In Reply to: Re: Atheists for Jesus posted by Farmer on August 02, 2010 at 09:55:31:
Farmer:
Well put.
As I have mentioned before, I have had many apologetics-related personal conversations with my stepfather, an 83-year-old (but still quite sharp!) retired Dean at a prestigious Ivy League college, and also a tenured former Philosophy prof, there, with a specialty in comparative religions.
He is a "Timothy Leary come lately" of sorts, who got my Mom to drop acid with him in their late forties, and to travel to both Mumbai, India and London, England in search of the "perfect" yoga ashram, when both he and my Mom were exploring semi-Westernized Hinduism (a BIG product/service in Mumbai!
They keep spiritual tourists away from some of the more obviously demonic/”Black Art” aspects of the extremely well-documented, extant manuscript-based stuff like the cannibalistic River Ganges cults, Shiva worship, etc.
I got a BUNCH of Christians to help pray them out of ALL that big mess!
If you watch him speak/teach [to] a group of more than one, it is obvious that he honed his oratorical skills as a professor. His questions can be quite pseudo-Socratic in nature, taking advantage of much, much younger intellects unskilled in the finer points of debate (like the endless barrage of rather pointless, or even deviously designed questions, of simply running out of time in any given venue. It’s a very sneaky “art”).
It’s humorous to watch, when you’re aware of the tactics(such as QE’s).
I have also caught him, quite frequently, and he will admit it when I do, asking question upon question, with the intention of wearing out a debate opponent, and winning for winning’s sake, alone, which questions are armed quite skillfully with specifically intended implications and insinuations, as well as even feigned “innocence” and even vehement protest when caught doing so.
In other words, he cheats philosophically, because he usually CAN (not with me, anymore, now that I have learned his devious tactics over the years, as if he were involved in a game).
He is also a formidable Poker player; by the way, as well as an extremely skilled Backgammon and Chess player, who ALWAYS considers himself the “smartest guy I the room”; bar none. He cannot beat me anymore at ANY game, much to his chagrin—but we both enjoy it in good fun.
My Mom finds it hard to not attack me verbally, for his sake—he is very much her idol in the worst sense; sorry to say.
He is NOT an anti-supernaturalist. He is categorically a pantheist/panentheist, but when he is given an “explosive” idea from a theist’s point of view (mine), and realizes the weakness/illogicality of his position, he does a very Orwellian thing—only pantheist “newspeak” is allowed in his theodicy, and his most common tactic is an endless barrage of questions, all the while intentionally avoiding ever answering opposing questions or statements, or any of their implications.
He implies, dishonestly and pretentiously, God love him, that he has NO burden of proof, while the ENTIRE weight of that consideration rests ENTIRELY on his opponent—and he NEVER ADMITS that his “arms are too short to box with God” (Romans 1:20)-he will admit no defeat even when he is obviously defeated.
And I love him, and will continue to do so, as God allows opportunity to reason with him concerning the Gospel. And he went to a liberal seminary, and came out “smarter than God”, as I have written before.
He has NO refutations for carefully-constructed ontological methodology asserting the inevitability of Judeo-Christian theism (like that of fellow Professor Alvin Plantinga), nor for the validity of approaching the basic tenets of Scripture, letting it speak for itself, or dealing with ANY lifelong ongoing truly experiential and revelational knowledge, experienced over lifetimes by millions of people in history.
He cheats there, too. That would take a much longer post to describe.
But at least he agrees with me that no atheist/agnostic (i.e.: “NOT Gnostic”, or a-gnostic, as the original coiner of the word, Aldous Huxley termed it) has EVER accessed the pretended set of actual data that so many atheists feign that they have, actually PROVING ANY aspect of atheism, with the pretense that they alone occupy a position of even minor proof.
Atheism is itself a religion of anti-religion, as Pastor Don implied, exhibiting TOTAL philosophical dishonesty and utter logical weakness, and is a circular argumentation as a whole, containing a false premise and an incomplete middle as a make-believe content—it literally has nothing to honestly say; philosophically—at least we agree on that—honesty must prevail.
Got to go!
‘Later!
OT2