teknomom

I have to disagree with “oldschool” on several points.

One, debate is ALWAYS about appearances and debate skill, and NEVER about substance and reasoned exegesis. The game is to sway the audience, not with superior arguments, but with superior crowd manipulation. So only those who are trained in formal debate should even think about participating. I highly recommend a site called Ex-Atheist for more information.

Second, the words “incoherent”, “mental gymnastics”, “emotionalism”, “stories” etc. are the same biased judgments Matt threw around. Exactly who was being and doing those things is of course a matter of opinion. I think Matt was clearly the emotional one, the one doing the gymnastics, the one who was incoherent. And as we have been trying to explain, Matt’s “sound bite” hermeneutic is a coward’s way out of dealing with the depths of scripture. A surface-skimming might be okay for him, but not for me.

A formal debate between Matt and Cheryl would be like the fly agreeing to duke it out with a spider on the spider’s web. It’s his game. Cheryl’s “game” is more like a long clinical study. What the Bible teaches about the Assembly and how we all fit into the Body is not “rocket science”, but neither is it “Exegesis Lite”. What they call “stories” is simply careful thought, and they’re not used to that.