Saturday, December 5, 2015

Unapolegetic Fact-checking

I have one other occasions point out that apologists, especially Christian ones, tend to be willfully ignorant, delusional, stupid, or a combination of the three. A recent post by Justin Steckbauer on the Christian Apologetics Alliance' website does an excellent job confirming this view. "The Facts on Christianity: A Quick Examination" is certainly "quick" but bears no resemblance the rest of its title. Steckbauer fails to provide any facts or even the slightest attempt at examining anything he states. The short piece is especially entertaining since he does a pretty good job destroying his own claims. Of the 5 points he tries to make 3 take the form of rhetorical statements ("Does God exist?", Is the Bible really God's word?", Did Jesus really exist historically?") with the last two being meant as persuasive questions ("But was Jesus Christ really God come to Earth?", "What will you do?").

He starts the first point by stating, correctly, that you do not need absolute proof to reach a reasonable conclusion. He immediately dips into idiocy by trying to use the cosmological argument. Predictably, what follows is a jumble of logical fallacies and double standards. Basically, its the old BS that the universe needs a cause but God doesn't. No attempt at justifying or explaining why God should be exempted. Steckbauer's approach to the Bible is just as feeble. He does make an interesting half-assed attempt at acknowledging what actual scholars have known for quite some time by stating, "But there are over 25,000 whole and partial ancient manuscripts of the Bible, and they all match nearly identically." I don't know what the estimate is currently up to be but the number of fragments that make up the Bible is in the tens of thousands. However, he is blatantly wrong about there being even a single whole manuscript. dating to ancient times. Not one! He further proves what an ill-informed fool by trying to claim, "The Bible when compared with recorded history is 99.7% accurate." Not even close. I would be genuinely shocked if it was .3% accurate since the very few references in the Bible that have any connection to established history tend to be grossly inaccurate. His approach to Jesus is just as false. He mentions but does not reference "historical accounts by witnesses." There are no such accounts. All the earliest information relating to Jesus come from scriptures. There are no historical accounts of Jesus. The earliest historians wrote about Christians not Christ. Most accounts are at best third or fourth hand. You would think if someone wanted to write about "facts" that they might at least spend a few minutes fact-checking.

Apologist really are only good for a laugh. Their "arguments" have not changed in centuries. They have been so thoroughly refuted that there isn't anything more to do beyond satire and ridicule.

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