Shadow Wraith

There were recently a couple of apologists who replied to my letter in the local paper's Opinion section. My letter was in response to the tons of pro-life letter in the paper, and I decided to use the famous passages Exodus 21:22-25 to counter many of the theological arguements. The first guy's letter was rather inane, but the second person's was a little "better". However, she admitted to ambiguity of the aformentioned Biblical texts, which would cause problems if she was a literalist (I dunno if she is). Of course, these two replies don't quite amount to the shitstorm of condemnation I received last summer when I replied to a letter where the son of a local reverend criticizing his claims that faith healing was better than modern medicine.

Here are the two replies to my recent letter.

http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/012203/opi_046-3790.shtml
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/012403/opi_046-3801.shtml

Peter Kirby

This seems more appropriate to Miscellaneous Discussions.

best,
Peter Kirby

Silent Dave

I remember once in my discussions with an amateur apologist, I put forth Drange's argument from nonbelief and religious confusion. He went into this long bit about how the Bible predicts that there would be sin, which in his opinion is the cause of religious confusion and nonbelief. He ended with -- this is a verbatim quote -- "In fact if the Christian message is true, I'd use R. Confusion as an argument for the Christian world-view. So that's two I'd use R. Confusion, and N. Belief, thanks Dave"

I think it's so cute when apologists try to act like grown-ups.


Dave

Shadow Wraith

One of the things I notice most about apologeticists is that they often will try to counter a piece of scripture with another piece of scripture. For example, I'll point out something immoral or just plain false, and they'll counter it with "Well, this verse says such and such." I'll ask them "Which is it? Both can't be right," and I will proceed to tell them that this means that the buybull is not self-consistent and therefore cannot be trusted as being literal. They have no choice but to pick and choose which parts of scripture they will hold as true--a rather common practice even among literalist fundies.