Dear Readers:
In my initial post I stated that I wanted to furnish some resources to believers who have questions regarding the Bible. I also stated that I had no desire to wrangle with professed atheists. I also believe I have good reasons as I stated I had a lot of demands upon my time at the present moment. I also demonstrated that when skeptics are cross examined their attacks against the Bible fall short (see post 40 onward). Corporately the antagonist of Christianity has over 1,700 years to sift through the Bible in order to find any factual errors or contradictions. The Rimmer trial shows the weakness of their position. I believe rightly does the Bible say: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise....Where is the wise man?... Where is the scribe? Where is the debator of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?...The grass withers. The flower fades but the Word of God abides forever." By the way, here is a answer to the hare/cud issue: http://
EvC Forum: Does the rabbit chew the cud? Bible inerrancy supported! -->
EvC Forum: Does the rabbit chew the cud? Bible inerrancy supported! (We will never know how prepared or ill prepared Dr. Rimmer's lawyer was due to the fact that the plaintiffs arguments crumbled so fast).
I will say that initially Paulk said there were no adequate explanations for maintaining Jesus's birth accounts (census). I would say that if he is going to make that claim he needs to cite each of the explanations given by Christians and show why they are in error. He never did that. Paulk would forced me to work a little bit if he had initially said this is why I think the birth account is untrue. But now I am going to ask him to support his initial claim. As far as the Roman census if the skeptic wants someone to debate him on this issue the Christian who wrote on the essay I referred to does offer a Dr. Rimmer type challenge regarding his essays. The skeptic is welcome to take him up on his challenge which is listed here:
http://www.tektonics.org/masoud01.html (please pardon the title of this challenge. I am not goading anyone or implying anything about anyone. I am just saying if you want to debate someone on this topic there is someone available and I am guessing he would debate you in this particular string's forum although I think he would also want the privilidge of posting the results at his site perhaps. You and JP Holding are going to have to work out the details).
As far as the word "extreme" I said I did not want to politicize the debate and I also said that one could use inductive logic to have moral certainty regarding the doctrine of Bible inerrancy in my discussion with Brian. I used the "moderation" paragraph previously to demonstrate that PaulK's assertions are not facts/opinions based on logical argumentation (for example, Paulk using such phrases as "most christians" and "well known" and "extreme" in order to attempt to support logical fallacies). Looking back, I believe I should have used something less satirical but I think I demonstrated my point. I did not mean to imply that Paulk based his every thought on pure emotion and took the middle position in every case in order to be accepted. I do think that there are many who do not use critical thinking in making their decisions and that is why many people are not successful in choosing stocks for example.
Let me elaborate on a point I made in the last paragraph. Many skeptics, though not all or necessarily Paulk, approach the whole debate between skeptics and Christians as if it were a "tabla rasa" debate that started just recently. I would submit there is a long pedigree of Bible statements being proved true and a long pedigree of skeptics assertions being overturned. I cited the comments of the John Barton and his co-editor in the recent Oxford Bible Commentary to support this claim ("chastened historical criticism") plus I gave other examples. If you want further elaboration of this fact I suggest the following link:
ADSL, ADSL2+, Broadband plans, Internet, Telephone, VOIP, SIM | Internet Service | Adam Australia | Internet Service | Adam Australia
(see the essay "The Bible: Tested, True, Triumphant")
I realize that some skeptics get upset that this trend is continueing and accuse me of "disrupting rooms" but I would argue that the skeptic/professed atheist/professed materialist apple cart is a very fragile and ill designed apple cart that often gets "disrupted". Many people in the yahoo chat room thought it was very humorous how obsessed some of the skeptics became when I upset their apple carts. I know that oni koneko damien and others became so upset they started recording transcripts of me that they reveal in partial snippets and railing at me with ad hominem arguments (damien became very incensed when I said there is no real empirical proof that atheism exist (people can lie, etc)and that there was no Foxes book of materialist martyrs [I never found any accounts of materialist martyrs]). I would say two things regarding their obsessive behavior. One is that I consider myself to be a beginner or lower/middle apologist who is just starting out. I would also say this that even a David can take down the arguments of materialists and their philosophical cousins because their arguments have no empirical or logical foundation and are by no means Goliaths. I realized this after debating in the yahoo atheist verus Christians debate room and by looking at better forums. I would also say that in the process of debating I learned that bring arguments like atheism has no empirical proof is not going to win you any friends. In short, I learned to pick my battles. I also learned to be more gracious in debates. I would submit to you that growing in the Christian faith and debating is a process. As far a growing in the Christian faith we can see this in Peter's life who lopped of the ear at arresting of Jesus or in the apostle John who wanted to call down fire on certain individuals.
