Hello, one and all.

I saw this come up in another thread and thought I'd start a brand new topic about it in order to "broadcast it to the masses." But I couldn't help but notice that every now and then (not often, but sometimes) my two favorite Christian apologists--J.P. Holding and Glenn Miller--get pretty well bashed on here.

Now I am a frequenter to Holding's site (www.tektonics.org) and wonder what foundation his critics really have? I agree with most (probably all) of you concerning his wisecracks and insults. As funny as they may be, I don't endorse it. (Miller's a much more respectful apologist, however, which is always good.)

But with that aside, my question is concerning J.P.'s "Chicken Challenge," where he challenges critics and skeptics to refute anything in his essays on his main page (www.tektonics.org/Tekton_TOC.html). Can any of you show me the person, article, website, etc. which has refuted him? And one which he has NOT made a rebuttal to yet? No stranger to the Secular Web myself, I've searched this massive website up and down and have found no refutation that he himself hasn't already definitively answered yet. (In fact, he told me the way he got into his ministry was that he always liked to read. So after years of researching the Christian faith, he came across atheistic sites like this one where the skeptics hadn't done adequate research but were still disturbing the minds of dedicated Christians who didn't have answers for the skeptics' arguments.)

Those of you who have criticized Holding (or Miller): Why don't you take on his "Chicken Challenge"? Simply refute just one of his essays, or better yet (since most of them are quite long), just refute a portion of it and e-mail the text to him. Or if (like me), you're an amateur or newcomer to the realm of argumentation and debate, you can certainly get some of the "seasoned veterans" here at the Secular Web to take him on.

It may be easy to dismantle some of the Christian arguments made by those on this message board or from the comfort of these boards to call down "Fundie inerrantist" insults on J.P. Holding, but I'd like to see if you all can really respond to any of his arguments.

I eagerly look forward to your responses to this.

Sincerely and respectfully,
Rew

Ernest Sparks

Rew,

Glenn Miller? Didn't he front an Armed Forces band in WWII and die in a plane crash?

What are you hunting for? The spectacle of some smug unbeliever being brought to knees and confessing God in front of all? In case you haven't noticed, NOBODY ever concedes in these contests. Likewise you won't see some erstwhile God defender rise up to his feet and exclaim: "Free at last! My mind is free at last!" Who scores the points and makes the calls? Who awards the trophies and the championships?

Ernie

Actually, most people on Internet Infidels don't waste their time with James Patrick Holding (that is not his real name--it is actually Robert Turkel). When he tried to explain away the second commandment which says, "you shall not make for yourself any graven image or the likeness of anything above the earth, on the earth or below the earth. You shall not bow down to them and serve them..." by saying, oh, well that's just a prohibition against worshipping graven images, when the passage CLEARLY prohibits the making of any "likenesses," I knew he was full of malarky.

Farrell Till has an interesting debate with Turkel on this website somewhere. If you type in the name Turkel, it should appear.

Nonsense. If the 2nd commandment is "one" commandment, it would only work as a whole-do not make idols, do not worship them is a cummulative commandment. That is do not do a and b, not do not do a or b. Or it is not one commandment, but several. You'd have to debate whether the 2nd commandment is rightfully only called a commandment or it must be referred to as commandments(plural) to deny the point.

There is nothing to indicate that the second part of the "one command" is connected with the first (from a "flow" standpoint). Let me explain, it does not say (and I don't think the text implies):

"You shall not make for yourself any graven image....in order to bow down and worship it."

OR

"You shall not make for yourself any graven image...to bow down and worship it." (Compare Lev. 16:1 which says, "[do not] place a figured stone in your land TO worship it...")

A more natural reading of the text would just have it say what it says: You shall not make any graven images. You shall not bow down to them and serve them. There is no and connecting them. As a matter of fact, I thought there would be, but when I checked the Hebrew, there was no "and."

Also consider Deuteronomy 4:15-18, 23. They are prohibitions against graven images without a reference to worship.

[This message has been edited by Le pede (edited February 12, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Le pede (edited February 12, 2001).]

Greetings, Ernie. I'm at a loss to figure out how you thought I was trying to convert anyone on here. In fact, if I know anything about the Secular Web, it's that most skeptics on here are beyond convincing, no matter what Christians show them. I dare say that some of you here are so ingrained in their atheistic beliefs that even if Jesus were to appear to you in His heavenly glory, you would still find some method to explain it away. So that wasn't my point.

As for Glenn Miller dying in WWII, I really have no idea what you're getting at there.

Rew

Greetings, Ernie. I'm at a loss to figure out how you thought I was trying to convert anyone on here. In fact, if I know anything about the Secular Web, it's that most skeptics on here are beyond convincing, no matter what Christians show them. I dare say that some of you here are so ingrained in their atheistic beliefs that even if Jesus were to appear to you in His heavenly glory, you would still find some method to explain it away. So that wasn't my point.

