I said earlier in a reply to his ramblings in the feedback section that I wouldn't give "Mediocre Man"--who like Robert Turkel is apparently too cowardly to write under his real name--any more space here if he didn't make an honest attempt to reply to my rebuttal points, so by writing another reply to "Mediocre Man," I guess I am pulling a Robert Turkel, who in his 1998 attempt to reply to an article of mine on the inconsistency in 2 Kings 10:30 and Hosea 1:4 concerning Jehu's massacre of the Israelite royal family said that he would not dignifiy my articles with any more replies but has since made me a favorite target on his website. Here is my previous statement to Mediocre Man that I am now reneging on.
Well, MM is back again with more of the same in his Feedback article linked to in the title above. I am going to dismantle it piece by piece, as I did to his other article, to show that he has given us nothing but more of the same, i. e., argumentation by assertion, question begging, and special pleading. If after this reply is posted, MM cannot come back with logical arguments to support his belief that the Bible "contains God's word," he will have to be satisfied with space available to him in the Feedback section, because I won't dignify his sermonizing by putting it in the article section, which receives the most attention from readers.
MM has now returned with more of the same, which is so typical of the nonanswers that would-be apologists use in "replying" to biblical skeptics that I am going to devote another article to him in this part of the forum. Showing the absurdities in his way of reasoning may prove beneficial to readers with friends and relatives who reason like Mediocre Man. As I have done before, I will answer him point by point and use the headers MM and Till to help readers follow who has said what.
MM's latest entry into the Feedback Section was an attempt to reply to Jason Wilson's reaction to A Mediocre Skeptic posted by "Jack Verden," which by his own admission is not his real name. (Isn't it strange that so many would-be apologists use phony names, whereas skeptics generally don't mind using their real names?) Verden had called me a "mediocre skeptic," because I had chosen to quit the ministry entirely and become an English teacher instead of enrolling in a seminary, where I could have benefited from receiving instruction from theologians who could have perhaps set me straight about perceived discrepancies in the Bible.
I saw in "Verden's" posts a style and method that made me suspect that he is really Robert Turkel. When I posted my suspicion that this is his real identity, he suddenly fell silent and hasn't returned. Anyway, in Jason Wilson's reply to "Verden," he noted that enrolling in a seminary could have put me into contact with the Gleason-Archer kind of theologians, who are "masters of the could have would have should have scenarios" that are so commonplace in biblical apologetics. This must have rubbed MM the wrong way, because he came out of the woodwork again with a post that I will be answering below. I think everyone will see that he, like Archer, is a would-have, could-have, might-have-been "apologist," who couldn't tell the difference in a logical argument and a blatantly biased comment if his life depended on it.
MM:
It's interesting to see this Feedback Forum up again. I had given up on
it after posting here some months earlier.
Till:
Because of a cable that was cut during construction work in the
Milwaukee area, the computer
system of TSR's host was down--off and on--for almost a month.
Needless to say, I
regret this inconvenience, which I told Feedback readers about in
"Apologies for the
Interruption," posted on June 12. I am glad to see readers posting
there again,
and there is always hope that a miracle will happen and "Mediocre Man"
will actually begin
trying to defend his belief in the Bible with logical argumentation
instead of fallacious
assertions, special pleadings, and begged questions, but I honestly
have more expectations of
seeing pigs flying before I see MM using a logical approach to the
defense of his beliefs.
MM:
Jason expresses his relief that Mr. Till did not acquire additional
education in theology since that exercise might have led to his
"brainwashing" into accepting an unreal paradigm as being true,
none-the-less [sic].
