James Patrick Holding makes the following comment in an article he wrote attempting to justify Christians using satire and sarcasm when dealing with critics:
There are certain people who has (sic) no desire whatever to discuss the truth-claims of the Christian faith. His sole goal, so it seems to me, is quite simply to ridicule Christianity and Christians...
First, there are also certain people who "has" no desire whatever to discuss the rebuttal position to Christianity taken by skeptics. His sole goal, so it seems to me, is quite simply to ridicule bible criticism and critics. Guess who I'm talking about.
Second, since you do nothing but try to smear me with libels that you've continued even after you were sued twice for libel by me (and like the honest Christian you are, parted with more than $21,000 so a non-Christian lawyer could employ a legal trick nowhere justified in the bible, which would help you escape having to answer on the merits), it would appear that you think I have no desire whatsoever to discuss truth-claims of the Christian faith, and that my sole goal is to ridicule Christianity and Christians.
You'd be wrong.
Your inflated ego is the only reason why you mistake my ridiculing of your own hypocrisy and moral failings, as a general desire to just kick the shit out of anything that dares to name the name of Christ. I have good friends who are Christians. They've know for years that I'm an atheist, and while we sometimes talk about it, I don't nag them.
If you were more interested in scholarly dialogue than in creating attention-deficit cartoons to keep your juvenile delinquent supporters happy, you might have found out that while I am an atheist, I don't see anything about believing in Jesus and doing the whole "church thing", without more, that would justify skeptical attacks. Indeed, my atheism would counsel that if human beings conjure up some method to enhance their group survival in ways that don't increase the potential for psychological abuse, I say "more power to you."
I am willing to have a debate or discussion with you about any Christian truth claim you wish. If you wish to get suggestions from me, I'll be happy to explain for you in step-by-step fashion why I say
- You didn't believe in the interpretation of Matthew 5:25, 40 which you now say you adopt, until after you found out the typical conservative Christian evangelical interpretation adopted by nearly everybody else would require you to do something you didn't want to do. Then suddenly, you came up with your rather convoluted desperate wrangle.
- Speaking of wrangling of words, I'll be happy to explain why I think your entire ministry constitutes the exact sort of "wrangling of words" that is prohibited in 2nd Timothy 2:14.
- The NT provides us with no eyewitness reports of Jesus' resurrection, and I say this after having extensively reviewed all the stuff from Habermas and Licona, as well as your own amateur book on the resurrection and your website articles on gospel authorship.
- The best explanation for why Jesus' own family members didn't believe his claims during his earthly ministry, is the explanation that says they had greater and better access to truth about Jesus himself than did those who attended his shows.
- Your inerrancy-driven efforts to sanitize Numbers 31:18 of any implication of sex within adult-child marriages, fails on both biblical and historical grounds.
- God in the bible declares himself responsible for causing, not merely allowing, men to rape women.
- Your efforts to find the female's consent to sex in Deut. 21:10-14, fail. You see things that don't exist.
- Your interpretation of Romans 7:7, driven more by concerns of inerrancy than by hermeneutics, renders Paul's chosen word οὐκ superfluous.
- Using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic (i.e., tossing out any interpretation, no matter how contextually or grammatically justified otherwise, solely because it would contradict some other biblical statement) is irrational.
- Jesus' Gentile-gospel contradicts Paul's Gentile-gospel.
- The open-theist interpretation of Genesis 6:6 has more support from the grammar, immediate context, and larger context of Genesis than does the inerrantist-driven "anthropomorphism" interpretation. Your God makes mistakes.
- The New Testament never expresses or implies that a teacher's intellectual superiority outweighs their moral failings. The NT is quite consistent that if a teacher has certain moral failings, he will be disqualified from that office even if he is the smartest Christian on earth. That's exactly why I argue that your ministry is unbiblical.
No, Holding, your cartoon responses to me on some of the above-mentioned subjects, are not a substitute for scholarly back and forth point-to-point discussion.
If you think I'm wrong on the point, I'll be happy to have a discussion with you about why your cartoons are better at entertaining than educating.
If you don't believe live cross examination is superior to written rebuttal, I'll be happy to explain why I believe it is.
I remember that even back in 2003, you hated being cross-examined; you ceaselessly but intentionally misconstrued simple questions as "one-dimensional" in your deceptive effort to pretend you had objective reasons for refusing to answer such questions, despite the fact that this puts in you rather uncomfortable company. Criminal defendants who are guilty as charged, also hate with a passion those simple one-tiny-step-at-a-time questions they know they'll be forced to answer in direct fashion should they take the stand.
You'll have to admit to your gazing followers that
- unless you have a phobia of speaking in public (refuted by some of your videos and your debate with Carrier in 2011) or
- you have a physical or circumstantial disability that prevents you from being cross-examined live in-person the way it is done in court, or
- you have good arguments for saying even properly conducted and fair live cross examination is more likely to muddle the issues, than is answering by written reply, or
- you are genuinely frightened that live cross examination will unearth weaknesses in your arguments otherwise normally left covered up by your written and cartoon replies;
...that you are shit out of plausible excuses for refusing to be cross-examined live. You either employ one of the first three excuses, or your followers start suspecting that the fourth is the real reason you dodge live cross examination the way gazelles dodge lions.
I think this is the part where you do a whole new series on why American Courts of law have been hurting the cause of justice in allowing Defendants in civil trials to be cross-examined live and in depositions, and how the jury should need nothing more than copies of the parties' written discovery questions and responses, and the Court's legal instructions, to properly decide the facts. All this putting people on the stand and live cross examination does more harm than good.
Amen?
