Cold Case Christianity: Are There “Limits” to God’s Power? Yes, if the bible has anything to say about it

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Are There “Limits” to God’s Power?

Posted: 27 Sep 2017 01:13 AM PDT 

285Christians claim God is “all-powerful”. Does this mean He can accomplish anything?

When Jesus answered that question the answer was "yes" and no exceptions were expressed or implied:

 26 And looking at them Jesus said to them, "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matt. 19:26 NAU)

Are unbelievers morally obligated to know enough about the bible to recognize that when God himself teaches people on earth  in the person of Jesus, he sometimes employs typical Semitic exaggeration?  If Jesus was exaggerating here when giving his exception-less statement that with God all things are possible, where else might he have been exaggerating?  Maybe in his statement that whoever doesn't support him, opposes him (Matthew 12:30)?

Skeptics often test this notion by offering the following challenge: “Can the all-powerful Christian God create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?” The question highlights an apparent dilemma: If God cannot create such a stone (or cannot lift what He has created), He is not all-powerful. Does this apparent paradox prove an all-powerful Being cannot exist in the first place?

Yes.  We are capable of creating an object we cannot lift, so the challenge is not a deceptive sophistry or trifle.  So if God cannot create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it, then there is indeed at least one act that, while being a logical possibility, is an act God is nevertheless incapable of doing, at which point the cherished doctrine of God's full omnipotence is refuted.

It’s true the Bible describes God as an all-powerful Being and often uses language that suggests that “nothing” is impossible for Him (as in Luke 1:37).

And if Paul Copan and Matthew Flanagan are correct when they argue in their "Did God Really Command Genocide?" book that God himself sometimes employs exaggeration, then we have to wonder how many other times a biblical author is employing exaggeration-rhetoric when describing some attribute or act of God, and what degree of potential death-blow this poses for traditional biblical proofs for classical theism.

At the same time, there are many places in Scripture where certain behaviors or conditions are described as “impossible” for God to accomplish. This apparent contradiction is inexplicable until we examine the nature of the activities (or behaviors) described as “impossible” for God:
 Moral “Impossibilities”
The Bible clearly indicates there are many things that God cannot do. Most of these are “moral” in nature. For example, it is impossible for God to sin (James 1:13). According to the Bible, God always acts and behaves with certain moral considerations in mind and it is impossible for Him to do otherwise. Our moral laws are not simply the decrees of God (as if He could have chosen otherwise) but are, instead, a reflection of his unchanging moral nature. God cannot violate His nature. For this reason, it is impossible for God to sin.

Some would argue that God sins whenever he either a) makes good on his promise to cause women to be raped, or b) takes "delight" in causing women to be raped:

15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
 16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
 30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
 63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:15-63 NAU)

If your basis for exempting God from sin despite his doing acts that are "sin" for human beings, is blind reliance on the biblical statements that god cannot sin, then your basis for saying God is all-good, is not reality or the merits of his character, but sheer word definitions.  Asking you to consider that God might sin is like asking the dictionary to consider that good might be the proper definition of evil.  You have DEFINED God as necessarily good, and you fallaciously view that conclusion as some untouchable icon.  Well guess what...you being a sinner means ANYTHING you believe could possibly be false.  And who doesn't know that Christians disagree with each other on almost every biblical subject.

Stop pretending your classical theist beliefs are foregone conclusions, unless you admit you are only interested in helping other classical theists feel better, in which case you are hardly doing "apologetics".

The person who would give two shits for any fundamentalist Christian attempt to classify God's causing rape to be a morally "good" thing, would be other fundamentalist Christians.  The rest of us keep our cell phones at the ready, waiting to call the police on you should you ever come within 500 feet of us.

Logical “Impossibilities”
The Bible also clearly indicates that there are a number of things that God cannot accomplish based on logical necessity. For example, it is impossible for God to change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17) or to deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).

God changes often enough.  He changes his mind in Genesis and in 1st Samuel 15, despite the claim in Numbers 23:19 that he doesn't change his mind:

 19 "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Num. 23:19 NAU)

 5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
 6 The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
 7 The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."
 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. (Gen. 6:5-8 NAU) 

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.   (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU) 

 28 So Samuel said to him, "The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor, who is better than you.
 29 "Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind."
 30 Then he said, "I have sinned; but please honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and go back with me, that I may worship the LORD your God."
 31 So Samuel went back following Saul, and Saul worshiped the LORD.
 32 Then Samuel said, "Bring me Agag, the king of the Amalekites." And Agag came to him cheerfully. And Agag said, "Surely the bitterness of death is past."
 33 But Samuel said, "As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women." And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the LORD at Gilgal.
 34 Then Samuel went to Ramah, but Saul went up to his house at Gibeah of Saul.
 35 Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death; for Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel. (1 Sam. 15:28-35 NAU)

You do not say these are anthropomorphisms due to any concern about the grammar, context, genre or other any objective criteria of hermeneutics, you say they are anthropomorphisms solely because that excuse is the only artifice you can employ to avoid the conclusion that the bible contradicts itself.  But you don't have the first clue whether the originally intended ancient Hebrew audience, having no "bible inerrancy" baggage to worry about defending, would have accepted God's regret in Genesis 6:6 as a literally true statement about their god.

