MORALITY DEBATE:
ExamineTheTruth.com
vs.Tektonics.org
James P. Holding 2nd
response
Tektonics.org’s response has been taken from here.
Go back to Morality Debate
page.
And be moderate in thy pace, and lower
thy voice; for the harshest of sounds without doubt is the braying of the ass.
And well, we were told that Mr. Ahmed was
one of those sorts who had no idea when he ought to just take his licks and
keep quiet; so it is that he has offered a response, and to
say that it is confused and prone to wandering would be something of an
understatement. Mr. Ahmed proudly crows that I "was not able to refute the
fact, that Islam indeed addresses the problems of today's society." Who
would refute that in the first place? No one doubts that Islam
"addresses" such things; so likewise does Judaism, the Hale-Bopp
cult, and Hare Krishna. Addressing problems is easy. Solving problems is
quite another matter. (Of course I also do readily acknowledge that Islam
"solves" many problems; just as euthanasia "solves" deadly
diseases. Whether it does so best is another matter.)
Mr. Ahmed grouses that I was "forced to
go looking OUTSIDE of the Bible for answers." I wonder whether someone has
lately infected him with King James Only Disease. Surely Mr. Ahmed would not
say that he was "forced" to go outside the Quran to know the
definitions of the Arabic words used therein. It seems indeed that the sort of
idiocy we address here is
not unique to Christendom. Mr. Ahmed obviously lacks any conception of texts
being defined by their contexts (social, literary, linguistic, etc.). Let the
ignorance speak for itself!
Beyond this Mr. Ahmed gives himself an
intellectual concussion blattering about how I and Matt Slick "must get
your story straight". Why? Does Mr. Ahmed need to get his story straight
with Osama bin Laden, with the Sufis, with the Shi'a, with every Islamic
variation, before he can run his mouth? I don't particularly care what Matt
Slick says about his wife's bathing suit; and nor in fact did I insinuate in
the least, as Ahmed claims that "all Christians must follow the standard
of modesty of the pagan and idolatrous Hellenistic Roman, Greek, and
monotheistic Hebrew culture." Though indeed, that standard of modesty was
quite stronger than ours in many ways (especially among the Hebrews), I made it
quite clear that modesty was arrived upon by means of graded absolutes; it is
established by contexts, which is a concept Mr. Ahmed seems to have grave
difficulties comprehending. On and again he whingles of being
"FORCED" to go outside the Bible to understand the Bible, as if this
were some sort of problem. This is the standard means of scholarship for any
ancient text, especially one written in a high-context society.
Mr. Ahmed refers to an article in which he
argues that "Paul abolished the laws of the OT." Our own view of the
matter (not a response to him) is here; I know not what
silliness Mr. Ahmed claims of Paul here, but in any event, it is merely a
contrivance to claim that when Paul speaks of "modesty" it "can
not be proven" and we can "never know" what Paul meant by using
the word. Good grief! Words are defined by their context and usage; in such
circumstances, the definition of "modesty" used by Paul and his
contemporaries (whom, we may add, he was specifically addressing) must be taken
as what is meant, and it is those who disagree who must provide solid evidence
to the contrary: They must, for example, produce a text from the time of Paul
that defines "modesty" differently, and then show that this was the
definition that Paul and his readers were more likely to be familiar with, than
the one clearly testified to in Greco-Roman and Jewish literature of the
period. If this is not the way things are done, what keeps us from ripping a
verse out of context from the Quran, and declaring that when Muhammed spoke
about modesty, he was really saying you could get naked and party naked all
night long? Mr. Ahmed's methodology is the intellectual equivalent of him
hiking up his pant legs like a little girl, stamping his feet rapidly, and
flapping his hands yelling, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" It is patently obvious
that Mr. Ahmed is lost in the sea of scholarship we have drowned him in.
Mr. Ahmed clouds his own waters of doom by
claiming that "if someone were to ask me [Mr. Ahmed], what my standard of
morality is, my answer would be very different than what the traditional
culture I live in dictates, and it will be based on my own personal standard of
what I think is right or wrong." Well now isn't that just hunky dory.
Aside from the fact that the world of the first century Mediterranean was a collectivist
culture, as we noted, and to which there was no reply or mention -- where Mr.
Ahmed's screaming individualism would have been regarded as a horrifying
mutation which would have had him disgraced in the eyes of his neighbors --
there is a scale of difference between the broad idea of a "standard of
morality" and that of a single aspect of morality, modesty. It is possible
that in
Mr. Ahmed further professes ignorance at
knowing of any Christian who "believes or practices what James P. Holding
is recommending." This gives excellent testimony to Mr. Ahmed's seclusion,
but little else. It is also quite frankly a non-answer to the question of
whether or not what James P. Holding recommends is accurate or not. Mr. Ahmed's
blubbering retort that "virtually all Muslims and Christians believe is
that God's Word transcends all cultures and practices" -- well, I cannot
speak for Muslims of whatever rank, but in the Christian world, the word for
persons who refuse to define the Biblical text in terms of its context is ignorant.
