More Christians also notice Holding's pathological need to insult critics

John Tors is a bible-believing Christian who has pastored churches and taught apologetics for more than 30 years.  See here.  His ministry includes many other good Christian people.  See here.

James Patrick Holding criticized a few things Tor believes in, and Tors' reply documents and condemns Holding's....(you guessed it)...unnecessary resort to insult.

The point of the below is not merely to show that other Christian apologists find Holding equally as insulting and foul as I do (as if that needed any more documentation than I've already provided here).

The point is that Holding has a pathological inability to detach from the emotional issues and simply deal with the scholarly issues.  Once again, he lives solely for a few anonymous nobodies who praise his every move and jump high with excitement at his cartoon videos wherein he only shows that he constantly fantazies about how much smarter and more significant he is than any of his critics.

Holding rteally fucked himself up by insulting Tors like this.  Tors is a Christian believer. 

I remember Holding in the past trying to duck his biblical obligations in Eph. 5:4 and Col. 3:8 to refrain from abusive filthy jesting and insult, by pretending that this was only talking about his duties toward other Christians.

Well gee, we find from his interaction with Tors that Holding's "interpretation" of those passages is nothing but dishonest subterfuge.  The truth is clearly manifested by Holding's long ceaseless trail of besmirching even Christains who don't see things his way; Holding simply does not give a fuck about anything in the bible that might require him to tame his tongue.  the solitary reason he bothers to "explain" anti-insult passages is because this is logically requires by his belief in bible inerrancy.

Sort of like the court judge who is sworn to uphold the law...but who in countless instances shows that despite his lofty claim, he shows by his works that he cares about only certain portions of the law.

See Tors' entire article here,  highlights of which are as follows:

MARK 1:2 REVISITED:
A Response to James Patrick Holding  
By John Tors | March 18, 2017 | 
© 2017, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved. 
 INTRODUCTION   I have elsewhere described the story of a certain contestant on the television game show “Jeopardy.”[1]  He was doing very well, answering questions correctly one after the other, but then he missed an easy one about famous comedy teams.  The correct answer was, “Who is Laurel and Hardy,” but he mistakenly said, “Who is Oliver and Hardy.” When the host, perhaps taken aback that a good contestant had missed such an easy question and did not immediately say it was wrong, the contestant glared at the host and repeated, more loudly and stridently this time, “Who is Oliver and Hardy?”  The host then told him that answer was wrong.  The lesson from this story ought to be clear: A wrong answer does not become right simply by being reasserted more loudly and more stridently.  And it certainly does not become right simply by reasserting it is more loudly and stridently, while adding bald appeals to authority and levying puerile insults against those who give the right answer.  It is a lesson that James Patrick Holding, the librarian who maintains his own apologetics website, Tektonics.org, has obviously not learned.[2]  Claims are settled by actual facts, not by bald assertions, nor by insults.

...It is quite clear that Holding has offered nothing new here.  Like the hapless Jeopardy contestant, he has simply repeated his discredited argument again, more stridently and more rudely, but it was vacuous before and it remains vacuous now.

...It is impossible, therefore, not to conclude that Holding is simply making stuff up out of whole cloth to maintain his view, and an apologist who does that has forfeited any right to be taken seriously.  By anyone.  Ever.
Holding should probably leave badly enough alone now, but he seems determined to bury himself, and proceeds to do so.

...But our librarian is not finished demonstrating his complete incompetence to deal with such issues.  He says,

...It really isn’t necessary at this point for Holding to put another nail into his coffin, but he does so, 

...APPENDIX: HOLDING’S INSULTS
The fact that Holding liberally sprinkled his response to our article with insults comes as no surprise.  We have elsewhere commented on his vicious verbal attacks on Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. Paige Patterson for rightly objecting to the idea of non-historical additions in the historical narratives of the Gospel books (and Dr. Patterson for having the temerity to agree with the Bible on the proper role for women in the church).[29]  The sight of this academically underqualified apologist rudely attacking his betters is quite repugnant, but it certainly makes it inevitable that he would insult me.  We may as well look at his insults and see if there is any substance to them.
“I was recently alerted to a rather pathetic attempt to respond to the above by a wannabe fundamentalist apologist named John Tors.”[30]
I will leave it to fair-minded readers of my original article, Holding’s response, and the current article to decide whose attempt is pathetic.  I do not think they will agree with Holding about this.  (And I certainly am an apologist, whether the librarian likes it or not.)
“After an insulting and rather bigoted description of the Jewish practice above as ‘bizarre’”[31]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “bizarre” means “very strange or unusual.”[32]  Now, Holding is free to consider a practice in which, for example, “the Rabbis state that Hirah and Hiram are one man, and that he lived almost 1,200 years”[33] to be quotidian if he wishes, but I think most people would agree that it is bizarre, and that this is a fair description, and not “insulting.”
The librarian’s claim that it is “rather bigoted” is reprehensible, however.  If a practice is bizarre, then it is bizarre regardless of who does it, whether Jew or Gentile.  Describing it as such is therefore not “bigoted,” and to hint that I did so because it was a Jewish practice is shameful.  On the other hand, to suggest that nothing done by any minority group should ever be described as “bizarre” no matter how bizarre it may be is sheer lunacy.
“Tors — who has no discernible credentials — arrogantly declares that myself and Sarna are wrong … a bare denial from a relative nobody like Tors, against a seasoned scholar like Sarna”[34]
I do not think academic training in Biblical studies is necessary to be an apologist (though I think knowledge of Koine Greek and Hebrew is extremely important) so I do not usually bring up such matters.  However, since Holding has brought it up, I will point out that my academic qualifications for apologetics are rather better than his own.  I hold a M.Div. (in addition to a B.A.Sc. in chemical engineering) and learned both Koine Greek and Hebrew at seminary.
Holding, on the other hand, has no relevant training; he describes his own qualifications thus: “I have a Masters’ Degree in Library Science. What the [sic] runs down to is, I’m trained in looking things up and answering questions.”[35]  Alas, “looking things up” is not nearly enough; critical thinking about what one looks up, based on the proper view of the inerrant Bible, is what is needed from a serious apologist.  (And, again, knowledge of the languages is certainly important.[36])
It is also passing strange that Holding should fault a “relative nobody” [sic] for challenging a “seasoned scholar” such as Sarna when our master of library science who can look up things himself not only challenges but foully insults Dr. Norman Geisler, B.A., M.A. (in theology), Th.B, Ph.D, author or editor of ninety-one books on Biblical topics, and accords the same treatment to Dr. Paige Patterson, B.A., Th.M, Ph.D.  The hypocrisy of this librarian is truly breathtaking.
“Frankly, Tors should leave apologetics and scholarship to the professionals and cease embarrassing Christians with his poor answers.”[37]
I am not sure what Holding means by a “professional” apologist, but I do not see why a librarian with a website should be considered one.  And inasmuch as his apologetic attempts have been shown to be risible, it seems clear that he is the one with the poor answers.  But we will let the readers decide.
For more information about the nature and quality of Holding’s apologetics, please see our article “The Three-Headed Monster and the Evangelical Betrayal of the Bible: Exposing the Major Weapons Levied Against the Trustworthiness of the Bible (Part 2).”[38]

 ...As to your comments and those of JPH that have not been posted, as I said previously, “I generally do not post comments that have nothing of substance to say, as there is no point in doing so.” This ministry is for the edification of people serious about the Bible, and substance-free comments do not edify. I have posted those comments of yours that made a point. JPH’s comments, on the other hand, simply consist of bluster and insults, such as “What a fraud you are, Tors”; “You’re so easy to manipulate. That’s why you’re such a budding cult leader”; “Mouth-foaming assertion, claiming to have used ‘facts and logic’when all you did was make cr*p up”; “better reserve your seat on the apostasy train now”; “typical fundy shimmying”; “What shall we call you? The Cornball of Canada?” Do you really think I SHOULD post such material? The irony is that JPH does not realize how bad it makes him look, so I did him a favour by not posting them.