Your fanatical devotion to bible inerrancy is greater than your willingness to interpret bible texts consistent with their immediate contexts.  If the bible had said in the originals that 2+2=5...

Wallace continues:

According to the Bible, God always acts and behaves with certain logical considerations in mind and it is impossible for Him to do otherwise. The laws of logic are, once again, a reflection of God’s unchanging nature.
 These “Divine Impossibilities” provide us with insight into God’s character and power. Objective moral truths and transcendent laws of logic are simply a reflection of God’s eternal being.

There are biblical exceptions to all moral laws of God in the bible.  Don't believe me?  Take your best shot.  Or decide that ignoring the challenge will likely help keep sales of your gimmicks going at a profitable rate.

They are not rules or laws God has created (and could therefore alter recklessly), but are instead immutable, dependable qualities of his nature reflected in our universe.

So because keeping holy the Sabbath day originally required killing anybody who dared to engage in work on the Sabbath day (Numbers 15:32 ff), God's eternal unchangeable objective morals require that this moral truth be observed today in the exact same way.  The more you talk about how Jesus showed us the liberal truth about working on the Sabbath day, the more reason you give us to believe the original death-sentence for Sabbath day work was improper and immoral.

Sorry, but most of God's "absolute" morals are contained in the Mosaic Law or first covenant, and the NT is clear that these things of God were becoming obsolete even in the 1st century, and were ready, even back then, to vanish away, which is the exact opposite of your lauding God's morals as eternal unchangeable objective truths.  And the NT specifies that it was God himself who made his first covenant obsolete, making him not much different from a sinner whose morals change throughout their life:

 13 When He said, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. (Heb. 8:13 NAU)

Wallace continues:

They exist because God exists (not because God created them).

Then the moral of God (i.e., that those who work on the Sabbath be killed (Numbers 15:35)) only exists because God exists, not because God created that law.  So unless you wish to argue God doesn't exist, this rather harsh objective moral of God still applies today in all the full stern way it did originally, that is, if you wish to accord the least bit of meaning to your belief that God's morals are eternal and unchangeable.

Some would argue that first requiring the death penalty for an act, then later refusing to enforce that death penalty in appropriate cases, constitutes a change in morals even if not a change in law.

In addition, the Bible describes God as omnipotent and capable of doing anything he sets out to do.

It also says God sometimes fails to achieve what he wished to achieve, such as his desire to give Judah battle victory, but could not in the case of particular enemies because they had chariots of iron:

 16 The descendants of the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up from the city of palms with the sons of Judah, to the wilderness of Judah which is in the south of Arad; and they went and lived with the people.
 17 Then Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they struck the Canaanites living in Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the city was called Hormah.
 18 And Judah took Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory.
 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
 20 Then they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had promised; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.
 21 But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.    (Jdg. 1:16-21 NAU)

Evangelical Christian scholars who accept biblical inerrancy are unable to explain how iron chariots could hold back the sovereign intent of God for Judah to win that battle, except to speculate that "presumably" Judah must have lost its nerve at that point in the battle...despite the fact that the biblical text provides the reason God's hand did not prevail...it was because the enemies he was fighting had iron chariots: 

 In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.).

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Keil & Delitzsch, ultra-conservative in their Christanity and theology, comment on this verse but carefully avoid discussing why the iron chariot held back the sovereign hand of god.

Wallace continues:

God’s choices, however, are always consistent with His moral and logical nature; He never sets out to do something contrary to who He is as God.

Which can only mean that when God causes rape and parental cannibalism (Deut. 28:30, 53), takes "delight" to inflict such ravages (v. 63), causes unbelievers to brutally slaughter Hebrew children and forces women to endure abortion-by-sword (Hosea 13:15-16), this is consistent with the notion that God is always "good".

!?

Do ya think there might be the slightest chance that J. Warner Wallace's interest in biblical inerrancy ultimately rests on something other than sincere genuine persuasion that this doctrine is true?

One has to wonder: if God is good despite causing such atrocities, what worse type of evil would God have to cause before conservative Christian inerrantists would change their mind and start saying the god of the bible isn't as good as the bible says?.

What could possibly be worse than hacking children and babies to death as the mother's arms are amputated by sword and she shrieks hysterically in her fruitless efforts to protect them?

Maybe refusing to purchase your forensic faith gimmicks would be a worse sin?   If you can justify slaughter of women and children as described above, there's every chance you'd seriously believe a person's refusal to purchase your materials is a sin.

When someone asks, “Can the all-powerful Christian God create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?” they are asking a logically incoherent question. It is the equivalent of asking, “Can God create a ‘square circle’?”

No, as explained above, because human beings can create an object so heavy they cannot lift it (for example, creating a steel beam that weighs 4 tons), then the question is no more illogical than

"Can a human create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"

Since the question is legitimate and can be legitimately and correctly answered "yes", the question will remain perfectly logical and legitimate regardless of whoever happens to the actual person named in the challenge:

"Can Bill create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"  YES
"Can Susan create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"  YES
"Can William Lane Craig create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"  YES
"Can J. Warner Wallace create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"  YES
"Can God create an object so heavy that she can't lift it?"  YES

So then, there is one logically legitimate action that God cannot do, therefore, he is not all-powerful.

There is nothing illogical about sinning, otherwise you'd have to say humans cannot sin, so if God cannot sin, there's another act within the realm of the logically possible, that he cannot do: sin.

