Dr. Dennis Ingolfsland, apologist who uses condescension to avoid a challenge

Dennis Ingolfsland is an apologist who operates an extensive online blog.

 I found out about him while surfing google for apologists that I could make debate-offers to.

Despite surfing around on his blog for about 5 minutes, I could not find a "reply" button, leading me to believe that he intentionally set up the blog to avoid allowing comments.  Let the world be silent before the Lord.

So I googled his name, found the university he works at and sent him the following rather respectful offer to have a serious debate about any one of a number of biblical problems.

From: Barry Jones [mailto:barryjoneswhat@gmail.com] 

Sent: Monday, August 13, 2018 2:46 PM 

To: Dennis Ingolfsland 

Subject: request to have discussion or debate

    Hello,

    I was intrigued by your blog http://dennis-ingolfsland.blogspot.com/, but noticed that, despite having many controversial things to say, your blog doesn't allow the reader to respond.  Did I miss something?

    I am an atheist, formerly a fundamentalist Christian, who engages in bible study as a personal hobby, and I'd like to know if you would be willing to have some exchanges with me on the following topics, whether by email, through your blog, or whatever medium you prefer, on times and dates most convenient to you, no rush.

    I’m also willing to discuss any topic you raised at your blog, or any controversy between Christians and non-Christians you wish.  The below list of topics is suggestive only.

1. Bible inerrancy is too controversial to justify using it as a hermeneutic.  If you are going to say somebody’s interpretation of a bible verse is false, you need to provide something more than “it contradicts what the bible says elsewhere”.  The unbeliever whose interpretation of a bible verse is otherwise contextually and grammatically justified, is under no intellectual compulsion to toss it aside merely because it would contradict something the bible says elsewhere.  But if it be reasonable to reject bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, many dogmas espoused by conservative apologists are accordingly deflated.

2. It does not matter if the views of a Christian scholar or apologist are “reasonable”, such views are usually never warranted with such blinding evidential force as to render any opposing interpretation “unreasonable”.

3. A careful examination of Paul’s prohibitions on debating unbelievers requires the conclusion that he would characterize ALL of modern Christianity’s attempts at in-depth examination of bible evidence and skeptical views, including most of what you post at your blog, as the precise type of word-wrangling he prohibited Christians from engaging in.  The other biblical texts that require Christians to do apologetics, require the type of apologetics that avoids the scholarly level of back-and-forth seen so often in blogs and theological journals.

4. There is nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre of Genesis 6:6-7 to suggest that this statement about God’s regretting his own prior choice to create man, is an “anthropomorphism”.  It appears to be intended equally as literally as the rest of the chapter.  The Christians who ceaselessly invoke God’s alleged “infinite righteousness” in their fantastic philosophically lofty efforts to speculate that God allows evil for the sake of a greater good (William Lane Craig?), are choosing to prioritize good words and fair speeches above the unhappy biblical truth.

5. The resurrection accounts in each of the 4 canonical gospels contradict Acts 1:3

6. For the full duration of Jesus’ public ministry, James the brother of Jesus persisted in unbelief.  This is more than sufficient to defeat the resurrection hypothesis, especially as argued by the front line snipers such as Licona and Habermas.

7. A close examination of all the biblical and historical information on every “James” mentioned in the NT, provides the investigator no compelling reason to think James the brother of Jesus ever became convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.  If he was the exact "James" who later oversaw the original Jerusalem faction of the church, he likely obtained that position due to political appointment and social expedience, not personal faith.

8. Generously granting highly unlikely assumptions of apostolic authorship of the gospels, I count a total of 3 resurrection testimonies in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form:  Matthew, John and Paul.  For this reason, typical apologetics arguments that say the resurrection of Jesus rests on the testimony of “many” eyewitness reports, is a deceptive exaggeration.

9. A close examination of the most explicit NT accounts of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus provides the investigator no compelling reason to consider him an eyewitness of the risen Jesus.

10. The unbeliever can be reasonable to adopt the Christian scholarly consensus that Mark is the earliest gospel, and that 16:8 is the place where Mark’s input stops, meaning the unbeliever can be reasonable to conclude that the earliest gospel did not say Jesus actually appeared to any apostles (i.e., the later gospels, with their more richly detailed resurrection appearance narratives, are merely embellishing the more primitive story, hence the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is so beset with falsified evidence that unbelievers are reasonable to wash their hands of the entire business, as opposed to getting their ph.d in historiography).

11. Jesus taught a legalistic salvation totally contrary to Paul’s version of the gospel.

12. Jesus said the gospel to the Gentiles consisted of their obeying his actual words, not merely his “teachings”.  For this reason, Paul’s infamous apathy toward the actual words Jesus used during his public teaching ministry, condemns Paul as a deluded heretic.

13. God clearly isn’t doing his “best” to convince unbelievers that the gospel is true, therefore, they are rationally justified to believe that, even if the Christian god exists, he has far less “love” for them than the bible says.

14. The bible characterizes God as causing men to rape women.  It doesn’t matter if this could somehow be reconciled with the notion that God ‘loves’ those women, causing rape is simply so far departed from any reasonable human conception of love, that the unbeliever is reasonable to reject such biblical theology as nonsense.

15. Contrary to popular belief, “God’s mysterious ways” does not keep the apologist above water when cornered by a skeptic on a biblical issue. The excuse rather functions as an admission of defeat, both for the modern Christians and for the biblical authors who invented it out of a similar desire to get around irresolvable problems and move forward anyway.

16. In the days of Moses, god approved of sexual activity within adult-child marriages.  If Jesus was the Jehovah of the OT, then Jesus was approving of such activity back then, regardless of whether he changed his mind after the incarnation.

17. The bible makes very clear in numerous passages that heaven is physically "up there", the ascension of Christ in Acts 1 merely being the tip of the ice-box.  It is not reasonable for the apologist to pretend that this is just a case of god ‘accommodating’ the viewpoint of pre-scientific people.

18. Christians who preach about how God is able to see forward in time because he is outside of time, are preferring mystical philosophy to biblical doctrine.  Every biblical description of heaven indicates events take place there by means of temporal progression no less than they do on earth.  Biblically there is no option to believe that God exists outside of time.

19. Nothing in the OT predicted anything about Jesus.  I’m prepared to discuss Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 52-53, Micah 5:2, Daniel 9:24-27, Psalm 22, Psalm 16, etc.

20. Contrary to popular belief, the bible indicates God does not “need” to punish sin or be given a sacrifice for sin.  Jesus’ alleged death for sin on the cross boils down to little more than an evolution in Jewish thought which began to stray from earlier biblical truth.

21. If a little girl was raped to death yesterday in California, the book of Daniel would counsel that this is because the angel whom god appointed to protect that area of the world, lost one of his sky-battles with a more powerful demon.

22. Contrary to the claims of apologists like Frank Turek and Matthew Flannagan, there is no objective standard for morality, hence, nothing about human morality implies the existence of God.

23. If Copan and Flannagan were correct to interpret the “kill’em all” commands of the OT god as mere rhetorical exaggeration, and were correct to characterize this as a command to merely “dispossess” the Canaanites without mass-slaughter, this makes God out to be a greater moral monster than the traditional interpretation.

24. The average unbeliever would have full rational justification to completely avoid inquiring into any alleged evidence of modern-day miracles, and they'd still be reasonable to remain confident that all such claims are more than likely arising from hoax, delusion or honest mistake.

    -------------------------------------------

    I hope I have piqued your interest, and I hope you detect that I am sincere.  I have serious objections to Christianity that I'm willing to have examined by any apologist desiring to take their best shot for as long as they wish.  I look forward to dialoguing with you.

