Old Testament - Rebuttal

Daniel's Rebuttal
I really have to sincerely apologize to everyone. The quality of the blogs have been dropping. It just gets worse and worse every single week. If you’re just joining us recently, I’ll catch you up on what’s going on.

Daniel is out on a mission: to disparage Christians and Christianity. His agenda is to make a caricature of what Jesus stood for and what Christians believe and he’s willing to pretty much go to any lengths in order to fulfill that agenda. It’s interesting, however, that he really doesn't like being called out on this. He whines complains and when we regurgitate his own words right back at him. Strange isn't it? Let me give you a nice example. He brings up how I use the fallacy known as appeal to emotion. Now if you really do read the blogs you will notice that at the end, he brings up the problem of evil. He accuses me of using a fallacy that he then uses himself. "...the idea of a character that sits idly by, throwing earthquake after earthquake at innocent people, allowing innocent people to be raped, and killing those who haven't died from the first two horrors by giving them AIDS, cancer, and malaria...the idea of that character having the ability to stop all these atrocities yet choose not to is insulting to their families and loved ones." Since we're talking about the fallacies that Daniel loves to point out and then use some himself, I'll even give some more fallacies that he uses. Argument from Fallacy Most Common Fallacy

Daniel employs pretty much every trick under the sun. He can’t argue based on true Scripture alone, so he twists it and takes it out of context (it gets so bad sometimes, that he takes verses from two different books of the Bible at one point) and then declares that it’s self-evident that these verses prove his point. Really the only thing that’s self-evident is that Daniel will misuse and misinterpret to the point of absurdity to further push his narrative and agenda that Christians are brainless morons. 

Daniel says that he wants this blog to be as logical and rational as possible yet he completely flips around his own role. He’s the one with the burden of evidence and all we need to do is point out “one simple error”, not vice versa. In a courtroom, the defense does not have to provide anything, nor does it need to make the argument for the prosecution. If the prosecution holds up a knife and says “this knife proves that the defendant is guilty!” and then sits down, all the defense needs to do is to stand up and say “No.” The jury will go with the defense.

And that’s what is happening here. Daniel is failing and he’s seeking to blame everything and anything. He says that by pointing out his goals and mission to equate Christians with Nazis, we essentially make an appeal to emotion and set a trap… Which… I suppose is true (I don’t know what he means by trap), but so what? This isn’t a fallacy. No one is saying that Daniel is wrong BECAUSE he’s a ridiculing/insulting jerk (THIS is ad hominem). All we’re saying is that Daniel is wrong (because of incomplete evidence) AND he’s a ridiculing/insulting jerk (this IS NOT ad hominem). And what’s up with trying to make us feel sorry for you Daniel? No one made you the “inherent enemy.” You put yourself in that position. Get over yourself. You really do yourself no favors by insulting and ridiculing Christians.

The last part of Daniel’s sorry attempts is truly laughable. He again attacks God for not doing things his way (again seems to fail to understand that God made a covenant with Israel within the context of that period in history.) He brings in a completely different topic (evil in the world) which is of course, a major mistake when making a rebuttal and he also seems to confuse Christianity with Islam (500 years of global conquest and forced evangelism? Sounds more like Mr. Muhammad than Jesus.) But Daniel gets seriously hysterical in the end. He constantly repeats over and over and over again that he has the superior argument (and even feels necessary to point out what he feels are zingers? I mean really?) Calm yourself Daniel. You should allow your argument to speak for itself If someone really needs to repeat over and over and over again that they have the superior argument, that's a sign that they don't really have a superior argument...

