Robert Price Will Debate James White

This should be a good debate. The topic is the historical reliability of the New Testament, something Price knows a lot about. James White though will have read up on Price's arguments and he'll be ready with something. Not sure what though.

White's view of Price is clear. He thinks Price is on a mission to discredit the Bible. That's true of a lot of atheists, but in fact it is not true of Price. Price is a guy that frequently corrects overzealous atheists in their efforts to identify contradictions. For instance he believes that the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 do not necessarily require that the earth is young. Someone that advocates "every possible theory that militates against Christian orthodoxy" would probably prefer to assume that the Bible is teaching six literal 24 hour creation days because it sounds so absurd. Price doesn't do this.

I've spoken with White on the Dividing Line about Price (see the 6/5/07 discussion). He tried to make the same sort of point. Robert Price has radical skepticism and applies one standard to the Bible and another to all other texts in an effort to discredit it. I said no. He treats the Qur'an the same way. "Sorry. The Bible and Qur'an have different textual histories." I replied that all books have different textual histories. "Oh so it's just so he can discredit theistic faiths." OK. At this stage it's obvious that White doesn't know much about Price's work. Price talks about how his reasonable questions apply to Plato's works and others on a regular basis.

So I think at this stage White probably has fundamental misunderstandings about Price and his views. He'll be reading up on them in the months to come. Hopefully that will do him some good.