    Barry Jones

 ----------------------------------------endquote

 Dr. Ingolfsland's bio includes the following:

Dr. Ingolfsland has published two books (The Least of the Apostles and I Pledge Allegiance to the King), one evangelistic booklet (Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up) three Kindle e-books, and 40 magazine and journal articles in publications such as the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Trinity Journal, Bibliotheca Sacra, Princeton Theological Review and others. He has also published more than 80 book reviews and has presented numerous papers to biblical scholars at theology conferences.
Ingolfsland’s area of academic expertise is the historical study of Jesus. He has presented papers and participated in several panel discussions about Jesus at theological conferences. In 2014 he moderated the “Synoptic Gospels Study Group” at the annual convention of the Evangelical Theological Society. In in 2013 he moderated both the “Synoptic Gospels Study Group” and the “Sayings of Jesus Study Group” at the annual ETS convention.

 You should keep those credentials in mind. 

This otherwise highly educated Christian apologist did little more in his reply to me, than to assure me of how wrong and idiotic I was, he spouted a few derogatory comments suggesting I oppose the bible god because I have a possible history of drug abuse, crime, addiction to pornography, etc, then told me not to respond, because he would not reply.

 Nothing spells dispassionate scholarly rigor quite like "leeme alone!"

This is offensive because the way I worded my challenges indicated what was true, namely that I had already obtained a reasonable knowledge of how the front-line apologists were making their defenses.  Yet, Dr. Ingolfsland speaks to me as if I'm just a drunk atheist whose reasons for unbelief are laughably superficial and dishonest.

First, the apologists and Christians who think my publicly posting Dr. Ingolfsland's email to me is illegal, are wrong, the law does not recognize emails as private after they have been sent:

This was true in 2002, State v. Townsend, 57 P. 3d 255, 262-3 (Wash: Supreme Court 2002):

There are two types of computer communications at issue in this case. The first is standard e-mail communication in which the sender composes a message and sends it via the internet to the recipient's computer where it is recorded or stored until the recipient decides to "open" it. This process is most analogous to a letter sent through the mail. Although not addressed in Washington cases, other jurisdictions have found that the reasonable expectation of privacy in an e-mail, like a letter sent through the mail, ends when the recipient opens it. Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 333 (6th Cir.2001); Commonwealth v. Proetto, 771 A.2d 823, 831-33 (Pa.Super.2001) (holding that there is no reasonable 263 *263 expectation of privacy in e-mail messages sent by man to 15-year-old girl), appeal granted, 567 Pa. 667, 790 A.2d 988 (2002). Once opened, the recipient has complete freedom to do what he or she wishes with the communication. See United States v. Maxwell, 45 M.J. 406, 417-18 (1996).

 And it remains true as late as 2018, from  US v. Bereznak, Dist. Court, MD Pennsylvania 2018:

...courts appear to be in general agreement that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic content such as emails or pager messages once they are on a recipient's device. See, e.g.,
United States v. Heckenkamp, 482 F.3d 1142, 1146 (9th Cir. 2007)("A person's reasonable expectation of privacy may be diminished in `transmissions over the Internet or e-mail that have already arrived at the recipient.'")(quoting United States v. Lifshitz, 369 F.3d 173, 190 (2d Cir. 2004)(finding no expectation of privacy in e-mail once received));
United States v. Jones, 149 F.App'x 954, 959 (11th Cir. 2005)(finding no reasonable expectation of privacy to prevent recipient from testifying as to contents of pager messages);
Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 333 (6th Cir. 2001)("Users would [] lose a legitimate expectation of privacy in an e-mail that had already reached its recipient; at this moment, the e-mailer would be analogous to a letter-writer, whose expectation of privacy ordinarily terminates upon delivery of the letter.").
One reason for this is that once text messages have been received, the recipient could reveal them to anyone, and "[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public [] is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967). The Supreme Court "consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979). In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court found that a defendant "takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government." 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976). In holding that the respondent had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his bank records, the Miller Court noted that the Supreme Court "has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." Id.

With that potential quibble out of the way, here is Dr. Ingolfsland's condescending loquacious email reply to me, with my comments interspersed at the appropriate locations:
----------------------------------------

 On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 6:21 AM, Dennis Ingolfsland <ingolfsland@crown.edu> wrote:

    Barry,   

    Please excuse my bluntness, but contrary to your assertion, I don’t think you are serious. In fact, I think you’re just playing games. You atheists like to play a game with us Christians. It goes something like this: “If you Christians can’t prove to my satisfaction and beyond any shadow of a doubt that every word of the Bible is absolutely true, then I am justified in not believing any of it!”    

Straw man, on the contrary, there is no reason for the Christian, knowing nothing more about me at the time than my list of 24 challenges, supra, to conclude that I'm just a game-playing atheist whose ideas about burdens of proof are conveniently lop-sided in my favor.  Furthermore, I never expressed or implied that you'd have to convince me your answer to any challenge was true "beyond any shadow of a doubt."  I also never expressed or implied I'd believe atheism true until somebody could prove every word of the bible absolutely true. For somebody with a Ph.d, you sure are quick to make false accusations.

In fact, I'm quite aware of, and accepting of, the same burden of proof that Licona and other scholarly apologists admit:  it is the hypothesis or interpretation that has the most explanatory scope and power, that wins. 

    But the game is rigged. There is no certainty in this world! No one can prove Christianity beyond any shadow of a doubt any more than someone could prove atheism beyond any shadow of a doubt!

I never expressed or implied that Christianity had to meet such an intolerably high burden.  Straw man again.

If someone does not WANT to believe something, there is no amount of evidence in the world that will convince them (e.g. moon landing deniers or holocaust deniers).    

 Correct.  That's why you cannot make other Christians, whom you think espouse theological error, see the light. Christians, with all of their alleged extra access to absolute truth, are no less susceptible to allowing their personal desires to cloud their better judgment, than atheists.

    Frankly, some of your objections seem analogous to someone saying I don’t believe in modern medicine because 1) They haven’t cured cancer or the common cold, 2) A room full of doctors may well have several different diagnoses and proposed remedies to the same symptoms. 3) Hundreds of people have died in hospitals due to malpractice, 4) Big pharma is more interested in profits than actual cures. 5) Doctors are in it for the money, 6) Hospitals are just big business, 7) No one is actually trying to cure major diseases like Cancer because the researchers would then be out of business so the who thing is a charade, etc.    

Straw man again.  I would hardly have set forth the specific challenges I did, if I didn't have supreme confidence that I could demonstrate them to be true within the confines of the historiography and hermeneutics accepted by the majority of Christian scholars. 

    Of course this is nonsense, but if someone tried to defend the medical profession, their attackers could just dismiss the defenses as apologetic word wrangling or some such thing.

 Leaving you with no basis upon which to support other apologists in their many debates with atheists.  Apparently you think it is all a big waste of time.  Another division in the body of Christ.  

Not only that, but some of the arguments are unanswerable. It would be impossible to convince someone who didn’t WANT to be convinced, that most doctors really do want to help patients and that in spite of their bottom lines, Big pharma companies and Cancer researchers really do work to provide cures.    

I could just as easily have argued similarly that Christians only deny atheism because they don't WANT to be convinced of the truth.  But I was polite and sincere toward you without condescension.

    I’m sure you are well aware that there is absolutely nothing a good skeptic can’t challenge or doubt.

Not true.  Dishonest lawyers are experts at playing such games in trial in order to defend their client's alleged innocence, but on the whole the juries appear capable of knowing the point at which doubting the prosecutor's evidence of guilt becomes an irrational trifle.  Worse, there are many things you and I would agree exist, or are true, including bible history. If you've never met a skeptic who could really kick your ass all over hell and back in a debate about biblical matters, perhaps you can be forgiven for presuming my idiotic blindness.  Apparently, David Hume isn't the only one who regards personal experience as the ultimate test of truth.

Descartes thought he found something he couldn’t doubt with his saying, “I think, therefore I am” but later philosophers have rightly pointed out that even that can be doubted.