However, the notion that God cannot sin constitutes nothing but willful salivating blindness on the part of biblical authors and the modern Christians who swallow such garbage hook, line and sinker, as has been demonstrated from Deut. 28:63 (supra) and as will be demonstrated from Ezekiel 38-39 (infra).

Circles and squares are mutually exclusive by their very definition. As a result, the question nonsensically queries the creation of something similarly nonsensical.

Then human beings must be more powerful than God, because under your logic, the examples I just gave must then indicate human beings can achieve the logically impossible.

God cannot create square circles for the same reason He cannot sin; He acts dependably in a manner consistent with His moral and logical nature, and our universe is the beneficiary of God’s dependable nature.

And nothing about this changes when he forces people to sin and then punishes them for acting the way he forced them to act, such as is taught explicitly in Ezekiel 38:4 through ch. 39.

God forces the future armies of "gog and magog" to attack Israel, describing the force with the metaphor of "hook in your jaws", which is clearly the wrong mental image for the person who thinks God always respects human freewill:

 1 And the word of the LORD came to me saying,
 2 "Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him
 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords;
 5 Persia, Ethiopia and Put with them, all of them with shield and helmet;
 6 Gomer with all its troops; Beth-togarmah from the remote parts of the north with all its troops-- many peoples with you.
 7 "Be prepared, and prepare yourself, you and all your companies that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them.
 8 "After many days you will be summoned; in the latter years you will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations, and they are living securely, all of them.
 9 "You will go up, you will come like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your troops, and many peoples with you." (Ezek. 38:1-9 NAU)
 16 and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog."
 17 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them? 18 "It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," declares the Lord GOD, "that My fury will mount up in My anger.
 19 "In My zeal and in My blazing wrath I declare that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.
 20 "The fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at My presence; the mountains also will be thrown down, the steep pathways will collapse and every wall will fall to the ground.
 21 "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother.
 22 "With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire and brimstone.
 23 "I will magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the LORD."' (Ezek. 38:16-23 NAU)
Ezekiel 39:1 "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal;
 2 and I will turn you around, drive you on, take you up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel. (Ezek. 39:1-2 NAU)

After these future armies are forced by God to be the means by which God punishes Israel, supra, then God will punish these future armies for the attacks on Israel which God had forced them to engage in:

 3 "I will strike your bow from your left hand and dash down your arrows from your right hand.
 4 "You will fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your troops and the peoples who are with you; I will give you as food to every kind of predatory bird and beast of the field.
 5 "You will fall on the open field; for it is I who have spoken," declares the Lord GOD.
 6 "And I will send fire upon Magog and those who inhabit the coastlands in safety; and they will know that I am the LORD. (Ezek. 39:3-6 NAU)

Sorry Wallace, but you need to learn some basic English.  "preaching to the choir" does not constitute "apologetics", and certainly doesn't equip your audience to do anything more than get slaughtered, should they dare choose to take your stuff and use it to confront an atheist knowledgeable of the bible, as I am.

William Lane Craig's dishonesty

Christian Apologist William Lane Craig in 2015 posted to youtube an excerpt from one of his lectures wherein he defends as morally good the ancient Israelites carrying out their belief that God wanted them to slaughter the children of the pagans who were originally living in that land.

As might be expected, comments are disabled for this video, so the reader will have to ask whether the uploader left this alone as the default position solely by accident, or intended to preempt comments.  One this is for sure, whoever posted this surely knew that the biblical commands of God that the Hebrews should slaughter children have horrified many Christians and not just the average unbeliever.

The video at time code 11:55 ff has an audience member ask a 2-part question, 1) if the bible is correct that God is not a respecter of persons, then why did God treat ancient Israelite children better than God treated the Canaanite children, and 2) at time code 12:07 ff, what is Dr. Craig's response to other Christian scholars who have interpreted the genocide texts as non-literal.

Unfortunately, this audience member could not finish the second part of the question after he said "genocide" because at 12:08 ff, Dr. Craig, in screeching voice indicating worry, interrupts him and from there until the end of the video, gives his reasons for saying God did not intend his "slaughter the Canaanite" commands to be taken by the Israelites as permission to subject the Canaanites to "genocide".

Dr. Craig's interruption of this audience member was dishonest, since the video ends after Craig ends his speech about how calling it genocide is incorrect, thus indicating either a) he intentionally avoided explaining why his explanation is rejected by other Christian scholars, or b) he answered that part too, but chose to avoid including it in the portion he chose to upload, which still smacks of dishonesty, since the fact that other Christian scholars of the evangelical persuasion reject Craig's "apologetics" on this issue, indicates that those atheists who likewise reject his apologetics, are not doing so merely because they are spiritually blind and rebellious, but the option remains on the table that they have solid objective reasons to reject Craig's thesis.

Craig's reply was also dishonest because whether ancient Hebrews slaughtering children technically justifies being characterized as "genocide" or something different, is useless semantics.  The biblical texts showing God commanded his people to slaughter children are not a problem merely due to the average person thinking these actions fulfill the definition of "genocide".  We have a problem with them for the same reason we'd have a problem with anybody asserting that God told them to slaughter children.  The problem would exist whether you characterize such divine commands as genocide or Gong Show.

