Cross Post: WinAce on The Impossible Faith

[jpholding]

This concerns a discussion found at:

http://cafe.planetwisdom.com/tc/v311/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=13;t=15036

By agreement I am offering some comments to be cross-posted. The issue is my article, The Impossible Faith, and the main combatants are "Elisha" for our side and "WinAce" (the same known here) on the other.

Elisha is frankly doing an admirable job of defense, so I will only add comments where I feel it is necessary.

Page 1

Obviously WinAce does not know the difference between a "non sequitur" and "the simplest and best explanation which it is a critic's burden to address". Or, perhaps this is just his usual method of providing sound bites when he has no other answer. It is also noteworthy that he continually repeats the claim that I refute myself in that Christianity survived into the second century; he ignored both my reference to Stark and the other that Elisha notes.

WinAce says, "The destruction and carnage associated with the sacking of Jerusalem might also need to be taken into account, as such events correlate rather nicely with increased religiosity and the joining of doomsday cults." In one sense I agree. If Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem accurately c. 30 AD, then it indeed needs to be taken into account. However, in the way WinAce suggests (where he would assumably not accord any prophetic authority to Jesus), he is out of order, because Christianity was in no sense a "doomsday cult". What was predicted beyond the destruction of Jerusalem was an ideological spread of the Kingdom of God, not the end of the world. Of course this is where we get into the thesis of preterist eschatology, which is beyond the scope of TIF in general.
Needless to say, that WinAce claims Christianity "spontaneously gr[e]w out of historical contingency and the interactions of people involved in them" shows that he has no actual detailed answer to offer in terms of why it did grow in the first place. This is one of those instances in which a Skeptic has found a most elegant way to say, "I have no idea how it happened, but it sure wasn't the way you say."

This note by "Leon" is quite hilarious: "The crusades and inquisition, snatching up children at gullibly young ages, and conditioning them to Christianity by hook or by crook will get you your 'impossible' faith, validity of claims set aside." Only a Skeptic of this caliber would suppose that events of the medieval period would have any affect on how Christianity survived in the FIRST century! :rofl:

WinAce: "In addition, some are based on extremely flimsy evidence, or what appears like reading into things interpretations that aren't warranted by the data (case in point: his interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:21 as a general encouragement to critical thinking...?)" One wonders why that isn't warranted by the data, since that is the only particular WinAce had the nerve to post (and which is therefore presumably his "best" example). The word used is dokimazo which in other contexts is used to refer to discernment via examination and testing:

Luke 14:19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

1 Cor. 3:13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire
shall try every man's work of what sort it is.

1 Tim. 3:10 And let these also first be proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless.

He says: "I'll admit it point blank here: the heck if I know, I haven't studied it in depth. Neither, I suspect, have you. Maybe it was the evangelical parlor tricks still popular in the Charismatic movement. Maybe it was the use of out-of-context prophecies gutted from various Old Testament verses. Maybe it was just plain preying on people at their emotional lowest, as modern cults do." So at least WinAce is big enough to admt he has no answer. But as he has been told time and time again, the OT was not "gutted" in any way that Jews of the day would not hav accepted. Moreover, the Jews would have only found such uses appealing if history backed them up. Otherwise we wait for WinAce to explain how i.e., healing people born blind is a "parlor trick". But even "tricks" like these would do nothing to erase the difficulties of most of the factors, especially since (as Skeptics are wont to remind us) this was an allegedly "gullible" age (though see Glenn Miller's note that this particular time was one of the most skeptical!) and others could do the same, thus engendering a Pharaoh-like, "Yeah, well my guys do this too" reaction.

He says: "A Muslim apologist could probably write a similar document that included a set of unique, arbitrary factors, cherry-picked from the hundreds available, that would make Islam 'unlikely to succeed' unless Mohammed was actually on to something. So could a Scientologist." These "could probablies" are the refuge of someone with no answer who is essentially admitting that the argument as it stands cannot be rebutted. The same also of WinAce's unsubstantiated attempt to call the factors "arbitrary" and pretend that there are "hundreds available" to choose from, and the remainder of his arguments on page 1 are nothing more than the same.

Page 2 (as of 9/18/03, my last check)

WinAce on Factor 7:
"However, it still consists of one begged question after another--that Acts was circulated in the first century widely enough to catch the attention of whoever would be annoyed by its statements" -- this is no begged question but is grounded in the use of Acts as a "defense brief" for Paul before a Roman magistrate.

"that Luke didn't just copy mundane events from Josephus and other sources when composing it" -- WinAce hurls this skinny elephant, but it's just for show; whether Luke copied from Josephus or not does not change the argument.

"putting an unfalsifiable theological spin on such things as Herod's death" -- the argument does not relate to such particulars as this one, so WinAce erects his usual distractive straw man.

"that Acts accurately records the words of Roman officials" -- which is exactly the point.

"that Mark was written pre-70 AD destruction of Jerusalem" -- WinAce knows full well I have addressed this issue in other articles.

"that falsification of those claims would ever get outside the limited area in which it occured" -- obviously WinAce has little or no knowledge of the social world of the NT, for such falsification WOULD get outside the "limited area" easily, via the graces of Diaspora Jews who returned to that "limited area" regularly for festivals and via the ancient network of gossip that was the day's sub for TV and radio.

"or would be remotely convincing to the public" -- exactly. And if they were not convincing, what does that tell us?

"To put it frankly, that sounds like a ridiculously exaggerated number. With conversions coming in so easily, Christians would outnumber ordinary Jews by the time of the Jewish War" -- This comment reminds me of the joke that at their current rate of growth, 1 in 3 people will be Elvis impersonators by the year 2025. Why not a model of a block of immediate conversions in the face of an unassailable truth, followed by fewer conversions by those who reserve doubts for prejudicial reasons?

"And I'm not convinced even a fair number of apostles could baptise THREE THOUSAND people in one day." -- Silly comment as well. No limits are stated in terms of the apostles being the only ones baptizing or it being all in one day. All that is said is that in that one day, 3000 were added to the fellowship. But even in one day, 3000 could easily baptize each other. 1500 times 2.

