For several years, I tried unsuccessfully to get Robert "No Links" Turkel to debate in an open internet forum, where his readers would have the opportunity to read his opponent's articles in their entirety rather than just the snippets that he quoted on his website without linking his readers to what he was quoting. Turkel persistently rejected these challenges on various grounds: he didn't have the time, most of what his opponents wrote was "fluff" that wasn't worth quoting, links aren't necessary because internet articles can be found at google.com by anyone who wants to read them, etc., etc., etc. He made every excuse imaginable, but he must have received criticism from some of his admirers, because Turkel suddenly posted an acceptance of the challenge. The first part of this article contained the usual sarcasm and insults, so I will quote just the acceptance part.
I accept. And here are the caveats:
1. Till must first refute what I have written here demonstrating his propensity to use sausage-ball filler in place of actual argument. In other words, from this article, prove to me that EVERYTHING is worth posting and essential to the arguments, that EVERY word is precious nectar of the gods that cannot be sacrificed. I say that no more than 10%, more likely less, of what Till offers is anything other than fluff, repetition and blather. Each and every word must be justified as to purpose and necessity to be left in, otherwise, Till can find his own hosts. Note that I will not accept any backing down, i.e, Till cannot backtrack by saying, "Well, I didn't mean that you couldn't edit a little bit out" -- he says EVERYTHING, so I'm going to read his words like a Church of Christ fundamentalist preacher and assume that he means EVERYTHING.
2. I pay for this site, so correspondent with the 90% fluff ratio I demand that Till pay for 90% of the costs of hosting any item he submits -- whether he meets challenge #1 above or not. Obviously the amount would have to be determined based on going rates for server space and the length of the article written. I also want payment for 8 years in advance (about the time I have the tektonics.org name reserved). Based on Till's behavior I am not so sure he'll be around that long before giving himself a coronary, and I think the security is a good idea.
3.Last, should this be agreed to, and before any further response on any other issue than #1 above, I want to first discuss the item here where Till called upon Wood's book on Marco Polo to support his polemics, and I replied by noting the disagreement of Polo scholar John Larner with three of Wood's major arguments which Till cited. I want Till to issue a reply to each of Larner's counterpoints. If Till deigns to reply I will locate Larner and/or at least a dozen other scholars who specialize in the history of China and/or Marco Polo and send them Till's reply for evaluation. Let's see if Till can deal with the experts when it isn't the Bible he's playing with. I think he can't deal with them, and that he makes his way by shazaming the gullible into thinking that yelling "Prove it!" or "How do you know?" is a legitimate form of argument.
In the meantime, wipe your chin, Foo Foo. You're staining the rug again.
The "more here" was a link to something Turkel had written elsewhere about my debate challenges. The fact that he gave his readers this closing link to another article he had written instead of leaving them to use a Google search to find it speaks volumes about his hypocrisy. I will have more to say about that later.
On II Errancy, I replied to all three of Turkel's points and accepted all of his conditions except demand number #2 to which I countered with an offer to pay 100% of all costs that he would incur in posting my part of the debate. Turkel has since insisted that he did not mean that I would have to pay 90% of the cost of his website but only 90% of the space that my articles would occupy, and I could have seen the statement in this way had he not gone on to say that he wanted payment eight years in advance. Since it would be impossible to know in advance how much space my articles would occupy over a period of eight years, I could see only a demand that I pay 90% of the cost of his website and make payment for it eight years in advance. At the very least, then, Turkel communicated his demand very poorly, but that would be nothing new for him. He often has problems--probably because of his obsession with cranking out as much hackwork as possible--expressing himself clearly. If I had had him in one of my writing classes, perhaps I could have impressed upon him the need to spend as much time editing and revising as he spends writing his first drafts.
Nah, what am I thinking? No one would ever be able to tell Turkel anything, because he already knows it all.
At any rate, Turkel adamantly refused to post anything from me on his website. These conditions that Turkel stipulated precipitated an exchange of personal e-mails that went on for several days, during which I tried to negotiate a set of rules and guidelines for the debate. I sent him the following proposed guidelines.
1. The Marco-Polo debate will open with a posting on both of our sites of the article "Did Marco Polo Lie?" so that readers will understand what the issue is about.
2. After the Marco-Polo straw man has been debated, we will conduct debates on at least 12 biblical inerrancy issues.
3. Each participant agrees to publish all exchanges in their entireties on their internet sites.
4. Each participant agrees to include all links that the participants refer to in their exchanges.
5. Each participant agrees to reply to all arguments and rebuttals made by the other.
6. If a participant overlooks an opponent's argument or rebuttal, he will reply to it after receiving notification that the argument/rebuttal was not answered.
7. Both participants agree to refrain from argumentation by asserting, question begging, or special pleading.
8. The participants agree to negotiate precisely worded propositions before a debate on an issue begins.
9. The affirmative debater agrees to define all key words in his proposition at the beginning of the debate so that the audience will know what the issue is in that part of the debates.
10. Both participants agree that their exchanges will be uncopyrighted so that anyone who wishes to publish them may do so as long as the published copies do not delete or add anything to the exchanges as they were presented by the participants.
11. The guideline immediately above will not exclude the right to correct grammatical or spelling mistakes after the exchanges have been posted.
