experience, which is enough for him. Never mind the experience of "native witnesses" who affirm that it is true. Never mind the scholars who say it is true (dahhh, they must have an agenda or something!). His experience says no, and that's the end of it. (Kind of reminiscent of Hume, isn't it?)

On the other hand, you're also not supposed to grab whatever pops up first on the Internet and assume that someone there knows the heck what they're talking about. This week I was advising a reader who was concerned about some material on Yahoo Answers -- a reader response tool which rates in my mind as only slightly less offensive than Wikipedia, if only because so few people use it, comparativeyt speaking. As I asked the reader, why give any credence to a rant by some user of unknown qualifications when he says that the Gospels are anonymous -- and that's the extent of their "argument"?

Some people think that the Internet gives us a chance to buck authority and thereby open minds, so that we need not be in thrall to experts like physicians and mechanics or even Biblical scholars. But in reality, they've just traded one authority for another -- themselves, and other equally ignorant people. If they're lucky their angry defiance of authority won't end up doing more harm than good. If they've extremely lucky they might learn something their particular expert didn't know -- but which another one did.

Either way, the supreme error would be to assume that a "5 second Google search," as one atheist put it, is enough to find the truth that will set you free. And that's the sermon for today.

Atonement and Honor

2011-11-30T09:54:00.001-08:00

Today's entry will be answering a set of objections and questions raised to my TektonTV vid below by a critic whom we will refrain from naming, for reasons that veteran readers will deem obvious.

Why do we have to follow this notion of honor when we interpret the Bible? Why does the culture have any relevance to God?

The simple answer is, because this is the context that the Biblical authors lived and moved in, and which governed their words, their actions, and their motives, and that context was used to reveal the structure of the theology.

The question, beyond this, is frankly an absurd one: Why would this NOT be the context within which these matters would be considered? Are we to impose a 20th century Western context? A 13th century British context? A 5th century Japanese feudal context? Or some context we simply make up out of thin air? If so, why?

There is an irony beyond this. Given that 99.9% of persons ever to have lived, and even 60-70% today, live in a social setting dominated by honor concerns, it is especially absurd to suppose that any other context ought to serve as an interpretive template for the Biblical text.

The real question is: Did man simply invent the concept of honor? Or is it derived from some notion of how God actually views reality? Those that take Scripture as a revealed product will have little choice but to take the latter option, since God speaks and acts and reveals himself in such a way that indicates a concern for honor. The alternative is to suggest that, eg, God and Jesus were merely acting that way coincidentally, such that it looked like they behaved with concern for honor, when they really did not.

If God has infinite inherent honor, then no matter how much you damage God’s acquired honor, His total honor remains infinite.

This point simply lacks cognizance of how honor works. One cannot add together acquired and inherent honor to come up with a concept of "total honor." The categories of honor are exclusive of one another and do not mix.

Relatedly, an error was made by the commentator in assuming that I regard hell as an “infinite reduction in honor.” That is completely incorrect; I do not regard the reduction as “infinite” – indeed it cannot be, since humans have only a finite amount of honor they are able to assume, and honor, like any limited good among humans, cannot ever be totally allocated to a single person. Rather, honor is reduced in hell (a state of shame) accord with ones works in life. So likewise honor is raised in heaven on the same basis.

The Bible compares us to sheep, and calls us children of God, servants, slaves, etc but nowhere calls us clients or God a patron.

This is again little more than a serious lack of cognizance of how Biblical society worked. The terms client and patron are what we have chosen to broadly describe a wide variety of relationships that existed in the ancient Biblical world, and indeed, dominated its functions. To object that these terms or concepts are not found in Scripture is no more a valid objection than saying the word “Trinity” is not found in Scripture. The terms accurately describe what is present in Scripture and in the ancient world.

Technically, master/slave is not reckoned as typical of the patronage relationship in the Roman era because the slave was property (though some scholars have assumed that it is). However, as we note in our review of MacArthur’s Slave, the use of that term in the NT for us must be reckoned by the Jewish Old Testament relationship, which was more in line with a suzerain-vassal agreement. This would be more closely akin to a client-patron relationship in the NT era. Further, note that Jesus qualifies disciples as “friends” which indicates something more substantial than an owner-property relationship.

What it amounts to is that a patron was anyone a client was in debt to, or owed loyalty to – and we are surely to be regarded as indebted to God for the gift of salvation.

Doesn't this concern for honor make God seem like an egomaniac?

Only to those who judge the text by anachronistic standards. Since honor was the concern of all persons in this society, one would have to then conclude that all members of honor-based societies -- meaning, 99.9% of all who have ever lived -- have also been egomaniacs. I think such a presumptuous conclusion speaks for itself in terms of its inherent socio-cultural imperialism.

As well, the entire concept of "ego" is an entirely modern one, limited to individualistic societies. In an honor setting, frank and honest recognition of one's own worth and capabilities is not "egomaniacal" but normal and expected. Indeed it would be considered just as offensive to understate one's qualifications and abilities.

Nor is it proper to say that God’s response is one of “revenge”. That too is a modern evaluation of ancient values. Rather, to seek restoration of rightly-held honor would be seen as a matter of righteousness and justice.

By your understanding, humans are a threat to God’s honor that need to be pacified, not made to actively help Him.

This is utterly false. One of the most basic functions of a client was to aid and serve the patron. At the same time, this is far from exclusive of the honor aspect; a client, too, could easily bring disgrace on his patron, which in turn would require action from the patron.

In close, we would recommend that those who foster objections of this nature read the texts listed in the link below in order to have a full-orbed understanding of these issues.

http://www.tektonics.org/books/socialbooks.html

Tekton Tenure, Continued

2011-11-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Been a while since we had an entry in this series…let’s check history from July-September 2003. Got some big names here!

Darrell Doughty – this fringe fellow – one of the Robert Price crowd – passed away in 2009.

Richard Packham – still maintains his website, though it still looks old school in terms of web design. He updates only infrequently; last time was October 2011, and before that, March 2011. His main focus remains on his former Mormon faith.

Bandoli.no – speaking of stupid, this Norwegian website, which I did a parody of on my toon site, is still around and has grown in terms of subjects addressed, but still has the same old garbage I refuted on the pages which I did address back then – unchanged.

Michael Martin – the famous atheist prof who endorsed the Christ myth and thought Jesus’ prohibition on swearing had to do with saying words like %$^$*! Still around teaching at Boston U.

Paul Jacobsen – critic of Lee Strobel – also still around, but only updates his site infrequently.

Randel Helms – still teaching at Arizona State, but hasn’t published a book on the Bible since 2005.

John Lynch – his ten reasons for not being a Christian are no longer online except in my rebuttal. His name is too commonplace for me to search further.

Dan Barker – still around in his same (in)capacities.

Stephen Smith – a hyperpreterist. Since his name is commonplace I can’t check further.

Back next week to round off 2003!

What Is Atheism? Part 7

2011-11-15T03:17:00.000-08:00

Nick Peters now has this portion ready for us, and since I'm still stoned (ha ha -- kidney stoned) we'll use it this week.

***

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.

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.

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.

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.”?

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

Either mankind is here by a purely naturalistic process or mankind is here by a process of creation.

Both of these views cannot be true.

Therefore both are false.

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?

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.

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.

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.

No.

And I say that saying God is omnipotent because power cannot do contradictions.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Next time I write will close up this topic.

http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/why-i-rejected-christianity-review-natural-evil/

http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/trinitydefense.html

http://www.tektonics.org/uz/vector01.html

Rauser on Licona

2011-11-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

Since I'm behind on my work thanks to the latest kidney stone, I'll take this week's entry to offer a link to Randall Rauser's blog in which he discusses the Licona-Geisler controversy. This again reflects why I consider it so important that Tekton retains its independence from other entangling alliances.

Link

Tekton Tenure, Part 2

2011-11-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

We continue our look back at Tekton opponents, picking up in April 2003:

Stephen van Eck – Eck is not the sort of guy who learns that it would be a good idea for him to shut up, and he hasn’t. He’s still there and still nuts – even recently (September 2011) suggesting that atheists can make a solid case for Jesus not existing by using sources like Freke and Gandy, or Burton Wolfe.

Mark Bonocore – when I ran into this guy he had a serious anti-intellectual bent. He seems to still be around – I found a debate he had with Jason Engwer, and another with Matt Slick (the latter dated 2008), but I don’t think he does this for a living.

Not an opponent, but in May 2003, current Tekton ministry partner Nick Peters wrote what we think is his first piece for us, on the angel of the Lord.

Joe Wallack – this fruitcake has had a site with “1001 Errors in the New Testament” for years. It’s also been stuck on #736 for at least 7 of those years. I think in no small part because Wally (as I call him) knew I was answering them as he posted them. He’s still around on debate forums.

Darrell Conder – this loudmouth was accused of some rather odd stuff in a blog here: http://livingarmstrongism.blogspot.com/2010/06/does-darrell-w-conder-teach-jewsih.html As hateful as he was, this wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t find any evidence that he is actively writing online now. One thing I didn’t know is that he was once a high placed member of the Worldwide Church of God.

Sid Green – has written nothing for Internet Infidels since I addressed him in 2003. However, I found him debating on Yahoo these days (2010).

Edgar Jones – wacko in charge of Voice of Jesus. The site is still up, and still being updated now and then, but it hasn’t improved in quality.

Apostasy Now! – this nutjob Christian site is also still around and updated infrequently (last in 2010).

That gets us to June 2003. We’ll do another quarter next time. In 2003 I was updating every weekday at times; that slowed as I found less to do, so future entries in this series will cover longer periods as we progress.

Tekton Tenure: A Look Back

2011-10-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

As an observance of Tekton’s tenth year of full time service, I’ve decided on a project some may find of historical interest – a look back at “opponents” we’ve dealt with in those years, and what (if anything) they’re up to now. The caveat on that is that I only have kept records of this sort of thing from the start of 2003, so this will be a survey starting 8, not 10 years ago; and I expect we can stop our survey at the end of 2008, since we wouldn’t expect much change from now to then. So let’s say this is a five year window we’re gazing through. I’ll leave out any dead guys I rebutted (like Remsberg) since there’s obviously nothing news about them.

Kenneth Harding – we took on this poor schlep in late 2002 and ended the treatment in January 2003. He featured a challenge to Christians asking that they fulfill Mark 16:18 by drinking poison. Harding is still around, and his pissant website is still up, though a random check shows he still has very old nonsense up from as long ago as 1998 that he has never updated. He still publishes now and then, and even has a blog, though the latter has not been updated since May 2011.

Farrell Till – we commented on Till in a prior entry here some time ago; no need to say more.

Skeptics’ Annotated Bible – of course these guys are still around; I’d hardly expect otherwise. It’s still updated maybe 3-5 times a month. I would guess Sam Harris’ endorsement has been a big help. But has the scholarship improved? You know better than that.

Edgar Foster – JW apologist. He’s still around, and he has a blog (who doesn’t??), and he also managed to get a credible doctorate in 2008. How he did that while staying a JW is one of those mysteries we’ll have to ponder.

Truthbearer.org – “Christian” site that promotes polygamy. Still around, though apparently not updated often.

Lenny Flank – I took this guy on for my creationist friends. His website is now defunct, though it is mirrored by another Skeptic’s site. He also seems to have gone into more political arenas; I found a recent article by him on the crank political site Daily Kos.

Not an opponent, but TheologyWeb opened in January 2003 as well.

Kevin Graham – formerly a Mormon opponent and friend of mine, he had a rhubarb with some lead Mormon apologists and is now (at last report I got) a deist.

Donald Morgan – one of the more polite infidels out there, he’s still updating his stuff now and then at their main website.

Barry Bickmore – Mormon apologist. He seems to have gotten more into issues related to his real expertise, geochemistry, and has gotten involved in the climate change debate. It doesn’t look like he’s doing much in the way of apologetics any more.

Vincent Sapone –I noted long ago that this guy’s web presence had been substantially deactivated, but you can still find bits and pieces of it preserved. He seems to have started at some point a career as a teacher, which probably keeps him busy.

Uri Yosef – Jewish anti-missionary, and a much older fellow than I thought he was. His personal website, the Virtual Yeshiva, no longer exists, but he is associated with a site called Global Yeshiva which seems to be a team effort. I gather he is still around but has retired overall from his activities.

Wayne Harrington – what a nutcase. He’s still around with his own website, though.

Darren Geist – I’d noted in 2005 that this guy’s writings I addressed had vanished.

Joe Alward – another of the few decent Skeptics I’ve met out there, although a little weird at times. I found a website of his filled with family photos, but little indication that he’s actively doing atheist apologetics.

Frank Zindler – obviously, he’s still active today, but no smarter than he was back then.

Kyle Gerkin – best for last. I’d say the most decent of all the Skeptics I’ve met online. He wrote a piece on Mormonism in 2004, and wrote me infrequently after that; I suspect he’s still around (I found what may be personal pages of his) but doesn’t seem to be active in atheist apologetics any more.

That’s all for January through March 2003 – if you see something on any of these people I missed, let me know!

Ten Years of Tekton

2011-10-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

On this day ten years ago -- give or take a day or two; my memory isn't that precise -- Tekton took a headlong jump from part time pastime to full time ministry. As a sort of observation, here are some reflections on those past ten years.

What was the nature of the decision to pursue full time ministry, in retrospect? It was more of a risk than had been expected at the time: The actual decision to pursue ministry full time was one I had made only days before the World Trade Center disaster, and at that moment, the world seemed a safer place to most people. Economically, there was no sign we were in for several years in which we would have especially lean tidings. I imagine many people would have rethought their decision in light of those events.

Would I have made the same decision had this all be foreknown to me? Yes, I certainly would have, though I'm also fairly sure I would have planned things differently. Out of the past ten years, there have been four so far in which the ministry's finances have touched on bleak, and only two in which such worries were far from consideration. It’s too early to tell what 2012 will be like, but there are a couple of unhealthy signs ahead. Tekton has been -- probably always will be -- a shoestring operation; it's the sort of ministry that inevitably relies on assistance that is transient and sporadic, and is often the first sort of thing on the chopping block when someone's personal finances need trimming. That's just the way it is -- and it's the result of the low priority our churches have placed on education and the emphasis they have placed on experience. (It's too bad apologetics doesn't give people an emotional high, isn't it?)

I suppose I could change that some -- by making Tekton something it isn't, by compromising certain pinciples. Not something immoral, of course: I mean, for example, that I could solicit for and accept live debate challenges, which tend to be relatively significant paydays. And by now more than a few atheists would relish the chance to (so they think!) take a bite of my hide, so that'd be a considerable source of income.

But no, that's not temptation enough, sorry. I accepted a debate with Richard Carrier so that my beloved could see, probably for the final time, an elderly uncle in his 80s who lived nearby; nothing else is enough to waver the principles that I hold when it comes to thinking live debate a useless sideshow that teaches people nothing. (She has one other uncle, but -- sorry, atheists -- he's somewhat younger and not in bad health. Check with me again in 10 years.) And besides, I've had it with extended travel for a while, too.

There have been a lot of changes in ten years. For example, I'm typing this entry on a notebook computer that didn't even exist in 2001. Tekton is also doing a lot of work today on the making of films for YouTube -- which in 2001 didn’t even exist, and would not for another 4 years. One of Tekton's first projects immediately after the switch to full time was a response to "cowboy" atheist Scott Bidstrup -- who today is still around, but still has the same versions of his articles up that I addressed in 2002, and also doesn’t seem to have written on the subject of Christianity any further after that. Bidstrup is just one of several opponents who have sunk into the woodwork since then; while of course others have risen to take their place. (The quality of opposition hasn't improved, though -- if anything they've gotten worse, and that's amazing when you consider that Farrell Till was in that earlier set.)

Beyond the ministry, there's also been a delightfully heavy chunk of freelance work for other ministries. When I'd made the switch to full time, I'd had one article for the Christian Research Journal, with one more in process: not by any stretch would I have imagined that the number of articles would reach two dozen (along with other articles for my friends in creationist ministry, and a few other places). There's also been unexpected as well as humbling recognition in the form of references (citations) in books by persons I never expected recognition from when all this first started: Lee Strobel, Daniel Block, Wayne House, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Robert Stacy McCain. There have been references in some very odd places as well: Perhaps the oddest of all, Tekton's article on Esther is referenced in a book by Matthew Stroud titled Plot Twists and Critical Turns: Queer Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Theater. If you'd told me in 2001 that there'd be a reference like that, I'd have probably suggested a place for you in a mental health facility.)

