The Dumplin' Dumbash Page

Dumplin's Victim Complex

"If you can't understand it -- revel in your stupidity." and, "If you make a big mistake -- blame the other guy for not making you smarter." That's what should appear as a motto above Dumplin's blog these days; he got my view on hell wrong, but insists he didn't, since he didn't "say anything" about fire and brimstone; and so supposedly I "garbled" his position. Yeah, right! He didn't assume I hold the usual view of hell, which is why he began his screed with the usual crybaby phraseology that comes from whiners wgho object to that view ("One of the problems with the Christian Gospel is that it must somehow reconcile the idea of a loving heavenly Father with the idea that unbelievers go to hell, even though they’re supposedly God’s children and a truly loving father would not send his kids to eternal torment.") That's why he uses that language again later ("He’s got a premise ('God is a loving Father') and an inconsistent consequence ('God sends most of His children into eternal suffering"). So we're to believe that Dumplin' was already aware of this view on hell, which is only beginning to be promulgated in modern times by a handful of people (like myself, J. P. Moreland, and a few others), but he STILL used the same old canard language ("suffering") for it, and posed it as a problem with the "Christian gospel" as a whole even though it's still a distinctly minority view which he later ADMITS is something new that only a few are talking about.

Sure thing, Dumplin'. Tell us another one.

But anyway, we'll see that as usual, Dumplin's head is inserted deeply into his arse when it comes to scholarship. I am said to introduce the "notion" of a "shame and honor" culture which is "allegedly typical of Biblical times..." Yeah, you read that right: Allegedly. That's how dumb Dumplin' is. He thinks I actually make this stuff up. He thinks it is some "esoteric and scholarly insight." (How that would make it wrong is not explained; he doesn't want to venture looking that stupid, but he'll take the propaganda thrust and plausible deniability ["I never said it didn't exist"] the "allegedly" affords him even so.) He also thinks the article I link to "makes a number of points rather different from the ones Holding is making," (but doesn't explain why this is a problem; as if any broad article on such issues is going to repeat every single point someone else says) and that it actually "rather contradict[s]" what I said, though he doesn't explain what point I make anywhere is "contradicted" by what is there, and he misreports the view of that site, which does not say that "both types of culture co-exist pretty much everywhere throughout history." The closest it gets to this is where it says, speaking of today:

The sources I cited have located shame-culture principally in the more collectivist societies of the East, but of course the two cultures co-exist (perhaps with different relative influences) everywhere.

Later on, Dumplin' also lies and says, "as the doceo site points out, shame-and-honor is an inferior system." It never says any such thing; it says, "Neither culture is perfect: neither is alien to our experience."

But anyway, not even getting that right, it's little wonder Dumplin' strains for his usual wild-pie conclusion, as he says, "Duh ah...this puts Holding’s views on atonement in a rather peculiar situation, since any misdeeds you commit aren't really wrong, provided you can get away with them." Oops -- uh, Dumplin'? Since in the Biblical view, God sees everything you do, the bottom line is that in that worldview, no one ever gets away with anything! Duh ah... Dumplin' also somehow manages to connect "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" to honor precepts of the ancient sort and thinks it somehow an argument that I do public shaming of people with parodies.

Uh...Dumplin'....lemme clue you in on something: What you WANT to prove, if anything, is that "guilt" existed in the ancient Biblical world; otherwise, your critique of atonement is dead.

You don't do that by arguing that "shame" still exists in today's modern guilt culture. Of course it does, you moron. Guilt societies ADD guilt to shame and give it prominence. But shame societies, in the ancient world, didn't have guilt. That's why your critique of the atonement sucks eggs. It speaks for itself that Dumplin's self-esteem is so damaged that he whines, "Holding can dispense with the mystical hand-waving and arcane symbols glued to his pointy cap: the shame-and-honor business is not some esoteric secret that only scholarly initiates have access to." True, it isn't: But it is something a moron like you hasn't accessed yet; arcane and esoteric only to the profoundly ignorant -- much less have you done enough homework to apply it properly to any Biblical text.

So what about my view of hell, anyway, now that he's done whining about being stupid? No, no answer; it's just more of Dumplin' feeling put upon and stupid again; this won him another Screwball award:

Isn’t it interesting that modern theologians, without God showing up in real life, and without any direct access to Hell itself, are able to make "new" discoveries about eternal punishment just by rejecting what men have said in the past and thinking up their own ideas about what Hell ought to be like? One of the advantages of academic theology is that, since everything is based on what men say about God, you can construct a whole "new look" for something as basic as the doctrine of Hell, just by going back over what’s already been said, and selectively emphasizing or de-emphasizing whatever ideas need to be made stronger or weaker.