12. Both participants agree to sign written copies of the guidelines and propositions after they have been agreed upon.
The upshot of these exchanges was that Turkel stopped negotiating and went off on his own to begin the debate with his farcical attempt to reply to my land-promise article published 12 years ago in The Skeptical Review. My replies to these are still in progress and will be posted as they are completed.
Before Turkel stopped the negotiations, however, he did promise that he would link all of his replies to the articles that he was answering. I have kept on file copies of all of my exchanges with Turkel during these failed negotiations, and his e-mails clearly show that he did at least agree to link all of his replies to whatever articles of mine he was answering.
On 5/20/02, he sent the following answer to my third proposal above, i. e., to publish all exchanges in their entireties on our respective websites.
If I have a neutral forum in mind, how about links?
This was in keeping with his adamant refusal to post any of my articles on his website, but his reply did suggest a willingness to link his readers to my articles. As noted above, my list of proposed guidelines included the following.
4. Each participant agrees to include all links that the participants refer to in their exchanges.
He sent a two-word reply to this.
Seems fine.
I kept pressing him to agree to post all of our exchanges on his website, with questions like the following, which I e-mailed to him on 5/20/02.
By the way, are you going to post our exchanges.... Excuse me, but I had to pause till I got my laughter under control. Are you going to post our exchanges on your website?
At this time, Turkel was telling me that someone, whom he never named, had agreed to carry our debates on a "neutral website," so on the same date, he sent back a reply that used the "neutral forum" as an excuse to reject this proposal.
As I said, I have someone who will host this shebang and when you have learned to use that type of forum I will put them in touch with you. Links can be provided to the whole essays from his site to our own sites.
His final sentence indicated that he was at least willing to have links that would make our respective articles easily accessible to his readers. That he was agreeing to have links available for his readers became more evident in an e-mail that he sent to me on 5/22/02 in response to my proposal below.
1. The Yahweh's Land Promise debate will open with a posting on both of our sites of the article "Yahweh's Failed Land Promise" by Farrell Till so that readers will understand what the issue is about.
Needless to say, he rejected this but did at least agree to provide links. I will emphasize in bold print the statements that show his agreement to provide links for the readers of his website.
I do not agree. I have already laid out what I wanted and it is this:
++++++
1. The Yahweh's Land Promise debate will open with a posting on the third party forum/discussion site of a link to the article "Yahweh's Land Promise" by Farrell Till (whatever it's [sic] location) and a link to the Tektonics reply (as well as any other further essay-lenth [sic] replies that may ensue) so that readers will understand what the issue is about. In turn both parties agree at the end of the articles on their own sites to link back to the third-party forum location, as well as offer a link to the third-party location from their "what's new" or weblog pages.
++++++
Your insistence that we each have the articles of the other on our own sites is unnecessarily cumbersome. The method outlined above guarantees the same level of accessibilty [sic] you desire for readers without the needless occupation of our respective servers with material by the other person. If you doubt that the accessibility is the same you may consult with Mr. Miles. Note that I do not consider this negotiable and there is no reason you should find it objectionable if accessibility is your concern.
Turkel broke off the negotiations on 5/26/02 with an announcement that he was unilaterally beginning a debate on the land-promise issue.
It's clear you have far too much spare time on your hands, so this coming Saturday check: http://www.tektonics.org//tsr/tilldebate.html
There's nothing there now, but by Saturday late morning there will be. I would strongly suggest you find someone to host your end until theskepticalreview.com is online and running. I will be linking to the Sec Web's copy of "Yahweh's Land Promise" and my response will be beneath via link. If/when you mount a defense, inform me of the URL and I will link back to that. And so on.
Turkel very clearly said that although he would not allow my articles to be posted on his website, he would link his readers to my part of the debate, but he is now reneging on that promise. In checking his Tektonics website, I found the following articles that were presumably "replies" to my rebuttal articles in the different debates we are engaged in, and none of them contain links to my articles that were being "answered."
Scrambled McTill with Sausage, Part Three
Scrambled McTill with Sausage, Part 2
Pathological Literalism: McTill Finally Rides His Scooter Into Jer. 7:22
Spitting into the Hurricane as Your Clothes Get Blown Off
Hacking with Fluff in Your Mouth
Losing Your Shirt While Sewing a Mitten
Who's Afraid of the Big Mouthed Wolf?
When I say that I "found" these, I, pardon the expression, literally meant that I found them. I started searching at Turkel's latest entries to his website in his December 20, 2002, update and by working down I found these "replies," none of which contained the links to my articles that he was "answering." As readers can see in the quotations above from his own e-mail messages, he promised that he would supply the links, but they are not there.
Finally, by working back all the way to his August 10, 2002, update, I found a link to his "Hallway of Ouch," where links to some of my early replies to his articles were found. In other words, at the beginning of our debates, he did what he said that he would do and linked his readers to my articles, but as the debates continued, he stopped the links. He reneged on his promise. Pardon me for asking, but wouldn't that be lying? If not, why not?
I predicted at the beginning of the debate that Turkel would eventually back down on his promise to link his readers to my articles. As a matter of fact, in Part One of my replies to Turkel's "Land Ahoy," I had to remind him in the second paragraph of my rebuttal that his "reply" to my original article did not contain the promised link.
