September 2008 SCrewballs

[MarcusAndreas]

You'll spend eons in Purgatory for that.

Probably.

[mig_killer2]

I nominate Robert Price for claiming that Paul never believed in the resurrection.

Sure, Bob, and the Pope isn't Catholic either.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Price thinks that Paul believed in a non-bodily resurrection of Christ and hence of the final resurrection of the believers.

this however, though very likely false (see: Wright Resurrection of the Son of God), is pretty popular among non-christian scholars. Many atheist scholars just can't get enough of driving wedges between Paul and the Evangelists. If this is what Price is getting at, then you're simply not warranted in nominating him for a screwball award.

however, if Price holds to the idea that Paul believed in no resurrection, physical or otherwise, then you certainly are warranted for giving him a screwball award.

[jpholding]

I'm pretty sure Dr. Price thinks that Paul believed in a non-bodily resurrection of Christ and hence of the final resurrection of the believers. .

Correct. That too is screwy, but only would win Bronze.

[jpholding]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156...cm_rdp_product

Dan Barker is trying to milk the New Atheism cash cow!

[T-Shirt Ninja]

Here's a whopper by Penn Jillette....

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

[jpholding]

What do you know. The Argument by Room for Jell-O.

[mig_killer2]

Correct. That too is screwy, but only would win Bronze.

I'm not sure it would be worthy of bronze especially when Britian's Greatest new testament scholar had to write an 800 page book refuting it.

[Goonerman]

No, all that is needed to refute it is the meaning of 'raised', which if I remember rightly has the literal meaning of being 'go-upped', in 1 Cor 15:4, the meaning of 'anastasis'. the state of standing up, now what did Jesus get 'go-upped' and end up in the state of standing up from? From being buried. I.e. physical resurrection. Furthermore, see Romans 8:11 and Romans 14:9 for a more explicit statement from Paul that Jesus' Resurrection was physical, the Spirit giving life to the dead mortal body, of both Him and eventually the believer.

NT Wright wrote 800 pages so as to give the maximum scholarly information possible. He's simply fleshing out in a big and detailed way what is known through a few verses, from the Greek words employed in the original and clear in any translation.

[mig_killer2]

I nominate the stickam user (If you think youtube users are morons, you will want to kill yourself after a few minutes in the "debate faith" room at stickam) "AtheistAtLarge" for saying this to me a couple minutes ago

All your arguments fail. Every youtube atheist has destroyed your arguments

[mig_killer2]

No, all that is needed to refute it is the meaning of 'raised', which if I remember rightly has the literal meaning of being 'go-upped', in 1 Cor 15:4, the meaning of 'anastasis'. the state of standing up, now what did Jesus get 'go-upped' and end up in the state of standing up from? From being buried. I.e. physical resurrection. Furthermore, see Romans 8:11 and Romans 14:9 for a more explicit statement from Paul that Jesus' Resurrection was physical, the Spirit giving life to the dead mortal body, of both Him and eventually the believer.

NT Wright wrote 800 pages so as to give the maximum scholarly information possible. He's simply fleshing out in a big and detailed way what is known through a few verses, from the Greek words employed in the original and clear in any translation.

hmmm, richard Carrier has some curious arguments for the non-bodily resurrection (though I addressed the bulk of them in my debate with amnouy), but coulden't it mean that his spirit left the body? Plotinus did use "anastasis" to talk about the spirits leaving the body.

[Challenger Grim]

John Goddard needs to go back to science class and try to graduate this time.

Conservation of matter. We're not all going to be able to have the EXACT same atoms building us up because otherwise... we're going to run out of atoms. The only way for everyone to be resurrected is for people to get new bodies.

I think there will be enough to go around. Either that or those selfish old mummies and people in graves need to donate some atoms.

[jpholding]

I'm not sure it would be worthy of bronze especially when Britian's Greatest new testament scholar had to write an 800 page book refuting it.

Erm, far from all of those 800 pages are addressed to that particular aspect of the issue....and really, the broader sweep of lit on the subject shows just how much Price strains (and leaves out) when he makes his arguments.

I address Carrier's claims in my own series on The Empty Tomb.





Meanwhile, awards to go. Mattchu Green is back for a sec:

If you have reached this website, chances are you were directed here by reading the book Why I Became an Atheist by John W Loftus. The website linked to was formerly a blog called “Tekton on Trial”. I had started this blog to expose the fallacious apologetics of Tekton Ministries and its founder Mr. James Patrick Holding. I thought that some of his fallacious apologetics were in need of a critique and that his behavior, character, and vile antics were in need of exposing as well. I had hoped to shame him for his extreme egoism, his vile and nasty abuse towards people who took views that he didn’t agree with, particularly skeptics and infidels, and his appalling hypocrisy as well as dishonesty and other ethically questionable behavior. I came to conclude that Mr. Holding is a vile and evil man and I see no point trying to further shame him or his acolytes into apologizing for horrendous misbehavior. I have decided, frankly, that he is no longer worth the time to critique, be it his silly arguments or his atrocious behavior. That doesn’t mean that I will never write a critique of anything he says ever again nor does it mean that I will not ever respond to anything he has written, such as a critique of anything I write but I see no point in dignifying his unethical antics or his frankly evil character.

