DoubtingDave

http://www.debate.org/debates/The-Ne...Consequence/7/

Could someone help me rebutte ReformedArsenal....please?

Toto

Help us help you. What particular issue do you need help with?

Toto

I see the debate topic is "The New Testament Contains No Genuine Contradictions of Consequence"

But this leaves enough room to drive a truck through. If it looks like a contradiction, I don't care! It's of no consequence! :lalala:

DoubtingDave

Huh? I don't understand, toto

ApostateAbe

I am not willing to fully study the debate and develop your counterpoints. This should be thought of as a learning experience for you, so that youcan anticipate the rebuttals and do better in the future.

The most persisting theme of any debate about religious scriptures is the promotion of ad hoc explanations, or speculations that are possible but improbable, and they do not follow from the face of the evidences. A very large set of ad hoc explanations, many that go well beyond the limits of probability, can be proposed to keep any imaginable proposition consistent with the evidence.

For example, if anyone wants to claim that the two seemingly different accounts of the death of Judas do not contradict each other, then of course it is a possibility that Judas hung himself from a tree that was on the edge of a ridge, the rope broke, he flipped and he fell headlong into the valley, where he spilled his innards. This is possible, but it is not seen on the face of the evidence in either account, and it is not the most probable explanation for the seeming contradiction that is on the face. The most probable explanation is that there really are two mutually-exclusive ideas about how Judas died.

It would have been an advantage to you, also, had you shown that even small and "insignificant" contradictions count as being "of Consequence" for any Christian doctrine that holds that the common canonical Bible is the absolute-perfect Word of God, as is commonly believed. Given common Biblicist belief, then it would be strongly expected that the accounts in the Bible have a far higher standard of truth than other historical accounts such as the set of accounts of the assassination of JFK, which we may very well expect to be contradictory. It is essential to sew up those weasel holes in the initial claims.

Since you have implicitly allowed the admittance of improbable ad hoc explanations, then it is looking like you will have to learn appropriately from this, congratulate your opponent, and hang up your hat. Sorry. Say that you have been convinced by your opponent that there can be a slight possibility that the Bible is perfectly consistent, the same as any other very-seemingly-contradictory set of accounts.

Toto

I was being sarcastic. Perhaps that didn't come through.

The topic has been defined so it is hard for you to win. So your opponent is going to say a lot of things like: And what can you say? Christian doctrine is quite slippery, and seems to change whenever convenient.

Could you be more specific about which issue concerns you? I don't want to wade through all of the debate.

ApostateAbe

Kohai, I have you to thank for letting me know of that website. I recently instigated a debate of my own:

The historical Jesus Christ was a doomsday cult leader

No challenger yet. Anyone is welcome to sign up and fill that spot, but time is short (presumably).

ApostateAbe

The spot has been filled already! Well, anyone else can sign up, start a debate, and invite me.

JonA

Looks exciting. Let's hope your opponent can bring some good things to the table and doesn't hang up the conversation on debating whether or not there was an historical Jesus.

Maybe these discussions could be more successful if they focused on the traditional Jesus rather than on an historical Jesus? I think they'd be just as relevant and meaningful; and the ahistoricists wouldn't have anything with which to pull the thread off topic to avoid addressing the issues.

Just a thought.

Jon

ApostateAbe

I think the typical methods of Jesus-minimalists--denying the utility of the evidence--is as embarrassing as any other type of bad argument, one way or the other, and I know how to effectively deal with it. Such arguments of Jesus-minimalists very much need to be openly criticized from an informed non-religious perspective, and this is a way to do it. I was actually hoping for a Jesus-minimalist, more than either a Biblicist or a Jesus-liberal, though those opponents would be great, too.