I find it hard to believe that Daffy is this poor of a reader, or this much out of it, but continued demonstrations of this sort make it hard to believe otherwise.

On my comment: "The idea of sanctification, of an ultimate cleansing and perfecting of the world and each person, stood in opposition to the view that the past was the best of times, and things have gotten worse since then." It is said: "Christianity's 'ultimately' optimistic eschatology in no way diminishes either its belief that things have indeed 'gotten worse since' Eden, or its prophecies of increasing turmoil and tribulation before the end times." Uhhh. Yeah...and how does this answer my point, again? How things started is not at issue at all and doesn't put a plus sign on the problem, which is that the optimistic eschatology didn't coincide with Roman perceptions that reality was on its way to hell in a handcart, and there wasn't anything turning it back. To claim to be able to "reverse the decay" would have been seen as supremely arrogant without vindicating evidence (like the Resurrection).

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy tries to rein his pants back up by petulantly ignoring that Roman perceptions, not what actually (he thinks, anyway) happened, is the issue, then quacks, Jesus never said he was going to reverse the negative trend or create some merely positive trend. He prophesied that things would continue to get progressively worse until the (imminent, in-this-generation) end of times, and that salvation would then happen all at once. Sorry, Daffy still hasn't dealt with the matter of preterist eschatology -- in which, Jesus prophesied bad stuff only for a few years, after which, the Kingdom of God would break in and all would be on the up and up from there. There is no "end of times" -- there is the end of the era of the law, and the progression of the era of the Messiah. Since Daffy will simply continue to avoid this issue, he'll be stuck on this merry-go-round for quite a while.

I say: "The Jews, on the other hand, traced their roots back much further..." It is replied: "The roots of Judaism and Christianity are ultimately the same." Yes, we know that -- that's why we went on to make the point, "we can understand efforts by Christian writers to link Christianity to Judaism as much as possible, and thus attain the same 'antiquity' that the Jews were sometimes granted." But we also added, "Of course we would agree that the Christians were right to do this, but that is not how the Romans saw it!" To this it is replied:

The bottom line here is that if Christianity were completely novel, it would have been much less likely to win converts, and if it were more Jewish, it would have become just another sect of Judaism.

Our critic isn't grasping well here, for he seems to be framing this as a "gray area" proposition where parts could be novel, but if other parts were not novel, that would mitigate this factor. It doesn't. Any newness at all struck the gong. There is no "excluded middle" as Daffy foolishly claims in his "Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" retort. (This was contrary to the ancient mindset; see here. And it's nothing but that "well, it wasn't 500% impossible" nonsense to suggest it would have been harder if Jesus had not included YHWH on the mix at all.) You could keep the old stuff, but what was new was no good, and all that made Christianity distinctive was new, and the new it offered outweighed the old it tried to claim. Thus it also does no good to say that "Jesus observed many Jewish practices, and his adoption of the Torah's ludicrous theology is indeed one of the fundamental reasons why we moderns realize he was not divine." Beyond the snide remark carrying the begged question, there was no option to "strike a difficult balance between novelty and tradition" -- any novelty at all was enough to set off ancient fire alarms, and putting "tradition" on the other end of the scale only got you, at best, a thud which sent the "novelty" flying off the other end and into the darkness. When you get to the level of Christianity's novelty in context, and add to it that they were caught between a rock and a hard place with Judaism (trying to claim its heritage, while rejecting/redefining its most visible and associated social distinctives), you've got another recipe for sufferin' succotash that our critic still hasn't found the ingredients for.

Factor #5 -- Don't Demand Behavior By now you may be asking if our critic has lost a few clues on his way to the forum. I myself am starting to wonder, and am starting to think that he hired someone of lesser intellect to compose this refutation, which has been of decidedly lower par than the Trilemma engagement. We see this come to the fore with this: noting my point that Christian ethics, while not insurmountable, do make it a "hard to do," it is replied:

Christianity offered to Jews a release from rules about diet, sacrifice, and ritual, while also granting permission to "render unto Caesar".

Well, as we have already said, the Jews were not at all anxious for "release" from those social distinctives, which were actually a point of pride for them and a sign of their distinction from pagan neighbors. In fact, indications are that the Jerusalem church members kept up their practice of Torah as a way of honoring their roots (redefining while not rejecting). Beyond that, it's not clear what this "granting permission to 'render unto Caesar'" is and what the Jews lacked in this respect. Rendered what to Caesar and how?

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy says I "seem oblivious to Mat 22:21 and its obvious implication that paying taxes to Caesar was considered religiously problematic by the Jews." No, I know that passage and what it means better than Daffy knows the back of my hand. "Religiously problematic" or not, the Jews HAD to pay taxes to Caesar. Period. There was no "permission" to be taken or granted. (Note of course that Daffy ignores my correction of his blatant error about "release" from diet, etc laws.) Furthermore granting permission to render onto Caesar only makes the issue more problematic for Christianity, since to do so would undercut popular support with the average person (who obviously did not want to pay taxes to a heathen nation! -- is Daffy ignorant of Judean tax revolts??) and in any event was already part of the OT tradition which allowed accession to foreign powers (Ezek. 8-9, Jer. 26:8-9, 27:6-22, 29:4-9).

Christianity offered to pagans a release from polytheistic superstition that for its time was so tough-minded that Romans compared it to atheism.

