February 2005
screwballs of the month
The
screwballs came out of the woodwork this month, and they came from all
directions. If this keeps up we may need to make this a weekly feature!
from the mailbag
Let’s start
with a couple of the more amusing comments I got by mail this past month.
Here’s one kindly soul trying to convince me that I should listen to anyone,
even my plumber, when it comes to Bible critiques:
If inerrancy is not assumed, then errancy is a possibility, and therefore _objectively_ one
should examine new arguments on their own merits even though the arguer may not
be a scholar: and this is what I hope to have you agree with me on.
Wow, talk
about connecting the dots with a sledgehammer. On the kinder side, here was a
well-seasoned letter I also got (slightly edited for the Family Channel):
F**king retards.
Believe donkeys can talk.
F**king retard.
Dan Barker ripped your retard apart.
F**king apolgist
retards.
Your email reply will be banned from
my ISP
F**king child abusers.
Hmm, not bad for Haiku, eh?
golden duh
award winners
Atheists believe, too!
From TheologyWeb, the screwiest statement this past month was
made by Jim Eisele, an atheist of the Farrell Till Sycophantry Society, who made this comment:
I think that you want to go to heaven when you die.
Well, so does an atheist. Who’s to say that an atheism god doesn’t exist?
Hmm, Maybe Eisele needs to get with another fellow from TWeb, styled “Magdalenbrother,”
who said:
God and man are inseparable. God's
name is the Father. Have you seen a father without a son? But many
Christians continue to hold the belief that God could not have created the
universe. It was a whim, they say. A whim of his goodness
that will end in eternal torment for most human creatures.
I guess
Jim’s atheists and Maggie’s Christians go to the same church. Might be Unitarian Universalist or something.
Finally for
this round of Golden Duhs, we have this question
posted by “
Regina Flangie
desperately wants to convert to Christianity; however, she needs X
amount of money to do so--don't ask why, it's irrelevant.
How much money (either a dollar amount or a percentage of your yearly income)
would you be willing to give to insure she could convert?
Hmm,
someone has too much Jim Bakker on the brain.
Silver duh
award winners
No, you put the HORSE first!
We award
two this time in the Silver category, both by Christians, and both emerging
from my recent debate (if you can call what my opponents have done so far “debate”)
with James White on Calvinism. It seems that many defenders of Calvinism end up
resorting to the neo-fundy school of Biblical interpretation.
One classic example was one styled “ChristianTrader”
on TWeb, who released this screwball statement:
Again as I said earlier, learn all
that you can. But at the end of the day, you must translate what the text says
and then go home. If you have a conflict between exegesis and cultural analysis, the
cultural analysis needs more work.
And
finally, our other opponent, Steve Hays, producer of a pompous and seldom-read blog, could win a legion of Duh Awards on his own for his
performance this past month; but we want to award a special Misuse of Google
Prize to “johnMark”, one of White’s Calvinist
hangers-on, who on TWeb pomped
out with these comments:
Do you all here think
that Steve Hays is not qualified to engage the situation the way he did? Do any
of you know who Steve Hays is?
I made comments about Dr. Hays to
show that he is qualified to engage this situation and he's not just an epologist like many are. Having a "Dr" infront of one's name doesn't make one's position right or
wrong. Not to mention is was "your side" who brought up anything
about a potential "bogus" doctorate [sic] as if that discredited an arguement.[sic]
jM had, you see, come under the impression that Hays was this
fellow:
http://www.classics.ohiou.edu/faculty/hays/index.php
a very
qualified personage. But some things seemed out of whack with that ID, so I did
some checking and – well, here’s what I wrote:
I also have a question. Is there
something on the blog
that connects to the man at
Why is it that the webmaster says of Hays,
"Steve is one of the most talented Christian writers I know, with an
intellect so sharp you could eat your steak with it. I hope this index will
make it even easier to access his insightful and illuminating contributions on
a wide range of topics.
New: Steve wrote a novel some years ago, entitled Musica
Mundana, which is now available as a free eBook (in Adobe Acrobat format)."
What? No, "He is a professor of X and Y at
Hays has also written for a site called thirdmill.org.
http://www.thirdmill.org/newfiles/s...abyrinth.2.html
Nothing is said about him being a scholar of credit. Why not?
http://www.ohiou.edu/gcatalog/03-05/faculty.htm
Interesting. The fellow at
And there's a good reason why behind all of this folks!
IT'S NOT THE SAME GUY!!!
I just got off the phone with Hays at
1) He knows about the other Hays. It's not him, but he looked at his stuff (not
to me specifically, but generally) and called it (I have permission to quote
him) "CRAP"!
2) He agrees with me that it is ridiculous to read Calvinism into texts like Romans 9.
Oh man, this is so funny I almost fell out of my chair!!!
I’d sue jM for my injuries, but it’s
contentment enough that he put his foot in his mouth like this. As an aside, jM will share this award with an atheist on TWeb who chimed in with agreement, “FormerFundy”
(aka Gargamel). A couple of
other people made the same mistake, but they apologized for it. To date,
neither johnMark nor Gargamel
have done so. Update: Just in time to make the grade, jM did apologize on 3/1. So we give the award only to Gargamel.
That’s all for this month. See you next time with the March Screwball Set.