David from MYSPACE Challenges Rook Hawkins!
Offline Here is my origional response to somebody on a Myspace Blog - I went to this blog to help a fellow responder! David then replied to me, his response is below. (The italicized bits in my reply was to the origional Blog poster, HERE)
My first topic is of Jesus. I know atheists who don't believe he even existed. It is interesting to me that when people look for historic and scientific proof of Jesus, they discard the Bible as a reliable source.The reason is quite simple. If we took every religious text as evidence, heck any text of any kind as evidence of people mentioned within as historical evidence, we should just start assuming all Tom Clancy's works, the Koran, the Illiad, Moby Dick, etc...as true as well.
The reason why we DON'T accept those events or characters as factual or historical personalities is because it's CIRCULAR REASONING. The same effect would be as if I asked you to give me an adequate definition of what the Ocean is and you said..."It's the Ocean." You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible just as you can't use the Koran to prove the Koran, or Moby Dick to prove Moby Dick. History demands some outside evidence for which none exists for Jesus.
From my research, if you look at the Bible simply as a historic document, it should be one of the most reliable.
A lie on your part, or maybe just a mis-informed statement? I'll pretend, mainly because I don't know you, that you are just highly mis-informed. Allow me to retort with a laundry list (although I'll keep it as short as possible just to keep things moving) of historical problems within the Bible that make it an invalid source to use for the verification of any historical events:
(Insert long list of Historical Contradictions which can be found HERE...took them out to conserve space)
Historians often refer to Herodotus as a key source of information. He wrote from 488 B.C. to 428 B.C. The earliest copy of his work comes from 900 A.D. (1,300 years later!) There are only 8 known copies of his work.
Problems abound here, which speaks to how little of the subject you know. Most historians DON'T refer to Herodotus as a key source, as primarily his works have been in dispute ever since Cicero in the second century BCE, in a sense even Lucian in the second Century CE acknowledges how suspicious Herodotus' works are, and even claims to deny him rites into certain realms of high court in the after life.
Further, you deceptively hinted at something here that bears little irrelevance to the point in contention, which is the existence of Jesus. Herodotus WROTE several muses, all of which WERE published in his lifetime, and he never claimed perfection.
These are three things that Jesus never did or had. Never once did he write something, nor was anything published by him or about him within his lifetime, and he claimed to be the son of God. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and this is a case where even ordinal evidence is lacking.
Comparing with this, the New Testament (where all the information of Jesus lies) was written between 40 A.D. and 100 A.D.
More lies. More deception. The earliest work in the NT is the Epistles of Paul, written around 60-66 CE. Paul did not write any earlier, as Paul's conversion didn't take place until this particular year, and he admits he kept his conversion and vision a secret for three years before going to Jerusaelm. Acts was written long after the death of Paul in the second century CE so the author neither knew Paul nor the events that paul discribes in his Eistles.
Paul was also not a literalist when it came to Christ, he was a Gnostic. He did not believe nor know of a historical figure you now think existed just thirty years earlier (supposedly). Not once does he ever attribute a quote to jesus, know of any Gospel events, or place the idea of a ressurection death and crucifixtion anywhere other then a spiritual plane.
The ealiest dating of the Mark Gospel, even conservative dating, place Mark after the destruction of the Jewish Temple at 75 CE, at the earliest! Anbody whyo says difefrently is purposefully lying to make a case for which there is none. At 75CE this is over forty years after the supposed events took place and nothing came prior to this.
I will continue this when I return home from work.
I did have a reply written up to further discuss the fallacious points of this blog, however the thunder storm (flash floods, ridiculous amounts of lightning) that took the area by surprise a few nights ago shut down the power to my computer for some time, and it happened as I was finishing the last paragraph - and I hadn't saved any of it.
However I logged in today and saw the following reply from David. David is a poster on Myspace.
Here is his reply:
ook is mistaken in several respects. First, he claims that accepting the historicity of the Bible is "circular reasoning," and he follows this up with the typical vague claim that "you can't use the Bible to prove the Bible." While belief in the Bible -- like belief in anything -- can be circular, it does not have to be. The basis for my belief in the Bible is not circular at all. I refuted the circularity argument very easily in this blog.Second, the "standard historical contradictions" Rook raises have all been addressed ages ago in such books as "When Critics Ask" by Dr. Norman Geisler and "Hard Sayings of the Bible" by F.F. Bruce. Additionally, it is not necessary to believe the Bible is inerrant in order to believe it is generally accurate. The New York Times is not infallible, and yet we are fully justified in trusting it. Likewise, even though I believe the Bible is flawless, I don't have to defend that view in order for Christianity to be factually correct.
