When apologists resort to personal attacks and the inflammatory language of bullies, you know they're weak. Apologists exist to convince true believers not to look at contradictory evidence, never to promote truth.
Granted I can be as mean as the next person; however in this case it comes with the territory you're describing. They are there - to deceive people. The story of Ravi Zacharias is a good example. The deceptive mindset, is similar to that of a psychopath and they have many amongst their ranks. In that it leads to this sort of ...instability, whenever they are challenged on any of it. The actual reason so many of them are jailed here in China; is because of the bigotry issue - and the aggression that follows.
Why do you (and 100+ people) think logos and pathos are one? Obviously you can say something true and be a bully about it at the same time. "1+1=2 dumbass". The point is so obvious and trite I don't know how you get people on board to the opposite.
Whilst this apologist is obviously entitled to voice his opinion, it is significant that he seems unable to do so without being deliberately unpleasant. Dan, by contrast, not only produced his original video calmly and factually but maintains that dignity in his response. This alone should make us doubt the apologist. I don't know who he is but I seriously doubt his scholarship or credentials.
He always seems to provoke these ranting retards. Ironically the only one 'humiliated' was this ignorant waste of space himself. I get the sense Dan will have to weather this sort of thing indefinitely as the sky daddy cult begins to collapse. Hopefully he doesn't let it phase him and continues to put these worthless clowns in their place. The bigotry of the religious is almost impressive. Hard to fathom how they aren't ashamed of it.
And why, whether one is a believer or nonbeliever, it is important to examine artifacts, text, or other data, and carefully try to understand what meaning or data is actually justifiable in an artifact, or data, or text. The scholarship DrDMc and others (he is one of an army of careful thinkers) needs to be encouraged.
It's always quite stunning to see someone so spectacularly ignorant of scholarship speak with such condescension to an actual biblical scholar. It's sad to see such adherence to dogma over data, but it's not surprising in itself. What *is* surprising is the smug superiority on display by this particular apologist. I'm quite amazed at your ability to remain so calm and level in your responses, Dr McClellan. Kudos as always :)
Yeah, I am always fascinated when nonscholars accuse actual scholars of being embarrassments to academia when they themselves are not academics. It is also comical when they spout theories as if they are fact that are well outside the mainstream scholarly consensus, but apologists have seldom ever let facts get in their way.
Dan, I’ve never hear you call someone “stupid” or that their argument was “stupid” or an “embarrassment to academia.” I’m not sure if this person is in academia, but the way they speak does not make me want to treat them seriously. I don’t like when my views, i.e. dogma, are challenged by data, that doesn’t mean that the data is incorrect. Neither does it mean I call the persons argument “crappy”, “stupid”, or “embarrassing”. Those pejoratives just mean that you’re getting emotional about the things you don’t like and that also makes me less likely to take the creator’s arguments.
So that other creator thinks that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which is not the prevailing scholarly view and the fact that they record events that they could not have possibly been eyewitnesses to such as the events prior to Jesus's birth, him preaching as a teenager in the temple, his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus's trial and many others.
At first I thought he was just throwing shade like Dan does but he got nasty! Definitely took personal offense. This information didn’t even seem that important to me lol
I truly enjoy watching Dan swat away all these ill-prepared apologetic responses; I think they may be my favorite videos. It's especially gratifying to watch him completely dismantle the rude and indignant apologists that cherry-pick facts from a Wikipedia page on ancient biblical texts and then believe they're a real PhD. (It's a cherry on top if the apologist is an actual PhD, but from a conservative evangelical school with no accreditations.)
This "creator" is the exact person I think of when Dan types his disclaimer about not "harassing or commenting" on someone else's page. His smarmy and sanctimonious tone is driving me bananas.
Dan, kudos to you for keeping it civil. I'd be hard pressed to do so in similar circumstances. It's a testament to your patience that you're able to do it.
I welcome this young man’s feckless display of ‘Christian love’ - speaking your mind in public is the essence of freedom! Dan’s response? Chef’s kiss, five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dan McClellan, I admire your continued informed calmness, in the face of these unapologetic apologist reality deniers. It's frustrating to think that this insulting dogmatist's audience will mostly never see your comprehensive response video.
The one thing that will make me distrust a person’s arguments the most is reverting to name calling and ad-hominem statements. And a large chunk of this apologist’s arguments are interweaved with personal attacks against Dan.
God is supposedly omnipotent, but somehow he needs an army of apologists to defend him. (Seems a bit suspect… 🤔) Oh, and he always needs money. Lots and lots of MONEY!!!
It’s like a kid arguing with the other kids (who know Santa isn’t real) that they’re stupid and “of course he’s real. How else to presents get to the end of my bed?”
What I can deduce is that Dan did not respond in a single setting but at least two settings. This is based upon the shirt changes (Spiderman vs Batman). This tells me that Dan carefully made sure that he articulated his position, as well as understood the argument from the apologists. He not only provided us with greater insight. He provided us with a teaching example of how we should respond in all matters. Thanks Dan.
.. the batman shirt was from a previous video that the other dude was reacting to. You have Dan reacting to a reaction video, which is why there's 2 shirts.
This apologist's entire approach can be summarized as "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Thank you, Dan, for pulling back the curtain and allowing us to assess the data for ourselves.
If the other creator has anything useful to say I cant tell, because Im so distacted by how rude he was, resorting to personal attacks and insults instead of arguing his points and ideas.
The apologist, despite his struggles with logic and kindness, still exposed some areas that benefitted from the clarification in this video. I think we are now much better prepared for Papias enthusiasts. Papias described his own methodology as ,to paraphrase, repeating what people claimed if they claimed it came from the Lord. He delighted only in those who taught the “truth”, which implies that he thought he knew the truth already and filtered out testimony that didn’t match what he already believed.