Que pasa? I'd like to hear more about this factoid, which is contrary to our point, it seems, that it was Judaism and Christianity that were comparable to atheism, from the Roman view. At the same time, it doesn't seem that the Romans/pagans, beyond a few intellectuals and Bacchans perhaps, regarded their polytheism as superstitious (that was the name they applied to Judaism and Christianity, and the intellectuals and Bacchans agreed with that as well!) and I'd like some direct, source-cited evidence for that "tough-minded" part. Right now I'm beginning to wonder if our critic is just making this stuff up as he goes along.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy notes that I already say "Jews and Christians alike were accused of atheism," which reveals that the problem actually is Daffy's writing "skills" -- his grammar suggests that the "polytheistic superstition" is what was "tough-minded"; but in any event, Daffy avoids the point that the pagans of the day did not regard their own beliefs as "superstitious", and thus there is no "release" to be desired or had. Daffy backpedals and claims now that the assessment would be "retrospective," which doesn't do a heck of a lot of good to explain their need for a "release" what they only in retrospect consider a "superstition".

Christianity's cosmopolitanism and orientation toward the meek made it well-positioned to spread beyond its origins among the Jews.

There's another fascinating factoid; what was so "cosmo" about Christianity, please, from a Jewish or Roman perspective? Are we talking about the same Christianity here? As for being meek, I think our critic needs another social lesson [Handbook of Biblical Social Values, 130-1]: "meekness" as defined in the NT means humility coupled with gentleness, by one who can readily obtain and use force -- it is a renouncing of force in order to communicate something to others (including insults, or good messages) and an open and confident acceptance of others. Then beyond that we need to hear a more detailed social explanation as to how this "orientation" made Christianity "well-positioned to spread" beyond the Jews. Then we need to explain how that erases or supersedes all of the difficulties we have listed.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Calling the kettle black, Daffy says my "question about the Jewish perspective is obtuse, since my point was about spreading beyond the Jews." The obtusity is Daffy's, for if it is "cosmo" it is obviously so from either venue, unless Daffy has some mystery social data explaining how what was "cosmo" to Jews was not "cosmo" to pagans. Then he quacks: Christianity would have been cosmopolitan to the Romans in the sense that it was selling a single god not of Israel but of the entire universe, in contrast to the heavily-emphasized local affiliations of the Roman gods. Uh huh. And what's "cosmo" about that? What Daffy is telling us is that, as we have shown and which he cannot answer, Christianity "sold" a system that was inherently offensive to everything the Romans held dear -- bearing in mind as well that the head Roman gods (Zeus, etc) were not considered "local" at all but were considered to be effective all over the oikoumene, and in any event, Daffy still needs to explain what it is about "local" gods that these people would have had wanted "release" from and what specifically made a universal god "cosmo" in pagan eyes. There's not a shred of evidence that they had any problem they wanted to get out of from this, so Daffy is still just making things up.

On meekness Daffy covers his ignorance of the contextual meaning of the word by quacking, "When I intend a connotation for a word other than its obvious English meaning, I say so. My point about orientation toward the meek/humble/lowly/modest/weak/poor remains unrebutted." It remains dead as a doornail, for that "English meaning" is completely inapplicable, and now Daffy wants to cover his mistake by adding in a host of other words that were not part of his original statement. This is how Daffy works when he is caught in error, hit with scholarship beyond his ability, and left with nothing to show for it.

We say: "It would not appeal to the rich, who would be directed to share their wealth. The poor might like that..." It is said: "And there are far more poor and meek potential converts than there are rich ones." Darn, there's that "meek" again, what does it mean? And how do we explain that Christianity had more than its expected share of wealthy converts, then (end matter)? And our critic forgets the proviso thereafter: "...but not if they couldn't spend that shared dough on their favorite vice-distraction (not all of which were known to be 'self-harming' and therefore offered an ulterior motivation for giving them up." Is this going anywhere? Yes, and from this it is clear where.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy claims that I did not document what I said about "expected share" (I did, and it is later in the original article -- the quote from Judge) and thus cannot get around that I have thus answered his "oriented towards the poor" retort. As for the proviso, Daffy now is shamed into a reply, that the "not all of which" "betrays his knowledge of the weakness of this argument" -- which is, allegedly, that "it's naive to think that a doctrine of sharing will automatically generate appreciable amounts of 'shared dough'". I have more sad social news for Daffy: The idea of "sharing" within a social ingroup was 100% NORMAL for the ancient collectivist. In fact Christianity offered nothing new here -- "envious poor" and "non-sharing rich" were a problem faced by the Empire at large; the rich were subjected to public shame if they did not share the wealth; the belief in "limited good" fueled the envy and forced the rich to at least pay some service to assisting the poor. What Daffy sees as a Christian innovation, and thus thinks adds to his case for something special for the poor, is in fact the same old same old for the ancients, and therefore nothing for the poor to cheer about, and is also oblivious to the point that this only works if the "poor" see that there are already enough "rich" joined up to keep the afloat, which begs the question of how the rich came to want to join in the first place ("Become a Christian! You can give your money to the poor!") and what advantage was retained that could not have been gotten by simply being a wealthy Roman who accrued honor by donating to the public good. Once again Daffy's lack of education in "Biblical minutaie" throws him for a loop.

When I say, "Judaism was [hard to do] as well, and that is one reason why there were so few God-fearers...it is very difficult to explain why Christianity grew where God-fearers were always a very small group," here is the reply:

The explanation is obvious: Yahweh-fearers were rare because the Yahweh meme, finding itself in danger of extinction, had been forced to restrict its target market to one small "chosen people".

