James White Agonistes; or, How I played the apologist easier than a pipe.

he Divid­ing Line of May 16, 2013, found here, is all the evi­dence I need—in sooth, all the evi­dence you need too, dear reader—that Dr.* James White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc), of Alpha & Omega Sophistries (he calls it “Min­istries”; it’s a crotch­et of his), is so pre­dis­posed to see lack of intel­li­gence, seri­ous­ness, cred­i­bil­i­ty (fill in your noun of choice) in Catholic apol­o­gists, that he will let him­self be played on like a pipe. No need for Catholic apol­o­gists who engage the good Dr.* White to wait for him to invent straw men. You can hand him one of your own mak­ing: He will grab it, tear it to shreds, stomp upon it, and cack­le in tri­umph. Mean­while, you can pro­ceed with your seri­ous apolo­getic, and he won’t both­er to touch it. To expose a fool, he doth become a fool.

Showing How the Author Had More Success Than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Per­pend: Long before I wrote this arti­cle, and this one, I had the sus­pi­cion that Dr.* White could be incit­ed to rip up a straw man in like fash­ion; that he could, by sub­terfuge and bluff, be fooled into attack­ing a joke (as though it were seri­ous) and leav­ing the real argu­ment unan­swered. I decid­ed to put that sus­pi­cion to the test.

The back­ground to all this is that, for lo these many years, Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) has more than proven that you can wor­ry him all-out barmy with any the most whis­per­ing men­tion of the “33,000 Protes­tant sects.” Or invent the num­ber of your choice; how oft he hath fix­at­ed on the num­ber and over­looked the seri­ous argu­ment behind the num­ber! Sooth, ’twas not all that long ago, dear read­er, he perched behind his Divid­ing Line micro­phone to caw at Michael Voris for cit­ing a fig­ure of 40,000 sects. “Infla­tion!” quoth Dr.* White.

Thus made I query, whether, if I cit­ed some fan­tas­ti­cal num­ber, cud­geled out of the ether, I could mad­den him to a like degree of spleen? That might be fun:

So, Dr.* White, did you know that there are 725,403 Protes­tant sects? And all of them due to sola scrip­tura!

Then thought I aright, thus: No, best not to make the fig­ure too high; else, it shall be obvi­ous you’re try­ing to nee­dle him. Inflate the num­ber, but only enough to achieve the spleen while still sound­ing as though you may be seri­ous. Yes. But how to do that?

Anon I hit upon the way; to wit: to fig­ure out what the num­ber of Protes­tant sects would be today, giv­en the stan­dard math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la for expo­nen­tial growth. I let the math cre­ate the joke for me. And I decid­ed to write it all out in such a way as to com­bine: (1) play­ing it straight; (2) ham­ming it up just enough to make it obvi­ous that I was joking—obvious, I aver, to any­one not tem­pera­men­tal­ly pre­dis­posed to expect silli­ness from Catholics. (Sooth, my good Bap­tist aspers­er, to include a pic­ture of Doc­tor Emmett Brown? does not that scream par­o­dy, McFly? any­body home, McFly? think, McFly, think!) (3) shame­less­ly giv­ing the joke away—using such expres­sions as “exag­ger­a­tion” and “par­o­dy” (in the very text of the self­same arti­cle, no less), post­ing it under “humor,” includ­ing a note in my side­bar to indi­cate that I am “often known to wan­der into satire and par­o­dy with­out warn­ing.”

My guess—a cor­rect one, it turned out—was that Dr.* White would­n’t notice these give­aways. A clever pick­pock­et can pick your pock­et in front of heav­en and earth and nev­er be seen by eye of man. Some­times the best way to pick some­one’s pock­et is to do so bold­ly and in plain view of all. (And no, I’ve nev­er picked any­one’s pock­et. But I have some­times played April Fools jokes in May.)

Mean­while, I decid­ed to include, around the joke, a seri­ous exeget­i­cal argu­ment involv­ing St. Paul’s words in Eph­esians that there is “one church.” I even includ­ed a dense pas­sage ana­lyz­ing the Greek, te ekkle­sia, etis esten to soma (Eph. 1–22-23) [1]. My guess was that Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) would be so dis­tract­ed by the joke—which he would take seriously—that he would­n’t both­er to address him­self to the real argu­ment; that he would­n’t both­er to notice his beloved Greek lan­guage; that he would­n’t both­er to do any exe­ge­sis of the pas­sage from Eph­esians I men­tioned; that he would­n’t both­er try­ing to rec­on­cile Paul’s words with the scan­dal of sec­tar­i­an­ism (regard­less the true num­ber of Protes­tant sects).

