Announcement

Collapse

Deeper Waters Forum Guidelines

Notice – The ministries featured in this section of TheologyWeb are guests of this site and in some cases not bargaining for the rough and tumble world of debate forums, though sometimes they are. Additionally, this area is frequented and highlighted for guests who also very often are not acclimated to debate fora. As such, the rules of conduct here will be more strict than in the general forum. This will be something within the discretion of the Moderators and the Ministry Representative, but we simply ask that you conduct yourselves in a manner considerate of the fact that these ministries are our invited guests. You can always feel free to start a related thread in general forum without such extra restrictions. Thank you.

Deeper Waters is founded on the belief that the Christian community has long been in the shallow end of Christianity while there are treasures of the deep waiting to be discovered. Too many in the shallow end are not prepared when they go out beyond those waters and are quickly devoured by sharks. We wish to aid Christians to equip them to navigate the deeper waters of the ocean of truth and come up with treasure in the end.

We also wish to give special aid to those often neglected, that is, the disabled community. This is especially so since our founders are both on the autism spectrum and have a special desire to reach those on that spectrum. While they are a special emphasis, we seek to help others with any disability realize that God can use them and that they are as the Psalmist says, fearfully and wonderfully made.

General TheologyWeb forum rules: here.
See more
See less

A Response To David Cross

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A Response To David Cross

    How wrong can you get Biblical Transmission?

    Link

    -----

    How did we not get the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

    Let me tell you the story about how we got the idea of evolution.

    Once in history Charles Darwin was sailing around in the Beagle Boat and saw a bunch of birds who had different beaks and came up with an idea of animals mutating into different forms, kind of like Pokemon, and then decided to extrapolate all the way back to the past. Modern scientists today think that there was a pond somewhere on Earth and a lightning bolt struck it and some cells came together and a bunch of them turned into a fish that crawled out of the ocean and turned into every other animal that we see over time. Unfortunately for the theory, Darwin recanted of it on his deathbed.

    Anyone who is an evolutionist be it an evolutionary creationist or a naturalistic evolutionist would think I am a total moron on the theory saying that. You know what? They would be right. That would be one of the worst presentations I could give of evolution. That doesn’t mean that evolution is true, but it does mean that I don’t know what I’m talking about with it.

    Now imagine if someone said the same kind of thing about the Bible? What if someone made a statement presuming to be an authority on a subject and yet it was nonsense? Such is the case with a meme I saw recently. I went to my site here to see if I had said anything about it and I hadn’t. Therefore, I decided I should write about it.

    This meme is attributed to David Cross. I do not know for sure if he said the quote or not, but people spread it around anyway. For the sake of argument, I am going to be assuming it was said but even if it was not, the thought expressed, or lack of thought I should say, is one that is commonly shared.

    So let’s look at this meme in all of its infamy.

    DavidCross.jpg

    Where to begin?

    First off, the Bible is a book that was written over a long period of time so to say when it was written doesn’t really make sense. It’s also unclear about what is meant by when it was editing. Some editing did take place in copying, but this would be to replace an unknown location with what it was known by to the current audience. This is not a change of content.

    As for dead languages, not at all. Three languages are in there. Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Today, there are scholars of all three languages so we can know what is said. it would also be false to say a translation was made of a translation of a translation of a translation. Go to the store and get any Bible you want. It has been translated one time. Each translation goes back to the manuscripts that we have to see what it says.

    Then given to kings for their favorite parts? Which kings were these? Cross doesn’t say and for good reason. There aren’t any to say. For a king to make this kind of change, he would have to go and change every single manuscript out there that we do have of the Old Testament and the New Testament. With the New Testament, he would also have to change the quotations found in the early church fathers.

    Then Cross goes back to the editing and re-editing and then talks about it being given to the Pope for him to approve. Which Pope? He doesn’t say. Again, this is for good reason. There wasn’t a Pope who did this.

    We come back to the same refrain again to which he then says that all of this was based on stories told 30 to 90 years AFTER they happened.

    Um. Mr. Cross. I don’t know how to break this to you, but most histories are written after the events happen. Some historians have tried writing about it before, but it really doesn’t work that well. It’s best to wait until the events take place and THEN write about them.

