You Don't Say

Jason Engwer has evaluated the White-Barker debate and he finds that James White was the victor. By a wide margin. In other news Tom Cruise thinks L. Ron Hubbard has a lot of worthwhile things to say.

This is very useful information. Jason has in the past calmly deliberated over his own performance in debate against me, John Loftus, and various other skeptics (for instance see his recent evaluation that I discuss here) and he's decided that he was victorious. Likewise he's convinced that Arif Ahmed lost to Gary Habermas. Come to think of it I don't recall him ever observing that a skeptic out performed a Christian in debate.

I love this image of inerrantist Christians calmly deliberating over the available evidence and drawing their conclusions as if it was a discovery based upon that evaluation rather than their commitment to the party line. They pretend to be scholars. But real scholars are always probing, interested in discovering new possibilities. They're interested in knowing if the way things have been understood is wrong. How does a real scholar square this with dogmatic commitments? For the inerrantist it's all one big damage control operation, not scholarship.

Here's Greg Koukl admitting that for most Christians the commitment to the Bible as the Word of God comes first and the arguments come second. Scholars don't start with their conclusions. They derive their conclusions by looking at the facts. Does Jason behave more like a scholar or a dogmatist? You can't be both as far as I'm concerned.