No. Instead, he would spend the entire time—so I guessed—cawing and ful­mi­nat­ing about how lack­ing in rea­son Catholic apol­o­gists (specif­i­cal­ly, myself) are.

Easier to be Played on Than a Pipe

So what did Dr.* White say on the Divid­ing Line? Did my guess­es prove accu­rate?  Did I pluck out the heart of his mys­tery? Did I sound him from his low­est note to the top of his com­pass?

Dear read­er, per­pend:

• He began by describ­ing me as a con­vert to “Roman­ism,” hence displaying—from this absurd­ly loaded if yawn­ing­ly overused word—the anti-Catholic bias that informs every­thing he says.
• Next, he declared that I—I, Scott Eric Alt—have “decid­ed” (motu pro­prio, ’par­ent­ly) that there are 48,500 sects. Hence mak­ing it clear how far the joke had flown over his vast and sub­stan­tial pate.
• He described his own “refu­ta­tion” of the now-con­ser­v­a­tive and laugh­ing­ly out­dat­ed 33,000 fig­ure as “absolute­ly thorough”—just to make it clear that, while Roman­ists, papists, and mack­er­el-snap­pers are irra­tional, no such irra­tional­i­ty enters the vast and learned brain of Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.). Not in the least. He not­ed that I had “dis­missed” his refu­ta­tion, though he failed to men­tion the basis upon which I did so. (To con­vey a craft­ed impres­sion of whim­si­cal, out-of-hand breezi­ness on my part.)
• He noted—an evi­dent ref­er­ence to my joke, which he took seriously—that such a “mind­set in ser­vice of Rome is cul­tic.

(“It’s cul­tic, Mr. Alt!” he cawed.)

Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decid­ed that jokes are “cul­tic.” No doubt indeed they are graven images! Between you and me, I’m con­fi­dent they’re pos­i­tive­ly Bac­cha­na­lian! In a less dan­ger­ous cen­tu­ry, Alexan­der His­lop exposed the pagan ori­gin of jokes, but unfor­tu­nate­ly we are back­slid­ing now, and the papists are grow­ing bold.

“There is no rea­son­ing with this!” Dr.* White sput­tered in a round of liq­uid bile. “It’s absurd on a lev­el that is beyond respectabil­i­ty!”

Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decid­ed that “respectable” peo­ple don’t make jokes. Jokes are beneath the Bun­yanesque intel­lec­tu­al stature of Dr.* James Robert White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.).

• He said, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, that “All those Mor­mon groups are a part of the 33,000!” Dear read­er, I con­fess I’ve searched in vain through both my ear­li­er blog arti­cles for even the small­est pass­ing ref­er­ence to Mor­monism or Joseph Smith.  This would appear to be an obses­sion on the part of Dr.* White, which he hath a need to project onto me.

(Speak­ing of Mor­monism, side­kick Rich Pierce guf­fawed at the notion that that wor­thy reli­gion has any con­cern at all for sola scrip­tura. What nei­ther he nor Dr.* White point­ed out, how­ev­er, was that, in my arti­cle, I specif­i­cal­ly attrib­uted the 33,000 sects to pri­vate judg­ment, not to sola scrip­tura. I went out of my way to point that out. Dr.* White and Mr. Pierce went out of their way to ignore it and to attribute to me an argu­ment that I specif­i­cal­ly denied.)

Dr.* White pro­ceed­ed to dis­cuss the “math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la” (a dis­cov­ery of pure genius on my part, inci­den­tal­ly), call­ing it “fool­ish­ness” that’s not worth respond­ing to. (Even though that par­tic­u­lar piece of tongue-in-cheek fun was the only thing that Dr.* White both­ered to respond to.)

• He said, of me, “I don’t think he men­tioned any­where that this same source [the World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia] list­ed many Roman Catholic [sects].”

Truth be told, Dr.* White (as it must and shall), I did. After giv­ing a pre­cise break­down of where the 33,000 sects come from (you can check it out your­self, if you dare), here is what I said:

Totaled, this gives us a num­ber of approx­i­mately 33,791. Remov­ing “Ortho­dox” and “Roman Catholic” from the list, we are left with a total of 32,768.

