Saturday, December 20, 2008

Mister Ed

I should state at the outset that this post is directed at Ed Babinski, and not his equine namesake. I don’t wish anyone to confuse Babinski with a horse—even a talking-horse—since such a comparison would be quite defamatory to the good name of the equine species, and I intend them no disrespect. Since Ed Babinski often resembles a certain portion of the horse’s anatomy, such confusion is understandable—which is why I hasten to preface my remarks with this disclaimer.

EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:

Steve wrote: "Ed, Care to document your sources?"

Sure, anytime, Steve. Just tell me which things I wrote about Calvin that you feel least comfortable considering, or most comfortable challening me on, and I'll supply the documentation. If you want we could write a joint article on the topic for your blog. I'll simply supply documentation and you rebut each piece I supply, piecemeal, since it's your blog. I just ask that you post the full documentation in context, nothing added or subtracted from what I send you for each question you challenge me on. Then you may reply to it at whatever length you choose. Whether or not people will accept that your explanations are all true and my documentation is all false or of absolutely no consequence, is something I'm willing to leave up to any reader of both sides.


i) I’d begin by noting that, to discredit Calvinism, Babinski must resort to a textbook fallacy. A purely ad hominem, guilt-by-association move. I like it when enemies of the faith must rely on textbook fallacies to attack the faith. That’s very reassuring.

ii) My query wasn’t a challenge to the truth or falsity of anything Babinski said. It’s simply a matter of adhering to some elementary standards of scholarship. If he’s going to make charges, he should document his charges so that we can examine the quality of his evidence.

iii) Babinski has no good reason to disapprove of Calvin’s tactics. Unless he believes in moral absolutes, Babinski is in no position to render a value-judgment on Calvin or Calvinism. How does Babinski’s worldview underwrite moral absolutes? Moreover, his evolutionary viewpoint entails such a reductionistic view of human nature that even if there were such a thing as moral absolutes, meat machines like you and me would have no rights.

I realize it may be tedious to keep harping on this point, but its fundamental, and as long as unbelievers presume to condemn Christians or Christian theology, I’ll remind them that they have no moral foundation for their condemnations.

iv) On a final point, did I ever indicate he said something about Calvin that made me “uncomfortable”? Can Babinski quote me on that? I don’t think so.

I have some news for Babinski: Calvin is not a relative of mine. He’s not my father or brother or son or uncle or nephew or cousin. In fact, I think we could safely say that Calvin was before my time. I wasn’t born in the 16C. Or even the 17C.

Calvin is a perfect stranger to me. Never met the man.

He’s just a famous person, like a lot of other famous people, living and dead. A celebrity. You know, the sort of folks we read about in history books. I don’t feel ashamed of what a perfect stranger does. If he does something wrong, why should I be embarrassed? I

The fact that Babinski thinks that anyone would feel uncomfortable about something a celebrity said or did is a revealing window into Babinski’s odd little mind. Evidently, Babinski is one of those Chris Crocker types who “bonds” with his favorite celebrity. Deeply identifies with the triumphs and tribulations of the bimbo du jour.

Babinski must cry a lot. Maybe there’s a YouTube video clip of his grief-stricken demeanor whenever his favorite celebrity is caught in some scandal. Babinski clearly needs professional counseling to overcome his intensive/compulsive feelings. Perhaps we can take up a PayPal collection.

