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I don't know if anyone has been following the brouhaha that has been bubbling up concerning the self-styled "Dr. Dino," Kent Hovind (whom I prefer to call "Mr. Dino" because his mail-order degree shouldn't even be worthy of a nickname).
In short, a few weeks ago, "Dr." Hovind posted some commentary to YouTube about the radio debate that took place between James White and Gail "God And" Riplinger back in 1993. His comments were rife with inaccuracies, such as claiming that White was merely a caller to the program where Riplinger was the guest (when in actual fact, White was the in-studio guest, and Riplinger was the one on the phone). Hovind later backpedalled on some of these claims and said that Riplinger herself would respond. Which she has done, and Hovind posted it to his blog: Big White Lies: James White Wants Authority over God's Word in the KJV.
I haven't had the chance to read the whole thing - honestly, reading more than a few paragraphs of Gail the Ripper's turgid prose is enough to try anyone's sanctification. But I have skimmed it, and I have a few preliminary remarks. James White has announced that his webcast tomorrow will also be reviewing this. (I cross-posted this to the BVDB, and I've made some minor edits to this version for flow.)
Riplinger writes:
It's hard to understand what, specifically, she is talking about. Is it the 1977 edition of the NASB, as the subsequent sentence suggests? I would submit that the unavailability of that version has more to do with it being withdrawn from print by the Lockman Foundation in favour of the 1995 revision, than anything Riplinger might have said.
Skimming the search results on Amazon, it does not appear that there is any shortage of NASBs being offered for sale. And I highly doubt that New Age Bible Versions, published in 1993, pointed out any errors in a revision of a Bible translation published two years later.
Similarly:
Again, the 1984 NIV was withdrawn in favour of the 2011 revision. The NIV has been the bestselling Bible in English since the early 1990s, and that didn't change with the change in edition. Given that, I imagine that the influence of Mrs. Ludwig-Latessa-Kaleda-Riplinger's books has been a very "small part" indeed.
Here it appears that Gail the Ripper is attempting to claim some sort of "expertise by association." While the Wikipedia article on BBN Technologies does indeed say that "[e]xperts at the company" examined both the Nixon tape and the JFK Dictabelt evidence, it doesn't say Newman himself was one of the experts.
Robert Newman was a professor of architecture in Harvard's school of design. If Riplinger took one of his courses, it was most likely to do with acoustic design, which would be relevant to her actual field of study, and I seriously doubt she learned about forensic audio analysis in that class. I took one course in English literature taught by Michael Higgins, a prominent Canadian academic. By Riplinger's argument, I'm therefore an expert in English literature, journalism, Catholic affairs, Pierre Trudeau, and all the other things that Prof. Higgins is an authority on--and not, as most people would probably imagine, merely somewhat better informed than the average Canadian about William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Riplinger claims that the audio of her debate with James White on KRDS in 1993, as provided by Alpha and Omega Ministries, was edited. It seems simple enough to prove this. Show us the better original recordings, if they exist.
And this one is also hilarious:
So now "acrostic algebra" is an exercise in symbolic logic. Of course, it doesn't follow the rules of symbolic logic any more than it follows the rules of algebra. At the very least, all those letters need to stand for individual propositions or terms, and she has made zero effort to define them. It's a rhetorical gimmick, neither more nor less, and not a particularly good one.
In short, a few weeks ago, "Dr." Hovind posted some commentary to YouTube about the radio debate that took place between James White and Gail "God And" Riplinger back in 1993. His comments were rife with inaccuracies, such as claiming that White was merely a caller to the program where Riplinger was the guest (when in actual fact, White was the in-studio guest, and Riplinger was the one on the phone). Hovind later backpedalled on some of these claims and said that Riplinger herself would respond. Which she has done, and Hovind posted it to his blog: Big White Lies: James White Wants Authority over God's Word in the KJV.
I haven't had the chance to read the whole thing - honestly, reading more than a few paragraphs of Gail the Ripper's turgid prose is enough to try anyone's sanctification. But I have skimmed it, and I have a few preliminary remarks. James White has announced that his webcast tomorrow will also be reviewing this. (I cross-posted this to the BVDB, and I've made some minor edits to this version for flow.)
Riplinger writes:
It's hard to understand what, specifically, she is talking about. Is it the 1977 edition of the NASB, as the subsequent sentence suggests? I would submit that the unavailability of that version has more to do with it being withdrawn from print by the Lockman Foundation in favour of the 1995 revision, than anything Riplinger might have said.
Skimming the search results on Amazon, it does not appear that there is any shortage of NASBs being offered for sale. And I highly doubt that New Age Bible Versions, published in 1993, pointed out any errors in a revision of a Bible translation published two years later.
Similarly:
Again, the 1984 NIV was withdrawn in favour of the 2011 revision. The NIV has been the bestselling Bible in English since the early 1990s, and that didn't change with the change in edition. Given that, I imagine that the influence of Mrs. Ludwig-Latessa-Kaleda-Riplinger's books has been a very "small part" indeed.
Here it appears that Gail the Ripper is attempting to claim some sort of "expertise by association." While the Wikipedia article on BBN Technologies does indeed say that "[e]xperts at the company" examined both the Nixon tape and the JFK Dictabelt evidence, it doesn't say Newman himself was one of the experts.
Robert Newman was a professor of architecture in Harvard's school of design. If Riplinger took one of his courses, it was most likely to do with acoustic design, which would be relevant to her actual field of study, and I seriously doubt she learned about forensic audio analysis in that class. I took one course in English literature taught by Michael Higgins, a prominent Canadian academic. By Riplinger's argument, I'm therefore an expert in English literature, journalism, Catholic affairs, Pierre Trudeau, and all the other things that Prof. Higgins is an authority on--and not, as most people would probably imagine, merely somewhat better informed than the average Canadian about William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Riplinger claims that the audio of her debate with James White on KRDS in 1993, as provided by Alpha and Omega Ministries, was edited. It seems simple enough to prove this. Show us the better original recordings, if they exist.
And this one is also hilarious:
So now "acrostic algebra" is an exercise in symbolic logic. Of course, it doesn't follow the rules of symbolic logic any more than it follows the rules of algebra. At the very least, all those letters need to stand for individual propositions or terms, and she has made zero effort to define them. It's a rhetorical gimmick, neither more nor less, and not a particularly good one.