Before I proceed to rebut his counterarguments, I must first take the time to point out that Turkel has already reneged on his promise to provide a link to my article that he was replying to. All that he did was to note above that the article appeared in the first issue of The Skeptical Review in 1991, but that is hardly a link that would enable his readers to click and read exactly what I had said. I sent an e-mail message to Turkel and asked where his link was, and he wrote back to say that he had put it in another article on his site, so we can already see the game Turkel is playing. By putting a link to my original article somewhere else besides in what is supposed to be his reply, he increases the chances that some of his readers will see only his article and never notice the link to mine.
I suppose, then, that Turkel will also refuse to put a link to this reply, or else he will put it somewhere on his site where some readers will be likely not to see it. Hence, we are already seeing indications that he is not going to debate in an open forum but will continue to hide on his personal website and selectively quote what he wants his readers to see. I have said for years now that Turkel is too cowardly to debate biblical inerrancy in an open forum where he will have to confront informed opposition, and his latest antics are confirming that I was right. My original article is here, and it will also be posted here (on the TSR website). If Turkel does not put this link into his article and then give his readers a link to my reply, he will be reneging on a promise he made during the failed debating negations that everyone can read about in another article that will soon be posted on the new TSR website. This article will contain all of the private e-mails that he and I exchanged while I was trying to get him to agree to negotiate a written agreement, and the correspondence will show that he (1) refused to post our debate on his website, but (2) agreed that he would provide links to my articles and rebuttals. Right at the very beginning of the debate, he has already reneged on one promise, so what will we see from him next? In an article about Turkel that I published in the July/August 2002 issue of The Skeptical Review, I said that some skeptics call him Robert "No Link" Turkel, so he is already living up to this name.
While the land-promise debate was in progress, I took the time to reply to two other articles about me that Turkel had posted on his website. Turkel promptly posted his replies to them, but he gave his readers no links to my rebuttals, so on 7/01/02, I wrote to Turkel to tell him that my replies to his "rebuttal" had been posted here and here and asked him to put the links on his website. I got back the following reply.
Since I didn't agree to debate these issues, you get no link and no EVERYTHING guarantee. I'll respond in my usual fashion, and ignore your complaints.
In other words, Turkel was saying that my rebuttal articles, although answers to articles he had posted on his site about me, did not pertain to issues that he had agreed to debate, and so I would get no link. His refusal to supply the links was too good an opportunity to let pass, so I posted his letter on the II_Errancy list. It got the desired result, because Turkel immediately sent the following reply.
Ha ha porkchop,
Take a chill pill! You don't get the instant link like I gave you with the land promise issue is what I'm sayin'. You'll get a link at the top of my reply -- I just ain't puttin' one on the debate page. GET IT? I was talking about the *debate page*. I said the word "debate". No habla? Yeesh, next time you don't get a grip, try asking first. You coulda saved yourself a migraine. Not that that ever stopped you from putting arguments in other people's mouths before...
In Part One of my second-round replies to Turkel's land-promise rebuttals, I said this in response to the quotation immediately above (from Turkel's e-mail message) about his refusal to link his articles to mine.
There was absolutely nothing in Turkel's first message to indicate that this was what he meant. In fact, I never even expected him to put links to my "David" replies on the "debate page," because the debate page concerned an entirely different issue, i. e., the failed land promise. I wanted the links on the pages where Turkel had written his reply to my David article, and now I have a promise from him that I will get this link "at the top of [his] reply." However, as I am editing this part of my reply on 7/10/02, a week has passed since I notified Turkel that my reply to his David "rebuttal" was on line, but I still haven't see a link to it on his site.
I'll check periodically to see if he keeps this promise and puts a link at the top of his reply, entitled "Trick or Treat, Got Some Bread." On 7/10/02, my reply to his attempt to rebut my article "Why Didn't They Know?" was posted here. Turkel's attempt to rebut my article can be accessed here. I invite everyone to read my original article, then read Turkel's "reply," and finally read my rebuttal. I'm sure Turkel doesn't believe that I am giving all of these links because I think he gave me a "whoopin."
Turkel's refusal to link
his
readers to my articles contrasts sharply with The Skeptical
Review's website, where readers can easily access his
material with just a click of their mouse buttons. In addition
to extensive links within my articles, there is a handy
index that gives readers easy access to all articles that both of
us have exchanged in the debate. I am showing below the index
for the land-promise exchanges as it was on 12/23/02. The words
highlighted in blue indicate where the links are in this index.
[Webmaster's note: The following indented
paragraph and the first sentence that follows reflects TSR's old design. This Web
site was completely redesigned in 2006]
Robert Turkel
(aka James
Patrick Holding)
Yahweh's Failed
Land Promise (The original TSR article that started this
debate.)
Land Ahoy Turkel's
first response. Also available offsite.
Tilling Turkel's "Land Ahoy"
(Part 1) Start of Till's 6-part rebuttal.
Parts
2, 3, 4,
5, and 6
Land
Ahoy! Part 2 Turkel's next response (offsite.)
Where's
the Land? (Part 1) Till's 3-part response to Turkel's
latest.
Parts 2, 3,
4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9,
10, 11, 12,
13, 14, 15,
and 16 (Note: Additional parts of this
reply will come later.)
