What Others Cry discuss something intelligent here Brooks can't answer any of our arguments, so he has also gone around collecting whinges from others who also can't answer them. Let's see what we have -- which amounts to comments from all of FIVE people, on over 1600 of my articles and dozens of TWeb threads: http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php... LAKEGEORGEGUY: It’s clear you’ve never read or studied any science Holding. It frightens you. You were scared to even take a position on the foolishness of YEC because you claimed such woeful ignorance about science. You have no clue about any of the modern discoveries of neuroscience, and in this post it’s clear you don’t even understand the one subject you’ve devoted your entire obsessive life to. I find you tragically amusing, it’s like you’re some kind of macabre Shakespearean character completely unaware of what a despicably ugly and flawed person you are. "LakeGeorgeMan" is himself a cowardly hypocrite who also never answers any arguments we post. The general claim about "taking a position" on YEC is addressed here. To get an idea how "LakeGeorgeMan" deals with arguments he can't handle -- which is 98% of what we throw at him -- see here. http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/holding1.html "As the text says - because despite Mr. Holding's smokescreens, he cannot escape the fact that the Bible tells us exactly what happened to Jephthah's daughter, and her fate was categorically not the one he would desperately like to believe it was. The plain, brutal facts are these: Judges 11:39 says that Jephthah ultimately 'did with [his daughter] according to his vow which he had vowed.' Mr. Holding weakly suggests that this is 'non-specific', but the opposite is true; it is perfectly specific. The vow that this refers to is, of course, the one contained in Judges 11:30-31: 'And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.'" "The text specifically and clearly says burnt offering (Hebrew 'olah, meaning holocaust, burnt offering, sacrifice). It does not say Temple service. Jephthah did as he had vowed, and what he vowed was to make a blood sacrifice. How obvious does this have to be before Mr. Holding is forced to acknowledge it? To what lengths will he strain to resolve even the most plainly insoluble problems? The text itself flatly and undeniably shoots down his tortured solution. Mr. Holding simply has no case whatsoever here." With all of this blatter, there is not one single answer to what we have written here. No negating evidence of argument. Just, "read the text in English an announce your opinion." Be sure and see the reply to Ebon at the bottom, in which he appeals to what he saw in a recent MOVIE (!) as evidence! Brooks also does no better: comment: Judges 11 contains a story about Yahweh accepting a young virgin girl as a human sacrifice. Clearly this is not good PR for Yahweh, so Holding tries very hard to deny that the girl was actually sacrificed in the story. He speculates that she was not killed but was instead made to devote her life to "Temple service." This explanation is not at all believable and it illustrates just how far Holding will go to deny the obvious. comment: Nothing here but the usual posturing and non-answering by Brooks: No actual retort, just a claim that is not "believable" (why?) and it is "obvious" (how?). This is why Brooks uses sound bites: He can't answer actual arguments. More from "LakeGeorgeMan", who wastes more time nitpicking about terminology than he does answering arguments. Funny how Brooks doesn't also give my answers to this one: http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?... Holding:...Incidentally, since LakeSewageGuy has been beating that "talking donkey" naturalist-begged question into the concrete on his head for the past sixty years, for lack of being able to say anything else, let's just make something clear: I reckon that the talking donkey episode is a midrashic jab at Balaam: http://www.tektonics.org/af/balaamnum.html LAKEGEORGEGUY: You “reckon”? You “reckon” things now Holding? Is that a quaint Florida term for “I don’t really have a clue but this should sound good so I can cross talking donkeys off the list of things I’m forced to defend and admit I believe in…” Typical LakeGeorgeMan response paradigm: Line upon line a hayseed avoidance, naturalist presupposition, and ya-ya. Brooks' linked to something nowhere near this quote, but naturally avoids my detailed responses on page 18. Since he does this, we also clip the rest at this point. Ebon "In regards to more substantive material, it is my impression that Mr. Holding essentially has only one argument, only one defense to skeptical attacks and charges of contradiction. This defense recurs throughout his site, phrased in a variety of different ways and appearing in a number of different guises, but it always boils down to the same thing. This defense, as I have pointed out before, is essentially, 'The Bible doesn't mean what it says.'" "Naturally, though, Mr. Holding