Switch89

I'd like you guys to read this and tell me what you thinK
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2009/1...p-holding.html

DancesWithCoffeeCups

Could you please provide a brief synopsis for our members?

Switch89

Holding is shown to be a very, very dumb man in numerous ways. Rated TV-14.

Toto

Why pay more attention to an attention whore? JPHolding should be an embarrassment to Christian apologists everywhere.

Switch89

Apparently not, since Mike Licona actually wrote the foreword to Holding's book about the Christ myth theory. I emailed my Licona about this though and hopefully he will never associate himself with Holding again. From what I've seen Licona is a nice guy, and an honest guy too. He's really biased, but I don't think he's actually aware of how bad his arguments are.

GakuseiDon

Well, I contributed an article on Justin Martyr and Diabolical Mimicry to his Christ Myth book as well, and I consider myself a fairly nice and honest guy also.

Yes, I agree that JP Holding's invective is often not necessary and overdone, but it is no worse than many others out there. Such invective carries its own punishment, since I suspect many people -- like me -- won't link to Holding's website simply because it will side-track any debate onto Holding's personality rather than the data in the article. That's a shame, because there are a lot of well-researched articles on the Tektonic's website, especially around the Christ Myth theory.

But you have to remember how many truly bad anti-Christian arguments there are out there. Yes, there are just as many bad pro-Christian arguments as well, but that's by-the-bye. I've seen Holding debate quite politely with people who show that they 'know their stuff' by citing sources, but he has little patience for those who repeat rubbish they've found on the Internet. That's not necessarily to his credit, of course, but often he is responding to a tone that is established by others.

A while ago I checked through some of those websites that try to show how bad Holding is, and he didn't come off too badly. Usually when you look at his ruder responses, there is a context to them that quote mining leaves out.

Let's look at the three quotes you give in your blog:

Example 1

(Holding said this in response to an Amazon Commenter):

"Speculation has it that you have intimate relations with farm animals. I guess that wasn't much fun because you're here posting comments. See? Isn't that great?"

Looking at the link provided, you can see what "See? Isn't that great?" is referring to -- the raising of speculation on something. What is Holding responding to? Someone (Jeff Leroy) was "speculating" about Holding's motives, and dragging in Holding's wife:

His "real name", Nick? Did he make his wife change her name, too?

Speculation has it, the reason he used a pseudonym was to avoid detection that he was posting to his website during work hours with the state. I guess that wasn't effective because he lost his job and hasn't worked in his profession (librarian) since.

Which brings to mind a humorous appellation I saw for him:

Robert "I don't have TIME to earn a living" Turkel
JP "At least I drive my wife to work" Holding

Holding's response, which is clearly aimed at the "speculation" part which has nothing to do with the review in question:

Jeffy, you're such a dip! State of FL prisons don't offer Internet access on the prison compounds.

Speculation has it that you have intimate relations with farm animals. I guess that wasn't much fun because you're here posting comments. See? Isn't that great?

It's too bad you're reduced to this sort of babbling because not being able to answer actual arguments frustrates you so badly.

Perhaps Holding shouldn't have answered this way, but you can see that he was responded to "speculation", and to something that had nothing to do with any debate, but was connected to Holding personally.

Example 2

In response to a web-forum member:

"And you? You’re nothing but a sanctimonious ant with delusions of your own grandeur; you’re nothing but a modern day Hugh waving your swollen member around and knocking people over with it or else disgusting everyone by pointing to it and shouting to everyone to look at it."

This was again a response, where Holding responded to a blog post made by a Christian who was critical of Holding and Tektonics. Holding was going through the blog article, posting comments about it, including the above.

As part of his accusations, the Christian seemed (to Holding) to be accusing Holding of diverting Tsumani donations. As Holding writes on the link provided by you:

"It seems to me that there was some accusation on your [the Christian's] part about tsunami relief funds, about Tekton being some sort of diversionary cover. I found this odd, since the link for Tsunami relief on TWeb was clearly to a general charity site that gave links to other charities. Would you mind expositing on that little arc of speculation?"

He also accused Holding's use of an alias as showing "a denial of Christ"; he declared the tax exempt status of Tektonics as suspicious; and finally criticised the importance of Tektonics in apologetics. Holding responded by discussing Tektonics and the number of articles on it, and finished off with the response you highlighted above.

Example 3

"Well, that's Crybaby's fault. He's an expert manipulator, and all I did was make him eat his own upchuck."

The link to the article where Holding says this is broken, so I can't check the context. But I guess the problem here is using the expression "make him eat his own upchuck". Not a nice thing to say as a response, but without knowing what he was responding to, I can't put it into context.

He does indeed, and this carries its own punishment, as I wrote above.

But how bad is Holding, really? Have a real hard look at the "Holding Quotes" webpage that you linked to here, where it lists the "horrible things" that Holding writes: http://web.archive.org/web/200512281...com/quotes.htm

Especially, check the ones that the website owner has highlighted in yellow. See how many are highlighted because he uses words like "pee pee" and "doo doos".

Toto

Licona is only a nice guy for public relations purposes, I suspect. There seem to be a lot of Christian apologists who contribute to Holding's books who try to distance themselves from his excesses, but not too far. It's like they know he's an abusive bastard, but he's still on their side, and they need him.

In any case, I went back and read your blog post and the comments, and Holding Tweb response, and it looks like you are in a pissing match with a skunk. He only issues those insults to get his opponents riled up to the point where they lose their cool.