PETERS: “But of course, it’s more about your looking holy and taking the Bible seriously as the inerrant Word of God. As Francis Beckwith says, if they can’t win with logic, they’ll try to trump with spirituality.”

Here Peters goes into a Holding pattern, resorting to impugning my motives, and asserting that I hold to the Bible as the inerrant word of God in order to look holy. Actually, I hold to the Bible as the inerrant word of God because that is what it is.

 J. P. Holding says: 
April 4, 2017 at 9:39 AM      
No, Tors, you miss the point, which is that your bare denials of facts and claims made by reputable scholars isn’t an argument. It’s an admission that you don’t have an argument. There were examples given, and your “responses” did nothing but further expose your serious lack of education.  That’s the way it is: You’ll twirl up some excuse no matter how cockamamie. Read Nichols’ The Death of Expertise. Your biography is in it.  I bet this comment never sees light of day. You’re too scared to allow it.

 John Tors says:
April 4, 2017 at 11:35 AM     
I am not “scared” to allow your comment, JPH; I generally do not post comments that have nothing of substance to say, as there is no point in doing so. However, since you really seem to want yours posted, here it is.  It should be noted that what your comment reveals is that the only response you can make to the case I put forth consists of nothing more than bald assertions, ad hominem attacks, and an appeal to accept uncritically the claims of “reputable scholars,” though it seems that only applies to those with whom you agree; as we saw in our article, all you have for scholars who dare to disagree with you is vituperative invective.  And a word of advice; it is not a good idea to assert that “you don’t have an argument” when it is evident to any reader of my article that every point I made I argued, and that I did so by means of facts and logic. Accordingly, this assertion you made simply hurts your own credibility.  If in the future you are able to offer substantive responses to my arguments, I would be happy to interact with them. But if all you have are more bald assertions, ad hominem attacks, and the appeal to follow uncritically JPH-approved scholars, there will be no point in expending effort on them.

Challenge to James Patrick Holding

Mr. Holding seems to specialize in red herrings.

For the last few months, he has been posting videos to his YouTube account wherein he refutes this or that hideously inconclusive skeptical objection to some aspect of the resurrection of Jesus.

Unfortunately, he has chosen to make Christianity look good by batting down the more stupid and uninformed skeptical objections, that any fool with access to Google could tell are false or likely false.

Holding apparently needs a refresher course in common sense:  The historicity of the resurrection of Jesus depends on the extent to which the testimony to that effect in the NT passes standard tests of credibility.  Telling your yammering children that the ancient Jews didn't believe in resurrected ghosts, might get rid of a couple of skeptics, but then again, me telling my own readers how stupid it is to play with live rattlesnakes might get rid of a few churches, but hardly does anything to hurt Christianity proper.

Holding needs to do videos on issues that actually matter, such as:

• Whether unbelievers can be reasonable to refuse to use bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic.  Bible inerrancy is hotly debated by inerrantists themselves, and is denied by most Christian scholars.  It has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other hermeneutics have, such as "grammar", "immediate context", "genre", etc, therefore, there is no justification to view an otherwise contextually and grammatically justified interpretation of a bible verse as wrong, merely because it would conflict with something the bible or the human author himself said elsewhere.  So something more than "that would make the bible contradict itself!" needs to be whimpered before an otherwise contextually and grammatically justified charge of contradiction in the resurrection accounts need be rejected.
• Why god doesn't use his disposition-changing magically coercive telepathic ability to make even the most pagan unbelievers change their minds and believe whatever he wants them to believe (Ezra 1:1, Daniel 4:33), to help today's unbelievers see the light, since God's use of such methods leaves him no excuse to bitch about how closed-minded unbelievers are.  Nothing is preventing God from using such ability except his own desire that unbelievers remain obstinate.
• Why most bible scholars are wrong to claim modern canonical Greek Matthew is anonymous.
• What we should infer from the fact that every church father who wanted to tell the reader what language Matthew wrote in, says it was Hebrew, while none of them declare that Matthew composed or translated in Greek, and why the obvious inference "Matthew likely didn't author or translate any Greek language gospel" should be viewed highly improbable despite its obvious merit.
• Whether the bible provides enough information about the gospel authors themselves, aside from the question-begging assumption of their alleged gospels, so that we can reach reasonable confidence in forming a conclusion about their levels of general credibility
• Why unbelievers should bother with the question of Matthew's authorship, when not even staunchly conservative apologists for the eyewitness authorship of the gospels, such as Dr. Richard Bauckham, are willing to say Matthew wrote it.
• Whether, assuming Matthew saw the risen Christ and heard more teaching about the kingdom of God for a 40 day period (Acts 1:3), he would be likely to knowingly exclude such from his gospel (Matthew 28).
• Why we should believe Mark wrote a resurrection appearance narrative that was later lost, when common sense says his requesting church would have recognized the fragile preciousness of the single autograph, and would likely have guarded against possible loss by making copies at the very earliest period before the repeated use of the original scroll or codex would cause the resurrection appearance narrative at the end to be lost.
   
• Why we should believe Mark wrote a resurrection appearance narrative that was later lost, when common sense says the resurrection appearance story, being the most joyful part of the Christian story, would be the part most likely to be enthusiastically memorized by Mark's requesting church, so that losses through corruption of the text itself could be overcome by simply writing a new copy from memory.
• Whether the Mary mother of Jesus in Mark 3:21 who concludes her son is insane and tries to put a stop to his public ministry (i.e., "take custody"), is the same Mary the mother of Jesus who somewhere between 30 a.d. and 65 a.d., allegedly told Matthew and Luke her prior experiences of God and angels back when she was pregnant with Jesus, and how these confirmed in various ways to her full satisfaction that Jesus was truly divine.  Since Mary thus wasn't forgetful, she was either apostate or lying.  Or Mark speaks of Mary in 3:21 as having thoughts so contrary to the nativity stories because Mark himself knew nothing about nativity stories, despite his source, Peter, being within Jesus' "inner circle", being thus especially likely to have more access to Mary and her testimony than most of the other apostles.
• What exactly is wrong with concluding that a person as interested in the divinity of Jesus as Mark, would not likely "choose to exclude" nativity stories that strongly support his theological agenda, and therefore, Mark excludes the nativity stories probably because he doesn't know about them or thinks them false.
• If Holding doesn't like the "Jesus couldn't do real miracles" conclusion we skeptics draw from Mark 3:21 and John 7:5, can Holding show that his own explanation for the unbelief of Jesus' immediate family is more likely true?  What?  Were Jesus' mother and brothers just brick-stupid recluses?  or maybe Holding never discovered, until about two seconds ago, that the vast majority of Christian translations of Mark 3:21 are wrong?
• Why unbelievers should bother with John's gospel, when conservative scholars like Licona and Craig Evans admit John was not above putting words in Jesus' mouth which Jesus never spoke, and was not above allowing his theological agenda to relax his concern for historical accuracy.
• Why apostle Paul should have shit to do with the discussion of resurrection eyewitnesses, when not even the most explicit NT accounts of Paul's interaction with the risen Christ, justify classifying Paul as an 'eyewitness'.
•  Paul claimed that he took a trip to heaven, and that 14 years later, he still couldn't tell whether that trip was physical or spiritual (2nd Cor. 12:1-4).  If Holding were being prosecuted for a crime on the basis of the testimony of a witness whose history included such similarly wildl esoteric claims, he would surely scream his head off that the witness doesn't have enough credibility to sustain the charge.  Why then does Holding expect unbelievers to think such indecisive mystics like Paul are the least bit credible?  How can we know when a person's shockingly bizarre claims of taking nearly indescribable trips to heaven does or doesn't justify viewing their credibility as fully impeached?
• Why unbelievers should be impressed with the "eyewitness" testimony to the resurrection, when the only such testimony that comes down to us today in first-hand form, are, at best, Matthew, John and Paul, that is, forgetting about the fatal problems of gospel authorship and the equally fatal problem of whether the resurrection stories of Matthew and John actually come from these individual men.
• How unbelievers can be expected to give a shit about any tyrant, real or unreal, who causes men to rape women and beat children to death (Isaiah 13).  Don't forget that God also claims he will take just as much "delight" to inflict such horrors on people, as he delights to bless them (Deuteronomy 28:63).
• Why unbelievers should think the bible god "loves" them, when in fact god's refusal to do his best to convince them the gospel is true, necessarily implies a rather shockingly limited "love" at best, and more likely implies a genuine hatred, since any parent who solely by choice did less than their best to rescue a drowning child is not exhibiting "limited" love, but "no" love.

