Marshall Boring - Part Two

Or, “Marshall Shouldn’t-Be-Taken Seriously-by-Anyone-with-a Brain”

This entry is the second part of a rebuttal to WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com. In Part One, I went over how the website is fundamentally flawed due to misreading of scripture extrapolated to the extreme and how he uses purely emotional arguments and nothing rational. In Part Two, I aim to go over how Marshall uses refuted canards about slavery and sexism, has no knowledge of good sources (One would wonder how he made it through college), and his ego and arrogance should be a clear sign to stay away. So let’s get right to it, shall we?

In Chapter 13, Marshall Brain (Henceforth known as Marshall “Boring”) loudly proclaims, “Why does God love slavery?” Then he cites writings by Frederick Douglass to get you to feel sorry for the slaves, which is highly effective, because American slavery was a barbaric atrocity. But what Boring doesn’t seem to understand is that Biblical slavery was nothing like American slavery. He’s never heard of something called “indentured servitude.” He also doesn’t understand that this same kind of “slavery” brought the first of our ancestors to America on their own free will. Even what we all thinks is “slavery” is completely different in the reality of the ancient world.

Raymond Westbrook, in “A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law” states:

Freedom in the ancient Near East was a relative, not an absolute state, as the ambiguity of the term for ‘slave’ in all the region's languages illustrates. ‘Slave’ could be used to refer to a subordinate in the social ladder. Thus the subjects of a king were called his ‘slaves,’ even though they were free citizens. The king himself, if a vassal, was the ‘slave’ of his emperor; kings, emperors, and commoners alike were ‘slaves’ of the gods. Even a social inferior
when addressing a social superior referred to himself out of politeness as,
‘your slave.’ There were, moreover, a plethora of servile conditions that were
not regarded as slavery, such as son, daughter, wife, serf, or human pledge.”

I think that should be enough for Boring to realize his failure to research, but if it’s not, you can see the rest here.

He then talks about animal sacrifices, but really doesn’t do anything except say, “Ewwwww! That’s gross.” Once again, Boring shows his ineptitude for historical knowledge of ancient laws. J.P. Holding explains it like this.

“For the ancient person, an animal was like money. It was their way of giving to charity -- the collection plate, if you will. Furthermore, cultured people of the past had no objection to the idea of vicarious or substitutionary
sacrifice.”

Boring is quick to spout off that that killing animals, “does not have any beneficial effect for anyone,” yet what do you call steak, Boring? But that’s not the point. This section has little substance other than, “The idea of killing an animal, splattering its blood about and then burning its flesh is, quite obviously, absurd and ridiculous. God would have nothing to do with animal
sacrifice.” Notice that we’re not told WHY this is obvious, and notice how this is all relative. He wouldn’t say that about killing the termites that live under his house. He wouldn’t say that when spraying his can of Raid around his living room for spiders. In short, his arguments calling animal sacrifice “absurd” is about equivalent to PETA calling a person eating a hamburger “absurd.” Once again, the question isn’t, “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” but “Why won’t Boring do any research?”

His argument about sexism is immediately flawed. He cites 1 Corinthians 33-35, which according to Boring says that women have to shut up, but that’s not true at all. This is a case of Paul quoting opponents and then refuting them with strong disapproval. We know this because he just did it in verses 12 and 13, there is a definite change in the tone of Paul's writing, and there was an extra word in the original manuscript after that verse that wasn't translated into the NIV: "What?!" (Christian-Thinktank) This, once again, demonstrates that Marshall Boring doesn't know the meaning of the word, "exegesis." (If you don't either, find out.) Among other things, he says that none of Jesus's disciples were women...but wait, according to Luke 8, Mary Magdalene was a disciple. Boring was probably looking at Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" painting when writing that one up.

Which leads me to my next point. He uses terrible sources. One of them is The Da Vinci Code.

All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made. Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions. As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts. The process is described succinctly and accurately in the book "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown.

...Excuse me? What's wrong with this picture? Boring is using The Da Vinci Code, a piece of fiction that has an incredible amount of factual errors, as a credible source of Christian doctrine? You've gotta be kidding me. Now, why is this? Because Boring seems to be unaware of anything by scholars that's been peer-reviewed. He's perfectly ready to cite Marilyn Hickey Ministries, Guidepost Magazines, and Rick Warren as uniform sources for Christian doctrine, but he's never touched any of the material by real scholars. If he stepped onto any of the reputable apologetics websites on the internet, he'd probably cringe in fear.

