Saturday, April 27, 2024

Gish Galloper Complaining About Gish Galloping

 Guess the disingenuous Roman apologist who said this during a recent debate?

 

So there's a lot in there that I would love to respond to that I simply don't have time to because James is engaging in a debater tactic that sometimes called "overloading" where you just throw one charge after another after another after another and you make claims about them that your opponent has no chance to respond to so in such a circumstance the only option for an ethical debater is not to be distracted and just point out what one's opponent is doing and then move on . . .

 

If you said Jimmy “I want to Gish Gallop against the entire LDS canon in one debate” Akin, congrats, you are right (click here to go to the 47:16 mark of his sola scriptura debate against White)

 

This damn hypocrite and liar also made similar charges the next day on the thesis "How Does One Find Peace with God?"; at around the 54:08 mark, Akin complains that

 

James sometimes falls into a debater tactic that is sometimes called "overlading" it is also sometimes called the Gish Gallop where you bring up numerous charges your opponent has no time to respond to and he just named numerous charges that I don't have time to respond to . . .

 

This is just typical of pop-level Roman apologists: rules for thee, but not for me. And to be fair to James White (can't believe I just wrote that!), Akin was dodging throughout both debates; he was using terms like "apostolic tradition" in a really disingenuous manner (par for the course with Akin), and you will never see Akin stand up in public debate and defend, say, icon veneration being apostolic in tradition (a topic he refused to debate) or, unlike Robert Sungenis, the Bodily Assumption of Mary.

 

As an aside, during the debate on soteriology, Akin kept referencing the Catholic/Lutheran joint declaration from 1999, notwithstanding it having no binding force upon Roman Catholics. He also claimed the Council of Trent, in condemning sola fide, only condemned "dead faith" not the Reformers' understanding of faith alone, and so forth. For a more intellectually honest appraisal of the declaration from a more intellectually honest Catholic, see Robert A. Sungenis, "Appendix 17: Critical Analysis of 1999 Joint Declaration," in Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification (2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2009), 660-85.