I thus suspect that the reason Holding fucks around with the more stupid trifling skeptical objections is for the same reason any skeptic would try to refute Christianity by exposing the errors of snake-handling and the prosperity gospel.  In both cases, you can make your own beliefs look better if you choose only the most dumbshit idiots as representative of the opposition.


Go ahead, Holding, remind your readers that yes, you already had all these relevant video-topics in mind, you just didn't get around to getting serious until an atheist complained that you are spending too much time in the sandbox.  Perhaps God is telling you to stop using other people's hard earned cash merely to give you another reason to sit on your fat ass.

New Reply to James Patrick Holding's unconvincing backpeddling

Since I began showing the world in 2008 what a piece of shit scumbag James Patrick Holding really is by reason of his absurd Harsh Language article, and other similar online screeds, he has changed the wording in that article several times.  I respond to it point-by-point below:

Printed from http://tektonics.org/madmad.php

As of 9/2/2017, Barry Jones, aka turchisrong, owes me $24,074.35. When is he going to pay his bills?

I'm never going to pay that bill.  You will simply a) update the amount each year, and b) suffer from incessant questions as to why Licona and other legitimately credentialed Christian apologists started wanting nothing to do with you soon after my libel lawsuits against you became public knowledge.  Jesus would never agree with you that because a secular judge awarded you fees, you must have deserved those fees.  Yet you hold up this granting of fees as if lower court judges are incapable of getting things wrong.  If you supplied to your followers ALL of the briefing that I filed and you filed which led up to that court judgment, they would notice that the judge ignored mandatory precedent numerous times.

But no, I'm sure that your drooling followers, so quick to presume you innocent and me guilty, find it more important to remain ignorant and thus comfortable, rather than educate themselves on what really went down, and thus take the risk of finding out this court judgment was immoral and unlawful.

The Christian and Harsh Language

There’s a particularly moronic notion that some people might come up with in response to what is below. They might ask if the Context Group (whose work I cite below) agrees with what I’m saying here, and think that actually is a meaningful question. It’s not.

Yeah right. Asking whether the scholar whose work you use, drew the same conclusion from his work that you did, this is a "moronic" question that is not "meaningful".  Are you drunk?  Dr. Rohrbaugh certainly thought it significant that you draw a different conclusion from his work than he did.  He said your article (the one I'm refuting right now) was a perversion of the New Testament, ALL Context Group work, and particularly a perversion of his own work.  The issue is why Rohrbaugh finds it so "obvious" that you have "perverted" Context Group scholarship, if in fact all you doing is drawing a different conclusion from it than he does.

The Context Group certainly agrees that riposte was the norm in Biblical times, which is the single and sole point that I derive from them.

 Which is to your disgrace, since you take what you 'derive' from them and use it to justify the type of slanderous talk that most mature Christian scholars quickly classify as sinful.  Rohrbaugh even said this article of yours was so bad, it didn't even merit a response, he said it would be a waste of his time.

And once again, it doesn't matter that riposte was normal in biblical times.  YOUR particular brand of riposte often involves sexually inappropriate slurs and is otherwise sufficiently extreme as to qualify as "slander", a thing the bible repeatedly prohibits (Mark 7:22-23, Ephesians 4:31), and lets not forget that Michael the Archangel did not bring a railing accusation against even the devil, 

  7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
 8 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
 9 But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!"
 10 But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. (Jude 1:7-10 NAU)

 ...despite the availability of arguments that the devil so often publicly slanders Christianity that publicly slandering him back might constitute justified "riposte".

What they may not agree with me on is whether it is appropriate today. I don't disagree with their interpretations. I disagree with their applications. I don't draw conclusions about those applications from their research. I do that on my own. And if they think what I argue is a perversion of their work, then it's likely they've been grossly misinformed by a tendentious source that is giving them leading information to draw out a desired opinion.

No, there you are lying again.  You know perfectly well that the reason Rohrbaugh steamrolled you in 2008 was because I had emailed him a cut and paste from one of our debates where you were gratuitously insulting me in ways that mature Christian scholars find to be a shocking violation of basic NT ethics. 

For those interested, my 2008 correspondence with Rohrbaugh, including Rohrbaugh's comments to the effect that James Patrick Holding gives Christianity a bad name and is just a boor with no manners who doesn't deserve to be given the time of day, is publicly documented here.

Furthermore, in 2015, I emailed to Rohrbaugh a link to your "Harsh Language" article, and his reply email is the one where he said your "harsh language"  article was a perversion of the New Testament, Context Group work in general, and his own scholarship in particular.  This and more is all documented here.

Holding continues: 

But that said, so what if they don't like my applications? I would say in reply: That’s their problem, not mine.

So apparently, if a skeptic uses a "that's your problem not mine" excuse, you approve.

Last I checked, Rohrbaugh, for example, thinks the book of Nahum is too nasty and should be removed from the canon. That’s obviously a position I don’t agree with, and it's not a matter of intellectual deficiency for Rohrbaugh to hold that view since the key facts (such as that Nahum has harsh language) are not in dispute. Rohrbaugh's view on Nahum is a moral decision he makes based on his own preferences.

It's also a moral decision he makes as a person who has been a Christian for many decades.  Sorry, Holding, but you are going to have to say Rohrbaugh went for decades as a Christian without ever noticing that the bible justifies modern-day Christians to use sexually inappropriate slurs the way you do.  Rohrbaugh's long experience with and scholarly-level knowledge of the bible are also part of the reason he finds your slurs to be so devilish.

Or have you stopped slandering people now that your dark side was brought into light through the Courts, and you can no longer get away with posting filthy language online?   I have to wonder how many of your former mentally comatose followers started obsessing in Googling your name and mine, after I fucked up  your image over at theologyweb.

I do think those preferences are absurd, narrow-minded and out of touch.

What we learn from the world's foremost Christian apologist, then, is that even if we skeptics get our Ph.d's in some area of study associated with the sociology of the biblical world, and even if we also become Christians sufficiently that we end up writing scholarly tomes on the bible that are well-respected among bible scholars, we can still end up drawing conclusions that are absurd, narrow-minded, and out of touch.

Sounds to me like biblical issues are fatally ambiguous, thus justifying refusal to bother with that stupid bullshit, unless one does it solely as a personal intellectual hobby, like me.

I would even go so far as to say that such views about the canon are a perversion, and that Rohrbaugh is guilty of perverting the truth to that extent.

 That phrase wasn't included in your earlier editions of this article. But your late choice to say "perversion" appears to be biting back at Rohrbaugh, who himself was the first to use that word in this controversy, using it to characterize YOUR article. 

And there you are, the old J.P. Holding, returning insult for insult, doing exactly what the Context Group says constitutes a perversion of the bible and their own work.

What we further learn is that even if we skeptics accept Jesus, become educated in apologetics and then for 20 years thereafter operate a website that answers skeptical objections to Christianity, boasting of how scholarly we are the whole time,  we might still end up getting an "F" in Basic New Testament Ethics 101.