The usage of personal attacks by this other creator really undermines their credibility. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to stick to the data.
If Peter consulted Mark on the construction of his gospel, its intriguing that this gospel is missing key elements like: the virgin birth and the post resurrection appearances of Jesus. Its interesting that Papias would prefer hearing tales from elders over the gospels. If the Gospels are eyewitness accounts, they're immediately more preferable than elders including elders that were eyewitnesses. Memory fails overtime and his work is dated to about 95-110 AD. This wouldve made John the Elder 89 years old if John the Elder was the Apostle John and our ideas of his age are accurate. Pretty sure an apostle like Matthew writing 15 or so years earlier wouldve had a better memory than John who was older at the time. And it seems like Papias' ideas of what occurred based off oral tradition contradicts scripture so ig Papias heard eyewitness Elder testimony that heavily contridicts what this guy says Matthew, Peter, Paul, and John claimed. Theres no way you get what he said about Judas any other way.
Dan Shows us the difference between a serious scholar and a faithful apologist who works backward from a conclusion and will not move off that conclusion, no matter the data that contradicts that conclusion.
I have to say. I am impressed that you kept your cool, explained how the other creator was wrong, and did not resort to any personal attacks on the other creator. Honestly, it makes it seem ae though you Dan, are on the side of logic and believability. Everyone who attacks you in this matter is just mad that you know more, and are taking their ball and going home so to speak..
Dan, you might be a modern day prophet to teach the world the TRUTH of the Bible. I'm not gonna state that as a fact, but it's what I believe. Peace be with you, God bless!
No one responds in kind. When academics argue it is about the grey areas where one makes logical, educated deductions based on where they consider the evidence is pointing. Debate can be heated. The people who criticise Dan don’t seem to even know how to debate interpretations of evidence. They are only scratching the surface. Most only refer to one source and that is the source in question! It was good that this guy had some knowledge but, you know, maybe the Dunning Kruger effect is in play if he thinks he can speak on behalf of academia.
When you can't pound the facts you pound the theories. When you can't pound the theories you pound the facts. When you can pound neither the theories nor the facts you pound the table. And this apologist is pounding the table.
I always wondered why, in fiction, when there was a protagonist that was supremely over-powered that the antagonist(s) would still press their attack on them even though they should have known there would be only one outcome. So, you know, some poor schmuck sidekick punching Batman. It always seemed ridiculous that someone would, with full knowledge beforehand, pick a fight they could not win. I was sure that this would not happen in real life. And then it does 🤣
Can someone identify the angry dogmatic unprofessional individual in glasses whom Dan addresses in this vid? I’d like to pay a visit to their account and see what other unhinged nonsense they’re spewing under the guise of “spreading facts.”
Unfortunately, despite plainly having been trained how to do so, McClellan doesn't bother to cite his sources. The expectation and duty to provide a source for the original is no different on RU-vid than it is in academia. This intellectual failing is really my only gripe with his work but it is an issue.
When you have multiple degrees and have been engaged in the study of something for years and find yourself debating a guy who gets all his facts from google.
Even if I knew nothing about Dan and if this had been my first video about conflicts in biblical scholarship, I am for sure going to be against the one who keeps saying the other one is stupid and being generally insulting
As I said in a comment in the original video, Christians have no good evidence for their authorship claims for any of the gospels. The best that they can do is come up with unsupported scenarios about how it is *plausible* that the assigned authors wrote the gospels. If they had good authorship evidence, they would simply present that, instead of coming up with ever more outlandish rescue mechanisms for their beliefs. In this case, being very butt-hurt while doing so.
Fairly accurate. Lunatics like this are pretty much harmless - as they discredit themselves easily with what you've said. The ones to watch out for however are the sweet talkers. So in a way this sort of thinking does have a flaw. In that you can be lead into thinking a calm and reasonable sounding person; is a good one. I mentioned it in another comment; but this is just like Ravi Zacharias. 40 years in 'apologetics' but struck off for being an abusive, blackmailing, sex pest and rapist. Beware the talented. Guys like this are...ironically lol... an 'embarrassment to academia'
people should realizes by now that marcion started the gospel tradition either by writing, redacting or collecting the very first gospel in existence and ten letters of paul thus starting the concept of a christian canon and stating later that the other christians added to it to make it more jewish to tie it up with judaism thus earning the respect of greco roman people who tolerates ancient religion and has disdain for new supersttitions like neo platonic christianity
It’s clear that the he is simply responding out of a need to be opposed to what you said, for no other reason then to fire up his followers in a quest to “protect the truth” aka dogma.
I'm not sure why youtube is removing my comments. I've been trying to ask about the Papias reference and whether it actually says that (i am sire it does, but i was trying to point to a History Valley video which shows the quote where it doesnt appear to say quite that). I'll put the History Valley link in a separate reply below this one and see if iy works this time. It's very relevant to this because it's John Kloppenborg talking about Papias and how tjat might be a reference to Q. Link below, unless youtube deletes it again.
As a Christian, I have no issue with accepting that the authors of the Gospels are anonymous. To me, it makes the most sense. I would never attribute my name to a work that would have me executed.
I'm afraid this creator is getting roundly hammered on social media for his lack of research. He's attacked Islam using a similar approach and should feel embarrassed at the results
Apologists exist to apologize for not presenting any evidence, let alone proof, of the deities they espouse to purportedly believe in - with conviction, devoutness and faith!
I actually felt sorry for this creator as he called out your name and you proceeded forward with detached discipline. You have persuasively impacted his beliefs. More deeply, he likes you and he doesn't know what to do with his beliefs or feelings. I give this creator one of the higher grades on engagement because, unlike so many you disassemble into the pit of "utter nonsense," this sweet fellow knows you have the superior argument.