"And parlor tricks, exploitation of human psychology, emotional blackmail, and any number of other things Christianity is really good at more than made up for any lack of substance." Not that WinAce explains how any of these particulars were pursued in context. This is just the usual, "I'll pick a sound bite over detailed explanation any day" that WinAce is fond of promulgating. I challenge anyone to name an example of "emotional blackmail" used in apostolic preaching of the kerygma.

This is all for now, but there is probably more coming and I'll provide updates here as needed.

[Elisha]

Just a note that I'll be posting Holding's responses at this link:

http://cafe.planetwisdom.com/tc/v311/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=13;t=15372

I'm keeping it separate from the thread me and WinAce are in, because:

1. I'm wanting the Christians and skeptics over there to see a defense of Christianity from an expert's point-of-view. We don't get many of those over there.

2. I'm not wanting the skeptics to "skip" over Holding's replies to criticism.

3. It will help both myself and WinAce to start sort of anew with the corrections that Holding has presented. We've been going in circles too much over the survival after the disciples death being evidence or an explanatory factor to how Christianity has survived in the beginning. Hopefully, it will get cleared up with Holding's much better explanation than mine.

4. Plus, we're talking about JP Holding! It deserves a separate thread to be noticed to its fullest :D


Thanks JP,

-Tim

[dizzle]

Elisha, I saw your post over there and thank you for the courtesy you showed us.

[jpholding]

Elisha, PW is a more youth-oriented forum, correct?

[Elisha]

Yep. Why do you ask?

[jpholding]

Just highlighting a difference. :thumb:

[jpholding]

Doings on PW have gotten interesting the past few days. Stevie "Sun Dog" Carr has shown up to rehash gripes he had here which were soundly rebuked. (He also finds a place where I devleoped my position on John 20:22 but had not yet changed an older reference where I held a previous position. This Stevie takes to be some sort of massive conspiracy on my part. I suggest he take his Ritalin.) It is clear that WinAce's primary tactic is to avoid specific replies and resort to non-documented non-answers such as vague allusions to "human psychology" and "humanity's ability to tell BS from fact" and wraps it all up with "how do you know the alien didn't do it" and "gradually modified legendary development" and "they were all stupid" explanations that are not supported with positive evidence and also avoid engaging any specific response (as Elisha notes) and beg the Skeptical equations. WinAce also tries to squirm out of dealing with the issues by appealing to alleged pre-made assumptions like the dates of the Gospels and source materials like Q, knowing full well that I have dealt with each of these specifically on Tekton in some detail. None of this is any surprise. WinAce even admits his ignorance on many of these issues and that he simply hands his soul to "consensus" without any critical evaluation (which is rather amusing for a Skeptic to say, an is rather belied by his desire to continually run his mouth on forums and on his website trying to change people's minds).

Again I will only comment where needed. This is on WinAce, page 2 alone.

Once again WinAce bellows that my 17 factors are "arbitrarily cherry-picked". They are not in the least, and he makes no effort to create a larger list that these were allegedly "picked" from, because he cannot. He refuses his responsibility to provide a competing hypothesis for evaluation (the usual sound bite mentality he offers). It is asked:

Can you even quantify what that 'reliable witness' would consist of, and why it should overcome these disadvantages in the first place? Because of sincerity?

No, because of unimpeachability and irrefutibility. On the empty tomb:

What evidence is there that it was even used as an argument pre-destruction of Jerusalem?

1 Cor. 15 is sufficent, as are the Gospels, though note that WinAce tries to avoid debating the subject of debates on this.

tombs can appear empty for a variety of reasons, and if a paranormal belief gets off the ground it will travel much farther and wider than its refutation

This is typical WinAce avoidance. No "reasons" are listed or argued for and resort is made instead to vague and snidely superior claims of "rationalizing" and "vested emotional interest" with none whatsoever shown in context. This is pedalling backwards to avoid a conclusion that is supported by the data as it stands.

Paul's testimony about the unnamed yet conveniently round number of '500 brothers who Jesus appeared to' is remarkably unspecific

It is not "conveniently round" for it says "over five hundred." Otherwise 1 Cor. 15 is part of a formulated creedal statement, indicating widespread use in the church and assumed knowledge of the existence of these persons. Demanding names in this context (especially from a high context document) is the province of a low-context modern with an axe to grind. The survival of the movement testifies to these 500+ as the core of that unimpeachable witness my thesis requires.

For all we know, if he didn't make it up, it could have been inspired by an event like Fatima,

Note again the resort to "could have beens" which admits that the data as it stands is not able to be refuted. Beyond this 1 Cor. 15 is written as a treatise to the Corinthians on the nature of the resurrection body. Paul uses the apostolic witness as a testimony that the rez body is tangible and real. Hence it could not have been an event like Fatima.

The unlikely and contrived story about Roman guards at the tomb


Nothing "unlikely" about it at all, and WinAce as usual refuses to deliver specifics.

.. the strangely increasing number, power and glory of the angels...

1 to 2, yes, that's "strangely increasing". Especially given the ease of Jewish background belief in angels. "Power and glory" increased how, and in what way beyond normal Jewish expectations? It is of course not explained.

the incredible earthquakes and resurrecting zombies

I address this at http://www.tektonics.org/asilent.html (link here to save space)

the increasingly detailed stories of Jesus post-resurrection appearances as time went on...

No such thing. The quality of a resurrection body in Jewish thought already entails what WinAce thinks is "increasing detail".

outline the scientific methodology to be used by a 1st century Palestinian in falsifying Christian claims

1) Check the tomb. Is there any evidence of malfeasance?
2) Question the leadership, especially Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate. (Don't be surprised if they already have "prepared statements".)
3) Question those who claim that they saw the resurrected Jesus and the empty tomb. Do their stories cohere sufficiently?
4) Check on the character of the evangelists and Apostles. Do others say that they were sane, sensible people?
5) Dive in to the community. "Gossip" was the coin of the day.

Relevant examples of other paranormal claims falsified using those criteria, from Josephus, Tacitus or other sources,

Of course, the assumption here is classic Skeptic: That the claims in Josephus, et al were also false.