The, er, "Yahweh meme"...and our critic wonders why we can't take him seriously. If I came out speaking of a "skeptical meme" that "finds itself in danger" and so is "forced" to "restrict itself" to a "target market" of one small "chosen people" (naturalists/scientists) I doubt if I would give a moment of credence. When skeptics start hauling up this "meme" explanation, which is the equivalent to the ultra-fundamentalist "Satan moved my car keys to bug me" paradigm, we can be pretty sure that they have no actual answers and are struggling to validate their case by any means possible, no matter how ridiculous.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" And believe it or not, Daffy actually is so infected by his meme that he continues to promote this idea seriously. He says of my reply-analogy, "Such a notion might be given credence -- if skepticism were a first-order belief instead of a second-order belief about beliefs, and if it had built into it an audience targeted by ethnicity." So why aren't there mutant memes that focus on second-order beliefs, then, and that focus on profession rather than ethnicity? These magical memes are capable of anything the desperate critic wants them to accomplish; that Daffy is embarrassed by his adherence to this skeptical form of superstition shows in that he blows off the matter, claiming that the point is that "Judaism and Christianity had obvious differences in terms of how ethnically parochial their respective messages were, and how much mythological and doctrinal baggage they carried." That point is false. Being Christian meant accepting the OT as authoritative and accepting as well the entire story of God's actions in redemption. Those who did otherwise, like Marcion, were considered out of the loop. Furthermore, Daffy has idiotically forgotten that Christianity offered nothing more than a more limited parochialism, based not on ethnicity (which was a point of pride for the ancients, thank you very much) but on membership in the Kingdom of God, and has also assumed that ancients would have shared his modern Skeptical view of mythology and doctrine as "baggage," when in fact for an ancient the matter was not baggage or not, but whose bags you carried.

Factor #6 -- Tolerance is a Virtue It took six points, but our critic finally used an actual source. Prepare yourself! Where I wrote of the Romans being "grossly intolerant" it is replied:

On the contrary: "The Romans commonly granted the local gods of the conquered territory the same honors as the earlier gods who had been regarded as peculiar to the Roman state. In many instances the newly acquired deities were formally invited to take up their abode in new sanctuaries at Rome. Moreover, the growth of the city attracted foreigners, who were allowed to continue the worship of their own gods." [http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Roman+Mythology]

Oopsie poopsie! Our critic isn't quite on the ball here, despite this appeal to an online encyclopedia, which is another of those sources great from sixth-grade reports on penguins and chlorophyll and which no amount of spin about "convenient sources" will make any more professional. My reference to Romans as "grossly intolerant" refers to their personal views (not views of the Roman state, viz. religions) but to point 2 above about stereotypes, which Daffy didn't get, and now cannot admit he didn't get. Now also, note carefully what I said: the problem is that Christianity was an exclusivist innovator. What our pal describes here are cases of the Romans granting tolerance to local gods which were NOT exclusivist. Bear in mind also that in the ancient view, your god was supposed to defend your territory; the peoples of the "conquered territories" would have had little choice but to admit that their god had been bested by Rome's gods, and in that light, the Romans were being quite gracious by letting the new, defeated gods into their own sanctuaries (or rather, they were covering their butts to keep the pax Romana alive). The Jews, and later the Christians, in contrast were exclusivists who insisted that Yahweh was still top dog even though Rome had beat the pants off of the Jews. That's the problem here, and our critic's encyclopedia appeal isn't an answer to this point -- which also has little to do with tolerance by the Roman state of those who admitted defeat, but with individual Romans (who were also what composed the state) who despised those who claimed exclusivism.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Prattling irrelevance, Daffy remarks that we "should know that by the time of Jesus, the Jews had for centuries already been explaining the various conquests of them as the deserved punishment for their infidelity." No horse. That's obvious. And it has nothing to do with explaining away the point that they were still exclusivists who insisted Yahweh was top dog. Daffy is prattling non-answers and posing marginally relevant factoids in the hopes that no one will notice that an answer hasn't been offered.

Then it is said, "That Christianity and Judaism were exclusivist indeed was a crucial reason why they weren't assimilated and eventually abandoned as all the Roman pagan religions were." That's another non-answer: This addresses how things might have gone well once Christianity had itself well-established, but it doesn't affect in the least the crucial "formative" and early years when it was under the spear, so to speak. It's just more social factoiding: Exclusivism in the context of a Roman world enamored of tolerance was a reason for no one to join it (without vindicating evidence), so we aren't even to the point where we can reference assimilation or the lack thereof -- nor, for that matter, explain how non-exclusivism contributed to the demise of Roman pagan religions.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Embarrassed by his intermixing of formative and later years, Daffy quacks the non-answer that "a non-exclusivist new religion might easily have disappeared through assimilation into the Roman pantheon." Obviously. So what's this got to do with anything and with that Christianity WAS an exclusivist religion, and that it took hundreds of years of Christian influence to phase out the pagan religions? Once again, Daffy throws an irrelevant factoid into the air, hoping no one will notice the lack of response to the actual argument. And yes, No one, "not one person out of millions," PERIOD. Daffy hoists the spectre of "the consensus of secular historians" (not one of which he quotes or even names, and which are NOT social scientists either) but it remains that this was a fighting paradigm, universal by all documentation, and it is Daffy's burden to explain exceptions that his "argument" requires. The "decades" and "many weeks' journey" is no barrier to speak of -- not between 30-70 AD, when witnesses and key persons were still alive; and not for the social elite Christianity was top-heavy with, who had the means to travel; and not with the Diaspora Jews who had no problem making such journeys as many as four times a year for Jerusalem festivals. Daffy's ignorance of the ancient world continues to plague his responses.

Rather simple-mindedly, Daffy wonders why not all of Jerusalem was converted if there was vindicating evidence. Such tremendous ignorance of the social world of the Jews -- who wanted and desired a political Messiah -- speaks for itself. I will tell you why all of Jerusalem" did not convert: Because the likeliest immediate reaction to the Gospel message is, "That's ludicrous!" -- with NO further investigation, and with ears stopped and eyes closed. There is nothing to say that missionaries did not appeal to the Star of Bethlehem, or the darkness, or the quake (and Daffy's low-context ignorance is the only thing that makes him INSIST that every such used detail would be recorded in Acts, and not covered under the general description of "signs and wonders" mentioned in such preaching); on the other hand, as with modern Skeptics, a plethora of excuses come to hand: "That star? It had nothing to do with your Jesus!" "There are quakes here all the time. Big deal." Daffy is oblivious to the point that "vindicating" evidence is not the same as "evidence that convinces the ignorant or stubborn" -- and as a Skeptic, since he no doubt says the same thing of those who won't accept evolution as fact, he can hardly deny it.

