skepticdude

When i posted the following over at theologyweb, that childish theology-playground that the fearless JP Holding confines himself to, it caused such a stir that I got banned and this thread deleted, for "deceptively baiting" Rohrbaugh, as if Rohrbaugh lied to me, and would have spoken about Holding in a more positive way if he knew I was going to place his responses on the internet. Read my direct questions to him and his replies to each, then ask yourself if I got anything from him except his truthful honest opinions. I had no intention of posting his answers until I was shocked to find that this favorite scholar of Holding completely disowned Holding. (My understanding of the law and fair-use doctrine is that emails are not private correspondence, since they must travel through at least 2 different third-parties, and thus be susceptible to interception by such, sort of like conversations in a store or on the street are not private because anybody may be able to hear.)

The cold stark reality, which will not budge, is that Rohrbaugh gave his honest opinion of Holding. If I tell someone I hate my neighbor, and I'm being honest, then my truthful opinion doesn't change just because I didn't know I'd be quoted. I therefore set forth TRUTH below. The only reason people wish to know beforehand that they'll be quoted, is so they can give a more politically correct (and thus less truthful/candid) answer. It's when they don't know they'll be quoted that they tend to express what they honestly feel.

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First, notice how Mr. Holding lauds the "Context Group":

Holding lauds specific Context Group member Rohrbaugh:

Another comment, this time from an article he wrote as damage control after a skeptic emailed Rohrbaugh about Holding's "collectivist" excuses for everything:

Holding assures me that Rohrbaugh, among other scholars, has done decades of serious study into the bible:

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So it's obvious that Holding highly approves of the Context Group's biblical scholarship work.

I emailed Rohrbaugh asking his opinion of Holding's use of Context Group work, and his opinion of Holding's insulting style of apologetics. Here is Rohrbaugh's reply:

Question to Holding: You are always quoting the Context Group with approval, and regard their decades of research on the bible as "serious". Do you agree with their founding member's opinion that you deserve no respect and that you give Christianity a bad name?

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Question for Holding: Do you agree with Rohrbaugh that insults from Christians have nothing to do with the bible one way or the other, and that they are just boors with no manners and don't deserve to be given the time of day?

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Question for Holding: Do you agree with Rohrbaugh that modern scholarship's opinion that the bible is a human product, is one of their most secure results? Do you agree with his opinion that the doctrine of full biblical inerrancy makes no sense at all? Please explain why the scholar you so highly approve of, agrees with all atheists and skeptics, that biblical inerrancy makes no sense at all.

What does it mean when the scholar you quote so approvingly as the reason a positive paradigm change in bible scholarship may come about, thinks your entire apologetics ministry has been spent defending a doctrine that makes no sense at all?

You are always faulting critics and skeptics for foisting their modern notions on the bible, but one bible scholars you quote approvingly numerous times to defend your beliefs, and a founding member of your favorite "Context Group", thinks bible inerrancy itself is a PURELY modern notion. Are you just as stupid as a skeptic for drawing purely modernist notions anachronistically out of the bible?

Now that Rohrbaugh has basically written you off, will you continue citing scholars to support you, who laugh at the effort you put forth to defend a purely modern doctrine that doesn't make any sense?

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Question for Holding:
Since you confirm your acceptance of the doctrine of partial preterism by saying "Yes, there is a view sometimes called full preterism (or by proponents, "consistent preterism") which holds that ALL Biblical prophecy is now fulfilled, including those that preterists of my school say refer to the final resurrection. This view is considered heretical by preterists of my school, who are often called "partial" preterists but are here called preterists."

over at http://www.tektonics.org/esch/pretsum.html, do you now agree with Rohrbaugh's opinion that partial preterism is nonsense? Or is Rohrbaugh just an idiot who doesn't understand the way the ancient semitic mind expressed itself?


Question to Holding: How do you explain how a founding member of the Context Group, has never read a book which you feel is a good explanation of how the Jewish mind thought in the first-century? How could your favorite scholar have missed this gem? Maybe it's not the gem you think it is?

Question to Holding: since you defend the Trinity at http://www.tektonics.org/uz/unitresp.html, will you now classify it as heretical, since the scholar you quote the most to show stupid skeptics how the Semitic mind worked in biblical times, says the Trinity doctrine is not biblical.

Question for Holding: While the Context Group contains Calvinists and non-Calvinists, you have set forth a theory they've deeply researched (i.e., Semitic Totality) as the reason that Calvinists are "misinformed gyrators" who use anachronistic argumentation:

"No, stupid, because the Calvinists maintain the same false dichotomy between thought and works that you do in this argument. Semitic Totality turns BOTH you and them into misinformed gyrators. That was the point of the challenge. Their argument is an anachronism – just like you!"
(from http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...08#post2455908)

Will you continue to proclaim the truth-defending work on the bible coming from the Context Group, as you have in the past, now that you know that group contains misinformed gyrators who use anachronistic arguments?

