God approves of alcoholism, Proverbs 31, Psalm 104

I contend that, regardless of whatever else the bible may say, there is a passage that approves of alcoholism.

 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, It is not for kings to drink wine, Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
 5 For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
 6 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, And wine to him whose life is bitter.
 7 Let him drink and forget his poverty And remember his trouble no more. (Prov. 31:4-7 NAU)

There are several signs in this passage the strong drink in question is real alcohol, not diluted wine or grape juice:

• The "wine" in v. 4 is defined as "strong drink" by hendiadys (Hebrew idiom: expressing one idea by means of two different descriptions).
• that it really is "strong" drink is confirmed from the King forgetting his own decree after imbibing (v. 5).
• Other persons are expected to forget their troubles if they partake of this stuff (v. 7)

Grape juice and diliuted or weak "wine" does not make those who drink it forget their decrees or forget their troubles.  But there's endless empirical evidence that alcohol surely accomplishes this goal.

The inerrantist-driven NAC says much against my interpretation, but can be dismissed because it does so by preaching to the choir, not by evidence and supported argument:

31:4–7 Verses 4–7 advise the king to maintain sobriety in order to carry out the work of establishing justice in the kingdom.3 The queen-mother does not recommend a free beer program for the poor or justify its use as an opiate for the masses; her point is simply that the king must avoid drunkenness in order to reign properly. The comparison to the suffering poor and to their use of alcohol is meant to awaken Lemuel to the duties that go with his class and status rather than to describe some kind of permissible drunkenness.

Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). 

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 246). 

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

On the contrary, the proverb contains the mandate to "give" strong drink (v. 6).

The WBC is a bit more realistic:

6–7 The emphasis on royal justice is followed by a rather bold and singular recommendation. Instead of enjoying personal consumption of the royal cellar, the king is to provide a supply of drink for the unfortunate people who need it as a kind of comfort (?) for their misery. This strange command has provoked several hypotheses. On the one hand, it has been considered to be “cynical” and perhaps a later addition; as noted in Note 5.a.*, the command is in the plural. On the other hand, it has been interpreted as providing some relief for the unfortunate. What is to be, as it were, doled out to kings is to be provided generously for afflicted members of the realm, whose comforts are little enough. Even though this can be only a temporary measure, a kind of ancient opium (as well as modern?), it is nonetheless recommended.  

Murphy, R. E. (2002). Vol. 22: Word Biblical Commentary : Proverbs. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 241). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

It likely wouldn't have evoked several hypotheses, unless what was being commanded in the passage was something exceptionally difficult for bible believing commentators to reconcile with the rest of the bible. And indeed, that is the case.  Paul forbids getting drunk, Ephesians 5:18,

Somebody will say Paul was only addressing the church.  That doesn't make sense; Proverbs must also be viewed as God's word to the church no less than Paul's epistles.


Something in the context of Psalm 104 makes it clear that it is God who not only provides wine, but provides it for the sake of making men's hearts merry:

 14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
 15 And wine which makes man's heart glad, So that he may make his face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man's heart.
 16 The trees of the LORD drink their fill, The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,
 17 Where the birds build their nests, And the stork, whose home is the fir trees.
(Ps. 104:14-17 NAU)

Furthermore, the context is praising God for what God does, so it is absurd to expect that these words about wine were simply a neutral assertion that mankind makes wine for himself.  That wine is no less a positive thing frm the Lord the the grass for the cattle, the vegetation for man, the water for the birds, the trees of Lebanon, or the trees where birds build their homes. All that stuff is positive, not neutral.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 5: God establishes all the secular laws

Perhaps the most devastating rebuttal against James Patrick Holding's belief that his Jewish god hates pedophilic marriage, is apostle Paul's unqualified language that the secular powers over Christians are put there by decree of God, Romans 13:

1 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
 2 Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
 3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
 4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
 5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. (Rom. 13:1-5 NAU)

If there are no secular authorities except those which are established by God, then Who was ultimately responsible for the secular authorities of Delaware in the 1800's setting the minimum age of sexual consent for girls at 7 years old?

Holding may resort to his "that's just Greco-Roman rhetoric of exaggeration", but

a) he won't be giving any evidence that this is indeed exaggeration, since he is fearful that to provide the criteria is to create the risk that somebody could invalidate the criteria;
b) you will have great difficulty convincing the vast majority of inerrantist evangelicals that Paul's language here was exaggeration, proving that Holding's predictable comeback has less scholarly rigor than his sneering would suggest; and
c) if it was exaggeration, then Paul was using exaggeration when making an important theological point, and that's a can of worms Holding will never close again if he decides to open it:  How many other theologically important statements from Paul were similarly a case of exaggeration?  Is your criteria rigid enough for typical Christian doctrines to survive, or is it sufficiently vague that pretty much anything that looks like an extreme statement in the bible, can be dismissed as being less important than the language suggests on the surface?