On the left side of this same page is an articles link that with the click of the mouse button will take readers immediately to an index of the other debate exchanges between Turkel and me on the issues of preterism, the men with David, Abiathar, and the failure of the apostles to understand that Jesus was supposed to rise from the dead. Everything that both of us have written so far on all of these issues is easily accessible to readers, who don't have to exit and do a Google search to find what Turkel has written on these matters.
Why the difference? Why is it that my website gives readers easy access to Turkel's articles by clearly posted links, whereas Turkel's doesn't? He will deny it, of course, but I think that any reasonable person can see that it is a difference in the personal confidence that each of us has in the positions he is defending. I believe that my replies to his articles are thorough and sound in rebutting his positions, but he knows that his defenses are weak, evasive, and at times even downright ridiculous, and so he does everything possible to keep his readers from seeing exactly what he is supposed to be answering. Thus, he denies links to his readers and tries to hide his evasion and apologetic incompetence beneath continuous streams of sarcasm and insults, as if these can substitute for logical argumentation. By not linking his readers to my articles, he can also quote selectively so that his readers will not see the arguments and rebuttals that he evades.
A good example of his tactics can be found in "Scrambled McTill with Sausage, Part Three", which contains no link to my article, neither here nor in the "What's New" section where he announced this addition to his website. Sarcasm gushes from nearly every sentence in his article: "McTill barks... bawls... blubbers... burbles... burps... drivels... drizzles... fantasizes... foists... fumbles... harps... rambles... whines... whinnies... yaps..." etc., etc., etc. His intention, of course, is obvious. Unable to answer what I blubbered or burped or burbled or whinnied, he seeks to discredit it in the minds of his gullible choir members, who will likely react by thinking something like, "Well, if Turkel thinks that Till just whinnied or burped this, then there must not be anything to what Till said in these places." By not linking his article to mine, he practically eliminates the chances that his admirers will ever read in context what I said, because it is unlikely that very many of them will take the time to do the Google search that Turkel thinks eliminates the need for links. Of course, he isn't at all consistent in his position on Google searches, because I counted 13 different links that he put into the above article that enable readers to access quickly something he or Glenn Miller or others had written elsewhere that he thinks would help his case if his readers could quickly access them. Why didn't he just leave it to his readers to do their own Google searches to find whatever it was that he was linking them to? Well, any moron could answer that question. Turkel knows that if he doesn't give his readers links to what he doesn't wants them to see, few of them will take time to search for them. A review of Turkel's website would show that he routinely fills his articles with links to material that favors his position but does not link readers to whatever article he is "answering." One would have to be hopeless naive to think that he does this for any other reason except that he doesn't want his readers to see how much he is skipping or distorting in his opponents' articles.
Here are some more examples of sarcasms and insults from Turkel's article cited above, which he used to hop, skip, and jump over arguments he couldn't answer.
From this Stupid Skeptic Question, which he assumes in ignorance I'll answer, "Duhhhh, yeah" to, McTill embarks on a skein of hoo-ha in which he wants to know, "why can't I ask if the astronomical signs in Old Testament prophecies meant that the age of the law would end when Babylon or Egypt or whatever fell?" As he bangs his cranium against this misplaced question for the next few sentences, we'll skip down past all of that....
McTill spends some more time popping out his previous thesis (rebutted in part 1) about how the NT doesn't see the end of the "age of the law" as future. We'll skip over that, since we already shopped at that Winn Dixie and already smelled the dead fish from the seafood department, and move to the next new point, where McTill yaps on about items like the parable of the tares and judgment....
McTill no doubt hopes that once he has amazed his gullible readers with this skein, they will think better of whatever cockeyed explanations he comes up with later, but we'll cut the skein off at the pass and get right to the answer.
You see what he does? First, he doesn't link his readers to whatever he is "answering," and then in his "replies" to the unlinked articles, he uses sarcasm to justify his skipping of arguments that he can't answer. "Till barked... burped... burbled... whined," etc., after which he tries to bury his evasion under a barrage of insults like the ones quoted above, which even a moron can read and see that he answers nothing and then tries to hide his evasion under insult after insult, like the following, all of which are taken from his article linked above.
Ha ha, isn't McTill a cutie when he tries to do scholarly stuff? He wouldn't know midrash from diaper rash, but he wants us to toe the line on "consistency" based on his third-grade understanding of Jewish exegetical procedures.
As a side funny note, McTill calls from his corner and beneath the dunce cap and refers to "this thing that Longenecker called 'Jewish exegetical procedure...'"
Ironically enough, McTill asks a Stupid Skeptic Question that, if he had any sense, would show him one of his problems. He wants to know why, with all this cosmic crunch happening literally (as he sees it), Luke didn't tell them to "run like hell to try to escape the battle raging around them...." Duh, McTill, if you have the sense to see that, what makes you think Median soldiers are going to keep running swords through people while the stars are falling on their heads?
McTill does explain this one, but he is just banging on his own head with raw sausage: "...if this "judgment" was simply the destruction of Jerusalem, then what about all of those 'ungodly men' who had crept secretly into churches outside Jerusalem (Jude 4)?" What does this have to do with the price of tea in Beijing? (Racist comment against the Chinese.) This says zip about judgment being group-later or individual-as needed.
Isn't that cute? For his reply, McTill arbitrarily designates an "age," otherwise undesignated as such by anyone, and slaps the era before the Flood into it. Just like inventing your own national holiday. Great!