Cer­tain it is that this dis­tinc­tion between 33,791 and 32,768 makes all the dif­fer­ence in the world to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of Protes­tantism. Jeep­ers creep­ers, a full three per­cent dif­fer­ence, let me rub my eyes! But I imag­ine if Dr.* White was not going to both­er to read what I wrote all that care­ful­ly, it is not much of a stretch to spec­u­late that he would­n’t notice that the “for­mu­la” and the 48,500 fig­ure were tongue-in-cheek [2]. What does it say—to any rea­son­able person—that Dr.* White would attempt to refute an arti­cle that he made such a half-Equ­us africanus asi­nus effort to read in the first place?

• He, Dr.* White, referred bit­ing­ly to the “wide-eyed, I’m a con­vert” notion that there’s “only one church.” Prithee count St. Paul in with this same “wide-eyed, I’m a con­vert,” “mind-numbed zom­bie approach” that Dr.* White “does­n’t respect,” since it was Paul who first said there is only one Church (Eph. 4:4) [3]. (But Dr.* White does­n’t men­tion that part of my arti­cle.)

“I would rather,” Dr.* White said, “have some­one who engages in thought.” Yes, it appeareth, Dr.* White hath now decid­ed that you can’t engage in thought and par­o­dy at the same time. Par­o­dy is an exis­ten­tial­ly thought­less thing to do, in the large-mind­ed opin­ion of Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.).

• He asked “on what log­i­cal lev­el” I would assume that there has been a “con­stant increase” in Protes­tant sects, since some Protes­tant church­es are clos­ing. (The cells it takes to fig­ure that one out.)

But for­sooth, Dr.* White, on no log­i­cal lev­el at all. It was a joke—a joke you missed in your red hot scar­let fever­ish desire to prove yet anoth­er Catholic apol­o­gist ridicu­lous.

I would, how­ev­er, invert the ques­tion on you: On what log­i­cal lev­el would you assume that, just because a few Protes­tant church­es here and there are clos­ing, there has­n’t nev­er­the­less been a net increase in sects? On what log­i­cal lev­el would you turn an anec­do­tal obser­va­tion of your own into evi­dence of the duplic­i­ty of Catholic apol­o­gists?

And fur­ther, Dr.* White, you said that church­es—mere buildings—are clos­ing; you did not say that sects are dying off. Per­ad­ven­ture sects may become small­er in their respec­tive size but greater in their over­all num­ber. Is there an incon­sis­ten­cy in that? Per­ad­ven­ture church­es are clos­ing because their mem­bers have all gone off into a score of schisms. Indeed, that would accord with the stan­dard Catholic under­stand­ing of the even­tu­al out­come of pri­vate judg­ment; name­ly, that every­one “becomes his own pope.” Every­one is his own church, a sect unto him­self; and to dis­cov­er how many Protes­tant sects there are, you would­n’t need to go to any World Chris­t­ian Ency­clo­pe­dia but instead to the phone book. Just count all the names.

• He, Dr.* White, con­clud­ed, “This is absurd on a lev­el that means there is no rea­son to ever talk about Scott Alt again. He has com­plete­ly made him­self unwor­thy of any­one’s even both­er­ing. And yet this is what slav­ery to Rome does.” (Hence pro­mot­ing me to the sta­tus of an arche­type.)

Dear read­er, imag­ine that! With noth­ing else to go on but a tongue-in-cheek sec­tion of a sin­gle blog arti­cle, which he mis­read stu­pid­ly, Dr.* White (Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.) has tak­en upon him­self the role of arbiter whether I’m worth “both­er­ing” with or talk­ing about. If I may make hon­est dec­la­ra­tion here, I doubt whether Dr.* White has read enough of my blog arti­cles, or tak­en the time to get to know enough of my back­ground or his­to­ry or rea­sons for con­vert­ing (con­tra what he knee-jerk­ing­ly pre­sumes them to be), to make any such judg­ment. His dense neu­rons are fir­ing into air and assault­ing the clouds. I have no evi­dence that Dr.* White has both­ered to read even the very few remarks I’ve made about my con­ver­sion. The specifics and chronol­o­gy of my con­ver­sion I have yet to write. (They are com­ing.)

He, Dr.* White, is all con­fi­dence and self-cer­tain­ty, how­ev­er, that I could­n’t pos­si­bly have had mature or decid­ed or ratio­nal rea­sons for becom­ing Catholic; and his only evi­dence is a joke that he made no effort what­so­ev­er to fig­ure out actu­al­ly was a joke. Who’s the dupe here?

