The Dumplin' Dumbash Page

The Legendary Dumplin'

We have a ton of stuff here on the resurrection, including answers to all that crap about "spiritual resurrections" and body theft. Dumplin' will never touch more than a couple of sentences of it, of course, and no wonder, since his method of reading obviously involves taking mind-altering drugs first.

For example, he says that "the reason Paul wrote [1 Cor.] 15 isbecause, as verse 12 tells us, he was unhappy with the number of believers who did not buy this whole resurrection business." Um, not quite, Dumplin'. Their issue was not with whether the resurrection of Jesus happened; their issue was with what was thought to be the impossibility of resurrection (point 3) according to pagan philosophical principles. There's no room to say that doubted that Jesus was raised; but they did doubt that they could be. As I noted in replies to The Empty Tomb, this does mean they were holding inconsistent positions. Paul's appeal to Jesus as a model is for the purpose of saying, to persons of a collectivist mindset, "If you deny that it can happen to you, then how do you explain that it happened to our ingroup leader?"

Obviously, Dumplin' didn’t explore any of that, and talked about something else instead. Who can blame him? He's in over his head when it comes to dealing with hard Biblical scholarship.

Beyond this, Dumplin' offers the usual canards. "Paul doesn't mention an empty tomb, bwaaaah." (No, I guess when he says "buried" he means they buried Jesus in midair, or at sea.) "The body could have decayed so that it was unrecognizable, bwaaaah." Doesn't matter, Dumplin'. ANY body could have been produced by the authorities, who could have tagged it "Jesus," and no one could have said boo to contradict them. Let's try to get some education in the politics of oppression, shall we? "Gossip and oral traditions, bwaaaah." Sigh. Get an education, Dumplin'. "It's an urban legend. Bwaaaaah." Unfortunately, his argument for this amounts to, "There have been other urban legends, so this could be one too." Wow. We're impressed, Dumplin'. So maybe your competence is an urban legend, too. Too bad it doesn't explain how that "urban legend" convinced others in the face of so many negative factors (see link re impossibility of resurrection, and don't forget to see the answers to critics too, Dumplin'). Urban legends like the 9/11 conspiracies don't convert a large percentage of the people and stay underground. They also don't challenge the honor of leading authorities, or demand that people give up their social status in order to believe in it. And so on. Oops. Care to try again and be a little less simple-minded with the next canard, Dumpy?

And so on. "They had a non-literal view of reality, bwaaah." We corrected that canard before; Dumplin's exegetical imagination, not scholarship, is behind it; and somehow he thinks some example from 2008 puts the same view on people in 48. Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle, did you really pull that rabbit out of your hat? "They didn't actually SEE the resurrection, bwaaaah." So what are you suggesting, Dumplin'? The evil twin Jesus theory? "I can't figure out when this appearance to the 500 was, bwaaaah." Your problem here is ours why, Dumplin'? Try explaining rather than asserting for one. And finally: "The Mount of Olives is just across the valley from the Temple and no one else noticed a flying man, bwaaah." Um hm. Earthtools doesn't exactly establish the matter of visibility or line of sight, Dumplin'. Try accounting for things like the walls of the temple, for example, or topographic features, and just how clearly someone could discern details of a "flying man" (as opposed to some other object) from the given distance. "Duh. Here's a map" is not an argument.

In other words, Dumplin' can bwaaaah out "evolve and mature" until he sucks his thumb right off, and it won't add a tinkle of evidence in his favor.