In all, rather unexpected for a shoestring operation that to this day operates out of one corner of a second bedroom. It remains to be seen what changes and morphings the next ten years will bring, but this much can be said: What has happened has exceeded my expectations, and what remains to be accomplished will be a matter of exploring new ground. I'd like to continue to put out books, whether e-books or standard print; I've also set a goal of having more YouTube apologetics vids on my channel than any other channel with an apologetics focus. That may not be hard; I've seen no channel with more than a few hundred such vids, though it is hard to count at times because some of them also upload personal vids on their channel. It would also be nice to drive a few more atheists there into submission. But it's likely TektonTV will reach 100 vids by the end of the year, and I'd like to reach at least 1000. With the current level of production, that will happen well before the end of the next ten years.

At the very least -- it'll be interesting!

What Is Atheism? Part 6: What About the Theistic Proofs?

2011-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Nick Peters continues his review.

***

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

But some of you are saying “But in his divine proofs, he does say we have to avoid an infinite regress.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chapter 7 next time.

Link

Defeating the Dingbats

2011-10-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

This past week there was a most revealing exchange with a head-between-the-cheeks fundy named Ed Dingess, who came out in support of Norman Geisler's stance with respect to Mike Licona. Having claimed to have read the defenses offered by Geisler, Licona, and myself, Caveman Ed, as I now call him, then proceeded to "respond" -- by doing no more than reiterating Geisler's own stance as though nothing had been said in reply to it.

Was that all? No, not quite; there was also an extended, sermonizing admonition about not making scholarship into a "trophy" that one held dear to self. An admonition all the more ironic from Caveman Ed, since he plasters himself as “Dr. Dingess” and proudly lists his degrees on his blog...even though they come from a non-accredited school (Tyndale Theological Seminary) which makes them about as useful as toilet paper.

The mode of his response on Geisler is, as noted, most revealing. At its heart is an implacable arrogance that is so pure that it becomes almost innocent -- an obscene sort of innocence, to be sure, but one so insulated in its arrogance and self-assurance that it sees no need to respond to arguments made against its position. Instead, the assumption is made that the position is secure, and impossible to improve upon; thus all that is left to do is to turn the "debate" into an occasion to warn possibly wayward souls away from the dangers of dissent; to affirm that there is no reason to disagree with the status quo aside from being a wretched sinner in need of dispensed grace. It is furthermore a chance to remind the guilty and gullible Christian that “Satan” is behind such interpretations as the one Licona used (presumably when Satan isn’t busy ruining Joyce Meyer’s BBQs).

The ills of the modern, Western church are a multifaceted problem, and this in itself is one facet, closely related (though it seems not on the surface) to the problem of pathological literalism as an interpretive tool, and anachronism as a guideline for exegesis Licona's initial suggestion -- that Matthew interrupted historical narrative to use a poetic device -- is, as we have pointed out in Ticker posts, not an unreasonable supposition given the nature of ancient composition; it does bear a significant burden of proof, but it cannot simply be dismissed on the assumption of uniformity.

Uniformity, however, does lies at the heart of such objection as Geisler made, as well as the sort of objection made by one of similar mindset, Robert Thomas, as we have recorded:

I've answered points claiming contradiction between Matt and Luke's versions of the Sermon on the Mount by noting that Matt's version is likely to be an anthology -- a collection of Jesus' teachings, organized by Matthew according to his purpose as the composer of a handbook of faith; whereas Luke is more on the historical side, and reports what was actually said on that occasion.

No big problem. Both writers were following standard literary and historical practices for the time. But Thomas insists that such an approach "inevitably leads to diminishing historical accuracy in the Gospels" -- for you see, Matthew 5:1-2 "indicates Jesus began at a certain point to give the Sermon's contents." And what of the literary-device explanation above? Thomas wonders, then, "why would (Matthew) mislead his readers" into thinking that Jesus made this full sermon on one occasion?

What is missing here: This was a normal practice for the day. No one would be "misled" into thinking this was a full sermon because no one would have thought it was meant to be recorded as such in the first place. But Thomas, clearly, does not agree, with comments like this in response to Blomberg's assertion that Biblical writers followed the typical practices for composers of the day: "Despite what the practice of ancient historians may have been, Matthew's intention to cite a continuous discourse from a single occasion is conspicuous. Was he mistaken?" "No matter what the alleged motives of the writers in so doing, that kind of action is fundamentally problematic at best and dishonest at worst." (!) The only difference between these comment and comments like C. Dennis McKinsey's "read the Bible like a newspaper" is that McKinsey is nastier in his formulations. And yet we are told that it is we who propose such solutions who are "run(ning) roughshod over the historicity of the Sermon's introductory and concluding formulas".

You might wonder, of course, how Thomas suggests that we resolve the differences in the Sermon, and his answer is: By harmonization -- of an extreme, unnecessary sort. Put it this way: Did Jesus say, "Blessed are the poor" or "Blessed are the poor in spirit"? Thomas replies: He said both, and on the same occasion. Matt and Luke just chose to report one or the other: "Most probably Jesus repeated this beatitude in at least two different forms when he preached His Sermon on the Mount/Plain, using the third person once and the second person another time and referring to the Kingdom of God by different titles." Odd here how omission is not a sin; but commission is. I thought it was Matthew's intent to show he was citing a continuous discourse? If that is the case, isn't he "misleading" his readers by not giving a full report and leaving things out?

Thomas is also responsible for a great deal of the book's panic-polemic, and some of his claims (and others in the book) are either misrepresenting their source or are just plain wrong. "(Craig) Blomberg attributes a higher degree of accuracy to modern historians than to Spirit-inspired writers of the Gospels in ancient times." If by this you mean, Blomberg says that modern historians revere "accuracy" in the sense of not being inclined towards literary practices that we would consider "inaccurate", but the ancients would NOT consider "inaccurate," then you are right: But to frame the matter in a way that suggests that Blomberg thinks that the Gospels contain fabrications is off base.

There is a sentiment in such arguments that, first of all, the Bible should reflect the perception of order held by the reader -- in this case, modeled upon Western precision-literalism, and the alleged “Christian ethic” developed in Western churches. Any suggestion that the text might vary from this order or ethic is looked upon as a deception. We have commented on this enough times, but would now add this dimension: That there is likely also a sort of psychological security sought by those like Thomas and Caveman Ed, in saying that the Scriptures present that uniform face. It is this same psychology that also rejects external contexts (like the social sciences) as interpretative lenses, and results in the objection that such factors are "not in the text" and are therefore off limits. (Thus as well, linguistics -- Hebrew and Greek -- are the only context admitted; for it can hardly be denied that the Scriptures were written in these languages; it's "in the text". But this is also overcome easily by assigning modern values to the semantic range of the words used; eg, "love" is not collectivist and utilitarian care under God's umbrella, but modern sentimentalism.)

Thus, Thomas and Caveman Ed, in their arrogance, also presume to rewrite the Bible in their image, and remake God in their image as well. The extreme of this is the "buddy Jesus" construction, or the health and wealth gospel. But the less spectacular manifestations are no less false for their lack of sparkle.

And thus as well, our point for today: Leaders and followers like Geisler, Thomas, and Caveman Ed in essence hold us hostage to their own insecurities. That is why it is so crucial that they be confronted, that they be challenged, and that they not be permitted to peddle their deceptions without rebuke. They must not be allowed to spread their insecurities and thereby weaken the Body of Christ. It is to the end of stopping such deception that we will continue pressuring Geisler to answer our challenge.

What Is Atheism? Part 5: Krueger and Miracles

2011-09-30T03:09:00.000-07:00

Nick Peters continues his series:

***

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.

“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature because of supernatural influence.”

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.”

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.?

Keep in mind, we theists are the ones who are supposed to examine our claims.
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.”

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.

No joke. Really?

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.

Well, maybe unless we could do something like establish that only one God exists which has been done….

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)

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.

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.

Not much here today folks. We’ll see what chapter 6 has next time.

On Hume

Panic in the Henhouse

2011-09-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I issued a challenge to Norman Geisler (link below) regarding his presuppositions concerning certain aspects of his arguments against Mike Licona.

A day or so later, someone posted a link to that challenge on Geisler’s ministry Facebook page.

Sometime in the last day or two, it was deleted – with no comment.

We want to know why – and we’ll keep the pressure on until an answer is produced.

Of course, it is possible that Geisler doesn’t manage his own ministry Facebook page (I don’t), and that it was deleted without his knowledge. But that still calls for an explanation. And to paraphrase his original open letter to Licona, he owes us one. (That’s being facetious, by the way.)

While we’re at it, I’m in the process of investigating this point made by Geisler:

…[t]here are far bigger and better scholarly circles than this, such as, the nearly 300 international scholars who formed the ICBI statement on inerrancy and its statements which declare that views like Licona’s were incompatible with the view of full inerrancy which declared that the Bible is wholly and completely without error and denied all dehistoricizing of the Gospel record.

I had an idea that “scholars” here was used a little too liberally, so I received a list of those “300 international scholars” to see how many actually qualify. I am up to the Es as of this typing, and the results are appalling. The list is top-heavy with pastors so far, most of whom we have no reason to believe would have sufficient knowledge to judge the issue Licona was writing on, and are decidedly undeserving to be called “scholars” in any real sense. Theologians are also top-heavy on the list: People whose scholarship is not in the right field. A handful are utterly unqualified; the list includes Josh McDowell, Hal Lindsey (!), Bill Bright, and a couple of businessmen so far. Many names cannot be further identified with anyone, presumably for reasons such as that they were deceased before record of them reached the Internet. I hope to confer with someone about any names I cannot correlate with known persons once I get done with my initial survey.

OT scholars are found in fair number (but still not many), while so far only 8 people out of 87 checked could be regarded as having some sort of competence in the subject area of concern to Licona (among them, D. A. Carson). And of course, Licona had gotten two of those 300 to sign in his favor already.

I’ll publish the results of my survey when it is complete. In the meantime, perhaps it is not hard to see why Geisler deleted that challenge.

Link

What Is Atheism? Part 4

2011-09-15T09:14:00.001-07:00

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.

***

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.

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.”

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.

Kreuger then lists five criteria for prophecy.

#1-It must be clear and contain sufficient detail to make fulfillment by a wide variety of possible events unlikely.

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.

#2-The event that can fulfill it must be unusual or unique.

I really don’t have much issue with this one.

#3-The prophecy must be known to have been made prior to its fulfillment.

Obviously no problem.

#4-The event must not be what could be the result of an educated guess.

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.

#5-It cannot be staged or manipulated by those aware of the prophecy.

No problem with this either.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Well what are Krueger’s reasons?

#1-Almost all the books of the Bible are anonymous. (Tekton has several articles on this issue according to book.)

#2-They were written decades after the events recorded. (Likewise, and note that this is still a blip in the ancient world)

#3-We have no original documents. (Likewise)

#4-The NT was written in Greek. (This isn’t a problem, and note that Krueger begins this part saying “If Jesus did exist.”

#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.

#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.)

#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)

#8-Most NT books are known to be forgeries. There is no source here given. It is simply assertions. (See link below)

#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.

#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.

#11-Biblical accounts contradict facts about nature and the ancient world.

For this, he has a few subheadings. To start with, he questions the credibility of the destruction of Ai based on an article in Biblical Archaeology Review. 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.

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.

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.)

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.

#12-The Bible contains many contradictions.

Of course, this is a favorite one. What do we have? The following, all of which are again old news (sample links below):

Does God repent?
Does God punish children for the sins of their parents?
Is anyone righteous?
Are we justified by faith or works?
Does God keep his promises?
Is everything possible with faith?
Will all who call upon Jesus’s name be saved?
Will god always be there in times of need? (Hard to believe Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 10:1 are used here.)
Was Jesus God?

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.

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?

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.

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.

http://www.tektonics.org/TK-2KIN.html
http://www.tektonics.org/uz/zeketyre.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/bucknerj01.html#days
http://christianthinktank.com/fabrach.html
http://christianthinktank.com/fabprof2.html
http://www.christianthinktank.com/qburnbx.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/comma.html
http://www.christianthinktank.com/pseudox.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/danieldefense.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/batbird.html
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/paydaddy.html
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jamesvspaul.html

An Ode to Independence

2011-09-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

Nick Peters will have more to say on Doug Krueger, but I wanted to break in for something else this week. Over on the Ticker I'd been giving an account of what's happened to Mike Licona as a result of Norman Geisler's misplaced crusade. I won't be writing about that directly here, but it does illustrate the point I do want to make, along with an entry I wrote some months back about a person who had an equally misplaced doctrinal issue with me (concerning the nature of hell).

That incident ended in failure for my accuser, which is how it should have been. My views did not threaten orthodoxy, though they did threaten some people's views of what orthodoxy should be. Unlike Licona, neither pressure nor sanctions were applied to me by anyone. (I was disgusted to have brought to my attention, by Nick, a blog by a pissant North Carolina pastor who was observing, with a self-gratifying smugness, that Licona was no longer listed as a speaker on certain conference lists now; such pastors as this one, who are self-manifestly ignorant dolts, are a sort I have had to deal with before who ought to have their pastorate taken from them, and will end up as toilet scrubbers in New Jerusalem because they have misled their flock. His type will send their youth next door to have their faith shattered by Bart Ehrman, and will scratch their heads not understanding why, or else blaming pride, sin, or some other rationalized excuse for their own miserable failure.)

Why no sanctions on me, though? Obviously, there's a huge difference between the way Mike and I are employed. He is (soon to be was) part of a much larger organization, the North American Mission Board, which in turn is a small part of the Southern Baptist Convention. That means he had a vast network which supported his work financially and in other ways. But in the end, he was also beholden (I do not say agreeably, of necessity) to the strictures placed on him by whoever was in authority -- even if that authority happened to be a pompous jackass who thought apologetics was a useless distraction and what we really needed was more and better praise choruses.

In contrast, Tekton has always lived on the edge in terms of finances and all else a corporate machine like NAMB/SBC provides. On October 20 of this year, Tekton will have been operating as a full time ministry for 10 full years, and for at least 7 of those years, it was open to doubt whether another year could be had of it. The current bad economy likely assures us of another year on the edge ahead.

But then again -- Tekton has also never had to worry about being lorded over by a pompous jackass. I don't have to toe a "party line" of some denominational organization. I can speak freely, being accountable not to some distant board of stuffed shirts who wouldn't know Greco-Roman rhetoric from a roasted pig, but to those who actually find the information Tekton provides and consider it helpful.

In the past 10 years I have asked myself more than a few times which situation I'd rather be in -- and in the end, I have to say that the situation as is, always wins out over what Mike has had to deal with. It is worth far more to be able to be free to say and do what needs to be said and done, rather than be thumbed under by a dense bureaucrat.

As an illustration of this, there was a time (before NAMB cut budgets) when I did some freelance PPTs for NAMB. One of those referenced Hindu practices of meditation, and to illustrate it, I found a picture of a somewhat older gentleman in a yoga position. Some yahoo at NAMB, however, had been given some kind of oversight over the project, and this yahoo wasn't an apologist. They were, however, deeply concerned because the man in the yoga picture was dressed in nothing but what was equal in coverage to men's bicycle shorts.

Stories like that remind me why I never wanted to be part of a larger organization, and still don't. Oversight is an excellent thing in principle, but it doesn't actually work unless the "overseer" has their priorities straight and also has some idea what they're overseeing.

***

ADDENUDUM

Shortly after I posted this, Mike sent out the following to several people which he said could be posted and distributed as seen fit. So here it is! With that list of signators, if I were Geisler, I'd find a deep place to hide. (9/10/11: Licona has requested a revision, explained below.)

***

An Open Response to Norman Geisler

Norman Geisler has taken issue with a portion of my recent book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, in which I proposed that the story of the raised saints in Matthew 27:52-53 should probably be interpreted as apocalyptic imagery rather than literal history. In response, Dr. Geisler has offered strong criticisms in two Open Letters to me on the Internet. Until now I have been unable to comment because I have multiple writing deadlines, two September debates in South Africa for which to prepare, and, consequently, no time to be drawn into what would probably turn into an endless debate. I shared these first two reasons with Dr. Geisler in an email several weeks ago. Yet he insisted that I “give careful and immediate attention” to the matter. I simply could not do this and fulfill the pressing obligations of my ministry, which is my higher priority before the Lord.

Dr. Geisler questions whether I still hold to biblical inerrancy. I want to be clear that I continue to affirm this evangelical distinctive. My conclusion in reference to the raised saints in Matthew 27 was based upon my analysis of the genre of the text. This was not an attempt to wiggle out from under the burden of an inerrant text; it was an attempt to respect the text by seeking to learn what Matthew was trying to communicate. This is responsible hermeneutical practice. Any reasonable doctrine of biblical inerrancy must respect authorial intent rather than predetermine it.

When writing a sizable book, there will always be portions in which one could have articulated a matter more appropriately. And those portions, I suppose, will often be located outside the primary thesis of the book, such as the one on which Dr. Geisler has chosen to focus. When writing my book, I always regarded the entirety of Matthew 27 as historical narrative containing apocalyptic allusions. I selected the term “poetic” in order to allude to similar phenomena in the Greco-Roman literature in general and Virgil in particular. However, since Matthew is a Jew writing to Jews, “apocalyptic” may be the most appropriate technical term, while “special effects” communicates the gist on a popular level.

Further research over the last year in the Greco-Roman literature has led me to reexamine the position I took in my book. Although additional research certainly remains, at present I am just as inclined to understand the narrative of the raised saints in Matthew 27 as a report of a factual (i.e., literal) event as I am to view it as an apocalyptic symbol. It may also be a report of a real event described partially in apocalyptic terms. I will be pleased to revise the relevant section in a future edition of my book.

Michael R. Licona, Ph.D.

August 31, 2011

We the undersigned are aware of the above stated position by Dr. Michael Licona, including his present position pertaining to the report of the raised saints in Matthew 27: He proposes that the report may refer to a literal/historical event, a real event partially described in apocalyptic terms, or an apocalyptic symbol. Though most of us do not hold Licona’s proposal, we are in firm agreement that it is compatible with biblical inerrancy, despite objections to the contrary. We are encouraged to see the confluence of biblical scholars, historians, and philosophers in this question.

It has come to my attention that this matter may become a political/theological hot potato. The scholars on the list have stood with me. It was not my intent to amass a huge list. It was my intent to demonstrate that a significant number of the most highly respected evangelical scholars, all of whom are members of ETS, see no incompatibility between the position I took in my book and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The list has served its purpose. I have no desire to be the cause of pressure brought on those who have stood with me or on their academic institutions. Therefore, I have decided to remove the list of names for the present time at least. In no case, did an institution demand that their professors withdraw their names.

A number of scholars have suggested that this discussion is better played out in the theatre of an academic forum. I could not agree more! Southeastern Theological Review (STR) has offered to host a ‘virtual’ roundtable discussion involving several significant scholars commenting on my book. A main subject of this roundtable will be the raising of the dead saints in Matthew 27:52-53. This roundtable discussion(s) will be posted on the STR web site and will precede a full journal devoted to my book in the Summer 2012 edition of STR.

What Is Atheism? Part 3 (Can Atheists Have Purpose?)

2011-08-30T03:54:00.000-07:00

Nick Peters continues his review.

***

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Finally, to close one part, Krueger says the theist cannot show that there is a God. This will of course be dealt with later.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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?

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?”

I also believe Krueger gives a wake-up call for the church in saying that purpose
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.

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?

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.

What Is Atheism? Part 2

2011-08-23T02:59:00.000-07:00

Nick Peters continues his review:

***

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.

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.

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.

What’s Krueger’s great argument? Why it’s the Euthyphro dilemma!

Because we know in 2,500 years of thinking since then that no theist has addressed this dilemma….

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.

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.

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.”

Krueger obviously knows this after going through a round of interviewing Sunday School teachers….

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.) Also of course, there’s slavery.

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 . Krueger adds that today, compassionate people consider racism immoral. Why? No reason given. They just do.

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)Then references to God punishing people by forcing them to be cannibals. (See links below again)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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Krueger also looks at name-calling such as calling someone a fool which supposedly goes against Colossians 3:8 .

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

(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.)

http://www.tektonics.org/qt/smithg01.html#lk627
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html
http://www.christianthinktank.com/qcrude.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
http://www.tektonics.org/TK-C.html (entry under Cannibalism)
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/obeylaw.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/midian.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/femalex.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/ancientmores.html#dt2228
http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatlove.html
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/namecallfool.html
http://www.tektonics.org/qt/secretteach.html
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/lyingghosts.html
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesussayshate.html
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesusrudemom.html

What Is Atheism? Part 1

2011-08-17T07:51:00.001-07:00

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.

***
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.

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.

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.

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.)

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Because we all know the existential relevance of unicorns and God are exactly the same.

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.

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.

Next time, we shall have some fun looking at Krueger on morality.

New Forge Posting Schedule

2011-08-12T03:14:00.000-07:00

So, now that we're done shaming Christian Lindtner, as noted the Forge will now enter a phase of reduced posting. I'll be sure and get in at least one post a week, though it may be on any particular day I get the urge to rant about something. If nothing else, Friday will be the date for a post so that everyone can get some extra oomph for the weekend. (hee hee) It's been interesting trying to produce this much writing every week, and it was a test to see how far that could go without affecting quality. In my view, it's a good time to reduce that output before things get too thin.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 7

2011-08-11T07:22:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

Link

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 6

2011-08-09T09:13:00.001-07:00

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.

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).

One more part to go - at least I haven't needed any nausea medication yet.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 5

2011-08-05T06:18:00.001-07:00

Flip...flop...clunk.

Turns out Linthead is not an entirely 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.

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?

You already know that answer.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 4

2011-08-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

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:

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?

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 shot people en masse.

Uh HUH. I didn’t deny the Holocaust, I just denied how they did it. Riiiight…

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.

I think matters are summed up well by a reader also following this situation:

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?

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.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 3

2011-08-02T06:35:00.001-07:00

Flip, flop. Flip, flop.

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).

It might be nice if it weren't so transparently self-serving.

On the side, if there IS any reason to watch these too-late mea culpas, 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 heard 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.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 2

2011-07-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

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?

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.

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.

Flip. Flop. Flip. Flop.

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.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 1

2011-07-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

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.

The first is the following quote from Lindtner’s “jesusisbuddha” website:

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?

Are there any modern parallels that prove helpful? 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? 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?

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.

Lindtner evidently hoped that quote would slowly die off after he removed it. It won’t. I’m keeping it alive.

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.

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...a new form of Judaism.

Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle. Has Ken got this message yet? (Of course not. He’s still using Lindtner as a source.)

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:

How can this be substantiated!? 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?!

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.

Forge entry

TWeb thread

Faith Freedom forum -- see post by Norseman at the bottom of the page

Cached quote from atheist forum

Quote on a blog that seems to be French

End of the Diablos Path

2011-07-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

And now we have the last of the diabolical doccies. I'm sure you'll miss them, but fear not, the Path People are the sort who will have 20 more by next week, especially if you write them suggesting something is good.

36) Immortality of the soul -- well, this one's a bit weirdly phrased, but it seems to be OK in the end, because it says God is the source of immortality, and that's the only way souls are immortal. They didn't need to take 500 pages to say it, though.

37) The King James Version is the perfect Word of God -- bah. That one was a challenge. I wouldn't call it diabolical. Silly, yes, but not diabolical.

38) It is OK to use or display religious images, icons, and likenesses -- yep yep. The usual bad definition of "image", though to be fair, they don't make it clear how far they take it. So you'll have to just hope that your Jesus coloring books won't send you to hell.

39) Some are predestinated to burn in hell forever -- this is just a combo of two prior doccies, so why they felt the need to make a hybrid, I can't say.

40) One cannot see God's face and live -- yes, I agree with the idea here but not that it's diabolical to think this. But really, they do this one because the Path People think they're had visions or revelations, so they have to really turn the screws on this one.

41) Deathbed conversions to Christ -- again, a repeat of something from a prior doccy. And for convenience, the story of the thief on the cross is designated to be added into the text later. Too bad there's no textual or historical reason to agree (and a cultic reason isn't good enough). So in the end, the Path People are still dodging the question it raises.

We're done now -- so what's left? We're assured that:

The day of vindication is now here and all things are now being reversed so that all is right side up. The day of the Lord is here. Repent, all those to whom it is given. Again, I say, repent.

All I can say is -- pardon me if I don't get up.

Down the Diablos Path, Part 5

2011-07-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Time for some more diabolical doccys. Want to annoy the Path People? Tell them you're using it as a checklist for things you plan to believe in.

30) All marriages are of God -- this one appears to just be an extension of the prior one about family unity, to the extent that it proposes that someone can marry out of God's will -- so that (shh) you can join the Path People and divorce your spouse if they get ticked about it...because the emphasis is on (hmm) what to do if you're married to an "unbeliever." That's convenient, as is the fact that the Path People designate anyone as an "unbeliever" who even uses the wrong fork at dinner.

31) "The Lord's Supper" -- a rant against transubstantiation as practiced by Catholics. I don't consider it a big deal, but the Path People really hate this one. However, their only "argument" is as follows:

According to one writer, Lew White, in his book, "Fossilized Customs," the error part was present before Jesus' day, with the pagan Mithraists, worshipers of the sun, who held wafers of bread up to the sun to receive its rays. By pronouncing the words, "Hocus Pocus" and "Abracadabra," words that now sound silly and are spoken in fun, the bread was believed to be transformed and was "transubsantiated" into the actual presence of the sun. By eating that bread, the partakers would possess the powers of the deity.

Funny how David Ulansey, the world's leading Mithraic scholar, never heard of any of this. As far as I can find, Lew White is an unqualified moron just like the Path People (and based on Amazon's look in feature, he provides no documentation for this idiotic claim about Mithraism).

After that, there's some ranting about varieties of practices in the Supper across the denominations, ranting about celebrating Easter (a pagan holiday, of course), ranting about eating ham at Easter (which is inferred to be an insult to Jews as grave as killing them as Hitler did), and then we're told the Path People don't keep the Supper, but no clear reason is given why; there are hints that its now a pagan ritual because it has been so badly corrupted.

32) Jewish worship practices and traditions are important to keep -- they say this one's more a false notion than a diabolical doccy. I call it no big deal either way, and suspect at this point the Path People were scraping barrel bottom looking for something to call wicked and diabolical.

33) The dead in Christ are unconscious -- I agree this is wrong. Not diabolical, but wrong. (Link below, where I explain why it is wrong a lot more coherently than they do.)

34) The wicked are annihilated -- once again I agree this is wrong. Uh oh. I hope I'm not turning into one of these guys.

35) Satan was once a good being -- whew. Not entirely. While I agree here that Satan is NOT found in Ezekiel and Isaiah, the Path People give two fairly crappy arguments for saying Satan was created evil. One is a lame appeal to Is. 45:7 (link below), which puts them in an exegetical league with some of the dumber atheists. The other is an appeal to John 8:44, which describes Satan as a murderer "from the beginning" -- which we're told, it is most "logical, relevant, and reasonable" to assume, means in the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, why it is most logical and all that isn't explained; nor is it explained why Eden was Satan's lifetime debut.

We'll look at the last collection Tuesday. Have you made a list of these you want to believe in yet?

Link: State of the deceased.
Link: Is. 45:7

Another Type of Doccy

2011-07-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

Ah, rats. It's going to be one of those days. I forgot I had a medical appointment, so I'll get back to the Path of Truth stuff tomorrow. In the meantime, it's just as well a good spot to relay a few things.

Once I get done with the Path of Truth, I'll be having a look at some material by Christian Lindtner, the Holocaust denier that Ken Humphreys thinks is a good source. Apparently the stink I raised about that is starting to hurt, because Lindtner produced some vids of some sort, which I have not looked at yet, but which address the issue. Whether they're denials of affirmations or something else remains to be seen.

After that, I expect we'll reach the month of August, and at that time, the Forge will drop a regular posting schedule and just become someplace I post when I have something to say that fits. I expect that still might end up being once or twice a week at times. (The Ticker blog will remain a 3x per week gig.)

Why? Obviously it's a matter of priority and what's developed since I posted the 2011 Tekton Manifesto. Writing is fun for me, but it can take time, and it actually takes longer for me sometimes to come up with an idea for one of the blogs than to write about it. At the time of the Manifesto, too, I had no idea how productive I could become with TektonTV; and after it took me over a month to produce the first animated vid, I couldn't have imagined I'd eventually learn more efficient techniques that would get me to a total of 50 vids there as of today. So call this a shift in priority and assignment of time.

As an observation ceremony of sorts, I'm also working on designing a new background for the TektonTV channel. Right now you'll see a background with the Tekton logo used as placeholders. I'm doing that to get some space measurements.

Anyway, be back tomorrow with more on the Path of Lunacy.

Down the Diablos Path, Part 4

2011-07-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

So now, back to those diabolical doccies; and by the way, there are 41, so we'll be at this maybe 2-3 more entries. It’s tedious going and starting to get really dull. Almost makes you wish the Path People were advocating free sex or something like that to get things interesting.

22) Denominations are legitimate in the sight of God -- legitimate in what way, though? There's a lot of bellowing about how Satan is behind such things, but what it boils down to is, the Path People are the only true church, the rest are bogus, so there. There's some validity in criticisms over division, religious entertainment, etc. but "we're the ones with the truth" is what the centerpiece is, though much short on specifics; to wit:

The Baptists "pump" water baptism but have no use whatsoever for being baptized in the Spirit of Christ whom they profess to serve. In rebuking the Corinthians, Paul emphasized the latter and played down the former.

Yeah...OK. But these dimwits couldn't even reveal a simple password to me, so whatever "Spirit" they have must be on the toilet. In any event, while there are legit criticisms to be had, the fact is that denominations just aren't that far apart in the essentials, outside of cults. But that's something I'm working on now, so...say no more.

23) There is no literal, personal voice of God speaking today as in Biblical times -- so they say, but like I said, if they're hearing God's voice, "God" must be on the toilet. I'm of the view that prophecy in general has ceased, but if someone can give me the goods of a valid prophecy, I'll consider that they just might have an ear to God's mouth. As it is, the Path People can't seem to deliver any sort of prophecy that isn't more than "join us you heathen". Quite a fail rate for folks who claims that they have "personal, intimate, direct communication and fellowship with Him" and provide no more validation for it being a real voice than "I think it was." (And by the way, they also say that if you do NOT hear God's voice, you're not saved. OK. I just heard it, and he says you guys are morons.)

24) All believers have equal authority and status -- what's this mean? Not what you may think; it's related to some idea that not all have equal access to God. OK, to be fair, yes -- people like the Apsotles, having been given more responsibility, probably did get more access; they needed it. So why think the Path People have it too? Um...because God told the Path People they did, that's why. Yep. A bunch of creepy wackos growing organic veggies in the woods definitely have all the responsibility Paul did.

25) Women are ordained or called as ministers of God, in spiritual authority over men -- well, partly here, this is a non-issue because the Path People don't think any modern people are ordained of God anyway, male or female. But beyond that, it's just the usual claptrap we see from misogynists who haven't figured out stuff like that 1 Cor. 14:35-6 is Paul quoting a Corinthian position which he then disagrees with. This is yet more reason why we need better exegetical education for our pastors and teachers. What doesn't occur to these folks, sadly, is that a lack of women in authority in the early church was more due to social strictures of the ancient world than anything else. Put another way, it was because men weren't ready to accept them as leaders, not because they were not suited to be leaders. Of course...if the Path People are that bad off too...we can grasp that easily.

26) All flesh is clean for eating -- yep. This is where we first get the teaching that that OT law is still meant to be observed. Now what though of the fact that "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the Word of God and with prayer"? The Path People's response reaches heights of wackiness unknown heretofore, as they suggest that you then ough to go eat a skunk, a snake, or even a cockroach. (Never mind that some natives peoples have in fact eaten those very things.) Or, they suggest, maybe cow urine.

Uh, news flash, guys -- freedom to eat any meats doesn't equate with choosing to eat any of them. So how do they explain that admonition to Timothy? They don't. In a perverse turnaround, they tell us that "for it is sanctified" is a qualification indicating that "every creature" is not really every creature, but just the clean ones in the OT. Now isn't that the Jim Jones Exegetical School having class: The reading on any other account would have the qualification the other way around, as you'd think if they were right, it would say, eg, "every sanctified [or clean] creature".

Just as perversely, the fact that Gentile converts were not told to eat kosher in Acts 15, is excused away by saying: But consider that the passage clarifies their thinking: "For Moses of old time has in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day." In other words, they were saying, "These are the more urgent matters; do these for now until you grow and are able to handle more and as you do, you will do well and the Law of Moses is available to you when you're ready for more."

Um, right. Strange how that works out in favor of what they want. But how could things be so "urgent" that they couldn't slip in, "oh yes, and obey the dietary laws"? Especially since the Path People tell us how important it is? For some reason, the Path People's own past inability (which they admit to!) to keep these dietarty laws becomes an excuse to validate a wacky reading of Acts 15; this in spite of the urgency professed in ridding ourselves of all these other diabolical doccies.

27) Democracy is Christian and\or Godly -- I don't know who argues this, but the Path People's view is that only theocracy is legitimate as a form of government, and they hope it happens soon.

28) Family unity is a hallmark of true Christianity – I don’t know who teaches this either. I wish they’d quote the sources of some of these doctrines so we can get an idea what they’re talking about and contextualize it. That said, their main purpose in this is not so much, family unity is bad, but I’m thinking more of a reply to those who have observed their cultish tendency to split families with their nonsense, under the assumption that their teachings are valid and worthy of a family splitting over them, as Jesus predicted in Matthew 10.

Yeah, right.

29) Spouses are equal in marriage – just more of the same misogyny we refer to in #25 above, misusing some of the same passages Glenn Miller discusses in his series here. I can understand why this groups’ leaders would want this kind of thing, though, because they have faces that would scare a dog out of a butcher shop.

Boy is this dull...uh...uh oh...

30) You should have free sex all the time.

Nah, I just made that one up.

Down the Diablos Path, Part 3

2011-07-15T03:09:00.001-07:00

Well, here we go with the next set of diabolical doccies from the Path People. Be sure and also check out the TWeb thread linked below to see a sample of the quality response (ha ha!) they gave us by email on the Trinity.

14) Salvation is possible in this life only -- oy vey. Didn't I deal with exactly the same arguments with the Mormons? Sorta. The Path People use a couple of the same verses (link below) but mostly they use a lot of emotional rhetoric of the "how dare you believe something so horrible" variety.

The real hoot is the way they dispose of Heb. 9:27:

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many..." is a passage of Scripture used to support this evil doctrine. There is nothing there saying that judgment is eternal or temporary damnation. In fact, the word "judgment"only means a decision, for or against.

Um...yes, true. But in the context of the words "once to die" and that of Christianity's Jewish background, that means only that there's no chance for salvation after death. No second decision. The Path People simply speculate wildly about second chances, then suggest anyone who doesn't agree is worse than Hitler (yes, even invoking his name). Then they try to invoke a cheap guilt trip by suggesting that anyone who really believed this would do nothing but evangelize -- not even stopping to bathe or shave.

Actually, I can believe that of the Path People, based on their pictures, already. But even if the Path People are right, there's a lot more they could be doing for God even now. So the guilt trip rebounds on them the same way, if we want to play that game.

15) Those who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will be fearfully and forever tormented, without end -- well, OK. As everyone knows, I don't buy the traditional fire and torture view of hell; they don't either, though their rejection of it is based more on "waah, how horrible" than any sort of sound exegesis of Scripture (much less do they have any idea what honor and shame might have to do with it).

16) There are many ways to God -- yeah, OK. This one is actually pretty much orthodox. Even a busted clock is right twice a day, right?

17) Christmas is a holy, God-ordained celebration -- Um...I have no idea who thinks this, sorry, and certainly not of the modern commercial holiday that gets the Path People's undies in a knot, to the point that they call it a "a wonderful rape in the form of a seduction." Get a grip, guys. Yes, people actually should be good to others all year -- I've made the same point myself -- but let's not get snotty and proud of ourselves, shall we? All this rot about "superstitions and practices" tells us more about how weak you are, not how weak everyone else is. (It is true of course that many think Jesus' birth was that day, as they note.) I'll let the egomanical nature of the Path People speak for itself, though:

"God alone knows the heart" you object. Yes, He does, and you don't, and so He sends me to tell you, if perchance you will listen and be saved.

He sent YOU? They couldn't even give me a simple password (last entry) I asked for, so pardon me, but if God sent YOU, it must be because He's gone senile.

18) Easter is Christian and Biblical -- same rant as above, really. Same answer. It speaks for itself that I last heard the same arguments from ProfMTH (and my answers to him apply too; link below).

19) God is trying to save the whole world now -- as far as I can tell this is some sort of screed against Christian Reconstructionism. Or something. Not my cup of tea.

20) Man has been given a free will -- yep. Same sort of thing we address at yet another link below. They're Calvinist on this score, but not very good at thinking outside the box or resolving the contradictions in their position, either. Instead, if you even ask about the contradictions, you're carnal and self-righteous. Now isn't that so Jim Jones of them.

Last one today:

21) Now we are in the dispensation of grace, not Law -- I'm no dispensationalist, but there's also nothing clear given -- at least on this point -- about what the Path People mean by the law. Since they're not sacrificing animals -- or are they? -- it's clear they're not full nomists. Looking ahead to point 26, they do at least insist on some dietary laws...we'll have a look at that one next time.

TWeb thread
Mormons and second chance evangelism
Easter vid
Free will

I Am John Loftus

2011-07-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

We’ll get back to the Path People tomorrow, but I had to stop to make a confession.

I invented John Loftus.

No, really. He doesn’t actually exist. I’m the one who is actually behind Debunking Christianity, all his books, and also, his Doubting John account at TheologyWeb. It’s all something I made up.

I didn’t think I’d ever be caught at it, but it happened. The background is that the other day on TektonTV,I loaded up this vid:

Now as you can see, I used John (or I should say, “John”) as a character. But there was one very intelligent atheist at YT styled “AliburX” who saw through my subterfuge, and said:

OK, first of all, you made up a fantasy character, Loftus, then defined him as an adulterer, and then further defined him as an illiterate who doesn't understand what thou shalt not commit adultery means when he reads it. That guy is your fantasy and does not represent anyone therefore your point is meaningless. There are plenty of us who have studied the bible and still find it severely lacking in any real substance. Simply asserting the bible is meaningful doesn't make it so.

What can I say? Guilty as charged. John is just my invention. He never actually existed. All the guys at Triablogue, Debunking Loftus, and so on have been arguing with a figment of my imagination all this time. I acknowledge it, and I repent. I can’t fool an intelligent atheist.

But you’re asking, "What about all those personal appearances John has been making? That’s not you." True – it’s an actor I hired named Reginald Snarf. I’m sort of glad this is over, since he charges an awful lot.

So in close on this saga, I just have one request of all of you….

Buy my book.

The Diablos Path, Part 2

2011-07-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

As a note before we get to Part 2, I've lately been tormenting one of the Path People's leaders by email, telling him that if he really has an ear to God's mouth, he ought to give me the password. What I meant by that was that I had thought of some random celebrity's name, and he was supposed to guess it. Instead he thought I was asking how to get to heaven. Ha ha. What a maroon. Prophet test = fail.

7) Eternal security... Once saved, always saved -- OK, to be fair, I'm not all with the P in TULIP myself, but here it's the Path People doing the legalist limbo again, thinking it's also sin that'll get you toasted. Hardly. When Jesus says we have to endure to the end (Matt. 10:22), he means it -- but what the Path People and many others fail to realize is that the temptation to apostasy in the ancient world was much, much greater than it is now, and that's why we have so many warnings about it. Unfortunately, since today's temptations are more mundane - e.g., sinning -- legalists like the Path People assume that's what these verses are about.

There's one particular passage often miused in this regard, and they do it too: “And one said to Him, Lord, are the ones being saved few? And He said to them, Strive to enter in at the narrow gate. For I say to you, many will seek to enter in and shall not be able” (Luke 13:23-24 MKJV). What these folks miss is that in essence, Jesus doesn't answer the question. And that's what we'd expect, of course: The question, like many questions in an agonistic setting, is actually a challenge; and here, the challenge is being posed by Luke in light of the teachings he just recorded about the value of the Kingdom of Heaven and the sacrifice one must make to join it. The questioner is challenging Jesus' teachings by implying that they mean few will be saved. But notice: Jesus doesn't say, "Yes, few will be saved." He does say "many" will not be -- and that's not the same thing.

Like most legalists, the Path People fear that "eternal security causes the lawless to be secure and confident in their sinful lives, spreading their lawless attitudes like cancer and causing those without faith to blaspheme the Name of God." I'm sure if asked they could provide about a dozen anecdotal examples. But as noted in a prior entry, they're forgetting about rewards -- and so are the lawless, for that matter.

8) We cannot help but sin; it is impossible not to sin -- it's not exactly clear where the Path People go with this one. I wouldn't say we "cannot help" but sin; I do think it is impossible to never do it again this side of death, but we are certainly supposed to be struggling with and suppressing it. Do the Path People think we'll be perfect and never sin after conversion, though? No, not quite that far:

We defile perfectly, but His blood cleanses us from ALL unrighteousness. Sinless perfection? Perhaps, but by His virtue and work and none of our own.

Good concession -- because I'll bet they wouldn't pass that test either. So overall, I can grant this one, with provisions also noted in an E-Block article (July 2010) where I addressed that subject.

9) Nothing more is required after conversion... Christ did it all -- well, really, this is just another variation on Doccy #1, so we won't cover it again.

10) Christ has fulfilled the Law; we are no longer under the Law but under grace -- huh? So will Path People restart the sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple then? The Path People don't discuss it to that extent here; instead they prefer to offer scary picture of someone in hell because they didn't do...whatever it is. They do have another article on law and grace; maybe we'll look at it later, and some of the other diabolical doccys later on seem to go in some detail.

11) We are all going to be raptured before the great tribulation -- I agree. Because the "tribulation" took place in 67-73 AD. No, the Path People don't believe that themselves; they're essentially post-tribbers from the looks of it. I'll leave it at that because it might be funny to see if I can get them to add preterism to their list of diabolical doccies.

12) You must belong or go to a church -- OK, to be fair again: There's a point made here to effect that if your fellowships around you are corrupt, you shouldn't attend. Tell me about it -- I can hardly find any that know what apologetics is, let alone that are willing to hear about it. That said, there's always the question of whether your evaluation of those fellowships is accurate, or whether you're just a discontented lunatic. The author for the Path People says that, "[t]he Lord directly, specifically and categorically commanded us to come out of all church systems, informing us that those in them were perishing in their sins, whoredoms, pleasures, idolatries."

I vote discontented lunatic. God told me so, too.

13) Sunday is the Sabbath -- ooo boy. Let's make this simple -- do they offer anything that answers what we have at the article linked here?

Nope.

That was simple. More next time.

The Diablos Path, Part 1

2011-07-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

The Path of Truth cult has a list of "diabolical doctrines" that we'll be looking at the next few days. Now some of you may wonder why we'd bother with a pissant cult that grows vegetables and sells organic baby food; the answer -- besides the fact that, as usual, I'm feeling masochistic, and we've been asked to have a look -- is that these are the sort of claims we'll hear from other quarters, too, and if at some later date someone else falls down the beaten Path -- or a similar one -- this will be there for them.

And besides, it'll be fun to see if we can tick them off.

Each description the Path People offer for each doctrine is about 70% rant, so we'll just be quoting what's the bare bones.

1) Accept Jesus as your personal Saviour and you will be saved
OK, to be fair: The Path People have a point, but it's nothing John MacArthur hasn't said already, and far better. That said, the Path People are off anyway; "accepting Jesus" will get you saved (it's entrance into the covenant), but doing nothing else will get you used diapers (versus, works = rewards).
The Path People say it is "presumptuous" to suppose you can "accept" God because it is not as though " we, and not God, call the shots." Um, yeah...but what if God Himself said that the rules were, to be saved, you accept the terms of the covenant? Who called the shots then? They don't consider this, but they do yank the story of Paul's Damascus Road call into the mix, as though this proved some sort of point about salvation, to this effect: "... the primary aspect of man's relationship with God was one of submission to Him as Lord over him and to His will."

Uh...yeah, that's appropos, IF you're being called with a bop on the head for a special mission, like Paul is. The Path People do seem to have this idea that they're that important, but bottom line is, Paul's call is no model for each person's salvation process; never said to be, never meant to be, save in imagination.

The Path People, though, are caught in that maelstrom that MacArthur and Hodges were whirling years back, the one you can safely cross with a couple of words: "Semitic Totality." (Link below.) Without this, you inevitably in one of two directions: Either Hodges' over-libertaranism, or the Path People's angry legalism and veritable works-salvation.

The Path People can't get around this easily. The key question which sets the bar is, "What about a deathbed conversion? What about the thief on the cross?" The Path People offer examples that don't answer that question (eg, pre-NT persons like Namaan, and people who had yet to hear about Jesus at the time they choose for illustration, like Cornelius!), and they need to, for therein lies the answer of whether obedience is required for salvation, or whether it is the inevitable result of salvation. They say, "A true conversion is marked by a point in obedience." But what if you die before that point? The Path People do not answer that question; rather, they dodge it by dismissing such conversions as "almost all, if not all, spurious." That's a cheap and insulting way to get out of the dilemma -- or rather, NOT get out of it. OK, how about this: A guy converts, then gets hit by a bus. They can't use impending death as an excuse to say that one's spurious. Think they'll answer the question now?

Their second "diabolical doctrine" is said to be, "Conversion is full salvation," and in essence, it is just the first one put another way. The third is, "Gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for today," and here, I have said that I am open to the idea that these gifts do still exist, but you need to prove they're in effect. Go to a hospital and heal people. Have those tongues analyzed by a linguist to show they're a real language and not babble. Naturally I want to ask if the Path People are doing any of this, but while they babble on about "carnal minds" and Satan deceiving people, all we get is anecdotes on toast: "I have seen many healings, and have personally witnessed them with others. I have had many visions, as Joel said believers would have, most of which have been fulfilled. Several people I know have had dreams and visions, which came to pass. Prophecies, many of them, have been fulfilled, with more to come." Oh really? Documentation, please? And while they're at it, they need a prophecy to let them know that Mark 16:17-18 isn't original to Mark.

They demand an argument for the gifts passing away....I have that (below), but if they can collect a few verified healings or tongues, I'll be open to change my mind. I won't be holding my breath.

The fourth "diabolical doctrine" is, "There are no apostles and/or prophets today." Yeah, OK. Once again, Path People: If you've got prophets, show me they can do their stuff. They're all on about how prophets aren't "found within the confines of established religion," speak only when God says to, etc etc etc -- but where are they, and what are their credentials -- and are they willing to step up for a Deuteronomic test that means stones in your Fruit of the Looms if you fail?
That there might still be apostles is less questionable. As they say, an apostle is one sent, and theoretically that could be many people in many roles today. But this isn't as big a deal as claiming to be a prophet with an ear to God's mouth.

The last ones for today, Diabolical Doccy #5: "The Spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit are different or two entities," and #6, "God is three persons." I already noted in prior entries that the Path People know as much about hypostatic theologies as they do about Japanese recipes for escargot, so there's no need to say more on this one; the only ones "confused" here are the Path People.

In close, though, it's amusing to see what their ultimate authority amounts to: Please, I know your arguments and I tell you they are all products of brain-soiling and quite easily explained away with truth from Scripture. I hear the voice of God. As Jesus said, My sheep hear My voice..." Do I hear introductions like, "This is the Father" or "This time it's the Son" or "Yesterday you heard from the Son but today I, the Holy Spirit, am speaking?" Or do I sometimes or always hear a chorus of three voices? No, I hear one voice as did all the prophets of God. He is one, not three.

Okay, fair enough.

Hey, Path People...I'm a prophet, and God just told me:

You're idiots.

Semitic Totality
Gifts

John's Prostitution Ring

2011-07-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

I had planned today to start a series on that Path of Truth cult, but realized a physician appointment today was bringing me near the local seminary, where I also had some business to do, so I'll start that series tomorrow. For today, I thought it interesting to note that John Loftus has found a way to prostitute the current "trial in the news" to argue against Christianity. (Yes, I'm not naming the defendant -- to show my contempt both for that defendant AND the media obsession with that proceeding.)

But then again, like I told someone who noted this also: John could find a way to prostitute a recipe for Swedish meatballs into an argument against Christianity.

Beastly Bomber Blowups

2011-07-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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. )

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.)
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.

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.

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.

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.

Hey, it's how I drove Farrell Till into relative silence -- why not do it to one of his groupies, too?

Hub link

The Perils of the Path People, Part 2

2011-07-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Next up for our look at the weed-choked Path that needs to be beaten, we have a survey of passages on the Trinity used by gotquestions.org, and how the Path People respond. I’ll have to say that I wouldn’t use nearly all of the OT passages gotquestions does in support of the Trinity, so I won’t be defending them on those points. Proverbs 8, and a couple of verses from Isaiah, are really all that are on point for a solid defense of the doctrine, and gotquestions doesn’t use any of those.