Where is the evidence Christianity made disproveable claims at all while they remained falsifiable?

Based of course on dates of relevant documents, which I have written on and WinAce will not argue with me about.

Where is the evidence these claims were widespread enough to draw the ire of anyone?

TIF showed definitively that the nature of Christian claims was such that they would IMMEDIATELY draw the ire of their contemporaries. Low context people need it "spelled out". Intelligent people don't.

Where is the evidence anyone attempted to 'disprove' any claim by Christianity

Matthew's stolen body polemic from the authorities is all that is needed. That's the best they could do.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, where's the evidence that such disproof would circulate as widely as the original claim,

The ancient gossip and social control network guaranteed it.

or couldn't be explained with a convenient and superficially believable ad hoc rationalization such as 'those darn Pharisees planted that body to make it look like Jesus didn't resurrect'?

WinAce thinks that would be "believable" in any sense? No matter; the stolen body polemic is all we have evidence for, and positing excuses like this means he may as well ask why they didn't say aliens took it. It also doesn't explain the rez appearances.

And why not? If you repeat a common enough urban legend circulating widely in your community and elsewhere,

Silly comment. Urban legends are either based in trivial matters no one cares about or in matters we have no interest or ability to investigate. Alligators in sewers is interesting, but no one has the time or interest to go down in sewers in check -- and the gators also do not represent a threat to the social order. Let's see WinAce apply the factors to that one.

what examples are there, if any, of erroneous assertions in obscure cult circles being successfully 'checked' and thus stopped by anyone in the 1st century middle east?

None are needed. The social background data is sufficient and there is no comparison to be made with these factors to modern urban legends.

And why would anyone care to dispute an account of a 'sound of a violent wind'? ..Forgive me if I'm not convinced the ancients kept meticulous track of such peripheral details when they wrote about dead men coming back to life, kings seeing people who should have been 50 miles away and celestial armies duking it out in the clouds.

More Skeptical question-begging, of course (mere "argument by astonishment"). The Jews however would very much care to dispute the wind, because wind was associated in the OT with acts of God. On the languages:

a known parlor trick you can still see in Charismatic Christian circles. It relies on the fact that, in a large group of people, some will recognize random gibberish as meaningful speech. It was also something known to Greek and Egyptian magicians, as I recall, mentioned as a common technique in sources other than Acts.

WinAce as usual avoids giving us specifics. As for the alleged "parlor trick" there is no match here for the jews fully conversant in the languages of their home countries recognizing their own languages -- several of them, independently -- being spoken. We challenge WinAce to produce an equitable case study. (They were also not "predisposed" as he claims.)

Name one religion or paranormal belief that was ever successfully disproved in history and lost its followers on that account, as opposed to something like receiving a violent end at the hands of another group or spontaneously receding into the dustbin of history due to changing social factors.

Try Sabbatai Sevi, Waco, and Guyana. Note that WinAce seems to assume all failures of this sort will be calm, collected, and orderly. Trying to shave off those that meet violent ends is arbitrary and naive. Nor is it required that ALL followers quit, as is implied. See my comments at http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_P_GGS.html

Encouraging people to be on guard for false prophets (hence protecting your own livelihood) is not a crowning endorsement of skepticism in general.

It certainly is, with reference to the matter under question. How does one be on guard against false prophets in this paradigm? Check Deut. 18 for a remarkably rational methodology.

Wow, what a monumental case of poor exegesis on John 20:29. Thomas had more than sufficient evidence -- the testimony of at least 11 men who he had gotten to know intimately over at least the past three years, plus personal experience of the miraculous powers of Jesus. He had no reason at all to distrust them, and having seen Jesus' miraculous powers, especially the raising of Lazarus, no reason to doubt the resurrection.

Once you get into the larger Resurrection apologetics...his 17 impeding factors become entirely superfluous.

That's a funny thing to say, since Kyle Gerkin thought that they were not superfluous at all. :rofl: And they are not, because the apostles and missionaries would have had to engage the same apologetic every time they preached, the only difference being that they had the advantage of first-hand testimony and ability to debunk/confirm.

WinAce tries to reduce the force of 1 Thess. 5:19-21's "test everything" by noting that the prior statement is, "do not treat prophecies with contempt." Once again, how is this done in Judaism? Deut. 18 offers the very simple advice of investigating. And if God advises this for prophecies, how in the world will anyone claim that it is not applicable for all other circumstances? Especially the religious ones we are diascussing!

The context of a discussion about the end times and testing prophets, which even the world-famously gullible RaptureReady crowd engages in...

Yes, they do. Of course if he wants to apply the 17 factors to the rapture ready crowd, we'll wait.

On the other hand, there are episodes like the Doubting Thomas incident and such hits as "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).

And such hits as, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." (Proverbs 4:7) Never mind also that Proverbs 3 is contextually having to do with making moral decisions in the face of the revealed law and commandments (3:1).

WinAce then tries to explain away the noble Bereans because he thinks that they "received the message with great eagerness," not their examination, is what is the grounds for their rated "nobility". This is merely an attempt to evade, for it is clear that the Bereans are praised for both their reception AND their checking of the texts. Yes, it does apply to inquiries into typological prophecies and consistency with OT theology, but that is utterly beside the point. WinAce is making excuses again, as though ONLY scrutiny in this particular area were praiseworthy.
WinAce then wants some parallel to statements of Buddha about not receiving anything based on "reports" or "hearsay" (but he does not highlight the part which says, "nor upon reasons and arguments"!). He doesn't need it, because the social climate of the day provides that background and orientation already.

The quote from Kirby falls to the same flaw: It complains of lack of indication that basic claims of the Christian story denied, oblivious to the point that if they were all verified, of course no such denials would appear at all.

Scientology is a religion that claims an ancient alien warlord transported the souls of his subordinates into terrestrial volcanoes due to an overpopulation problem... Should this reasonably cause any remotely intelligent person to laugh it off as a cheap, incredibly obviously made up cult?