This being the case, I have closed the blog and it is no longer functional as of this writing. But since my friend John has linked to this website, I am going to keep up the essay on the failed land promise but with some editing and some improvements. I have it on the blog in the meantime but in the future I plan on transferring this essay on the failed land promise over to my own webpage on the Secular Web. In fact, I plan to make this essay on the failed land promise a part of a much larger essay on failed prophecies in general. I am still in the process of researching two other prophecies that I believe failed, namely the promise of an eternal throne to David and his descendents as well as the promise of an eternal sacrificial system. When I am able to have it done, I will transfer the failed land promise essay over to my own personal page on the Secular Web and I will include a link redirecting visitors of the defunct blog to my own personal page where readers may read the article on the failed land promise essay. After that, when I update the essay, readers will be taken to the essay containing the more detailed and broader argument considering the three failed prophecies of the land promise, the eternal dynastic throne for David as well as the eternal sacrificial system.

I hope to eventually close and delete this blog and so I will attempt to convince the editors at Prometheus Books to edit Loftus’ book in future editions so that they will not have to be redirected to my webpage by having been directed here first. I will announce editorial changes that have been made; including updates of this particular piece that you are reading that will announce the changes as they are being made. The first edition of this book, however, when readers click on the link to this blog should automatically be redirected to the Secular Web page where the new essay will be hosted. Readers should be delighted to know that other essays and projects are in the works and among them is a detailed critique of the argument against any legendary embellishments of the Bible, as well as a detailed critique of Mr. Holding’s essay “The Impossible Faith”.

Screwbies to Mattchu for well, just being a lunatic. And for being DJ's "friend" even after DJ was exposed as a bold-faced liar.

Screwbie to DJ for giving a link to the blog in his book.




And, Dumplin' Dumbash does it again, riding that same old "waaah, God doesn't kiss my butt" hobbyhorse and declaring that historians are just fooling themselves when they use accuracy of detail as a way to establish an author's reliability and status as an eyewitness:

As an even better example, G&T spend 3 and a half pages spelling out 84 historical details that Luke got right in the book of Acts. 84 things, such as the fact that he spelled the names of cities correctly, and mentioned Greeks believing in gods named Zeus and Hermes, and used the correct names of local officials and VIP’s. They conclude the list by asking, “Is there any doubt that Luke was an eyewitness to those events or at least had access to reliable eyewitness testimony?”

Well, yes there could be. Obviously. If the only way a person could know such things is by being an eyewitness to Paul’s missionary journeys, then there would be no way scholars today could know that Luke got any of them right. The fact that G&T are bragging about Luke’s historical accuracy demonstrates that this information does not require eyewitness participation and/or access. They are inflating Luke’s credentials as an eyewitness by citing trivialities that don’t actually demonstrate he personally witnessed anything.

Nor is it necessarily the case that we do know that Luke got all of these details right. A few items on the list, for example, have to do with a specific shipwreck during a specific Mediterranean storm. Scholars can verify that Luke’s account is not inconsistent with typical weather patterns for that part of the world, but it would hardly take a great feat of storytelling to imagine a dramatic shipwreck in a seafaring region known for sudden dangerous storms.

Yep. It's all a conspiracy to fool YOU, Dumplin'.

What Geisler and Turek forget is that we are eyewitnesses as well. Every day we live, we are eyewitnesses of a world in which God’s behavior is dramatically different from the sort of behavior Luke ascribes to Him. We witness a self-consistent world, an infallibly true world, in which God does not do any of the things Luke claims to have seen (or heard of). And even though the alleged reasons for God’s past behavior are just as real and just as compelling today as they were back then, we see an unmistakable lack of divine response to those needs and priorities.

So in other words, forget standard historigraphic practice -- it all has to be bogus because God isn't coming down and wiping the drool off Dumplin's chin RIGHT NOW.

If he rides that hobbyhorse any harder, he's gonna break it....

[Challenger Grim]

We witness a self-consistent world, an infallibly true world,...

If he rides that hobbyhorse any harder, he's gonna break it....

Not according to quantum mechanics and some other REALLY weird science theories. But then, try and disprove DD with science and his head explodes.

[energyman]

I'm pretty sure Dr. Price thinks that Paul believed in a non-bodily resurrection of Christ and hence of the final resurrection of the believers.

this however, though very likely false (see: Wright Resurrection of the Son of God), is pretty popular among non-christian scholars. Many atheist scholars just can't get enough of driving wedges between Paul and the Evangelists. If this is what Price is getting at, then you're simply not warranted in nominating him for a screwball award.

however, if Price holds to the idea that Paul believed in no resurrection, physical or otherwise, then you certainly are warranted for giving him a screwball award.

Does anyone even know what a "spiritual" resurrection would entail?

[TolkienFan]

Thanks to SteveF for bringing this to our attention:

http://www.rr-bb.com/showpost.php?p=778624&postcount=13