It is clear the audience member had a legitimate question as to how Craig answers other Christian scholars who disagree with Craig, who say these kinds of divine commands were never intended to be fulfilled in an absolute literal sense of exterminating all pagan men woman and children.  Two such scholars the audience member likely had in mind are Paul Copan and Matthew Flanagan, who jointly authored a book in which they make explicit how wrong they think Dr. Craig is to take these slaughter-passages literally.

The fact that Craig has publicly acknowledged elsewhere why he thinks Christian scholars like Copan and Flanagan get this wrong, does not erase the fact that whoever posted the video conveniently ended it with Craig avoiding answering this rather important concern with the fallacious red-herring of "it's not genocide!".

Now beyond the issue of Dr. Craig's dishonest attempt to avoid having to publicly acknowledge that other people equally spiritually alive as himself, do not find his apologetic argument at this point very convincing...

a - The problem of biblical genocide cannot be solved by appeal to a technical definition of "genocide".  It is the average person on the street, whether unbeliever, atheist bible critic, or Christian, not merely the liberal college professor, who finds immoral the general idea that God would ever tell his followers to kill children. So a technical discussion of what genocide is and is not, is nothing but dishonest distraction.

b - at 5:10 ff, Craig absurdly argues that by bringing about the deaths of these Canaanite children, God ensured their eternal salvation.  However this does nothing but rip the door of Pandora's Box off the hinges:

If God likes the idea of giving people a shortcut to heaven (i.e., killing them before they reach the age of accountability) then we have to wonder why God thinks allowing most of mankind to grow past this age and thus endure the horrible risk of eternal hell fire, is supposed to be better than the guarantee of heaven that results from all infanticide.  Some would argue that if we can do anything at all that will motivate God to grant salvation to a person, we should dedicate our lives to doing exactly this, and our motive is the fear of hell that God himself placed in our hearts.  Salvation can never possibly cost too much.

If Craig's theology is correct, every "baby" that is aborted goes directly to heaven, a good result.  This creates another problem because the vast majority of people naturally adopt consequentialism (i.e., whether an act is morally good or bad depends on what kind of effect it produces).  If abortion sends the baby directly to eternal salvation, that is an effect of abortion too, and it is improper for Christians to ignore the higher spiritual reality involved here and simplemindedly focus solely on the fact that abortion is a violation of God's prohibition on murder.

Worse, God himself takes personal responsibility for all murder in general anyway, and for forced abortion-by-sword and infanticide in particular:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU) 

 15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)

So Craig's theology confronts us with the classical conundrum of why God wants us to believe murder and abortion are immoral, when in fact on biblical grounds that logically necessitates the conclusion that what God does is immoral.  How can our murders and abortions be immoral for us, if the biblical truth is that God is causing us to commit these acts?  Isn't that rather like the puppeteer condemning the puppet for doing what the puppeteer wanted?

Craig admits he adopts divine-command theory (i.e., if God commanded it, it is good by definition, end of discussion) and if that is true, then the acts of the pagans in subjecting the Israelites to infanticide and forced abortion-by sword (Hosea 13, supra) is morally good, end of discussion.

Here is my reply to Dr. Craig's article on the subject of atheists, Christian scholars and  the issue of the divine command to slaughter pagan children.

Cold Case Christianity: Four Truths About the Universe You Can Share with Your Kids to Demonstrate the Existence of God

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Four Truths About the Universe You Can Share with Your Kids to Demonstrate the Existence of God

Posted: 25 Sep 2017 01:19 AM PDT

If you’ve raised your children to believe Christianity is true, you probably want them to continue to believe it’s true, especially through their critical university years. There are good reasons to be concerned for young Christians once they leave our care. Statistically, most will walk away from the Church (and their belief in God) during their college years.

Probably because it is only outside their protective homes and churches that they will become exposed to truths that create serious problems for the fundamentalist view they were raised with.  There can be no doubt that the number of Christian "fundamentalists" has dwindled significantly since the explosion of the internet in the popular sphere in 1995. 

What can we, as parents, do to address this growing problem? How can we help them know that God exists?

What a shame for you that although you claim to depend on "God", the way in which you solve the problem betrays that you don't think God actually does anything more here than he does when you order fries at the drive-through.  If you are the one implementing the safety procedure, then the only reason you credit your kids' safety to God is your theological insanity.  And it gets more insane if in spite of not crediting your own good works to yourself, you readily credit your bad works to yourself (i.e., when you do good works, it's God's fault...when you do bad works, it's not God's fault).

As a cold-case detective, parent, and prior youth pastor, I have a suggestion: master the case for God’s existence and start sharing it with your kids at an early age.

And the best way to do that is to purchase your forensic faith materials and basically swallow whatever marketing gimmick you use, correct?

Sounds simple, right? Maybe, or maybe not. If your kids asked you to defend the existence of God right now, what would say? What evidences would you provide? Are you ready to make the case for what you believe, even as the world around us often makes the case against God’s existence?

Is there anything in the writings of the NT that requires Christians to make the case that God exists?  No.  You are blindly assuming that all Christians be evangelists and teachers, but not every person in the body of Christ can do this:

 11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; (Eph. 4:11-12 NAU)

 28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
 29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
 31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. (1 Cor. 12:28-31 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Don’t panic, you don’t have to be a theologian, philosopher or scientist to defend the truth. All you need to be is interested.

