RaisingPaine

Hi, IIDBers...

I'm a newbie referred here by JP Holding, whom I originally came in contact with through his popular Apologetic essay against Paine and The Age of Reason, Common Nonsense along with his "dissection" of AR, A Bigger Paine in the Posterior. As a Paine afficionado, I felt they did a disservice to his viewpoints.

Consequently, I took it upon myself to answer both of those essays with my own rebuttals, which hopefully you will find interesting.

Common Nonsense - Rebuttal
A Bigger Paine in the Posterior - Rebuttal

RaisingPaine

countjulian

Awsome.

The only thing I would say is that you shouldn't waste your time on a moron like Turkel. He'll go on and on forever and ever...


The only way one should challenge him is in a live debate, where he has to make his point quickly and his oppenent's rebuttals are avaliable right there for people to see. Other than a debate on a forum or something, don't waste your time.

Orthodox_Freethinker

The Age of Reason was my favorite book in high school until I realized the fallacious nature of Paine's arguments. Slight contradictions between the Gospel accounts do not disprove the resurrection story. If anything, it shows that the Gospel writers did not collaborate with each other in their testimony.

Julian

The Age of Reason is quite possibly the finest book ever written. I find it hard to believe that anyone in their right mind could attack that work, which, of course, explains why Turkel could do it...


Welcome, RaisingPaine, to II. Enjoy your stay.

Julian

Orthodox_Freethinker

I agree that he was a good writer linguistically but his New Testament scholarship was flawed.

Julian

I know I told myself not to ever answer one of your post directly again but, dude, your argumentation regarding the NT is the weakest I have seen in a long time.

You assert and assert, yet provide no evidence, ignore any evidence presented against your position and promote absurd notions that you can in no way defend. You have been intellectually humiliated on this board over and over again, yet you remain oblivious of even this fact.

You are in no position to comment on Thomas Paine's scholarship seeing how yours is completely and deeply flawed and is sustainable only by your repeated disregard for evidence.

You simply believe what you wish to be true.

Paine could spot bullshit when he saw it, as can I.

Julian

Orthodox_Freethinker

Crossan's argumentation against Craig on the resurrection of Christ is the weakest that I've ever seen. Crossan did not even bother to refute Craig's points but insisted that the resurrection must have been 'metaphorical', without even presenting evidence for this claim.

Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
William Lane Craig
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html

Again, one cannot disprove the resurrection simply by the apparent contradictions of the Gospels.

Clivedurdle

Welcome!

Is this true, I would have thought he wanted this site kept a dark secret!

I want Tom to replace Gideon's Bible in every hotel room across the world!

RaisingPaine

Hi, Freethinker

I would offer two observations on this and your later post. First, Age of Reason is not a work of scholarship, but opinion. It was written for mass consumption, not academia, and is not obliged to meet those standards. Paine cannot also be held to standards not met by scholars of his day; that much of the knowledge we now have of ancient times is a result of discoveries and advancements made since Paine's day affords him a measure of forgiveness.

Even so, it's unclear to what NT scholarship problems you allude to. I would refer you to the second rebuttal document in which JP vigorously attacks Paine's lack of scholarship. My answers to his objections are likewise there. In a few cases, his objections are well-founded. In most others, IMHO, not.

Secondly, I would add that by focusing on the merit of NT (and even OT) inconsistencies identified in AR, you are making a judgement based on (subjectively) the weakest part of the work. The rebuttal introduction on the previous link also addresses this. Paine's anachronism and consistency arguments are among the one's most challengeable and are, unfortunately, too frequently adopted without research by modern skeptics.

RaisingPaine

Orthodox_Freethinker

The problem is that these were his only arguments against the resurrection of Christ.