Dialog 3 - Round 1

From Johnny 2/20/05

Hi Brady,

Thanks for your e-mail. You said "I am even willing to allow you to pick the methodology and baseline, as long as they follow the four basic guidelines outlined in my paper. Allow me to repeat them here for completeness.

Johnny: And herein lies my objection. The words "as long as" tell the tale. Your requirements are unreasonable. In all of the public and private debates between Christians and skeptics that I know of, for the most part there is no "as long as" except regarding politeness and the size of the posts. Other requirements have nothing to do with limiting the methodology of the participants. Such being the case, there has to be an underlying motive behind your unusual approach. I may have just figured it out. Part of your income is derived from donations. If you look good to donors in your debates, the donations will keep coming. If you don't look good to donors, that would result in less financial support for you, or at least less financial support for your ministry if you don't get any money personally.

You are confident of your abilities, but if you allow me to debate as I wish, you will soon see that the deck is only rigged in your favor if you get to make up all of the rules. You have probably heard of Dr. Robert Price. He is a past member of the Jesus Seminar and he has his own web site.He has given me a number of compliments regarding my writings and my Style of debating. Regarding one of my new approaches to debating Christians that has proven to be quite successful against Christians at the Theology Web, and an approach that I will use against you if we have a debate, Bob said "Wow! Who else but you would have come up with such a novel and effective approach to debating Christians?" A friend of mine is a college professor. He has two masters degrees, one in philosophy and one in humanities. He has an IQ of 173, and he scored 1560 out of 1600 on his college board exams, including a perfect score in the verbal portion. He told me that a gifted amateur like me doesn't come along very often. I only have a high school education. You also may have heard of Marilyn Savant. She has a weekly question and answer column in Sunday's Parade magazine. Marliyn has an IQ of 230, and is in the Guiness Book of World Records. Her stated policy is to not make personal replies, but she sent me two personal replies. In one reply she asked me for my permission to use my name and parts of my essay on free will in a possible future column. I gave her my permission. She hasn't yet used parts of my essay, but even if she never does, I was thrilled to get a very unusual reply from her. Her other reply involved a question to readers regarding the undisclosed location of a sign. The object was to find the location of the sign using the information that she provided. She printed the first correct answer in her column that was the quickest and easiest solution. I was a week late with my solution, but Marilyn liked it so much that she sent me a personal reply and said "Interesting solution!," and then went on to tell me why she liked my solution, which was in fact better than the solution that she printed. She didn't print my solution because I sent it to her to late, but I was still thrilled to get a second reply from her. I have only been a skeptic for about six years. When I debated you, I guess it was a couple of years ago, I didn't have nearly the experience that I do now. The Theology Web is a good place for skeptics to learn how to debate Christians. When I first started debating there several years ago, I didn't do very well due to a lack of experience, but over time I got a lot better. I have started over 50 topics, called threads, and I have gotten a number of withdrawals from Christians, but never any compliments. I can promise you that I now have an approach that you will have difficulty successfully dealing with. Since you have financial donors, you might feel that your future income, or the future income of your ministry, is at risk. Since I don't have any financial donors, and since I don't need any, I am not at risk except for the possibility that I will do poorly in debates, a risk that I am more than willing to take. It appears that you are not willing to take a risk, hence your unreasonable rules. If such is the case, then just say so and I will be on my way. There is plenty of competition available elsewhere, and no other Christians will seek to limit my style of debate like you are trying to do. As long as I am polite, which I am, I deserve to be allowed to debate however I want to debate. The Apostle Paul most certainly did not put any restrictions on the skeptics who he debated. Neither should you. If God is really on your side, and if you are actually well-prepared, you should have no obejctions to allowing me to debate as I wish. The Old Testament says that David was confident that he could defeat Goliath with only a few small stones and a sling. Are you as confident as David supposedly was? Obviously not. I doubt that you would allow your readers to read this e-mail.

Well, that's all for now. Let me know what you want to do.

Johnny

From Brady 2/20/05

I wrote in a previous post: "I am even willing to allow you to pick the methodology and baseline, as long as they follow the four basic guidelines outlined in my paper. Allow me to repeat them here for completeness.

Johnny responded: And herein lies my objection. The words "as long as" tell the tale. Your requirements are unreasonable. In all of the public and private Debates between Christians and skeptics that I know of, for the most part there is no "as long as" except regarding politeness and the size of the posts. Other requirements have nothing to do with limiting the methodology of the participants. Such being the case, there has to be an underlying motive behind your unusual approach.

The four guidelines I outlined were nothing more than four of the most popular logical fallacies used by atheist when discussing the resurrection. You find it unreasonable that you are required to work within the rules of inductive and deductive logic. How can it be “unreasonable” to require participants to follow the rules of reason? Which of the fallacies were you planning to use? I find that interesting. Is this your “new” approach? Most atheists at least try to hide the fact that they committed a fallacy. Is your new approach to just come out and admit you are committing fallacies? Well, regardless of whether you are going to readily admit it or try to hide it, a fallacy is still a fallacy and if your argument(s) rely on fallacies, then you are already admitting my thesis is true. Once again, my thesis is: The only rational position is to affirm the Resurrection of Jesus. To rely on fallacies is by definition not rational, ergo you concede the point. You might want to rethink this.

Johnny wrote: there has to be an underlying motive behind your unusual approach. I may have just figured it out. Part of your income is derived from donations. If you look good to donors in your debates, the donations will keep coming. If you don't look good to donors, that would result in less financial support for you, or at least less financial support for your ministry if you don't get any money personally.

Well, here is another fallacy. This is a non-sequitur. In other words there is no connection between my argument for the resurrection and your above statement. Why is that? Because my argument will either have a cogent and strong conclusion based on the logic and the evidence or it will not. It is that simple and completely objective to anyone reading it that has any knowledge of the rules of inductive logic (rules you don’t seem to want to follow).

Johnny wrote: You have probably heard of Dr. Robert Price. He is a past member of the Jesus Seminar and he has his own web site. He has given me a number of compliments regarding my writings and my Style of debating…

Same as above. It doesn’t matter what these people say about you. Your conclusions either follow the rules of logic and the evidence or they don’t. Don’t waste my time telling me who thinks you are the cat’s meow; show me a rational argument or concede the point. So far, all you’ve done is tell the world you don’t want to be limited by those “unreasonable” rules of reason (logic).