 Those philosophers are also wrong, a non-existing thing could never make a statement.  Existence is an axiom of speech...unless you think a non-existing thing could make a speech?

The fact is that there is no absolute certainty in this life—not even atheism or science is beyond doubt!    

Again, straw man:  I never expressed or implied that Christians either prove their beliefs absolutely, or concede the debate.  I believe your burden of proof is no higher than anybody else's:  beyond a reasonable doubt.  The standard used by everybody in daily life, in courts of law, and by the more scholarly Christian apologists such as Mike Licona.

    I once had an interest in Cell Biology so one of the biologists where I work recommended a book that she said was like the “Bible” of Cell biology at the time. I was amazed how often the text conceded that they just didn’t know how such-and-such worked, or there was simply no known explanation for this or that phenomena. A good philosopher of science who wanted to be obnoxious could have absolutely torn that book to shreds, figuratively speaking! In fact, the more we learn about the unbelievable complexity of even the simplest forms of life, the more random chance and natural selection seem impossible.   

The only problem being that you are thrusting these talking points out into your soliloquy in a speech that ends by telling me to avoid replying.  If you are so sure intelligent design is an obvious truth of reality, you should have no fears about your ability to steamroll an atheist in a debate about intelligent design.  Unfortunately, your soliloquy ends with your telling me to avoid responding, because by choice you refuse to communicate further.  If you can be reasonable to set your own subjective limits on how much obedience to Jude 3 you will permit, you cannot reasonably fault skeptics for similarly setting their own subjective limits on how often they will answer Christian challenges. 

    But to play your game just for a moment, take for example your first objection on inerrancy. It seems to me that several of the objections on your list have to do with efforts to reconcile the Bible with inerrancy, for example #5 (you’re still stuck in your fundamentalist background!).

 First, Objection # 1 stands on its own.  I was willing to attack the notion that bible inerrancy should be used as a hermeneutic.  That debate would not involve the question of whether any specific bible statement was true or false.

Second, it hardly matters whether you affirm or deny inerrancy.  inerrancy is a false doctrine that hangs around the neck of many Christians.  I am doing a lot of good to beat it bloody, even if you happens to be one of those Christians who don't believe it or don't prioritize it.

Third, I am not stuck in a fundamentalist background. I have chosen to attack several forms of Christianity, one of them being the fundamentalist type that you apparently don't aspire to.  The fact that you don't espouse that form of Christianity, doesn't mean it is completely irrelevant and can be dismissed without commentary.  Fundamentalists are wrong, but they also ensnare a lot of innocently ignorant people with their half-cocked arguments.  the more I attack false doctrines, the more hope of helping Christians out of the doctrinal hell-hole that they fell into.

Contrary to many fundamentalists, Christianity simply does not rise or fall on inerrancy (as evidenced by the huge number of biblical scholars who do not believe in inerrancy and yet are dedicated Christians).

 I agree.  I would  never foolishly pretend that if I can prove one genuine error in the originals of the bible, then the collapse of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy suddenly means the collapse of Christianity.

Unfortunately for you, there are well-informed scholarly Christians who insist that yes, Christianity does rise or fall with inerrancy.  A prime example would be Steve Hays.

Tyson

I'm not sure we're using "foundational" in the same sense. By "foundational" I mean that there are things in Scripture that, were they wrong or missing, would not destroy Christianity. For instance, Christianity does not rise or fall on Shamgar's killing of 600 Philistines with an oxgoad (Judges 3:31). Imagine we find out that Shamgar killed 30 men with a spear. Would you abandon Christianity because of the discrepancy? I should hope not.

Hays 

1. That's a hopelessly atomistic view of the issue. It's like saying, because I can survive frostbitten toes, because I can survive an amputated toe, I can survive Antarctica in my tighty-whities. The question isn't whether the body can survive the loss of a toe, but what sustains the entire body, toes included. 

If you jettison inerrancy, then you implicitly jettison the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture since it doesn't make a heap of sense to say a verbally plenarily inspired text is fallible.

Hays is obviously wrong as he thinks God inspired certain sinners to write out inerrant scripture, but did not take away their sinful natures at any time in the process.  Therefore, the idea that God can effectively guide his church using imperfect human books is not near the wild irrational thing Hays thinks it is.

Something can have all kinds of errors and still be essentially reliable—take CNN or the New York Times for example.   

Agreed.  Leaving me to question why you bring up such a thing, as I never expressed or implied that atheism wins unless you can prove the bible perfect in every way in absolute fashion. Christianity does not rise or fall with inerrancy, agreed. 

    Your 2nd and 24th arguments are basically regurgitating David Hume’s outdated arguments against miracles.

It's a pity that you are so confident I'm wrong in these propositions, when I've offered to support them with scholarly argument, and all you do is scoff, assure me I got it wrong, walk away and make clear you won't accept the offer to discuss the matter.

Some would say such a reply has more in common with fundamentalism than with scholarly acumen.

As for my point # 2, I was merely offering to argue that Christians do not win a debate by showing that their notion is "reasonable". The bible and the world are chock full of examples where reasonable people disagree about the facts.  It might very well be that the reasonable Christian interpretation of a matter isn't the only interpretation that can be shown to be "reasonable".

As for my objection # 24, this had nothing to do with Hume.  Had you been willing to discuss it, I would have pointed out that since Christians and unbelievers routinely draw inductive inferences about larger issues without knowing about every single piece of relevant evidence, then unbelievers cannot be charged with unreasonableness for doing, during miracle-investigation, what everybody else does in every other area of life:  deciding that the pool of data they sampled is sufficiently large to justify drawing conclusions from.

I would also have pointed out that because apologists would concede that there comes a time in the life of the unbeliever when helping his child with homework is reasonable, that is one potential justification for avoiding miracle claims.  Gee, how many other facets of the average unbeliever's life, would the apologist say are more important than miracle investigation?  Can we be reasonable to leave the internet long enough to use the toilet?  Or would reasonable people take the computer into the bathroom, because to miss that one provable and true miracle claim is to risk wrongfully deciding miracles are false, and ending up in hell?

If the unbeliever has a job which pays the bills, then how can you justify saying he should put the bible down, turn off the internet, and concentrate on his worldly job to any degree?  Isn't it true that such unbeliever is always merely one heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternity of torment?  Isn't his spiritual condition more important than his worldly concerns?

 Must you not, consistent with your intense support of Christian apologetics, tell him that it would be more rational to get rid of everything in his life that gives him an excuse to cease the miracle investigations?

But if the unbeliever need not give up the normative daily things in his life that limit the amount of time he can spend investigating miracles (taking kids to school, having a job, sleeping, eating, etc), then you cannot really say at what point he is irrationally avoiding miracles and bible investigation.

Would you advise juries to never make a finding of "guilty", all because it's always going to be possible that the criminal suspect is innocent?  No.  The fact that there might be one piece of evidence out there they haven't seen yet, that would prove his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, does not make the jury unreasonable to find the prosecutor's case convincing.

Therefore, it doesn't matter if there is one miracle-claim out there that proves god's existence beyond a reasonable doubt, the skeptic who takes no longer to hear miracle evidence than a jury takes to hear evidence in a criminal case, is going to be reasonable to draw a negative conclusion if his reasons for it cohere with normative investigative protocol.

I don't know what your views on "hell" are, but if they are anything like those of the typical Southern Baptist, then my above-arguments show that there is too much urgent danger to justify sitting down and doing 20 book reports on the latest scholarly apologetics offerings.

Even non-Christian philosophers have pointed out the fallacies in his logic, but atheists generally don’t care as long as Hume serves their purpose.

 And you foster our allegedly apathetic attitude by mouthing off in what amounts to a hit-and-run reply.