Till:
Let's suppose that I had been an Islamic cleric who had decided that
this religion was indefensible, and so I abandoned it to become a
Christian preacher. I wonder if MM would
then have accused me of being just a "mediocre preacher" because I had
not enrolled in an
Islamic university or religious institution where I would have had
access to Islamic theologians, who could have set me straight in the
matters about Islam and the Qur'an that had been bothering me? To ask
the question is to answer it. Those who teach in institutions
devoted to Christianity or Islam or Hindusim can only be expected to
defend these religions
with stock "arguments" that have developed over time, so the chances of
getting an unbiased
view from seminary theologians are about as good as my chances of
winning the Powerball
jackpot.
In our original debate on the Jehu problem back in 1998, Robert Turkel sang the praises of Thomas Edward McComiskey, who turned out to be a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, which, by coincidence, happened to be the same institution where Gleason Archer had taught. In this section of "The Zigzagging Stripes of Bobby Turkel," I quoted directly from the website of this university to show that it unabashedly supports the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Anyone who clicks this link and reads the "statement of faith" posted here will have no difficulty seeing that this institution exists to teach a biased view of the Bible, but I guess that MM thinks that if I had just enrolled in this divinity school, the "theologians" there could have removed all of my doubts about biblical inerrancy.
MM:
However, as I have mentioned in my previous posts in this Forum, Mr.
Till has done a remarkable service to Christian theologians by pointing
to areas in the Bible where religious explanations of scriptural
inconsistencies are inadequate.
Till:
Well, actually, I can think of only a very few discrepancies that I
discovered on my own. Most
of them, however, were identified long before I came along. I have
thought at times that I
had discovered new ones, but I later found that they had been pointed
out by others before me. The fact that MM apparently doesn't know how
long most of these discrepancies have been known speaks volumes about
how little he has apparently researched the subject of biblical
errancy, but if I have indeed performed such a "remarkable service to
Christian theologians" by showing them where their "explanations of
scriptural inconsistencies are inadequate," maybe MM can point me to
the implied "adequate explanations" that "Christian theologians" have
forumulated
in response to my work. On this website, I have identified many
biblical discrepancies. I invite MM to read the articles here and then
show us what "adequate" explanations have resulted from my having
reported these discrepancies.
What we have here is nothing more than a sour-grapes comment that I have heard more times than I can remember. I think I could retire in luxury if I had a dollar for every time some "Christian" disgruntled by my articles but unable to answer them satisfactorily has said to me in parting shots that I had done a great service to God by writing articles that have strengthened the faith of many Bible believers. If this is true, I can't understand the many letters, e-mails, and phone calls I have gotten from former Bible believers who thanked me for the help I had given them in seeing that the Bible is not at all what they had grown up believing.
MM:
This should spur the honest seeker of truth to inquire further into the
scriptures themselves--into their languages and history, and into the
political motivations of those in whose care they were intrusted [sic]--to
see why such discrepant accounts came to exist in the scriptures as we
have them today.
Till:
Well, if MM is an "honest seeker of truth," I suppose that my articles
have spurred him to
"inquir[ing] further into the scriptures" to find out why "such
discrepant accounts came to
exist in the scriptures," so perhaps he will favor us with what his
truth-seeking led him
to discover.
And perhaps pigs will fly some day too.
MM:
It is not hard to imagine how in 4500 years, with all the many attempts
to destroy both the scriptures and those who possessed them,
discrepancies could accrue in the manuscripts.
Till:
Four thousand five hundred years! This also tells us how little MM
actually knows about the
Bible. According to biblical chronology, the exodus happened around 1446 BC, which
would have been only 3,451 years ago. Those who click the link and
study the biblical
chronology analyzed there will see that MM's 4500 years ago would take
us back to the time
of the flood. Hence, he is claiming that attempts to "destroy both the
scriptures and those
who possessed them" were happening at the time of the flood, which
would have been around
2,000 years before most responsible scholars think that the bulk of the
Old Testament was written. Comments like this one tell us that MM is
trying to be an apologist for a book that he knows very little about.