And on it goes. McTill rings up his misapprehension of the CCBE quote for the 758,329th time, whines some more about how he couldn't find what he missed in our original article, once again analogically-impairedly compares quoting a certified and trained scholar to merely quoting some duffhead like McKinsey with his ear in his soup, and finally gets to discussing the meaning of aion.
"And on it goes"--that is an appropriate description of not just the rest of Turkel's article but of all the articles he has written in our so-called debates, which have turned out to be one-way affairs in which I take the time to go through his articles point by point--skipping nothing--and answering him with detailed rebuttals only to be "answered" with unlinked "replies" that skip far more than they answer. To hide his utter inability to answer my rebuttals, he strings together insult after insult, which presumably his choir members, who have probably never spent a day in their entire lives in serious biblical research, ooh and ahh over. He plays to the gallery, and even there he fails, because some of the biblicists that he seeks to hang on to have been repelled by his antics. I have received apologies from his readers for his conduct that they consider inappropriate for someone claiming to be a Christian, and some have been driven away from their inerrancy beliefs by Turkel's inability to defend his positions. II_Errancy members will recognize the following message, which was posted there on 12/7/02. Emphasis will be added to call attention to the comment about Robert Turkel and Glenn Miller.
Hello everyone. This is my first posting as I am a new member. I joined this list because I have been printing out and studying many articles in The Skeptical Review. There are however some questions that I have about TSR and some points not addressed in it. Right now, I consider myself a freethinker having recently de-converted from the Christian faith, and I now embrace Deism. I am still having some second, third, and fourth thoughts on whether I did the right thing.
Although I think that The Skeptical Review has some great articles that I have read, I am not sure of how to "answer" or "explain" some of the Christian arguments that I have encountered in Christian apologetics. I was wondering if this was the place to do it. Most of the material that I have encountered has been produced by Glenn Miller and Robert Turkel. I was wondering if some knowledgeable folks can help walk me through these arguments?
So this new list member came to II_Errancy with doubts about his deconversion because he had been reading "apologetic" articles by Turkel and his favorite pulp apologist Glenn Miller, and wanted help to explain the arguments they used to resolve biblical discrepancies. When I saw this message, I posted a reply recommending that the writer go to The Skeptical Review Online if he wanted to see Turkel being "put through the grinder."
Thirteen days later, this person posted the following message.
As a former Turkel fan, I have a lot of his papers printed out from his site. When I discovered Bible contradictions that his site didn't address or addressed very poorly I began to study some debates between Turkel and Till. I began with the "Yahweh's Failed Land Promise." It was a real eye-opener. I have never seen anyone act so childish and unprofessional as Turkel did. I didn't even read the rest of the debate since Turkel seemed more interested in nauseating everyone with cleverly phrased straw man arguments. I thought Till acted very professional and furthermore that Turkel could definitely have benefited from Till's writing classes. I didn't finish the first debate because I was so disgusted at Turkel's unprofessionalism. However, when I read the "Dear Abiathar" debate, I thought Till won hands down. It's amazing considering that I thought this contradiction had already been answered by Archer and Norman Geisler. Once I saw the arguments from Greek Lexicons that Till put forward I knew Turkel was done for. I suspected Till would win. I very much enjoyed watching Till mop the floor with Turkel. I hope they have a lot more debates. Perhaps they should debate over an issue that will really grill fundamentalists like the resurrection contradictions, the temptation of Christ problem, or even one about Jacob's flawed mating technique in Genesis 30:37-43. I wish for Till to have a lot more debates with Turkel and really smash Turkel for the ignoramus I perceive him to be. Forget about all other biblicists, just mainly focus on the loudest of them all!
I am not so naive to think that Turkel doesn't receive mail that congratulates him for the trouncing he is giving me, but I doubt that any of it has ever been from anyone who said that he used to be a biblical skeptic but, boy, after seeing the beating that Turkel was giving Farrell Till, he has since become a believer in biblical inerrancy. That just isn't going to happen, because neither Turkel no any of his cohorts can give any kind of convincing argument for why those who doubt the Bible should believe that it is the "inspired, inerrant word of God." Turkel knows this, of course, so he is concentrating on fighting a rear guard action while biblical inerrantists are in retreat so that he can hang on to those who by lifetimes of indoctrination fervently want to believe the Bible is "God's word," but the letter quoted above shows that he can't even hang on to what he already has.
This is exactly why Turkel has reneged on his promise to link his readers to all parts of our debate exchanges. He is now engaged in desperate damage control, so he knows that he must do everything possible to minimize the chances that his readers will see the articles he is claiming to "answer." He is also aware of how this must look even to his readers, so he is trying desperately to rationalize his refusal to link his articles to the ones he is "replying" to. In an article entitled "Open Mouth, Insert Brain: Some Intructions [sic] on How to Use Search Engines Effectively", Turkel desperately tried to justify his refusal to put links in his articles by stupidly claiming that anyone who knows how to use google.com could easily find whatever articles he is "answering."
Perhaps, just perhaps, I have vastly overestimated average Skeptical intelligence. It wouldn't be the first time.