You don't even need to be interested.  The bible makes plenty of room for a person to a a genuinely born again Christian whose witness to others does not consist of learning arguments.

It’s not hard to be interested when the spiritual fate of our kids is hanging in the balance.

Here you blindly assume the stakes are high, when liberal Christian theologians make a persuasive case that everybody will be saved and a hellish afterlife are false doctrines.

Make a commitment to investigate the case for God’s existence so you can communicate it to your kids.

Translation: "purchase the materials that I so ceaselessly promote".

The Apostle Paul was correct when he said that God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:20).

Which means you are not addressing anybody here except those who believe everything Paul taught as blindly as you do.

We’ve written God’s Crime Scene for Kids to help you and your children investigate everything “that has been made.”

Which cannot be reconciled with your alleged belief that the bible alone is sufficient authority for faith and practice. God would probably worry himself sick if you stopped helping the Holy Spirit through your attention-deficit lectures and videos, wouldn't He?

Along the way, you’ll discover four truths that will help your kids demonstrate the existence of God:

Implying that God wasn't capable of demonstrating these to Christians between the 1st and 20th centuries.  But if he was capable then, he's capable now, in which case modern Christians no more need your forensic faith bullshit than hey need Benny Hinn.

Our Universe Requires a Divine “First Cause”

Scientists have determined that our universe is not infinitely old.

You conveniently leave "scientists" unqualified, thus creating the false impression that "most" scientists deny the infinite age of the universe.  You are incorrect, the number of scientists who are open to the possibility of the universe being infinite is growing.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.

=============

  Scientists have predicted the possibility that the universe might be closed like a sphere, infinite and negatively curved like a saddle, or flat and infinite.
A finite universe has a finite size that can be measured; this would be the case in a closed spherical universe. But an infinite universe has no size by definition.
According to NASA, scientists know that the universe is flat with only about a 0.4 percent margin of error (as of 2013). And that could change our understanding of just how big the universe is.
"This suggests that the universe is infinite in extent; however, since the universe has a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the universe," NASA says on their website. "All we can truly conclude is that the universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe."

Wallace continues blindly appealing to what his intended audience already believes:

In fact, they now believe that everything in the universe, all space, time and matter, had a beginning in the distant past. Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. What could account for the beginning of the universe?

 No, see above, you are giving the false impression the only respectable scientific theory on the universe is that it is finite.  You apparently know not even that which can be determined with a quick Google search, or you are dishonest.

One thing is certain: whatever caused the cosmos must be something other than space, time or matter (since these didn’t exist prior to the beginning of the universe).

Well since the universe is infinitely old, the problem of where the universe came from, disappears.

That means we’re looking for something non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material, and incredibly powerful. Sounds a lot like God, doesn’t it?

It also sounds like a fairy-tale solution more in line with religious belief than empirical observation.  There are no concretely established cases for the existence of anything that is "non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material", so until the day you establish such, you cannot get rid of the possibility you'd like to get rid of, that what you are talking about is pure nonsense.

Life in the Universe Requires a Divine “Author”

Scientists have also determined that life in the universe is formed and guided by information. Biological organisms (like humans) possess deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. The nucleotide sequence in DNA is an incredibly long (and sophisticated) code that guides the growth, development, function and reproduction of every living organism.

But where does the information in DNA come from? Did this incredibly complex series of instructions come about by chance? Was it caused by the laws of physics or some process of evolution? No. The best explanation for information is intelligence. The information in DNA requires an intelligent author. Once again, God is the most reasonable explanation.

Why do predator birds have very sharp eyesight?  If the world of lving things was vegatarian before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, then nobody would need eyesight any sharper than that of a cow, to locate and eat foilage and fruit.  In which case you cannot cite the degrading effects of the Fall to account for today's predatory birds having super-sharp eyesight.  If you continue denying evolution's ability to increase the complexity of creatures over time, you are forced to blame God for predatory birds gaining an increase in their visual acuity at some point after they stopped being vegetarians in Eden.  In which case your god is personally responsible for causing eagles to be motivated to inflict the misery that carnivores typically inflict on other animals.  And your god's doing this is arbitrary since apparently becoming carnivorous wasn't a requirement after the fall as so many billions of cows testify.

And if you say predatory birds were carnivorous even before any sin entered the world, then it is a world full of tooth and claw misery and pain, that God is calling "good" in Genesis 1:31, using the Hebrew word "tob" for "good" that is used in 2:17 to signify the moral opposite of evil.  In which case God in 1:31 is asserting the full moral goodness of a world full of carnivors inflicting misery and pain on each other.

That should come as no surprise, for when God inflicts rape upon disobedient women (Deut. 28:30), this is something he "delights" to do no less than he "delights" to grant prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).

That's how you cause the intelligent design argument to back-fire in the face of Christian apologists.  Since you deny that random chance and evolution can account for why eagles desire to kill, lions and others have fangs suited to little more than ripping flesh, etc, only intelligent design can account for these, in which case your God's idea of "good" is so alien to everything you stand for that it can only be by a truly "blind" faith that you insist this God is always "good".