MM:
But where Mr. Till comes up short is in his apparent acceptance of
those discrepancies as though they were part of the original "inspired"
scriptures themselves;
Till:
Ah, so, MM is also going to resort to that old original-autographs
claim? He is claiming
that the so-called "original autographs" did not have discrepancies in
them, but how could he
possibly know that? Has he ever had the opportunity to examine those
originals to determine
that they were inerrant, as he apparently believes they were?
This, folks, is an example of the kind of "apologetics" that we can expect from MM.
For his benefit, I will tell him that I certainly don't think that the "scriptures" as we have them today have come down to us as they were originally written. Only a moron would believe that, but if MM expects to instill in us any confidence in the Bible, he needs to give us a logical reason why his "God" would have "inspired" the original scriptures and then left them to accumulate the discrepancies that exist in them today. Why did MM's god "inspire" the scriptures if he was just going to leave them on their own to be corrupted as MM apparently recognizes they now are? What was the purpose of the original "inspiration"?
I assume that everyone recognized that MM was arguing from assertion and a begged question again when he asserted that the original scriptures were "inspired." What is his proof that they were so "inspired"? He didn't bother to tell us, but MM never bothers to explain an assertion, does he?
MM:
and then to parade those discrepancies as though they somehow disproved
the existence of the God about Whom they instruct.
Till:
Just look at the questions that MM is begging here. First, he begs the
question of "God's"
existence without making any attempt at all to prove that such an
entity does indeed exist.
Then he begs the question of whether the Bible instructs us about this
"God." How does he
know that the god that lived in a tent
that the Israelites carried with them in their nomadic wanderings was
really this entity that he calls "God"? If we grant MM his assumption
that "God" does exist, how does he know that Yahweh of the Hebrews was
this god? How does he know that Yahweh was this god rather than Dagon
or Bel or Marduk or Chemosh? The inscription on the Moabite Stone shows
rather clearly that king Mesha of Moab believed that Chemosh was a real
god, who communed with him on a regular
basis, so how does MM know that Chemosh was not "God" rather than
Yahweh of the Hebrews?
MM:
On top of this nonsense he takes obvious glee in "refuting" those naive
theists, young and inexperienced in the faith,
Till:
Speaking of "naive theists" and those who are "young and inexperience
in the faith," could
any of them be any more naive and inexperienced than MM has shown
himself to be?
MM:
[On top of this nonsense he takes obvious glee in "refuting" those
naive theists, young and inexperienced in the faith,] but who dare to
proclaim that God exists, by bashing their immature idealism on the
rocks of the false dilemmas he poses for them to solve from the
scriptures.
Till:
What false dilemmas? I assume everyone notices that MM can assert but
can't seem to support
his assertions with real evidence. If I have subjected those who are
"young and inexperienced
in the faith" to "false dilemmas," MM should be able to tell what those
false dilemmas are,
so why didn't he give us at least an example or two?
Those who are inexperienced in the faith? Quite frankly, I have found that not one churchgoer in a hundred really knows diddly squat about the Bible, so in that sense, most of them are "inexperienced in the faith." I have to wonder, however, what MM would do if he found himself in the company of young and inexperienced atheists. Would he say, "Well, I can't try to evangelize them, because if I did, I would be taking unfair advantage of them"? I doubt that he would. He would probably be a typical Christian, who would delight in thinking that he had found another chicken to pluck, which is what door-to-door missionaries do. If they encounter some informed person like me, they will quickly excuse themselves by saying something like, "Well, we aren't looking to argue; we are just going around to talk to those who want to learn more about the Bible." What they mean is that they are looking for those who are so uninformed about the Bible that they will be unable to express any kind of logical objections to their cut-and-dried spiels that they deliver to those who let them inside.
MM:
If Mr. Till were truly an educated man, instead of being a religious
bully reveling in his atheistic psychopathology, then he might be
disposed to better himself,
Till:
Better myself in what way? By becoming like MM and his ilk, who are
naive Bible believers
who don't have a clue to why they believe the Bible except that they
just believe it?