But to answer on the merits, I'm quite aware of the problems in Hume's formulations, but his basic argument was reasonable.  His error in calling a miracle a "violation" of natural law does nothing to sublimate his general argument.  The more a claim's assertions depart from the hearer's confirmed experience of reality, the more the hearer is justified to demand a level of evidence that is greater in quantity and quality than what we normally expect to support claims that conform to normative experience.  A picture might be enough to show that you walked into a store.  But it wouldn't be enough to show that you levitated by supernatural power.

By the way, if you were genuinely sincere, I would suggest that you read Craig Keeners’ two volumes on Miracles in which he provides a devastating critique of Hume.   

Ok, then I must be genuinely sincere under your own criteria, because I previously sent Keener the ultimate challenge to his miracle claims, and, shock, surprise, neither he nor any of his supporters has ever dared to accept the challenge or answer my questions.

    Some of your other argument are just plain silly—I almost laughed out loud at #21!    

 You should direct your laughter to the book of Daniel which makes the claim that angels guard certain parts of the earth, and that earthly chaos arises when and if that angel loses a battle with a demon.  Here's what two Christian scholars have to say:

10:13 One of the strangest accounts in the Bible is now unfolded. The angel related that he was coming to bring Daniel the answer to his prayer but was delayed because “the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.” Finally, Michael (whose name means “who is like God?”), one of the most powerful and important angels (“one of the chief princes”), came to the interpreting angel’s aid. Evidently the reason that Michael became involved and not another powerful angel was that Daniel was interceding for Israel, a nation especially entrusted to Michael’s care (v. 21).

The NIV’s “detained there with the king of Persia”827 could mean that the angel was prevented from leaving the area ruled by the human king of the Persian Empire. Yet the Hebrew word translated “king” is plural, and the concept of the angel’s being “detained with” the earthly kings of Persia seems

untenable. In the context of angelic warfare, these “kings” likely were spiritual rulers who attempted to control Persia.

Miller, S. R. (2001, c1994). Vol. 18: Daniel. Includes indexes. (electronic ed.).

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 284).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 

10:5–9 …A few passages, however, suggest that there are heavenly armies that oppose Yahweh, so that earthly battles reflect battles in heaven; whichever side wins in heaven, its equivalent wins on earth.

Goldingay, J. E. (2002). Vol. 30: Word Biblical Commentary : Daniel.

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 291). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

You apologists are always screaming about how grossly immoral the pagan nations were.  If they really did engage in unrestrained bestiality and burning children to death, they likely also approved of pedophilia.  Unless you think the above-cited Christian commentators got it wrong (the first is an inerrantist, the second is an evangelical), then my challenge, about the bible explaining child rape in California on the basis of California's angel losing a sky-battle with a demon, is perfectly consistently with what the book of Daniel teaches.

    On #8, many (if not most) Christian scholars are even more skeptical than you.

 Which is another reason you should have cordially assumed that I'm not a wild-eyed skeptic guilty of the hair-brained half-assed stupidity that you apply to me.

They would say that Matthew and John were not eyewitnesses! In fact, I doubt that Wright would say Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.

 That's correct, and when such an authority as Wright says such things, you cannot really say whether the investigating skeptic "needs" to do more investigation before his own negative conclusion can be reasonable.

But this was simply irrelevant to his arguments on the Resurrection (come to think of it, have you actually ever read N.T. Wright’s Resurrection of the Son of God or Mike Licona’s “Resurrection of Jesus”—or did you just skim them, or worse yet, just read the Amazon reviews?    

 Yes, I've read both of them.  Wright's attempt to avoid Mark's lost ending is unconvincing to say the least, and if he is correct, Mark's ending need not have said anything more than that the disciples saw Jesus in Galilee.  Nothing more is required from the earlier Markan material where Jesus promises to see them in Galilee.  That still leaves Wright with the earliest gospel having the least to say about Jesus' resurrection, rationally justifying the hypothesis that the later gospels have more detailed resurrection appearance narratives only because of emebellishment, not because Mark "chose to exclude" all that fantastic important stuff.

Licona fatally agrees with the majority of scholars that Jesus' family rejected him and his ministry at least as late as the crucifixion, and I capitalize on that admission by asking whether it makes sense to say that Jesus' own family, in that collectivist society where they could not avoid hearing about Jesus' miracles, should witness these allegedly genuine miracles for three years and still somehow persuade themselves, in this honor/shame society, that they were fakes or being done by Satan's power.

I've also reviewed and found wanting the arguments of Lunn and Snapp in their attempt to falsify the Christian scholarly majority view and assert Mark's long ending was authentically written by Mark.  No dice.

If your question about my scholarly research was sincere, would you have loaded it up with all that condescending context?

    Many of your arguments amount to “I’m right and all scholars who disagree with me are wrong”

They were presented as honest challenges and offers to deal with the best you could possibly offer in rebuttal, they were not presented as the juvenile rhetoric you claim. Can you think of anything more routine than for somebody to think that a scholar had gotten something wrong?  How does my disagreement with a scholar besmirch my sincerity or credibility?

and some other arguments are things that some Christians would agree with—but they are not sufficient to destroy their faith.

 My challenges to you were not intended to destroy anybody's faith.  They were intended to force you to admit that the skeptical view on those matters can be reasonable.  There's a big difference. Contrary to popular belief, your being reasonable to be a Christian doesn't automatically operate to make atheists unreasonable .  Sometimes data is sufficiently ambiguous that it allows two opposing hypotheses to be equally reasonable.  It's why juries deadlock and why dedicated fundamentalists often change their mind about bible doctrine several times in a lifetime.

    Christianity does not rest on inerrancy or the interpretation of this or that verse (One need only read James’ Dunn’s Jesus Remembered or Dale Allison’s “Constructing Jesus” to know that (and neither of them are even conservative, much less fundamentalist).  

 I agree, and I never expressed or implied that proving inerrancy wrong would collapse Christianity.  But that doesn't mean blasting inerrancy is pointless.  There ARE fundamentalist loudmouths in the world who push inerrancy to a degree that causes psychological harm for the less informed Christians.  I am doing something good in refuting these sorry bastards. 

So if you are really serious, I would suggest starting with the book, “There is a god” by the once world-renowned atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew (the atheist grand-father to atheists like Dawkins or Hitchings). He did not become a Christian but he finally concluded—after years of defending atheism—that atheism is simply not scientifically possible.   

Sorry, I disagree with your narrow minded idea that I cannot be serious unless I read books you recommend.  And I'm well aware of Anthony Flew and I've already publicly stated that I find that man to be a very poor excuse of an atheist.  I seriously wonder whether he was suffering from a brain disorder when he was debating Habermas on the John Ankerberg show.  Flew could have steamrolled Habermas, but instead appears to be throwing nothing but softball responses.  Here is how I responded to a YouTube video of the entire Flew/Habermas debate hosted by John Ankerberg:

Sorry, but as an atheist myself, I do not think Flew does very well in public debates, despite how much he is lauded by other atheists as a smart guy. Habermas does most of the talking, Ankerberg usually ends a segment after Habermas has had his last say, and the Christians in the audience were no doubt wrongly thinking that because Flew is a smart guy, his performance here shows them how weak the non-believer responses are. I would have argued that under Christian scholar consensus that Mark is the earliest gospel and ended at 16:8, it is reasonable (at least for the unbeliever who has a life and cannot just google Christian scholarship minority positions 18 hours a day) to believe that the earliest form of the gospel did not say a resurrected Jesus appeared to anybody, thus further implying, if patristic testimony can be trusted, that Peter also didn't tell the Roman unbelievers that Jesus made any resurrection appearances, thus further implying that fictional embellishment is the likely reason the later 3 gospels have resurrection appearance narratives, ultimately ridding Christian apologists of the very eyewitness evidence they admit is so crucial to their case...

Ingolfsland continues:

    Then read the Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder which is the book that changed Flew’s mind. Schroeder is a brilliant scientist (from MIT as I recall, and not a Christian).   

