- Robbie Taylor
Fred Butler, I've enjoyed Steve hays criticisms very much so . They're spot on.
- Fred Butler
@Robbie so you believe with Steve, ala Keener, that God is working mighty miracles among Catholics and the Bethel Redding cult? God regularly affirms the false teaching of Catholic charismatics and metaphysical cultists with healings and such? wondering...
It's a pity to witness Fred's moral decline.
i) To begin with, observe how he falsely attributes to me a position I explicitly deny. Notice the steps. Fred begins with his own paradigm, according to which the only role of miracles is to affirm teaching.
I reject that premise. I've argued against the claim that the exclusive function of miracles is to attest doctrine.
Fred imputes that paradigm to me, then derives the conclusion that I think God affirms the teaching of cultists. At best, that's taking something I believe, taking something Fred believes, which I reject, then combing these premises, of which (at most) I only affirm one, to yield a conclusion.
Is Fred deliberately cutting corners on the truth? Or is he so hardened in his position that he's lost the capacity to be an ethical disputant on this issue?
ii) In addition, this is become part of Fred's schtick. Keener published a 1050 page monograph on miracles. Fred tries to deflect the force of Keener's cumulative case by picking out some particular examples he thinks are poor examples. For instance, Fred thinks the Bethel Church in Redding is a shaman healing lodge rather than a Christian church.
Suppose Fred is right about that. How does showing that Keener picked a bad example automatically discredit all the other examples? Does Fred imagine that when I refer people to Keener's monograph, that's a blanket endorsement of every single example? Is Fred really that naive when it comes to sifting testimonial evidence?
Logically, each case has its own evidence. Each case is independent of every other case. Logically, you assess each case on the merits.
To take a comparison, must I believe everything Josephus says to believe anything Josephus says? If Josephus gets some things wrong, does that mean Josephus gets everything wrong?
To take another comparison: Alistair McGrath recently published a biography of C. S. Lewis. One of his challenges was to date events in Lewis's life. Lewis was careless about dates. He often got the dates wrong. Does that mean Lewis is a historically worthless source of information regarding his own life? Of course not. The fact that Lewis didn't remember the dates of some events doesn't mean Lewis didn't remember the events.
Fred isn't trying very hard. In fact, Fred's tactic is a tacit admission that he can't deal with most of Keener's examples.
iii) As for Catholic miracles, I've discussed that objection on several occasions:
Fred conveniently ignores the counterargument.
In addition, this reflects an element of duplicity in the MacArthurite position. On the one hand, they say church history falsifies continuationism. They say charismatic miracles don't occur throughout church history. On the other hand, if you cite evidence from the Middle Ages, they discount the evidence because those miracles are too "Catholic."
Well, which is it? Is their demand for evidence sincere or insincere?
When we witness the moral degeneration of good men committed to an indefensible cause, what does that say about their position? If Fred can't defend his position by honest means, what does that tell you?
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