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 4: "In non-essentials, liberty"

Most conservative Christians agree with a non-biblical moral maxim:

"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity."

The origin of this phrase is not important to this argument, but for the curious, here's the Wikipedia link that will start off the newbies with non-authoritative information.

This maxim seems to be saying that, if the area of discussion is a "non-essential", then it is not rational to view a Christian as sinful or non-Christian merely because they disagree with you on said non-essential.


What criteria should we use to figure out which bible teachings are "essential" and which aren't?

Let's review what modern conservatives have to say:

Credo House gives the following criteria:

1. Historicity: Does the doctrine have universal historical representation?

2. Explicitly Historical: Does the history of the church confess their centrality?

3. Biblical Clarity (Perspicuity): Is the doctrine represented clearly in Scripture?

4. Explicitly Biblical: Does any passage of Scripture explicitly teach that a certain doctrine is essential?

...Again, these four criteria, I propose, must all be present. I think I am committed to this. If one or more is lacking concerning a particular doctrine, I believe that it is not possible for one to legitimately argue for its core necessity. As well, all four feed off each other and are somewhat self-regulating. In other words, if someone doubts whether something is clear in Scripture, all he or she has to do is look to history.  If something is not clear in the Scripture, we will not find that it passes the test of historicity. This is why it is of vital importance that Christians not only be good exegetes, but also good historians.

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no "universal" historical representation.  That subject is not made "universal" by either the bible or the church fathers.  Singular expressions of opinions do not make something "universal".  Tertullian was a Montanist, but that hardly makes his opinion a universally recognized teaching.  The same with Origen's spiritualizing the text to get rid of contradictions/errors, and Irenaeus' belief that Jesus lived to be around 50 and had an earthly ministry of more than 10 years.

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no history of the church confessing it's centrality.  Nowhere in church history do we ever find statements about minimum age for marriage being declared to be "central".

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no clear basis in the bible.  When we think of doctrines that have "clear basis in the bible", we think of monotheism, existence of God, Jesus being the son of God, his rising from the dead, etc, etc.  Apparently then, "clear basis in the bible" requires multiple attestation.  God's opinion on the minimum age of marriage is hardly witnessed in the bible to that degree.

Norman Geisler's criteria for identifying essential teaching is to stress the creeds, and give the reader an overview of the Roman Catholic, the Reformed, and the Anabaptist criteria for essential doctrine.  But this doesn't help, since none of those sources even talks about the minimum age of marriage.

From this brief survey, it would appear that the minimum age a girl must be in order to be eligible for marriage in God's sight, cannot be "essential" teaching, it can only at best be "non-essential" (i.e., your salvation or orthodoxy cannot be compromised by the age you believe a girl becomes ready to marry), in which case, by your own creed, you must allow "liberty".  That is, you cannot disfellowship or excommunicate the man in your African congregation who is a member of a Bushman tribe and who has married a 9 year old girl consistent with the tribe's beliefs.

As an atheist, I'd cease being friends with anybody if I found out they were a pedophile, since I detest the practice in all forms.  There is no "how do we know what essential teaching is" to muddy up my moral intuitions.

You can escape this rebuttal by refusing to believe in the maxim stated at the beginning of this article, but you'd probably take a very big hit socially and personally, since you'd then become a bigot, and you'd give up on Christian friends as soon as they disagreed with  you on anything in the bible.

Face it, friend, you are sure that your god hates marital pedophilia as much as he hates bestiality, yet your god apparently chose to plainly prohibit the latter and say absolutely nothing about the former.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 3: We can know what sin is by intuition?

 13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit."
 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."
 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
 17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
(Jas. 4:13-17 NAU)

This verse proves nothing, for even if we accept it as true, it is only saying that it is sin when we already know what the right thing to do is, yet we don't do it.

The question of what criteria we should use so that we can correctly identify what "the right thing to do" would be, is left unanswered.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 2: We can know what sin is by our conscience?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Some Christians will try to argue that because we can know sin by our conscience, as the bible says, then we can know that sex within adult-child marriages is sin even if biblical law is silent about the subject:

 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.
 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
 17 But if you bear the name "Jew " and rely upon the Law and boast in God, (Rom. 2:12-17 NAU)

I don't see how this passage proves anything.  The world is filled with shameless pedophiles whose consciences don't bother them regarding their sexual life.  