    Then read Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer (And Signature of Controversy which is Meyer’s response to his critics). Meyer is a scientist and philosopher of science from Cambridge University who studied every significant theory of the origin of life ever proposed—and shows that all of them fail scientifically. (Some would say that the problem with atheists is not just that they are too critical, but that they are too selectively critical. If you would be as skeptical and critical about the origin of life as you are about the Bible, you would abandon your atheism and at least become agnostic)!   

    Then read James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered and Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus. As I said, neither of them are conservative but they show how honest historians approach the Life of Jesus apart from any assumptions about the Bible being inspired, much less inerrant.    

    Finally, read the two volume set on Miracles by Craig Keener, The Resurrection of Jesus by Michael Licona and the Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright.   

I feel insulted that you could seriously think the person who submitted those 24 challenges to you, probably hasn't already heard of those books already.  Once again, you are letting your religious zeal get in the way of your better judgment. And your teaching position in a private Christian school can induce you to keep the Christian emotions running strong even if you feel you shouldn't.  We all want to impress our peers and our bosses.

    As I said, there is no absolute certainty in this world.

And I never expressed or implied that lack of absolute certainty in the Christian position thus lets atheists off the hook.

All we have is possibilities, probabilities, evidence, etc.

 Agreed.  I passed Philosophy 101 and Historiography Preschool about 15 years ago.

Two people can look at exactly the same evidence—whether in law, or science, or medicine—and come to radically different conclusions. If someone does not WANT to believe something, there is no amount of evidence that will convince them.    

 That's true for Christians no less than atheists.  So unless you say all debate between the two groups is a waste of time, you don't really have a point.  And the fact that I'm less skeptical than some Christian scholars, by your own admission, should tell you that I'm a bit more objective than you give credit for.

    The world-famous atheist philosopher, Aldous Huxley, once wrote,   

    “No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community…The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world [i.e. an atheist like himself] is not concerned exclusively with a problem of pure meta physics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…” (Huxley; Ends and Means, London : Chatto & Windus, 1940. 272)    

Thanks for the reference, and I agree with him and you that complete objectivity is impossible.  I also appreciate Licona for holding the same view. 

And atheism is not a philosophy of meaninglessness.  You are assuming that God's existence is what gives rise to meaningfulness.  You are wrong.  Atheism only says there is no god.  What moral conclusions a person should draw from atheism, is another question.  And yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with Frank Turek and his "Stealing from God" stuff.  His blind assumption that any moral is necessarily objective, is laughable.  I've also steamrolled Matthew Flannagan, who similarly goes around pretending that moral relativism is fallacious.  Over the course of about a year, when I debated him and asked him what moral yardstick he was using to claim that babies shouldn't' be tortured, or that parents have a duty to avoid harming their kids, Flannagan went silent, and this last time, his website conveniently banned me, though in private email he denied banning me.  This convinced me that squeezing god out of morals is a very weak argument; it only works with those who already agree that the badness of some human actions is beyond dispute.  Flannagan's bible tells him that god put his laws into our heart, but Flannagan never goes there, he simply bans me when I ask the hard questions.

  For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness [atheism] was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired for simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom…There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people [in context, he is talking about Christians] and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever” (Huxley, Ends and Means, 273.    

    I admire Huxley’s honesty. He is saying that for him, and the other atheist philosophers he knew, they chose atheism because without God, they were free to live as they want. 

That's one of the benefits of atheism, but it no more follows that this is every atheist's reason to disbelieve, than the fact that some people use religion as a crutch because they have a weak mind, should mean this is the case for every person who becomes a Christian.

    At its heart, atheism is rarely, if ever, about problems in the biblical text.Atheism is a heart issue.

 Now you are just preaching the choir. I could just as easily say that Christianity is a heart issue, not an intellectual issue.  You are only a Christian because you WANT it to be true, etc, etc. 

Jesus and Paul teach that people are in sinful rebellion against God and that unless they repent of their rebellion and turn to Jesus they will face the wrath of God.

 Then they were liars, Saul must have heard the best quality Christian testimony available when he was imprisoning and torturing the Christians, yet after conversion, he says he obtained mercy because his violence toward the church was done in ignorance and unbelief:

 12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service,
 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief;
 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.
 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. (1 Tim. 1:12-15 NAU)

I've never mistreated Christians anywhere nearly as violently as Paul did, so if anything, I am less culpable than Paul for "rejecting the truth".  If Paul can be considered to have acted ignorantly despite his likely having heard the best quality Christian testimony numerous times, I have supreme confidence, that, if Christianity is true, God will deem modern unbelievers even less culpable, given that we are now limited to 2,000 year old documents whose authorship and provenance are doubted by even many Christian scholars.

Atheists don’t want to be told they are sinners (although in your heart you know it’s true).

Yeah right.  And in your heart you know Jesus didn't rise form the dead, you just pretend he did because that's what currently keeps your bills paid.  Must you insult the intelligence of bible skeptics who are smarter than you give them credit for?  What did I do?  Steal joy?

The way to avoid that annoying guilt is to deny that there is a God and then to desperately look for ways to justify your belief (faith).    

Again, preaching to the choir.  I must be more objective than you.  I was willing to justify my position with scholarly argument and discussion with you.  You've chosen the lower road of insulting my intelligence, expecting me to think your sermon constitutes the very presence of God, and then walking away warning me that you won't reply further.

    So what’s your issue, Barry? Pornography? Self-indulgence? Dishonesty? Greed? Envy? Arrogance? Alcoholism? Drugs?

The innuendo suggests your fear of corresponding with me in a scholarly polite way on the merits.

You can continue to try to ease your conscience by denying God’s existence (is that working for you?),

Does believing in god take away that terribly empty feeling you get when you think about life without god?

or you can confront your sin by confessing your rebellion to God, asking his forgiveness, and committing your life to Jesus. He can give you the clear conscience and life of peace you are looking for.  

What you don't mention is that "committing your life to Jesus" is also found by many to do little more than cause them depression.  You wrongfully and blindly assume that any such problems are the sole fault of the imperfect sinner not being sincere enough, or not having the right theological views.

You also fallaciously and blindly presume that what you offer is available to me, when you bible makes it abundantly clear that God could be judging a certain person and refusing to give them the peace of mind even though they seek with a sincerity that produces tears of remorse (Hebrews 12:17).  Perhaps you should become a charismatic or a Pentecostal, so you can have enough discernment to tell whether or not the unbeliever you are dealing with really does have the option you think they do.  I wonder whether the children of Babylon had the option to avoid the rapes and murders that God foisted on them and their families in Isaiah 13:16.  Don't forget your bible teaches a corporate solidarity that punishes children for the sins of the fathers.  God didn't have to make David's baby sick for 7 days before killing it, but he wanted to torture that baby this much anyway because of David's sin:

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

Ingolfsland continues:

    But if you come from a fundamentalist background you know all that. The problem is that you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater! Fundamentalists generally define faith as some kind of intellectual belief in certain doctrines. Since you can no longer believe in all those doctrines, you reject Christianity.

 There you go again, blindly assuming things you couldn't possibly know.  What kind of university do you teach at?  KJV Only?

You also give no heed to my reasons for rejecting those doctrines.  

But as John Calvin wrote, faith “is more of the heart than of the brain, and more of the disposition that of the understanding” (Institutes 3.2.8; and no, I’m not a Calvinist).

 That's another problem:  I also reject Christianity because the bible supports Calvinism and thus supports a a stupid doctrine that says God openly forbids us from doing what he secretly causes us to do.  Yes, there are bible verses that oppose Calvinism, but that hardly means there can be none that support it.  There are.  

