September 2008 SCrewballs

[jpholding]

http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/aug08scr.html

August feature is up.

[Bill the Cat]

Stupid5er:

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=118023

[Challenger Grim]

Found this on Yahoo! Answers

If they were pro-life, they would adopt many many children since they supposedly "care so much" and want to make sure that all people considering abortions carry the pregnancy to term and give the child up for adoption.

I personally know several pro-lifers who have adopted and advocate for women to put up their children for adoption.

Don't you love people who live in a fantasy world? I wonder if that girl ever thanked her mom for not aborting her.

[Challenger Grim]

Unfortunately for her, I DON'T support the war, I DON'T support capital punishment, I DON'T like killing bugs, etc.

I've often wondered how some can oppose the death penalty but support abortion. Seems a much greater contradiction than the reverse or (shocker!) being consistent on both.

[jpholding]

Stupid5er:

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=118023

Wow. Massive stupidity in a can.

Does everybody agree with me that the early "Christian" church could and did find the difference between "with you I am well pleased" and "this day I have begotten you" to be doctrinally significant?

Um, no. "Son" is a Christological title of the incarnate Jesus and its lack would not materially affect an understanding of Jesus' divinity and his identity as eternal hypostatic Wisdom.

Let's just stick with the doctrinal significance here. The issue of whether the Adoptionists were right or wrong for using "this day I have begotten you" to reject Jesus' divinity from birth, is another subject for another thread.

No doubt it needs to be, since on the basis of the above, it was one of the adoptionists' stupider arguments.

Also, I haven't gotten any response to the most important observation I've made about the "textual corruption" issue.

O RLY. Couldn't be because it was a dumb question, could it?

feed and house the family and be good moral people, obviously didn't have the tools, time or ability to go chasing down textual variants, like you do today with "Bible Works 7.0" and Google.

Thankfully they didn't need to, because the contextual tools for understanding (such as concepts of hypostatic Wisdom) were already part of their mental framework. They didnt need Bible Works or Google because they weren't as stupid about such things as we are.

As such, they were pretty much stuck with whatever text their local scribe made for them, including any and all of it's doctrinally significant deviations from the original.

And of course, they were also cut off from opposing views, because there was no church hierarchy or structure, no opposing teachers, and no means taken to correct such views; in fact, any time a new heresy popped up, magic duct tape appeared to seal the mouths of dissenters. Arius was such a dolt to think that doing things like composing slogans for his views would manage to influence anyone, or that he'd need such things to answer critics and opponents.

Being in such a deprived capacity, they would have very little reason to be suspicious of "God's word". Hence, we all agree that early Christianity was split into many groups, each with their own forms of the gospel, or outrightly false gospels, pointing the finger at the other groups and crying "heretic".

My my. What a simple-minded view of history.

This observation shows that that a corrupted NT text had great ability to decieve the simple Christians of the earliest centuries. In other words, if a Christian child was being reared in an Adoptionist-community, then the "gospel" that child will most likely revere the rest of her life would be the one that says "this day I have begotton you" at Luke 3:22,and therefore would think nothing amiss about her community's belief that Jesus wasn't chosen by God until he was baptized.

Um, it seems to me that it has been the norm to suppose that persons raised and continuing in ignorance get a break on such matters.

(the question of whether it should have been obvious to them from other Lukan material that Jesus was begotten of God from birth begs the question of how the Adoptionists viewed that other Lukan material.

Oh. I see. So we'll beg the question the other way instead, yes?

So I would like the fundamentalists and conservatives here to explain how they can go around saying the textual corruption of the NT was never acute enough to successfully decieve modern Christians, when in fact modern Christians still fight with each other about text-types and whether some readings are corruptions, and when our ability today to weed out corruptions doesn't demonstrate howancient Christians were supposed to know the difference.

Um, never heard that claim made before. The claim would be more like it wouldn't deceive anyone who was being honest with the text (eg, not deceiving themselves). You know, like David Koresh was honest with it, for example. You remember how he used the Handbook of Biblical Social Values and Aune's commentary to arrive at his exegesis of Revelation, don't you?