Moral Laws in the Universe Require a Divine “Law Giver”

All of us recognize the existence of moral laws and obligations. While some behaviors (like stealing or lying) may be justified on rare occasion (to save the life of an innocent person, for example), it’s never morally acceptable to steal or lie for the fun of it.

Your 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you aren't likely to deny the salvation of since they accept all doctrines you say are "essential" to salvation, assert that a person is fulfilling God's secret will when they sin, even if with such act they are also contradicting god's "revealed" will.  So if some criminal steals a six-pac of beer from the corner store mostly because she thinks it "fun", this must be credited to God, and that sucks for you, because you insist that anything which God wills, is righteous by definition.

If even spiritually alive Calvinists can "misunderstand" the nature of God's sovereignty in a sinful universe, as you will likely accuse them, you are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists and non-Calvinist Christians to think your views on this matter are the end of the discussion. 

This is true for all of us, regardless of when we have lived in history or where we have lived on the planet. These objective moral laws also describe obligations between persons. No one, for example, is morally obligated to the laws of physics or chemistry.

All laws such as these require law givers.

No, the laws that most humans agree on, they agree on because obeying them conduces toward facilitating easier survival, that's all the rationale needed to explain why most human beings think torturing babies for fun is immoral. We are social animals the the acts we think of as crimes, just happen to be those that end up playing a significant part in breaking up society which inhibits survival.

Objective laws and obligations that transcend all of us require an objective, personal law giver who transcends all of us. Once again, God is the best explanation for the moral laws and obligations we all recognize.

Well since your own god takes credit for motivating pagans to inflict horrible miseries on the Israelites:

  15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)

 ...you cannot assert that humans are rebelling against god's moral will when they murder each other.  You are forced to agree with your bible that they were empowered by God to do these things.

You will say God doesn't force people to hurt others, but that in his judgment he sometimes withdraws his prevenient grace so that such humans naturally inflict the misery they are already naturally inclined to inflict, so that God is free from responsibility for the evil he knew would happen as a result of his own choices, but this is about as convincing as the dog owner who intentionally unleashes his pit bull for the purpose of mauling you, then arguing later in court when you sue for injuries, that because he didn't maul you himself but only removed the restraints on his dog knowing the dog would maul you, he is thus not responsible for your injuries.  Yeah right.

Evil in the Universe Requires a Divine “Standard”

Some people point to evil as an evidence against the existence of God. Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God allow bad things to happen?

Maybe because his idea of love is so different from ours, the acts we perceive to be unloving, he thinks are loving?  And therefore, when you assert "God is loving" to the average person, you are guilty of deception and equivocation?

If God's "love" cannot be construed as an absolute guarantee that he will do all in his power to, say, prevent a child from being raped, then why are you so sure God is "loving" toward children?  Answer: your blind faith that because the bible says God is loving, that must be the end of the discussion. 

Is He unable to stop them?

Yes, the God who was helping Judah win a war, wasn't able to overcome the power of iron chariots:

 17 Then Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they struck the Canaanites living in Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the city was called Hormah.
 18 And Judah took Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory.
 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
 20 Then they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had promised; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.
 21 But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.
 (Jdg. 1:17-21 NAU)

 Even Christian scholars who accept and defend biblical inerrancy, are forced to speculatively "presume" something not implied in the text, in order to "explain" this surprising admission that God's power wasn't enough to do the intended job:

In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; 

The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Wallace continues:

Is He simply unwilling to prevent them?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  God not only "allows" evil (i.e., rape, v. 30, parental cannibalism, v. 53), but he takes credit for causing or inflicting it.  Worse, he "delights" to inflict such atrocities on them, v. 63.

In either case, the existence of evil seems to invalidate our definition of God as an all-powerful and all-loving Being.

It wouldn't make much sense for you to defend God's all-loving nature, if you have to argue that certain acts we find unloving, God thinks are loving.  If God's idea of "love" is so contrary to our own beliefs about it, you aren't "defending" anything, you are simply preaching the bible and reminding the believing audience that God's definition of love is more accurate than the definition accepted by civilized societies.  Which then involves you in the stupidity of asserting that God condemns the evil men that God uses...sort of like paying a hit-man for murder, then telling everybody that while what he did was evil, your using him to commit murder was not evil for YOU.  Well fuck you.

But what defines something as evil in the first place?

How about your bible?  Since God in Ezekiel 39 is punishing the Gog and Magog armies because they warred against Israel, we can soundly presume God thought these armies had done evil...but in Ezekiel 38:4, it is God himself who is forcing these armies to commit this specific evil (i.e, "hook in your jaws", a metaphor that puts images in the mind that are wholly contradictory to any notion that God "respects human freewill" or that God doesn't want people to do evil.)

Is something “evil” simply because we don’t personally approve of it,

Yes, there's no natural law that says a person's subjective beliefs about evil are disqualified.  If I think it is evil for fundamentalist Christians to evangelize unbelievers, I am rational to think that way despite the fact that other people would disagree.  Nothing else is more common than people disagreeing on what constitutes evil.

or do we believe some acts are truly evil, regardless of our opinion? If the latter is true, we would need an objective, transcendent standard of good by which to judge any particular act.

And since we all agree that a) sex within adult-child marriages is evil, and b) God doesn't have jack shit to say about this evil, you don't have an "objective, transcendent standard of good by which to judge" this particular act as evil. You have nothing but your own conscience, and some would argue your conscience is hardly objective or transcendent.