One point I would not is that gotquestions says, “The Hebrew word for God, Elohim, definitely allows for the Trinity.” I’ll allow that the Path People are right that this is not an open declaration of the Trinity, since it does not specify three. But where they really get funny is when they try to answer the point that the –im ending in Elohim indicates plurality:

Did you know, dear reader, that the Hebrew words for “water” and “Heaven,” both singular nouns, also end in “im” – “mayim” and “shemayim”? The plural form of a noun in Hebrew does not automatically mean there is more than one.

Uh, sorry, yes it does, unless scholars of Hebrew have changed their minds lately. But hello? “Waters” and “skies” – does that mean there’s more than one water, more than one sky? Not exactly. These plurals are collective in nature – get it? Their excuse is:

This is the case with “Elohim,” which, when referring to God, is not plural, but singular, denoting great distinction.

Really? “Great distinction”? What Hebrew grammar says that? None. The problem is that the Path People don’t understand the notion of plurality of power indicated by the word elohim (link below – which is why they also fail to grasp the importance of verbs and adjectives with elohim being used in the singular).

There’s a good deal of modalistic babbling after this which doesn’t interest me; especially since the Path People think Matthew 3:16-17 (the baptism of Jesus) is a key proof text for the Trinity. It isn’t, exactly; it’s also compatible with tritheism (Mormons) and Arianism (JWs). Modalists alone have a hard time with that one, but the Path People – evidently modalists in training – assure us that’s only “proof of man’s lack of understanding,” our lack apparently being that God appeared in three forms at one time, yes, but He’s still just one guy in reality, showing off three “functions” simultaneously. Put simply, modalists like the Path People have to strain the most to make this fit with their theology, and we end up with the spectre of God as a schizophrenic who talks with his own sock puppets and also uses the same terminology and concepts as a paradigm in Judaism that matched up with Trinitarianism. How convenient.

Then we get to the NT passages used by gotquestions.org, and here again, there’s a whole bunch I wouldn’t use at all. None of my useful proof texts make an appearance, except a couple of fragments of John 1 which are not used as I would use them, and needless to say, neither side has any notion of the relevance of texts like Sirach (which I expect the Path People would just mouth-foamingly wave off as “works of men” or some nonsense like that). It just goes like this, basically: Gotquestions points to a verse that calls Father, Son, or Spirit God; the Path People have a temper tantrum and scream back, “Of course that’s true, but in a modalist sense, not in a wicked, evil, carnal, ungodly trinitarian sense!” It gets dull after a while, but simple minds like these folks tend to enjoy repetitive motions. It amuses them and keeps them from the dangers of original thought.

So that’s all I can really say; the Path People haven’t got a clue about these things beyond kindergarten theology, which is no doubt why, in the end, the old “you’re gonna burn in hell heathen” warnings round off all their commentary:

GotQuestions presents itself as the one-stop shop for answers to all your questions about God and the Bible, from a Christian perspective. We show that this is not true - their perspective is their own, one born of flesh, not the Spirit of God. His thoughts and ways are not men’s, and men’s are not His, no matter if they claim to represent Him.

Awwww. Cry me a river, cult babies.

I sure hope I make it on their list for this, too!

Elohim

The Perils of the Path People, Part 1

2011-06-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

Over on the Ticker the past couple of days, I was giving gotquestions.org a hard time because of their poor grasp of preterism. To show there’s no hard feelings, I’ll now spend a few posts here helping them out – against a group that quite frankly has CULT stamped on their foreheads in letters ten miles high.

The website is called The Path of Truth, and based on the article I read, from which the entries below are taken, the path in question is one of those where folks walk their dogs forgetting to bring pooper scoopers! The article title for examination is, “The Asininity of the Trinity”.

I’ll make this quick and painless for veteran readers: No, they show no awareness of the critical concept of Wisdom theology. So that makes the article an epic failure immediately, and we literally could stop there and consider this path to have been shown misdirected. But we’re masochistic at the moment, so we’ll take it down a few more notches.

First, though, the Path People rant on about how gotquestions tries to discourage people from visiting cultic sites like theirs. Now that sort of thing has never been my policy; I always figure that we should visit the opposition’s books, websites, etc. because there’s no better way to learn where they go wrong – to say nothing of the comic relief value many offer. Exemplary of that is how the Path People try to build a Biblical case against gotquestions’ policy:

So how do we know they are not giving unbiblical answers that lead people down a false path? Don’t other religious organizations also believe they are using the Bible properly to answer questions? Which one doesn’t think they are right, or admits they are wrong? Consider! “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the hearts” (Proverbs 21:2 HNV).

Um hm. Well, one way or the other, basic epistemology is that when there are competing views, either one is right and the rest are wrong, or else all are wrong and the right way is not known. How do we determine between them? The usual procedure is to collect facts, weigh evidence, and apply the principles of logic. Cults tend to not like stuff like that, so it’s not unusual for them to hoist some decontextualized verse like Prov. 21:2 -- which, in the context of Prov. 21, has to do with moral choices, not with things like deciding whose answers are “biblical” or not. But of course, a cult like the Path People needs to level the playing field somehow – they sure can’t meet us on level ground when it comes to things like sound exegesis and serious scholarship.

The Bible can tell us whether one uses it correctly or not, but only if properly understood and applied by the grace of God.

Oh really? And where’s that found? It isn’t – it’s once again a way cults have of putting their claims out of reach of testing. In essence this is just another version of the Mormon “internal witness” (see link below) – and it’s subject to the same criticisms.

For example, proposing to prevent people from visiting “unbiblical sites” is an unbiblical, false way. Here are two Scriptural witnesses that tell us so: “For there must also be heresies among you, that the approved ones may be revealed among you” (1 Corinthians 11:19 MKJV).

Ha ha, that’s funny. I’m not sure how they’re applying this. My guess is, based on a comment quoted below, that they’d say that because heresies “must” be among us, we need to go look at heretical sites so we can see who the “approved” are.

Unfortunately that’s not a contextually sound approach to this text. In many of his letters, Paul makes use of rhetorical irony, and here, his comment that “there must also be heresies among you” is a sarcastic observation that the Corinthians are so status-conscious (as were all people in honor-shame societies) that they need division in order to gain honor.

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 KJV).

That’s a lot less successful. While it does indicate that there will be falsehood around, it doesn’t support or negate trying to stop people from going to heretical sources. Nor does either passage say that, “God has determined that false works are necessary to catch and filter out the insincere and other abusers of the truth. They are also there to try and purify the sincere.” That’s the conclusion they reach on their own, and it certainly is one valid way to approach false works.

However, I would recommend such an approach only for persons who are meant to be trained in apologetics or evangelism. It’s not an approach I’d recommend for Aunt Flossie, who doesn’t have the discernment needed to sift truth from falsehood. Bottom line: The Path People are imagining that using false works this way is God’s universal method – and that’s not found in the texts, nor is it found in any rational analysis of method.

The Lord gave a parable describing how the wheat He sows grows together with the tares sowed by the enemy, until He sends reapers to bundle the tares for burning (Matthew 13). Whoever tries to prevent these things fights against God Himself. As it is written, “The deceived and the deceiver are His” (Job 12:16).

Um, no…that doesn’t follow either. The parable reflects the fact that there will be tares and wheat, but it doesn’t follow from that, that we’re not supposed to prevent tares from growing in the first place. If that were the case, then the Path People are themselves guilty of this, since the very presence of their website is an indication that they’re trying to change people’s mind about something, which means they’re also doing their best to tear you from the tares. Sadly, cults are seldom consistent in this regard.

A couple of paragraphs follow in which gotquestions is described as “part of the darkness, erring in the foundational elements of true faith and salvation in Christ...self-serving…. a black backdrop against which God shines His Light to give understanding to the simple who put their trust in Him” (that’s another mark of cults, of course: sanctifying their own ignorance)…etc etc. We then get to the subject of the Trinity (finally), which is put off as, “a diabolical and confounded misrepresentation of God, is one of the prominent indicators that you are dealing with a cult.” (Yawn.) And here, I will have to part ways with got questions, because unlike them, I don’t think it is true that the “Trinity is a concept that is impossible for any human being to fully understand, let alone explain.” It’s easy to do both; you can even explain it in cartoons, as I have (link below). So on that account, I won’t get the Path People’s ruler-whack for trying to explain something I say is not explainable, though by now I imagine I’ll make their list of heretics along with everyone else. (Too bad their site’s traffic ranking is, like, 20 millionth or so and they won’t be able to warn anyone.)

It takes a few paragraphs for the Path People to get off this kick and on to the actual “bones” of the Trinity doctrine; once they get there, it’s pretty…asinine. Gotquestions puts it this way:

“The Bible teaches that the Father is God, that Jesus is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. The Bible also teaches that there is only one God…The Trinity is one God existing in three Persons. Understand that this is not in any way suggesting three Gods.”

The Path People respondeth:

What twaddle! How are “three Persons” not “three Gods”? Oh yes, we are told this is inexplicable. Well, we will explain how wickedly stupid and wrong such thinking is, because it calls the Lord a liar when He says He is the only One and Singular God, with no God beside Him (Isaiah 45:5,21). Line up three “Persons” - “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” - and there are Gods beside each other, are there not?

There are not, no. This is the standard mistake which confuses modern use of the word “God” as though “God” were a proper name of a person, when in fact the Greek theos was an abstract noun. Today we use “God” when we likely mean the Father. Additionally, as noted in the article linked below, this fails to comprehend Wisdom and Spirit as hypostatic entities. (The word “hypostatic” I imagine will be too large for these guys.) So, sorry, no – three Persons does not have to mean three gods; hypostatic relationships make it otherwise. Further ranting ensues in which the Path People somehow conclude that by gotquestions’ logic, they themselves are God because “I am one with Him, like Jesus, and exist in Him.” Well, no, not really – the Path People aren’t hypostatic entities. Sorry to disappoint them.

Later on, there’s the usual misuse of the Shema which we’ve seen from Unitarians (see link below), and another few hundred lines of railing, and we get the impression where the Path People come from on this issue:

Trinitarianism treats Jesus Christ like the Koran does. Islam presumes to honor Christ by calling Him a prophet, yet denies He is the Son of God. Trinitarians presume to honor Christ by calling Him “the second Person of the Godhead” while denying He is the One True God and Father.

Hmm, so modalism, then? No, sorry – that’s the least well grounded of the anti-trinitarian heresies, and also the most simple-minded. That’s why we have this sort of Q and A from them:

John 14:8-9 EMTV (8) Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” (9) Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He that has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (By the way, how is the Son co-equal with the Father if He is the second Person, commanded and given for the sins of mankind by the Father, Who is first? And how is it the Father knows things the Son does not if they are co-equal?)

Well, for one thing, orthodox Trinitarianism maintains an ontological co-equality while also maintaining a functional subordination – which again fits hand in glove with the Wisdom template. Likewise, the hypostatic functions explain why Jesus does not know certain things (link below). Hereafter, there’s a survey of verses used to argue for the Trinity. I don’t use all of them myself; some, like Gen. 1:26-7, are amenable to a Trinitarian view, but since they do not name three persons specifically, I don’t use them in a primary defense of the doctrine.

We’ll pick up tomorrow with a look at how the Path People abuse those passages which we do make use of.

Basic article -- see within for links on Unitarianism
Lack of knowledge by Jesus
Mormon internal witness
YT vid

The Last Camping Trip

2011-06-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

My beloved Mrs H once asked me if I'd ever written to Harold Camping to give him correction, I told her I was sure it had been done before, and it has. My local ministry partner alerted me to corrective attempts made when Camping pulled his nonsense before, in 1994. Here's a link to an article back then by Greg Bahnsen -- see if it doesn't sound like you could insert "2011" where 1994 is.

The Clear Snoot Experience

2011-06-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

I said there'd be no post today, but I just had to remark on the results of my turbinoplasty. The experience of breathing through my nose clearly, without the aid of medications -- for the first time ever -- is so novel that I feel like I'm dreaming at times.

Well maybe not always. When my beloved Mrs. H and I stopped by a store last night, I got a clear indication that they hadn't emptied they trash bins in a good long time. It hit me like a ton of bricks. That, too, was novel.

I expect by next week I'll be fully recovered...but if you're like me, and have been living with a stuffy nose caused by allergies -- take a look at having this procedure done, too.

Candor Camera

2011-06-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, the local megachurch announced a new fundraising project -- for 1.2 million dollars. Now what do you suppose they were going to use that for? Any guesses?

A food service ministry? Nope.

Some other kind of social service ministry, like a thrift store? Nope, not that either.

The 1.2 million is for the purchase of new television cameras -- so they can continue showing their service weekly on television.

There are times when attending or watching church services makes me physically sick. Sometimes it is because the teaching is so poor, where the Biblical text is twisted to serve some modern psychosis. (That happened, too, by the way: Genesis 22, the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac, was perverted into, among other things, a lesson on fathers bringing their children with them whenever they make big decisions.) Sometimes it is because emotion and experience is emphasized while rationality and evidence is ignored. (That happened, too; every week in fact, because the very title television show this church produces has a strong emotional/experiential connotation.)

Then I get sick when this sort of thing happens -- funds being raised for some accessory purpose that's more for show than for serious and unavoidable ministry needs.

Yes, they'd say: A lot of people are "touched" by our television program. Okay...laying aside the fact that the insipid content does more harm than good, don't tell me that 1.2 million dollars is needed to buy television cameras. Maybe that's also for other production costs? That I don't know. What I do know is that we have a lot greater needs than that right now. They obviously have working cameras now, so why they need new ones, I can’t say.

Just for perspective here: Tekton will never need 1.2 million for any of its projects. Indeed if anyone dropped that amount in its accounts, here's what that would mean: I could tell every donor to never donate again; I'd be able to conduct the ministry until I was 83 years old (that's 40 years from now) or even longer, if I were able to put some of that into Treasury bonds; and I'd still be able to give away $200,000 to some other ministry, or else give Nick Peters a good head start as my associate.

A slick television show is often produced with the notion that it will serve as a "beacon" to the world. I think a much brighter beacon could be lit if we used our resources in a way that showed we used God's property in a responsible and efficient way.

I'm still a little weak from the surgery, and have an unrelated physician appointment Tuesday, so the Forge will return again next Thursday.

In the Recovery Phase

2011-06-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

Hey folks. They surgery went well and I'll be taking it easy the next two days. Link below on the procedure I had. I'm not having the level of serious after effects described, though.

Link.

TektonTV Behind the Scenes: Even Pan/Crop

2011-06-17T02:41:00.000-07:00

Today's entry is about movement, and a specific tool I use in my film software to accomplish it. Here's a snapshot of a closing scene from my second most recent vid, where the cartoon ReligionFreeDeist character is rolling backwards along the floor of a dojo.

As cartoon RFD rolls, the background moves behind him. The character shots themselves are on trasparent backgrounds so that the dojo background shows through; we've already explained about that method in a prior entry. But how does the background move?

First of all, it's worth noting that the background is one graphic -- a very, very long graphic (dimensions: 2000 x 200 pixels) created by re-using the same smaller graphic over and over in a row. (Yes, that's how they did it in the Flintstones too; that was sufficient for the dojo, though I also added a lamp in the background for every fourth sector of the background wall.) The "camera," as it were, is moving along this background section by section, giving the impression that RFD is rolling along it.

The film software has a tool called Event Pan/Crop, which allows me to have the camera move along larger graphics like this one for the background. Here's a screenshot of what that tool looks like. (Unfortunately, the graphic of the dojo wall turns red when I go “offline” from the film software to use a tool like screenshot capture.)

The dotted rectangle is where the camera is focusing, and the row along the bottom represents the total time that the graphic is being shown in the film -- here, a total of about 6 seconds The diamonds you see at either end of the time bar represent action marks -- places where movement across the background starts and stops. If necessary, I could have the camera range back and forth, and take turns in any direction, along the graphic. This particular sequence was rather simple, since I only went along the background in one direction, with no stops and re-starts or turns.

Almost any time you see background movement in a TektonTV vid, the Event Pan/Crop is the tool I'm using to do it. Sometimes I'll use different background drawings to accomplish this, but it can be a lot more work.

That's all for a bit -- I have a minor surgery Monday to ease my breathing through my nose, so the Forge will be off until at least next Thursday.

Reasons to (Not) Go Postal

2011-06-16T06:23:00.001-07:00

For today's entry, we have a rousing end to a story that started back when I was about to go to Sacramento to debate Richard Carrier.

No, it has nothing to do with him. Nor with the debate.

I had arranged with the debate organizer to send a rather heavy box of books out there by media mail, to be offered for sale after the debate. The box had about $150 worth of my books in it, plus a few DVDs by someone else. I sent it off a week early to make sure it would get there on time.

