Evangelical Realism

This week I thought we might pay a visit to the Tektonics forum over at theologyweb.com, home of the monthly “Screwball Thread” wherein JP Holding and company defend The Faith by hurling animated smilies at people whose words displease them. If you’ve been following the September SCrewballs [sic] thread, you’ll know that Holding has recently started following the XFiles Friday posts here, and they’re apparently putting a bit of a burr under his saddle. This week’s installment has him so worked up that he breaks from his usual pattern of simply posting excerpts, and tries to fisk them (or at least the bits that he quotes). In doing so, he gives us a bit more insight into his own personal world, and his techniques for insulating himself from those aspects of the real world that might prove troublesome.

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As charismatic Christians like to tell us, Jesus once said, “Nobody puts new wine in old wineskins,” meaning that old traditions can’t always accommodate new movements of God, or something to that effect. He never said anything about putting old wine into new wineskins, however, and I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for how Christians re-frame Scriptural teachings to accommodate new interpretations. JP Holding gives us a good example of this in his article on “Biblical” faith, which we started to look at last week. But before we get to Holding, let’s do a quick review.

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Never a dull moment around here: yesterday, Challenger Grim spent a good chunk of the day arguing that I was wrong to reject the notion that everybody’s world view is based on some kind of arbitrary, non-logic-based and non-evidence based faith. Meanwhile, in JP Holding’s Sunday Toon for today, Holding accuses me of failing to understand that faith must be a conclusion based on evidence and reason. And if that weren’t ironic enough, Grim went from here to Holding’s home turf, where he proposed devoting an entire thread to discussing what a “screwball” I am for denying that all knowledge is based on arbitrary faith—and Holding sympathized with him! Apparently, Grim is unaware that Holding’s definition of faith explicitly rejects the kind of faith that Grim is arguing for, and/or Holding is unaware that Grim’s definition of faith is as toxic to his own definition as it is to skepticism. Either that, or he just doesn’t care so long as he gets to mock non-Christians (plus any believers who fail to live up to his “scholarly” standards of what it means to believe).

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Last week we started looking at JP Holding’s “parody” post on the subject of atonement, but ended up spending most of our time looking at his views on hell. This week, I want to finish up with the original post, which (once you wipe away some of the froth and foam) does actually try to make a point or two.

Despite his protestations, honor and shame were the spoke upon which Biblical society revolved. It was as important to them as paying the bills is to us. I’d recommend that Dumpy read some works by credible scholars on this subject (like Malina and Rohrbaugh), but since he is still a fundy at heart, still reading “death” in the Bible in terms of nothing other than physical death (rather than wholesale separation from God), I may as well ask him to tie his own liver in a knot while wing-walking on an SR-71. The chances are better he can do that than grasp Biblical scholarship.

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Continuing his critique of my post on Compromising God, JP Holding devotes a separate page to the question of what atonement means, especially in light of his views on eternal punishment. (Oddly, he entitles his web page “Apologetics vs. Bible-based faith,” an apparent reference to a completely different and unrelated post.) And as usual, he begins by urging his readers to assume that I’m stupid (and thus can safely be ignored).

When people can’t get yoor basic stance on things right, you know you’re dealing with some stupid. Guess what that makes poor Dumplin’ Dumbash.

His address to my material on the atonement begs to assume that I hold a view of hell as “eternal torment.” Not quite — if by that Dumpy means literal fire and brimstone.

The gypsy strikes again: Holding has garbled what I said about his stance on eternal punishment. I didn’t call it “eternal torment” nor did I say anything about “literal fire and brimstone.” I used the same term Holding uses: “eternal punishment.” But perhaps that’s also wrong? Let’s look at the link Holding has posted (twice!) that explains what he really means about hell.

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In this week’s Sunday toon, JP Holding explains why he responds to my posts by giving me “mean” nicknames, insulting my intelligence, and in general mocking me personally in any way he can. He does it because

It’s so much easier to attack the person than attack the argument…

Of course, true to the spirit of the Gypsy Curse, he intended that as a personal attack on me. Nor did he stop there: the full sentence reads, “It’s so much easier to attack the person than attack the argument; but to be fair, Dumpy isn’t competent in even knowing what the arguments are, or even who is making them, so who can blame him?”

Jesus must really have ticked off that poor old gypsy.

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For today’s trip to toonland, I want to finish up a few loose ends in Holding’s attempted defense of C. S. Lewis’ famous “Liar, Lord or Lunatic” trilemma. First, though, let’s take a quick look at a comment Holding made about this blog in the “July Screwballs” section of theologyweb. He introduces a comment of mine with this little gem:

And, Dumplin’ Dumbash on why he responds to me, and why he therefore has Dunning Syndrome:

The reference to “Dunning Syndrome” is apparently a reference to an Ig-Nobel-award-winning paper (available in PDF here) in which authors Kruger and Dunning discuss people with very low mental aptitude (e.g. 12th percentile) having impaired ability to assess their own intellectual performance. Wikipedia has an entry for this phenomenon under “Dunning-Kruger Effect” (not “Dunning Syndrome), and describes it as “the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge (or skill) tend to think they know more (or have more skill) than they do.” Holding wants to accuse me of suffering from this problem, but in his rush to accuse, he mistakenly calls it a “syndrome” and gets the name of the authors wrong, thus demonstrating that he really doesn’t know as much about this condition as he thinks he knows. The gypsy curse strikes again!

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For our Sunday morning toons this week, let’s have a look at Holding’s attempts to rescue his own attempt to rescue C. S. Lewis’s famous “Liar, Lord or Lunatic” argument (aka “the Trilemma”). Holding seems to be replying to an earlier post of mine entitled “Tekton Apologetics on the ‘Lord Liar or Lunatic’ Argument,” even though he entitles his page “On ‘Compromising God’,” referring to a different and unrelated post. He begins by accusing me of trying to change the subject to something “outside the scope” of the trilemma argument.

The main way used to defuse the trilemma is to try to add to it. As I have noted, these efforts are misguided. Dumplin’ whines (as do other) that the trilemma leaves out stuff like, “How do we know Jesus did say these things?” Actually, it doesn’t; that is just outside its scope. The Trilemma does assume that Jesus’ words are recorded accurately; but positing that they weren’t does not dissolve the Trilemma; it goes outside of it.

Notice that Holding assumes that I am trying to argue that the New Testament documents are unreliable records of what Jesus actually said. That is indeed a valid concern, however that was not the point I was trying to make, nor does my post anywhere raise that particular issue. Holding claims I tried to refute the trilemma argument by asking how we know Jesus said such and such, but I never raised any such objection nor did the idea figure in my argument at any point. So right off the bat Holding is attacking a ghostly straw man, a mere figment of his own imagination.

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I’ve mentioned JP Holding’s cartoon-style apologetics before, but there’s so much good stuff there I might have to make this a regular feature. As a preview of today’s episode, here’s Holding lecturing “Dumplin’ Dumbash” on how name-calling means you’re a loser.

As a matter of fact, Dumbash, it does settle it, and calling the text and its authors names (”Bronze Age,” “superstitious,” “unbelieving”) just shows how inept you are at providing an actual answer.

I may have to revise my opinion of Holding’s grasp of the art of parody.

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