Third, Rook's claims that narratives in the Bible are "Historical claims with little or no extrabiblical connection" are both misleading and irrelevant. It is misleading because a great deal of Biblical history is corroborated by external sources, i.e. the extent of Old Testament canon which is confirmed by Josephus and Philo, and indeed much of the OT itself. I highly recommend this book for further reading. And it is irrelevant because a hundred ancient writers may have testified to the Biblical events and we would have no idea, the reason being that the vast majority of documents in ancient antiquity are lost to us. Now if we somehow discovered all or even most of the documents that were thought to have been written during that time, and none of them referenced any such events, his point would begin to have merit (but it would still be a very inconclusive argument from silence).
Fourth, Rook claims that "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and this is a case where even ordinal evidence is lacking." The mere claim that Jesus was a real Jew living in 1st century Palestine who was crucified by Pontius Pilate is not extraordinary at all; in fact, it's a very boring, ordinary claim. I don't think Rook has any justification for demanding extraordinary evidence for such ordinary claims -- it's just his prejudice against the person of Jesus.
Fifth, Rook's claim that "Paul's conversion didn't take place until" 60-66 A.D. is blatantly false. Scholars, even harsh anti-Christians like Peter Kirby, are almost unanimous in the view that 1 Corinthians and Galatians are genuine Pauline letters which were written in 55 A.D or earlier. I will admit that Rook is not the only person on the planet to date Mark to 75 A.D., but I challenge him to present his dates for all of the gospels and his reasons for thinking so. I date all four gospels to prior to 70 A.D. and present a front-line defense of that view here.
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Ugh, not that guy again.
After directing people on that blog to come here, David replies:
To which I responded:
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I was going to let you go, Rook. I can put up with your personal insults if you choose to degrade yourself to that level. But you've pushed me too far with your academic dishonesty, also known as plagiarism. Regarding your arguments for the dating and order of the gospels, I do not believe you've read a single book you quoted. You copied/pasted every one of them, word for word, from www.earlychristianwritings.com. Unfortunately, you did not bother to cite that website or Peter Kirby as your source. I suspect this omission was deceitful rather than sloppy; after all, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and space by simply copying and pasting a link to his website. Additionally, you called this "your" critique, giving readers the impression that you actually did that research yourself. Your egregious plagiarism totally annihilates your credibility -- not to mention annihilates the arguments themselves.
Besides, why do you have so much faith that Kirby cited those authors correctly? Kirby's accuracy and motives should be taken with a grain of salt given that his covert purpose is to discredit Christianity (note that despite the 'objective' format of his site, virtually every argument he cites is anti-Christian). In fact, I can tell you that in at least two cases -- John P. Meier and F.F. Bruce -- he took the authors severely out of context.
I have no interest in continuing this discussion, Rook -- let alone on here. I responded to your comment on that lady's blog. The link is found here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=82248431&blogID=141804669&indicate=1
Own up to your plagiarism, stop the unnecessary personal insults and condescension, and I'll challenge you to a professional, honest, and civil debate in a neutral forum any day. Take care.
No such place exists, and myspace not only isn't close, but it is horrible for text debates. Reference the plagiarism charge, I don't see it. It seems more to me that your defense of this issue is not much more than ad hominem attacks. How bout you address the arguments.
I notice you say on that blog you'd debate this on myspace... is that the neutral forum? There is no neutral forum on myspace that could serve as a one on one debate, and there is no place on myspace that offers good formatting. It would seem to me this is another dodge.
You also say on that blog:
Maybe you shouldn't make the absolute claim that only "people whose minds and hearts are vacuum-sealed to Christ" read this forum when we have plenty of Christians posting here, and plenty more reading who don't post (that you could make an impression on). Instead, I see this as yet another dodge, it's also a foolish absolute claim that is a lie.
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David's a fool. I RAPED his arguments on my blogs and he ran away with his tail between his legs. Ha ha ha ha.
That Anthony guy is worse, though. He just hates. I posted on a blog and he just started screaming at me. Not making any arguments, mind you, just screaming and insulting. Like I murdered his mother. Crazy ad hocs out of nowhere. I don't even know the guy. Wow. Idiot. :roll:
I'd help you if I could Rook but I'm no historian, sorry. But you can handle yourself.
Wilson: "We were afraid that if you found out you solved a case with absolutely no medical evidence you'd think you were God." House: "God doesn't limp."
Biggest Cop-Out Of All Time.
I have no problems at all admitting I took those words from Kirby, in fact I'm more then happy to admit it. The only reason I missed the reference is I copied the formatting from another post I made with the source info in it - I just didn't grab the rest of the document. (And only that small bit is from Kirby, btw)
Further, were you planning on just hitting me with just non-sequitor like you have here or were you actually planning on making a case with evidence? You make a lot of statements, but you never make an evidence-backed case. We're all still waiting for you to stop wasting our time.