But it never showed.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. The debate organizer and I checked with our local post offices on each end, hoping for direction in recovering the box, but each time we hit a wall of singularly unhelpful postal employees. In the past three days I figured to try the "last resort" -- the so-called dead letter office in Atlanta. I got a call back from an employee there just yesterday who was very polite -- and very unhelpful. No, sorry, we can't help you unless you bought tracking on the package.

Huh? You mean you guys don't have an indexing system for lost packages? I mean, as a librarian, I can design an indexing system in less than 30 seconds that would do the job and enable any caller to describe a package and its contents and have you able to find it immediately.

But as it turned out, they didn't have it anyway. Two days ago, one of the editors at the Christian Research Journal emailed me to say that one of the sponsors of the Battle for the Bible conference last year had a box of books of mine left over from there, and wondered what they should do with it. Yes, I know: I immediately figured it was my lost box, too. They said it didn't fit the description, but lo and behold, I met the sponsor rep yesterday afternoon and...
yep. My lost box. Whaddya know.

So what happened to it? Well, in spite of the fact that the debate organizer's address was still CLEARLY on the box...on the same side as the postage mark...apparently some brilliant postal employee decided that an older FedEx label on the box's bottom side, from the conference sponsor, was where the thing ought to go. So they (or someone) crossed out the postage label AND part of the zip code on the label to Sacramento (!). Now I have to admit I hadn't seen that older FedEx label, but really folks...how much intelligence does it take to get that the postage label is NOT on that side, so that's NOT where it should go? And that it is a FedEx label, not a USPS label?

The post office wonders why they're losing money? My beloved Mrs H and I get misdelivered items at least once every three weeks, intended for the house on the street parallel with ours with the same address number. Different resident name, different street name. I'm sure readers could multiply examples of incompetence. But where does it all come from? It happens too often to be honest, human mistakes done at a normal pace.

Here's where I think it comes from. I'd describe all the postal employees I dealt with as polite but unhelpful. I'd also use those two words to describe nearly every encounter I've had with a postal employee the last ten years. Why, for example, waste my time with the interrogations asking if I want stamps, insurance, delivery confirmation, or any one of ten dozen other things? If I wanted any of that, wouldn't I ask? And why ask all this when there's a line of 10-20 people and only 1-2 clerks?

Why, also, does the post office sell money orders? When people come in for these things, they invariably take far too long to produce, making the line longer and increasing the wait exponentially. It's a post office, for pity's sake. Not a bank or a convenience store. Ben Franklin would roll over in his grave if he knew that USPS had compromised the mission of mail delivery to make sure some bonehead didn't have to spend an extra 69 cents at the 7-11.

All of this -- the extra services, the extra questions -- is pretty clearly related to something I posted on a while back. This is kissyface customer service, designed by extroverts, for extroverts, and designed as well to soothe the whiny consumer in an economy balanced on comfort and convenience. The balance is grossly tipped in favor of such things as being nauseatingly polite while also not being able to be in any sense helpful when there's a problem. Meanwhile, we waste money, we waste time, and we get deeper and deeper into the hole while we're being asked if we want any stamps.

Maybe the introverts ought to have a rebellion of some sort -- start our own postal system, our own grocery stores and service businesses -- and show 'em how to do it right.

A Texas Sized Whine

2011-06-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

I don’t make much of political issues, but I had to be amused by a recent story of a student in Texas, the child of one Carla and Danny Schultz (also Skeptics) who filed a lawsuit to stop prayers at a public school graduation. The story has so many twists and turns that I don’t have time to follow it closely; you can see a link about it below. I’d just like to remark on a social aspect of the situation.

Apparently, the judge who sided with the student in this case argued that the student “irreparable harm” if the decision was not in his favor. What sort of harm? The student had apparently experienced “anxiety” over the issue.

He wants anxiety? Let’s send him to Sudan, they’ll be glad to show him how to relax there.

I don’t care for whiners. That includes Christian whiners, too, lest anyone think otherwise; as for example when I said concerning something in Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity:

The first part of this is a fictional account of a man named Winchester who is bored with church; it is an expression of Viola's "blame the object, not the person" argumentation. Winchester says church "bores me to tears." A trip on over to Sudan would resolve that boredom, and he wouldn't have to dress up either. Winchester objects to wearing a tie -- over in places like the Sudan, they have some much more uncomfortable neckwear for Christians.

Whiners like Viola or that agnostic student have never experienced real persecution. They’ve never been physically tortured. They’ve never had their property confiscated by a merciless state. And please – don’t pull the old “slippery slope” canard on me with this, either; if you think allowing such trivialities as school prayer opens the door to more serious persecution of people like atheists, then the character of this nation and its people is such that you’re not going to stop it with the legal system anyway; the federal judge who decides for you in such a theoretical nation would end up dangling on a noose right next to you.

Which reminds me – although, apparently, this judge’s orders were overturned, I would say that if they had not been, it might have been a good time for some civil “disobedience.” Nothing illegal, necessarily, though as we know from leaders in such movements, like Gandhi, that level of action may someday be necessary. For now, if indeed that student had succeeded, how about giving him a taste of some real “anxiety” or “harm” (ha ha!) with things like:

Saying prayers aloud, or having religious discussions, any time he comes nearby.

Always turning conversations with him towards religious topics.

Wearing plenty of religious t-shirts and other paraphernalia in his presence, including at that graduation ceremony.

Of course, the poor whiner will probably say he’s being persecuted. (Like I said, though, he doesn't know what real persecution is.) And other whiners will say, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” My answer is that I wouldn’t feel anything – and I wouldn’t whine about it, either. I’d engage others in debate. I’d do all I could to make my own views widely known while not also spoiling life for others. I’d produce books, films, and other media promulgating my POV. Of course, the whiners also forget that they wouldn't have those options in the Sudan. They're just using the freedoms religious people fought for to accommodate their own whininess.

One particularly whiny YT atheist wonders if we’d put up with things like atheist blessings at graduations if Christians were in the minority. Um, well, some may not like that, but I wouldn’t care one bit. Not that it matters: Atheist whiners take stuff like this to court because they know they can’t win the real arguments, so they take it out on others with whatever weapons they can scratch out.

How about this: Let’s see if the Schultzes can defend their views on a forum like TheologyWeb! Anyone out there know them well enough to extend the challenge?

Story

The Wolf With a Laugh Track

2011-06-10T03:54:00.000-07:00

Thommy Stark has made the rather laughable claim that follows in regards to my response to his latest whiny diatribe against Paul Copan:

…his first criticism, that I don’t understand what an agonistic culture is, is a good example of bluster. I addressed this reality very clearly and straightforwardly in both my review of Copan and in HFG (on more than one occasion in each), and I showed why this move is a red herring. One can’t replace moral evaluation with historical description and expect that to solve the moral problem.

Snort.

First of all, yes – Stark had no idea what an agonistic culture is; and he had no idea, not until I told him. He makes no reference to it anywhere in his work, nor does he ever refer to any scholar who has done work in that area. He shows no awareness of such concepts as honor and shame (he refers to honor only when quoting of it in the Biblical text), limited good, the role of envy, or the collectivist vs. individualist mindset. If he did know any of this, he would have used it in his work. He also would have recognized Susan Niditch’s profound error in attributing the origins of the “ban” (cherem) to the need to assuage guilt over killing people.

Second, yes, one CAN use historical description – as well as social and anthropological description – to solve the moral problem, or rather, show that it does not exist in the first place. The moral “problem” seen is rooted in the bigoted evaluation of critics like Stark who presume that their own modern, Western values are superior and that they are warranted in looking down their snot-encrusted noses at those bone in the nose heathens who would DARE violate their modern moral standards.

As it is, Stark has not done a whit better than any critic so far in presenting more than “argument by outrage” (link below). He never offers any serious, complex evaluation of the social settings of the OT world; such references are sparse, incomplete, and without reference to the most critical concepts of all (honor/shame, etc per above). It’s not hard to see why he doesn’t, either:

In HFG I cite Jeffrey Stout at length on just this issue. That I am called “bigoted” for making moral judgments about an agonistic culture is humorous. In the review itself I make a clear distinction between judging actions as moral or immoral and judging those who engage in them as moral or immoral. With human sacrifice, for example, I explained how its logic made great sense to the ancients, and I said that while we should judge the act of child sacrifice as immoral, that doesn’t necessarily mean that parents who practiced it were immoral people. We should give them the benefit of the doubt that they were doing the best they could with what they believed.

How nice. How irrelevant. I am not questioning whether Stark judges ancient people, although he clearly does so, yet in such a way as to maintain plausible deniability. The technique is one that allows the critic to maintain their air of condescending moral superiority while also not seeming to judge people as people. They’ve learned, in other words, the way to maintain the surface impression of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” an attitude that Stark certainly learned when he was a fundamentalist. But the moment Stark airs out his own hypocrisy (as when he lashes out at those who criticize him), the pretense is exposed. He may apologize later -- but by then it's too late. The one benefit here is that he doesn't have to apologize to dead people from the Bible when he insults them.

Even so, the question I raise IS about judging the acts as moral or immoral; and Stark’s judgments on these matters are informed by nothing more than his presumption that his own values and morals are superior and that he is competent to make judgments (and Stout offers nothing of any more substance). As it is, again, he provides little to no serious ethical analysis; his critique of Copan is rife with “arguments” that amount to, “oh, how horrible!” or “how would you feel if someone did this to you?” That’s probably as deep and as complex as his mental capacity allows him to go, but it won’t do the job for those who require more than an emotional high to be convinced.

In a comment elsewhere, Stark whines:

I’ve read Holding’s responses so far. I’ve attempted to have fruitful engagements with him in the past and it hasn’t worked, so I won’t be engaging him. If you do have any questions about particular criticisms, feel free voice them here and I’ll be more than happy to respond, but I’m not going to use my time trying to persuade Holding; that’s a bottomless pit.

Oh yes, that’s a microcosm all right, concerning Stark’s own moral turpitude. You see, if he’s telling the truth, there’s no way he could have read my responses to him so far, unless he’s stealing them. The response is part of an E-Block series, and he’s supposed to hit a “donate” button to get access to that. As it is, it is clear that he is not in the least disturbed about stealing others’ intellectual property, even when it is clear that he is supposed to be providing compensation. By the same token, whoever is giving him that copy is participating in the theft as well. So he’s stealing...or maybe lying about stealing. Either way, he and his twin Loftus seem to have this thing about trying to violate the Ten Commandments.

The stark reality is that Stark knows he is in over his head – he’s made multiple mistakes that he refuses to admit, even on the most trivial matters. (Link below.) Like Loftus – whose moral and intellectual twin he is – he won’t face me on an open forum like TheologyWeb, because the reality is that he knows he’s not prepared for it, and never will be. Do be prepared for this much, though: As a skilled rationalizer, he is very likely even now “cramming” on social science literature, so that he can say later on that he was familiar with it all along and throw around words like “agonistic” with the air of one who is doing more than just slurring them like a parrot who overheard it.

Yep. Thommy Stark is Anthony Weiner of liberal “Christianity” – except that it’s his mind that’s wearing no clothes.

Argument by outrage

Typical Stark blunder he won't admit

Things Christ-Mythers Hate

2011-06-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

A longtime reader proposed that we start a list of things hated by people who think Jesus never existed. Got something to add? Pop it into comments. As for me...be back with the Forge Friday; I got some USDA work to do. Bleah.

1.) Each other. Was Jesus a copy of Horus, a copy of Julius Caesar, perhaps Titus, or just a Midrash. They cannot agree on that and have no problem considering those who disagree with their personal Mythicist stance to be irrational.

2.) Peer review. Getting arguments into academic journals just takes so much work when instead they simply can publish online for anyone to find.

3.) Atheist and Agnostic Bible scholars who simply have no time for their nonsense.

4.) Academic presses which simply refuse to publish there books. Why try to publish your books with say Yale when you can publish them on demand and avoid that whole peer review problem.

5.) Relevant degrees. Why bother having a degree in history before writing about Jesus. Graduate from High School proclaim yourself an expert in ancient documents and you are ready to do battle against Christianity!

6.) That fact that many ancient figures from history are accepted without any remaining primary sources.

7.) Christianity. Well duh.

8.) The fact that other fringe historical proponents use arguments very similar to theirs.

9.) The fact that they pretty much agree with academia in opposing things such as truthers and birthers but suddenly academia is irrational toward their arguments.

10.) Any expert that disagrees with their views, it seems they only become relevant experts when they happen to say something mythers like.

11.) Nazareth. Stubbornly insists on being dated to the first century.

The Copyright Lockup

2011-06-03T03:15:00.001-07:00

While looking for something else on YouTube the other day, I noticed some vids by some other people on some other topic that raised my interest. The user in question had apparently for years been posting “reviews” of episodes of a popular sci-fi program, in which they used a small amount of footage from the episodes. They had done this freely for some time, but more recently, the sci-fi series had been purchased by a new owner, and this new owner frowned on the use of the material. As a result, YouTube apparently began removing the reviewer’s vids – compelling him to take them elsewhere, and prompting reply vids in which he and others objected in strong (and sometimes profane) terms to what they saw as YT’s cowardice and/or concern for making money.

I won’t be deciding here who has the better case. On the surface, the user seemed to have been within the rights of fair use, and the new owner of the series appeared to be using bullying tactics. That’s not unusual; different corporations and people have different views of how protective they want to be with their material. Some examples of excess:

Fuji TV, the owner of the original Iron Chef program, sent out cease and desist letters to a number of fan websites using video, pictorial, and audio clips from the series.

Paramount Pictures forced the removal of a vid someone took of the set of the next Transformers movie.

J. K. Rowling objected to fans who created a concordance-type work of her Harry Potter novels, and also went after a military newsletter that had printed a parody of her stories.

All of these are fairly obvious cases of owners ignoring the principles of fair use and using muscle to get their way – for of course, the average fan doesn’t have the resources to fight such matters in court. (The military does, and I wish they had, but they chose to cave in instead.)

Not all owners are like this. In particular, LucasFilm has been very open to the fair use of their material, especially in parody. I recently used a smattering of a LucasFilm musical piece from Raiders of the Lost Ark in one of my vids, and only did so after making a variety of checks (including with a media consult of mine, who has worked closely with LucasFilm in the past) to make sure it would pass muster. The results can be interesting at times: My vid opens with a “parody” title graphic which is reminiscent of, but not exactly like, the Raiders title logo. My consult declared it passable, precisely because it was like, but not TOO much like.

Even so: We do have some who, like FujiTV, choose to be aggressive, and I watch out for that. The results of THAT can also be interesting. FujiTV, for one, ended up alienating a lot of fans of Iron Chef, which in the end surely did more harm than good for their profits. (LucasFilm takes the opposite view and sees things like parodies as a way to increase their exposure and profit.) The above referenced users, well – the results there speak for themselves: The fans are now angry, and can’t understand why the new owner would want to squash something that can only be to their benefit.

It’s a tight rope to walk, to be sure. I don’t care much for people using my work, even briefly and within fair use boundaries, but I recognize that as my own problem and don’t press it unless I think fair use has devolved to unfair abuse – particularly if someone is just using my material to be lazy (as is the case with a user I referred to some time back who stole a news background image from a website and purposely obscured the website logo, or as in the case of “HonestTechnoAtheist,” who did nothing but crib my vid for his entire reply!). Perhaps the problem in such cases IS that people are lazy – they don’t appreciate how much work creators do, because after all, it is so easy for them to just lift a screenshot of that work. You work hours to paint a masterpiece, and all they do is point, click, and save. That hardly seems fair, even under fair use.

But then again, I don’t think FujiTV was all about caring for their craft so much as caring for their money. That’s the other side you can fall from while walking the tightrope. On the one hand, you want to discourage thieves. On the other hand, you don’t want to alienate those who admire your work.

Making it worse… it’s sometimes too hard to tell the difference between one and the other!

TektonTV Behind the Scenes: Layer Celebration

2011-06-02T03:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I released a vid which ended with a scenario of the Apostle Paul karate-chopping ReligionFreeDeist’s YT channel page into shards, to reveal behind it the message, “Repent of Your Charlatanism!” This scene gives us a good example of how TektonTV uses layers of graphics to achieve an effect.
To compose this scene, there were actually three separate graphics, seen below:

It may not be apparent, but the space surrounding Paul is transparent. That’s one of the keys to imposing him over the other backgrounds. The other thing to notice is that all three graphics are exactly the same dimensions. This is most important where Paul is concerned, because he’s an animated figure, and I have to keep him in the same place while he’s chopping. So I had placed Paul onto a blank graphic with the same dimensions as the other two.