Old Testament

Daniel's Assertion
Well ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got it. We’ve got a confession from Daniel about what his goal is with these blogs. He admits he’s here to push his agenda by any means necessary. He concedes that the only way he can form his argument is by going through the Bible and deliberately picking out only the verses that fit into the narrative he’s trying to weave, which is that Christianity is crazy and God is equivalent to Hitler. Don’t believe me? His exact words: “It doesn't matter; the problem is that he's immoral at all! That's why my entire job is to cherry-pick!” (And no Daniel, this concept isn’t subjective. It’s fairly easy to see which one of us is looking at Scripture as a whole and which one of us is pushing his own twisted version of it.)
While professing to be a defender of progressivism, Daniel seems to forget a very important part of our culture, a concept known as “innocent until proven guilty.” To him, God is already guilty, and it’s up to us to prove Him innocent. Well no Daniel, this is not how this works. It’s up to YOU to prove your assertions and claims. The burden of evidence lies on YOU, not on us. I mean the way our blogs are set up give this away completely. You are the PRO side to your (general) argument that God is Hitler and Christians are stupid, ignorant buffoons. We are the CON side. If we were in a court, you would be the prosecution and we would be the defense. You provide a claim and we provide the rebuttal. This is how this works.
But Daniel doesn’t want to play by the rules. Why not? Because he can’t provide enough evidence that God is similar in nature to those evil, atheist dictators that slaughtered people by the millions (did I mention that these people were atheists?) Daniel throws up a cadre of Scriptures, twists them inside out, claims they all prove what he’s saying, and then has the gall to accuse us of not rebutting his arguments??? What did he expect? That he provides a couple hyperlinks to Biblegateway here and there and we’re expected to write on for pages and pages dissecting every single verse? We’re not idiots Daniel! You generally label groups of Scripture as proving your point, without any sort of specific evidence and detailed analysis, and we respond in kind, with general statements as to what you’re engaging in (distortion and mockery.) If you want to convince us all that we secretly worship Hitler, you’re going to have to do a lot better than to cite a verse and simply declare that it proves women are property (which is a concept that we’ve already shown to be false in previous blog posts.)
As to why God doesn’t provide his own culture to humans? Because He transcends culture. Christianity isn’t limited to one single way of life. Millions of different people around the world are Christians. No, not all of them are Americans and have an American way of looking at the world, but each of them worships God uniquely and within their culture. But to be honest, I think all of us are beginning to get confused a bit. Daniel seems to be getting angry that a being that he believes doesn’t exist, isn’t doing things his way. God doesn’t say the things Daniel wants Him to say, He doesn’t act the way Daniel wants Him to act, and He doesn’t do what Daniel wants Him to do. Daniel is basically throwing a tantrum and yelling that “If God was real, He would do things MY WAY!” It’s like claiming your math teacher doesn’t exist because she gave you word problems instead of multiplication tables. It’s absurd (and a little funny.)
In conclusion, we see Daniel more and more frustrated. He doesn’t seem to be able to convince anyone to agree with his radical interpretations and insulting premises. He blames everything under the sun for this: ignorance, stupidity, a closed mind, etc. Maybe it’s something else Daniel. Perhaps Christians aren’t all that stupid and God isn’t actually an evil dictator. Just some food for thought.

The Topic of Women - Rebuttal

Daniel's Rebuttal
Well it seems like Daniel has got a little bit upset. He's failing at his mission of caricaturing Christianity and demagoguing, so he's blaming his failure on "willful ignorance" and "confirmation bias." Well, to put it simply Daniel: no. Our readers aren't ignorant. You're just doing a crappy job.
Daniel continually pleas for his audience to have an open mind (something he himself lacks) and "to look at each argument objectively and judge based off of actual logic and reason rather than hold onto unreasonable explanations." Well I've got news for Daniel! We do! We're not stupid! And it's very clear to everyone which one of has well grounded claims and which one of us desperately clings to illogical ones.
I'm very pleased that we are having this discussion in the written form, because it's very easy for everyone to go back and look at what was said in previous blogs. I'd recommend Daniel do this because right off the bat, he seems to forget what he himself has said. Yes Daniel we all know that you're in favor of women's rights (though these last couple of blog posts did get us thinking about that), but we'd just like you to know that we are too. All of us think women are equal to men and we'd like you to stop assuming that we don't, because when you argue as if we don't think this way, you're creating a strawman (I can also link things, and not to mention, being a hypocrite based on your strange obsession with posting links about fallacies.) Now you say that you don't think God hates women. We sincerely apologize. We clearly misunderstood you when you said that "[women are] also barely even seen as people in the Lord’s eyes." Be that as it may, we're extraordinarily confused by your short term memory loss concerning the story of Samson. In your rebuttal, you said that you've never claimed that it was sexist propaganda, yet this is a direct quote from your original assertion: "The propaganda-like portrayal of women in the story of Samson isn’t directly ordered by God, but we can see how Jews saw women (thanks to God’s earlier decrees)." So please, go figure out what it is you're trying to say, memorize it, make every effort imaginable to make sure it stays in your brain, and then lecture everyone else on willful ignorance.
Daniel's quotes from the Old Testament are relatively easy to dissect. Every single one of them is torn out of context, obviously, but you don't need a theology degree to realize that Deuteronomy was set in ancient times, with an extraordinarily different culture than one we have today. I'd need a separate blog to go through every single verse, (there's plenty of resources available online that explain certain passages of the Mosaic law for those that are interested) but I'll focus on one, the passage concerning the rape of a virgin. In ancient times, virginity was a very important part of society and culture. Men and women were expected to be virgins at the time of marriage. If virginity was lost, they'd usually be shunned and unable to marry ever again. This law was a method of protection against this. It forced the man to marry and take care of the girl whom he dishonored and take responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
Now Daniel's other misquotations of Scripture are even easier to deal with. For example, he points to Apostle Paul being sexist when he said that woman was created after man. Ok Daniel. I believe what we have here is a non-sequitur (yay for more links!) Paul was stating fact. Man was created first and woman second, just like I wrote this blog second, after my first one. This doesn't mean my second blog is inferior to my first one and the fact that woman was created after man doesn't mean she's his property. And just to be extra sure people like Daniel didn't try to mischaracterize his words, Paul threw this in just to be sure everyone understood: " 11 Nevertheless, in [the plan of] the Lord and from His point of view woman is not apart from and independent of man, nor is man aloof from and independent of woman; 12 For as woman was made from man, even so man is also born of woman; and all [whether male or female go forth] from God [as their Author]," -1 Cor. 11:11-12. By the way Daniel, the only way the New Testament can say that "women are subservient and under the authority of men" is if you cherry pick certain verses and ignore a plethora of others (which is exactly what you do.) And it's painfully obvious that when Paul discusses head coverings for women and men, he does so within a cultural aspect. And the last tidbit at the end you referred to? It's actually not an end, but the beginning of new train of thought. "16 Now if anyone is disposed to be argumentative and contentious about this, we hold to and recognize no other custom [in worship] than this, nor do the churches of God generally. 17 But in what I instruct [you] next I do not commend [you], because when you meet together, it is not for the better but for the worse." 1 Cor. 11:16-17 (It pays to read Scripture in context.)
If you want a good example of willful ignorance, look no further than Daniel's next couple paragraphs. "Just because women lead Israel at certain times and fulfilled God's agenda, does not logically follow that they aren't property of men and not human beings." Ummm… Actually it does Daniel. So you know when I pointed out examples of women doing the same things as men, being capable of the same things as men, and even playing equal roles as men in terms of importance (if not more important), it does logically follow that they're not inferior to, not the property of, and not dirtier than men are. (That last one really bugs me. I mean whoever thinks that women are more dirty, smelly, and filthy than men really needs to take a trip down to the boys locker room. You'll have a Road to Damascus moment, trust me.) And what's up with that attack on donkeys? Don't make fun of donkeys. Everybody loves donkeys! And spoons too. Poor spoons. Seems like nothing can evade the wrath of Daniel.
Daniel's claims and arguments are steadily growing more and more ridiculous. I think we'll see this trend continue. Daniel is out on a mission: to portray Christians as stupid herds of cattle unaware of their own teachings. We're not going to let him. We'll be right here, disproving, and disassembling his arguments every week. Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy my blog.