And the reason that often happens is because there is no Holy Spirit to effect spiritual growth in anybody in the first place. THAT is how you can be intensely involved in Christian defense for 20 years and yet miss the forest for the trees the entire time.

But the bottom line is: I agree with their findings, and I don't think they misinterpret the New Testament.

Well they sure said you "pervert" the New Testament.

However, I also don’t agree with all of their applications of those findings. There’s a huge difference, and very simple minds may not grasp that difference.

Then stop presenting biblical issues in the format of YouTube cartoons catering toward 40-year old adolescents, and maybe the juvenile delinquents who think you died for their sins will discover how the Holy Spirit kept Christians interested in his work for 2,000 years without needing internet bells and whistles and cartoon sound effects to overcome their inherent lazines, you stupid cocksucker. 

They also fail to grasp that it is quite possible for someone like Rohrbaugh to be judiciously informed on one matter while being profoundly ignorant on other matters. (This in contrast to fundy atheists, who are profoundly ignorant about just about everything.)

You weren't leaving room for Rohrbaugh to be "profoundly ignorant" on other matters back in 2008, when you were lauding his bible expertise and using some things he said to justify your slandering of other people.  Now that you've been steamrolled by the scholar you quoted the most for this stupid childish bullshit, suddenly, you remind the world that Rohrbaugh isn't perfect.  

Ha Ha, you are ANYTHING but a threat to bible critics.  And nothing spells "Emergency! Clam up! Emergency!" quite like your blocking my ISP from being able to access your website.  You are like the child during a fight saying "I'm not scared of you" while running away from the attacker.  You cannot escape the fact that talk is cheap; your actions speak louder than your words.

However, if any of the Context Group ever wished to argue that such language is inappropriate today, my reply is that they need to mind their own business and look past the rarified confines of academia.

And according to you that would also require that they abandon the basic morals they learned as children, and become willing to libel others in spite of the bible's many prohibitions against "slander".

Scholars like Malina and Rohrbaugh don’t spend any time confronting atheist idiots like DarkMatter2525 or NonStampcollector.

Probably because these well-qualified bible scholars have never seen any justification in the bible for spending their time confronting atheist "idiots".  So if you see such justification in the bible for this activity, the reader has to decide who is more likely to have gotten the biblical message correctly, qualified bible scholars, or one lone ranger on the internet who lost the support of his own favorite scholars when truth was brought to light in two libel lawsuits. Gee, that's a hard one.

They’ve never engaged in forum debate with lunatic fundy atheists who keep quoting Thomas Paine as an authority on the formation of the canon, or who have some sort of personality disorder and keep posting mile-long blog entries no one ever reads, or who have never done anything with their lives except work as day laborers or truck drivers and sit around collecting government checks and don’t have a job while they otherwise rack up huge six-figure debts they can’t pay off.

It appears you haven't learned your lesson perfectly, but you've certainly learned some of it.   Your subtle reserved language about me, and refusal to specifically mention my name, is in sharp contradiction to the demon-possessed three year old who was operating your website in 2015, and who slandered me hundreds of times over because of his psychotically narcissistic inability to recognize his own stupidity.  I was correct:  You are such an obstinate fuck, it really does take the extreme measure of kicking your head in, and causing you to associate pain with your stupid choices, to get you to calm down, since trying to convince you on a purely intellectual level is like trying to convince an alligator to repent and believe the gospel.  Your brain simply doesn't have the hard-wiring necessary to enable to you give a fuck about being wrong.  You missed your calling, Holding, you should have been a lawyer.  They too give a shit far more about how to trifle this and that, than about actual truth.

They also, not shockingly, never appeal to the Bible as authoritative justification for their views about modern behavior (because as the Nahum example shows, the Bible isn't their chief defining authority).

What skeptics learn here is that even if we became Christians and became as smart as Rohrbaugh, there is no guarantee we'd adopt the view of the bible God wants Christians to adopt...thus justifying the average unbeliever to say "fuck you" to any Christian challenge to learn biblical things.

They don't think Nahum is a good example for us. So of course the Bible isn't their final word as a moral guide.

And with all of your unbiblical slandering of other people, the bible apparently isn't your final word as a moral guide either.

It's also relevant that they aren't out there like the fundy atheists peddling their views deceptively and in gross ignorance.

Preaching to the choir.  You are scared blind of challenging me with any of your apologetics dogshit, you know you'll get steamrolled.  Most Christian apologists do not intentionally configure their website to make it inaccessible to certain people.  But you sure do.

If any Context Group member doesn’t think there’s a place for hard language today, good for them – they need to get out more.

If any internet apologist thinks there IS a place for hard language today, good for them --  they need to get out more.  Isn't  it funny that your excuses always sound stupid when anybody else use them? 

They are far from being my favorite Bible scholars, nor have I ever worshiped the ground they walk on; nor do I quote them the most on this website.

That's irrelevant, you weren't expressing or implying any of this backtracking in 2008 before you found out Rohrbaugh thinks you give Christianity a bad name.   I'm happy to infer from your constantly modifying this article that behind the scenes your followers have serious problems with you, sufficient to get you to constantly update this article. 

I respect their expertise and use it, but I can use the research of the Context Group even if they disapprove of my views and the way I apply that research.

The issue is not what you are "allowed" to do with somebody else's research.  

The issue is why the authors of that research complain that your use of their research constitutes an "obvious perversion" of it.  You cannot get rid of Rohrbaugh's Christian moral view by simply noting that somebody can be smart in one area and judiciously ignorant in another.  Rohrbaugh clearly thought your slanders were a violation of basic NT ethics, it was the equivalent of him feeling compelled to say that another Christian doesn't recognize that stealing is unbiblical.  One of you is not just in the wrong, but in the wrong so deep that it can only be explained by brick-level stupidity, or willingness to violate clear NT ethics.  I let the reader judge which extreme you are.

For the record, no Context Group member has ever written to me about any of this.

Because Rohrbaugh said a reply to your article wasn't worth his time.

The better question is whether you did the scholarly thing, and contacted Rohrbaugh to clarify his views about you.  In 2008, you pretended that you'd never contact him because he was too busy to worry about other people's personal problems, but on the contrary, Rohrbaugh's views of you are so low, he was effectively asserting that you sinned against him by "obviously perverting" his scholarship... just a modern way of making a claim that you are a false witness.  So unless you wish to go all the way into the liberal toilet and claim that even if you sin against somebody, there's no need to discuss it with them personally...then you don't have a choice, you have a biblical obligation to personally communicate with and seek forgiveness of, those who charge you with being a false witness.

And we all know that the real reason you didn't attempt any such contact is because you were genuinely fearful that Rohrbaugh would simply castigate you more and confirm that what I was putting out on the internet was accurate.

And if they ever did, I'd invite them to spend a few hours on YouTube and get some eye-openers.

That's rather stupid given that you've been made aware they think such conduct is wasteful.

But I don't expect they'd waste their time anyway. Rohrbaugh is in his 90s, and it is absurd to think that he or any of the other distinguished academics that are part of the Context Group spend any time trolling YouTube channels.

Good call.  It's more reasonable to assume only dumbfuck assholes who think of themselves as the center of the universe, would go around trolling YouTube channels looking for skeptics to refute.  Did you ever look in a mirror, or did your therapist insist that you need to start spending less time gloating over yourself?

Mike Licona likely thinks James Patrick Holding is a piece of shit scumbag

Update, May 4, 2018 -- see end
Update, June 4, 2018 -- see end

It hadn't dawned on me until recently that there are good reasons, even absent my personal knowledge of such, to believe that resurrection scholar Mike Licona thinks Christian apologist James Patrick Holding is an unsaved and genuine piece of shit who does more to hurt than help the cause of Christ.