    I would also think it would be awesome if we could get skeptics to say Genesis was written 30-90 years after the events took place. We could easily dispense of JEPD then. This again is another area where Cross doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

    Cross’s statement is also unclear. Did these stories just start getting told 30 to 90 years later? Doubtful. These were being told in the lifetime of Jesus even and these were oral societies that knew how to keep stories well. Don’t expect him to cite anyone like McIver or Dunn or Keener or anyone like that.

    Also, 30 to 90 years in that time wasn’t a long time. Many of the lives of Plutarch were written over a century later. Many great historical works were written long after the events took place. This sounds like a problem to modern people. It’s not in the world of ancient history.

    Finally, most people back then couldn’t read or write, but someone else could and that person would read a letter or Gospel. Normally, the person delivering the work would also know the author and be able to tell some of the details that weren’t written and answer questions. Again, no research is cited in this little meme but hey, lack of research has never stopped atheists from propagating statements of faith like this.

    So no, you don’t have to wonder what it would be like for someone to get Biblical transmission as wrong as I got evolution.

    David Cross has already done this for us and so have all the atheists who have shared this as if it was a convincing argument.

    In Christ,
    Nick Peters
    Last edited by Apologiaphoenix; 11-08-2019, 07:11 AM.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
    How wrong can you get Biblical Transmission?

    Link

    -----

    How did we not get the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

    Let me tell you the story about how we got the idea of evolution.

    Once in history Charles Darwin was sailing around in the Beagle Boat and saw a bunch of birds who had different beaks and came up with an idea of animals mutating into different forms, kind of like Pokemon, and then decided to extrapolate all the way back to the past. Modern scientists today think that there was a pond somewhere on Earth and a lightning bolt struck it and some cells came together and a bunch of them turned into a fish that crawled out of the ocean and turned into every other animal that we see over time. Unfortunately for the theory, Darwin recanted of it on his deathbed.
    I am not certain of David Cross, I need to read further about him, but I am deeply concerned about your dishonest misrepresentation of Charles Darwin, and evolution. It is an unfortunate dishonest myth that Charles Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed,

    Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-fantasy-of-the-deathbed-conversion


    The Fantasy of the Deathbed Conversion
    By Lawrence M. KraussJune 6, 2016

    Why has a prominent evangelical Christian alleged that Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, was, during the last years of his life, “teetering on the edge of belief”?Photograph by Stephen Voss / Redux
    Earlier this spring, a prominent evangelical Christian named Larry Taunton published a book alleging that Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, had been, during the last years of his life, “teetering on the edge of belief.” Taunton, who claims to have been one of Hitchens’s friends, cites as evidence two conversations he had with Hitchens during car trips on the way to debates about religion and atheism—debates, it must be said, that Hitchens was paid to attend.

    Hitchens’s family and actual friends—people who didn’t pay to spend time with him—know that this claim is absurd. (I was honored to be one of Hitchens’s friends during the last five years of his life.) Hitchens saw Christianity as little more than a social virus with interesting literary overtones. That view never changed during his final year of life—a period during which Taunton didn’t even meet with him. Hitchens loved to engage in generous intellectual repartee, even with those with whom he unequivocally disagreed. His civility, it seems, has been misinterpreted.

    This most recent claim, of course, is just the latest in a long line of similar claims about famous atheist conversions. It raises a worthwhile question: Why do evangelical Christians so often seek to claim converts among the dead?

    In relatively recent history, the most well-known postmortem Christian evangelist is probably Elizabeth Cotton. In 1915, she declared that, thirty-three years earlier, Charles Darwin himself had revealed to her, on his deathbed, his wish to recant the doctrine of evolution in exchange for Christian salvation. This claim was shown to be false by none other than Darwin’s daughter, Henrietta Litchfield, who was with him at the end. She pointed out that Cotton—like Taunton, in Hitchens’s case—hadn’t actually visited him during his final days. And evangelical Protestants aren’t the only Christians addicted to the narrative of the deathbed conversion. Catholics have made claims about the “long conversion” of Oscar Wilde; the Mormon Church has gone so far as to baptize dead people who haven’t asked for it—pro-bono conversion, as it were.

