Will the gauntlet be picked up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Not too long ago, upon seeing someone else talk about the book, I wrote a review of David McAfee’s Disproving Christianity. As you might expect, I found the book as sorely lacking in what it needed. The appearance I get is that David McAfee just looked up passages on Bible Gateway and read Wikipedia about them. There was no interaction with scholarly material. There was no bibliography. There was not an argument against the resurrection of Jesus at all. It pretty much boiled down to “If there are contradictions in the Bible, then Christianity is false.”
This has no basis in reality. Not even Bart Ehrman would totally buy this idea as he was a believer in Christianity for awhile even while thinking the Bible was not inerrant. There’s no reason to think the Bible is an all-or-nothing game, as if because we show that because the Bible supposedly contradicts on if man has seen God or not, that that means that Pontius Pilate never existed since the Bible records his existence. This is the way a fundamentalist thinks and this is why I say that McAfee is a fundamentalist as well. He applies the exact same standard the fundamentalist Christians he condemns does and does not engage with scholarship.
He has also written a book called The Belief Book which I plan on reviewing soon. It is designed for children. Remember Christian friends. It’s wrong for you to teach your own children to be Christians, but it’s perfectly okay for atheists to write books teaching atheism to children. Those who are telling you that you can’t teach your own children something are doing so because they have something else in mind that they want to teach your children. Yet in this book, others have told me that he really questions the existence of Jesus even, just as he does in Disproving Christianity. This would be enough to cue the laugh track anywhere else.
Yet it looks like McAfee has supplied himself with a bunch of yes men. These are not scholars, but simply his fan base who aren’t any more educated than he is. In my interactions, I have seen the same disdain for scholarship and the abundance of presuppositional atheism. Not a shock that the idea that Jesus never even existed is right at home there. For some reason, McAfee is treated as if he is an authority of some kind.
So right now, I am really making a public challenge. I have done so on his Facebook page, but I will do so right here. If David McAfee is sure he’s right, he’s free to face me on a debate on the resurrection of Jesus.
Why should he engage me? Well he already has to an extent.
You see, this is part of the modus operandi of David McAfee. He will often put up a response without showing the other side as if what was said was automatically brilliant. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to respond to my reply. McAfee says my response to the claim of 41,000 denominations was to simply ask “What’s a denomination?” This is not so. I in fact told what a denomination was. A denomination was a self-governing entity. McAfee posted up his response and while he linked to what I said earlier, but we know most people will never click the link. One thing McAfee might want to keep in mind is that if someone answers your response, it doesn’t bode well to put up your response and never return and answer them again, which of course, he never did.
I could also point out that I do happen to already have some scholarly endorsements. I am not saying all are scholars, but a number of them are. As readers of this blog know, I happen to have my own ministry and my own podcast and on my podcast, I have also interacted with the work of scholars. There are also several Ebooks of mine that are available. I have also appeared on shows like Atheist Analysis and had a debate with Ken Humphreys who runs the web site of Jesus Never Existed and one with Matthew Ferguson of Adversus Apologetica which you can download here on if Jesus rose from the dead and one on Unbelievable? where I answered the question of where was God in Haiti after the great 2010 earthquake. This in addition to being a speaker as well, such as at the New Orleans Defend The Faith 2015 Conference.
So if McAfee wants to think he has triumphed in a snippet over me, then he is welcome to come and face me in a debate. He might have an easy time surrounded by all his fans who will not give him a challenge to what he believes, but let’s see if he will be willing to face someone who does disagree with him.
The gauntlet has been cast down.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
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