WinAce is apparently unaware that when you are evangelized by Scientology, they do not start with the "ancient alien warlord" routine but enter through the back door of psychological health. It is only AFTER you are committed that they insert all that "warlord" crap. If WinAce thinks "Any other apologist could just as well pick 5, 10, even 20 factors unique to his own religion and use those as the gold standard, showing how their religion was the 'impossible' faith," then let's see him do it rather than mouth off.

Mark 13:19"... because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now--and never to be equaled again." Bubonic Plague. Holocaust. Stalinist Soviet Union.

Decontexualizing skeptics. :teeth: See http://www.tektonics.org/olivet01.html

if something is prophesied in an ancient source, that counts as prima facie evidence it was written after the fact unless other considerations (such as an extant manuscript) override it.

And of course if you beg the question of naturalism. This is not "special pleading" as WinAce claims unless one already assumes naturalism is true to begin with.

'When you see the 'Abomination of Desecration' standing where it should not be - let the reader take note! - those in Judea must flee to the mountains.' The parenthetical comment to 'let the reader take note' underscores the fact that this speech was written for the Christians of Mark's time.The contemporary audience of Mark would understand very well what he was talking about, although the 'Abomination of Desecration' is a cryptic reference to us. "

The error here is that the "reader" reference is not to what is read in Mark, but what is read in Daniel. To cover this WinAce quotes a non-argument by Decker: "That this is Jesus' comment directed to the [hearer?] who was reading Daniel... is improbable in light of the setting (an oral discourse) and the typical literacy rate of first century Palestine (about 10%)." This is a remarkably foolish statement, being that the literacy rate did not get any higher for Mark's audience than it did for Jesus' and Mark's Gospel would still be read aloud and thus would still essentially be an "oral discourse" for 90% of Mark's audience.

But if one accepts the conclusion that this was, in fact, an editorial comment, one must immediately ask what Mark was doing drawing specific attention to a cryptic reference in Daniel he should have not understood pre-70 AD.

It is abject nonsense to claim Mark "should not have understood" the reference prior to 70. The Roman eagle hovered over Judea constantly in this time. Attacking and plundering temples of your enemy was SOP (remember Pompey). Issues over Roman use of pagan symbols in Jewish settings had arisen many times before.

WinAce's screed about the "Legion" story is not directly relevant but does beg the dating question.

Mark was presumably writing to reassure Christians in difficult times that their Messiah would come back after the war

This fails on the account that the prophecies were actually fulfilled in 70 (see link above) and the Messiah had already had his parousia by the time WinAce thinks Mark would be writing these alleged "reassurances". After this are several non-specific charges ("It's amazing how apologists like Holding will disavow "argument from silence!" when it decapitates their claims, but invoke it when arguing against the opposition. The inconsistency is almost palpable.") that WinAce naturally refuses, as usual, to back up with specifics.

Finally, what evidence is there that the Acts written by Luke is the same as our canonical version?

Here WinAce makes issue of the Bezae edition of Acts, which he seems to think provides some hint that maybe the original Acts didn't make certain claims. He has yet to learn that textual critics do not argue by "association" and that this is a fallacy. It is also remarkable as an argument given that Acts' other edition reports such fascinating matters as the hours that Paul taught in Tyrannus' lecture hall. Obviously a very important theological conspiracy was at work. :ahem:

The rest of Acts 2 made no reasonably empirical claims. "God raised Jesus from the dead" is an unfalsifiable theological statement, a far cry from "God raised Jesus from the dead, left an empty tomb at this address that the establishment still has no explanation for...

Beyond the poor comedy, WinAce lacks a great deal of cognizance here. "Left an empty tomb..." is indicated:

Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his ssepulchre is with us unto this day.

Does it take much to see here, "And Jesus' sepulchre is also available"? The claim itself implies all contextually accessory facts, WinAce's low-context mumblings aside.

Neither, do I suspect, were accurate presentations of speeches and such considered a requirement in ancient historical writings. Josephus, Thucydides and others apparently made them up on occasion when it seemed appropriate to advance the plot.

See my summary at http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_02_02_03.html on "invented" speeches (and the more detailed response I allude to from Miller).

Sure you could, if the appropriate locations had been destroyed by a nuclear weapon and repopulated in the meantime, or underwent a gradual process of modification so subtle that, at no specific stage, could anyone object "Hey, that's OBVIOUSLY not what happened!"

Interesting. What "nuclear weapon" hit Palestine c. 70 AD?

In addition, in a predominantly oral society, your claims could displace actual history if they were presented in a more believable fashion than the "official" version of events over the course of many years.

False. This is merely graphocentrism. The oral "versions" WinAce hypothesizes would compete the same way that written versions would today. The rest is vague generalization of the usual sort.

Paul, by his own admission, was a zealot for the Law-which included things like mandatory circumcision. In Galatians 6:12, he apparently alludes to Christians desiring to escape persecution by following it to the letter.

A very naive reading of Gal. 6:12. Mark Nanos has argued that these are not Christians, but Jews seeking to avoid trouble from the Romans concerning the special classification of the Jewish faith. However, even if these were Christians, following the law would only relieve on minor aspect of being persecuted from one particularly minority party (the Jews).

Steven Carr deconstructs many similar claims about Christian "martyrdom"

Carr's complaints are vastly overstated when used in this context. TIF does not reply on a "renounce or kill" stark alternative but a broad range of "persecutional" options.

This doesn't particularly matter to Christians in honor-shame societies of today, either, like China or Saudi Arabia, whose persecution complex is more than enough psychological justification for their suffering.

Note how WinAce arbitrarily and snidely assumes enough psychological expertise to claim that these persons have a "persecution complex" even as he has never examined or spoken to even one of them. However, this is irrelevant by now for the same reason WinAce has been told that survival of the movement past the second century is of no relevance.

The psychology of martyrdom just can't be ignored, as Holding does. Here's an article about religious persecution faced by the Bahá'í in Iran. Some of the parallels are striking:

The parallels die a painful death inasmuch as the Bahai religion is not based in any verifiable historical event, thus making it easy to assume that persecution verified the correctness of Bahai teachings. It also fails inasmuch as that the Bahais, like the Mormons, had places to flee to preserve themselves. Outside the oikoumene the Christians had no options but wilderness and barbarism. Bahai responses are equitable rather to civil rights protestors who believe in the justness of their cause.

