The Dumplin' Dumbash Page

On the Trilemma

Watching Dumplin' Dumbash try to defend himself in depth is a bit like watching a cockroach squirm under your feet after you've stomped on its hind parts: You can see the little legs and antenna wiggling helplessly, and if you asked the roach, it no doubt would say it was making a valiant effort to defend itself. This sort of defense, however, is like using papier maiche against carbide steel. Dumbash "defends" his trilemma spoutings first of all by creating new meanings for old words. I pointed out that stuff like, "How do we know Jesus did say these things?" is outside the scope of the Trilemma. Dumbash -- pioneering new efforts in semantic deconstruction -- claims that wasn't his point, no, no, no, no, no.

O RLY? So what was his point, then, when he said things like:

Notice the binary thinking here. Either a thing is 100% true, or it is 100% false. Either Jesus claimed to be divine, or he did not. But does this really reflect the realities involved in Jesus’s remarks and the circumstances under which he made them (assuming he really did make them)?

So apparently he was making some OTHER point than that Jesus may not have said these words when he asked whether we can assume that Jesus really said those words. Huh. I wonder what point he was actually making then? Maybe he was actually using that point to make an argument about Japanese fiscal policy.

Likewise, though Dumbash next claims that I am "admitting that he didn't understand what I wrote" his quote of me doesn't say anything like this. It rhetorically asks Dumplin' to defend his claim re alleged "false dichotomies" in my article, but instead of getting that, we first get some rambling diatribe about how Lewis did this, and while Lewis and I were in many ways similar, he isn't me. Then Dumbash whines:

The problem is, Jesus liked to teach in parables and to use figurative language even when speaking to his disciples. Even if he did say, "I am God," would that be meant literally? Let's look again at Holding's first dichotomy. "Either Jesus claimed to be divine, or He did not" (emph. Holding's). The first question is, did Jesus claim to be literally divine? This is the first dichotomy in Holding's argument, and it also reflects Lewis's claim that Jesus has not left open the possibility that he was merely an inspired non-divine teacher. This question is the core of the trilemma argument, because if Jesus was not intentionally trying to convey the idea that he was God the Son Incarnate, all the subsequent dichotomies become moot.

Problem? The only problem here is that Dumbash is, as usual, a poorly educated dolt when it comes to Biblical semnatics and scholarship. Genre and context study shows that there are many literal claims to divinity by Jesus. They are not in parable form. They are not in the form of figurative statements. I have a whole series on the divine claims of Jesus; I'd ask Dumbash to explain why each isn't a literal claim to deity, but he needs to fumble around with John 10 some more before he can move on past kindergarten. On John 10, I noted several complexities beyond Dumplin's ken, such as the meaning of elohim. Dumplin' has no answer for this, other than smiling and going "duh":

In other words, the problem with trying to turn Psalm 82 into a dichotomy is that the word for "god" or "gods" can mean different things in different contexts, and theologians need to dig a little deeper than the Lewis/Holding dichotomy of "either true or false."

Yes. That's right. And?

Nope. He didn't answer it; all he did was posture in astonishment that (Lord help us!) we actually had to dig some to arrive at an answer. I also pointed out that Ps. 82 is nevertheless relating something true or false, and Dumplin's reply appears to have been composed on magic mushrooms:

The problem is, the determination is dependent on the interpretation, or more precisely, the accuracy of the determination is dependent on the accuracy of the interpretation. It's all well and good to try and protect God by distancing what He allegedly said from what He allegedly meant, but that only makes the trilemma an even weaker argument for the deity of Jesus. Even if Jesus was absolutely 100% correct when he claimed to be "one with God" (in some sense), the assumed truth of that statement contributes nothing to the argument that he was genuine deity unless the interpretation (that he was claiming divinity) is also correct. Inaccessible truth is theoretically possible but practically useless, and our only access to the truth (or untruth) of Jesus's claims is through human interpretation of his words. And those words must be interpreted exegetically, not by simplistic, artificial dichotomies.

Uh....right.

Well, Dumplin', let me put it this way. I did interpret Ps. 82 exegetically. You did not refute my interpretation. I interpreted all the other claims exegetically. You're still scratching your butt and making monkey sounds, like the ones quoted above. We're told that we need "a more nuanced, exegetical approach to what Jesus might have meant" in John 10, and it is said that our approach "oversimplifies the theological issues involved, and reduces a complex theological question to a false dichotomy between mutually exclusive binary absolutes, neither of which necessarily describes the real-world context of the question." But as for actually giving an alternative exegesis rooted in serious contextual study....uh....forget it.

Yep. One more case of Kruger-Dunning Syndrome.