It is not exactly clear what Mr. Ahmed means by "transcends all cultures
and practices" but it seems that he thinks it requires gross
decontextualization, and I am constrained again to ask once again (since it was
not answered, see below) where Muhammed included definitions of the Arabic words
he used to author the Quran. If Mr. Ahmed so much as looks at an Arabic
dictionary, or was taught the definitions of words by someone else, he is
following "man made traditions" and thereby hoists himself on his own
petard.
Obviously not having yet achieved that high
of a reading level, though, Mr. Ahmed "challenges" me to recommend
here that "Christians MUST dress like the people did in the first century
because this is what Paul truly meant," though that is not at all what I
recommended, and I have no issues to speak of with any particular
"Christian Cheerleaders" or "Christians to win the title of Miss
America." As with a certain atheist we know, Mr. Ahmed shouts a challenge
into the dragon's cave, knowing that the dragon is down at the bar and grill
picking up his order of buffalo wings. We get now to where I noted that
"Mohammed certainly did not provide a glossary of terms for the
Quran"; oblivious to what this point means, Mr. Ahmed says in essence,
"we don't need no stinkin' glossary" for the Bible, muddles about
the alleged lack of a solution, and then ignores entirely the point about an
outside context (Arabic language) being needed to even access the Quran. The
Quran's "clear guidance for daily living" is of absolutely no use
unless someone in the crowd somewhere can read Arabic. I believe (perhaps Mr.
Ahmed, given his oddities, is different) no Muslim gets guidance from the Quran
by rubbing it on his head.
We get now to where I made some issue of the
social aspect of high context that made definitions, for Paul, unnecessary; and
made admonitions in the Quran, if anything, a sign of a more degnerate society
in need of the reminder. Mr. Ahmed plays the ignorance card yet again, simply
calling this "foolishness" and "jealousy towards Islam";
but of course, any expectation that I did have the Mr. Ahmed would actually
provide a response, rooted in the findings of peer-reviewed,
credentialed social-science scholarship as my point is (see Malina and
Rohrbaugh's Social Science Commentary on John, for example), may as well
have been an expectation that Mr. Ahmed would grow pig ears and fly to the
moon. Further confused, Mr. Ahmed reads my note about the mere existence
of community standards with a recommendation that we follow them, and then
claims contradiction between the point he invented for me claiming that we are
supposed to follow first century norms. In essence Mr. Ahmed has erected two
scarecrows in my yard and has put them in the boxing ring. he also takes my
comment, "Sure it is," not as a facetious retort (as the context
itself shows -- he does not quote my invitation to him following, to stroll
down a Saudi Arabian beach nearly naked and see if his claim rings true) but as
an admission of the truth on my part! Needless to say, the barrel of yuks that
descends from Mr. Ahmed's barn meets anything produced by any atheist we have
ever rebutted on this site!
Further on, in response to my point about it
perhaps being "sexy" for a woman in Mr. Ahmed's crowd to turn up an
ankle, we have but some skein about "racist caricature of Arabs"
(from whatever range of paranoia that resulted from) as well as some
implication that the 1900s cartoon I referred to was somehow racist
("silly racist cartoons from the 1900s depicting Muslims as vile sex
perverts" -- I will have to ask Mr. Ahmed how many Muslims were in
America, as specified, in this period!), though it depicted, in fact,
white, male, non-Muslim American citizens of the period (it was from the artist
whose work is noted here).
Remaining unanswered is my point that someone like St. James can be no means by
held responsible for the perversions of those who are "turned on"
because her hair is curled just so. If that is so, then I expect Mr. Ahmed to
hide himself at once beneath a burkah, as there are undoubtedly some women, or
maybe even homosexual men, out there who would find his attractive, and it is
his fault if he tempts them.
Back again to context: Regarding what I said
about the rules being in place already when Paul wrote (or else what Mr. Ahmed
whinging about being of no cultural relevance), Mr. Ahmed consults the highest
level of social science scholarship he can find -- himself -- and declares as
he stamps his feet, no, "people meeting each other, then deciding to get
married" have always existed. The Romans and Greeks certainly did it this
way." No, they did not. Marriages in the Greco-Roman world were arranged;
there was no dating (the main point of Mr. Ahmed's screed) and women were kept
tightly controlled in their homes. Marriages were performed for financial gain
(to one or both families). At any rate, from all of this in which I am
explaining why Paul does not give rules for dating and did not need to, Mr.