The existence of God offers such a standard,

And used car salesmen offer used cars to solve your transportation problems too. Many of those cars are lemons, and so is yours, you shameless salesman.

and God often allows and uses temporal evil to develop our eternal character,

If I cannot justify murder by saying the emotional outrage this causes will develop the survivor's moral character, then when you try to justify God with the same argument, you are doing so because of blind and arbitrary choice to believe God just cannot do anything wrong.  You have defined God as "good", so to you, trying to allow that God could do wrong is, in your mind, equal to suggesting that the word "good" could sometimes mean "evil".  Well in light of Genesis 6:6-7, God is quite capable of making the wrong decision and regretting it later, and your "this-was-just-an-anthropomorphism" excuse derives neither from the genre of Genesis, the context nor the grammar of the passage, and is therefore most likely a false interpretation forced on the text because of your prior belief that other bible passages are correct in saying God is always infinitely good.

draw us to himself, and achieve a greater good (if not immediately, over the course of history).

According to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, God also inflicts and causes evil solely for the purpose of causing the misery and destruction of the people he is hurting.   Yet, you will never tell Christian parents that God allowed their child to be raped because God was angry with them because of some sin.  You are more interested in telling people what comports with their existing beliefs, than in telling them the more harsh brutal biblical truth.

Evil doesn’t disprove God’s existence, but instead requires a standard of good to be anything more than a matter of opinion. Only God can provide such a standard.

There’s much more to examine in the universe, and you can help your kids make the case for God at www.CaseMakersAcademy.com. They’ll solve an intriguing mystery, as they also learn how to investigate the truth about the cosmos. They’ll also have a chance to become Case Making Cadets and earn a Certificate of Graduation after completing our free Case Makers Academy. It’s never too early to master the truth. Help your kids defend with they believe so they can worship God with their hearts, souls, and minds.

This article first appeared at Crosswalk.com.

 And the fact that you make money of of this marketing gimmick makes us wonder how God was able to teach before you came along, suggesting Christians don't "need" your materials half as much as you pretend.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Is God So Hidden?

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Why Is God So Hidden?

Posted: 22 Sep 2017 01:15 AM PDT

286As a young atheist, I denied the existence of God for practical, experiential reasons. During my elementary school years, I found it difficult to understand why anyone would believe in God without visible evidence.

Probably because, in the real world, failure to prove an allegedly life-changing proposition with visible evidence rationally justifies skepticism toward it. 

I knew my parents, teachers and friends were real, because I could see them and I could see their impact on the world around me.

That's apparently also the reason the apostles believed Jesus rose from the dead, so if God was willing to cater to the human desire for empirical proof back then, then we are justified to believe something is wrong with this god if we find there is no such visible confirmation available today for God's existence.

God, however, seemed completely hidden. I often thought, “If God exists, why would He hide in this way? Why wouldn’t God just come right out and make it obvious to everyone He exists?” As I examined these questions many years later, I began to consider other factors and considerations, particularly related to the nature of “love”.

Yeah, sometimes love really wants you to avoid a danger, but chooses to not notify you of such danger except through fortune cookie-means like ancient scripture, whose adherents have disagreed with each other for 2,000 years over what it means and what it implies.  Yeah that makes sense.  

If I see your child drowning in your swimming pool, maybe the godly way for me to warn you is to knock on your door and talk to you about how terrible death is for a family?  Gee, physically going to the pool and jerking your child out of the water, well that might not necessarily be the most loving thing I could do, eh?  And yet your bible characterizes evangelism similarly as you pulling the unbeliever out of the fire, Jude 1:23.

I held love and compassion in high regard, even as an unbeliever. These were values I embraced as essential to our survival as a species, and values I considered to be foundational to human “flourishing” (as many atheists commonly describe it). But love requires a certain kind of world,

Is this the part where you invite a 5-point Calvinist Christian into the discussion so your audience recognizes that your ideas about love and freewill are rejected by other equally born-again Christian teachers?

Or do you say no 5-Point Calvinist can be a real Christian?

Or do you say not even being genuinely born again can protect one against believing heresy for a whole lifetime, in which case we legitimately ask why we should believe God has ANY part to play in ANYTHING.

and if loving God does exist, it is reasonable that He would create a universe in which love is possible; a universe capable of supporting humans with the ability to love God and love one another. This kind of universe requires a number of pre-requisites, however, and these pre-requisites are best achieved when God is “hidden” in the way He often seems to be:

Love Requires Freedom

True love cannot be coerced.

Which means the God of Ezekiel 38:4 cannot be true love.

We love our children and we want them to love us. We cannot, however, force them to do so.

Correct, but we would still jerk them out of the street if they refused our command and some drunk was barreling toward them in a speeding car.  We wouldn't be stupid like god and say "well if you don't love me, I won't protect you", we instinctively love our children even if their own stupidity evinces their lack of love for us.  It's the wise mature thing to do, and remains the case even despite our inability to know the future or exert infinite power.

When we give our kids direction and ask them to accept this direction as a reflection of their love for us, we must step away and give them the freedom to respond (or rebel) freely.

Love also forces the loved one against their will when the loved one's stupidity or rebellion is headed for certain destruction.  So if we are on our way to hell, God's "love" would imply he'd force us to believe, not that he'd just stand there telling us to read the bible like a robotic emotionless idiot. 