Question to Holding: You are always quoting Rohrbaugh as an authority who understands how ancient Jews thought. Do you agree with his opinion that there are no good translations or version of the bible today in English? If not, then which person in this disagreement is the idiot with no formal training in the bible, and which one has the proper credentials and decades of serious bible research in his resume?

Question to Holding: Do you agree with the founding member of the Context Group that you need serious help?

Question to Holding: Since a founding member of the Context Group, and a person whose scholarship you quote with high approval numerous times, said he thinks NO bible scholar nor ANY member of the Context Group would want to be associated in any way with the ideas or behavior or yours, how likely is it that Rohrbaugh and his Christian brothers and sisters in the Context Group think your insulting rhetoric toward your critics has biblical justification?

If you are so quick to quote the Context Group to prove your beliefs, how about if I quote the Context Group to prove my belief that your insulting of bible skeptics is itself unbiblical? If your "Jesus-and-Paul-insulted-their-critics-so-I-can-to!!!" excuse for riposte is so "obviously" biblical, why do you suppose the one Context Group scholar you quote the most, doesn't agree with it?

You are always lambasting your critics when they don't agree with you that something is 'obviously' biblical, will you now be consistent, and lambaste Rohrbaugh with insults?

Or could it be that your favorite scholar disagrees with you on riposte, because your use of insults toward critics is NOT so obviously "biblical"?

Should I argue as you do: Point out that the Context Group has reams of social science data on the bible, so they know what they're talking about, while you have ZERO formal training in the bible?

If your reasoning is supposed to convince your opponents, how do you like having your own reasoning thrown right back in your face?

Are you gonna suddenly stop insulting people because your Context Group doesn't think such policy is biblical? Or will you tell us that they probably aren't as smart as you've lauded them to be in the past?

GakuseiDon

From this:
If JP Holding says that he doesn't trust you, doesn't that agree with Rohrbaugh's view of the cultural context of the time?

Does Rohrbaugh actually say that riposte is unbiblical, though? Or just Holding's use of it (which, to be fair, he seems to have only the view that you are giving him there)?

Student of Sophia

Very interesting skepticdude. I've crossed swords with JP a couple of times and my opinion of him is very, very low. He does indeed need help.

GakuseiDon

Adrift, posting on TheologyWeb, makes an interesting point on this:
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...118797&page=19

Transient

JPH is rude & arrogant - probably knows he's skating on very thin ice but it's his "thing in life" so he isn't about to let go.
Tweb mods are the same and twist the truth around to suit their petty desires.
They warn & ban for ridiculous reasons at times while allowing their "friends" to insult and assault whoever they choose.
So petty & childish.
I hardly login anymore at all - damned if I am going to read another warning
I think the nastiness amongst the christians there is tied in with a real fear that they are not able to effectively justify their beliefs, so they retaliate with verbal abuse which is quite astonishing at times - comical really.

skepticdude

Rohrbaugh first read an accurate sample of debate correspondence between me and Holding, then concluded that people like Holding give Christianity a bad name.

I suspect he wouldn't say that if he felt that Holding was doing only what Jesus and Paul did. He would only say Holding gives Christianity a bad name if he felt Holding's demeanor was unbiblical.

skepticdude

I challenged Holding to a public oral debate, and you can watch as he continued adding more and more absurd conditions before he'd then agree.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=118849

First, he said I'd have to wear a red clown nose and t-shirt at the debate that said "atheist fundy" on it, then he required me to pay $20,000 in advance to his church, then he started increasing the price for every day I wasn't able to post a response, then he demanded I advertise the debate at my own expense with a billboard in Florida, etc, etc.

I tried in vain to show that any idiot who has enough knowledge to be dangerous, can write Holding's apologetic stuff, if they have 3 days to respond and have interlibrary loan capabilities and Google. But in oral debates, you don't have those aids so your true level of scholarship comes out. No luck. They are all certain that the fake scholars fear written debates more than oral debates. Apparantly, fake scholars can't fake it if they have several days to consult library books and google before they respond, but they CAN fake having knowledge in an oral debate where they might get hit with questions they might not have specifically prepared for.

I showed that Holding's excuses for refusing to debate me turn out to be reasons why he should have increased confidence in winning the debate. If I'm only offering such debate so I can play sound-bite games, Holding's critical thinking Christian audience would surely notice such underhanded superficiality on my part, and hold it against me in the debate, right? No luck.