This actually falsifies Holding's thesis-if there was an 'undeniable' witness to the Resurrection, who in their right mind would sacrifice eternal bliss for a few years of suffering on earth? ;)

Moral cowards. Next question?

Well, that's easy enough. Why do people join any other religion? Because they get convinced it's true thru apologetics equally fallacious to, if not worse, than those you're quoting now!

It's always "easy enough" when one responds with sound bites rather than details.

Appeal is then made to Carrier's accounts if military messiahs of Palestine. WinAce is oblivious to the obvious point that these failures only verify my thesis. The Egyptian's movement in dead and died early. So are Jonathan's and Theudas'. It is symptomatic of WinAce's refuge in non-answers that he asks, " Had military intervention not been applied and their followers massacred en masse, who knows how they would have turned out." Being that the movements were of a "military" character to begin with, no other option would have been possible as a conclusion.

Nevertheless TIF has shown that for Christianity, not having a solid witness to the Resurrection would have resolved in the same fate: extinction, or at best a tiny handful of "True Believers" per the Sabbatean movement -- NOT growth and expansion.

Has it occurred to you that the reason Mark claimed women found the tomb, and then ran away frightened without telling anyone (the oldest manuscripts end at Mark 16:8, no post-resurrection appearances at all), was to rationalize away the odd fact that no one heard of the story before?

That would be a remarkably silly argument given that it is the "consensus" that Mark's full end is lost, and that by WinAce's own account 1 Cor. 15 predates Mark and indicates an empty tomb as is.

WinAce's comments cut off here, apparently for lack of room.

[jpholding]

Page 2:

Stevie Sun Dog, who ran from here with his tail between his legs after being caught in and called on a long string of errors, stomps in with a few issues:

1) On John 20:22 -- Stevie notes a difference in my answers between http://www.tektonics.org/TK-LK.html and http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_FICF.html No sweat. The latter position is the result of further consultation and consideration; I will note it on the Luke page. It's called "further research" (as opposed to a pablum for Stevie's paranoid "Holding will say anything, anwhere , anytime, even if totally contradicts what he says anywhere" routine -- I wonder if it occurs to Stevie that there if he is right, there is no accruable benefit to me to report these different answers intentionally on such widely separated pages). Given that I have written 1300+ articles over the past 7 years, I would suggest that if I did NOT contradict earlier positions of my own because of further research, I'd deserve to be fired.

2) I say: 'Matthew's reference to the thirty pieces of silver may be of a similar nature, but given that this amount would be sensible for the time, it may also be an accurate historical reflection, or a close estimate (i.e., if Judas were given 28 pieces, why not round to 30 for effect?).' Stevie whimpers:

So why not just make up numbers and round them up for theological effect, to make it seem as if a prophecy had been fulfilled.

Apparently little Stevie lives in a very black and white world. The burden to show "made up" is larger than the burden for "rounded off", especially in light of the Jewish exegetical principle here, in which history called up the passage, not vice versa. By Stevie's logic, if a man admits to having committed one rape, why not charge him with several others he does not admit to?

3) I say: "By no means, Lord" Ezekiel 4:24, Acts 10:14 (medamos, Kyrios) -- Only this has any uniqueness, but it is a word used by Luke four times (also Luke 11:36, 12:4). Stevie whimpers: 'medamos , Kyrios' is a phrase used in the NT only about Peter refusing to eat. It is also found in Acts 11:8. But what does Holding mean by saying 'medamos' is found in Luke 11:36 and 12:4? Here is Luke 12:4 'And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.'Holdings's incompetence shines through time after time after time....

How's that foot taste, Stevie? A variant of "medamos" used here is "no more" in Luke 12:4. No wonder he left TWeb in disgrace.

4) Stevie says of Jesus calling out on the cross, "Who would have thought that barely conscious people, suffocating to death could shout?" Someone who realizes that all it takes is a few drawn breaths and enough time. What is Stevie now, a pulmonary specialist? He's not. I'll get confirmation on this issue from a trauma specialist I am acquainted with.

5) Then Stevie appeals to http://www.tektonics.org/crosswords.html where I say "'We need only recognize that John is focusing on what Jesus said that was not shouted publicly." Stevie whorps:

So Jesus shouted the conversations in Matthew and Mark, yet Holding says they were hardly audible

I have no idea where Stevie gets this from. I say nothing about "hardly audible" but of a distinction between "Eloi" and "Eli" under certain conditions. This man is on medication, folks.

Stevie then gets on topic some:

If you want to know how rumours could have spread in the ancient world :-One wonders why Pilate had no idea of what Jesus was supposed to have done, if the governor had all these thousands of people spying on everybody else.

I can only guess where Stevie gets the idea of, "Pilate had no idea....", and "thousands," despite Stevie's exaggeration and straw manning, is not necessary. Perhaps he means Pilate's rhetorical "what charge" question, which does not indicate lack of knowledge of Jesus' doings but is Pilate's formal start of the legal procedure. Who knows, since he doesn't get specific?

Paul warns in his letters of false letters supposedly by him, so rumours could abound and spread without being debunked.

Uh, and Paul in so making this warning was doing WHAT? :ahem: Did someone say, "Debunking"?

I say:

'The ancients would not have worried about not having adequate measures in place to stop a terrorist attack -- because such measures of surveillance were already present. Control comes not from indiviuals controlling themselves, but from the group controlling the individual. '

Stevie whoops:

Gosh, there were whole groups of sicarii terrorists (I think sicarii is the right word).

Yes, and their main pursuits were what, exactly? 1) Open war -- not terrorism. 2) Sneaking through crowds and killing individuals. What? Not blowing up Pilate's house with a sheep dung bomb? Sorry, false analogy. We're talking murder of single persons on the sly, not terrorism as we know it; Stevie is scale-impaired as usual.