Let's just make that simpler, shall we?

"Duh, I'm stupid. I can't answer your arguments."

Dumplin' doesn't present any argument against these interpretations; all he has is the fundy-atheist literalist canard to offer: "One can’t help but wonder, however, why Jesus and the apostles never seem to have heard of this idea, and why it takes a 'new look' from modern apologists like Miller and Lewis to discover that the Christian Church has had a mistaken view of Hell for all these centuries." Yep. That's an answer all right. Never mind exegeting those words of Jesus and the apostles in their social and literary context (which shows that this is what they did mean). Never mind answering, for example, the point that "weeping and gnashing of teeth" is an expression of shame, not pain. For Dumplin', all he has to do is be a fundy and say: "Duh ah. Jesus says there's fire there. That must mean there was fire there. Duh ah. Duuuh."

In the end, Dumplin' has to admit that with this view of hell, all the problems are solved (just as my good atheist friend Kyle Gerkin said). But in the end, Dumplin' can't dispute the facts, so he makes up problems out of thin air. One is his lie above that the UK site claims that shame cultures are inferior. (Dumplin' has his fitting for a white sheet tomorrow at 10.) His second blat is that it seems "odd" that "God would be bound, by 'epistemic realities' beyond His control, to punish people for sin, only to have both the offense and the appropriate punishment defined by fallible, pride-based human perceptions about what 'honor' is?" In this Dumplin' simply begs the question that such percceptions ARE merely human. It would never occur to him that human occupation with honor derives from a means value that God holds. (Of course, a racist, Uncle Whitey McSam pig like Dumplin' assumed in Bible college, and still assumes now, that God is "bound" by the values his own culture instead, and also assumes that the "defined" punishments are not defined by God.)

Third, Dumplin' asks the supremely dumb question, "how could humans successfully shame God?" Uh oh, time for another lesson in how ignorant Dumplin' is. You see, there's two types of honor -- one type is what you'd call "acquired" and the other is what you'd maybe call "inherent." God has skillions of points worth of inherent honor because of who He is. But "acquired" honor comes from outside. Humans CAN dishonor God this way, by denying that He is God, for example. Fourth, Dumplin' whines, "what kind of loving Father casts His own children into the outer darkness as eternal punishment for dishonoring Him?" -- he's stil laboring under the idiocy that "love" is sentimentalism and feeling. Oops. And he's also still applying the "old view" of hell in which God actively casts people out. What was that about me "garbling" your view, Dumpy?

Fifth (he's still whining), "if you deserve to go to Hell for dishonoring God, and if God the Son must suffer even more humiliation and degradation on your account, why should anyone wind up in heaven?" Huh? The question isn't even coherent; apparently Dumplin' misses the point of atonement, in which Jesus' sacrifice buys us as slaves, in essence. "Duh ah.... doesn’t that mean that believers are responsible for shaming God twice?" No. Where such a dumb idea comes from we can only guess, but it may have something to do with Dumplin's habit of snorting freon.

"Lastly" (that's a relief) "if it’s merely a question of shame and honor, wouldn’t it be possible to escape from the punishment by just swallowing your pride and returning like the prodigal son, bearing your own shame?" Uh, Dumplin'? This is why you're so ignorant. The prodigal son DIDN'T "bear his own shame," the father took it on himself, in essence. When your brain actually operates, look for something titled "A Dysfunctional Family and its Neighbors: Luke 15:11-32." by Richard Rohrbaugh. And the son didn't bear his own shame either; repentance isn't mentioned. And news flash: Equations of the father with the Father are -- WRONG! You can start here if your library fines are too big from returning Green Eggs and Ham late.

So it is that Dumplin' as usual doesn't bother when it comes to exegesis or explanation. It's more than sufficient for an idiot to just be an idiot -- and for a fundy to stay a fundy, even as an atheist. It speaks for itself that the put-upon Dumplin' still resorts to the same brand of excuses he would as a fundy: "(Holding's view is) based solely on the things men say about things," "intricate, well-researched, and carefully footnoted rationalizations."

Yep. As Gump said, stupid is as stupid does.