And, Dr.* White, per­pend, con­sid­er, pon­der, and rumi­nate: Could I pos­si­bly have got­ten an M.A. degree (from an accred­it­ed uni­ver­si­ty), with a 3.69 GPA, by absur­di­ty that’s not worth both­er­ing with?

Mean­while, does Dr.* White men­tion my dis­cus­sion of Eph­esians, or my analy­sis of the Greek? No.

Does he men­tion my dis­cus­sion of how no one should insist upon some spe­cif­ic fig­ure of sects? No.

Does he men­tion my dis­cus­sion of the scan­dal of sec­tar­i­an­ism, which holds true how­ev­er many sects there are? No.

Does he men­tion this pas­sage at the end of my arti­cle:

Dr.* White seems to be oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that if he can just get the num­ber of Protes­tant sects low enough, he can sleep the sleep of the just. Con­trari­wise, some Catholic apol­o­gists seem to feel that the high­er the num­ber, the greater the case against Protes­tantism they have. But the fact is, St. Paul says that there is one Church. Does it real­ly mat­ter whether there are 49,000 sects, or 9000, or two?

No.

Does he men­tion any­thing, in fact, that I said or meant seri­ous­ly? No.

He would rather let the whole world know that he is eas­i­er to be played on than a pipe.

The Calvinist Tweak

I know that Dr.* White has a great admi­ra­tion for Rush Lim­baugh. (A lover of frac­tals, he was in a sim­i­lar way a lover of the Lim­baugh tie col­lec­tion.) Now, one of the things Mr. Lim­baugh is very good at is what he calls the “media tweak.” He will say some­thing that is wild exag­ger­a­tion, wild par­o­dy, wild hyperbole—something he comes nowhere close to hon­est­ly believing—and yet his detrac­tors will nev­er­the­less take him seri­ous­ly and become appalled. Why, how can Rush say such a ridicu­lous thing! Some­times, they will call the show, out­raged, and Rush will con­tin­ue to play it straight, as though he real­ly is seri­ous. And that will lead to fur­ther out­rage on the caller’s part. If you’ve ever watched the Dit­to­cam, you can see the laugh­ter and the jok­ing in Rush’s eyes, and yet these things are utter­ly missed by those who are pre­dis­posed to think of Mr. Lim­baugh as an extrem­ist but haven’t tak­en the time to lis­ten to the show all that often, if at all.

Dear read­er, I pulled a Rush Lim­baugh on Dr.* White. Call it the “Calvin­ist Tweak.”

There was a seri­ous point to all of this, though: Catholic apol­o­gists are in one very impor­tant sense at a dis­ad­van­tage when engag­ing Dr.* White. Before the first word has been uttered, Dr.* White already assumes the Catholic to be lack­ing in rea­son and ratio­nal­i­ty. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly true about con­verts. My joke was meant to expose that bias and smug self-sat­is­fac­tion on the part of Dr.* White. I decid­ed to test whether I could say some­thing wild­ly ridicu­lous, meant as a joke, and yet have Dr.* White believe that that’s real­ly what I think.

The fact that I suc­ceed­ed in doing so illus­trates the bias of Dr.* White. He is not capable—not at the moment—of engag­ing Catholic apol­o­gists on a seri­ous lev­el, because he is too busy try­ing to make them look ridicu­lous.

In this case, I hand­ed Dr.* White the “ridicu­lous­ness” like a head in a charg­er.

Now, when (and if) Dr.* White wish­es to address him­self to my seri­ous dis­cus­sion of Eph­esians chap­ter 4 and the scan­dal of sectarianism—forget the num­bers, let’s talk about the scandal—I’m ready to engage that dis­cus­sion. If Dr.* White will let go of his need to think of those on the oth­er side of the Tiber as just too sil­ly and lack­ing in rea­son, then—and only then—we can have a seri­ous dis­cus­sion about the dif­fer­ences between “Rome” and “Gene­va.”

Bar­ring that, I shall con­tin­ue along in defense of the Catholic Church with­out the need to both­er with Dr.* White. And he can keep imag­in­ing he does­n’t need to both­er with me.

Endnotes

[1] τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα.

[2] Could­n’t it even be said that they were a par­o­dy of Catholic attempts to exag­ger­ate the num­ber of sects? You’d think this would be a par­o­dy Dr.* James Robert White (Th.D., CES) would appre­ci­ate!

[3] ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν· εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα· εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν.