burning flames

they very gleefully and verbosely defend chrisitanity especially from a historical perspective.

Silent Dave

But badly.

And dishonestly.

And with a tone that tends to put off a great many people, atheists and Christians alike.

Check out http://the-anointed-one.com/exposed.html

Steven Avery

Some of the analysis is good, some notso. Tektonics is hamstrung in apologetics by the textcrit confusion that makes them have to try to defend things like the pig marathon in Gerash. Personally I think that their awkwardness of no real tangible Bible contributes to some of the bluster - meant to cover. It is very hard to do real Christian apologetics without identifying the word of God in a clear and concise and tangible way and without having the pure and accurate Bible.

And the tone is a real concern.

I rarely reference their material, it generally just does not seem to fit, but I do find some good analysis on occasion. On one occasion I sent them some material on Matthew 28:19 which was utilized in their article.

Shalom,
Steven

Doug Shaver

I assume you meant tektonics.org?

It's good for laughs. J.P. Holding is the clown prince of evangelical apologetics.

Doug Shaver

If you're looking for apologetics done by someone with respectable academic credentials, you might check out William Lane Craig's Web site.

Roger Pearse

The writing style seems to be the main barrier on which people remark. But the research seems to be generally very good.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

hallq

I recently had a guy at my university recommend it to me. I actually think Holding gets quite a few things right: Jesus predicted the end of the world within a few decades of his preaching, the argument from prophecy is a bad argument for Christianity, and that the Spanish Inquisition made wonderful sense from the point of view of the Catholic Church: "Cathar actions undermined the social order and threatened to cut the links of the chain of survival, as well as (from that view) security in eternal life." Holding exactly hits on how the delusions of orthodox Christianity lead quickly to hideous crimes.

As for Holding's Impossible Faith flaship essay, I haven't had a chance to carefully compare criticisms with Holding's responses, but on first reading it looks like Holding took one or two bad ideas and repeated them ad nauseum with out putting much though into what he was doing.

Sven

:huh:
Reading comprehension, anyone?

Try reading the thread again:

John Kesler

Since you think that Turkel's research is "generally very good," please give me your opinion about Turkel's comments here:

If the 430 years of Exodus 12:40 refers to the amount of time that the Israelites lived in Egypt, then how could the promise to Jacob, which occurred before Jacob even had children, be "where the 430 years dates from"?

Jack the Bodiless

Holding/Turkel is spectacularly clueless.

I studied his attempt to defend the "Tyre prophecy" here when working on the ErrancyWiki article here. Turkel makes pretty much all of the usual apologetic blunders, there doesn't seem to be a pothole that he can avoid falling into.

He repeats the usual apologetic split of the prophecy into "Nebuchadnezzar's part" and "Alexander's part", mistakenly assumes that Nebby's part was "fulfilled on the mainland" despite the context clearly indicating the assault on the island fortress AFTER the mainland was taken, completely ignores Ezekiel's claim that Nebby's army would rampage down ALL the streets of Tyre (which would have to include the island, which Nebby failed to take), mentions Ezekiel's offer of Egypt as compensation while failing to mention that this prophecy also failed, falsely claims that Alex fulfilled his part (he didn't permanently destroy Tyre, in any sense), completely misses all the references to Tyre's status as an island (a rock, in the midst of the sea, strong in the sea) when discussing events on the mainland... and brazenly tries to pretend that "and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again" doesn't refer to permanent destruction.

He even caps it all with repeating and endorsing the spectaculary boneheaded apologetic comparison of the fates of Tyre and Sidon (on another page, here):
...Completely ignoring the fact that Tyre is far from "extinct", and is actually the fourth-largest town in modern Lebanon, similar in size to Sidon!