lpetrich

An annoying feature of various religious and ideological apologists is their tendency to deny their own creeds when they want to win arguments.

I experienced some annoying examples of that in EoG as I was composing a response to someone's criticism of physicist Victor Stenger's arguments -- that VS critic was claiming that God does not provide objectively verifiable answering of prayers, which is odd, to say the least.

A more classic one had happened in a long-ago thread on how well Jesus Christ had satisfied Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero criteria. I had found a very good fit, but Bede thought otherwise.

I had given a score of 0.5 to JC's father being a king, since the Bible tells us that Joseph had Davidic ancestry -- and contains two different lists of intermediate ancestors. Bede protested that Joseph had been a commoner, but that to me was a rather blatant disregard of those genealogies.

I had also given a score of 1 for defeating some enemy or some monster, on account of Jesus Christ successfully defeating the Devil's temptations and the Devil giving up. But Bede thought otherwise.

I don't recall the rest, however.

I have, however, noticed similar creed-denial apologetics among Muslims and Marxists and others.

Yahzi

The ultimate is the First Cause argument.

In their zeal to prove there was a First Cause, they jettison everything they know about their God, reducing him to nothing other than a First Cause.

Then, at the end of the flight, they look around for their baggage, and can never seem to understand why it's not on the plane.

Biff the unclean

Lord Raglan's scale
1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin.
2. His father is a king and
3. often a near relative of the mother, but
4. the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. he is also reputed to be the son of a god
6. at birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. reared by foster-parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. on reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and or giant, dragon, or wild beast
12. he marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. prescribes laws but
16. later loses favor with the gods and or his people and
17. is driven from from the throne and the city after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death
19. often at the top of a hill.
20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. he has one or more holy sepulchres.