Josephus's 'Wars of the Jews' says that a heifer gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the Temple.
This was written within ten years of the events by a participant in the Wars. Why was it not debunked?

How about:

1) Because it was true? And/or,
2) Because the claim presented no threat to the social order, and if anything, would have made Josephus' Roman overlords happy?

No comparison.

Pliny the Elder writes in Book 7 of 'Natural History' that Cicero knew of a copy of Homer's Iliad written on a piece of paper small enough to fit in a nutshell. Pliny describes a model of a four-horse chariot made out a piece of ivory smaller than a fly's wing. He mentions a boy of eight who ran 75 miles in just a few hours. Pliny reports a man who could see for 135 miles. Book 7 Section 174 has a tale of someone who could leave his body and report things thousands of miles away. Why were these claims not debunked?

Yes, I imagine many people felt that the stability of Rome was seriously threatened bu that tiny ivory chariot. They probably feared an invasion from tiny ivory soldiers driving tiny ivory horses. As usual, Stevie has no grasp of scale. (His complaints about John the Baptist are addressed by "Tarmac" on PW.)

Page 3:

The issue of use of Malina and Rohrbaugh on the woman at the well has been addressed previously here on TWeb. Note that Stevie brings it all up again as though nothing has happened. Stevie then tries for more "find the contradiction" games.

Me: 'Jesus marginalized himself by being occupied as an itinerant preacher. Of course, there was no Palestine News Network, and even if there had been one, there were no televisions to broadcast it. Jesus never used the established "news organs" of the day to spread His message. He travelled about the countryside, avoiding for the most part (and with the exception of Jerusalem) the major urban centers of the day. How would we regard someone who preached only in sites like, say, Hahira, Georgia?'

Stevie: So Jesus avoided major urban centres, never used established channels to spread his message and was a marginal figure etc etc. So why was everybody scouring the Roman Empire trying to debunk Christian claims?

As usual Stevie exaggerates and overstates. Not "everybody" needed to do this; only a few key figures with the influence and wealth needed to, and given Christianity's "top heaviness" in the area of the well-off, the model shows that what happened is that these people who could scour, did scour, and ended up convinced. And Stevie fails to distinguish between the pre-rez Jesus' teaching mission and the post-rez kerygmatic expansion. Truly the man has thinking problems.

And how did gnostic Christianity gain converts when people would have checked out the claims of gnostics to have things like Gospels written by Mary, or by Thomas, or stories about the infant Jesus?

Uh, because Gnostics relied on "secret knowledge," not historical testimony? :ahem:

Then, noting where I say 95% of the population was illiterate:

So most people could not even read Acts, even if it was circulated (and Holding has no evidence of that at all), and Holding scoffs at the idea that people circulated NT documents to evangelise.

I guess Stevie never heard of documents being read aloud. And the key players (like Herod's people) would have been among the literate anyway. Also, Stevie misses that there is a difference between use of documents to evangelize and use of them to record and report history and offer debate in the public square.

Then Stevie somehow gets the idea that this by me:

'Quotations were seldom exact, and were often done by memory, because documents were relatively rare and inaccessible and it could be a royal pain to look up a citation in a document'

Leads to this:

SO how could non-believers (who mostly couldn't read) look up the deeds of a marginal person that historians were not interested in, in documents which were relatively rare and inacessible, and were not even circulated as evangelistic documents?

No, I don't see a connection either. :huh: This referred to quotation of other documents when someone was writing a new document.

Then Stevie notes my use of Miller's quote, 'Literacy among the common populace was highly developed and wide-reaching, and had been so for centuries.' versus that 90% illiteracy figure. That Glenn was referring to a specific period in Israel alone, not the Greco-Roman world as a whole as I did, Stevie somehow misses.

Stevie even messes up his own skeptical friends, essentially rebutting WinAce's interpretation of Acts 17:11! Then he bungles:

In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says nothing about encouraging people to checking with eywitnesses. Not one thing.

Gosh, heck no, Stevie. The Corinthian church was 10 years old or more by that time; encouragement to check with witnesses, naming the 500, etc would have been done a decade ago! :dufus: Come on, Stevie, THINK! Stevie then abuses Galatians 1:6-8, and Tarmac handles that well so far, so no comment needed. (Though it is probably a waste to try to use terms like "covenantal nomism" with Stevie. He could also stand to check Nanos' thesis that the Judaizers in Galatia were Jews, not Christians.) He also abuses:

Matthew 22:37 '36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' Where is there anything about checking eyewitness reports? It seems to me to smack of bringing a nice clean, freshly-washed brain to your beliefs....

Of course, since Stevie assumes all religion is brainwashery, no surprise, but he's the one who has dipped his head in the Scrubbing Bubbles here. The foundation of the Shema was Israel's evidential encounter with God at the time of the Exodus. Stevie of course disputes the veracity of that, but it remains that God served a patron to Israel, and client-patron relationships were based on loyalty and trust established by relational performance. (See my article on the real meaning of "faith" at http://www.tektonics/org/whatfaith.html) What profound ignorance for Stevie to say, " Why should the meaning of English words be any different with Christianity?" English words? For a work written in Greek and in a different social setting? Good job, Stevie! :thumb:

Doesn't Paul complain about letters forged in his name? Why would people write faked letters if they knew they were going to be debunked?

I dunno, Stevie. Why would a bank robber rob a bank if he knew he was going to get caught? :dufus:

There is a page 4, but it just started so I will wait. In the meantime as well WinAce has taken his dog and pony show to iidb.org (where accusing people of lying is considered an argument), where we get a lot of repeat performances. We have dumb comments like this from "Toto": "It's really stretching things to go from traditional societies where social control is everywhere and everyone pokes their nose in your business, to saying that claims about Jesus would have been checked out." Gosh, it is? "It's really stretching things to go from societies where people checked things out to saying that claims about Jesus would have been checked out." Uh huh. Now you know why I consider iidb.org a dumping ground for the frustrated and insane. :ahem: Toto also tosses in vague bits about how these people believed in superstition and witchcraft; as usual, the Skeptics think all they have to do is tar with the "miracles" brush and everyone in the ancient world is rendered a slobbering moron. No, Toto: Your attempt to limit the control aspects to "who slept with who" is your own arbitary declaration. The comparison to witchcraft, etc. does not hold, because this refers to things that would be inaccesible to scrutiny in the paranormal realm -- not to historical events like Jesus' teachings, the crucifixion, and an empty tomb.