I can, of course, understand how celebrity worship would fill the emotional void created by his apostasy. Rom 1 and all that good stuff.

~~~~~~~~

Steve also wrote: "While you're on the subject, would you also like to give us a historical overview of life in non-Christian/anti-Christian regimes, such as pagan Assyria, or Japan under the Shogun, or China under Mao, or Russia under Stalin, or Germany under Hitler, or Cambodia under Pol Pot (to cite a few examples)?"

Steve, for the record, Germay under Hitler was filled with Christians who had moved to the right in reaction to the previously more liberal Weimar Republic days of Germany. So the country was moving rightward when Hitler ran for office, and the votes of Christians living in the country was where Hitler scored his biggest gains in votes and that's what got him elected. (The votes in the cities were too close to call among the various candidates.)


If you want to talk about the alleged Christian/Nazi connection, I’ll call your bet and raise you by talking about the Darwinian/Nazi connection:

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/6163

Also, concerning communism and Christianity we could discuss the affinities that religion has with absolutist political ideologies that promise paradise (a worker's paradise in Marx's case) and claims to have the inerrant truth concerning all of history's questions (dialetical materialsm in the case of Marxism). It's also probably no mere coincidence that Maoists varried little red books they had to memorize and carry around like Bibles. See also Eric Hoffer's little book, The True Believer, which relates the psychological affinities b/w people who join religious, fascist, and communist mass revolutionary movements.

In other words, Babinski is reduced to admitting that unbelievers are twisted believers. Their rebellion against the Bible is a just warped form of religiosity. I can go along with that, Ed. Sounds like the Biblical diagnosis of idolatry. Thanks, Ed, for corroborating the Bible.

Leaving such movements aside, let me point out that there are more examples than ever before from much of modern day Europe, Japan, and other first world countries that a high percentage of religious believers does not appear to be necessary for the health of such societies.

i) Of course, modern-day Japan was influenced by the American occupation of Japan. Notice how Babinski runs away from pre-Christian Japan.

ii) And have I ever said that religious believers are necessary for a healthy society? “Religious” as in what? Muslims? Hindus? Wiccans?

Because Babinski is irreligious, he treats one religion as interchangeable with another. I do not.

Such countries have low percentages of religious believers, but high levels of education and vital statistics that are better in many areas than vital stats in the U.S.

Notice that Ed offers no moral criteria for the quality of life. Just college degrees and high life expectancy.

Ted Kaczynski was Harvard-educated. Leni Reifenstahl died at 101. That’s Babinski’s definition of social progress.

(Isn't it a bit ironic that some Evangelical Christians type away tomes on why civilization can't survive without Christianity, on computers invented and manufactured by atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists?)

i) Isn’t it ironic that you know nothing about elementary Christian doctrines like common grace? No doubt your ignorance made it easier for you to commit apostasy.

ii) And did we say that civilization can’t survive without Christianity? Japan survived for a centuries as a vicious, brutal stratocracy.

iii) It’s comical of you to suggest that unbelievers have a monopoly on computer science. That’s really quite droll. You should join the circus.

I could also cite an example nearer Calvin's day, the case of what took place in the Netherlands after Calvin had died but before the Thirty Years War, when relatively liberal Christians (for their day and age) formed the first successful republic in Europe, a place that prospered immensely, with freedom of religion, people of all religions trading equally with one another, and each worshipping as they pleased rather than as a king demanded they all do, and it was even a center for controversial exciting new works to be published from Hobbes to Spinoza, that publishers in other parts of Europe were afraid to publish.

i) Up to a point, I don’t have a problem with freedom of religion. On the other hand, if a Muslim migrates to the West, bringing with him such pious customs as jihad, sharia, honor-killings, child marriage, female circumcision, &c., then there are limits to my tolerance.

ii) I also find it amusing to see you pose as a champion of religious freedom when so many of your cohorts try to persecute Christian expression.

But here's what happened to this first success republic in Europe, what happened was that conservative Calvinists despised the prosperity that their fellows were enjoying under this experiment in a republican form of government and these Calvinists plotted with Catholics to reinstall a kingship which they deemed more godly than a republic, because they thought it was more important for a nation to fear God than gain in prosperity, and they hated that the Dutch East India Trading Company was not striving to make Christian converts out of everyone they hired and met in Asia.