Little Stevie Carr popped into our Trophy Room and seems to have a little problem understanding why I expect my "gullible readers can find articles by entering words which exist in the articles that they have not seen! How exactly do people do that? For example, he expects his gullible readers to find links to an article by entering 'relevant psychological diagnosis identification divinity' into Google. What a weird way for Turkel to salve his conscience from charges that he is too chicken to provide links!"
I read this article several days ago, but I am writing this part of my reply on 12/30/02. I know from my own experience with Google, which is my first choice in search engines, that not every article that has been written will be accessible through Google, so I took the time to do some checking. I began with Turkel's own article and typed "Open Mouth, Insert Brain" into the search window. I received eight hits, but not a one of them was a reference to Turkel's article. They were all about asinine comments that Dan Quayle had made while he was vice president.
I then went back to the Google search window and typed in Turkel's subtitle "Some Intructions on How to Use Search Engines Effectively," retaining the misspelling of instructions for obvious reasons. This time I got no hits at all. A message stated that this string of words produced no matches. So I then turned to key words and expressions. I used first "Little Stevie Carr popped into our Trophy Room" and got the same response. There was no match for this expression. I then used "Poor Stevie, I really did underestimate his intellect," the opening sentence in the continuation of Turkel's article below, and got the same response: "Your search - "Poor Stevie, I really did underestimate his intellect" - did not match any documents." In other words, Turkel's own article, in which he was explaining how even dumb skeptics could use Google to find the articles he was answering on his website, couldn't even be found with a Google search. According to his "What's New" page, Turkel posted his article on December 16th , and 14 days later, it had not yet made its way into Google's archives.
Perhaps this will tell Turkel why Steve Carr made the statement that Turkel quoted above. If I post a reply to Turkel, and he cranks out a typically evasive tirade within a day or two--as he usually does--those who read his "reply" right away won't be able to find my article with a Google search, no matter how many key words and expressions, taken from quotations, that they type into the search window, because the article won't yet be in the Google archives. By coincidence, Jeff Lowder, whom most readers of this article will know, interrupted me with a phone call while I was in the middle of typing this paragraph, and the conversation turned to what I was doing at the time. When I told him I was answering Turkel's article "Open Mouth, Insert Brain," Lowder told me of a time when he interrupted the reading of one of Turkel's articles to try to find the article he was answering. Lowder said that he spent about 20 minutes using key words and expressions to try to find the article, and he was unable to locate it. Those who know Lowder certainly cannot accuse him of being computer illiterate.
Turkel knows all this, of course. He may be arrogant, biblically ignorant, abrasive, and narcissistic, but he isn't computer illiterate. He knows what he is doing, and he is doing everything he can to make access to articles he is "answering" as difficult as possible for his choir members, because he knows that anyone who reads the articles he is "answering" will easily see that he is hopping, skipping, and jumping far more than he is answering.
Turkel's article continues.
Poor Stevie, I really did underestimate his intellect. How do I expect them to do that? The same way any intelligent person uses a search engine. Let me use a non-topical example in context, and maybe, just maybe, little Stevie will learn something, as will all the other whining Skeptics out there. There is a certain poem I recalled from many years back that I wished to see again. I remembered little of it, other than that it was a satire of poetic usages that particularly focussed on Lord Byron's poem about the Assyrian attack on the Jews. How to find it? I only recalled one line from it for certain: It was a line that spoke of "purple and gold anythings".
Hard to find? Not in the Internet age. Put the phrase "purple and gold anythings" in Google (including the quote marks). What turns up? Ah. Several links which include copies of Ogden Nash's Very Like a Whale. Just what I wanted. So how did it find it? It wasn't hard. Google works upon a very simple principle of searching for words and phrases. Now of course the more words you put in, the narrower your search will be and the more likely you will be to hit a target you want. Thus when C. Farris McTill suggests one can search for one of his articles using the terms "Bible prophecy" he may as well hit himself with a large coral reef and go home. The principle of the searches I inputted in the Trophy Room entries is that I took unique words or phrases from the quotes I provided from the articles I responded to, and stuck them in Google's engine.
Turkel accuses skeptics of being stupid, but this example he used shows just how stupid he is. He is comparing internet articles of people who are relatively unknown to the likes of Lord Byron and Ogden Nash. Of course, one could do a Google search and easily find a particular poem written by Lord Byron or Ogden Nash, because these were both literary giants, whose works have found their way into major anthologies of British and American literature, but what about an internet article by either Robert Turkel, er, excuse me, "James Patrick Holding," or Farrell Till? That will be a different matter entirely.
For example, I have completed and posted a nine-part reply to Turkel's preterist position. It is entitled "Humpty Dumpty Takes Another Fall," Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, etc. All nine parts were posted weeks ago, but as of January 1, 2003, if you did a Google search using "Humpty Dumpty Takes Another Fall," you would get a hit only to Part 1. The other eight parts were not yet in the Google archives. On December 24th, Turkel posted an article entitled "The Bible Undug," which purports to be a reply to Finkelstein's and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed. Today (January 1, 2003), I just did a Google search for "The Bible Undug" and got the following message: "Your search - "The Bible Undug" - did not match any documents." So over a week after he posted it, one of Turkel's own articles has not yet been added to the Google archives. Hence, it just isn't true that one can easily find the articles that Turkel is "answering" on his website by doing a Google search, and as I said above, Turkel knows this. His "Open Mouth, Insert Brain" is nothing but a duplicitous attempt to pull the wool over his sheep's eyes. If he wants to talk about stupidity, maybe he should address the stupidity of his choir members who accept this excuse as a legitimate reason for his not taking mere seconds to put opposition links into his articles.