The only way this verse can be used to support identifying pedophilia as sin, is to favor the conscience of all people who decry this sexual practice, and arbitrarily discount the conscience of those who see nothing wrong with it.  That is anything but objective.  You might get the congregation to signal their agreement with your view by clapping, but locating groups of other people who have the same conscience as you, is hardly an objective argument that you've got the morals figured out correctly

---------Update:  March 20, 2023

Romans 2:15 ("...work of the law written on their conscience") is surrounded in the immediate context with references to the Mosaic Law.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to conclude that many conservative scholars are wrong when trifling that "work of the law" is something different than the moral precepts of the Mosaic law.  And indeed, that makes practical sense:  Did or didn't God put "thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14) on your conscience?  

Shall we trifle about whether God did or didn't place some Mosaic moral law on your conscience?  Of course not.  Therefore, there is no room in Romans 2 to justify pretending that our "conscience" is an independent basis upon which to judge some human act to be sin.  That basis for the conscience in condemning some act as sin is still Mosaic law regardless, along with all of its omissions.

If Romans 2:15 is true, then your conscience troubling you as you think about pedophilia is not something that arises from the OT YHWH who gave the law.  

Inerrantists will carp that the OT YHWH also cleared up much in the NT thus it is the same God in both testaments, thus both words of God should be read harmonistically, but of course there is no universally recognized hermeneutic that says compilations of theological material produced by two different ancient religions who often disagree with each other on major points of doctrine (as Jews disagree with each other, Christians disagree with each other, and Jews disagree with Christians) still somehow "deserve" to be read harmonistically.  So when I refuse to do so, all I'm "violating" is a rule of exegesis that not even all Christians agree to (most Christian scholars deny inerrancy, it just seems otherwise because of how loud the inerrantist-minority bark about shit).

I lose no sleep violating a Jehovah's Witness's request that I clear all my bible interpretations with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

I also lose no sleep violating an inerrantist's request that I forget about all the numerous interpretive differences between Jews and Christians, and simply do whatever needs doing in order to find harmony between the OT YHWH and the NT Jesus.  I prefer rather to adopt the view of the 2nd century Marcion, who correctly held that the god of the OT was a demon, and not the father of Jesus.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

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

Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

Posted: 14 Jun 2017 06:00 AM PDT

 Whenever I start writing about morality or the existence of evil, I almost always get an email (or two) from people who point to the historic actions of alleged “Christians”. For many skeptics, Christianity is the source of much evil in the past (i.e. the Crusades and the Inquisition). For this reason, some skeptics point to “Christian” evil as evidence against the existence of a good Christian God.

That's about as fallacious as saying the evil of the Nazis argues Hitler didn't exist.

While history may include examples of “Christian” groups committing evil upon those with whom they disagreed, a fair examination will also reveal Christians were not alone in this sort of behavior.

That's right, using religion to violently promote causes is a brain fart that infects all religions, Christianity included.

Groups holding virtually every worldview, from theists to atheists, have been mutually guilty of evil behavior. Atheists point to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition when making a case against Christians, theists point to the atheistic regimes of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung when making a case against atheists. Death statistics are often debated in an effort to argue which groups were more violent, but all this seems to miss the point. The common denominator in these violent human groups was not worldview; it was the presence of humans.

It is also illogical.  How many people Christians killed not only cannot be used to falsify Christianity, but according to the bible, it remains a valid possibility that God inspired the Inquisition and the Crusades.  Those who think their NT god of love would never do such at thing, apparently never read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

History has demonstrated a human predisposition toward violence.

And Jesus is no exception:

 12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. (Matt. 21:12 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  Regardless of worldview, humans will try to find a way to justify their evil actions.

And the biblical authors were no exception, who think "shut up" is the best answer to the problem of God causing evil:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? (Rom. 9:18-20 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  The question is not which group is more violent but which worldview most authorizes and accommodates this violence.

Then the Christian theistic view wins, since it's pretty hard to find a stronger authorization for evil, than God's admitted "delight" in watching those who disobey him, raping each other and eating their own kids:

  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.
 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
  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 th (Deut. 28:30-63 NAU)

 If that's mere "Semitic exaggeration", and you don't have solid criteria for deciding what impreccatory language in the bible is literal and which is exaggeration, you open Pandora's Box:  why isn't it mere "Semitic exaggeration" also when biblical authors talk about hell or hell fire or eternal conscious suffering in the afterworld? 

Christians who commit horrific evil toward other humans actually have to act in opposition to the teaching of their Master, Jesus Christ. The Gospels repeatedly demonstrate that Jesus came to “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79), and Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have had to do so in rebellion; they ignored or were ignorant of the teachings of Jesus.