Then we have this asinine commentary from "Infidelletante":

There is an interesting story told in Acts 23 that can shed some light on the subject of Jewish reaction to Christianity. We are lead (sic) to believe the early church was active in evangelization and apology on the behalf of the new religion. This is most likely not so. In Acts 23 Paul goes to Jerusalem to quell the misgivings of the Jerusalem church regarding his teachings. To appease James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, Paul was required to take part in a ritual cleansing at the Temple to prove he ‘walkest orderly and keepest the law’ Acts 23:24. The leaders of the church in Jerusalem were deeply concerned that Paul was teaching his converts that they were no longer under the law as other Jews were. Other Jews such as themselves.

The correct interpretation of this passage is that for some years after the death of Jesus the members of the church in Jerusalem were indistinguishable from the multitude of devout Jews who kept the Law and offered sacrifice at the Temple.

There's more amateur exegesis from the School of Flip It Open and Comment. No, Paul did not go to Jerusalem "to quell the misgivings of the Jerusalem church regarding his teachings". He went to deliver the money he collected for the aid of the Jerusalem church (Acts 24:17). As for law-keeping, this displays the typical lack of education about social realities of the period. The situation for the Jerusalem church was far different than any other: They lived in the midst of a particularly seething pot, in which disrespect for the Law and for Jewish sensibilites could lead to a knife in your gut. To be "good neighbors" the Jerusalem church continued to observe the Law as a formality -- for the same reason, on a lesser scale, Paul had Timothy circumcised (16:3). To say that this respect for Jewish custom shows that the Jerusalem church people were still "Jews" without any sort of distinctive at all, and with no claims of a crucified and Risen Christ (how THAT jump would be legitimate in not explained) is patently ignorant. This person goes on to note that "James didn’t take Paul to the empty tomb", etc but excuse me, that would have taken place years ago, during Paul's first return to Jerusalem as a convert. (There is a minor error as well: It is said that "James took Paul to the only place that had any religious meaning to him and that was the Temple," but James is not said to be part of the party that went there -- 24:26.) I'm actually not surprised to find that this person's source is the amateurish work of Joel Carmichael which argued that Jesus was some sort of Zealot revolutionary (see http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_02_03_01.html). This is the kind of source these people think is authoritative!

Otherwise, Stevie repeats his same points we saw above, and Sauron the Sore Loser who ran from here with his tail between his legs whines some support for Stevie's off-topic cry-babying. There'll probably be more to come, but that's it for now.

[jpholding]

I'll start with a comment I got from my doctor friend -- who is a trauma specialist -- on Stevie's implication that Jesus could not cry out from the cross:

Many people seem to be gasping at straws (pun intended). It's called a "last gasp." That last bit of adrenalin allows the last bit of energy available to be marshalled for some last task. Tell anyone who is so certain that Jesus couldn't have said anything to get a life.

Stevie, get a life. :rofl: Now for the latest comments. Nothing new on IIDB as of this moment; we do have some new comments from Stevie and WinAce. Tarmac on PW is still doing well so again, comments only where needed, continuing on page 4 where we left off:

As for Paul meeting eyewitnesses, I remind you of his claim that he was unknown to the Judeaen church, and even years after his conversion, he had hardly met any...How could he have mey eyewitness and be 'unknown by face'? Perhaps these eyewitnesses had their eyes shut?

This is a stale liberal argument; in addition to what Tarmac offers in reply, a critical reading destroys this argument. We must remember that when Paul says he was unknown "by face" it does not necessarily mean that he had never been seen by the Judean churches. In the NT, "face" (prosopon) can mean simply the physical face, but in context also implies a certain degree of knowledge (cf. also 1 Thess. 2:17), and a certain degree of presence, not merely appearance. What Paul is saying in Galatians, in denying any connection to others for his preaching, is that he was not known of the Judean churches as an intimate friend or as one who had a relationship with them. Obviously, he did not go around introducing himself ("Hi, my name is Saul, and I'll be persecuting you today!"), or wearing a nametag, or having conversations with church members about the weather, before he hauled them off to the pokey! Saul/Paul may have been known "by face" (as we understand it) to those he persecuted, but they hardly exchanged names or business cards, and Saul would be known to the churches only by reputation, and separately as one of the party who gave them trouble when they showed up at the door. (See also Acts 26:20 in this regard, where Paul tells Agrippa that he preached in Judea and Jerusalem after his conversion. One would point out here that Paul was not going to be preaching in Jerusalem and Judea to churches that already knew the Gospel! He would be preaching in the synagogues and marketplaces to people who needed to know the Gospel! Other than that we should also consider the polemical purpose of Galatians, in which Paul is actively trying to distance himself from the Jerusalem church in order to affirm the originality and authenticity of his own teachings.)Gal. 1:22, when used to counter this passage in Acts, has been severely blown out of proportion.

On 1 Cor. 15:3:

The word used is 'paradidomi', which is not a 'technical' word at all.

Yes, it is. As Tarmac points out, it reflects the technical word used by rabbis to pass on sacred tradition. That it is used of the word about Judas handing over Jesus is not relevant because Jesus is not a sacred tradition Judas was handing over. Context, not just the word, establishes the technical meaning.

As for John 20:22, Holding happily admits he can reverse his positionn 180 degrees and never have been wrong before he changed his opinion, and was never wrong after he changed his opinion, while lambasting sceptics like Helms who hold the same view (that John 20:22 is an impartation of the Holy Spirit) that Holding held.

Stevie is as usual confused; I never held the same view as Helms. Stevie has removed the differentiating premisses of my view vs. Helms and claimed that we held the same view!

More confirmation that Holding will say anything.

In the meantime, Stevie who whines about my advancement in position, seems able to provide a refutation to neither one.