Saving faith is not just about believing certain doctrines like inerrancy. It is about sincerely repenting from our sin and turning our lives over to Jesus Christ in loving devotion as savior and king. Read my little booklet, “Will the real Jesus Please Stand Up.”    

What makes you think my stay in fundamentalism was all doctrine and no sincere repentance? A 2,000 year old book of questionable authorship that says unbelievers are without excuse and true believers never apostatize?  LOL.

    I’ve read all of the books I mentioned above as well as over a hundred other scholarly books on Jesus—including many critics who attack Jesus and the New Testament.

 So have I.

I find there is enough evidence for me to take an educated step of faith and follow Jesus.

 It doesn't matter if that is true.  It can also be reasonable to reject Christianity as a false religion. That which is "reasonable" cannot be nailed down with rigid certainty, and it is very often the case that reasonable people come to different but equally reasonable interpretations of evidence and history.  But clearly, your need to be dogmatic leaves no room for such realities.

If you don’t, we live in a free country and that’s your right.

I challenged your beliefs on the merits.  We've moved beyond what my rights are, and have entered the arena of whether my viewpoints are reasonable.

    I’ve lived a good life. I’ve been a good husband, father and grandfather. I’ve given thousands and thousands of dollars to good causes. Have helped feed starving children and taught thousands of people to love others and be compassionate to people. I didn’t do all this to earn anything from God. I did it because I am convinced of the love, grace and mercy God showed me on the cross of Jesus Christ.

 So?  Lots of non-Christians do all the things you just mentioned.  Must their non-Christian metaphysics be true?

So if you are right and I am wrong about all this, I will go to my death in peace, never knowing that I was wrong—but having lived a good, worthwhile life.    

    On the other hand, if I am right and you are wrong… We’ll let’s just say there is a lot at stake so it is worth the time to read all these books I recommend with a genuinely open mind—unless, of course, your atheism is driven by something other than serious intellectual doubts. (If you don’t read anything else, please, at least read my little booklet in the link).    

Do you believe that I am always just one heartbeat away from the gates of hell?  If so, how can you ask me to do things that logically imply I can safely delay the day of my repentance? Is there a reason that I should be confident I won't die in an accident in the two weeks it takes me to read the material you suggested I read?

If you think I could die at any moment, and if you believe there is no limbo or purgatory, we just go to heaven or hell at death, then isn't your asking me to read some books, really in effect asking me to be confident that I can safely delay my repentance?

    Well, I think I’ve said all I’m going to say on this topic. Please don’t bother to respond. I won’t answer. I’ve taken all the time I can afford to take on this. Whatever you decide, I wish you a good life.

    Dennis

Enfield Poltergeist: challenge to Jason Engwer

UPDATE July 27, 2019

Since authentication of evidence is everything in investigation by outsiders, especially in this Enfield poltergeist case that Engwer himself admits involved fakery by the main players, I hereby request Jason Engwer to provide to me ALL of the audio, video, testimonial and documentary evidence he has obtained in the matter of the Enfield Poltergeist case.  Will Engwer comply?  Or will he argue that skeptics are being irrational by asking for the most authenticated forms of the relevant evidence?

Please contact me by email to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, to discuss possible ways you can communicate this evidence to me.
--------------------------------------

Over at Triablogue, Jason Engwer has reached a new low with his obsessive need to attack naturalism and prove that the supernatural exists.  His latest?  An endless amount of blogging to defend an alleged incident of poltergeist activity that happened between 1977 and 1979 in England, known as the Enfield Incident.

One wonders whether Engwer could put his sophistry skills to convincing use telling us that the Lutz family attorney was more than likely just kidding when confessing that the Amityville Horror was a hoax.  Anything to keep sinners interested in the supernatural, amen?  God surely approves of the honorable lie, doesn't he?

Anyway, this exposè will be updated regularly.  Here's the story:

In 1977, a poltergeist allegedly invaded a house in England occupied by a divorced mother and her two daughters.  Read the Wikipedia article for quick introduction.  Read the Rational Wiki article for a more cynically skeptical view.

For the next two years, this phenomena was investigated by various people.  Most came away skeptics, but a few kept this matter alive by their conclusions that the haunting was real.

Jason Engwer claims that he funded the digitization of the certain audio recordings of this incident made by Maurice Grosse.

First, a question:  Jason, how do you think the god of the Old Testament feels about you putting forth substantial amounts of Christian money and effort to prevent the destruction of things that allegedly testify to activities promoted by devils and spiritists?

 27 'Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.'" (Lev. 20:27 NAU)

 10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
 11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.
 12 "For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you. (Deut. 18:10-12 NAU)

Second, I'm sure you will, like a cheap lawyer, trifle and pretend that because you do this in the effort to achieve the apologetics goal of proving the supernatural to be real, your bible-god thus approves of your expenditure of time and money this way. Sorry, that's not likely:  in Acts 19, despite the possibility that apostle Paul could have preserved the books on magical arts owned by recent converts, ostensibly so that he could expose truths about the devil, no, Paul's converts decided that permanently destroying such things was best:

 18 Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and disclosing their practices.
 19 And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone; and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
 20 So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.   (Acts 19:18-20 NAU)

Third, if you are so damn sure that the standard apologetic fare you push through your website (i.e., the NT documents are historically reliable, atheism is logically fallacious, Jesus' resurrection is a secure fact of history,  etc, etc.) is seriously in accord with truth, and if you believe god blesses your efforts through such arguments, can you really say that the benefit of resurrecting what you think are the devil's works outweighs the risk that some of these recordings will motivate non-Christians to dive even more deeply into spiritualism and other forbidden areas?  Are standard Christian apologetic arguments not enough, that you have to resurrect gossip about the devil's activity in the world?

If you are doing just fine with your standard pop apologetics, can you really say that more is always better?  Can you really say that any evidence of the supernatural is always best displayed to the entire world?  Sorry, Jason, the bible does not express or imply that god will lift the ban on materials in support of idolatry/spiritism/satan merely because the Christian plans to use them for a godly purpose.  You don't believe yourself deficient in holy and godly arguments and evidence for Christianity, you don't think you are so lacking as to need the help of materials that have far greater potential to lure your non-Christian readers deeper into the occult. 

Or did you suddenly discover what a convenient blessing it can be to become a Calvinist and insist that everything you do, including even drawing people's attention to the tricks of the devil, was predestined by God and thus unavoidable?  I think its funny that you and Steve Hays have such violent disagreement on whether Calvinism is biblically justified.  Sort of warns the non-Christian reader that by becoming genuinely born again, we gain NO ability to correctly discern any biblical thing.

Fourth, I detect nothing in the New Testament that expresses or implies that God approves of methods of promoting Christianity that involve giving money to non-Christian organizations that specialize in preserving evidence of the devil's activity on earth (thus, satanic organizations).  Jesus and Paul did plenty of evangelism and apologetics.  Don't you think the bible's inerrant record of this model is sufficient for your faith and practice?  Apparently not.

Fourth, Jason, at any time in your communications with SPR, did you evangelize them or make any attempt to persuade them to repent and accept the gospel, yes or no?

Fifth,  I decided to do my own research into the Enfield Follies with as much of the first-hand evidence as possible.  So I sent the following request to SPR, the same organization Engwer paid to digitize the Grosse-tapes:

-----------beginquote

Hello,

I am interested in researching the so-called Enfield Poltergeist, the matter you advertise at

https://www.spr.ac.uk/news/enfield-haunting

A man named Jason Engwer is claiming to have funded the digitization of the Maurice Grosse's Enfield tapes.

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-enfield-poltergeist-tapes-made-more.html

I request the following materials in my attempt to investigate that phenomenon.  Please let me know which materials are not free, and what the cost would be, if any.

If any of the below-requested materials cannot be produced, please explain why.  For example, they are copyrighted, or the owner refuses to give permission to distribute, etc.

