Eight ways evangelicals are driving Americans to atheism

[Jonathan_Burke]

@Eddie

Drop the condescension.

When you ask questions which are explicit acknowledgements of your ignorance, you don’t get to complain about condescension when someone answers your questions and expresses surprise at your ignorance. You keep touting your alleged academic qualifications (which seem to change regularly, and which you can never prove), but your actual statements don’t reflect anything like the learning you claim to have received. This is the point; I have a BA in Classics and a Masters in information management, yet I know more about these subjects than you do.

I don’t believe you have any of the qualifications you claim, and I believe that’s the reason why you conceal your identity, and can’t provide evidence of any of your qualifications or even the name of your college. People who have the kind of education you do, typically don’t write like you. They’ve also published in scholarly literature, they’re well known, and they could hardly conceal their identity if they wanted to. I think you’re a complete fraud.

@Eddie

If you want to address specific points, you may do so. But you are wasting everyone’s time here if you pretend (as you regularly pretended elsewhere) to be an oracle on theology and Biblical scholarship…

On the contrary, unlike you I repeatedly identify the fact that I am not a expert, and do not claim to be “an oracle on theology and Biblical scholarship”.

@Eddie

Yes, I am aware of all of them.

All of them! I doubt it. But let’s pretend you are. Why did you write as if you were ignorant of them?

@Eddie

Yes, I’m fully aware of how much modern Churches have compromised with the principles of the Enlightenment.

So why did you write as if you were ignorant of these shifts?

@Eddie

Yes, I’m fully aware of it. I was studying thnetopsychism back around 1980, when you were either not yet born, or still running around in short pants.

So why did you write as if you were ignorant of these shifts?

@Eddie

It is nothing new that Anglicans rise to high rank in the mainstream Anglican churches with very little commitment to anything like traditional Christian doctrine.

Then why ask questions like " How is this different from any brand of Christian theology?“? You say " I think it would be impossible for church doctrine not to limit the possible conclusions of Biblical scholarship”, but many churches don’t see it this way, and you seem completely ignorant of the fact.

@Eddie

The main thing you miss, of course, is that if all of Christian tradition is negotiable, and the final standard of appeal is the Bible, then Christianity can only hold together if there is broad agreement across denominations and confessions on what the Bible teaches. And there isn’t.

I disagree on two points. Firstly Christianity has held together for centuries despite broad lack of agreement. Secondly mainstream critical scholarship is typically in far more agreement on what the Bible teaches than confessional commentators are.

@Eddie

You would like to believe that there is, and that the “consensus” is pointing in the direction of your own Christadelphian beliefs, but in fact the situation today is virtually anarchic.

No the situation is not virtually anarchic. I really don’t think you are remotely familiar with the current status of critical scholarship. I doubt you’re familiar with any scholarship after 1970. You don’t even use the historical critical method, and you repeatedly speak disparagingly of it.

@Eddie

And indeed, if you understood the trajectory of historical-critical scholarship at the deepest level, you would see that this must be the case, since the very conception of “Bible” with which Calvin and Luther could use as a club with which to beat down the Roman Church is rendered problematic by historical-critical approaches.

So what?

@Eddie

…but in itself it recognizes no limiting principle…

Yes it does.

@Eddie

…dissolving the foundations of Christian thought.

This is a laughable statement, which only exposes your theological fundamentalism.

@Eddie

If you took your historical-critical-inspired skepticism of mainline church tradition to the logical extreme…

Ludicrous slippery slope fallacy.

@Eddie

There is also grovelling servitude to the “consensus” of Biblical scholarship.

Irrelevant tu quoque fallacy. I note you didn’t attempt to address the point.

@Eddie

Christians of all people should be aware of the very worldly motivations which animate the majority of Biblical scholars, including those who are nominally Protestant or Catholic.)

Worldly motivations! Well poisoning fallacy. You’re not only ignorant, you can’t even construct logically coherent arguments. You’re just another run of the mill fundamentalist without any scholarship, or knowledge of the relevant literature, who rejects evolution and whose theology is stuck in the medieval era.