Last, but certainly not least, he's a very egotistical person that doesn't attempt to hide it. He has an entire section on the page called, "Understanding Your Delusion," that basically says that anyone who believes in any religion is equivalent to any adult that still believes in Santa Clause. He cites the Santa story, saying no adult would believe it unless they were delusional. Then the Mormon and Muslim stories, saying that Christians think those people are delusional. Then, he cites the story of Jesus Christ, and says that all the Mormons and Muslims think that Christians are delusional, so the God of Christianity must be imaginary.

I am using solid, verifiable evidence to show you that the Christian story is imaginary. Your rational mind can see the evidence. Four billion non-Christians would be happy to confirm for you that the Christian story is imaginary. However, if you are a practicing Christian, you can probably feel your "religious mind" overriding both your rational mind and your common sense as we speak. Why? Why were you able to use your common sense to so easily reject the Santa story, the Mormon story and the Muslim story, but when it comes to the Christian story, which is just as imaginary, you are not?

Try again. I have seen no "solid, verifiable evidence." He's done nothing to disprove the Jesus story other than saying, "Duh, Jesus doesn't appear to anyone today, so he must not have resurrected, duh," and "Other people think your stories are false, so, duh, it must be true, duh." Brain hasn't touched the "solid, verifiable evidence" for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Other statements he makes, like this, where he waves the "common sense" flag, which he does in nearly every paragraph:

The Bible is clearly the work of primitive men, many of whom were insane. Anyone with common sense can see that. Exodus 21:20-21 alone is enough to prove it. When people insist that the Bible is the word of God, we should ignore them and exclude them from public discourse.

Or this, where he tells his atheist readers to promote the site like crazy, because if any Christian sees it they'll convert (exaggerated):

The way to change the world is to change people's minds. As more and more people openly discuss the fact that "God" and "Allah" are completely imaginary, the world becomes a better place. The people who believe in "religion" look sillier and sillier. Eventually, religion becomes a fringe activity that is meaningless...

...You would be amazed at how much of an effect discussion and linking can have. If
we keep publicly discussing the problems of religion, we will coalesce the
minority and then begin changing the majority. As discussed on this page,
religion will eventually fall to rationality because of the immense weight of
the evidence.

...clearly show that this man, Boring, thinks he's the "normal" one and everyone else is "delusional." But, as I've shown, if anyone's delusional, Boring is.

He even has the nerve to hide text in his HTML code that's insulting to Christians. Here are some of them.

If you are a Christian, you now have a major problem: We have just proven that God did not write the Bible. You have to solve this problem -- if men wrote the Bible rather than God, Christianity is dead. So you do one of two things with these passages. You simply ignore the fact that God condones slavery in the Bible. You continue to believe in God and the Bible anyway. If someone asks you about all of the pro-slavery passages in the Bible, you change the subject. Or you accuse the person of blasphemy. You try to come up with incredibly convoluted explanations for the pro-slavery passages in the Bible. You try to find some sort of bizarre rationalization to explain away an all-loving God who openly advocates slavery in both the Old and New Testaments.

Sorry, Boring, but we've already showed you how your doctrine of slavery is the "incredibly convoluted" one. If you try to disprove history, which you undoubtedly will to conform with your slavery doctrine, you're the one that's delusional.

Instead of acting like a child and turning to religion and all of its bizarre
mythology, what you need to do is grow up and accept reality. Then you need to
make the most of it.

Oh, please. I'd love to see this guy debate with any educated Christian. We'll see if he still says that they're acting like children or not accepting reality. Boring needs to stop calling the kettle black over and over.

Well, that's about it. WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com is nothing but a bunch of whining and complaining, mixed in with misinformed doctrine that as no historical bearing whatsoever, a whole lot of the phrase "common sense," which in itself seems to be missing Boring, him calling things "bizarre" (he really thinks communion is referring to literal cannibalism, which is hilarious in and of itself), terrible use of sources, fundy-atheist hyperliteral Bible reading, and overall stupidity.

F minus for Failure Beyond Belief.

If this isn't enough for you and you want a much more comprehensive rebuttal to this website, in a parody formation, check out Why Does God Hate Deputies? by James Patrick Holding.