In other words, you attack “these Calvinists” because they’d rather save souls than guilders. If only they’d been more venal and materialistic, you’d commend them. But because they put evangelism ahead of filthy lucre, you disapprove.

Hence the first successful republic in Europe was undone by conservative Calvinists. Though of course the Netherlands is back to being liberal today, and a republic. Calvinism just doesn't last so far as governmental systems go. Geneva today is over 40% Catholic and they erected at least one (I've read more than one) statue to Servetus, even naming a local football team after him. And Calvin's Academy is likewise more liberal than it was when he founded it.

i) Considering the fact that secular Europe is committing demographic suicide, you might need to adjust your actuarial charts.

ii) I don’t care that much about process issues. What matters to me is not so much the political process, but the end-product. A process is just a means to an end, not an end in itself.

iii) You also ignore the role of Calvinists like Calvin, Knox, and Rutherford in challenging absolute monarchy.

Puritanism in Britain and in the U.S. likewise lost it vigor. Such systems just don't hold up.

Do you apply the same yardstick to secular systems like communism and socialism?

Human creativity, curiosity and questions undo them all. Harvard was quite conservative religiously, then the questions began entering there, and Yale was founded in reaction to Harvard's loosening of its conservative orthodox heritage. Now look at Yale.

This is so olde hatte. Do you think you’re telling me or anyone else something we haven’t heard before? In the meantime, you disregard the rise of new Christian institutions of higher learning.

Schools of the highest caliber attracting professors and students of the highest caliber for two centuries or more, do not remain as conservative in their religious beliefs as when they first began.

Actually, the Ivy Leagues are chockfull of politically correct quackery.

You know about Westminster Theological Seminary?

Gee, Ed, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that place. What do they sell? Lingerie? Fried chicken?

Van Til taught there.

Van Til? Doesn’t ring a bell. Is that a brand of cheese—like Gouda, Leerdammer, and Limburger?

Founded by Machen who left Princeton Theological Seminary (home of B.B. Warfield, but by Machen's day Princeton Theol. Sem. had grown too liberal, so the fundamentalists left Princeton to found Westminster Theological Seminary.

Thanks, Ed, for your first grader’s grasp of American Presbyterian history.

Today Westminster is having difficulties with professor Peter Enns and his book, Inspiration and Incarnation and the faculty's endorsement of him staying, but the administration told him to git gone because they don't approve of his broadening of the definition of inerrancy.

You know, Ed, for a computer savvy library, you’re remarkably ignorant of facts in the public record. If you bothered to mouse over to the website of WTS, and go to “Official Theological Documents,” you could learn in a hurry that opposition to Enns wasn’t limited to the administration. There was substantial opposition to Enns from his colleagues.

And there's Paul Seely, a graduate of Westminster Theol. Semn., and his book the inerrancy question that nearly destroyed Glenn Morton's Christian faith. Seely also expressed himself with such aplomb and conducted such massive research in a few papers that they were published in the journal of Westminster Theol. Seminary, papers outlining why the creation stories are those of a flat-earth believing culture, and that the tower of Babel story is likewise probably mythical.

Considering the fact that I personally debated Seely, your appeal leaves me less than overwhelmed. His performance was less aplomb and more of a bomb.

I'd chalk up Seely and Enns as having had too much contact with the full range and depth of bibilical scholarship in the outside world.

Once again, Ed, this is yet another illustration of your studied ignorance. There’s no dearth of evangelical seminaries out there committed to the inerrancy of Scripture—whose OT faculty is quite conversant with comparative Semitics. They’ve studied with the leading figures in the field.

So in future I'd expect Westminster to also be considered too "liberal" by some Calvinists who go off to try and found another little retreat from modern scholarship.

Ed, you’re the one, in your pitifully demonstrable ignorance of who’s who, that’s on a little retreat from modern scholarship. But thanks for making a public fool of yourself, and the cause you so disably represent.

14 comments:

  1. I have a request (I know you Triabloguers ignore most requests, but this is a good one and I really would like a response).

    The uber intellectual Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, who is an atheist, wrote a post at secularright.org (a Wordpress blog) that she retracted four hours later. I tracked down the original post. It was about a girl in a church who fell to her death acting in a play. Here is the post Heather M. deleted:

    * * *