is never this blatant about saying so, and he has devised a wide variety of ways to say it so as not to appear that he is repeating himself. He might say that the Bible can't be 'read like a newspaper'. He might say that statements in it are 'paradoxical' or 'in tension', but they are never contradictory. It's not true that God doesn't know everything, but nevertheless there are some verses where he 'feigns ignorance' and acts as if he doesn't. It's not true that two gospels depict the same event as having happened at different times - that's just an example of 'dischronologized narrative'. If a blanket statement contradicts some other verses, that statement is 'proverbial literature' and thus non-absolute; or else there were exceptions 'implicit in the social context'. Or else that statement is a 'strong, colorful expression', an 'outrageous, rhetorical teaching technique', or an 'exaggeration for emphasis', the product of a mindset that was 'given to expressing itself in hyperbole and extremes'. If an entire book contains many such blanket statements, it is a symbolic 'discourse of a man who lives without knowledge of God' and we're supposed to realize that nothing in it can be taken literally. If a statement contradicts other statements by saying 'don't do X,' it's a 'negation idiom', and what it means is 'do do X'. And if all else fails, Mr. Holding simply declares the contradiction 'intentional', which 'puts [it] beyond the measure of 'contradiction' and into the semantic realm of artistic license.' After all, a Van Gogh painting can hardly be construed as 'contradicting' a Picasso." Brooks does right to snip, and avoid my response: The above is actually Ebon’s roundabout way of describing his persistent tendency to approach the biblical literature with a wooden-literal rule of interpretation. The text means whatever it means to him, scholarship and textual considerations be eternally damned. Ebon carries forward the illogical legacy of McKinsey, and spends a few paragraphs addressing specific examples through ridicule instead of reason. Apparently he thinks that when I speak of such things as "dischronologized narrative" or "proverbial literature" or a "negation idiom", I am taken to be making these things up as I go along. Implicitly he compares this to alleged use of similar tactics by corporations in bookkeeping, though in the realm of mathematics, such results would be unlikely to obtain, and Ebon may actually be passing off a satirical article as reporting the "real thing"! Ebon, who labels me a fundamentalist, is in fact himself a "fundamentalist atheist" -- a member of the very species he decries, but wearing spots rather than stripes. When Ebon speaks of one "viewing the world through any lens but their own rigid preconceptions, and removing their ability to ever admit error or uncertainty in any matter of theological significance," he describes himself, as one hiding under piles of sandbags, to a T plus. Ebon, as he has been wont to do throughout the course of his "rebuttal", pats himself on the back for knowing what I would say in response to his simplistic approach to the Bible, and well he should know since it needs to be said so frequently to Bible commentators of the Skeptical persuasion, and he uses his allegation of prior knowledge as the excuse to trot out his tired argument to the effect that a requirement of knowledge in association with Bible interpretation places Christianity outside the reach of most supposed Christians or obscure to all persons, and that it is indeed logically possible to make a work that is understandable on every point at all times to all people. The former is complete nonsense, of course, and that Tekton has reached so many and enlightened them is proof that it is nonsense; the latter is demosntrably false by the inability of men to come close to producing such a document in spite of education and intelligence. Exhaustive accurate knowledge of what the Bible says specifically is beyond the reach of most people, certainly. Basic knowledge of sin, who Jesus was, and what he accomplished is quite simple, and is sufficient to lead to salvation. Demanding "more recent prophets" is a demand of laziness and also begs the question that I am not myself (along with others like Glenn Miller) in some sense fulfilling that function for Ebon and others. (What else does Ebon have to do? Watch Seinfeld reruns?) Ebon’s knowledge, in particular, is shown to be insufficient to identify his goal: A documented Bible contradiction. Apples, meet oranges. (And I'll toss Ebon a bone he should have chewed before: Yes, I do not pass judgment on other religions I know nothing about. That is why I did years of research into Mormonism before taking it on. If he thinks another candidate worthy of consideration, let him tell me why rather than throwing examples in the air like hayseed. Is he really suggesting Scientology as a serious alternative? And is he really so ignorant as to think that most conservative Christians are equitable to KJV Onlyists? Perhaps he