Initially, the scene started with just the scene of RFD’s channel (a screenshot capture -- and no, I wasn't trying to get it with his eyes closed, but it worked out that way, and I decided it looked funnier). Then Paul had to jump in and move, which meant his “layers” were superimposed over the RFD channel layer. Once he had “chopped” the channel picture, I was ready to use the third layer, the one with the “repent” message. That one become the “bottom” layer, and I chopped up the picture of RFD’s channel into shards and pasted the pieces on to the “repent” layer randomly. Then, Paul’s layer was imposed over that one.

Using the undo feature of my graphics program, I then removed Paul, rearranged the shards with cut and paste so that they looked like they had fallen further, and put Paul back again.

Scenes like this can be a real challenge, in terms of trying to think of how the layering process can or should be used to achieve the desired effect. Under this rubric, it’s not hard to see why I express such contempt for the work of the likes of NonStampCollector, who comparatively speaking, do so little real work; or others who just crib screenshots of my material and therefore essentially do no real work at all. Those of you with an art or craft of your own can relate: If you’re a musician, for example, what would you think of someone who responded to a symphony you composed with a chorus of banging tin cans? Is it little wonder some artists are so vehement when it comes to copyright protection?

Which reminds me…check here tomorrow for more on that!

Debating the Textually Critical

2011-05-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

Richard Carrier has finally posted some of his own thoughts on our debate. Here’s my commentary on his look at it, which I am reporting in full. (It was placed as a comment on his original entry on the debate back in April.)

Holding called it a win-win, which I suppose depends on what you thought was the important conclusion.

Well, no, not from here. I specified why I called it a win-win in my post here before:

Yep, that's what we'll call it. Richard Carrier and I each presented our views, didn't intersect that much in doing so -- and actually got along fairly well in person. I'm content, and think we both did a good job presenting our cases.

So in other words, I count us both winners for having successfully communicated our ideas. But I don’t think we met head to head enough for a real “debate” to have occurred.

As to the actual debate topic, he conceded that debate in his opening and moved the goal posts by defending a different position (something like "Yes, the NT text is unreliable, but it's reliable enough for supporting the core things of the gospel" without ever specifying what those core things are).

Hmm, well --- not too many would disagree what the core doctrines of the Christian faith are, and this is also a statement drawn more or less from Bruce Metzger, and also reused by Bart Ehrman. I also would hardly say I moved the goalposts. The topic was: Is what we have what they had? I answered yes, in substance, completely; in exact words, not so much, but still quite a bit, and what we don’t have is not that important. If the topic had been, “Is what we have in terms of exact words what they had?” then this would be a valid objection.

I didn't bother rebutting that argument because he never stated what things were reliably supported by the extant text, so there was nothing to rebut.

Perhaps not. 15 and 10 minutes doesn’t really allow for that many specifics. I could spend an hour, I imagine, on texts about the Trinity alone. But I am certain there are enough things that Carrier could recognize as core values of Christianity that he could have picked one or two to discuss, and also discuss how they are (if they are) affected by textual questions.

So he can claim to have "won" that argument if we are unbothered by it being one big fallacy of special pleading.

I can’t really say how that’s arrived at. Perhaps if the debate were all the information anyone had, we could say that. But that general statement is backed by Metzger, Wallace, and even Ehrman with an ample amount of data. But no, the argument wasn’t “won” or lost…because again I don’t think we really addressed each other’s views head on that much.

As to the actual topic of the debate, it was a clear and informative win for me.

Of course I agree. And add that it was a clear and informative win for me as well.

"We do not have what they had," and many changes made to the text are undetectable to us now. Holding didn't even argue against that.

I didn’t, in specific terms, because I don’t find that the substance is affected by even hypothetical changes that could be reasonably suggested. There surely are undetectable changes, but based on the record we have, if we are extrapolating backwards from known data, the undetectable changes also would have to have been inconsequential.

There was one overall exception to his "goal post" move being special pleading. I think he made a point to the effect that broad claims in the NT, like that Jesus was crucified or Mark described the discovery of an empty tomb, were not "textually" dubious, and I agree.

Well, if I did make such points, I don’t recall it. There’s no mention of the crucifixion or empty tomb in my notes for either round. But of course I would agree in any event.

But as I pointed out, the NT isn't just used for broad stroke claims like that, it is used to make countless specific points from specific passages (even specific word choices in those passages), and on that point he certainly lost. What isn't clear is whether he even cared about losing that argument. But it will certainly complicate his attempt to make those kind of arguments in future.

This reaches to the fundamental problem of substance vs exact words. What Carrier seems to refer to – a sort of vacuous prooftexting of the sort you hear from pulpits frequently – isn’t the sort of thing I engage in. It’s a practice of naïve fundamentalists and those who would fail to recognize what I say about substance vs exact words as valid. In fact, some such persons would condemn me as a heretic.

I remarked to Carrier more than once that he doesn’t seem to know much about me. This would be another example – it’s very seldom that I engage in this kind of prooftexting, if at all; and if I do, it is only a small part of what I present as a case.

There are certainly persons for whom Carrier’s argument would be a serious problem. For example, consider this statement made by a hyperpreterist I engaged. I had indicated the need to use informing contexts like intertestamental literature to inform our understanding of the NT, and he replied:

Maybe this is a good time to inform you that we are having a “Bible” discussion here, not a discussion of “opinions” held during the inter-testamental period. While they may offer some educational value, they are not the final authority. The word of God must prevail in all cases. God always reserves the right to choose and define his own terms. So, without equivocation, I will readily ignore reams of contexts which are outside of the Bible when they contradict what is “inside” the Bible.

So yes – I’d say I don’t care if I lose that argument, because it isn’t one I’d make in the first place. For someone like this hyperpreterist, Carrier’s points are an unmitigated exegetical disaster. For someone like me – or a Dan Wallace, or a Ben Witherington – the points have little if any impact.

Let’s consider some examples Carrier presented on his slides. One is a case where copies of Matthew had added to them bits from John about Jesus being pierced by a spear. But exactly are we supposed to be concerned with here? John’s testimony is more than sufficient; apart from questionable ideas that we need a second or third or fourth source for such claims, that we find the claim in John alone is of no moment. Further, of what relevance is the spear thrust in the first place? I doubt if John was anticipating modern “Passover plot” scenarios. He also didn’t need it for prophecy fulfillment, despite what some exegetes may claim: That idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of the OT (not as a repository of prophecy future, but rather, of validation past), and at any rate, he could have suggested it was fulfilled when Jesus’ wrists and ankles were “pierced” by nails.

Another example offered was Luke 23:53, where it was added that the stone closing Jesus’ tomb was so large it took 20 men to move it. Are we solely dependent on Luke for this information? Isn’t archaeological data about Jewish tombs worth far more than this interpolated statement?

Another: Luke 2:14 could read “peace on earth, good will towards men” or “peace on earth, good will for men with whom he is pleased.” (I take that reading from the NET Bible; Carrier has it as, “for whom God pleases” on his slide, which I take to be a mistake.) Carrier describes the latter reading as less lofty and more ominous. But this evaluation would not be possible unless we had the later reading, so what would we be missing if the second reading had never existed? Beyond that, it is patently obvious that God, as a patron, would express His good will only towards those that please Him. Indeed, in my own view, the former reading causes my theology far more difficulty than the latter one.

Is the number of the beast 616 or 666? I commented on this earlier:

Now I don’t expect that Carrier is aware that I hold to an entirely different eschatological view than the majority of Christians. He likely expected that most of his Christian audience at the debate were standard dispensationalists who were scanning the horizon for a figure that used “666” conspicuously and was ready to tattoo it on their foreheads.

Well, I’m not one of those people. I think “the beast” was most likely Nero, and that nearly all of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century. As a result, for me “666” is probably either a numeric rendering of a Greek rendering of “Nero Caesar” transliterated into Hebrew (using an admittedly defective spelling), or perhaps a numeric rendering of the Hebrew word for “beast” (with the note that this word was sometimes used to describe Nero). The 616 variant would just come from a transliteration of the Latin form of Nero’s name into Hebrew – if it isn’t simply a “typo.” But whatever the case, this is just one aspect of my case for Nero as holding the position which so many modern dispensationalist identify with a future anti-Christ figure, and the “616” variant doesn’t really cause me any problem.

Finally, as a sample, Carrier offered the example of 1 Cor. 15:49: “And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Carrier invoked the variation, “we will also bear…” The NET Bible’s comments on this tell the story:

A few significant witnesses have the future indicative (foresomen, “we will bear”; B I 6 630 1881 al sa) instead of the aorist subjunctive (foreswmen, “let us bear”; Ì⁴⁶ א A C D F G Ψ 075 0243 33 1739 Ï latt bo). If the original reading is the future tense, then “we will bear” would be a guarantee that believers would be like Jesus (and unlike Adam) in the resurrection. If the aorist subjunctive is original, then “let us bear” would be a command to show forth the image of Jesus, i.e., to live as citizens of the kingdom that believers will one day inherit. The future indicative is not widespread geographically. At the same time, it fits the context well: Not only are there indicatives in this section (especially vv. 42-49), but the conjunction (kai) introducing the comparative (kaqws) seems best to connect to the preceding by furthering the same argument (what is, not what ought to be). For this reason, though, the future indicative could be a reading thus motivated by an early scribe. In light of the extremely weighty evidence for the aorist subjunctive, it is probably best to regard the aorist subjunctive as original. This connects well with v. 50, for there Paul makes a pronouncement that seems to presuppose some sort of exhortation. G. D. Fee (First Corinthians [NICNT], 795) argues for the originality of the subjunctive, stating that “it is nearly impossible to account for anyone’s having changed a clearly understandable future to the hortatory subjunctive so early and so often that it made its way into every textual history as the predominant reading.” The subjunctive makes a great deal of sense in view of the occasion of 1 Corinthians. Paul wrote to combat an over-realized eschatology in which some of the Corinthians evidently believed they were experiencing all the benefits of the resurrection body in the present, and thus that their behavior did not matter. If the subjunctive is the correct reading, it seems Paul makes two points: (1) that the resurrection is a bodily one, as distinct from an out-of-body experience, and (2) that one’s behavior in the interim does make a difference (see 15:32-34, 58).

All that offered, my own answer would also include an understanding of the use and meaning of the word “image” to refer to the carrying of authority (see The Mormon Defenders Ch 1 on this). This meaning would hands-down stand only for the aorist subjunctive described above. Indeed, the future indicative makes no sense at all, and is completely incoherent with language of the “body of Christ” indicating our shared identity with him. I wouldn't even need the NT to decide which view is correct.

In closing – if there was a fulcrum for my viewpoint, it was found in this statement from Round 1:

And classical scholar Rosalind Thomas adds, “…to apply the concept of original and copy to ancient documents is anachronistic…we must abandon the modern concept of authenticity and the modern requirement of exact verbatim correspondence down to the very punctuation.”

Carrier’s views cause severe problems for those who do adhere to the modern requirement of exact verbatim correspondence – but they have very little bearing on someone like me who does not. In that light, maybe we can arrange for Carrier to debate that hyperpreterist. He does do live debates...and it would probably be more raucous than the debate we had.

Gagging the Guilt-Trippers

2011-05-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

This past week, a YT fundy atheist pulled a canard on me that no one with a “personal relationship with Jesus” would use insulting language towards opponents. Yes, you know what kind of fun I had with THAT anachronism. But that’s not today’s point.

ProfMTH, back in April, re-released a vid in which he asked why Christians celebrate Easter, and argued very badly that things like Easter egg hunts, because they might be traced back to pagan practices, any Christian who did them was violating Deuteronomic law.

Yeah, that’s a joke too. But it’s not the point today, and the fact that both of these twits are on YT is just coincidence; you’ll get nonsense like this from a lot of fundy atheists.

The point is this: The first fundy atheist certainly does not believe Christians have a “personal relationship with Jesus.” He sees such things as akin to a child having an imaginary friend. (I agree to a point – but that’s another matter.) ProfMTH is certainly not hurt in any way by Easter eggs or chocolate bunnies, and his argument doesn’t in any way undermine any basic tenet of Christianity. So what’s their point?

It’s a very simple one: To undermine Christian confidence with cheap guilt trips. Oh my. Don’t you feel bad that you’re offending Jesus by using insults? Don’t you feel bad that you’re offending God with that chocolate bunny? Maybe you’ll be less confident about your beliefs in the future now that you see what a horrible mistake you’re making.

Please.

There are apparently a few people who think I’m being too hard on ProfMTH and others; they think he and others are really just nice guys interested in serious dialogue. No, they’re not, and this sort of cheap “guilt trip” foist proves that they are not. Their agenda is to destroy Christian faith – for whatever reasons they may have; whether it be some political or social agenda, or because they were whacked on the knuckles with a ruler by Sister Mary Mulch at Catholic school, frankly doesn’t make a lot of difference. The end result is the same. They want the Christian witness and arsenal emasculated, even if it means advocating for positions they themselves don’t believe in.

One would think that FA #1 for example would want Christians to abandon that imaginary friend – not encourage them to look inward for guidance from it. ProfMTH has covered a few meaty issues, but not hardly enough to count, and surely has better ideas and arguments he could be addressing to help Christians overcome their disabling spiritual heritage. You think they really care about dialogue? About setting Christians free with truth? Fat chance. Here’s an ad for Antarctic beach property; want some?

For those who think I’m being too hard on these idiots: Clue in. They’re not there to help you. They’re interested only in themselves and in getting fat off victims of the flock. They only do enough serious research to be able to foist some misguided reading to serve an agenda – as I have shown, and as I will further show. It’s as a reader said: When you’re nice to the wolves, you don’t end up with peace between the sheep and the wolves – you end up with fat wolves. Let’s keep those wolves on Weight Watchers and teach them a lesson in deflating arrogance and deception.

Those UNeducational Cartoons!

2011-05-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

One of those silly YT Skeptics once complained that you didn’t expect to be instructed about Biblical scholarship in a cartoon format. That’s silly as an objection anyway, but as it happened, Mrs. H and I saw a show on the space program the other day where it was noted that NASA had used an animated figure, Andy the Astronaut, to teach adults what would happen to humans in the vacuum of space without proper protection. As it happens, someone had this vid on their Facebook page, and you can see the link below. Andy is put through all sorts of cartoon mayhem, too – stuff these stuffy noses would regard as “immature”.

I asked my media consultant if he could give me any more examples of adult education using cartoons, since I recalled Disney used to do some of that. He described the list as “virtually endless” and gave me several examples. I looked for as many as I could on YT so you can see them, too. (Added 12/18/2011: I found that a couple of these are no longer on YT.)

Yes, I'm belaboring a point. This is fundy atheists we're talking about, and they're the sort who will say a dead horse they're beating crossed the finish line ahead of yours.

Bert the Turtle for the "Duck and Cover" campaign.

Woody Woodpecker explaining space flight in Destination Moon.

Reddy Kilowatt explaining electricity (removed).

Three Looney Tunes shorts explained economics, using characters like Sylvester and Elmer Fudd. These were sponsored by the Alfred Sloan Foundation. (Removed.)

Disney's Victory Through Air Power promoted the Air Force.

Disney's Man Into Space promoted the space program.

Disney's Seven Dwarfs from Snow White promoted innoculation.

Warner used the character Hook for a series of Navy shorts and Private Snafu for the Army. These were written by Theodore Geisel aka Dr. Seuss.

When he was in the military, Stan Lee gained favor by making comic books explaining military procedures.

The Japanese regularly use both manga and anime to educate people, of all ages.

Animated characters, like Tony the Tiger, are used to "educate" the public about breakfast cereals and other products. Animated graphics are used to demonstrate how products work, like the function of a razor blade or a weed killer.

Andy the Astronaut

Scrubbing New Jerusalem's Toilets: Camping Out

2011-05-24T04:42:00.001-07:00

This is the first Forge post since the world ended – not – so it’s an opportune time to revive this series and reflect in a category that includes not just Harold Camping, but also a range of teachers from Joseph Smith to Joyce Meyer.

The fruit of these future bathroom cleaners isn’t always as obvious as it is with Camping. This past weekend a local radio station mocked Camping’s forecast with a “Last Request Weekend” in which listeners were encouraged to call in their final requests for songs. As is often the case, I find myself on the one hand satisfied that the likes of Camping are being mocked by the world at large; yet I’m also disturbed because I know that the world at large doesn’t have the knowledge to discern between Camping and (say) N. T. Wright, and will assume many or most Christians were expecting the end of the world last Saturday too. The sensational always gets more press than the sensible, after all. Indeed, one YT troll posted a comment Monday asking if I felt stupid because the Rapture had not occurred.)