How could I reach such a conclusion when I don't know of any statements Licona made to that effect?  After all, didn't Mike Licona promote Holding's "Defining Inerrancy" book?

Michael Licona

May 23, 2014 ·

J.P. Holding & Nick Peters have just published a book titled "Defining Inerrancy" in which they critique, not the doctrine but an overly wooden and anti-scholarly concept of it being forwarded by Norm Geisler and a few others. Foreword by prominent New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg. Available in Kindle for only $3.99 at http://www.amazon.com/Defining-Inerrancy-Affi…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Yes he did.  But that was 2014, before my lawsuits enabled other Christians to see the dark and homosexual side of Mr. Holding. 

First, unless Holding's defenders wish to assert that America's courts do more harm than good by allowing circumstantial evidence, they will have to agree that circumstantial evidence is valid even if not quite as slam-dunk as direct evidence. Holding lives in Florida, the part governed by Florida’s “Middle District” federal court, so let’s start with how Florida courts view circumstantial evidence:

"The standard for assessing the sufficiency of evidence is whether any reasonable view of the evidence, considered in the light most favorable to the government, is sufficient to allow a jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Leonard, 138 F.3d at 908 (11th Cir. 1998) (citing Bush, 28 F.3d at 1087). "The test for evaluation of circumstantial evidence is the same as in evaluating direct evidence." United States v. Henderson, 693 F.2d 1028, 1030 (11th Cir. 1982). As stated in the jury instructions, "There's no legal difference in the weight you may give to either direct or circumstantial evidence." (Doc. # 49 at 5). "Circumstantial evidence can be and frequently is more than sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Henderson, 693 F.2d at 1030.

US v. Wilson, Dist. Court, Middle District, Florida 2016

You may have heard the terms "direct evidence" and "circumstantial evidence." Direct evidence is evidence that directly proves a fact. Circumstantial evidence is evidence that proves a fact indirectly, by proving some facts that allow you to infer that some other fact exists. For example, direct evidence that it was raining outside is testimony by a witness that she was outside and she saw it raining. Indirect evidence that it was raining outside is testimony by a witness that she was inside and saw people enter the building carrying wet umbrellas. You should consider both direct and circumstantial evidence. One type of evidence is not automatically better than the other. It is up to you to decide how much weight to give to any evidence, whether direct or circumstantial.

Jury Instruction quoted in Cooper v. Meyer, Dist. Court, WD Wisconsin 2018

"`Evidence of a defendant's state of mind is almost inevitably circumstantial, but circumstantial evidence is as sufficient as direct evidence to support a conviction.'";

People v. Baker, Cal: Court of Appeal, 5th Appellate Dist. 2018

People v. Nguyen (2015) 61 Cal.4th 1015, 1055

Circumstantial evidence and reasonable inferences drawn from that evidence may suffice to prove the elements of a crime. In fact, our Supreme Court has held that "circumstantial evidence is oftentimes stronger and more satisfactory than direct evidence."

People v. Graham, Mich: Court of Appeals 2018

citing People v Carines, 460 Mich 750, 757; 597 NW2d 130 (1999) and People v Hardiman, 466 Mich 417, 429 n 7; 646 NW2d 158 (2002)

And circumstantial evidence is merely evidence of a fact from which the existence of another fact may reasonably be inferred.

Warner-Armstrong v. Home Depot USA, INC., Dist. Court, SD Mississippi 2018,

Citing Miss. Winn-Dixie Supermarkets v. Hughes, 156 So. 2d 734, 736 (Miss. 1963).

"Circumstantial evidence can create a genuine issue of material fact . . . [and] [i]nferences that can reasonably be made from the record are made in favor of the non-moving party."

Brooks v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Idaho: Supreme Court 2018

Quoting ParkWest Homes, LLC v. Barnson, 154 Idaho678, 682, 302 P.3d 18, 22 (2013)

Further, a trier of fact may rely on direct and circumstantial evidence in evaluating a defendant's guilt because both types of evidence carry the same weight and possess the same probative value. State v. Lash, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 104310, 2017-Ohio-4065, ¶ 31. In fact, "[a] conviction can be sustained based on circumstantial evidence alone."

State v. May, 2018 Ohio 1510 - Ohio: Court of Appeals, 8th Appellate Dist. 2018

quoting State v. Franklin, 62 Ohio St.3d 118, 124, 580 N.E.2d 1 (1991).

As the court noted in Hampton, the importance of the reasonable theory of innocence instruction in cases involving only circumstantial evidence is "deeply imbedded in Indiana jurisprudence" because:

    [w]hile a criminal conviction may properly rest entirely upon circumstantial evidence, there is a qualitative difference between direct and circumstantial evidence with respect to the degree of reliability and certainty they provide as proof of guilt. Such a supplemental instruction is a safeguard urging jurors to carefully examine the inferences they draw from the evidence presented, thereby helping to assure that the jury's reasoning is sound. Additionally, it serves to "reiterat[e] the magnitude of the [`proof beyond a reasonable doubt'] standard to juries when the evidence before them is purely circumstantial." Nichols [v. State], 591 N.E.2d [134,] 136 [Ind. 1992]. In this regard, the "reasonable theory of innocence" instruction informs the jury that if a reasonable theory of innocence can be made of the circumstantial evidence, then there exists a reasonable doubt, and the defendant is entitled to the benefit of that doubt.

Hawkins v. State, Ind: Court of Appeals 2018

Quoting Hampton v. State, 961 N.E.2d 480, 486 (Ind. 2012)

Second, Holding has a ministry partner named Nick Peters (i.e., of "Deeper Waters" fame), who admits being married to Licona's daughter, and admits to being willing, as he has in the past, of confronting Mike when Nick has a strong disagreement with him:

A Response To Lydia McGrew

I was quite saddened to see what was on Lydia's blog post this morning. Saddened because I do have a great relationship with Tim McGrew who I value as one of my dearest friends in this world. I do not want to have this be seen as a personal attack.

As the son-in-law of Mike and Debbie Licona, some might say that I will just walk in lockstep. Not a bit. In fact, Mike and I have had some strong disagreements as have Debbie and I. They know something for sure about me. (Other than the fact that I'm crazy about their daughter.) I speak my own mind and I do not let myself be easily swayed. If I thought Mike was seriously wrong on something, I would tell him. He knows this because I've done it before.

Does that increase the odds that Licona has had private conversations with Holding about Holding's problems?  Obviously yes.  And the fact that Licona and Holding are both conservative Christians and "apologists" suggests that, unless they have a moral problem with each other, they are going to contact each other not less often than fellow Christian scholars contact each other.

Third, what evidence leads me to believe that Licona more than likely has chastised Holding and presently regards Holding as biblically disqualified from any Christian teaching position?  I start with the biblical evidence and conclude with Licona's published materials.

a) Licona insists that he is a conservative Christian who accepts bible inerrancy, so I am required to assume that if Licona finds the bible telling Christians what to do, he will do it.

b) There is something in the bible, actually a few things, that tell Licona that 'Christians' who are ceaselessly aggressive, combative, and have a reputation for not much more than being quarrelsome bigoted attention-whores, are disqualified morally from any type of leadership position over the Christian people, regardless of how 'smart' the alleged Christian is:

 1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
 2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
 3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
 4 He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity
 5 (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?),
 6 and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
 7 And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. (1 Tim. 3:1-7 NAU)

1 Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. (Jas. 3:1 NAU)

For those of you who might not know, the "pugnacious" in 1st Timothy 3:3 which Paul forbids the teacher from being, means combative:

Definition of pugnacious
: having a quarrelsome or combative nature : truculent

Other translations make this clear:

ESV  1 Timothy 3:3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
NAS  1 Timothy 3:3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money.
NIV  1 Timothy 3:3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
NKJ  1 Timothy 3:3 not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous;
NRS  1 Timothy 3:3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money.
YLT  1 Timothy 3:3 not given to wine, not a striker, not given to filthy lucre, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money,
CSBO  1 Timothy 3:3 not addicted to wine, not a bully but gentle, not quarrelsome, not greedy--

Yes, there are jackasses in the world who will trifle that these qualifications are only imposed on "overseers" (1st Timothy 3:1), so, "aha...these qualifications are not required of teachers!"