needs to read the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy a little more closely!) (snip) "My comments above about Mr. Holding's straining for any explanation rather than admit the errancy of the Bible apply with force here. In his bid to defend this book, which he believes to be the true Word of God, he has indeed actually declared some of the contradictions in it 'artistic license'. While the ludicrousness of the lengths he will go to may provoke laughter, the fact remains that he is deadly serious, and can offer such incredibly forced arguments without irony. This is, of course, another symptom of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, that memetic virus which has locked itself around the minds of Mr. Holding and those like him, preventing them from viewing the world through any lens but their own rigid preconceptions, and removing their ability to ever admit error or uncertainty in any matter of theological significance. (A clear case of Morton's Demon in action.)" Answer same as above, but note that Ebon believes in "memes" -- a Skeptical fantasy construct as deluded as they claim it is to believe in demons. All of this, at any rate, remains a complete non-answer to any specific argument. Theology Web (URL pending) Holding: How do you spell "Sauron"? H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E. SAURON: Nope. I'm not the one who: 1. avoids discussing evolution, cosmology, and earth history, and 2. tries to says that he is unqualified to discuss such topics, yet after all that 3. continues to put forth AiG as a reputable scientific organization, and 4. refuses to explain why If #1 and #2 are true, then #3 is nonsense - if you don't have the skills to evaluate evolution, then quite frankly you don't know and cannot tell who is right, and who is wrong. This is the same tripe as found in the therad Brooks linked to on another page, so no more needs be said. Saurhead himself dodged debating me on issues I knew about, so he remained a coward and a hypocrite. Daffy Duck "Holding is losing this debate so badly that his defeat is amusing to quantify. In his latest response alone Holding fails 79 times to answer, acknowledge, or correctly represent my arguments. On six occasions his reasoning is so faulty as to constitute textbook examples of fallacies, and in six other instances he exhibits a misunderstanding of the elementary logic of his own Trilemma argument. In 19 instances he edited his essay to hide from his readers his defeat on particular points, and six other times he changed the subject to deflect attention from a defeat. Seven separate times he adopts the pretense that forcing a successful defense of my thesis is somehow a victory for him. Finally, on 14 occasions he indulges in insubstantial argument by way of generalization, hollow bluster, ad hominem, and slurs (such as calling me 'bigoted' for disagreeing with people of other cultures)." See Daffy's analysis shredded here. Earl Doherty "I have been known to employ touches of sarcasm myself, and I can be provocative, but I have always been careful to maintain a basic level of civility. Mr. Holding knows little of this concept, which is a common characteristic of the zealot, who regards dissenters as the incarnation of the devil." Funny thing from Earl, because as a preterist, I can't believe anyone is an incarnation of the devil these says. In any event, a poor subsitute for Earl refusing to answer arguments. Ebon (for the third time) Mr. Holding's position is one that will concede no ground and countenance no loss, no matter the evidence or logic arrayed against him, no matter how soundly he is trounced, no matter how hopeless his case is. In such circumstances he will clutch at any argument, no matter how strained, and present it with a belligerence usually inversely proportional to its strength. Once again, the Whinging Non-Answer with a Posture. Ebon doesn't seem to have time, what with all of this flowery rhetoric he needs to compose, to actually "trounce" anything. Robert/Richard/George Packham "The abundant use of 'satire' and emotionally-charged words ('biased,' 'bigot,' 'confetti in the air,' 'low-level,' 'absurd,' 'showboating,' etc., the ad hominem and flippant title, inviting the reader to laugh at all lawyers) should have very limited place in a rational discussion, and their overuse by a disputant generally is an indication of a realization (conscious or subconscious) that the argument at that point is weak. Such tone also is useful when one is preaching to the choir, when substance is less necessary." Whooppeee. Packham obviously couldn't stand being asked to do homework to defend his views; the fact is, I used kid gloves on him, and he wanted an excuse to extricatre himself. As Luther said, the proud spirit can't stand to be mocked...but in fact, most or all of those words weren't even used by me against Packham; and he never shows why any of them are not appropriate in their contexts. To be continued...when Brooks can find more malcontents unable to answer arguments...