The Topic of Women

Daniel's Assertion
To be honest, I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I don't know where to start.

Daniel has delightfully cherry picked passages from all over Scripture, ripped them out of context, and combined all this with his own deceitful interpretation in order to weave a narrative that the Bible is sexist and misogynist and that God hates women. I don't think any of us are surprised. We're all aware of Daniel's agenda to demagogue and mischaracterize Christianity.

Now I spent a good deal of time wondering how to go about dealing with Daniel's ridiculous interpretations and his intellectually dishonest analysis. I suppose I could go through each verse that he twisted and flipped inside out and point out how absurd it is that he projected his own opinions onto all of us and then pretended to prove that our beliefs are horribly sexist. I could point out how he contradicts his own argument, how he makes a caricature of the Law of Moses, how he completely disregards the concept of  "setting", and how silly he looks when he claims that the story of Samson is really a propaganda story for spreading sexism. But that would be tiring, frustrating, and most importantly, would lend credibility to the storyline he's trying to progress. So I'm not going to do this. Instead, I'll go through and make my own list of Scriptures that clearly show that men and women are equal in the eyes of God.

This is incredibly easy. We can start with Genesis 1:27 "27 So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them." So right off the bat, it's established that both males and females were created in the image and likeness of God. Sounds pretty darn equal, but then again, maybe the Creation story is secret propaganda for misogyny and God's just trying to lure us into His book to spring sexism on us later. So let's look at some specific examples of women in the Bible.

We have women who were warriors and judges and even led the armies of Israel into battle (Deborah, Jael, and many others.) We've got a large number of female prophets (Miriam, Hulda, Anna.) We've got examples of strong women who played a big role in the lives of their families and sons (Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah.) We even have two books of the Bible named after women: Ruth and Esther. Daniel's really having problems with his "property of men and not human beings" narrative now, but there's more!

These women were the first missionaries
when the told others that Jesus has risen. 

We have the story of Mary, mother of Jesus. We have the stories of the female followers of Christ, who became the first missionaries when they spoke of His resurrection. We have Jesus Himself coming into conflict with the sexist Pharisees and standing up for the women that they targeted (which by the way was mentioned in my first rebuttal to Daniel's assertion on the law.) And should we point out that the Church is also a female? Misogyny? Sexism? Sub standard human beings? Daniel's claims are not adding up here.

Apostle Paul puts it directly, clearly, and without hesitation: "26 For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. 27 For as many [of you] as were baptized into Christ [into a spiritual union and communion with Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah] have put on (clothed yourselves with) Christ. 28 There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Daniel is wrong. These are not our views, they’re not the views of Jesus, and they're most certainly not the views of God. These views should be lumped into the views of a different organization with Daniel. I've provided a link for him below:
Westboro Baptist Church