1. A full unedited copy of the contract and any other documents Mr. Engwer signed with you or with other organizations/persons/agents.  How much money has he paid you so far to digitize the Grosse-tapes?
2. A full unedited copy of all other communications you sent to or received from Mr. Engwer at any time, whether by letter, email, internet post, or otherwise.  I would like to know how extensive Mr. Engwer’s requests for evidence were.
3. Links to all the audio files concerning this incident that you have already made available to, or that you intend to make available to, Mr. Engwer.  I have found some websites that purport to host some downloadable versions of those tapes, but I would feel better if I could obtain those digital files from you directly.
4. Downloadable versions of any notes, diaries, investigative files or other written memoranda created between 1970 and 1987 by any investigator before, during and after they visited the house where the poltergeist allegedly was.
5. Any BBC broadcasts on radio and television you have, which mention the incident, or interview witnesses, etc.
6. All video and audio evidence that you believe is not available elsewhere.
7. All photographic and video files that anybody ever made of this phenomena at the house in question, between 1970 and 1987, including the photos allegedly depicting levitation, object movement or any other type of allegedly paranormal  activity.
8. All information and facts you have about the mother Peggy Hodgson,  the daughters Margaret and Janet, their father, and any family members, friends or neighbors.
9. Any reports filed by any police or welfare or social workers who may have made some type of inquiry or investigation into this incident at any time.
10. The most extensive biographical information you have about Maurice Grosse, John Burcombe, their investigations into any other incidents of alleged paranormal activity, and information on anybody else not already identified, supra,  who attempted any type of inquiry or investigation at any time into this incident.
11. I also seek your opinions on Jason Engwer's arguments that this was genuinely supernatural activity.  Does anybody at SPR suspect that the the Hodgson children were responsible, to any degree, for faking or attempting to fake any type of supernatural phenomena?  Does any of the evidence establish that anybody engaged in any type of deception or foul play between 1974 and 2005 concerning this incident?
12. All documents containing your answers or rebuttals to any skeptics who argue that this entire incident is just one giant hoax.
13. A listing and description of all the Grosse-tapes and any other audio recordings made between 1977 and 1980 relative to this incident, that is, the recordings that you decided not to digitize, the dates those tapes were originally recorded, and your reasons for not digitizing them.
14. References to any other persons, organizations, websites or companies that have audio, video, written, photographic or other source material you do not have about this incident.
15. The current mailing address, telephone number and any email addresses of Margaret and Janet Hodgson, or, if they wish not to be contacted, why they wish not to be contacted.

I'm sure you can appreciate why serious investigation requires that I obtain the evidence from sources as close as possible to the original authors.  Finding some of that stuff on unauthorized internet sites might make for interesting viewing, but can only hamper the investigation when the questions of authenticity inevitably arise.

Thank you for your help,

Barry Jones

-------------endquote

I sent that email today, August 13, 2018, so we'll have to wait and see how willing the SPR is for unbelievers to evaluate their claims using as much of the primary source material as possible.  I'm hoping they don't get commercial on me and insist that most of the requested evidence is proprietary and costs money.  

Maybe Jason will say I am unreasonable to bother these nice folk because I could get much of this off of the internet.  That's right Jason:  If its found on the internet, skeptics have no choice but to admit it's true.  What's next?  Gonna start tithing to Ron Wyatt's ministry?  Skeptics can't refute that picture of a chariot-wheel at the bottom of the Red Sea, so Wyatt has surely been used by God to smack down atheism and extol the inerrancy of the bible?

For now, Jason entitled one of his posts as The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible

Jason, are you going to make those digitized audio files more accessible to the public?  Or is there a limit to how accessible you think these critically important tapes should be?

For now, yes, you guessed it, Mr. Engwer seriously believes that the iconic photo of a girl standing above her bed proves that she was levitated or at least "thrown" by paranomal powers:

What Burcombe witnessed, corroborated by Peggy, demonstrates that the poltergeist had an interest in levitating people in the manner reflected in the photographs.

Ready to see a picture that proves levitation can be done by ghosts?

















Maybe Jason can tell us how suspicious we should be that an alleged levitation that a regular camera caught, could not be caught on a video camera.  Until that day, assuming these pictures are accurate copies of the originals, this is nothing but girls jumping on beds.  It's also an otherwise smart apologist allowing his deluded religious zeal to cloud his brain.

Jason's god is apparently capable of creating the entire universe, parting the Red Sea, taking people up into heaven by whirlwind and chariots of fire, even causing the earth to stop turning just so Joshua has enough time to complete a battle....yet Jason's god apparently wants Jason to refute atheism by arguing that a picture of a girl above a bed is depicting levitation, not jumping, and hence the supernatural realm exists.  Does this send me running to repent in dust and ashes?



Hey Jason, how hard do you think it would be for a jailhouse lawyer to get some attention by arguing that the accidents that happened on the set of the original Exorcist movie cannot be explained on purely naturalistic grounds?  Yeah, go google that shit and discover the 67th book of the bible.

And while you are at it, assure skeptics that they have no hope of being able to debunk the fanciful miracle accounts in evangelist Mel Tari's 1971 best seller "Like A Mighty Wind".  The last I heard, those miracle stories were told by "eyewitnesses" and "corroborated", so atheists simply have no choice: god exists.

Updated regularly.

Update: July 27, 2019

Engwer got his shovel, apparently, and started digging into the bottom of the credibility barrel, once again.  He has posted a long rambling article doing what he does best, trifling about largely unknown events that he apparently gained knowledge of by listening to audio recordings made in 1977.  See here. 

I will respond point by point, not to the entire article, but to his own admissions that some of this stuff is baloney, since, as I will argue, such admission fully justifies broadbrushing the entire Enfield incident as a mixture of foul play and one paranormal researcher looking for fame and money.

First, there is the New Testament.  Nowhere does the text express or even imply that a follower of Christ should spend their time gossiping about paranormal events to the degree that Jason Engwer trifles about the details of this bullshit Enfield Poltergiest yarn.  Go ahead, read your NT, then ask yourself what Jesus wants the Christian teacher to focus on.  "Gossip about evil spirits as originally conveyed by a non-Christian person who had an interest in evil spirits" is not even close.

Second, the obvious:  the main players, to my knowledge, have never given their testimony under oath, in situation where they stood a risk of going to jail for lying.  So you'll excuse me if I don't give a shit about the girls being willing 40 years later to maintain their supernatural explanations while talking to tabloid tv reporters.

Third, I tried to gain the same tapes, videos and evidence from the same source Engwer allegedly got them, and after being told my request was being routed to others, received no more response.  That ought to tell you how interested the custodians are in allowing the evidence to be evaluated by disinterested parties.  They stand for paranormal activity.  They don't allow skeptics to see the most authenticated evidence, and Christians don't allow Mormons to interrupt Sunday services.

Fourth, to my knowledge Engwer has never provided any authentication for these "tapes".  I don't mean that he is lying about having such tapes.  Unless he thinks "authentication" a negligible issue, the lack of authentication automatically justifies wholesale skepticism (i.e., not suspension of judgment, but judgment that the incident was completely faked with no supernatural anything to it).

Fifth, Engwer tells the reader nothing about why historians and courts of law agree that second-hand testimony is generally considered inferior to first-hand.  Had he done so, he'd risk some of his readers asking "why don't you conduct a personal interview with the main players who are still alive?".  Then Engwer would have to disagree with historians and legal authorities and pretend that second-hand evidence, whose authenticity he has no personal knowledge of, is "just as good" as under-oath testimony from the main players.

Sixth, I would like Engwer to make available to me ALL of the audio recordings, video recordings, and any other documentary or testimonial evidence that he has obtained about the Enfield incident.  If he wants to be taken seriously when he pretends this crap was likely genuinely paranormal, he will not fear investigation into the matter by somebody who does not subscribe to the paranormal.  Any refusal of Engwer to fork over said evidence, shall be taken to mean that he is fearful that a purely naturalistic explanation of the evidence would be equally if not more reasonable than his own. 