You completely ignore the well-known divine atrocities of the OT, such as God's command that babies should be slaughtered and pregnant women should be forced to endure abortion by sword or "ripped up"

NAU  1 Samuel 15:1 Then Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen to the words of the LORD.
 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:1-3 NAU)

 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. 13:16 NAU)

 Copan and Flannagan, of course, say this is typical exaggeration language because the pagan nations in those days also exaggerated their divine threats and war victories.  Although I've written a strong unpublished rebuttal to this nonsense, the strongest rebuttal is the fact that we also believe a person can be guilty for allowing that which they know to be evil.  If you see a man raping your daughter, and it can be proven in court that all you did was stand there and watch, with no evidence the rapist was a danger to you or had threatened you, you become responsible for ALLOWING despite the fact that you didn't CAUSE.

As Copan and Flannagan well know, God "allows" the worst imaginable evils to take place daily in this world.  No, the "God gave us freewill" excuse doesn't work, because that doesn't get god off the hook any more than it would the owner of a dog, known to be violent, who chooses to unleash the dog and let it run loose anyway.  The owner didn't CAUSE, but the owner did ALLOW, and we still say failure to restrain dogs who bite others, makes the owner liable.  The point is that if God knew we'd do all this evil after he gave us freewill, God is not in a different moral position than the pit-bull owner who gives his dog freedom despite knowing the damage the dog will do.

So if our ALLOWING evil is not morally distinguishable from our CAUSING it, then there is no rational reason to think the matter is different with God, in which case, the undeniable fact that God ALLOWS evil, as Copan and Flannagan must admit, operates to make God just as culpable as if he had CAUSED said evil.

Indeed, what fool would say there's a moral difference between a Hitler who allows his nazis to gas Jews to death, and the Hitler who actually orders such death?  Not much!

But in an atheistic worldview (where humans are not specially designed in the image of God), there is little or no reason why any of us should feel compelled to treat other people with the respect that Jesus taught his followers to have for their enemies.

That is stupid, we are social animals, we recognize there's safety in numbers, so it only makes perfectly good sense under completely naturalistic reasoning to band together, elect leaders, vote laws over us to keep the peace, etc, so as to further promote flourishing.  Since we are civilized, that's the way we get things done, even if in nature there are less civilized life forms that get things done more barbarically.  We can obtain all the moral justification we need for our moral outlook by simply saying we were born and raised to think and act like this.  If a terrorist from another country comes to us and does criminal acts under our laws, we prosecute him because we think we are "better", but because we recognize that we need to do this in order to continue achieving our naturalistic goal of keeping the peace.  Although some atheists believe in objective morality, I don't.  The Christians are correct:  if atheism is true, then there's not going to be any objective way to prove that life in 1950's America was "better" than life under Stalin.

If the world is simply filled with species and groups competing for the same resources, and if history belongs to those species and groups who are best suited for survival and reproduction, why should we be concerned with those groups who are not “fit” enough to survive?

It is sufficient to argue that being social animals logically compels us not to just toss the sick to the side of the road and move on.  That is, we show compassion for the purely naturalistic reason that we all desire to live and flourish.  We don't need to prove that view better than the view of a psycho who wants to nuke everybody, before we can have rational justification to see things that way.

History is filled with examples of one population group replacing another in the natural struggle for resources. If atheism is true, and survival and reproduction are the only true concerns, then the struggle for resources authorizes and justifies human violence.

But we are social animals, so it's only natural that we don't automatically wish to war with each other just to weed out the weak.   

Unlike Christians, atheists can commit genocide without ignoring their worldview; atheists have the freedom to eliminate competing groups as a faithful expression of their worldview.

Indeed, America's compassion for the poor has shown the ugly consequence...the poor and degenerates and mentally ill have increased in number.  Evolution is not perfect, and we apparently evolved to have a bit more compassion than is consistent for the long-term good.  Providing for safe needle-exchange, and free STD testing, does little more than help the freeloaders flourish.  We've already decided to limit welfare more than we ever did in its' history, so apparently we are starting to discover that we need to make and enforce decisions that prioritize long-term good of the nation, over the short-term relief of suffering for individuals.  I hope we turn further and further toward meritocracy.  

God has given us the freedom to follow our own nature or to follow the teaching of Jesus.

And there you go again, talking in complete defiance of your Calvinist Christian brothers.  We can rationally dismiss your argument here until you first show the world that you and Calvinists have resolved your differences of opinion over the bible's teaching about human freewill.

Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have simply submitted to their natural inclination rather than to the foundational teaching of the Christian Worldview:

Matthew 7:24-26

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Not everyone who calls himself a Christian is listening to the words of Christ (Matthew 7:21). Those of us who have identified ourselves as Christians, yet have perpetrated evil, are willfully resisting or rejecting the words of Jesus.

 But Jesus overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the OT god's atrocities are too well known from Deut. 28:15 ff to need repeating here.  Your idea that the true Christian of modern times is one who doesn't commit "atrocities" simply denies large sections of the bible.