Monday, June 25, 2007

Introduction to Tekton

Tekton Apologetics is an, obviously, apologetic site, devoted to answering skeptical questions about Christianity. To support this claim; here is tekton's mission statement:

"Tekton Apologetics Ministries is committed to providing scholarly answers to serious questions which are often posed on major and minor elements of the Christian faith. We believe in the importance of sound Christian doctrine which is based on a careful exegetical analysis of scriptures from the Holy Bible. We also believe that it is important to incorporate the findings of various theological and scientific disciplines in order to properly assess the veracity of scriptural evidences, and to carefully evaluate issues which are relevant to the Church as a whole."[1]

The web address of the apologetic ministry is http://www.tektonics.org/. [2]

Tektonics has according to it's owner "over 1600 different articles and mini-articles on a variety of apologetics subjects, mostly addressing Skeptics, but also a variety of other religions.".[3]

The owner of Tektonics "J.P. Holding" (a psuedonym, but more on that later), has written two books in addition to all the articles on tektonics.org, "The Impossible Faith"[4] On Amazon.com, here is the book's description:


"A Thesis So Explosive, An Atheist Paid $5,000 for An Answer The Impossible Faith offers the proposition that Christianity could not have succeeded unless it had indisputable proof of the resurrection of Jesus. Had there not been such evidence, Christianity would have been an "impossible faith". Using his seventeen years of experience in apologetics ministry, the author will demonstrate the impossibility of Christianity in the eyes of the people of the first century and present an apologetic for Jesus' resurrection. Christians will be encouraged and emboldened by the message of The Impossible Faith, realizing "how firm a foundation" they have in Christ Jesus. Non-Christians will be challenged to consider the truth of Christianity in a new light."[5]

The other book written by "J.P." is "The Mormon Defenders"[6] Here is the description of this book (Don't worry, it's much shorter!):

"The Mormon Defenders offers for the first time in print responses to leading Latter-day Saint apologists who argue that theirs is a true Biblical faith. Calling upon top-notch scholarship, The Mormon Defenders demonstrates that the case for a "Biblical" Mormonism is rooted in misinterpretations of the Scriptures."[7]

However, in addition to these two books and a website, J.P. has a side-site called http://www.tektoonics.com.[8/] It at first has four links. The first one is to a comic-series called "The Annals of Hearthstone". The page contains the comic itself, plus character bios. [9] The next link is an almanac including an Atlas, Prologue, Ethnology, ext. [10] A page to encourage you to subscribe, and links to a page to subscribe if you already want to.[11] Finally, one called "et cetera", with humor, banners, art, and a section called "Parody Central"[12] Now then, since Parody Central supposedly is for fans of Tektonics, we will go into detail about this area.[13] Parody Central contains two areas, "Screwballs of the Month"[14] and "The Stark Raving Lunacy Hour"[15]

Now then, "Screwballs of the Month" is basically a monthly catalog of emails from skeptics that he considers "crazy" or "stupid". Here is his own words; "Monthly awards to people I run into who think stuff like that the Vatican is run by lizards."[14] The other one is a collection of "rebuttals" to articles from renouned Christianity skeptics. The list includes former pastor-turned Bible skeptic Farrell Till[16] "The Skeptics Annotated Bible"- A popular secular web-site edited by Steve Wells[17] and author of two books and operator of the site "Truth Be Known" Acharya S[18] When you view his responses to such skeptical individuals, you'll find out something about J.P.: The guy's a jerk. He litters his responses with ad-hominem attacks, as if it proves something. I'll go more into detail about J.P. himself later on, this was just an introduction to Tektonics, it's sister site tektoonics, and information as to the two books the guy has written. Now that you understand more about Tektonics, you will be able to understand this blog better.

Thank you for your time.

References:

[1] http://www.tektonics.org/lp/mission.html%20("Mission Statement")
[2] www.tektonics.org
[3]http://www.tektonics.org/lp/mission.html(under "What's On Here")
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Faith-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1602660840/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8703823-3047202?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182818469&sr=1-1
[5]http://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Faith-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1602660840/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8703823-3047202?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182818469&sr=1-1(Under Book Description)

[6]http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Defenders-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/0970906307/ref=pd_sim_b_2/002-8703823-3047202?ie=UTF8&qid=1182818469&sr=1-1

[7]http://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Defenders-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/0970906307/ref=pd_sim_b_2/002-8703823-3047202?ie=UTF8&qid=1182818469&sr=1-1 (under Book Description)

[8] http://www.tektoonics.org/

[9]http://www.tektoonics.com/hearthstone.html

[10]http://www.tektoonics.com/almanac.html

[11]http://www.tektoonics.com/subscribe.html

[12]http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/etcetera.html

[13]http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/parody.html

[14]http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/screwball.html

[15]http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/lunacy.html

[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrell_Till

[17]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptics_Annotated_Bible

[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharya_S