Incinerating Bethrick

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Bahnsen Burner said...

And here I thought only Christians read my blog!

There was another point I want to include here. Steve wants to understand Acts' use of "heavenly vision" (26:19) as confirming the alleged objectivity of Jesus' appearance to Paul. He says that the vision that Acts has Paul speak of is “'heavenly' because Jesus ascended to heaven. So, in order for him to appear to Paul on earth, he must leave heaven." But this explanation conflicts with Acts 3:21, which indicates that Jesus "must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets." Had God restored everything by the time Saul made his journey on the road to Damascus, his ministry to the gentiles would have been too late. What we have here is ad hoc apology, asserted without thorough knowledge of what the 'good book' itself says.

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1.No conflict since Acts 3:21 has reference to the Parousia, not the occasional Christophany. A Christophany is not the same thing as the Second Coming of Christ.

2.As to ad hocery, Bethrick is the one trying to shore up a weak performance after the fact. I respond to what people say when they say it.

Bethrick is welcome to repair a badly damaged argument, but he’s the one resorting to these rear-guard maneuvers, not me.

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Besides, as I pointed out in my blog, Acts' account of Paul's encounter with Jesus has him see "a light from heaven," not a person from heaven. Instead of strengthening his claim that Paul's vision was 'objective', Steve simply makes his own case all the worse.

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Yes, indeed, he pointed that out—more than once. And I pointed out the false antithesis—more than once.

Bethrick is the one who’s lagging behind, not me.

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Bahnsen Burner said...

Actually, Frank, if you read Hays' hazy response, you'll see that it is miserably weak. Even you should see his obvious reliance on fallacy. Some examples: "[Bethrick's] an ignoramus," as if this is sufficient to serve as a rebuttal.


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True, that would be insufficient to serve as a rebuttal. But, of course, that’s not all I said. Bethrick quotes a little snippet here and there—minus the supporting argument.

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He writes "Wells is a retired German teacher" and "Kümmel is a student of Bultmann" as if this were sufficient to discredit their points.

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i) Bethrick deems it sufficient to discredit someone merely by referring to his “confessional investment.”

ii) There were no points for me to rebut since the only thing Bethrick ever offered was the sheer opinion of Wells and the sheer opinion of Kümmel. Just a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions. Where’s the supporting evidence? I can’t very well rebut a nonexistent argument.

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The resemblance between Hays' "No serious scholar uses Thayer’s any more" and "No true Scotsman..." is more than skin-deep; he says that "Only a bantamweight like Bethrick would appeal to Thayer’s," when in fact it's the Blue Letter Bible which quotes Thayer's (I guess a nobody like Steve Hays knows better than those folks?).

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i) Observe the tertiary source: Dawson quoting the Blue Letter Bible quoting Thayer. Dawson rejects a second-hand source as unreliable (Luke), but replies on a third-hand source to make his own point. And this isn’t the first time he’s done it.

ii) Since when is the Blue Letter Bible a scholarly resource? This is a website that archives the sermons of J. Vernon McGee and Chuck Smith.

It’s highly ironic that Bethrick has so much faith in fundy Bible-thumpers.

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Some of the more humorous points were when Hays quotes a whiny review of Doherty's book from Amazon.com to which Doherty himself responds on his site.

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Notice that Bethrick never gets around to giving us any actual arguments by Doherty.

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And when he offers nothing but that he's insulted in response to the cartoon universe analogy.

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Who said I was insulted? It was meant to be insulting, but to be insulted one would have to take it seriously.

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(In fact, if the cartoon universe analogy is unassailable, that's enough to validate my position.)

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i) Dawson needs to brush up on elementary logic—among other things. All he did was to offer a comparison.

Now, even if the comparison were accurate, drawing a parallel between A and B does nothing to disprove the existence of A.

ii) Furthermore, every argument from analogy is also an argument from disanalogy since an analogy falls short of identity.

So Dawson also needs to show that the A and B are sufficiently analogous such that if B is imaginary, then A is imaginary.

Dawson’s problem is that he’s using an illustration as a substitute for an argument, rather than using it to illustrate an argument.

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The list goes on, too numerous to detail given my time priorities. He's going to need more than one-liners and ridicule to overcome the points I've raised

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There were far more than a few one-liners in my reply to Dawson. There was a point-by-point rebuttal of the major contentions.

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And still Hays nowhere proves that anyone actually saw a resurrected god-man in 1st century Palestine.

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That all depends on how he chooses to define “proof.” What’s the proof that someone in the past saw someone else?

To see someone return from the dead doesn’t call for a different kind of evidence than any other observational datum.

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At most he can appeal to tradition.

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“Tradition” meaning what? The ordinary proof of a historical occurrence is testimonial evidence.

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And rely on obfuscation, just as Christians have been doing for 2,000 years.

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No, the shoe is on the other clay foot. Bethrick is the one whose whole secular apologetic is hinged on systematic obfuscation. He tries to shield his claims from falsification by resorting to all-purpose ambiguity.

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It's not my fault that he's been duped.

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Even if Christians were duped, what difference does it make, in the long wrong, who was duped and who was not?

In the secular footrace, the first man to the finish line dies, and the last man to the finish line dies. If you lose you lose, but if you win you lose. Win or lose—you lose.

So, assuming that Bethrick is right, who cares whether he beats out the competition?

So what if he can run the 3 minute mile and drop dead at the finish line while I can only run a 4 minute mile and drop dead at the finish line?

Since the fruits of victory leave something to be desired, I might as well take my time.

If Dawson is in such a hurry to die first and claim the prize, I’m happy to let him pass me by in the frenetic race to oblivion.

Let him win the gold medal as he rushes headlong in the jaws of death. In this race the first prize is the same as the second prize, and the third prize, and the fourth prize…

In the secular footrace, everyone ends up in a mass grave. A common extinction.

So who am I to deprive him of his precious award? Right or wrong, I can afford to be generous. Right or wrong, he’s just as dead.

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You do realize why they call Christianity a 'faith', don't you?

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What takes real faith is an apostate who thinks that winning and losing still matters in a race to the grave.