But with your dishonesty I suppose it will be some time before you ever do such a thing. Now go run off like a wet dog with his tail between his legs.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists. Books by Rook Hawkins (Thomas Verenna)
He replied again and my comments are also presented below:
This is true, unfortunately, the scholarly opinion on Jesus is as follows:
50% Believe that Jesus probably existed
30% Feel he is a mythical being
20% Feel that he probably existed but there is not enough evidence to say either way
One key factor is, however, the majority of scholars are not secular, and those that ARE non-Christian hold mainly to that 30% bracket, although some fall into the third category.
It should also be noted that not all scholars are also historians. For example, a scholar who is partial to theology will not so much delve into history as much as dogmatic law and apologetics. Richard Carrier, for example, is a historian who knows intimately the details of practically every document of antiquity. Thi is why I would trust Carrier over a scholar who does not know so much the history of the early church as much as they know the practices of the early church.
Please...I've already explained the problem with scholarship and Christ. However, once I publish my dissertation I have a feeling some scholars are going to shift opinions.
There isn't one argument in the entire blog containing anything about the Bible being non-circular. You are lying.
Give me an example because you are making about as much sense as G.W.B. when you speak of such matters.
When the ONLY thing you have to rest your faith on is the Bible, once the book is shown to be fallacious and errant, you fail to have a crutch to stand on, as your faith in a book full of contradictions, errors and lies is shown to be just that.
I'm very familiar with Josh McDowell and Stuart, Comfort, and Gleason Archer, and those who write such apologetical work. Do you not understand what apologetics is?!
Apologetic: Offering or expressing an apology or excuse: an apologetic note; an apologetic smile.
Self-deprecating; humble: an apologetic manner.
Serving as or containing a formal justification or defense: an apologetic treatise on church doctrine.
You are apologizing essentially for the mistakes there-in and noting that, yes, these aremistakes because I have to defend them. If they were not mistakes, or not obvious at that, nobody would need to go to apologists.
When the document itself claims inerrancy, and turns out to be errant, that pretty much proves the Bible to be a load of crock. Until you can prove otherwise, I suggest you stop making yourself look foolish.
Again, you misrepresent my case. Both Josephus and NG do not claim, nor have they ever claimed, inerrancy. So their validity is based on observation. The bible claims to be the eprfect word of God and to be inerrant. The fact that it is shown to be otherwise proves that the Bible is lying right off the bat. You don't even HAVE to dig any deeper, as the very face of the book is a lie. However, the more you do dig the more you see JUSt how BIG the lies go.
What a straw-man argument! Where did I ever make such a claim? Stop lying.
Yet you have not even established the existence of Christ, let alone his divinity, but I can also show through internal evidence that Christ not only wasn't divine but also impossible for him to have been the messiah.
You are correct, I misread that. I had read over it and thought you were talking about the NT, especially when you were discussing Josephus. I am sorry for that misrepresentation of your point.
However that still doesn't change anything. Josephus and Philo MAY have cooberated the OT, but they are not eye-witnesses to any of it. They were not there for Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, or the like. They were not there when the Assyrians and the Babylonians swept through, they weren't there when the prophets were preaching.
Their cooberation is nothing, in fact it would be like you claiming the Pope's existence today, andhis faith, is evidence for the existence of Jesus. So, in all honesty, it's just as ridiculous you claim that these two sources validate the OT as you claiming these two sources validate the NT.
You're still in that same dishonest predicament.
Please, I'm nothing like you. When I make a mistake I correct it, and apologize for it because that is what honest people do. When you can learn enough to do so, we'll talk about who is the moral authority in this discussion. Until then, shut up.
Carrier feels that Jesus couldn't have existed. He has stated this on our show and to me personally.
Yet when Origen was debating Celsus he would have had access to these ghost documents, where were they in his debates? When Martyr was arguing with the jew Trypho, where was the accounts then?! When Eusebius was writing his Histories, where are these mysterious accounts you claim existed?
You admit that...yes, we don't have any documentation on said person, but we are to just assume that there were and rpetend and have faith that they existed. This is about as far from reasonable as it gets. Your argument is so full of holes it mocks a back-door screen.
Done and done.
Yet you can not produce any anyway. None exist.
Which if you try to say he did, you will sorely be torn to shreds. No historian or scholar of any merit would claim that all the epistles are authentic. None.
You are a liar and a fraud. The more you try to prove your case the more flaws and lies of yours I expose. Keep them coming.
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In other words, you were about to run off, but you felt the heat...
So you want to simply toss aside the arguments as invalid, because you think he didn't cite them properly?
How does the suppposed lack of a citation discredit the arguments themselves?
Which of course means that you read every christian writer with a grain of salt, seeing as they want to prove their faith true?
Right?
I mean, you wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, right?