    And They Probably Didn’t Say Happy Holidays, Either

    December 20th, 2008 - Heather Mac Donald

    An actress playing one of the three wise men tragically fell to her death while suspended over the stage during a Cincinnati Christmas pageant Wednesday night. According to my stepmother, God sends his angels to hold up the retaining wall of her Los Angeles house in answer to her prayers. Her angels couldn’t have gone out on loan? Secular Right sends its condolences to the victim’s family.
    * * *

    Now, as stated, Heather retracted the post four hours later and wrote this:

    * * *
    My Error

    December 20th, 2008 - Heather Mac Donald

    I regret having written an insensitive post on a recent tragedy in Cincinnati. It was an egregious failure of judgment for which I take full responsibility.
    * * *

    My question is two-fold: is this atheist showing a twinge of conscience? I've read on that blog that atheists don't believe in conscience.

    But my other question is: how should one answer this common provocation from atheists about unanswered prayers and generally why didn't angels (or God or prayer) save this person if they saved that person and so on. I could answer it in three long paragraphs, but what would the short response be?

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  2. >"In other words, Babinski is reduced to admitting that unbelievers are twisted believers. Their rebellion against the Bible is a just warped form of religiosity. I can go along with that, Ed. Sounds like the Biblical diagnosis of idolatry. Thanks, Ed, for corroborating the Bible."

    I wish I'd had this comeback to use before I was banned at the secularright.org blog.

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  3. "Jesus Camp" is another one they draw on and reference quite frequently.

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  4. (Isn't it a bit ironic that some Evangelical Christians type away tomes on why civilization can't survive without Christianity, on computers invented and manufactured by atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists?)

    Man, I wish I would have been told this before I went and got my EE degree and was at the top of my class. Should have told the guys I studied with too, deluded evangelicals killing the curve for the non-Christians.

    The connection between Christians using atheistic computer engineers could be reversed to non-theists using the printing press post Gutenberg.

    I'm going to go outside and bang some rocks together.

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  5. Also, they say when God restores an amputated limb, as a response to prayer, then they (the atheist) will believe. Etc.

    ps- I know these are all very old and common things atheists say and that Christian apologists have responded to zillions of times, but it occured to me that when I responded to the atheists at secularright.org on the unanswered prayers thing I found myself giving them a too long tutorial on what prayer is, biblically, and so on, and I was wondering if there is a pithy response.

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  6. And didn't the military play a foundational role in developing the internet? And isn't the military traditionally made up of like 99.999 percent Christians?

    Still, the more relevant response is the fact that the Reformation brought liberty to pursue science and discovery and invention. Atheists generally are parasites on Christian civilization and culture (like the example of the Soviet Union 'inventing' everything Americans just developed).

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  7. Steve -- I have a practical question based on something you said.

    i) Up to a point, I don’t have a problem with freedom of religion. On the other hand, if a Muslim migrates to the West, bringing with him such pious customs as jihad, sharia, honor-killings, child marriage, female circumcision, &c., then there are limits to my tolerance.

    How does anyone begin to put legal limits on certain "religiously-based" types of behaviors. (Some time ago I heard a radio program, where a largely Muslim community in the Detroit area wanted to broadcast a "call to prayer" at certain times each day, over a public address system, and there was an uproar. I don't even recall what happened, but there were people arguing on both sides of the issue).

    This was a local question. What if the Muslim community in that particular locale were to have enough votes to permit such a broadcast, for example?

    I guess a larger, related issue is, what's to be done in that "secular Europe is committing demographic suicide"? Just continue to watch that happen?

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  8. JOHN BUGAY SAID:

    “How does anyone begin to put legal limits on certain ‘religiously-based’ types of behaviors. (Some time ago I heard a radio program, where a largely Muslim community in the Detroit area wanted to broadcast a ‘call to prayer’ at certain times each day, over a public address system, and there was an uproar. I don't even recall what happened, but there were people arguing on both sides of the issue).__This was a local question. What if the Muslim community in that particular locale were to have enough votes to permit such a broadcast, for example?”

