February 2012 Screwballs

[Benson Shays]

Right, everyone before around 2000 years ago somehow had enough knowledge of Christianity to reject it, even if they didn't even know it would emerge during the first century AD.

Makes sense to me. *eats more carpet glue

[Darth Executor]

Little Miss Black Screen wrote me a PM asking:



Unfortunately, she's already demonstrating her incompetence again by exceeding her stored private message quota, so I can't answer in turn. So I'll put my reply here instead.

***

I'm not debating you. I will issue a response in a new vid, and you will not be named in it, though your alleged arguments will be crushed. For one thing, you are too ignorant, and too ignorant of your own ignorance, to be worth such personal attention. For another, if I crush you publicly, I will get a lot of whining about beating up on a teenager.

As an example of your profound ignorance, and your inability to correct it with any kind of real work:

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...54#post3360854

Seriously, if you're too lazy to do things like go and LOOK UP Warren Allen Smith and check to see if he IS a "religious person" -- if you're so inept that you don't even try to find out, and think that just announcing your assumption makes you a worthy debate opponent -- you're badly mistaken, in over your head, and lazy beyond all redemption.

I'd strongly advise you to just have your fun in places like the "last person who says meow" thread and keep out of my way.

Now don't write me again.

***

[Jolly Rogers]

So Dan Wallace just debated Bart Ehrman again, and he gives a summary of the debate here: http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blo...n-round-three/

In the comments there is a one line comment from a lass called Mary: "The new testament has to many contradictions to see it as written with the help of the holy spirit or god breathed."

It'll be interesting to hear about the 1st century Mark fragment in a year's time.

[Benson Shays]

It'll be interesting to hear about the 1st century Mark fragment in a year's time.

I'm with James McGrath on that one. Even if it does hold up, it won't make a bit of difference to skeppies.

[Challenger Grim]

From a commentator on John C Wright's blog. (no, there's not much context being lost here)

Yes it could be one of those, or it could be door #4: I am in fact a prophet of the Dark Side on par with Hitler, Lovecraft and Palpatine, here to share the power of the Dark Energy and the cosmic Black Flame which I receive nightly from the Void, the black holes, the stars and planets which burn so brightly here in the Arizona desert that I feel as though I could reach up and seize them for the greater glory of the Black Sun Imperium.

[Teluog]

Another sanity award to the book No More Christian Nice Guy:

Christian Nice Guys are afraid to be bold, because the church has them petrified of sin. They're afraid that when they move into masculinity they may misstep, say something wrong, upset the order of things. They worry that they may go overboard and not behave perfectly. If I live small, I'll sin less.

By now you can see that living small is profoundly sinful: Peace that avoids and denies actual conflict is counterfeit, using passivity as an excuse. When you're tempted to fall back into that destructive way of thinking, remember the words of Martin Luther: If you're going to sin, he said, then you ought to "sin boldly." That's as forgivable as your current timid sin, so what are you worried about?

I hear people testify in church that they know they are making the decisions in life because they "feel God's peace." Conversely, many times when I've followed what God says in his Word, I feel turmoil. I've never stood up for justice, for example, without getting pounded by someone and then licking deep wounds; at the same time, I know that my actions have brought my Lord pleasure and, hopefully, glory--this brings a peace that surpasses understanding. Christian living is not a series of unbroken feel-good moments. That's New Age mumbo-jumbo.

It's time to be more (not less) offensive while standing up for truth. It's time to give people what my friend Dr. Kevin Leman calls Vitamin N: "Tell people no. It's good for you and others." Charles Spurgeon likewise advised his students, "Learn to say no. It will do you more good than Latin."

The Bible says that "the righteous are as bold as a lion" (Proverbs 28:1). It's safe to say we are not yet remarkably bold. Let's give people some Vitamin B--boldness--because it's good for our souls and for theirs.

[jpholding]

Screwball to pseudo-scholar David Farnell, co-editor of The Jesus Crisis, who saw my comment at:

http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/20...mbie-argument/


And wrote me an email which started:

Dear JP Holding or aka “Robert Turkel”

...and it went downhill from there.

[One Bad Pig]

Preterist Gangrene: Its Diagnosis, Prognosis and Cure by Martyn McGeown

[Challenger Grim]

Preterist Gangrene: Its Diagnosis, Prognosis and Cure by Martyn McGeown

Wait, is this for screwball or anti-screwball nom?

Now for those interested in a laugh, look up "Equality, the God for people who think they have no God". It's pretty funny.

[One Bad Pig]

Wait, is this for screwball or anti-screwball nom?

Screwball. Among other things, it asserts that orthodox preterism inevitably leads to hyperpreterism.

[MWM958]

I'm with James McGrath on that one. Even if it does hold up, it won't make a bit of difference to skeppies.

this discovery's gonna be interesting...

[Benson Shays]

this discovery's gonna be interesting...

Some Christ-mythers are already claiming the find will confirm doherty's work.

[Chrawnus]

Some Christ-mythers are already claiming the find will confirm doherty's work.

You mean the one where they're claiming that he's maintained that Mark is to be dated within the first century AD? Even if that's true (i.e that that's Doherty's position) I fail to see how that's anything other than damaging to his Christ myth "theory".

[Raphael]

Some Christ-mythers are already claiming the find will confirm doherty's work.

Ok, so Erhman is not a Myther, but Wallace points this out "In the give-and-take that followed, I failed to ask Bart to lay out what he needed to believe that we had the original text of the NT. This was asked in our debate last October, and Bart said that he would need to see ten MSS of Mark, written within a week of the autograph, and having no more than a 0.001% deviation. I called him on that skepticism in the TC-List, and he conceded that he was speaking off the cuff and that it was an exaggeration. I noted that the question asked had to do with the minimum he would need to believe, so if he gave an exaggeration he was not really answering the question. Further, I noted that since there are only 57,000 letters in Mark, to require no more than 0.001% deviation would mean half a letter at most!"

I would imagine that Myther's and skeptics would all have the same response.

[Benson Shays]

You mean the one where they're claiming that he's maintained that Mark is to be dated within the first century AD? Even if that's true (i.e that that's Doherty's position) I fail to see how that's anything other than damaging to his Christ myth "theory".

Yep. http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/02/...-earl-doherty/

One thing is certain. Earl Doherty has steadfastly maintained that the Gospel of Mark must be dated squarely within the first century. (pp. 3, 400-404 of Jesus Neither God Nor Man and p. 196 of The Jesus Puzzle)

(Other mythicists — Drews, Wells, Price – have given the Gospel of Mark a terminus a quo of 70 c.e.)