As for Glenn Miller dying in WWII, I really have no idea what you're getting at there.

Rew

Hello, Le pede. Actually, most call him Bob Turkel. As far as your interpretation of the second commandment, where exactly do you get that from, and how do you know it's legit? I know that Holding (or Turkel, whichever) is well researched in ancient literary customs, so I hope you have some evidence to back up your assertion.

I've seen most of Till's rebuttals to Turkel. They're at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...l/turkel.html. Consequently, have you seen Turkel's answers to Till's rebuttals? Those are at http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_TWMA.html, http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_JER722.html, http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_FISHBUB.html, http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_TWMA4.html, http://www.tektonics.org/TWMA4-2.html, http://www.tektonics.org/weasel.html, http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_DAD.html, and http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_WRE.html.

Again, I really wish those two wouldn't engage in the truckloads of ad hominem that they do, but there's nothing I can do about that. Good day to all.

Rew

Rew, your challenge does not conform to the 'rules' of this forum. If there are powerful and convincing arguments on another website, then learn them and bring them here.
Challenge us by presenting them to us. That way you are forced to do some thinking as well and we all learn something.

It's too easy to assume that some smart person somewhere has dealt with all the opposition's arguments adequately. I'm sure you could find a website designed by a 'smart' person that argues for every side of every issue which may be quite persuasive to someone not as familiar with the arguments.

So I challenge you to think through and present Holding's arguments here.

Rew --

The reason that skeptics don't bother much with Holding/Turkel is that he has been dealt with and quite effectively. McKinnsey has a set of rebuttals to his rebuttals on the _Biblical Errancy_ website.

Other reasons are that the response are themselves so inane that replying seems pointless. For example, here is a Q and A from Glenn Miller:

______________________
On..."three days and night" vs. "on the 3rd day"?

On Mon, 20 Nov 1995 ZZZZZZZZ wrote:

question: This comes from a list of reasons why humanists don't believe the Bible. I picked up their document from America On-Line. It is also a question I've had, but have never had answered. Jesus said he was going to be in the earth (buried) for three days and three nights. If he died on Friday and rose on Sunday morning, how is this three days and three nights.

GM replies:
This is one of the easier ones...the Jews counted PART of a day or night as a WHOLE day or nite, so part of Friday, all of Sat, part of Sun would be 'three days and three nights'--it was a Hebrew idiom of the day...

We do the same thing of course...if I say I worked at the office all day, 'all day' normally doesn't mean 24 hours...it means most of the daylight hours or whatever...
_____________

This passage shows why, REW, nobody pays much attention to Miller. As McKinnsey pointed out in his reponse, you might be able to buy friday to sunday as three days, but Friday and Saturday night, no matter how you cut
it, remain only two nights. So, Miller, actually didn't answer the objection, he just pretended he did, hoping nobody would notice he didn't account for half the question.

Turkel also rewrites the Bible at will to make his point. See his Golden Duh award
for who killed Saul. This is a simple contradiction. The Amalekite comes to David and says he killed Saul(SA 1 31:4-6) Another story elsewhere says Saul offed himself. Turkel solves this problem by saying "Duh!"
The Amalekite was lying, hoping to get a reward!" He places the word "LYING" in a giant font all by itself on the page, as if rubbing us poor benighted skeptics in how dumb we are.

Of course, the little problem is, how does Turkel make that judgement? Nowhere in there does it say the Amalekite is lying. Actually, it is just as possible that Chronicles is lying about Saul's suicide, in order to prevent it from being known that the Amalekites had a hand in Saul's death. Imagine if skeptics could play this game:

"When Jesus says "I am the Savior," he is LYING.

Save us a lot of trouble in actually reading the Bible, we could just say "It's LYING."

You see, whenever Bible-worshippers are confronted with a genuine contradiction, they just make their own rules about how it is to be interpreted. They add whatever they want to the text, or take it away, or make up special rules about interpreting particular words, etc, etc, etc. Another example of this occurs in his response to the old impossiblity of the striped sticks and goat breeding in Genesis. In Turkel's reponse
(http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_AALOBC.html#gen3039) he reads into Genesis 31:10-13 ideas that aren't actually present in the text.

Wish I could play that game!

Here, why don't you look up Holding's response to the contradiction between God's promise not to kill sons for father's crimes, and his actual murder of David's child for David's sins? I can't find it in either Biblical Errancy or the Tekton site, but I remember seeing it somewhere, and it is pretty sick, as I recall. Maybe I've confused my apologists. There are so many,
and they all sound the same.

Michael
turton@ev1.net