    There are any number of things the public could do. The question is whether it has the political will do to it.

    At present, the political will is lacking. If, however, Islamic terrorism revives in the US, the political climate might rapidly and radically change.

    “I guess a larger, related issue is, what's to be done in that ‘secular Europe is committing demographic suicide’? Just continue to watch that happen?”

    At the moment, watching it happen is about all we can do. It’s their funeral.

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  9. Steve: "If, however, Islamic terrorism revives in the US, the political climate might rapidly and radically change."

    Change? In which direction?

    As a Christian whose identity is in Christ, and not in politics, but who still tracks political and socio-cultural trends, I pray that the U.S. doesn't follow the EU's lead when it comes to Islamic terrorism. The EU are appeasers and accommodaters and enablers who have rehabilitated Neville Chamberlain into a hero figure and leader.

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  10. Hi Steve,

    I stuck with discussing Calvin and Calvinism in Geneva in my original blog comment, since the subject was one of Calvin's arguments in favor of the death penalty for heresy/blasphemy. But your new blog post seeks to ignore the topic which was quite specific by bringing up a multitude of side subjects.

    If you want to discuss what I wrote about Calvin and Geneva, let's discuss it, I offered to do so with references cited. But apparently you wish to cut off all discussion before it even begins.

    For instance you bring up moral absolutes, but just because something is written in the Bible doesn't automatically make it an absolute. Neither does the Bible forbid adults from marrying what many states today consider to be children, nor prevent people from owning slaves, having sex with slaves (Yahweh blessed the patriarchs by multiplying their slaves or blessing them with many slaves), stoning people for a variety of offenses we would not today, even committing genocide, and what do inerrantists say? Is it because all such actions and commands from God depend on the circumstances back then? So if you blame non-Christians for "situational ethics," I suspect you might want to first consider the beam in your own Bible's eye.

    Humanity has also been making laws since before the first book of the Bible was even written. That makes me suspect that ethics are based on shared feelings and recognitions of what we love and hate as social beings, i.e., shared feelings and recognitions of what constitutes physical and psychological pain. Who is eager to have their lives taken away at some other person's whim? Or have their goods stolen at another person's whim? Hence laws arose, at first within the in-group, and then later such laws were considered universals.

    In contrast, an authoritarian view of ethics that you propose, merits no further discussion, except for biblical exegesis, and we know how well that turns out. Calvin and Reconstructionists have suggested via their exegesis that stoning is appropriate even today and should become government law once a majority of Calvinist Reconstructionist Christians are in power. (But if you have some Reconstructionist Calvinist friends who want to go form their own nation somewhere based on such exegesis, not that your exegesis is the same as theirs, then I hope they have fun in their Christian paradise.

    As for me, I'll take the First Amendment, freedom of religion, over the First Commandment, "thou shalt have no other gods before me," any day. And most Americans I know would agree with me in that choice.

    I think we have enough knowledge to get along, enough practical moral wisdom from all the world's religions and philosophies, but as for absolutes of dogma and doctrines, they seem to separate people, including Christian against Christian, what with over 45,000 different Christian denominations, sects and missionary organizations in the world today. I've read about Protestant churches splitting twice in one young person's lifetime. I'm not saying Christianity is more or less divisive than other views, just that I don't see any magical absolutistic answers to a lot of questions. But I do see that we have enough basic recognitions that we share as human beings to come to agreement concerning basic laws between human beings. It's the O.T. laws about worshiping God that we disagree most about.

    Now... this Calvin question that I originally brought up was simply to say that he was not the father of tolerance, but defended and advocated for the execution of heretics. There were, however other Christians who lived back then, unaffiliated with either Lutheranism or Calvinism or Catholicism, Christians whom Calvin despised, and these outlying Christians these individualistic renegades were the fathers of religious tolerance, perhaps because they were on the outskirts, having no power or influence over magistrates or kings and had to often keep their beliefs secret for fear of being tried for heresy. That was the point I was making. And I will gladly discuss that topic along with Calvin's views and actions in trying to get such people executed, the very people who advocated for freedom of conscience and who were truly ahead of their time in doing so.