Ahmed gets some delusional idea that I recommend a return to this sort of
method in marriage (!), which makes about the fourth delusional strawman Mr.
Ahmed has erected since this discourse began. It is much easier, I daresay,
than coming to grips with social science data far above Mr. Ahmed's ken.
Re my note about Muslims in
Oddly enough, Mr. Ahmed agrees with my point
that the Bible (and the Quran, he allows) say nothing about drugs for there
were no drugs to use and abuse; yet this glimmering moment of contextualizing
realization is spoiled by his excuse that "Islam was clearly able to
address the evils of today's society and condemn them. The Bible failed to do
so." Christianity, however, contrary to Mr. Ahmed's makeshift proposition
to the contrary, did not fail to do so; while the Quran "did"
fail by his own admission. That little shiftiness of categories won't be gotten
away with. And then, in spite of agreeing that there was good reason for the
Bible (or the Quran) to mention drugs, Mr. Ahmed embarks on a skein of
mulluguthering about the "Bible's gross deficit" (shared by the
Quran, as he admits) and an alleged "logical fallacy of false
analogy" in my appeal to "common sense". Mr. Ahmed whingles,
"There are many things, which are BAD for you, but are permitted by God,
like butter and eggs, which are high in chloresterol." I do beg pardon.
The medical research says that these things are bad for you, IN EXCESS; and it
takes no more than common sense to say that would be the case for anything.
Whole grains are good for you; but eat nothing else but those, and eat them
until your belt flies off, and you will die of scurvy and get grossly fat as
well. In any event what any of this has to do with "Biblical
morality" is difficult to see. I suppose next Mr. Ahmed will "freak
out" over the Bible's (and the Quran's) lack of advice on maintaining a
"good" cholesterol level of 200. I would remind Mr. Ahmed that his
own Allah is "ALL KNOWING and ALL-POWERFUL, he knows the past, present and
future." Therefore, Allah knew very well the issue of drugs even more so
than people do today. Yet, according to the Quran, as Mr. Ahmed admits and
according to the same level of explanation he demands of the Bible, Allah
decided, that it is not a sin to do drugs. Thus we are left with two options.
We can either be absurd literalists, as Mr. Ahmed is, and insist that if the
exact drug name and FDA number is not given in the Bible (or Quran), that drug
is not prohibited and we can get as high as we please; or, we can be like 1)
the Muslims here
(or are they "Shia"?) and use some common sense, to decide that the
Quran's forbiddance of "intoxicants" can be broadly defined to
include drugs yet unknown to Muhammed; and 2) Jews and Christians who use some
common sense, to decide that the Bible's strictures on pharamkos
(Galatians 5:20) or against marring the temple of the Holy Spirit, speak just
as well in application to drugs not named there either. Got that, Ahmed? ALL
Christians scholars uphold this view. This is bad news for millions of
decontextualizers as well as Islamic apologists who don't do their homework. 
Mr. Ahmed goes on to deny, from his realm of
fantasy, that those deep in sin won't be affected by rules one way or the
other; he admits to us "that if it were not for Islam's explicit rules, I
would definitely try marijuana... I would love to try cocaine...And definitely,
I would like to have a beer with my friends after work." To which I can
only say, that we thank Mr. Ahmed for admitting to his own rank stupidity
and/or utter lack of self-control. It bespeaks well of the quality of his
debate, as well as the fact that he obviously grew up in a non-collectivist
society.
And so it is, that Mr. Ahmed's
"reply" to our article, using as it does not one whit of relevant
scholarly data, closes with Mr. Ahmed apparently exciting himself a bit too
much describing "walking around in tight fitted, skimpy outfits exposing
much of their parts like that of Britney Spears," and declaring that no,
the Bible does not teach that "you should look at their INTENTIONS behind
their deeds." It hardly needed to; that once again is a standard moral
lesson that has been known in societies from the dawn of time; if Muhammed
needed to remind his own contemporaries of that point, it is yet again merely a
testimony to how sunken in moral mire his contemporaries truly were. If Mr.
Ahmed likes challenges, I do challenge him to find me a society that failed to
differentiate between evil works down with intent to harm, and accidental works
that caused harm inadvertently. Until then, I will also challenge him to stay
under a burkah of his own, lest by some means he inadvertently (but it's his
own fault) tempt some woman (or even some homosexual man) to ogle him. Or maybe
I should recommend that he go around stark naked lest he tempt some person to
say, "I don't like the clothes that guy wears. They're too conservative. I
rebel!" and then compel them to go around naked as well. No, the only
solution for the uncourageous, unthinking soul that is Mr. Ahmed is to hide in
his room and never come out again. Little wonder that the heavy-handed
solutions of Islam have appeal for him.
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