Adoptionism is easily revealed as fraudulent and would have been to any person in ancient times that was honest with the readily available data. It could only be kept by doing things like Marcion did -- cutting out what you didn't like -- or by making baseless, contrived claims to secret traditions, etc.

Hell, Jehovah's Witnesses today use the doctrinally corrupt "New World Translation", although they live in a time when they can easily perform research that would have been impossible for ancient Christians, to determine whether their NWT is corrupt.

Yes, they could. The problem is that they don't. Because they don't WANT to. Not because they can't or are unable to.

Do you seriously think early Christianity would be the mess of splinter groups that it was, if the true NT text was always available to everybody who sincerely wanted to know the truth?

A lack of such sincerity was precisely the problem, you moron. At some point, someone was insincere with the text. They lied. They may well have spread the lie to innocents, but those who accept this falsehood in innocence and continue to accept it thusly will be cut a break. Too bad that isn't you. Ignorant you are, but not innocent.

If it wasn't always available, then obviously corrupted NT texts did enjoy a measure of success in decieving ancient simpleton Christians, amen?

To say nothing of modern simpleton fundy atheists.

If that wasn't enough argument for you, then consider how diverse Christianity is today, in the modern age of objectivity and science, and ability to check scholarly commentaries, etc. Christianity is still plagued today by it's members arguing over which NT text or text-type is superior, King James Onlyists are just one example.

Why yes. We all know how Peter Ruckman answered Malina and Rohrbaugh so well, don't we? Er....ooooh.....

What, does God care more about YOUR doctrinal purity, than he cared about the doctrinal purity of a child growing up in a 3rd century Adoptionist-Christian community?

If it didn't cost them anything, there's really nothing to worry about, is there? A 10 year old animist who has never heard the Gospel is closer to heaven than Peter Ruckman is, perhaps. Or at least will be better rewarded at death.

On the other hand, devout liars like spitfiver are another matter.

[Challenger Grim]

There's a whole load of them on godawful fan fic dot net. Most of whom take the tack that anyone who's anti-abortion is OHNOES TRYING TO CONTROL WOMEN OR OHNOEZ TELLING ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY BODY ITS NUNYA BIZNESS!

Why were you on fanfic to begin with?
(BTW: go to tvtropes and look up "all fan fic writers are female")

And the rest basically do the "every chow a planned and wanted chow" (and drag out horrific abuse stories to show how much better off a fetus would be dead than in an unwanted home).

One has to wonder, why don't they just advocate killing all those poor children? It is the logical result of their arguments.

[Sparko]

Stupid5er:

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=118023

He is still harping about that? sheesh. He needs to do a little studying on textual criticism.

[MarcusAndreas]

I nominate JP for an Anti-Screwball for the fact that some things I sent in last month WON!!!!!

[Josephus]

Why is Kabane's video on the authorship and date of Matthew down as a screwball??

(in the videos you posted as screwballs on your site.)

[jpholding]

Why is Kabane's video on the authorship and date of Matthew down as a screwball??

(in the videos you posted as screwballs on your site.)

I suspect it's one of the comments that was in mind from one of his loyal fans.

[The Curtmudgeon]

AntiScrewtop nomination for a young woman whose car I was behind during the commute home today. Besides the regulation "Darwin phish" on her car, she sported (on the rear windscreen, not the bumper) a bumper sticker that had an ape on one end, a man on the other, and in between the slogan "The logical next step is ATHEISM!" (bold & caps as per original). I'm suggesting an AntiScrewie for her because, given the underlying assumption implicit in the slogan, it's logically correct: If ape did give rise to man, then of course the logical next step is Atheism.

The (of course, it's the logical equivalent of saying, "Given the sequence 7, Q, ..., the third term is obviously .") Curtmudgeon

[lilpixieofterror]

Ken is getting really desperate now. Take a look at his newest rant and note the underlined part.

So, I now have had some time to settle in a little - see how thinks work around here from 10,000 ft. Get my feet wet so to speak.

As stated in my welcome message I was invited by a Christian, PeterEsther, who wanted some assistance in answering some of the questions I posed to her. Now, since arriving, I have realised I am going to have to broaden my parameters a little and do some background in order to hit the right notes. So this first thread is purely background - nothing major at all.