    Lastly, I have never professed atheism, nor any sort of doctrinal dogmatic theism. I am simply a person with more questions than answers. But that is not unusual because there are also Christians with more questions than you.

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  11. EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:

    “Hi Steve,__I stuck with discussing Calvin and Calvinism in Geneva in my original blog comment, since the subject was one of Calvin's arguments in favor of the death penalty for heresy/blasphemy. But your new blog post seeks to ignore the topic which was quite specific by bringing up a multitude of side subjects. __If you want to discuss what I wrote about Calvin and Geneva, let's discuss it, I offered to do so with references cited. But apparently you wish to cut off all discussion before it even begins.”

    No, what you attempted to do was to discredit Calvinism in general by expressing your disapproval of Calvin’s regime in Geneva.

    Since I reject your framework, I have no reason to respond to you on those terms. The truth or falsity of Calvinism doesn’t hinge on whether or not we agree with the way in which Calvin’s administration.

    Because you don’t have a real argument, you resort to guilt-by-association. If you really want to argue at that level, then I can construct a parallel argument, discrediting atheism or agnosticism by citing the misconduct of celebrated representatives like Bertrand Russell or the Marquis de Sade.

    “For instance you bring up moral absolutes, but just because something is written in the Bible doesn't automatically make it an absolute.”

    A straw man argument. Calvinism traditionally distinguishes between the moral, civil, and ceremonial law.

    “Neither does the Bible forbid adults from marrying what many states today consider to be children, nor prevent people from owning slaves, having sex with slaves (Yahweh blessed the patriarchs by multiplying their slaves or blessing them with many slaves), stoning people for a variety of offenses we would not today, even committing genocide, and what do inerrantists say? Is it because all such actions and commands from God depend on the circumstances back then? So if you blame non-Christians for ‘situational ethics,’ I suspect you might want to first consider the beam in your own Bible's eye.”

    i) It’s monumentally stupid of you to raise this objection when, if you’d bothered to monitor my blogging over the years, you’d be aware of the fact that I’ve already addressed these charges in great detail.

    ii) And it’s a diversionary tactic on your part since pointing out alleged difficulties in my position does nothing to rectify the difficulties in your own position.

    “Humanity has also been making laws since before the first book of the Bible was even written.”

    Since I doubt you approve of all the legal injunctions in pre-Biblical law codes like Hammurabi, your historical appeal undercuts your own position.

    “That makes me suspect that ethics are based on shared feelings and recognitions of what we love and hate as social beings, i.e., shared feelings and recognitions of what constitutes physical and psychological pain.”

    i) If you think that morality is reducible to feelings, then you have no basis for moral discrimination since you can’t distinguish between licit and illicit feelings. A pedophile has feelings. So did Jeffrey Dahmer. And the Marquis de Sade.

    ii) You need to show that the gratuitous infliction of physical and psychological pain is morally wrong. Where’s your argument, Ed?

    “Who is eager to have their lives taken away at some other person's whim? Or have their goods stolen at another person's whim?”

    Your pragmatic appeal cuts both ways. Cheating is a way of getting ahead. Crime can be very lucrative.

    It’s a calculated risk, but life is short, and if this life is the only life there is, then there are many situations in which a cost/benefit analysis would favor criminal activity as long as a crook is clever enough to cover his tracks.

    Many military dictators enjoy a lavish lifestyle. They rose to the top of the heap by assassinating their political opponents.

    Why should an unbeliever care about the common good? He has no long-term investment in the future, for he has no long-term future. In the end, we’re all dead. So why not be a mugger or looter?

    “Hence laws arose, at first within the in-group, and then later such laws were considered universals.”

    i) That’s an evolutionary just-so story. Where’s the evidence for your etiological fable?

    ii) Even if your just-so story were true, a historical description of what people have done in the past (or present) is no argument for what they ought to do or refrain from doing. Morality is not about the status quo, but about the way things should be.