That's easily disposed of:  Why is it that Paul forbids contentious assholes from being "overseers"?  Could it be that ceaseless insult and back and forth bickering constitute signs of spiritual immaturity?  Paul didn't just forbid constant word-wrangling vitriol for "overseers" he also forbid laymen from doing it, explaining that it leads to the ruin of the hearers:

 14 Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. (2 Tim. 2:14 NAU)

1st Timothy 3 means exactly what it says, according to both inerrantist and non-inerrantist Christian scholars, which means Holding must either call them 'stupid' as well, or admit he himself is stupid for being so crazy mad against the Christian scholarly consensus.

 T.D. Lea, an inerrantist writing for the inerrantist New American Commentary:

In contrast to practicing violence, the Christian leader is to be “gentle” or forbearing in his relationships to troublemakers. The “gentle” man uses elasticity in supervision and is flexible rather than rigid. Synonyms for “gentle” include yielding, kind, forbearing, and considerate.

A “quarrelsome” man is a verbal (perhaps also a physical) fighter. He is contentious, grasping, and pugnacious. What Paul demanded in the church leader was a peaceable attitude that rejects all forms of threatening and fighting.

Lea, T. D., & Griffin, H. P. (2001, c1992). Vol. 34: 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (electronic ed.). The New American Commentary (Page 111). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 W.D. Mounce, not an inerrantist, writing for the non-inerrantist Word Biblical Commentary:

ἄμαχος, “not quarrelsome, peaceable,” occurs elsewhere in the NT only in Titus 3:2 where Paul is telling Timothy to encourage all people not to be quarrelsome but gracious. It is a strong term describing active and serious bickering; it even can refer to physical combat (O. Bauernfeind, TDNT 4:527–28; cf. Acts 7:26; and Paul’s mention of ἔξωθεν μάχαι, “fighting without,” in reference to his tribulations in Macedonia [2 Cor 7:5; cf. 1 Cor 15:30–32; 16:9]). It is used elsewhere in the NT to describe the internal fighting that is caused by a person’s passions (Jas 4:1–2) and the war of words caused by Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life (John 6:52). This quality stands in direct opposition to the opponents, whose lives were characterized by their quarrelsome attitudes (see Form/Structure/Setting). Elsewhere Titus and Timothy are warned to stay away from quarrels over the law (μάχας νομικάς; Titus 3:9) and away from stupid and senseless controversies that only breed quarrels (ὅτι γεννῶσιν μάχας; 2 Tim 2:23). 

Ellicott comments, “the ἄμαχος is the man who is not aggressive . . . or pugnacious, who does not contend; the ἐπιεικής goes further, and is not only passively non-contentious, but actively considerate and forbearing, waving even just legal redress” (41).

Mounce, W. D. (2002). Vol. 46: Word Biblical Commentary : Pastoral Epistles.

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 176). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 What really fucks up Holding bad is Paul's forbidding Christians from engaging in "foolish" controversies or foolish questions.  Holding is quick to characterize any and all atheist criticism of the bible as necessarily foolish and stupid, that's all he's been saying for 20 years.  Yet for 20 years he has directly violated Paul's prohibition by ceaseless willingness to trifle, at length, with adversaries he thinks are stupid dumbass morons who make stupid foolish arguments against the bible and ask stupid foolish questions.  Some would argue that Holding's need to obey Paul is more important than Holding's desire to defend a few impressionable know-nothings from being misled by stupid foolish arguments.

 c)  that's all well and good, but do I have evidence that Licona himself agrees with most bible commentators that Christian "teachers" and "apologists" are biblically prohibited from being  quarrelsome with those who publicly criticize Christianity?  Yes.  

Licona authored a book with Gary Habermas on the subject of proving the resurrection of Jesus, a book which comes with an interactive cd-rom. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, paperback 352 pages, Kregal Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI. © 2004 (with cd-rom)

In that book we find a chapter in which Licona states, in various different ways, that any Christians who would answer skeptics must be peaceable and gentle, and that getting all aggressive and insulting is the opposite of what Christ requires.

The game on the cd-rom asked a question as to which of 4 possible choices was quality about you that would have the most positive impact on those you witness the faith to. The choices were 

“wearing a suit and tie”, 

“debate skills”, 

“punctuality” and 

“love”.   

So the authors were clearly implying that “debate skills” are distinguishable from and not necessarily the same as “love”.  The correct answer was “love”.

On the cd-rom, the questions about "skeptics" included 

"if a skeptic is extremely belligerent, it is ok to call him a name”.   

the “yes” answer was incorrect, with the explanation 

“wrong, knucklehead!  Peter says to provide answers with gentleness and respect.”

Notice, Habermas and Licona believe that when Peter told Christians to give their answers with gentleness and respect (1st Peter 3:15), he was telling them how to answer "skeptics".

So, Mr. Holding, since you cannot afford to ignore my blog, when do you plan on making public statements about how Licona and Habermas are moronic dumbasses (to use your favorite terms) for applying Peter's advice to Christians dealing with skeptics?

Another question from the cd-rom game was 

‘people often lie, misquote, or repeat false information during the course of a conversation.  If you suspect this when someone raises a strong point against Jesus’ resurrection with which you are unfamiliar, how should you respond?”   

one of the wrong answers was “Accuse him of lying or stretching the truth in order to win the discussion”, with the explanation “this is not treating a person with ‘gentleness’ and “respect”.   

Since “skeptics” are the ones apologists think are most likely to raise such points, Habermas and Licona are indicating that they think apostle Peter intended for Christians to answer skeptics and not just unbelievers in this courteous respectful way.   And yet Holding currently still thinks calling a skeptic a "big fat liar" is appropriate.  From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lzdc3HZAow

One thing is perfectly certain: starting at least in 2004 and likely much earlier, both Habermas and Licona would have found James Patrick Holding’s “idiot/dumbass/moron" style of presentation with skeptics to be shockingly contrary to basic NT ethics, and they likely would have followed this to its biblical and logical conclusion, i.e., that Holding, by misrepresenting the truth of such a basic NT teaching for more than 20 years, and doing so with great ferocity and eagerness, is more than likely an unsaved wolf in sheep’s clothing, since this is the exact term the NT authors use for those in Christianity who rise to some type of popular teaching position but who have nonetheless failed spectacularly the moral and/or doctrinal criteria for any such leadership.  

I don't seriously expect Licona or Habermas to publicly explain why they don't conclude from HOlding's eagerly persistent sin of insult and slander that his claim to be born-again is very questionable, but I've certainly got a heavy circumstantial case that they do indeed privately hold that opinion, even if unwilling to bluntly say so.

Another question from the cd-rom was 

“if a skeptic claims that all events have natural causes, what would be a good response”?   

One of the wrong answers was "call him an idiot", with the explanation “We hope you won’t call someone an idiot”.  

Notice again:  Habermas and Licona were talking about a Christian dealing with a "skeptic".  They are obviously dead-set against Holding's bullshit theory that Christians have biblical justification to call names toward those who publicly criticize Christianity.  That's exactly what "skeptics" do; they publicly criticize Christianity.

Another question from the cd-rom game:

“Skeptics will sometimes claim that even if God exists he cannot violate the laws of nature.  What could you say in response?”   

One of the wrong answers was “The fool has said in his heart, there is no god”, with the explanation 

 “A comment like this is not likely to motivate your skeptical friend to be open to anything you have to say from that point on and doesn’t answer his objection either.”

