Ted Hoffman

Poorly written,poorly presented and poorly argued. We looked at it more than a year ago on this forum.

Toto

I'm surprized that you would refer to this Christian apologetic website. There are some good quotes and facts, but on the whole, the arguments against Doherty have an air of sophistry about them.

Doherty's reliance on Q to draw conclusions about early Christianity is based firmly on conventional liberal Christian scholarship. He may indeed be wrong, but he is in good company.

Zeichman

Aye, but you haven't really addressed "straw man" in regards to its actual definition as far as I know. I hate to repeat myself:
"The straw man fallacy is when you (a)misrepresent someone else's position so that (b) it can be attacked more easily, (c) knock down that misrepresented position, then (d) conclude that the original position has been demolished. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made."

Are any of those untrue of Doherty's response to my use of the word narrative? It certainly wasn't intentional, but it was also a straw man. Keep in mind that "so that" does not say anything about intention.

And I would tend to agree with your (Jacob's) assessment of the preventingtruthdecay article. However, the quote by Dale Allison is right on target regarding eschatological elements in Q1 and likewise Kloppenborg on primitivity of Q2 traditions. I think both of these are valid criticisms of Doherty (and Mack, Vaage, Cameron) and need to be taken more seriously than he has.

Johnny Skeptic

I do not know much about this thread. I was only trying to be helpful.

Ted Hoffman

Zeichmann, we are also awaiting Ben's instalment.
And what do we call that kind of a "fallacy"? Certainly not a strawman. And he never purported to be knocking down your argument purely based on how you used a certain word. Just chill and prepare your rebuttal.

Zeichman

That definition is quoted from the infidels definition of "straw man," so yes, it is called that. If you don't think that's what Doherty was doing (at least in part), then you need to reread his argument. You can't just accuse me of things like this and expect me to drop it when you want me to, unless you have made your case to the contrary.