    “In contrast, an authoritarian view of ethics that you propose, merits no further discussion, except for biblical exegesis, and we know how well that turns out. Calvin and Reconstructionists have suggested via their exegesis that stoning is appropriate even today and should become government law once a majority of Calvinist Reconstructionist Christians are in power. (But if you have some Reconstructionist Calvinist friends who want to go form their own nation somewhere based on such exegesis, not that your exegesis is the same as theirs, then I hope they have fun in their Christian paradise.”

    Is your objection to stoning an objection to capital punishment in general, or an objection to a particular method of capital punishment?

    I support the death penalty. The method of execution is secondary.

    “As for me, I'll take the First Amendment, freedom of religion, over the First Commandment, ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ any day. And most Americans I know would agree with me in that choice.”

    That’s rhetorical sophistry, Ed. Not a serious argument. You’re playing to the galleries, like a good demagogue.

    “I think we have enough knowledge to get along, enough practical moral wisdom from all the world's religions and philosophies.”

    History torpedoes your bubble-gummy optimism.

    “But as for absolutes of dogma and doctrines, they seem to separate people, including Christian against Christian, what with over 45,000 different Christian denominations, sects and missionary organizations in the world today.”

    That’s a simple-minded analysis.

    “I've read about Protestant churches splitting twice in one young person's lifetime.”

    Which is pretty harmless.

    “I'm not saying Christianity is more or less divisive than other views, just that I don't see any magical absolutistic answers to a lot of questions.”

    A straw man argument. The point at issue is not whether the Bible has answers for every question we can pose. Rather, the point at issue is whether the Bible has the answers we need to discharge our responsibilities to God.

    “But I do see that we have enough basic recognitions that we share as human beings to come to agreement concerning basic laws between human beings.”

    There is no historical basis for your wishful thinking.

    “It's the O.T. laws about worshiping God that we disagree most about.”

    Well, Ed. that assumes you think it’s possible to correctly interpret the Bible. You can’t very well object to OT laws unless you know what they mean. So you concede the practical possibility of correctly interpreting the Bible. In that case, your appeal to Christian sectarianism is at odds with your confident, albeit derogatory, appeal to the Bible.

    “Now... this Calvin question that I originally brought up was simply to say that he was not the father of tolerance, but defended and advocated for the execution of heretics.”

    That was never in dispute. And I’d add that Dennett, Dawkins, and Sam Harris are quite intolerant, too. So were Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot.

    “And I will gladly discuss that topic along with Calvin's views and actions in trying to get such people executed.”

    Since I already indicated my disagreement with Calvin on the execution of heretics, there’s nothing to discuss.

    “I am simply a person with more questions than answers.”

    Spare me the innocent routine. You are a militant apostate with an anti-Christian agenda. You are determined to destroy the thing you once believed in.

    It’s not a case of your having more questions than answers. You think that Christianity gives the wrong answers.

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  12. Hi Ed and Steve,

    The angels are celebrating the one lost sheep that has been found. Here's an excerpt:

    "Three years ago, I promoted and appeared in the atheist documentary “The God Who Wasn’t There,” dedicated to the proposition that Jesus never existed.

    TODAY I DEDICATE THIS SITE AND MY LIFE TO THE WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST."

    From a site that used to be called The Raving Atheist.

    Praise God for His Bountiful Mercy and Grace and Love!!!

    May the same happen for Edward Babinski!!!

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  13. Hi Steve,

    You began your post by jokingly connecting my first name with a talking horse, "Mr. Ed." I might point out your name is Hays, and horses eat hays and pass them out their rear end. Or would you appreciate a post in which I called you "Steve Haze" based on your ability to obfuscate?

    You take things so personally, as if simply pointing out Calvin's extreme views of how Christians ought to manage society is to attack both you and God and be labeled an anti-Christian. I am a non-Christian and explain why. You are a non-agnostic and explain why. Let's leave it at that.

    You may interpret history as you like, but I remain willing to share with you actual cases from Geneva that you probably have not read about before because I have not seen them mentioned in most books on Calvin sold in Evangelical Christian bookstores, though some Catholics like Dave Armstrong and his pro-Catholic website are aware of some such cases and have composed articles about them in order to even out the history of Catholic crimes with Calvinist and Lutheran ones.