I notice that you didn't spend a second actually examining the arguments themselves. Very interesting.
You didn't start in the first place....... all you did was attack everything BUT the arguments....
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
I think a fundamental problem (and a cause for many headaches) that is not only the religious community's but part of the anti-religious community's is an absolute refrain from the basic use of logic. How many arguments or debates have we all had (Rook probably more than many of us) where the other person simply used false logic, plain and simple? Someone's knowledge of historical fact and evidence (such as Rook's or Carrier's) is a very admirable and necessary attribute, but goddamn if it is anything but a waste of breath when used against people like David. This general acceptance that logic and reason is not THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT REASON HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALIVE TODAY is perhaps the most disgusting thing I can fathom. I'm not sure if I'll ever fully grasp how it is possible, but, although I am one happy fucking atheist, until light is shed on this problem from a neurological and sociological standpoint, I will be one cynical son of a bitch until I become fertilizer for some lucky patch of grass.
"It's not so much staying alive. It's staying human that's important." - 1984
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Intelligent people are good at trying to justify things they came to belief for non intelligent reasons.
David has been... uh... squaring off with me since I came to myspace, never once came out on top of an argument... Just moves onto the next blog... Then the next... Acuses me of logical fallacies then drops them when I dissprove them. Sometimes he even admits it, others he just... leaves... I dunno. But he makes several of his own, you notice? And very descrietly... As if he knows it. And he always has an "abandon ship" plan for the fallacy. It's as if he knows he's wrong. Whatever, those are just some observations.
All I'd point out is that David, in the beginning, admitted to me he believes on faith. That he, as he directly says, has seperate worlds of faith and reason. By his own merit he doesn't use reason for his theist views. Then, of course, once pounded on that, he suddenly DOES. (Not really, but he avers he does anyways).
But just remember, he admitted to attributing a seperate portion of his life to the opposite of reason. To the absense of it. "I don't need it here." What the hell makes God so horrible he wants stupidity to glorify him? Why can't he be a God who isn't hidden, silent, evil, and obessessed with blind belief? Why can't he be a God of reason? Well, I'll tell you why... Cause no one knows shit about wether he actually exists or not. So they make things up. And gee wiz, what do you know! One of those made up things happens to be blind stupid faith glorifies God! What a great way to get followers!
And you get people like David who by into this sorta thing - and when challenged they try to tap their intelligence to justify something completely idiotic. He's good at it. A weak minded fool could fall easily. But... The fallacies are there. And he ends up chasatizing me on my profanity or too many exclaimation marks. As if pointing them out refutes what I say well enough for him to avoid the arguments at hand. Or some other shit he pulls, I mean, it's... Steriotyical bullshit from someone who, at least deep down, must know they're wrong.
It's sad. Sad how humans cling. Forsake their intelligence as their desiding commander and use it meerly for a defensive tool for stupidity and faith to command. It's sad. I'd pray for him, but that'd be a complete waste of time and make me look silly.
Most people believe because they were TOLD to believe from a very young age, not to mention promised heaven, threatened with hell, etc. It's tough to change the way you thought your entire life, but many of us here are examples it can be done! But you do hear a lot online of people who claim to have been atheists and became christians. I find it hard to believe. Sometimes when they explain it they weren't "true" atheists, they just never really thought about it much, and then the first thing that came down the pike they listened to, they believed it. (I find it very difficult to believe a person with any intelligence who wasn't christian could read the Bible and accept it.)
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Regardless of how "intelligent" he is, you can't be much more of a fool than that. When you know deep down you're wrong and still fight irrationally for it, that's the most foolish thing I can think of, especially since it's for something as utterly ridiculous as the Christian religion. I don't care what his IQ is; David's one of the biggest fools I know. Whether he was raised that way or not, it's still true. Probably not entirely his fault, but true nonetheless. He definatly needs a wake-up call. Or smack.
Wilson: "We were afraid that if you found out you solved a case with absolutely no medical evidence you'd think you were God." House: "God doesn't limp."
He's a dolt. I'm still waiting on his refutation of just ONE of my rebutals to his tripe.
So is everyone else.
:smt005
This is the problem with most Chistians that will try to debate you on religion: Once you make an argument they can't touch, they will pull something out of their ass on what you did wrong, and move on. They just can't accept that their faith is bullshit. I've never once had a debate with a Christian where I've said "Wow, good point." The argument just keeps going on and you waste breath, then they quit. Fuckers.
Yeah, you're right. I've never heard of an intelligent atheist becoming a Christian. As for me I was never raised in a very religious family, so at first I didn't think of it a whole lot. Then I started to see religious effect on politics and decided to study it a bit and realized that there are a lot of flaws in Christianity, Islam, along with other religions. But I'm sure if my family was very religious, none of that would have ever happened.