I've only given a few examples of the sort of qualifiers that could be added to what I said earlier about Margaret and Janet's suspicious behavior. I wouldn't claim that these qualifiers satisfactorily explain everything. But I do think they satisfactorily explain some things.

Then we have a problem not different from that facing the jury after they heard the rape-victim admit she has lied repeatedly in the past about rape.  Does it prove the current rape didn't happen?  No. Would it intellectually justify the jurors who choose to find her lacking in credibility?  Yes.  In a rape case where the physical evidence only shows sex and it is only the woman's testimony that says "rape", you cannot blame the jurors who, upon hearing her confess to lying about rape in the past, to consider allowing a potentially guilty rapist go free to be a higher priority than jailing a potentially innocent man.

My overall assessment of the altered states of consciousness is that it's highly probable that at least much of what happened was paranormal, but that some of it is suspicious, sometimes even highly suspicious.

Then you cannot blame the atheist or skeptic who uses their intentional fakery to broadbrush all the evidence, call it bullshit, and forget about it.  The issue is not whether lawyers who specialize in sophistry can always raise trifles that skeptics cannot completely blow out of the ballpark.  The issue is whether insisting on the purely naturalistic basis for all the Enfield Poltergeist activity is "reasonable".  It is.  In Engwer's word, nobody is reasonable to be skeptical of a story until they have taken several years to do doctoral-level research into it and extracted reluctant confessions of foul play from all of the the main players.  Well fuck you, reasonableness in skepticism doesn't require such extreme analysis.  Otherwise, you are a dipshit to ever render a skeptical opinion about anything, since in all likelihood you didn't exhaustively investigate it beforehand.

A lot of what occurs during these episodes is trivial, immature, vulgar, nonsensical, and embarrassing.

And yet you expect us to believe the girls made free choices to fake some symptoms while sincerely believing the poltergeist was genuinely supernatural?  Where exactly do you think skeptics go wrong by using the "highly suspicious" and "nonsensical" acts of the girls to broadbrush the entire matter as fake?

I'd expect many people to dismiss the phenomena because they're so different than what's commonly expected from a poltergeist.

There are no reliable records of genuinely poltergeist activity in the first place, so the fact that the Enfield phenomenon involved elements no present in movies entitled "poltergeist" means exactly nothing.

But common expectations are often poorly informed.

A rather stupid statement given that because they are "common", they represent the collective wisdom of a lot of adults, and therefore usually aren't poorly informed, at least when it comes to ghosts.  non-Christian adults have lots of morally and intellectually justified "common expectations" (the dangers of joining cults, unprotected sex, drunk driving, college education gives you a boost in the job market, etc).

And the suspicious aspects of the phenomena have to be evaluated alongside the evidence we have for the paranormality of the events.

And the woman's testimony that she was raped needs to be evaluated alongside her confession that she has lied about rape in the past.

You can't focus on the former while ignoring the latter.

You don't cite to any rule of historiography or rule of evidence that prohibits smart people from using some evidence of foul play in the record to broadbrush the entire matter as fakery and delusion.  I really hope you don't become a judge...you'd have to first do doctoral level research into a litigant's credibility before you could issue a ruling during an evidentiary hearing.  Sorry, but in the real world, credibility determinations can be reasonable even if they don't answer every trifle a Pharisee could possibly raise.

I've made some comments in the past about why the poltergeist may have behaved as it did on occasions like these.

Jesus also said God was his Father.  Like it matters.

I've also discussed why people would sometimes fake incidents in a genuine paranormal case.

I have to wonder...should I look up that discussion?  Or should I obey 2nd Timothy 2:14?

I'll have more to say about both subjects in later posts.
But I want to conclude this post with some comments about the personal aspect of paranormal research. I opened the post by referring to how the tapes on these altered states of consciousness are the hardest ones to listen to. That's primarily because of the personal implications involved.
Tapes 22 through 24 in Grosse's collection have stood out in my mind in this context. They were recorded in the middle of November of 1977, on a night when the Hodgsons were staying at the Burcombes' house. Janet was in one of the bedrooms, Margaret and Billy were in another, and Peggy was in the third. Peggy was ill at the time, so much so that she couldn't take care of her children. (See the segment here in a November 1977 television program that alludes to the situation.) In his book, Playfair refers to how Peggy had "collapsed in total exhaustion" and had a "breakdown" around this time (81, 88), and it's sometimes said that she had a nervous breakdown at least once during the case. Both of the girls were going in and out of altered states of consciousness, often screaming, crying, groaning, and such, with Janet exhibiting unusual strength and being violent at times, as levitations and other paranormal events went on simultaneously.

Sorry, you don't have any convincing evidence of levitations.  Yet you droll on and on, constantly peppering your evaluation with references to how paranormal acts were actually taking place. 

Grosse was frequently moving back and forth among the rooms, trying to keep up with everything that was going on, moving his tape recorder from one location to another, and directing the other people involved.

Sure is funny he never got video of the poltergiest moving or levitating objects.  The fact that the older evaluations seriously set forth a series of pictures showing a girl jumping on her bed as her being thrown around by a poltergeist, justifies full skepticism alone. The very fact that you have to admit fakery and then trifle that the fakery doesn't necessary mean there was no poltergeist, cooks your goose.

He got some help from the Burcombes, and Mrs. Edwards, who I referred to earlier, was there. But it had to be a miserable experience for Grosse.

Not if he was making money or seeking to make money/gain notoriety.

As he tells Edwards on that night, "it's a dreadful thing to watch". I don't know how anybody could listen to these tapes without having a lot of respect for Grosse and appreciation for the difficulty of the work he was doing.

Easy, Grosse was seeking to turn this spectacle into money and notoriety, which seems likely given that he was exactly an "paranormal investigator", or so all internet sources agree.

But you sympathize with the Hodgsons more than anybody else. In some ways, what Janet went through was worse than what anybody else experienced. For the most part, her trance states (as distinct from her dreams) come across as highly convincing and agonizing experiences.

Kids are sometimes very good at deceit.

But it's hard to tell just how much she was aware of at the time, and she didn't seem to remember much about the experiences afterward.

Or she remembered it all full well, but realized that by saying she was suffering amnesia, should be drastically lessen the likelihood of saying something that might contradict her earlier testimony.

By contrast, Peggy had to watch what her children were going through without being able to do much about it, and she remembered it. During one of the episodes, she commented that "It cuts you in pieces inside." (GP20B, 13:35)

Yes, some people can be gullible.

There are a lot of reasons why the neglect of paranormal research is so appalling.

But you are a "Christian".  The bible never expresses or implies that any "Christian" spend the same amount of time trifling about particular instances of alleged evil-spirit activity that you spend.  Among all truthful statements the world has ever produced, the statement "the people at Triablogue intentionally misinterpret 2nd Timothy 2:14 so they can feel better about their ceaseless sins of word-wrangling" ranks near the top.

We should think about the effects that neglect has on the people who go through these experiences.

Or you can think about preaching the wurdagawd.  Read your NT, then you tell me which one Jesus would more than likely wish for you to engage in.

We should also consider the implications for a culture when people don't care or think much about these issues.

I do.  I consider how much more advanced society would be if nobody believed in ghosts.

We should also consider what it means when an allegedly "bible-believing" Christian like Engwer devotes substantial amounts of Jesus' time and money to helping resurrect gossip about what Engwer himself admits is the activity of demons.  Had Engwer read Genesis 3, he might have figured out that focusing on the devil and what he has to say can do nothing but lead to ruin.

It is my suspicion that Engwer's motive has nothing to do with Christianity, he simply loves to create opportunities for him to 'wrangle words' with other people, which would be a violation of 2nd Timothy 2:14.