Bill Joey

I found this and look at the way that Johnny debates.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ad.php?t=90599
http://jcsm.org/1on1/JohnnySkepticDebate1.htm
http://www.cerm.info/debates/christian.pdf

One of the debaters that Johnny engaged appears to be a Fundamentalist (or better yet a Fundamentalist copy cat).Reading the website and his separation views, I see he has links to apostate ministries and quotes from New Age PERVERTED Bible Translations, but regardless it appears that Johnny got floored on all the debates above.


Bill

Joe Bloe

You are allowed to quote the Bible all you want. You can't very well discuss its contents or make arguments about those contents without quoting the contents, can you? But the point is, after you quote something you need to go on to discuss it, to put together an argument about what it means, and then to respond to critiques of your argument. You were doing fine when, for example, you tried to argue that science and Genesis agree on the flood, or that Judges 11 doesn't really say that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter. That's fine, that's one of the things this discussion forum is for. The problem is, when we disagreed with your interpretations and your claims and we offered counter arguments, you ignored us and either repeated the claims you already made or went on to make new claims. That is not a discussion. A discussion is a two-way street. You are trying to preach, a one-way street, communication in only one direction. We will listen to you as long as you will also listen to us. But if you refuse to listen to us, why should we bother listening to you?

You can quote scripture for the purpose of debating all you want. But that's not what you have been doing, at least not consistently. You have been preaching, i.e. talking at us rather than talking with us. We've heard it all before. Many of us, and I'm one of them, used to be fundigelical Christians and biblical inerrantists, but the Bible itself convinced us otherwise. Quote the Bible. Discuss the Bible. Quote and discuss the Koran. Quote and discuss Moby Dick. Just don't preach. Do you understand the difference?

Joe Bloe

Who wrote the Bible?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Bill Joey: Please reply to my posts #17, #18, and #19.

Deus Ex

If a Muslim were to try to convince you that Islam is the one true religion by spouting off verses from the Koran, do you think it would be effective?

Apologetics is the attempt to use reason to justify your beliefs. Spamming a bunch of bible verses is ineffective because we don't consider the human written bible to be the Word of any deity.

spamandham

Well, since you asked, I think the method is stupid and futile unless your audience is fellow Christians. They are the only ones who might be convinced by such silliness.

If your goal is to convince skeptics, odds are we are as familiar with the Bible as you are, and will not be convinced by apologetics of any kind. We can however be convinced by reason and credible evidence, so if we are your target audience, those are the tools you will need.

It's understandable why such a biased perspective is appealing to you, but you need to do better than simple authoritative claims. We're not sheep here.

By the way, welcome!

Johnny Skeptic

Do you mind giving some examples of where I got floored? Regarding the first website that you mentioned, which is http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ad.php?t=90599, that is a Theology Web website. Consider the following post from that website by James Holding:

The truth is that I demolished Holding by extensively quoting from Rodney Stark's "The Rise of Christianity." Whether or not Stark intended for his research to be used against Christianity is irrevelant. Research is research. In the book, Stark estimated that there were 7,530 Christians in the entire world in 100 A.D. Regarding Christianity's eventual rapid growth, that only became possible after all of the supposed still living eyewitnesses died. Until then, since Jesus did not perform any miracles, and since he did not rise from the dead, when people checked things out, the usual response to their investigations was "What miracles, and what Resurrection? We did not see any miracles, and we did not see Jesus after he rose from the dead?"

Logically, if Jesus performed many miracles, and rose from the dead, and appeared to over 500 people in one place after he rose from the dead, the first century would have been the most likely time for the most rapid growth in the Christian church due to the presence of thousands of still living eyewitnesses who could have verified claims of miracles, and Jesus' appearances after he rose from the dead, but the Christian church did not start to grow rapidly until after 100 A.D. Of course, some Christians claim otherwise, such as "World Christian Trends," a book that claims that there were 800,000 Christians in the world in 100 A.D., or over 100 times Stark's estimate. I once exchanged some e-mails with one of the two authors. He was not able to adequately verify the book's estimates.

Consider the following from the same website:

Well, it is almost a given that Rodney Stark did not write that, not to mention the fact that I am an agnostic, not an atheist. If Sparko told a lie, it would not be the first time that Christians have had the attitude that the end justifies the means.

Regarding "Stark used a simple mathematical formula to come up with a growth pattern and Johnny kept claiming it was an ACTUAL population figure," anyone who takes the time to read chapter 1 in the book will discover that Stark's method was not simple, and it took a lot of research.

In the book, Stark extensively quotes other scholarly sources, including in chapter 1. Two of the various kinds of evidence that Stark used to justify his estimate are archaeology and papyrology.

The book of Acts says that 3,000 people became Christians after hearing a brief sermon by Peter. Stark tried to explain that away by basically claiming that it was merely a figure of speech that should not be taken literally. I beg to differ. The texts say that 3,000 became Christians.

Consider the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Stark

Ok, if Stark does not know what he believes, and has trouble with faith, his comment "It's a nice article," referring to Holding's article that is titled "The Impossible Faith," should be taken with a grain of salt. In addition, it would only be fair if Stark also had commented on Richard Carrier's rebuttal of "The Impossible Faith." Have you by chance reader Richard Carrier's rebuttal of "The Impossible Faith"? If not, you should. The article is at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...er/improbable/. Richard demolished James Holding. Richard also has a book at Amazon that is titled "Not the Impossible Faith."

Please reply to my posts #17, #18, and #19.

Doug Shaver

That is not, in any useful sense of the word, debating. That is just preaching, pure and simple.

You might as well just cut to the chase and say, "Everything I believe is true because I'm infallible so I can't be wrong about any of it."

Zeluvia

That 'method' doesn't qualify as apologetics. Apologetics implies an intellectual discussion of the text to reconcile difficulties.

I don't even think it qualifies as exegesis, if you aren't stopping to explain the text, and interpolate meaning.

TheRealityOfMan

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