Let's look at just a few examples of Turkel's hypocrisy. He argues that he doesn't have to give his readers links to skeptical articles he is "answering," because his readers can use Google and easily find them, yet he fills his own articles with links to materials that he wants his readers to have easy access to. The first sentence of his article "Thallus: Darkness Rules" has a link to an article by Glenn Miller on the same subject.
We recommended here Glenn Miller's essay on this subject.
The word in blue is a link in Turkel's article that will immediately connect readers to Miller's article with a simple click of the mouse button, but if Turkel's excuse for not linking his readers to skeptical articles is legitimate, why didn't he begin his article like this: "We recommend that readers go to Google and find Glenn Miller's essay on this same subject"? Well, the answer to that is obvious. Turkel wanted his readers to see Miller's article because he thought that the material in it would help his case, and so he gave them an immediate link to it. He knew that if he just left it to his readers to search the internet for this article, not many of them would bother to do it.
In another article, entitled "Fallacious Faith," Turkel had links all through it. In the quotations below, the words in blue are links in his article that can be clicked for immediate access to materials he has written on the issues he discussed in the article.
At reader request we will examine some of what Jones has to say in his "Book on Paul" (which is where his core arguments are found) and offer some comments. A key issue as we might expect is Jones' inability to reconcile the difference between Paul and Jesus/James on faith and works, and which he sees as resting at the core of Paul's greatest deception; for that we point the reader here and here. In various places he also accuses Paul of exegetical freedoms that are actually normal Jewish exegetical practice for the day, as they were for Jesus; see here. He likewise claims Paul erred in predicting the parousia is his own lifetime; we say he did not, and refer the reader to our series here.
Further along, he had a paragraph with links to two reference works that he said he had found "extremely useful of late."
Our prime resources for this essay are two works we have come to find extremely useful of late: Malina and Neyrey's Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality [87, 167] and deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity [95ff]. These books offer us a glimpse into the ancient world of the early Christians and an understanding that their "faith" was understood as anything but a matter of believing against the grain as our examples suggest.
You can be sure that if Turkel found these works "extremely useful," then they present biblical views that support his own. If, however, all that Turkel has said about links not being necessary is true, why didn't he just list the titles of these works and then tell his readers that they could find them at Google? The question is stupid, because anyone who has an intelligence that's even below average would know that internet links make access to materials readily accessible but that few readers of an internet article will take the time to go to a search engine and try to find an unlinked article with key words and expressions. Hence, the omission of links to articles Turkel is answering increases his chances that readers will never see just how much he hopped, skipped, and jumped over in "replying" to those unlinked articles.
I'll quote just one more of Turkel's pathetic attempts to justify his omission of links to skeptical articles he is answering.
With that in mind let's answer little Stevie's Stupid Skeptic Questions:
1) How can I expect my "gullible readers can find articles by entering words which exist in the articles that they have not seen!" It's simple, folks -- the words exist in the quotes from the articles which I provided. Now how hard was that? Too hard? How did I find Nash's poem if I could not remember all of the poem -- heck, only one line of it? It's enough, in plenty. Thus here is the whole poem up until that line (and it could have been written by Fundaliteralist McTill in seriousness!):
Well, I showed above that this is simply not true. Turkel does occasionally quote his opponents, but the words in what he quotes cannot always be used to find the article he is answering. On December 20th, two weeks before I wrote this paragraph, Turkel posted "Scrambled McTill with Sausage, Part Three," which purports to be "replies" to Parts 7 through 9 of my Humpty Dumpty series [referred to above]. In his "reply," Turkel quoted just a few parts of my articles, four of which I am requoting below.
Did references to the darkening of the sun and moon in Old Testament passages mean that the "age of the law" ended at the times designated in those prophecies. When prophecies referred to stars falling as figs fall from a tree (Is. 34:5), did this mean that the "age of the law" ended at that time?
Yes, it probably was an allusion to Psalm 90:4. So what? Whatever Psalm 90:4 said, Turkel can't base on it any kind of argument about what 2 Peter 3:8 meant, or has he forgotten the position he took when I pointed out that Romans 10:18 was a quotation of Psalm 19:4, which said that the heavens had declared the glory of God through all the earth and to the ends of the world? I pointed out that Paul had quoted from the Septuagint version, which had used the word oikoumene for world, so he could not have intended for oikoumene to mean just the Roman empire.
How, then, can Turkel know that "Peter" wasn't doing this when he alluded to Psalm 90:4 in his thousand-year simile and that "Peter's" hidden meaning was entirely different from what the psalmist had intended. One thing about Turkel is that he will never let consistency get in the way of fabricating some kind of quibble to try to make the Bible not mean what it says.
What elements would these be.... Could it possibly be the elements in the "earth" [ge] that he said in verse 7 had been reserved for fire? Sure, it could. After all, he said just three verses later that the "elements" would melt with fervent heat, and if there was any doubt what "elements" these were, he immediately said that "both the earth and the works that are in it would be burned up.