    My point which you appear to have missed (or grown Hazy about) is that Calvin was the founder of the school of biblical interpretation you believe in most highly. And you agree that Calvin was an intense student of the Bible and had a faith in God like unto your own in prayer and devotion. Yet he concluded after a lifetime of Bible study that the state needs to abide by harsh Mosaic laws if it is to please and honor God.
    That was Calvin's conclusion. Now you can say he didn't interpret the Bible correctly in this respect, and hence admit that either his studies of the Bible in these areas were faulty or in vain (while simultaneously claiming his studies of the Bible in all other areas were unquestionably true); or you can admit that the Bible itself did not speak clearly enough for Calvin to recognize what it was saying, not even after a lifetime of studying the Bible.

    I also pointed out that there were Christians (including heretics) who lived during Calvins' day who disagreed with Calvin on how Christian magistrates ought to act in terms of blasphemy, adultery, punishing children, witches, members of diverse Christian sects, and Jews, yet both Calvin and Beza in Geneva denied that the Bible could be interpreted so liberally.

    What blinded Calvin to a more liberal interpretation? And what opened the eyes of some of Calvin's contemporaries (including heretics) to more liberal interpretations?

    A difficulty that has remained a difficulty since both the O.T. and N.T. were written is that Jesus' commandments concentrated on individual salvation while Moses's laws concentrated on how to maintain a nation that was pleasing to God, avoiding God's curses. Today's reconstructionist Christians likewise follow Calvin and his biblical interpretations concerning which social laws are most pleasing to God and will bless a nation and avoid God's curses.

    But like I said, most people in the U.S. agree instead on the validity of the first amendment rather than the first commandment.

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  14. EDWARD T. BABINSKI SAID:

    “You take things so personally, as if simply pointing out Calvin's extreme views of how Christians ought to manage society is to attack both you and God and be labeled an anti-Christian.”

    You were the one you chose to personalize this, both by trying to frame it in term of my “comfort” level with Calvin’s social policies, as well as your attempt to discredit Reformed theology in the person of Calvin.

    I was merely answering you on your own level. If you don’t like that, then change the level at which you choose to pitch your argument.

    “You may interpret history as you like, but I remain willing to share with you actual cases from Geneva that you probably have not read about before because I have not seen them mentioned in most books on Calvin sold in Evangelical Christian bookstores, though some Catholics like Dave Armstrong and his pro-Catholic website are aware of some such cases and have composed articles about them in order to even out the history of Catholic crimes with Calvinist and Lutheran ones.”

    You keep trying to impose on me a frame of reference which I reject. History is descriptive rather than normative. The point at issue is not how I interpret history with reference to Calvin’s time in Geneva. The point, rather, is that a historical framework is irrelevant to the normative question of where the truth lies. It simply tells us what people did, not what they should have done or refrained from doing.

    Your standard isn’t my standard. Moreover, you’re quite selective about your historical standard, since you don’t apply the same standard to secular regimes.

    Therefore, you’re committing the dual error of (a) trying to impose on me a standard I reject while simultaneously (b) failing to live up to the standard you do accept.

    “My point which you appear to have missed (or grown Hazy about) is that Calvin was the founder of the school of biblical interpretation you believe in most highly. And you agree that Calvin was an intense student of the Bible and had a faith in God like unto your own in prayer and devotion. Yet he concluded after a lifetime of Bible study that the state needs to abide by harsh Mosaic laws if it is to please and honor God. _That was Calvin's conclusion. Now you can say he didn't interpret the Bible correctly in this respect, and hence admit that either his studies of the Bible in these areas were faulty or in vain (while simultaneously claiming his studies of the Bible in all other areas were unquestionably true); or you can admit that the Bible itself did not speak clearly enough for Calvin to recognize what it was saying, not even after a lifetime of studying the Bible.”

    I have often discussed my hermeneutical approach—especially in dealing with Catholic and Orthodox believers. Likewise, I have often discussed my position on theonomy. You’re not raising any new issues that I haven’t already covered in detail on multiple occasions.

    “But like I said, most people in the U.S. agree instead on the validity of the first amendment rather than the first commandment.”

    Most folks in the U.S. also reject naturalistic evolution. But I don’t find you appealing to popular opinion on that score.

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