If we are “ever-present”, their response will be coerced;

Is God "ever-present", yes or no?

they will behave in a particular way not because they love us, but because they know we are present (and they fear the consequence of rebellion).

That's exactly the motive God wants the Israelites to act under:  they better obey him, or he will kill them, see Deuteronomy 28:15 ff.

If God exists, it is reasonable that He would remain hidden (to some degree) to allow us the freedom to respond from a position of love, rather than fear.

That's not what other spiritually alive Christians called 5-point Calvinists say.  They say our sinful acts are always in conformity to God's "secret" will even if they conflict with God's revealed will.

What now?  Will J. Warner Wallace admit that somebody can be sincerely born again and yet go their entire lives holding to heretical absurd theology?   Could that possibly provide rational justification for saying the Christian god is fake?

Love Requires Faith

Love requires a certain amount of trust;

Not from the parent's point of view.  If our 5 year old doesn't love us and runs out into the street in willful rebellion, we will go to jail if that child gets hurt and it can be proved we only did what God does, and stood there issuing warnings without doing anything to force them out of the street.  Love does not always shrink back from using force.

we must trust the person who loves us has our best interest in mind,

You mean after they PROVE that they love us?  Sure.  But not before.

even in times of doubt.

If you have already had their love demonstrated to you personally and empirically, then yes.  If not, then no, doubts will be justified.  You don't just blindly trust that somebody loves you if they've never demonstrated any such thing, which is precisely the case with your alleged god who allegedly chooses to remain so hidden, that your choice to be a Christian appears to be nothing more spiritual or special than anybody else's choice to join some religion.

There are occasions when trust requires us to accept something as true, even though we can’t immediately see this to be the case.

But this proceeds from your biblically faulty premise that God wants us to love him freely, when in fact plenty of conservative Christian scholars deny the libertarian sense of freewill that you adopt.

In essence, trust often requires “hiddenness” on the part of the “lover” if love is to be confident, powerful and transformational.

Well gee, then the disciples could have been mightily transformed by a hidden resurrected Christ, and not just one that provided empirical proof?  If so, why did Jesus bother to provide empirical proof, as alleged in Acts 1:3?  Did he think remaining "hidden" would reduce the transformative effect?

Love Requires Evidence

Love does, however, require sufficient evidence. While we may not want to coerce our children, we do need to give them sufficient reason to believe we exist, support and love them.

But as already stated, sometimes our kids do things that require us to force them, if we love them, against their will to protect them from the consequences of their own rebellion or lack of love for us.  Ezekiel 38:4 shows God will force people to do things, even force them to sin, so the more you deny the meaning of this verse, the more your whole "love requires freewill" business becomes bunk.

While many non-believers may deny there is any evidence for the existence of God, the natural world has provided us with sufficient (albeit non-coercive) evidence God exists.

You are doing nothing but preaching the choir.  If God really did think atheists were in danger of hell-fire and really seriously desired them to avoid this fate, he already knows from the first century that empircally proving himself to their empirical senses works wonders, so he has nobody to blame if a different result is achieved with us because he refuses to act today consistent with how he allegedly acted back in the first century. 

We have the ability, however, to deny this evidence if we choose.

Other spiritually alive genuinely born again Christians such as 5 Point Calvinists disagree, and you are a fool to expect spiritually dead unbelievers to figure out which of you correctly understands the bible here.

Love Requires Response

In the end, we do need to show our children our promises have been reliable and their love and trust in us has been well placed.

And if we give them godly love and qualify that our love for them doesn't necessarily mean we'll always be willing to protect them from rape and murder, they would be rationally justified to call 911, got into foster care,  and stop experiencing our "love".

Even though we may have to be “hidden” at times in their lives,

Yes, but our children drown in pools because we aren't there to protect them, and if it were proven we knew they were drowning and could have saved them, and didn't, the more we claim at the parental neglect trial that we had a godly love for our children, the more the jury will find us insane.

at the end of the day, love requires us to make a visible response. The Christian Worldview maintains that God will respond visibly at “the end of the day”. While He may sometimes seem “hidden”, He will ultimately be evident to all of us.

Tell that to the 5 year old girl who is being raped, whose live depends on a protector refusing to stay hidden.

Under biblical logic, it would be blasphemy for a Christian woman to curse god after she had been raped.  For this reason, you'd have biblical authority to rebuke her sharply...but could you seriously blame her?

If God exists, it is reasonable He would personify and fulfill the requirements of love, as described in Christian scripture:

Romans 1:20

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they (we) are without excuse.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Yup, you don't give one rat's ass about answering skeptical objections here, you are just preaching to the choir.

God created a world reflecting His holy nature:

No, he tried and it went to shit, by his own reluctant admission, Genesis 6:6-7

We live in a universe where love is possible.

We also live in a universe with a bible that teaches God sometimes forces people to sin, Ezekiel 38:4.

This kind of universe can sometimes be a scary place, because it requires un-coerced human freedom. God offers us this dangerous liberty (and often remains hidden) so our love will be genuine.

And a solid half of conservative Christianity disagrees with you and says godly love on our part does NOT require the type of libertarian freewill you say it does.

my reply to youtube's "deflatingatheism"

Update: September 26, 2017