Finally Daffy struggles to explain how non-exclusivism contributed to the demise of Roman pagan religions, not by citing a historian or any scholar, but by contriving this explanation: "....the ascendancy of any particular non-exclusivist pagan religion in Rome would not contribute much toward the demise of other such religions, whereas the ascendancy of the first exclusivist religion would have rapidly led to the demise of competing religions, whether exclusivist or not." What kind of "explanation" is that?? It isn't one. It's just a pastiche of ideas with no relevance, in other words, bulldada on a string disguised as an answer. The "intolerance" problem means that there is no way for the "first exclusivist religion" to ascend to begin with! This is the problem Daffy never answers, and never will be able to answer.

I say, "Jews too would be intolerant to the new faith," and it is said, "Indeed, and this is why Christianity ultimately had so much more success among gentiles." This is still another of those "thrown up" answers so vague that it deserves a prison sentence. Entire books have been written on the social aspects of the Christian faith, but apparently here, one sentence will do. Tell us, please: how we know there was more success, pro rata, among Gentiles (i.e., where is the social data; keeping in mind that Gentiles vastly outnumbered Jews to begin with, so that mere numbers mean nothing) and explain to us how that overcomes the problems we lay out. This as yet offers nothing; it is merely side commentary that does not address the point at hand, and there continues to be no answer from Daffy, other than to note that "Christianity ultimately became the religion of the overwhelming majority of the Gentiles living in the Roman Empire" which answers zero questions about where this data comes from and what the numbers were. Daffy merely pulls this assertion out of his ear and thinks that it is enough.

Factor #7 -- Stepping Into History -- "Let's put it this way: If you wanted to start a new religion with new and wild claims involved, do you claim, at any point, to have connections that you don't have?" The reply is: "If one's 'new and wild claims' are false, then it obviously helps to include whatever extraneous truths one can." Really! Well, then, I want to know: Is our critic conceding that the NT contains many "extraneous truths"? Indeed, is he willing to grant such claims as we signified -- appearances before officials? Burial in Joseph's tomb? We'll withhold further answers at this point, because we wish to see how much our critic is willing to give up. Specifics, please? (Do not hold your breath; we got few to none last time!)

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy concedes the presence of "many extraneous truths" and admits to the probable historicity of several events. He irrelevantly claims that burial in Joseph's tomb is countered by John 19:38 indicating he was "secretly a Christian" and says I don't "explain how Joseph's secret faith would have been 'highly vulnerable to inspection and disproof'." That's not what I asked about; I asked about the burial in his tomb, but the obvious answer -- too obvious for words -- is that the testimony of the man Joseph himself after the fact was open to scrutiny, and it is doubtful that he did not have family who knew of his actions and faith.

Regarding Herod Agrippa, it is said: "[Holding] confuses Acts 11 with Acts 12 [don't you love how skeptics think pointing out typographical errors validates their case? -- and sorry, that's not a huge bungle of the level of confusing Rome with Jerusalem, since no typo will get you from one city to the other], in which Luke makes the somewhat vague claim [vague? how?] that after failing to 'give praise to God', Herod was 'immediately' 'struck down' by an 'angel of the Lord' and 'was eaten by worms and died'. How 'immediately'? [the word means "instantly" and refers to the striking by the angel; why is this an issue at all?] Was this Herod's first such failure, or merely the last failure Luke could cite as preceding Herod's non-miraculous death? [And what difference does it make to whether or not Luke reported the verifiable matters factually -- being eaten by worms, and dying; and the detail of the previous verses?] [Holding] doesn't explain how 'the public' was supposed to empirically disconfirm this report that Herod's death was caused by 'an angel of the Lord'. [I do not even mention the "angel of the Lord" part; I refer to the "eaten by worms" part! Had this been false it would have been a claim of dishonor upon Herod, amounting to slander!]" We're still offering non-answers that do not address the issue.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy now covers his embarrassment by inventing a spiel of nonsense questions such as, Does 'immediately' mean seconds, hours, or days? (Gee, when has anyone ever used "immediately" for hours or days? What linguistic fantasy world does Daffy live in?) "Struck down" how? It SAYS how! He was eaten by worms! What did this "striking down" look like? What does having worms put into your gut "look like"?!? What would YOU look like if your guts started hurting? Figure it out! This is Daffy the low-context reader at work, demanding levels of detail found in no historical narrative not composed by the paranoid. One could invent all sorts of idiotic and irrelevant questions like these for ANY account, and then whine that it was "vague" because it didn't answer them. How did anyone know it was done by an "angel of the lord"? By revelation -- how else were such things known in the Bible? Hello?

