----- Original Message -----
From: tony martin
To:Ken Adachi
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008
Subject: Christ,the Bible,James Patrick Holding and Acharya S
Hello Ken,
I would like to say something about your article about Christ,the Bible and Acharya S. I'm not saying that I completely agree with every single thing that Acharya says in her books. Maybe she's wrong about everything... or maybe she's right about everything ...that's not my reason for writing you. But did you know that the head of the web site tektonics.org that you've provided to discredit Acharya is headed by a man which also doesn't go by his real name? And believes that the Bible is infallible and without error?
He calls himself (James Patrick Holding)...but when he debates, he goes by the pseudonym (Robert Terkel) a man that I have been following for years now in debates about the Bible,which IMO has lost every single time he has debated Farrell Till (bible scholar) and others Bible scholars about the infallibility of the Bible. He believes that the Bible is infallible and perfect!
From what I've read on your site, you haven't even hinted that you believe that. IMO honest critical study of the Bible will reveal hundreds of contradictions and discrepancies that are very easy to detect to anyone who would take the time to read and study it for errors. He really doesn't have the understanding of the Bible that he claims. He's been blown away so many times in the debates about the Bible... that it actually grew boring watching his massacre time after time. Check it out for yourself!
This is what he says he believes on his web site. James Patrick Holding:
>>Campus Crusade, the big-time evangelistic organization, has a Statement of Faith here.
"I AGREE WITH IT IN WHOLE", though I vary on a couple of points from the average Christian today on how they will be fulfilled.
Statement of Faith
The sole basis of our beliefs is the Bible, GOD'S INFALLIBLE WRITTEN WORD, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that it was uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters on which it speaks.<<
He also goes on to disingenuously ridicule the people he has been debating with (and losing with) for years and years now in this excerpt:
>>Meet me on TheologyWeb.
This is a forum run by people that includes readers of this site. Many readers of this site are participants. Look for me under the username jpholding << If you come posting junk, you'll be laughed and scolded all the way to the dark side of the moon. If public humiliation is your favorite thing to enjoy, by all means, pop on board and tell us all about how "C. Dennis McKinsey" or "Farrell Till" or "Joseph Atwill" refute this or that on this site. We'll add the laugh track and have a real good time. On the other hand, if you DO use serious sourcework, you won't be able to run fast enough to escape the red carpet treatment. Our people WANT some serious interactions and challenges. They're not afraid of it.<<
This is ridiculous... since he's not been able to win a debate about the infallibility of the Bible at all! All I ask is that you read some of the debates (I have to admit they are very long) to see whether or not I'm telling the truth about his Bible scholarship. Here are some of the debates which he uses a false name or pseudonym for some unknown reason (maybe because he always loses?) just like Acharya S. and many others on the Internet I guess.(By the way, Farrell Till is not a great fan of Acharya either) http://www.theskepticalreview.com/search.php?searWords=James+Patrick+Holding+&Send=Search&search=0&match=0
PS I also hope to see this letter on your site for others to scrutinize if possible.
Tony
***
Hi Tony,
I used the first 5 or 6 links on Acharya that came up in a google search. I just perused them quickly. My purpose for including those links was to let Eric Dubay know that Acharya has far more critics than she has admirers. And the reason she has such an army of critics is because her claims are so pathetically erroneous, contrary to Eric's statement that he has searched high and low and yet could find no fault with her claims.
I wanted Eric to realize that Acharya is no authority on the historical record of Christ's existence, nor does she have any academic credentials in archaeology, nor standing with an internationally accredited institute of archaeology. In other words, she's a rank amateur without credentials who's trying to convince the entire world that she's a leading authority in archaeology and she has single-handedly managed to stumble across the greatest archaeology "find" in history: she claims to have "discovered" that Christ never existed. According to her, Christ is a confabulated "myth". She also claims that Buddha never existed, not Krishna.
That was the purpose of including the links to which you refer. Whether the author of some of those links uses a pseudonym on the Internet is immaterial. It's also irrelevant if he's a believer in the infallibility of the Bible. The issue at hand is whether Jesus Christ really existed and lived on earth from roughly year 1 AD to 33 AD and whether Acharya's claims have any merits. Everything else you've mentioned in your letter is unrelated to what I was talking about and therefore is not germane to this topic.
Naturally, Bible thumpers are going to be the first ones out of the gate when it comes to criticizing Acharya, because they're active on the internet, but Catholic scholars or Jewish scholars or Hindu scholars could have done an equally competent job of reducing Acharya spurious assertions to cinders had they shown any interest in defending Christ's reputation from such specious debunkers as this woman. However, it seems that only non-denominational, Christian fundamentalists are even aware that the internet exists and that these Christ-denial propaganda ploys are in play--and winning converts like Eric Dubay - precisely because they AREN'T being challenged by Biblical authorities.
So unfortunately, I have to take the time to play the role of defending Christ's historical record until those who have devoted their entire careers to Biblical scholarship step up to the plate and start doing what they should have started doing when this Christ debunking atheist first came out of the box 7 or 8 years ago.
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