 Notice again, Habermas and Licona were talking about how to reply to the "skeptic", and they clearly do not believe quoting Psalm 14:1 is going to help the situation.  Gee, Mr. Holding, are Licona and Habermas "dumbass morons" because they don't think Psalm 14:1 is a good answer to such a skeptic?

Why don't you do a video on why it is that you refuse to label Habermas and Licona as dumbass morons? 

Of course jailhouse lawyer Holding will snicker that he's always made clear he doesn't argue to "save" skeptics, but to encourage Christians who might be bothered by skeptical arguments.

But that just shows Holding's continual inability to progress spiritually or emotionally.  The obvious reason Licona so easily presumes 'salvation' is the apologist'ss goal when dealing with a skeptic, is because he doesn't think there is any biblical precedent for the narrow-minded view that some Christians are not called to witness or lead others to Christ, but solely to strengthen the church.

Maybe Holding and Licona can have a public debate on whether the bible requires ALL Christians to be willing to lead skeptics to Christ?

Licona follows with a real-life example of how wrong he was to get mad at a Jehovah Witness during his discussion with her:



Keep reading, and for all of Holding's supporters who seem to think jailhouse lawyer trifles are the only purpose of life, notice that Licona previously mentioned "skeptics" in this context, and he continues to counsel apologists to avoid being aggressive toward "skeptics".  So you cannot argue that Licona was only talking about how apologists should deal with open-minded unbelievers.  No, Licona in the following excerpt distinguished "skeptics and seekers", and therefore intended apologists to have the same gentle disposition toward both those "seeking" and those "not seeking":



Gee, is Mike Licona so stupid that he didn't realize the bible supports righteous indignation toward those who persist in skepticism?  Or is James Patrick Holding just an obstinate jailhouse lawyer who wouldn't admit his sins of slander to save his life?

The worst part of this of that because Licona and Habermas are two of modern Christanity's most capable scholars, both of whom having even previously endorsed Holding, the more Holding uses "dumbass" and "moron" to label those skeptics who criticize his dog-shit attitude, the more Holding is also calling Licona and Habermas "moron" and "dumbass", because these two gentlemen clearly find compelling and true the Christian scholarly consensus that Christians are NEVER justified to engage in ceaseless insulting vitriol against "skeptics".

Is Holding, allegedly Christianity's most fearsome warrior, going to be publicly consistent in his ways, and admit publicly that Habermas and Licona are "dumbasses" and "morons" for disagreeing with him about this matter, as he is obviously so willing to insult everybody else publicly this way when they disagree with him on this issue?

Or is Holding a chickenshit cocksucker who will suddenly stop seeing any need to hurl righteous indignation when he thinks it might hurt his book sales?  I opt for the latter.  Holding thinks skeptic Dr. Richard Carrier is a moronic dumbass, but in their live debate some years ago, Holding did not hurl any insults at him.

Like I said, Holding is a chickenshit having more in common with a pussyfied 8 year old juvenile delinquent who roars through the phone during prank calls...but who skips town when challenged to show up at the bike racks.  Did Holding overlook that when his faith heroes Jesus and Pual insulted their critics, they did so live, in-person too, and not just through letters?  If Holding is going to imitate the honor/shame dialectic of the first century in modern America, why did he conveniently choose to ignore the "say it to my face" part?

Like I said, Holding is a chickenshit, that's why.


I've been asking Holding for years to cite any biblical scholars he knows of, who agree with him that ceaseless insulting aggressiveness toward public critics of Christianity is consistent with the attitude the NT tells Christians to have when they deal with those who publicly criticize Christianity.

As predicted, Holding fails to meet that challenge, and therefore, he is not allowed to hold that "most" Christian scholars got this wrong...he has to say all bible scholars are misinterpreting the bible on this matter.

As I show in another post,  Holding's magnum opus for defending his childish rage and need for perfect certainty 24hrs per day, "The Christian and Harsh Language", was found by Context Group scholar Richard Rorhrbaugh to be an "obvious perversion" of his own work, ALL Context Group scholarship, as well as a perversion of the NT itself, and was so bad, he did not even deem it worthy of peer-review.

Actions speak louder than words.  I will be supremely unconvinced by any official statements from Licona or Habermas to the effect that they still think he is a legitimate Christian brother in good standing in the faith.  Their hatred of insult and mockery makes it impossible for them to overlook the one trait that Holding has chosen to characterize himself with for the last 20 years.  Licona/Habermas are probably genuinely puzzled as to how a professing Christian could miss the forest for the trees so intentionally for so long.

Update, May 4, 2018-----


There's a video of the 2018 Licona/Erhman debate on YouTube, and I've advertised this blog piece there

 I advertised the same at the Barker/Licona debate

 I posted the same to Jonathan McLatchie's interview of Licona, I provide the screenshot since McLatchie has convinced me he'd like to see such thing suppressed rather than made known:

 ----------------------

Update, May 8, 2018

In 1990, Professor Thomas Sheehan argued in the short-lived Faith Works journal that Jesus was not raised in any literal sense.  In 1992, Gary Habermas replied to him in the Michigan Theological Journal:

In the introductory issue of the new journal Faith Works, Thomas Sheehan provided an outlined summary of his thesis that Jesus was not literally raised from the dead in any sense...In brief, Sheehan holds “that the Easter victory of Jesus was not a historical event — it did not take place in space and time — and that the appearances of Jesus did not entail anyone visually sighting Jesus’ risen body in either a physical or a spiritual “form.”¹

1 1. Thomas Sheehan, “Smiling Nihilism vs. the Evidence: A Reflection on the Resurrection,” Faith Works, vol 1, no. 1, Fall 1990, 5.

Interestingly, despite Sheehan being a person Holding would call a "false teacher" and thus deserving of being slapped with insults and riposte, Habermas opposes Sheehan's own insulting demeanor with language that could just as easily be used to oppose Holding's own insulting demeanor.  Habermas says:

However, purposely highlighted in Sheehan’s agenda is a secondary contention: A not so carefully concealed disgust for conservative research. This does not deserve to be treated as a separate critique, so I will mention it only here. Sheehan’s disdain for conservative scholarship which takes the Bible literally is manifest in well over a dozen comments. I am referred to (tongue in cheek) as 

“the doyen sans pareille of Fundamentalist apologists of the resurrection.”2

Some literalists “insist on riding Balaam’s ass to their scripture classes.”3 In spite of his view of the “resurrection,” Sheehan responds (Ibid., p. 12) to fundamentalist research as follows:

“If this were done intentionally, we would call it blasphemy.”(!)  Sheehan refers to literalists and their work as

“naive and misleading,”

“pseudo-scholarship,”

“nonsense,”

“fantasies,”

“supinely ignorant,”

“ignorance,”

“pernicious,”

“naive, backwater interpretations,”

“sleight of hand exegesis,”

“fudging the facts,” and

“the self-imposed ghetto of unscholarly literalism” (Ibid., pp. 5, 12-13). Lastly, Sheehan ends his article (Ibid., p. 13) with these words against literalists:

“And God is not served by telling lies on His behalf.”

I am not quite sure what the purpose of the ad hominem rhetoric is; perhaps Sheehan thinks that his overt denigration of such research disproves its conclusions. But it should be obvious by the end of the essay that such abusive bravado does not take the place of carefully reasoned arguments for ‘his position.
2 2. Ibid, 11.
3 3. Ibid, 13.