On January 1, 2003, I used these quotations from Turkel's article (Posted December 20, 2002) to test his claim that readers can easily find the articles he is answering by using key words from what he quotes from the articles. I got the following Google results for the first quotation.
Your search - "Did references to the darkening of the sun" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "ended at the times designated in those prophecies. " - did not match any documents.
Your search - "When prophecies referred to stars falling as figs fall from a tree" - did not match any documents.
I then went to the second quotation, conducted Google searches of key expressions, and got the following results.
Your search - "Yes, it probably was an allusion to Psalm 90:4" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "or has he forgotten the position he took when I pointed out that Romans 10:18" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "I pointed out that Paul had quoted from the Septuagint version" - did not match any documents.
I went through the same process with key expressions from the other two quotations from my article and got the same result. Google listed neither my original article nor Turkel's article that quoted from mine, so weeks after my article had been posted and almost two weeks after Turkel's reply to it had been posted, neither article was in the Google archives. Perhaps Turkel could explain to us just how results like these would support his claim that he doesn't need to give his readers links to his opponents' articles because they can easily find them with Google searches.
Incidentally, I used both Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers in these Google searches, because I had learned that I had erred in "The Turkey Challenge" when I said that an article by Turkel had been removed from his website. I checked after being told that the article was still there, but my Netscape browser still could not access the article, so I used Internet Explorer on my wife's computer and found the article. To avoid the same mistake this time, I used both Netscape and Internet Explorer to see if Turkel's quotations of my article could be used to find the article he was "answering." In both cases, I got the results noted above. Furthermore, I triple checked by asking another person, living in another part of the country, to use the key expressions noted above to see if he could locate my article that Turkel quoted. He couldn't.
Here is the result that he obtained on the first of these key expressions.
I got the same thing, but when I left off "Did" so the search was simply "references to the darkening of the sun," I got three hits,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=
ISO-8859-1&q=%22references
+to+the+darkening+of+the+sun%22&btnG=Google+Search
but none of them was from your or Turkel's articles.
Here is the result that he obtained on the second key expression.
I got the same result as you. I even shortened the search to simply "designated in those prophecies," but got no returns.
Here is what he got for the third key expression.
No returns, even when the search was "prophecies referred to stars."
And so it went for all the others. He could not locate my article by using any of the key expressions in the sections that Turkel quoted from the article. Does Turkel know this? If he doesn't, he is a fine one to talk about the computer incompetence of skeptics. If he does know it, then he is intentionally trying to deceive his readers into believing that there are no reasons why he should link them to the articles he is "answering," and that would make him... well, a liar.
"Were You Expecting it?," which Turkel touted as a reply to "Stevie Carr" and Brooke Trubee, was posted December 13, 2002. Turkel quoted both Carr and Trubee in the article, but if he quoted them accurately, none of their articles can be located by using key words in a Google search. Needless to say, his article gave his readers no links to the articles by Carr and Trubee that he was "answering."
Turkel posted "Responding to the Hurricane with Spitwads" at least by November 1, 2002, because this was the date that he published the first part of "Scrambled McTill with Sausage" in which he linked his readers to "Spitwads." Why Turkel put this link in "Sausage" is anyone's guess. Since it is so easy for his readers to go to Google and find anything that he refers too, why didn't he just say that he had written the "Spitwads" article and tell his readers to look for it on Google? At any rate, I used a key expression in one of the short statements that Turkel quoted from my article that he was "answering," and I did indeed get a Google hit.
It was Turkel's article in which he was quoting my article. I kept using key expressions from my statements that Turkel had quoted in his article, and I always got the same result. Google would list his article but not mine.
This is more than enough to expose Turkel as a liar. First of all, if he really thinks that articles he is answering can always be found by going to Google and using key expressions from what he quotes from the articles, then he is the last person who should ever talk about the computer stupidity of skeptics, because he is making a claim about internet searches that is patently false. I don't think for one moment that he is stupid in matters of computers. He knows exactly what he is doing when he leaves out links to articles he is answering. He leaves them out because he doesn't want readers to see what he is presumably answering. He becomes a liar, then, when he claims that he leaves the links out because they aren't necessary since his readers can find what he is replying to by going to Google. He knows better than this, so that makes him a liar.
Second, he is a liar, because his habit of putting links all through his articles to sources and materials that he thinks will help his case shows that he recognizes the importance of links. He leaves out links to his opponents' articles, because he doesn't want his readers to see how weak his position is. If he denies this, he is a liar.
Third, he is a liar because when he skips over arguments and rebuttals of his opponents, he claims that he is skipping only "fluff" or unnecessary commentary. He is skipping it because he knows that if he addresses it directly, as I address every point in his articles, his readers, even as naive as they are in their biblical beliefs, will see that he cannot successfully refute the argument. The messages quoted above from the former biblical inerrantist and Turkel admirer show that even some Bible believers will see through his apologetic veneer if he lets them see too much of what he is supposed to be rebutting. If Turkel denies this, he will be lying again.
Last, even if I am wrong on the three points immediately above, Turkel is still a liar, because he said before our "debates" began that he would link his readers to my articles. He has stopped doing that, so there is only one conclusion to reach.
Turkel is a liar.
The only thing sadder than Turkel's moral character, or rather lack of moral character, is that people are sending him money so that he can sit at home and crank out his evasions and lies.
I
wonder if they know what "enablers" are.