GakuseiDon

Well, I contributed an article on Justin Martyr and Diabolical Mimicry to his Christ Myth book as well, and I consider myself a fairly nice and honest guy also.

Yes, I agree that JP Holding's invective is often not necessary and overdone, but it is no worse than many others out there. Such invective carries its own punishment, since I suspect many people -- like me -- won't link to Holding's website simply because it will side-track any debate onto Holding's personality rather than the data in the article. That's a shame, because there are a lot of well-researched articles on the Tektonic's website, especially around the Christ Myth theory.

But you have to remember how many truly bad anti-Christian arguments there are out there. Yes, there are just as many bad pro-Christian arguments as well, but that's by-the-bye. I've seen Holding debate quite politely with people who show that they 'know their stuff' by citing sources, but he has little patience for those who repeat rubbish they've found on the Internet. That's not necessarily to his credit, of course, but often he is responding to a tone that is established by others.

A while ago I checked through some of those websites that try to show how bad Holding is, and he didn't come off too badly. Usually when you look at his ruder responses, there is a context to them that quote mining leaves out.

Let's look at the three quotes you give in your blog:

Example 1

(Holding said this in response to an Amazon Commenter):

"Speculation has it that you have intimate relations with farm animals. I guess that wasn't much fun because you're here posting comments. See? Isn't that great?"

Looking at the link provided, you can see he was responding to "speculation" by someone (Jeff Leroy) on Holding's motives, bringing in Holding's wife. Jeff had written:

His "real name", Nick? Did he make his wife change her name, too?

Speculation has it, the reason he used a pseudonym was to avoid detection that he was posting to his website during work hours with the state. I guess that wasn't effective because he lost his job and hasn't worked in his profession (librarian) since.

Which brings to mind a humorous appellation I saw for him:

Robert "I don't have TIME to earn a living" Turkel
JP "At least I drive my wife to work" Holding

Holding's responded with his own "speculation":

Jeffy, you're such a dip! State of FL prisons don't offer Internet access on the prison compounds.

Speculation has it that you have intimate relations with farm animals. I guess that wasn't much fun because you're here posting comments. See? Isn't that great?

It's too bad you're reduced to this sort of babbling because not being able to answer actual arguments frustrates you so badly.

Perhaps Holding shouldn't have answered this way, but you can see that he was responding to "speculation" which had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Example 2

In response to a web-forum member:

"And you? You’re nothing but a sanctimonious ant with delusions of your own grandeur; you’re nothing but a modern day Hugh waving your swollen member around and knocking people over with it or else disgusting everyone by pointing to it and shouting to everyone to look at it."

This was again a response, where Holding responded to a blog post made by a Christian who was critical of Holding and Tektonics. Holding was going through the blog article, posting his response to comments made by the Christian.

As part of his accusations, the Christian seemed (to Holding) to be accusing Holding of diverting Tsumani donations. As Holding writes on the link provided by you:

"It seems to me that there was some accusation on your [the Christian's] part about tsunami relief funds, about Tekton being some sort of diversionary cover. I found this odd, since the link for Tsunami relief on TWeb was clearly to a general charity site that gave links to other charities. Would you mind expositing on that little arc of speculation?"

He also accused Holding's use of an alias as showing "a denial of Christ"; he declared the tax exempt status of Tektonics as suspicious; and finally criticised the importance of Tektonics in apologetics. Holding responded by discussing Tektonics and the number of articles on it, and finished off with the response you highlighted above.

Example 3

"Well, that's Crybaby's fault. He's an expert manipulator, and all I did was make him eat his own upchuck."

The link to the article where Holding says this is broken, so I can't check the context. But I guess the problem here is using the expression "make him eat his own upchuck". Not a nice thing to say as a response, but without knowing what he was responding to, I can't put it into context.

He does indeed, and this carries its own punishment, as I wrote above.

But how bad is Holding, really? Have a real hard look at the "Holding Quotes" webpage that you linked to here, where it lists the "horrible things" that Holding writes: http://web.archive.org/web/200512281...com/quotes.htm

Especially, check the ones that the website owner has highlighted in yellow. Many of them are highlighted because he uses words like "pee pee" and "doo doos", and terms relating to sex or other bodily functions. Not very sophisticated responses by Holding, of course, but if that Quote webpage is the "worst of Holding", then it does not live up to the legend, I'm afraid.

Switch89

GDon,

I'm not much impressed with your defense of Holding. What he said was pretty gross and pretty rude. And maybe that, by itself, doesn't make him a terrible person, but then again you have to remember that he is supposed to be representing Christianity. And he's about the worst advertisement one could make. Not that that means Christianity is false, just that I think Christians ought to pick a better spokesperson if they want to actually win people over.

Now, the three quotes weren't the only thing, or even the main thing, that made me write my blog article. The fact is is that he pretends to be an authority on a lot of different issues and makes grand pronouncements without a hint of doubt about the dates of certain books of the Bible (like Daniel) even though he has ZERO qualifications in any relevant area. And then he criticizes others for doing the same. I also mentioned quite a number of other things that show he is unreliable as an authority. Do you disagree with those?

So I think if you want to defend Holding you should also look at the other issues that I brought up. Look at the meat of the article, not just the quotes I mentioned in order to give my readers an idea of what Holding was like.

Switch89

I'm not interested in getting in a pissing match with a skunk. And in fact, I believe I'm going to wash my hands of Holding. I probably won't read his post, since I've had all of his negativity and BS I can take. However, if someone wants to quote any relevant point he makes that needs addressing I'll address it.