However, PeterEsther and myself are the "fortysomething" brigade (actually I don't officially turn 40 til Feb but close enough) so I feel it is very important to ensure the opinions are relevant in terms of experience and world view.

So, I would like to lay some ground rules for my discussion if you don't mind - I am happy to discuss these ground rules in order to get to where I need to be, before we get into the "meat" of my investigations.

1) Christians only to answer (for Esther's benefit, not mine), although I am happy for atheists / agnostics / others to chip in if they can enrich the discussion BUT with the following caveat : -
2) Only reply if you are over 35, again with the following caveat : -
3) UNLESS you genuinely feel you have some special claim to expertise - ie I very much welcome those under 35 who are scholars in the field of theology, classical civilisations, archaeology or any other related / relevant field.
4) Now, it's not going to be relevant at this stage as I don't think I'm asking any difficult questions here, but I want to use a consistent set of ground rules on all my posts. After some research on the author I am completely unwilling to accept the authority of anything on www.tektonics.org.
My sources are various - here are a few links:
http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/...d-summary.html
http://the-anointed-one.com/lie.htm
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspo...lding-off.html
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/holding1.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...s/holding.html
There are others - I do not claim that this proves absolutely that Tektonics.org cannot be trusted, but certainly there is sufficient doubt for an outsider to question the veracity of this source, and frankly if Christianity rises or falls base on any one single apologist source than I think that's pretty much "game over". Therefore if Tektonics.org material is going to form any part of your discussion you are not welcome to respond. By all means quote other sources, but no weight will be given to "arguments from tekton" any more than any other "arguments from internet authority" that are unverifiable elsewhere or where there is similar weight of proof that the source is tainted.

So - those are my ground rules - please let me know if these are acceptable while I move on to my first question:

The first question is simple:
What is the basis for Christian belief? My opening hypothesis is that it falls within three categories, so before I get into any meaty let us first just ensure we have a full menu to start with. No point asking a question if I have completely missed my mark.

I propose that the basis of belief falls into one of the following three categories:

1) Tradition
Tradition can be any oral or written tradition (e.g scripture), handed down within a family or community.
2) Authority
Accepting the authority of a living person (priest, minister, cult leader, internet site) who tells you that "these are the reasons you should believe". Authority may of course also refer back to 1)
3) Revelation
Personal experience of some kind ("feeling the presence of God", feeling "Christ entering my life" etc). Quite possibly 3) occurs after a basic exposure to 1) or 2), but not necessarily.

I apologise if this is all a bit abstract - more specific questions will follow, I just don't want to waste any more time on blind alleys.

Once we can establish the basis / bases for belief, I can move on to some more specific questions by category.

Thanks for your patience.

Ken

Take a look at his source work against you JPH. so does this further his campaign for Platinum noob?

Edited to add, if you think this is bad, take a look at his profile, first his post bit:

"Ken_1969- Tektonics - liars and frauds"

Of course, DJ can lie all he wants, but that's ok... because DJ disagrees with you and agrees with him. This is not it... there is more:

"Home Page: http://the-anointed-one.com/lie.htm "

Wow, he links to dimbo who has been proved wrong and thoughly refuted by you, me, and pretty much anybody with half a brain (which is more of a brain than Ken has). He couldn't end his frustration without attacking the person who has completely humiliated him in front of oh so many people:

"What does yxboom mean?: Crystal/Pixie's spelling"

It's funny he didn't start his spelling rant against me until I started pointing out his errors, which his biggest one being his misquote of you and me proving that he did misquote you.

So JPH, does he get an automatic platinum yet or does that honor still go to DJ?

[jpholding]

Ken is getting really desperate now. Take a look at his newest rant and note the underlined part.



Take a look at his source work against you JPH. so does this further his campaign for Platinum noob?

I'd say so.

Has he also disallowed responses from pixies, pirates, and people with brown hair yet?

[lilpixieofterror]

I'd say so.

Has he also disallowed responses from pixies, pirates, and people with brown hair yet?

As soon as they prove him wrong he will. Anything is better than admitting he's wrong, take a look at his profile if you want a good laugh.

[T-Shirt Ninja]

http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/aug08scr.html

August feature is up.

The August 2007 John Loftus Collection?