I say: "If Luke lied in his reports, Luke probably would have been jailed and/or executed by Agrippa's son, Herod Agrippa II (who held the same position)..." It is replied: "[Holding] forgets that Luke/Acts does not identify its author, and that Luke was often away on missions anyway." Oh, yes, it's that old "no author mentioned" game yet again, and our critic is still not able to refute our material on Gospel authorship. As for Luke being "often away on missions" our critic has no copy of Luke's schedule showing his travels in and out of Herod's territory (and presumably does not accept what Acts has to say about it, which would not support his case); it might make a particular difference for times when Luke himself was in Herod's territory. But this would not at all overcome the problem of Acts itself making a slanderous claim if false, and as I say: "Had Luke reported falsely [and here I would say, not just on Herod, but on any one of the numerous things he reports that involved highly-accessible and visible public figures], Christianity would have been dismissed as a fraud and would not have 'caught on' as a religion." To this our critic breathes not a word.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy merely blows his nose and says there are "obvious flaws" in the Gospel authorship article (though he hasn't the nerve to address even one, which indicates that the "obvious flaws" evaluation is a polemical stand-in for, "I have no idea what the heck that's about and couldn't answer a single point of challenge on the subject if someone held and Uzi to my neck") and refers readers to the "point by Carrier about anonymity that I cite in the Trilemma debate" (which I in turn crushed in my reply, as Daffy well knows). Thus he excuses himself from responsibility to answer, and claims "zero evidence that Agrippa II a) knew about Acts, b) cared about Acts, c) knew who the author of Acts was, or d) could find the author of Acts," ignoring the problems that a) it is not even Acts he or his family needed to know about, but Christian claims that his actions produced the result, and that would have been part and parcel of the kerygamtic "gossip"; b) the demands of honor and shame produced automatic "care" about such things; c, d) knowing the author or not is irrelevant in light of a), and in any event, the original point of this section was not that Herod knew or cared, but that his reader(s) knew and cared, which is particularly relevant in light of the likelihood of Acts being written to a Roman magistrate as a defense for Paul. Finally to the last point, Daffy still breathes not a single argument, other than the begged question that Christianity obviously got away with fabrication, because look at all of them in the Gospels! In other words, the same old circular skein: "They must have been stupid, because we're here now talking about it!" My Skeptical friend Kyle Gerkin had a better idea: He agreed with most of the material here, and went instead after the validity of the Resurrection.

I say: "If claim #1 is proven false, that opens the way to doubt others -- all the way up the line to the resurrection." Reply: "If claim #1 is trivially true, then it does not follow that the resurrection is more probable than if claim #1 were omitted altogether." That is not the point. The point is that is claim #1 is NOT trivially true, then it incites doubt as to whether the Resurrection is possible or probable AT ALL. Our critic is carelessly reading the argument in reverse and standing it on its head.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" . Daffy offers the usual non-answers: Whether reports about an event X contain falsehoods has no bearing on whether event X is "possible". No kidding, and still not the point. [Holding] makes no effort to rebut my assertion that including trivial truths does not increase the likelihood of the resurrection, and instead merely points out that mishandling trivial truths would have made the gospels seem marginally less truthful. And no effort is needed, because that was never the point to begin with. All Daffy is complaining about is my not rebutting the irrelevant point that he brought up to begin with. "Probability" issues here enter into realms of theism, naturalism, and subjects not germane to the social and historical progress of Christianity. Next Daffy will bring up some argument about saving plastic bags, and demand to know why I don't answer it!

On the various phenomena surrounding the Crucifixion, appeal to made to the usual fallacious arguments about Seneca and Pliny not mentioning it (see here, as well as here, which is not in any way damaged by anything referenced by our critic. Only Josephus' lack of mention might have any significance, but it does not at all counter our point that these were events that were public and would have been visible (if true) to millions of witnesses. Arguing that it is NOT mentioned by certain writers does not erase the problem that it was mentioned by writers whose claims were highly open to refutation, in spite of who else said anything or nothing about it.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy short-shrifts both Miller and I, saying Miller "makes highly unwarranted inferences" without explaining why the example he gives is such (only implying that Julius was somehow misrepresenting Thallus' intent, which is the standard Skeptical insult to the integrity of others when the data blows up in their faces), and also ignoring Miller's note that the identification of Thallus with someone in Josephus is not necessary to his argument. (He is also ignorant of our comparison of Miller's and Carrier's material here.) My material on Seneca and Pliny is not engaged in the least, merely dismissed as "feeble excuses" with no explanation or response at all. Daffy has nothing but bombast, assumed naturalism, and quacking to offer, as usual.

I am accused of ignoring Josephus, but there is nothing to "ignore" -- the point remains about the numerous witnesses available; if Daffy thinks an explanation is required for Josephus, it is simple and easy: Josephus (and once again, all others who did not become Christians) need only have made the same "excuses" Skeptics do: "It was just a coincidence. It had nothing to do with Jesus." It remains that argument from silence is a fallacy, as noted here (see especially Byrskog's comment on the Greek wars, which should give Daffy pause concerning his low-context, golly-gosh mentality applied to the ancient world). And despite Daffy, time and distance was no barrier, as we have already explained -- and motive was built into the collectivist mentality to mind the business of others constantly, to which we will see Daffy's naive reply below.

Now as to that number. Our critic sides himself with critics that regard counts of millions at the Jewish festivals as inflated, and claims that "only 60,000 to 125,000 pilgrims would have visited Jerusalem for Passover, so it's just ludicrous to talk about 'attendant crowds numbering in the millions' -- especially in the context of Pentecost." Let us begin with that number and those estimates. That festival number comes from Jeremias' work in 1966, and is made contrary to claims by Josephus that Passover pilgrims numbered, in one instance, 2,700,000. We have seen very little work done to justify reducing these figures, other than "gosh, it couldn't be that big," which is no reason at all, and our critic is merely copying others uncritically. E. P. Sanders, a more modern writer, was willing to grant 300,000-500,000. But let's just grant a middling number like Sanders', for the sake of argument. Even then, with numbers of this magnitude, our critic hasn't resolved the problem of a high order of magnitude of witnesses at all. He still has the same problem: Historical claims made with reference to an event that was (i.e., would have been if true) in the immediate and checkable presence of a horde of witnesses.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy whines as well that I "give neither a quote nor a citation for Sanders" (this from someone whose only sources have been two online encyclopedias!) and if he wants to call using an erudite scholar like Sanders "uncritical," let him do so and embarrass himself more thoroughly. Beyond this Daffy has devolved to some wacky idea that I said "millions" could have "attended" the tongues-speaking at Pentecost, when I made no such numeric connection to that particular event; I said millions attended Pentecost, not the tongues event. Daffy has some very serious problems with contextual comprehension.