    There are charitable ways of understanding this proclivity. Perhaps postmortem evangelists hate to think of the people they admire, and in whom they have detected goodness and integrity, being permanently exiled to Hell for lack of faith. And yet that idea doesn’t fully account for the phenomenon. A 2011 survey of declared Christians in the U.K., conducted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation, found that the majority of self-identified Christians either aren’t aware of or don’t accept many fundamental aspects of Christianity; for example, only a third of British Christians believe in Christ’s resurrection, and nearly half don’t think Jesus was the son of God. Evangelicals don’t seem to care what these ordinary Christians think; no one tells stories about their achieving a proper understanding of Christianity on their deathbeds. Attention is focussed, instead, on atheists who are also luminaries, like Hitchens.

    In a conversation we had a few years ago, Hugh Downs, the television anchor, suggested why this might be so. One of the reasons people go to church, he said, is intellectual validation. People attend church for spiritual and social reasons, of course: to pray and to see friends. But they also want to hear their religious convictions affirmed—convictions that, as the Dawkins survey suggests, may seem a little dubious during the rest of the week. Could it be that evangelicals seek to convert the famous dead because they’re insecure about their own beliefs? If they can claim that people they admire as intellects—Darwin, Wilde, Hitchens—ultimately agreed with them, it validates their own faith.

    © Copyright Original Source



    If you choose criticize David Cross, but leave Charles Darwin out of it, unless you are willing to represent him accurately and with dignity.
    Last edited by shunyadragon; 11-07-2019, 07:51 PM.
    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
      I am not certain of David Cross, I need to read further about him, but I am deeply concerned about your dishonest misrepresentation of Charles Darwin, and evolution. It is an unfortunate dishonest myth that Charles Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed,

      Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-fantasy-of-the-deathbed-conversion


      The Fantasy of the Deathbed Conversion
      By Lawrence M. KraussJune 6, 2016

      Why has a prominent evangelical Christian alleged that Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, was, during the last years of his life, “teetering on the edge of belief”?Photograph by Stephen Voss / Redux
      Earlier this spring, a prominent evangelical Christian named Larry Taunton published a book alleging that Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, had been, during the last years of his life, “teetering on the edge of belief.” Taunton, who claims to have been one of Hitchens’s friends, cites as evidence two conversations he had with Hitchens during car trips on the way to debates about religion and atheism—debates, it must be said, that Hitchens was paid to attend.

      Hitchens’s family and actual friends—people who didn’t pay to spend time with him—know that this claim is absurd. (I was honored to be one of Hitchens’s friends during the last five years of his life.) Hitchens saw Christianity as little more than a social virus with interesting literary overtones. That view never changed during his final year of life—a period during which Taunton didn’t even meet with him. Hitchens loved to engage in generous intellectual repartee, even with those with whom he unequivocally disagreed. His civility, it seems, has been misinterpreted.

      This most recent claim, of course, is just the latest in a long line of similar claims about famous atheist conversions. It raises a worthwhile question: Why do evangelical Christians so often seek to claim converts among the dead?

      In relatively recent history, the most well-known postmortem Christian evangelist is probably Elizabeth Cotton. In 1915, she declared that, thirty-three years earlier, Charles Darwin himself had revealed to her, on his deathbed, his wish to recant the doctrine of evolution in exchange for Christian salvation. This claim was shown to be false by none other than Darwin’s daughter, Henrietta Litchfield, who was with him at the end. She pointed out that Cotton—like Taunton, in Hitchens’s case—hadn’t actually visited him during his final days. And evangelical Protestants aren’t the only Christians addicted to the narrative of the deathbed conversion. Catholics have made claims about the “long conversion” of Oscar Wilde; the Mormon Church has gone so far as to baptize dead people who haven’t asked for it—pro-bono conversion, as it were.