The Early Christian Belief In The Resurrection Of Jesus

By Gary R. Habermas, A Response To Thomas Sheehan,

MTJ Vol. 3:2 (Fall 1992) 105-107(emphasis added)

If Gary Habermas thinks stuff like "naive and misleading" and "sleight of hand exegesis" constitute the fallacy of ad hominem and is also "abusive bravado", one can only wonder how he would characterize James Patrick Holding's brand of insulting rhetoric, which includes such marks of spiritual maturity as accusing his critics of using their penises to hit other people:

      "And you? You’re nothing but a sanctimonious ant with delusions of your own grandeur; you’re nothing but a modern day Hugh waving your swollen member around and knocking people over with it or else disgusting everyone by pointing to it and shouting to everyone to look at it."  ----http://www.ctm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=84                     ---------------wayback has archived this if you care to check to see whether this man was arguing in a context that morally or biblically justified such language.  https://web.archive.org/web/20050501231546/http://www.ctm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=84

                    "In your arrogance you missed it; you were so busy waving your giant pee-pee around that you bonked yourself on the head with it and didn’t even notice." -----""http://www.ctm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=89                     ---------------wayback has archived this if you care to check to see whether this man was arguing in a context that morally or biblically justified such language.  https://web.archive.org/web/20050501231540/http://www.ctm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=89

     Swollen member?  Giant pee-pee?  Shouting at everybody to look at one's uncovered genitalia?

See these and more examples from my blog post here, "The Context Group has THRICE disowned James Patrick Holding (aka Robert Turkel".


On a theologyweb.com debate from 2008 that Holding's buddy John Sparks, owner of theologyweb, conveniently deleted, Holding responded to me as follows:

....me: his rebuttal first if he is so confident of the stupidity of bible skeptics, that he can accurately predict what evidence I will set forth to substantiate my case.
----Holding: Actually, no, I can't predict anything you might say; I can't see your arguments with your head stuck in the way up your bum. Your answers would come from plain-English, decontextualized readings you picked up in Fundyville, and there's no telling what sort of contorted rationalizations you may come up with. Something like what John Goddard produces, I expect.

....me: and places a very extreme burden on my shoulders in the debate, at least in your opinion, does it not?
----Holding: Not really, since you don't care about the facts in the first place. Not much "burden" involved in pulling claims out of your bum while you ignore scholarship, after all.

Holding's followers need to remember that Holding started his internet ministry in 1998.  So they cannot dismiss this evidence as Holding still being young in the faith.  Holding has always held himself out to be a biblically qualified "teacher" of others, and these insults come from posts he made in 205 and 2008, within 7 to 10 years after Holding started his internet "ministry".  What should we think of an alleged "Christian" who so eagerly violates obvious basics of NT ethics 7-10 years after he publicly declares himself a teacher of others?

And in 2015-2016, I documented in my two lawsuits against him how Holding equally egregiously libeled and defamed me, with the result that this "fearless spiritual warrior" (as his supporters obviously see him) felt compelled to remove his juvenile slurs from his website, contrary to his consistent 16-year history of being an obstinate prick who extends no mercy to any critic, ever.


I found further Evangelical disdain for abusive rhetoric in an article by Timothy P. Weber (Ph.D., University of Chicago Divinity School), in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS):

Though I never considered David Rausch’s original article to be a personal attack, after reading his rejoinder I am beginning to get a little suspicious. Rausch initially criticized a few pages’ worth of my views on the relationship between Jews and premillennialists. Now he takes issue with my whole book.

It is safe to say that Rausch does not care for my Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming. He calls it

shoddy,

shallow,

simplistic,

inaccurate,

insensitive,

imprecise and pejorative. He thinks my main thesis is a

psychological fantasy, states that

I portray premillennialists as ethereal, slinking robots (an interesting image, to say the least), and

claims to have located
the thousands of pages I did not read while I did my research. He does not even like the book’s title and assures us that Arno C. Gaebelein (who died in 1945) would not have liked it either. If Rausch is right about all this, somebody ought to put my book out of its misery. After reading his analysis, one might seriously wonder how the manuscript ever sneaked by a dissertation committee at the University of Chicago, the editors of Oxford University Press, and so many book reviewers (including some premillennialists)—all of whom rather liked it.

One side of me would like to give a detailed, blow-by-blow response to Rausch’s rejoinder. But his arguments are so ad hominem and personally directed that it would be hard to do so without sounding overly defensive and self-serving.

I will gladly leave it to the readers of JETS and my book to judge the spirit and validity of the bulk of Rausch’s comments. Though I choose not to answer Rausch in kind, I would like to draw attention to some of the more substantive issues in his rejoinder.

First, I am surprised by Rausch’s claim that I caricature premillennialists in such a distorted and negative way.

Timothy P. Weber,  A Surrejoinder To David Rausch’s Rejoinder,

JETS 24/1 (March 1981) 79-82 (emphasis added)

Apparently, there is room within conservative Evangelicalism to view James Patrick Holding's insulting rhetoric as the fallacy of ad hominem, and thus a sign of spiritual immature at best and lack of salvation at worst.  

And since I exposed the fact that Holding's goto scholar to support such, the Context Group (Richard Rohrbaugh) views his defense of insult-rhetoric as an obvious perversion of the New Testament, Holding's followers will have only two choices:  Either there are no Christian scholars who support Holding's foul mouth because they are all blinded by the devil and just don't know how God wants to get things done, or, there are no Christian scholars who support Holding's foul mouth because the very idea of a foul-mouthed person being a genuinely born-again Christian is in absurd conflict with basic NT ethics.  

Are Holding's supporters following a spiritually mature leader who has the uncanny ability to recognize truth far better than all modern conservative Christian scholars, or are they following a wolf in sheep's clothing, who confuses juvenile rhetoric with spiritual warfare?

 -------------Update June 4, 2018

That Licona thinks James Patrick Holding's filthy mouth disqualifies him from deserving consideration by anybody, may also be legitimately inferred from Licona's reasons for refusing to directly engage in argument with Lydia McGrew.   While her critiques of Licona involve nowhere near the type of vulgarities that Holding chooses to use, Licona still felt that Lydia's "tone" was sufficiently uncharitable as to justify Licona in refusing to engage with her directly.

Engaging with Lydia would require a significant amount of time. Since her blogs on my book are very long, I would begin by reading them, which would take a few hours. Replying to them cannot be completed in a mere 45 minutes but would require much more time. I’d probably be looking at a solid week of work. Then, if Lydia’s past actions are indicative of what would happen next, she would write very long replies to my responses. And those now desiring me to reply would also want for me to reply to her reply. To do that would require another week’s work. So far, I would be looking at a solid two weeks that could be spent otherwise in research or writing.
I’m virtually certain things would not end there, since Lydia would feel compelled to reply to my second reply. And the process goes on, requiring even more hours. (Even a back and forth for Philosophia Christi would require a chunk of time.) Seven years ago when another person was writing a dozen or so open letters to me on the Internet that criticized my book on Jesus’s resurrection, several highly respected evangelical scholars counseled me to ignore him, since engaging would end up sucking up an inordinate amount of my time and would not result in good fruit for the kingdom. I’m very glad I followed their advice, since my refusing to be sidetracked has allowed my ministry to expand nationally and internationally.
Understandably, Tom and some others may answer that, while a significant amount of time would be required of me, I should spend the required time considering Lydia’s criticisms carefully and either revising my position or clarifying and defending it. I do not share their sense of necessity. When I observe several theologians and New Testament scholars, such as J. I. Packer, Robert Stein, Darrell Bock, Mark Strauss, Craig Evans, Craig Keener, Craig Blomberg, and Scot McKnight (all of whom are evangelical and have expertise in the Gospels, having spent decades studying them with passion and reverence) and Christopher Pelling, the foremost scholar on Plutarch, all having read my book and expressed varying degrees of approval while none have expressed anywhere close to the degree of alarm we are seeing from Lydia, I do not feel a necessity to spend the sort of time and emotional capital required to engage Lydia, especially when her critiques are seasoned with a tone that I consider less than charitable, to put it mildly. Therefore, I will leave to others the task of engaging with her.