I did rightly say that paulk was using a genetic logical fallacy and ad populum logical fallacy (see most christians comment). I also feel as though Paul is not completely addressing the links I gave. I absolutely realize that debate by links is strongly discouraged here but at least I did not cast out unsupported assertions (Noah, Canaan conquest) and offered some information. I realize that this is a debate forum but I would also say that even though I clearly stated from the start that I did not want to wrangle with professed atheist I was willing to engage more reasonable people such as Brian. I also feel as though I did explain how Bible innerrancy could be maintained - namely inductive logic (plus divine revelation doesn't hurt).
I have a good acquantance who calls himself an atheist (he defines an atheist as anyone who is not a practicer of a faith - especially the Christian faith. He said he is an atheist mainly do to disinterest in the whole issue). He said several months ago that wrangling with people on the internet is not that productive. He said that talking with people face to face is far more productive. He also said that there were old people in nursing homes who would love to be visited plus other people as well. I think my good acquantance is entirely correct in his comments. I have no problem with talking with people and answering their questions or providing resources that can answer their questions.
I also do realize that people like JP Holding and Glenn Miller provide a useful service in that Biblical study often requires specialized knowledege in Hebrew, Greek, semetic culture, history, science, etc. and that these gentleman have spent a lot of time researching the material in these various disciplines. I also realize that sometimes the experts have very little data to work with. Archeaology is great example of a small data pool although the pace of gathering data has quickend (Archeaologists still has a lot to do but I do think the results are encouraging for the believer. see:
Archaeology and the Old Testament I also realize that archaeologist have their controversies regarding methodology and interpretation:
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http://www.christian-thinktank.com/noai.html However, I would also say that there is so much evidence for Christianity that it would be impossible for a person to read and/or discover it in a lifetime.
I have reflected on my current situation and my good acquantainces advice and have decided to no longer engage in wrangling with professed atheist. Once in a while, my good acquantance and I do get into heated discussions in a friendly way but at least we are not doing it over the internet and I can say I am taking his advice!
I have decided to post my resources in a webpage format for Christians so they can easily look for the data themselves and make an informed decision. This is my last new post message to the end of this particular strings forum. If I believe a certain specific Bible issue is not being adequately addressed by the web or in written material I may open another topic but I do not see this happening in the near future. Otherwise I believe the initial post I made should prove adequate. I do thank the EVCforum people for providing me the resources for listing the information I have listed on their website. I realize that given the breadth of this topic and my time contraints that it is not practical for me to continue. I still believe that inductive logic can be used to provide moral certainty in regards to Bible inerrancy but I also realize that skeptics can and do raise limitless objections which I do think fail under cross examination. I would also thank the moderators and administrators for enforcing rules of propriety in debate.
If some Christian is lead to continue the debate that is fine with me.
I realize that some skeptics will assert that I ran away from the debate but I would remind them from the very start I said I did not wish to wrangle/debate although I did not specify the reason why. Also, I would just say they remind me of the "black knight" (see
http://www.tektonics.org/masoud01.html) So it is humorous if they consider that I ran away from a debate when I said from the start I had no wish to. In short, there is a profound difference between "Bible inerrancy is well supported" and "I will personally support Bible inerrancy exhaustively in this room" Given my time constraints, I would never and did not assert the latter. At best should I continue posting in this room I would only be able to offer links. But I would say this if a link versus link battle were to be allowed that Christianity would prevail because as I briefly alluded to the idea that when truth and untruth battle in a equal setting truth definitely has a strong tendency to prevail and it will always prevail in the long term.
As far as oni koneko damien, you can read my earlier comments in this post and I would say that you did imply that evcforum is a better forum to debate than yahoo atheist versus Christian debate room. With that in mind, I would say if you continue to debate atheism and profess atheism I would encourage you to open new debate topics here so people here could see you try to defend your professed views which I know are not defendable. I have already stated that I believe the yahoo room mentioned is a 3 ring circus and anyone can go there to see if what I maintain is true.
I gave the resources available in my first post so that Christians and others could see there were a lot of resources available. Each person is going to have decide for themselves if they choose to accept of reject the material.
Sincerely,
Ken DeMyer
[This message has been edited by kendemyer, 01-19-2004]
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