Speaking of problems not solved, our critic responds to the points about "healings of illnesses and dysfunctions, even reversals of death, in highly public places" by referral to his previously inadequate treatment of the miracles in the Trilemma piece, which we have now put to bed in more detail here. Then our critic shows how little he pays attention, yet again: To our comment, "A triumphal entry into Jerusalem in blatant fulfillment of Messianic prophecy," it is said, "The fulfillment could not have been very 'blatant', since most Jews did not believe Jesus qualified as the Messiah." Whether anyone "believed" or not here is not the point! The ride into Jerusalem was a blatant fulfillment of Zech. 9, a well-known Messianic prophecy, and what anyone "believed" about it is beside the point in this context. The point is that is was a visible and highly "obnoxious" attempt to draw attention, whether legitimate or not -- it was yet another of the very strong, highly disprovable claims of history which, if not agreed to have happened in accord with the testimony of those who were there, would have pulled the rug out from under any attempts to offer less public events like the Resurrection as valid.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy defers to answering the matter of the link later, and bypasses the point about the donkey ride being verifiable by admitting that it would be, and then distracting to the point that it adds no weight to the Resurrection as having happened, which was never the point in the first place. The point has been, and always will be, and never will be answered, that what was done was not "done in a corner", that inspection was invited (indeed was effectively a challenge), and that it is the burden of the critic to explain all of this within a paradigm whereby historical accuracy is considered a "plus" for any document, and how events like the Rez, if they did not happen, evaded critical scrutiny. As it is, Daffy's best answer remains, not said in words but in fact, "They must just have been stupid, because here we are, and because people have been stupid in the past!" Daffy wants to haul in the spectre of other religions I would say are false. Well and well, when he applies each and every one of my factors to each religion he wants to discuss, then we can talk. As it is, all he does is uncritically and presumptively lump together all beliefs and religions as if they derived from the same social contexts, made the same kind of historical claims, and had the same progression.

Our point remains, and it remains unrefuted: If you are trying to promote false claims, you do not advertise related claims on the TV news in ways that invite investigation and scrutiny. You keep your mouth shut and leave witnesses to your history obscure and nameless. Our critic answers not one bit of this, not even with this closing comment: "That many non-gullible people recognize such disproof does not mean that a false religion like Christianity or Mormonism cannot grow by converting the gullible." This does not answer any of our points; it merely assumes, yet again, that there must have been people gullible enough, because well, here we are! As we have already said: Skeptics will need to find a better excuse than, "They was just stupid"! They need to erase the effects of these factors (and they will not be able to) by some explanation other than stupidity and gullibility, for these are factors which substantially transcend any possibility that "jus' bein' stupid" or gullible was enough to result in belief.

Factor #8 -- Do Martyrs Matter, and More? Our critic tries to hop on the Polemic Train over our note that "there are few examples of this sort of martyrdom that we may point to" by interrupting with comments about Peter and James being "the only resurrection witnesses who the New Testament names (John 21:18,19, Acts 12:2) as martyrs, but there is no evidence that recanting their alleged belief in physical resurrection could have saved them. Indeed, there is no direct evidence that Peter and James even believed in a physical resurrection at all." Well, we still have not solved that problem of there being no other kind of resurrection to believe in; and at any rate, we're talking about more than just resurrection witnesses but believing the Resurrection and Christianity at all in light of multiplied social factors, which is the focus of the point at hand. In that regard, our critic notes first that "Many false religions (such as Mormonism) have thrived despite persecution, no doubt partly because persecution can easily make believers even more cohesive and zealous." Since he only chose Mormonism, we note in reply that we specifically made a comparison with Mormonism in one of the accompanying essays, which was not commented upon by our critic at all -- the analogy is not relevant, as we show. What is at issue is not intangibles like eternal punishment and reward, but the very tangible claim of the Resurrection and of God acting in history through Jesus and his Apostles, and thus, the failure to "desolidify" the Resurrection also causes our critic's reply to fail.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy begins with a hilarious attempt to "desolidify" the Resurrecton taught in the NT, implying that 1 Cor. 15 teaches a "spiritual" rez (while naturally completely ignoring my article that proves otherwise, and against the scholarly "consensus" Daffy claims to religiously follow elsewhere) and offers these other laugh tracks:

Daffy further whines that I "abandon outright the standard martyrdom apologetic" (which I never advocated in the first place, thank you) and then zooms into and out of the Mormon issue as quickly as possible, burning the straw man with a question implying that I think Mormonism is the only "false religion" that has thrived despite persecution (never said, never argued; just the only such religion I have engaged the issue on, being that it is currently the fastest-growing) and selects only my comments about Mormon persecution from the linked essay, ignoring the remainder that explains why Mormonism offers no viable comparison. Daffy also hauls in an anachronistic comment that "Christians in the Roman Empire were dispersed and usually secretive," which is again NOT true of the crucial formative years between 30-70.

Factor #9 -- Human vs. Divine: Never the Twain Shall Meet! Our critic's sole reply here is, "It was indeed unlikely that all Jews would consider a human like Jesus to be divine, and most Jews of course did not. But it is eminently 'conceivable' that some fraction of Jews and Gentiles would believe the gospels." It is not in the least conceivable, and merely asserting that it is conceivable does not make it so! Our critic seems to think that a chauvinistic "nuh uh!" is sufficient!

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy merely blows off Doherty, with no countering explanation or answer, merely a re-assertion, "Yeah it is so conceivable cause I say so!" Then he blows off the matter of divine titles of Jesus with a link, confident in his continued refusal to address my material on this subject with more than an emphatic snort.