For those who may not know psychopathology is the study of the causes of mental illnesses, so MM is accusing me of being atheistically insane. If that is the way he wants to conduct a discussion, I will show him that I can play the same game. If anyone is insane, it would be MM, who doesn't have a shred of real evidence to support his belief in "God" and his insane belief that the Bible is the "word" of this god. He has merely accepted simplistically and uncritically what he was taught to believe when he was growing up, and he now lacks the intellectual integrity to examine his belief in any sane, rational way.
MM:
[If Mr. Till were truly an educated man, instead of being a religious
bully reveling in his atheistic psychopathology, then he might be
disposed to better himself,] and those who read his puerile
dissertations, by searching out why those scriptural discrepancies
became part of the Biblical documents we have today.
Till:
What is childish [puerile] about trying to discover the truth about a
book that has a stranglehold on so many people in western society? MM
has no desire to know if there is any
possibility at all that his view of the Bible could be wrong. He simply
wants to cling to a
blind faith that he has been indoctrinated in, and that is about as
puerile as anything can
be. As I have said many times, I can understand those who vent their
anger on me, as MM is now doing, because I was once where they are, so
I know how emotionally shackling deeply
ingrained religious beliefs can become. However, I have experienced
both sides of this issue,
but MM hasn't, so he is the one talking about things that he is
pathetically uninformed in.
Bullying? Is it possible to bully the truth? If MM's take on the Bible is really true, he should be able to defend it with ease. The fact that he can't defend it shows that he is either ignorant of why he believes as he does, or else there isn't any truth in what he is trying to defend.
As for why those discrepancies are in the Bible, how about the possibility that they are there because the Bible was written by fallible people without the benefit of any divine guidance, and so the mistakes are there because the people writing the Bible made honest mistakes? I suspect that MM is too simplistically naive even to consider that possibility.
MM:
But Mr. Till does not undertake this more noble endeavor because he
wants to rationalize his atheistic fundamentalism--
Till:
MM is following a familiar track here. He is asserting that atheism is
"bad" and theism is
"good," i. e., "more noble," but what proof has he offered in
support of this assertion? None at all. He is so logically ignorant
that he apparently doesn't know that
arguing by assertion is a recognized logical fallacy.
It is easy to demonstrate how fallacious MM's way of "arguing" is. Suppose that a Muslim had accused him of "bully" naive Muslims, who are "young and inexperienced in their faith." If the Muslim said that instead of taking the "more noble endeavor" of "searching out" why discrepancies are in the Qur'an, he tries to "rationalize his [Christian] fundamentalism," just how impressed would MM be with that line of reasoning? I think that even he could see that everything the Muslim said was based on an assumption that Islam is the true religion, but he apparently can't see the same fallacy when he uses it in "defense" of the Bible. He epitomizes the kind of logical ignorance that we have seen over and over again in this forum from would-be apologists who want to defend the Bible but don't know how.
MM:
which, of course, he would find less convenient to do if the scriptures
as they exist today were found to be consistent in all their parts.
Till:
The scriptures as the exist today, of course, are not at all
"consistent in all their parts,"
and there is no way for MM to know that they ever were. If he says that
they were once
consistent in the "original autographs," he will once again be found
engaging in question
begging and argumentation by assertion.
MM:
So it is one thing to seek out inconsistencies; but quite another to
seek out the truth.
Till:
And it is one thing to defend the Bible out of a blind faith that it is
what MM has been taught to believe but quite another to seek out the
truth. MM doesn't have the intellectual
capacity to understand that, and I seriously doubt that he has the
intellectual integrity
ever to try it.
MM:
What Mr. Till does is plant his scriptural inconsistencies as a
roadblock to pursuing the truth. And in doing so, he is found to be
working against the truth.