Equally tragic, news reports noted a man who had spent his life’s savings – some $140,000 – to promote Camping’s message. He ended up confused and waiting in Times Square, made a spectacle of by the media. Since Camping didn’t make so much as a marginally competent effort at handling Scripture, these and other expenditures for promoting his nonsense (billboards, bumper stickers, etc) are doubly tragic; the needs that went unfulfilled will drag the church further into disrepute.

I’m not here just to condemn Camping, though, since he’s just a symptom of a broader problem. Camping is typical of a breed of self-appointed teacher today whose training to be a teacher amounts to, “I opened my Bible and God revealed to me that…” Or, “I opened my Bible and figured out that…” It’s a symptom, really, of what I have termed in an early E-Block article the doctrine of radical perspicuity. In that article, I quoted a KJV Onlyist website which said:

The question is asked, "Do you really understand the Bible? How can you be sure that what you think the Scriptures say is in fact what they do say?" These questions are directed not at the learned in the Scriptures, at ministers, professors of theology, and the educated, but at the common people of God, who place their simple trust and faith in the Scriptures as the Word of God. Such questions not only raise doubts in the minds of God's faithful people, which is in itself wrong, since the Bible stresses that the life of the Christian is not one of doubt, but of faith. But even worse, these questions are meant to lead the people of God to the conclusions that after all the Scriptures are not understandable, contrary to what the church has always taught and thought. What is required to understand them is a great deal of education and learning, as well as intimate knowledge of the methods of interpretation and the historical and cultural conditions under which men wrote the Scriptures. The result of this is the conclusion that only the clergy, the favored few, are able to understand the Word and interpret it, while the laity, the ignorant masses of common folk, are really in the dark. Thus the door is opened to all sorts of corruption, heresy, and error, which is rampant also today.

In contrast to this, we wish to emphasize the Bible as we have it, and that means the King James Version, is perspicuous. Even a little child can read and understand the Word of God, as anyone with children knows.

But you don’t have to be a KJV Onlyist to hold to a view like this. It’s implicit each time a Harold Camping, or a David Koresh, or even a Joyce Meyer or a Charles Stanley, produces teaching after teaching in which all they do is quote the Bible and say what they think it means. At times such people can also add (as Camping did, with his experience in engineering) expertise in some other field to the mix, and the result is, as I am fond of saying, much like mixing chocolate cake with Polish sausage: It’s barely edible and pretty much just a mess.

Now of course, some parts of the Bible are indeed simple enough that that is all we need to do – if all we need is basic knowledge about what it means. But even the simplest passages can have deeper and richer backgrounds that a straightforward reading can miss – and that can lead to a deeply erroneous conclusion. (In fact, wait a week…I’ll have a TektonTV vid that provides a very good example of just that happening.)

I won’t reproduce the whole E-Block article on perspicuity here, but a few major points deserve notice. First, the historic idea of the perspicuity of Scripture was made against claims that the meaning of the text was inaccessible to readers by any other means than revelational authority – claims made by groups like the Gnostics who claimed they had some “secret” way to interpret Scripture. It was not intended to be used against serious study and exegesis, nor could it be: The means whereby scholars and students seek to better understand the Bible are not restricted to those are granted revelation. Anyone may go to a library, or go to Waldenbooks, and find the same resources I or anyone else has.

Second: Scripturally, there is no support for a doctrine of radical perspicuity. I found proponents using a smattering of texts in support, and their strongest (ha ha!) was Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Of course, Ps. 119:105 certainly cannot be appealing to a canonical collection of Scriptures which, at the time of the Psalms, would be as yet mostly unwritten! Contextually, reference to the commandments in v. 104 indicate that the "word" in question is the Deuteronomic law. Beyond this, we cannot make any assumptions (since this Psalm has no authorial credit) about the level of discipleship and knowledge of Psalm 119's author. Light comes with understanding, and we do not know where this author's level of understanding rested.

In contrast, other texts are quite clear that growth in knowledge and understanding is expected of the disciples of Christ. The very word "disciple" implies a follower who will grow in knowledge and performance. Other texts clearly indicate stratification in understanding and knowledge (Eph. 4:11-12, Heb. 5:11-12; 2 Peter 3:15-16).

The point for today being: Self-studied “experts” like Camping are a bane to the church today; they don’t even need to be teaching cultic doctrines to be a danger. They destroy the honor of the church and cause the name of Jesus to be insulted, besmirched, and mocked in the public square. If Camping’s followers had any sense, they’d publicly disown and denounce him, and the church at large should now (heck, they should have done it before, if they didn’t!) publicly ridicule his teachings and disfellowship him until such time as he publicly apologizes and forfeits all activities as a Bible expositor. (I was pleased to see that at least one lead official among Southern Baptists had made such a call for an apology.) And frankly, if I had my druthers, when it came to gross incompetents like Camping, I’d make it so that their ministry property and funds were seized by the church at large and redistributed to more worthy causes, while Camping himself would be relegated to a job as a janitor.

I’m being facetious, of course. We all recall he did this in 1994 once before…and nothing of the sort happened. It’s too bad we didn’t learn the lesson before he did his encore.

Pounding the Pipsqueak

2011-05-20T05:52:00.001-07:00

Today on TektonTV I will be loading two vids; one is a revamp of an older one in which I parodied the bad arguments and poor production values of a particular atheist, and I have reworked this into an all-purpose “how not to respond to TektonTV” narrative.

The other vid, though, will be new, and is another jab at the street-corner Napoleon Skeptic styled ReligionFreeDeist (RFD).
RFD had made the absurd claim that scholars were “pressured” to support ministries that were orthodox in their creeds, even if they happened to do things that they otherwise disagreed with (in my case, using satire and riposte against Skeptics). In reply I requested 5 examples of this alleged pressure, including names of scholars and proof that they would not have supported a given ministry apart from this alleged pressure; and, a report of what sort of “pressure” was used.

RFD ignored this and other questions initially, but after being pressed by another user, gave responses – not that they were satisfactory. In response to this particular question, he 1) expressed amazement that I would even dispute that it happened; 2) perversely took my demand for 5 examples as proof that I knew it did happen; 3) admitted that he didn’t have five examples (!), but 4) had one, which he had been told in confidence, which we could choose to believe or not, but he wasn’t telling us what it was, now let’s move on, shall we.

Uh uh. Not so fast, small fry.

One secret example, sorry, isn’t sufficient to sustain such a wild and sweeping generalization about scholars. Not even 5 examples would have been enough, but I chose that number, in fact (and later reduced it to three and then two, in YT annotations) knowing full well that RFD was blowing smoke. He has a bad habit of overextending himself with hyperbole, and then making excuses and/or parsing his words after the fact. In this case, his explanations above actually self-contradict openly in substance (1 and 2 vs 3 and 4); how could he possibly argue for widespread “pressure” if all he ever knew was one example? And indeed, since he won’t share it, how do we even know it was applicable, and that it passes all the necessary tests? Yet he’s the one flabbergasted that I don’t believe that it happens the way he claims. Duh ha…

Scholars pressured? Spare me. Dan Wallace serves as an example of one sort; you don’t tell him what to do, no matter who you are. He’d laugh in the face of any attempts at “pressure” and doesn’t hesitate to share his opinions. In other cases, endorsements will be offered with caveats: Yes, he does great work on X, but he’s a preterist, or he thinks hell’s fires are not literal, or he thinks hell’s fires are literal, or he delivers heavy satiric blows. That’s obviously not the sort of thing RFD has in mind, though, since it involves a personal decision to endorse with qualification that requires no “pressure” to arrive at. What his initial claim indicated was that, were it not for some defined, definitive “pressure,” X scholar would not be endorsing X ministry at all. That was a rather high bar to set – and now he’s ending up with that bar stuck in his mouth like a horse’s bridle.

I have never let loudmouthed Skeptics get away with such claims at any point, and at YT, it seems they’ve been at it for so long with no one calling them down for it that they don’t know what to do when they do get called down. Today’s vid satirizes RFD’s “search” for 5 examples and his failure to produce them. No doubt he’ll whine and cry and posture in response, but there’s only about a .0001% chance he’ll do what he ought to do – justify his wide-ranging and absurd claim about scholars with some actual examples.

By the way, despite RFD’s wishful thinking, the model for my “5…3...2” reduction was actually the story in Genesis of how God negotiated with Abraham for the rescue of Sodom and Gomorrah. God told Abraham he’d spare the cities if he could find, in turn, a slowly reducing number of righteous persons in those locales. As it happens, Abraham couldn’t meet even the least stringent requirement – and neither, clearly, can RFD.

I say in the vid that the “pressure” will continue until RFD admits he is overgeneralizing or else produces 5 examples. The one thing that makes that difficult is that he’s an intellectual pipsqueak who doesn’t have a lot to say – but there’s enough for me to take on for a little while if he doesn’t cry “uncle”. In short order.

YT Thief BUSTED!

2011-05-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

This was a bust that’s not quite as spectacular as discovering John Loftus’ fake blog, but it was still fun.

The perpetrator this time is someone I don’t name here, because he’s a nuisance who likes seeing his name on the little screen – just like Farrell Till. Which fits, because years back he was one of Till’s groupies, and I alluded to him in an earlier entry here on the Forge as a benighted soul who thought Till’s ghost town forum was worth bringing attention to. (It is, if you want an example of unhealed fundamentalism in a collective setting.)

These days, he gets his adoration fix from his own set of groupies on YouTube, which total in number about the same as the number who read my article on Mithra every two months. They’re clearly quality people for the most part – such as one I alluded to the other day whose username was half deity names, half sexual slang words. Their fearless leader specializes in being not-creative and making high-level bungles in logic and understanding. Of the latter, perhaps my favorite was a time when I referred to a specific scholarly book, which he dismissed because he couldn’t find it in HIS local library. At other times one of his favorite excuses for ignoring arguments is, “That scholar is conservative/an evangelical.”

These days one of his dalliances is trying to answer my YT vids on 2 Kings 2:23-5. Previously he had had an answer up to another user there who had used me as a source, and was forced to issue an apology to that user when he falsely accused him of plagiarizing my material (he had in fact credited me). Answering me directly after I showed at YT gave him an excuse to obscure that embarrassing apology (as well as some other mistakes – for example, accusing me of just making up the idea that baldness was rare in the ancient world; I still recall his use of a picture of empty bookshelves to indicate that I had no source for that claim).

His newer reply to me directly is in terms of quality about 30% expressing amazement that Christians believe this crazy stuff (ha ha), 20% actual argument, and 50% emotional rhetoric. To give you an idea the sort of backwards mentality we’re dealing with, his only “answer” to my point that the youths hassling Eiisha fought back against bears because bears could be used (like buffalo) as resources for food and other staples was to laugh and show pictures of – uh – products people made from bears. Yep, that’s the way to refute it.

Even better was the one where he refuted a point I made about honor being received in battles by cribbing a screenshot from Star Trek showing Klingons singing about receiving honor in battle. That’s a good answer, huh? “Hurr hurr. Honor. Funny. Let’s move on…”

Ah yes. Cribbing screenshots. That brings us to the main issue today. Our dilettante has another serious problem when it comes to his vids: if he ever had an original idea for doing one, it hitchhiked to Peoria. If he isn’t cribbing screenshots from someone’s website, or from a film, or from some old painting, he’s making an effort to find one he can crib. There’s not an ounce of originality in anything he produces (whether arguments or production values), and given that, it’s not surprising that I caught him at something which deserves notice as an example of just how much respect these guys have for the intellectual property rights of others.

His latest vid (now removed – see below) made a personal announcement in which he parodies one of my own characters used in reply to him. That’s legal, even if reflective of inability to come up with ideas of his own. But it’s not the character that’s the issue – it was the background graphic, which was a sort of global map designed to look like a news show background.

One of his group was impressed with it, so they asked where he got it from. To this he replied that he did not remember, but that he got it from a Google search of “news background”.

Oh really. He didn’t remember, eh?

As it happens, you can find that graphic with the very search he points to – it comes up second or third, and interestingly enough, it’s a graphic you’re supposed to PAY for – about $125 for a license to use it and an associated animation program. Not only that, the version on the site has a “watermark” to discourage theft. He didn’t mind though – he just used an object in the foreground of his vid, and some lettering, to cover up the watermark and hide his thieving handiwork.

There are a couple of stunning things about this. The first is the audacity of lifting a graphic with an obvious watermark – one you clearly saw and covered up – and using it for free. (Which he did, since he admits he just lifted it via a find from Google.) The second is the audacity of lying about it when asked directly where he got it from. The last is the arrogance of the theft in the first place – supposing that you have every right to steal someone’s intellectual property. It goes beyond fair use, I might add: the graphic was used in the background of all but a few seconds of the minute and a half vid, and that’s way over the line.

I’m not saying I never make mistakes on this. Sometimes you can’t do it right, maybe because some third party has used/edited a graphic, sound effect, or what have you, and left the impression that it is not from a paid source. But I do all I can to be sure I don’t violate someone else’s intellectual property rights. I don’t use graphics with a watermark or with a price. I stick with fair use. I try to use items found on educational or government sites, or places where no one is trying to make a profit. People work hard to create these things, and it isn’t our place to take them and use them wholesale.

And more than that – you sure won’t find me trying to cover my tracks, either. One day after I brought notice to this issue in a vid of my own, the Till groupie pulled his vid down, and told his thralls:

I'm back from the business trip early. Emergency with one of my clients forced me to cut it short.

Yep. Being caught red-handed is definitely an emergency.

Dah!

2011-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Folks, I had planned a post for today but it looks like Google is fooling around with things and the one from Thursday got deleted. So I won't post today, unless I see it is fixed. Thankfully I still have a copy, but I'm not about to post it and have it deleted again.

And after this...the Forge will be off until Thursday as I have some USDA work to do.

Those Immauture Looney Tunes!

2011-05-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to Tuesday’s post, I have some new information regarding the charge that it is “immature” to subject persons in my vids to LT-style gags. One response made was that because ProfMTH is a “real person” while Daffy Duck is not, one can be deemed “immature” while the other can not.

I pointed out some flaws in this reasoning last time, and I can now add another one that deals the death blow (sorry!) to the objection – or else forces objectors to expand who they call “immature” even more.

The fact is, even live cartoons target “real people” for their gags. In my consult are a couple of people who are experts in the field of cartoons and entertainment. One of them gave me several examples of celebrities or public figures who were parodied, caricatured, and made into victims of gags by early LT shorts.

A particularly illustrative (and hilarious!) example is one we’ll feature below. Here, Daffy Duck hammers Adolf Hitler with a mallet right in the middle of a speech, causing Hitler to bawl like a child. So either it was “immature” for LT to do this…or it isn’t “immature” for me to do it. Take your pick.

Of course, I can hear the whines already, so:

Are you comparing ProfMTH to Hitler? Dah – no, except in the sense that both are public figures (just as I am). Of course, back in the day on early LT, average joes like me didn’t have any way to make films, and guys like Hitler were the easiest targets, and the ones people would most recognize. The age of electronic communication has expanded the opportunity for such lampooning tremendously.

Aside from that, as noted, celebrities were also so treated; my consult noted as example of W. C. Fields having his bulbous nose pinched.

I fully expect one of the Skeptics to try to do the same to me someday (in fact, some of them think they're doing it already, with a stolen picture of me). But they'd better do a good job of it, or I'll be all over it in more ways than one.

So where does it stop? Don’t think a line can’t be drawn here: The key is PUBLIC figures. Lampooning someone like my next door neighbor would cross the line, because he is not in public arenas. Lampooning someone like the spouse of one of these Skeptics would be out of bounds, too; they’re not involved in what they do. As I said before, if these critics want celebrity and attention – it all goes with the territory, and always has. Even academics are subject to this when they go off the wall, like Ward Churchhill did.

In the end, though, even without these examples, it is clear that a double standard remains where many of these YT Skeptics are concerned. I noted on ReligionFreeDeist’s channel that one of his group was addressing a Christian member – one who was very polite and nonconfrontational – with language suggesting that he took my side because, metaphorically, he engaged in homosexual relations with me. On another Skeptics’ channel, I noted a user with a username that implied homosexual relations between Jesus and the Muslim deity Allah, using specific slang terms for genitalia and the buttocks. Yet no one seems to raise any protest to these or multiple other examples I have seen and found – and except for modern and false portraits of Jesus contrived to say so, there’s no reason for us to sit around and take it lightly, either.

Hmm. If that’s what Skeptics call mature, I’ll stay with my “immature” stuff, thanks.