Factor #10 -- No Class! -- We say, "The erasure or blurring of these various distinctions -- stated clearly in Paul, but also done in practice by Jesus during his ministry -- would have made Christianity seem radical and offensive." The reply is: "The inclusiveness of Paul's Christianity would indeed have prevented it from completely converting any single ethnic or religious group, but this inclusiveness was quite well-suited for a missionary religion trying to establish itself throughout the Roman Empire." What! Our critic skips over entirely the very key point: "Malina and Neyrey note that in the ancient world, people took their major identity from the various groups to which they belonged. Whatever group(s) they were embedded in determined their identity. Changes in persons (such as Paul's conversion) were abnormal. Each person had certain role expectations they were expected to fulfill." We are showing, here and in what followed, that "inclusiveness" was the very offense that made Christianity impossible to swallow! This does not answer the argument; it merely restates the matter as though the ancient world was itself like the modern one, and open to social inclusivism!

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Covering himself with an embarrassing blanket of hayseed, Daffy dismisses Malina and Neyrey's commentary as "vague generalization" (though he hasn't a clue about social differences in the Biblical world), claims that it does not prove anything, and bleats for "peer-reviewed mainstream scholarship" that agrees with me in order to avoid his inability to provide a direct answer. He wants to know if I claim that today people do not "take their major identity from the various groups to which they belong"? Yes I do. People take their minor identity from various groups to which they belong. Their main identity they take from their own introspection. THAT is the consensus of "peer-reviewed, mainstream scholarship" in the social sciences, and Daffy obviously lacks any sort of education to discover or claim otherwise. Pompous chest-puffing and denial will not suffice.

Where we say, "joining the group did not do anything to alleviate their condition in practical terms," it is replied: "[Holding] is mistaken if he thinks there are no practical benefits in having a hope of eternal reward, a sense of identity, an excuse for self-righteousness, a deliverance from doubts, an exemption from critical thinking, etc." Beyond the bigoted and snide commentary, our critic fails to observe that this comment is made in the context of the previous words, "Note that this is not just to those in power or rich; it is an anachronism of Western individualism to suppose that a slave or the poor would have found Christianity's message appealing on this basis." We are talking here about material (i.e.,. tangible) benefits; this is what the reference to "practical terms" is made with, and the things listed do not at all alleviate slavery or poverty. (And as for those things: as we noted, the mystery religions provided eternal reward and deliverance from doubts; their "ingroup" provided a sense of identity, without any of the social shortcomings we have listed which totally negate Daffy's points here, his bland and pompous assertions notwithstanding. (And to this Daffy has only another of his "see, it wasn't 500% impossible" remarks). And we challenge our critic to show that any putative ancient convert sought out Christianity, or any faith, looking for an "excuse for self-righteousness" [the ancients, as collectivists, were little concerned with "self-" anything!] or "exemption from critical thinking"! This is merely a prejudicial and snide skeptical remark aimed from the barrel of our critic's personal complaints against modern Christians!)

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy can't resist a poke at Jesus for not condemning slavery, for which we drop on his head this bomb by Miller which he will quote one sentence from, call names, and otherwise ignore and claim to have refuted in full. Otherwise he admits (but not an error) that yes, Christianity did not solve these problems, but wait, it was communitarian -- which as we have noted, was the same for other social ingroups as well. Daffy also backpedals furiously from his "self-righteouness" argument, saying he "did not say that any ancient convert was consciously seeking these things" (meaning, he just put in the idea of people looking for it for yuks) and then hypes back to the same old "see, it wasn't 500% impossible" canard that doesn't address the points. Acts 5:9, despite Daffy, is not "self-righteousness" -- this is merely Daffy's bigoted, presumptuous name-calling of Biblical person, not an actual documented psychological incident of self-righteousness. Daffy also claims that rationality is "denigrated" in NT writings, citing the usual verses abused by contextually unenlightened Skeptics, Col. 2:8 and 1 Cor. 1. Daffy also challenges us to find where the Bible has a "kind word" to say about human rationality. I'll produce it when he produces the same from the works of Lao Tzu, Confucius, or Martin Luther King. The great minds take human rationality for granted, which makes discussion of it rather pointless.

On Jewish converts who ceased to observe the law, it is commented: "[Holding] is oblivious to the possibility that the dogmas and rituals and cohesiveness of the Christian community could be a perfectly adequate substitute for what he admits was for Jews a workable 'defense mechanism' against the scorn of others." A substitute, yes -- obviously! Adequate? That's that ananchronist speaking again! The central importance of kinship in this society meant that family and family connections were paramount! Being cut off from your family was a high price to pay, even as you entered a new community -- a price that would never be paid without confirmation that it was worth being paid in the first place! Our critic does not answer the argument, but merely frames the matter once again in modern, individualistic terms as though loss of family ties were something that could be easily and readily accepted! The issue here is not need for a group identity, but losing the most familiar and by far most valuable group identity. It's like an offer to join the Kiwanis, when doing so will get you kicked out of the Millionaire's Club and cause you to thereby lose your family, your inheritance, your social support network. You have the Kiwanis, but I think even a modern would be sure that the Kiwanis were on the up and up before they took the final step!

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Lacking any actual answer, Daffy merely waves off this firm social data, derived from scholars in the field, as "assertion" which is "obviously false to anyone even vaguely familiar with the phenomenon of religious belief among Homo sapiens," though we are yet privileged with a single example, much less one derived from a society like that of the Biblical world. Daffy's continual resort to bigoted and vague generalities speaks for itself as a salve for the egotistical Skeptic.