Till:
Once again, poor, critically-challenged MM can do nothing but argue by
assertion. He asserted
without proof that I am "working against the truth" when I point out
"scriptural inconsistencies," so he is asserting that the Bible is the
truth. Let's see him prove that.
Furthermore, why shouldn't one think that "scriptural inconsistencies" are important in a book purporting to be the inspired word of an omniscient, omnipotent deity? Instead of ranting in a long tirade against me, MM would do the Bible a lot more service if he would undertake to show that I have incorrectly claimed that discrepancies are in the Bible. On the index page of this forum, MM will find a long list of articles in which I explicated in detail discrepancy after discrepancy in the Bible. Why doesn't MM take some of those articles and show us--show us, not tell us--that these aren't really discrepancies?
I'll tell you why he doesn't. He doesn't because he can't. It angers him to see these discrepancies presented in such intricate detail, and so he responds in the only way he can. He lashes out at me. Remember that old adage about killing the messenger?
MM:
For the insurmountable fact remains--God does indeed exist and is the
Sovereign Creator of the universe in which we live.
Till:
This is an insurmountable fact? It is nothing more than a bald
assertion, and I defy MM to
post his evidence that "God does indeed exist" and that he "is the
sovereign creator of the
universe." Do you hear me, MM? I defy you to prove these assertions.
I will issue to MM a challenge that I have presented to others who have made these same assertions. I defy MM to prove that it is at all possible for invisible, immaterial entities, such as gods, spirits, angels, demons, and such like, to exist independently of matter. No one has ever accepted this challenge, and I have no expectation at all that he will either. He is simply an ignorant Bible believer who is parroting what he has heard from the pulpit and in Bible classes but has never spent a moment of his life critically analyzing.
MM:
But more importantly [sic] for the atheist fundamentalist who
wishes to deny this truth,
Till:
More important, more important, not "more importantly."
This is an elliptical
expression that is actually saying, "But [what is] more important for
the atheist fundamentalist...." People who say "more importantly" in
situations like these are using
an adverbial expression with nothing for it to modify, but I doubt that
MM has enough
linguistic knowledge to understand this.
MM:
[But more importantly [sic] for the atheist fundamentalist who
wishes to deny this truth,] God is the Sovereign Creator of all
mankind, as well.
Till:
Here is another argument by assertion, and I doubt that MM will ever
acquire enough logical
knowledge to understand that it proves nothing. If a Zoroastrian, for
example, should say to MM, "For the insurmountable fact remains--Ahura
Mazda does indeed exist and is the sovereign creator of the universe in
which we live, but more important for the Christian fundamentalist who
wishes to deny this truth, Ahura Mazda is the sovereign creator of all
mankind as well," would MM leap to his feet and exclaim, "Well, golly,
I sure didn't know
that; I'm going to have to convert"? Of course, he wouldn't. Even he
isn't so logically
dense that he wouldn't be able to see that the Zoroastrian had done
nothing but peel off a
bunch of bald assertions, but he is apparently too logically challenge
to recognize when he
is doing the same thing.
When I encounter religious density like MM's, I can't help wondering if there is any hope that mankind will ever find its way out of the superstitions that have engulfed it since prescientific times.
MM:
That means that Mr. Till is accountable to the very God he wishes to
deny existence.
Till:
And the Zoroastrian could say that MM is accountable to the very god he
wishes to deny
existence.
Hey, MM, is any of this sinking in?
MM: So when he is called upon to give account of himself to the Sovereign God it will be Mr. Till who will be saying, in Jason's words, "could have should have and would have." Too bad. At that point in one's existence there is no longer time left for any "plan B."
Till:
And the Zoroastrian says in response, "So when he is called upon to
give account of himself the sovereign Ahura Mazda, it will be MM who
will be saying, in Jason's words, 'could have should have and would
have.' Too bad. At that point in one's existence there is no longer
time left for any 'plan B.'"
Did any of this sink in, Mediocre Man? It
didn't, did it? Too bad.