      There are charitable ways of understanding this proclivity. Perhaps postmortem evangelists hate to think of the people they admire, and in whom they have detected goodness and integrity, being permanently exiled to Hell for lack of faith. And yet that idea doesn’t fully account for the phenomenon. A 2011 survey of declared Christians in the U.K., conducted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation, found that the majority of self-identified Christians either aren’t aware of or don’t accept many fundamental aspects of Christianity; for example, only a third of British Christians believe in Christ’s resurrection, and nearly half don’t think Jesus was the son of God. Evangelicals don’t seem to care what these ordinary Christians think; no one tells stories about their achieving a proper understanding of Christianity on their deathbeds. Attention is focussed, instead, on atheists who are also luminaries, like Hitchens.

      In a conversation we had a few years ago, Hugh Downs, the television anchor, suggested why this might be so. One of the reasons people go to church, he said, is intellectual validation. People attend church for spiritual and social reasons, of course: to pray and to see friends. But they also want to hear their religious convictions affirmed—convictions that, as the Dawkins survey suggests, may seem a little dubious during the rest of the week. Could it be that evangelicals seek to convert the famous dead because they’re insecure about their own beliefs? If they can claim that people they admire as intellects—Darwin, Wilde, Hitchens—ultimately agreed with them, it validates their own faith.

      © Copyright Original Source



      If you choose criticize David Cross, but leave Charles Darwin out of it, unless you are willing to represent him accurately and with dignity.
      If I had to guess what with the intentionally bad explanation and all I think that that point is part of te intentionally bad explanation that AP is using here.
      sigpic

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
        I am not certain of David Cross, I need to read further about him, but I am deeply concerned about your dishonest misrepresentation of Charles Darwin, and evolution. It is an unfortunate dishonest myth that Charles Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed,

        If you choose criticize David Cross, but leave Charles Darwin out of it, unless you are willing to represent him accurately and with dignity.
        I think his whole point is that ISN'T a fair representation of Darwin any more than Cross' quote is a fair representation of the transmission of the Bible. Kind of like, "let's see if YOU like it when I do it".
        Curiosity never hurt anyone. It was stupidity that killed the cat.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
          I am not certain of David Cross, I need to read further about him, but I am deeply concerned about your dishonest misrepresentation of Charles Darwin, and evolution. It is an unfortunate dishonest myth that Charles Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed,...
          If you choose criticize David Cross, but leave Charles Darwin out of it, unless you are willing to represent him accurately and with dignity.
          Geislerminian Antinomian Kenotic Charispneumaticostal Gender Mutualist-Egalitarian.

          Beige Federalist.

          Nationalist Christian.

          "Everybody is somebody's heretic."

          Social Justice is usually the opposite of actual justice.

          Proud member of the this space left blank community.

          Would-be Grand Vizier of the Padishah Maxi-Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-MAGA King Trumpius Rex.

          Justice for Ashli Babbitt!

          Justice for Matthew Perna!

          Arrest Ray Epps and his Fed bosses!

          Comment


          • #6
            Poor Shuny didn't get the joke. Did he think Jonathan Swift was seriously advocating the consumption of Irish infants?
            If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

            Comment


            • #7
              And this is why I just ignore Shunya.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
                And this is why I just ignore Shunya.
                Who?
                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                  Who?
                  Someone who wants to research as little as possible.

                  Comment

                  Related Threads

                  Collapse

                  Topics Statistics Last Post
                  Started by Apologiaphoenix, 03-15-2024, 10:19 PM
                  14 responses
                  75 views
                  1 like
                  Last Post rogue06
                  by rogue06
                   
                  Started by Apologiaphoenix, 03-13-2024, 10:13 PM
                  6 responses
                  61 views
                  0 likes
                  Last Post Apologiaphoenix  
                  Started by Apologiaphoenix, 03-12-2024, 09:36 PM
                  1 response
                  23 views
                  0 likes
                  Last Post rogue06
                  by rogue06
                   
                  Started by Apologiaphoenix, 03-11-2024, 10:19 PM
                  0 responses
                  22 views
                  2 likes
                  Last Post Apologiaphoenix  
                  Started by Apologiaphoenix, 03-08-2024, 11:59 AM
                  7 responses
                  55 views
                  0 likes
                  Last Post whag
                  by whag
                   
                  Working...
                  X