It is also said: "...if becoming Christian does not mean doing without a group identity, then the need for group identity is simply not a disadvantage that Christianity can be said to have overcome." Daffy remains oblivious to the hierarchical ranking of importance of groups, as if being in a group, and not particular groups, were all that was of import! Daffy oversimplifies yet again: This is not a matter of merely "joining a cult" proving its claims, but of joining one in the specific social circumstances described -- the argument Daffy studiously avoids broaching with all but the vaguest of generalizations.

On Christianity turning social norms upside down, notably the norms which established the paramount assignment of social honor, it is said: "[Holding] here is simply confused by the tension between designing a religious sect for maximal conversion of some pre-existing group, and designing a cult to cherry-pick the disaffected and marginalized from a broad range of groups." And what is this supposed to mean?!? There is no "cherry-picking" of "the disaffected and marginalized" in view; the point is that conversion meant you would become disaffected and marginalized, when you were not before, or more so than you were before! You would be perfectly acceptable in this society if you recognized and stayed in your place. Christianity shattered the boundaries, blurred the distinctions, and said that your identity was of no importance at all in terms of salvation in Christ. This is now the second time our critic has turned one of our arguments upside-down and misconstrued it!

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy now claims an "obvious fact that Paul's Christianity was tailored to appeal to the disaffected and marginalized of a broad range of group" and challenges me to assert negation. I just did. It is not "tailored" for any such thing; the resort to spin-doctoring elements and contriving explanations of why such and such element might appeal to the disaffected, etc. is the most obvious answer, but remains irrelevant in any event, for as has been noted, but Daffy refuses to answer, the matter is one of weighing the benefits of one group versus another. Any "appeal" Daffy contrives for Christianity is found as well in any social group of the time, without any of the negatives, and thus any argument that some part of Christianity would have such appeal flounders for utter lack of relevance.

I say, "Moreover, a person like Jesus could not have kept a ministry going unless those around him supported him. A merely human Jesus could not have met this demand..." Reply: "Merely human religious leaders attract and keep followers all the time, and there is no reason why a human Jesus would have necessarily been an exception." That's it! Yet another "nuh uh" and a completely unsubstantiated, generalized answer. To even come close we need to find such religious leaders in a collectivist society -- then make a detailed comparison in terms of demand for belief ratio. As it is our critic can do no better than try to apply positive "spin" yet again: "Jesus' combination of charisma, appealing teachings, faith-healing, and exploitation of Jewish mythology can easily be seen as a non-divine explanation for why he attracted converts and why they in turn were able to recruit successive cohorts of converts." Charisma? What charisma? Where is this to be found? Appealing teachings? Which ones, and how "appealing" in comparison to the radical and offensive teachings (item 16 below, which our critic will merely blow off)? "Faith-healing"? Only if the healings actually worked, and we have been through that mill before with our critic failing to make the grade (see link above). "Exploitation of Jewish mythology...?" May we have some specifics, or is this merely "hot air" to impress the skeptical masses? Let's have some examples of such exploitation, and an explanation as to how this "exploitation" could have garnered converts in ways that subsumed the negative aspects we have listed.

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Daffy embarks here on one of his longest skeins of evasion, saying I claim that:

And so it is that in his stultifying ignorance, Daffy calls "group orientation" and "collectivism" merely buzzwords that [Holding] chants without ever quoting a mainstream scholar asserting any one of the above claims. Let that ignorance speak for itself. Numerous items on this site have referenced and quoted experts on this subject (see here, here, and here for three prominent examples, easily found by using the site's search function), and if it is Daffy's pleasure to tuck his head between his buttocks and call what is beyond his comprehension "buzzwords" as though fiction, we encourage him to continue to do so.

On charisma, I asked for proof of charisma in Jesus; Daffy dodges with a begged question that Jesus must have been charismatic , because after all, those "who attract followers tend to be charismatic" and then postures for negative evidence against the positive assertion he made without any proof at all. My request for an explanation and value-judgment on the appealing nature of Jesus' teachings is brushed off with a dodge that I "must assert that nobody would have found Jesus' teachings on the whole appealing," which in fact, I DO assert: In terms of quality, Jesus' teachings were counter to accepted norms, often violently. My link about faith-healings is ignored in favor of a mere restatement of the original argument. On Jewish "mythology" vague reference is made to the concept of "Messiah," which is hardly in the category of "mythology" (there no "stories" about this; there were prophetic oracles -- not that this would have countered the negatives, as opposed to being seen as spin-doctoring; for this Daffy merely re-asserts his victory even as he lies senseless on the canvas.)

Finally our critic toots his horn: "Believers in apocalyptic cults often remain faithful even in the face of undeniable failures (e.g. of apocalyptic prophecy). This of course applies directly to Christianity, since (as I demonstrate in our Trilemma debate) Jesus' clear Olivet prophecy [Mk 13:26-30] of an imminent return went blatantly unfulfilled." Our critic demonstrated nothing whatsoever on the Olivet Discourse in the Trilemma debate; his answers to our material on that subject amounted to little more than variations on the comment, "That's ludicrous!" The same non-response remains in the update.

Factor #11 -- Don't Rely on Women! Here our critic entirely dodges the question of women being regarded as unreliable witnesses, and diverts attention instead to the issue of alleged disagreement among Gospel accounts (which was brought up in the Trilemma debate, and to which we gave link-answers which he did nothing about other than call them names, for he has no answer to them otherwise) and alleged errors (such as the eschatology issue noted above). We have in fact dealt with all of these issues, as our critic well knows, and he has not an answer in reply, and therefore has a great deal of nerve telling his readers that we "wisely" choose not to deal with them!

"Woo hoo! Woo hoo!" Not quoting my note that this was answered in the Trilemma debate with a link he ignored, Daffy falsely claims no answer was given on the matter of inconsistency among the accounts. He quacks that Christianity's appeal to the disaffected explains why women would be used as witnesses, which still does not answer that they remained considered unre