I accepted Holding's $20,000 price tag for an oral debate at a location, date and time of his choosing, on a biblical subject of his choosing, in front of any audience of his choosing, then asked for the name and number of his pastor to facilitate the deal, guarantee his promise to debate and transfer the money. Nope. He refused to give the information on his pastor (like Holding really goes to church?!), unless I PM'd him with an electronic scan of my bank statement showing I had at least $20,000 in my account. When I objected that people sending bank statements to people they don't know on the internet is absurd, and they can be easily photoshopped anyway (bank statements being little more than letters, lines and numbers, how hard is that to alter?), he replied that he knows experts who can tell whether a scan that shows my name and money-amount, has been photoshopped or not. As if the prospect of meeting personally with his pastor to facilitate this deal upon his agreement to debate, was somehow more prone to deception and falsification than his ridiculous face-saving suggestions.

And yet, Holding is positively certain that bible skeptics feel threatened by his apologetics.

The worst blow to Holding came from Rohrbaugh. This favorite scholar of his thinks biblical inerrancy is a purely modernist notion and makes no sense at all. The subject Holding dedicates his life to defending, is a subject which his favorite "serious" bible scholar thinks is a purely modernist notion and makes no sense at all. Nice going. The theologyweb children couldn't seem to get the point that if Holding's own oft-cited bible scholar doesn't believe in the Trinity, biblical inerrancy, or the biblical justification arguments for riposte, then maybe such things are NOT "obviously biblical", which means his other critics who deny those things, are not idiots thereby.

Holding has his own special play corner of Tweb. What did you think would happen if somebody pummeled him like I did? Recieve an honorary position as moderator?

Toto

First of all, JP Holding can use the research of the Context Group even if they disapprove of him.

Secondly, I don't know of any bible skeptics who are threatened by his work. He mainly seems to attract Christians who like his testosterone-fueled professional wrestling style - as entertainment? as part of their fantasy of actually having an argument?

But I have never understood how social science research can prop up the obvious problems in the Bible. Cultural understanding may soften some of the problems, but once you have to rely on cultural relativism, you are implicitly admitting that the Bible is not an inerrant document that any modern Christian can use as a guide to life.

In your quote, Rohrbach indicates that in our culture, people don't insult each other, and that is why this sort of behavior gives Christianity a bad name. He does not sound like the type of person who would use the term "unbiblical" as a synonym for "bad." Clearly, slavery is biblical but a Christian slave holder gives Christianity a bad name.

This exhausts the amount of my time that I think that JP Holding is worth.

skepticdude

I never said he couldn't.

I've merely argued how ironic it is that the supremely smart scholar he parades in his writings, wants absolutely nothing to do with him and says he gives Christianity a bad name. At the very least, this requires there be a major disagreement between the two on the subject of biblical justification for riposte. If Holding is sure that other Christians and skeptics are just plain stupid for not finding his "Jesus-did-it-so-I-can-too!!" excuse persuasive, then why shouldn't he call Rohrbaugh plain stupid upon the same basis?

My whole point was that there IS room to legitimately disagree with Holding, without being a moron or an idiot or stupid or a dumb wooden western hyperliterialist, etc, etc, etc. Nobody at theologyweb would touch that point. Holding either needs to admit inconsistency, call his own favorite scholar stupid, or admit that the critics who disagree with this particular argument, do not deserve the insults he heaps on them merely for disagreeing with him.

Yes. The last resort of a girl with a bad argument, is insult.

Yes indeed. Holding is always saying "you don't understand Semitic Totality" or "that's not how a collectivist socieity would have viewed it", which as you say, causes the issue to leave the heavens and become a purely naturalistic/human issue. What's important is that for all his knowledge, Holding never quotes a scholar directly in his debates to refute specific points.
He cannot quote a scholar to directly support his view that riposte is very effective cover for a troubled angry mind.

I've asked Holding once or twice whether he has any criteria for seperating the purely divine instructions in the bible, from the relativistic culture allegedly used to transport it from heaven to earth. No response. Apparantly then, the eternal god has been Jewish from all eternity.

GakuseiDon

IIUC he said he was happy to participate in a written debate. Personally, as written debates allow people to go into arguments in depth, I can't see why you insist on a public oral debate. Essentially you appear to resist wanting an in-depth debate, which reflects more badly on you than him.

I'm sorry, but the ability to memorise facts and reproduce them at a moment's notice doesn't equal scholarship. How do you define "scholarship"? The ability to memorise facts? No, it's the ability to research. If you want an oral debate, fine, but it has little to do with apprising someone's scholarship.

I would say that the quote from Elliot is a worse blow. Rohrbaugh in theory seems to suggest that riposte was a part of the culture then.

But then, I don't think it matters whether it is biblical or not. As I wrote to you on TheologyWeb, JP's over-the-top insulting style carries its own punishment. No-one can link to his website without the whole thread being fragmented as everyone talks about how much they dislike him.