Meanwhile his gullible readers lap up all he says, painfully unaware that in a few months time, Holding will be saying exactly the opposite.....

I should hope, again, that if I do further research that advances my view, I WILL say something different! Again, I suppose Stevie considers it a virtue never to learn anything or advance yourself. Let that bespeak of his own lack of core values.

And where is the evidence that these 500 existed and that Paul met any of them, and was not just repeating rumours?

Where is the evidence that Paul was just repeating rumors, and had not met any of them? 1 Cor. 15 is a creedal statement whose form points to it being widely circulated as part of the kerygma. It would be useless without the known quantity and quality of the witnesses. Which leads again to my point that the 500 provides the needed explanation for Christianity's growth and survival against all possibility.

And how does Holding explain his new view that John 20:22 is NOT an impartation of the Holy Spirit? Silence.

Silence? Stevie just ignored my explanation. I know it is better because it fits within the Semitic pradigm of dramatic symbolic action. It also fits better with the lack of reaction (such as speaking in tongues) in John. In other words, it is a simpler and more contextually sound solution that the other. Meanwhile Stevie can't answer either one.

Somebody who can change his mind about that, cannot claim to be able to understand the Bible.

How ironic that a Skeptic condemns someone for having had an open mind and being welcoming of change after further investigation! :hrm:

Where is Holding's evidence that Acts was circulated to nob-believers so they could check up on the claims?

This is being discussed now in a thread in Apologetics 301, along with issues of OT versus NT use and accessibility. Stevie fails to grasp that the NT message was part of an evangelistic effort, whereas the OT was not (except when used by the NT).

WinAce meanwhile declines to engage and offers the excuse:

As I said earlier, I would not be debating Holding. It simply takes too much work to distill the three or four paragraphs of argument from the entire post of witty one-liners, begged questions, unevidenced assumptions and well-poisoning.

Indeed so. Responding with sound bites is much more efficient. :rofl:

Back to Stevie:

Galatians 1:11-12 For I did not receive (parelabon, from paralambano) it from any man, nor was I taught it, but (I received it) through a revelation of/about Jesus Christ. So Paul is adamant that his Gospel has NOT been received from the disciples.

Poor Stevie mixes categories again. Paul here refers to his kerygmatic message of grace and faith, not to the sort of data and tradition found in 1 Cor. 15.

And Holding claims that Acts was circulated widely , while the OT was relatively rare and inaccessible. What a joke!

A great joke indeed, one promulgated by experts in the field, notably Gamble in Books and Readers in the Early Church. That there were OT copies in the synagogue is not a matter of issue here. The copies would not be handed out to just any schlep to read and write off of, and even if they were, they were still on cumbersome and difficult to manage scrolls.

Amazing! So documents were readily accessible, but if you tried writing a new document, for some reason, all the documents you had been writing suddenly become inaccessible.

This comment is almost incoherent, but as above Stevie fails to distinguish between writing a new document and use of claims in an evangelistic setting (where oral or written will suffice).

As for his remark that when his articles claim that ''Literacy among the common populace was widespread' he was referring only to Jews, which does not contradict his claim that 90% of non-Jews were illiterate, well , isn't he the one claiming that non-Jews were the people Acts was circulated to?

First, it is Miller's remark, not mine. Second, Stevie still forgets about orality and evangelization.

Here is the question I asked 'SO how could non-believers (who mostly couldn't read) look up the deeds of a marginal person that historians were not interested in, in documents which were relatively rare and inacessible, and were not even circulated as evangelistic documents?'

This has already been answered; Stevie just doesn't "get it". All that is needed is that small group of literate and interested people to do the legwork; from there, their own authority spreads the news to the lower levels as needed. That is exactly what we have available.

On Pliny and ivory chariots, etc: Holding's answer to why these claims were not debunked? Silence. People believed all sorts of stupid things, even intelligent people like Pliny the Elder, and nobody went around pointing out that these things were not true.

Silence? Can Stevie read? As I said: Yes, I imagine many people felt that the stability of Rome was seriously threatened bu that tiny ivory chariot. They probably feared an invasion from tiny ivory soldiers driving tiny ivory horses. As usual, Stevie has no grasp of scale. That's not "silence", that's a devastating answer showing how irrelevant Stevie's point is. (Elisha added some more good points.)

Even Holding's own claim that people like Gnostics believed things without checking to see if they were historical cuts to ribbons his claim that ancient people checked to see if things were historical.

Um, sure, if the Gnostics, a group specifically "into" secret knowledge and hostile to objective epistemology, believed without checking (they couldn't anyway, what they claimed and so many years after the fact) then that proves all ancients, everywhere, never checked. Typical Stevie logic.

Back later this week for more, as needed.

[Elisha]

DeeDee might edit one of the words here (though, it does have a fitting Webster's definition hehe), but, if ya do that, please leave the rest, DeeDee :bow: My friend summed up the debate quite well...


Carr: Holding is hard on me and he was mean that one time. Alas, the world is but cruel.

Holding: Carr is a snivelling weasel.

Tim: Oh yeah? WinAce is an ass.

All the people: We agree!

Rilke's Namedropper: Oh come now. WinAce's just misunderstood.

Jesus: I agree with Tim!

(All the people CHEER and the peasants REJOICE)

You've gotta read the lengthy debate to find the humor in that.

[Elisha]

Just to make sure JP reads this:

"This debate seems to have ended, though.

JP, when you read this, I'm wondering if you can offer some closing comments.

Thanks a lot for accepting my invite to come here to present and defend an argument for Christianity. I'll be sure to keep the thread at PW bumped up for a while for any Christians that want to learn more about it.

You're the coolest, man :cheers: "

[jpholding]

Well, this seems over, so in closing:

I think we have seen typical reactions here from WinAce and Carr. They know nothing of the social world of the NT (WinAce even admits it) yet are willing to spread around their responses as though authoritative. Kyle Gerkin was a much better respondent on this issue.

[Lili]

I

[Sparko]

WinAce has passed on and reviving this thread serves no purpose Lili.

Closing thread.