Cold Case Christianity: Why Is the Penalty of Hell the Same, Even Though People Are So Different?

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

Why Is the Penalty of Hell the Same, Even Though People Are So Different?

Posted: 08 Sep 2017 01:20 AM PDT

257The notion of Hell is incredibly controversial, even among Christians.

Which means you need to be god-damn sure you aren't spouting heresy before you tell the world that Hell is a literal place of literal endless torment.  You aren't going to gain that level of certainty in light of the fact that most Christian scholars provide convincing biblical arguments that the NT concept of Hell is mere metaphor.

Many believers struggle to reconcile the mercy and grace of God with the existence of Hell and have tried to redefine Hell in an effort to remove what they perceive as offensive. For some, Hell seems too inequitable to be possible. Would a Loving God punish everyone in the same way?

God himself prescribes different level of punishment for different offenses in the bible, for example death for adultery (Lev. 20:10), but when the adultery is between a slave owner and his slave-girl who was previously pledged or betrothed to another man, then the death penalty doesn't apply "because she isn't free".  Lev. 19:20-22.

  10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20:10 NAU)

  20 'Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment; they shall not, however, be put to death, because she was not free.
 21 'He shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering.
 22 'The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him.     (Lev. 19:20-22 NAU)

If God never changes, Mal. 3:6, then his sense of justice also doesn't change, so that if NT Hell lumps every lost sinner together in a mindlessly screaming fiery mass, it is inconsistent with other biblical teaching.  God's rescinding the death penalty for adultery in the specific case of the slave girl, supra, makes it clear that James 2:10 is wrong for saying those who offend in one point of the law are guilty of all.  If God seriously thought the slave owner who committed adultery with the slave girl was therefore also guilty of death-deserving blasphemy, God would not have rescinded the death penalty in the case of the slave-girl.

Sorry, Wallace, but you need to learn how stupid it is to say that the guy who is convincted of jay-walking is viewed by God as guilty of rape, child molestation, murder, arson and spousal battery.  Such stupidity provokes interesting philosophical conversation, but doesn't amount to jack shit for practical reality.  How long would you live in a convervative Christian county where the law said that if you are convicted of theft, you will be viewed by the judged as guilty also of kidnapping?  If James 2:10 is so stupid that it doesn't even work in real life, what makes you think it remains a valid theological truth?

Wallace continues:

Isn’t it unfair to send someone like Gandhi to Hell (simply because he was not a Christian) alongside someone like Hitler (who committed unspeakable atrocities)?

Yes, and biblical arguments could be made that your ultra-fundie view that gospel rejectors go to hell, is false.  though I doubt you have the courage or conviction to contact me to find out how you've been missing the forest for the trees your whole Christian life.  Contacting me would not promote sales of your book, so why would you bother?

A reasonable and just God would not be the source of such inequitable punishment, would He?

Makes sense enough on a practical level, but any Christian who has trouble with God's love appearing so unloving, is probably talking from biblical ignorance.  Your God not only causes rape to befall women who disobey him (Deut. 28:30), he takes the same "delight" in causing such rape that he would take in causing prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).  Let's first resolve the question of why you so blindly believe the bible's statements that God is loving in the first place, when it is a perfect absurdity to say the person who can "delight" to cause rape, is "loving".

In one sense, it is true: All sin has the same consequence when measured against God’s perfection.

Not if the OT has anything to say about it.  God thinks adultery with a free woman deserves death, but not adultery with a slave-girl.  God would hardly demand less punishment in the latter case if he seriously believed both acts "deserved" the same degree of punishment.

Lying is just as significant as murder when it comes to assessing our imperfection relative to the perfection of God.

And only a jailhouse lawyer for God would insist that the man who exaggerates his bowling abilities to his friends (lying) has committed a wrong equally as significant as the man who rapes a child to death.  Fuck you.

Even the slightest sin demonstrates our inadequacy and need for a Savior.

Your spiritually alive and authentically born again 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in the Christian faith would explain that the ultimate reason we sin is because God wanted us to. 

But make no mistake about it; some sins are clearly more heinous than others in the eyes of God (John 19:11-12).

You just contradicted yourself, since you just said "Lying is just as significant as murder when it comes to assessing our imperfection relative to the perfection of God."  How can murder be more heinous in God's eyes than lying, if in God's eyes they are of equally significant sin?

As a result, the God of the Bible equitably prescribes punishments for wrongdoing on earth and in the next life:

Some would argue that the degree of heat one is tormented by in hell hardly matters, since it at minimum must be a place where everybody weeps and gnashes their teeth.  I've often asked fundies to explain how hell can be so mindlessly awful as certain biblical descriptions say, if at the same time it is sufficiently tolerable to allow the rich man to have an intelligent conversation with Abraham as he does in Luke 16.  You cannot hold intelligent conversations with another person when you are on fire.

There Are Degrees of Punishment on Earth

When God gave the Law to Moses, He made one thing very clear: Some sins are more punishable than others. God assigned different penalties to different crimes, based on the offensive or heinous nature of the sin itself.

For example, it is because the slave girl is not free, that the man who commits adultery with her escapes the death penalty otherwise required for adultery, thus indicating God views the worth of slave-girls exactly the way most other slave-owners did in those days:  her lesser social status proved her lesser ultimate worth.

The Mosaic Law is filled with measured responses to sin. God prescribed punishments appropriate to the crimes in question (Exodus 21:23-25). In fact, the Mosaic Law carefully assured that each offender would be punished “according to his guilt” and no more (Deuteronomy 25:2-3).

Which contradicts James 2:10 and its statement that offending any part of the law makes one guilty of offending everything else in the law.

The Mosaic Law is evidence of two things. First, while any sin may separate us from the perfection of God, some sins are unmistakably more offensive than others. Second, God prescribes different punishments for different crimes based on the severity of each crime.

And it is for this reason that the the harshest possible penalty of being burned alive is required of the girl who has pre-marital sex (Lev. 21:9).  Some would argue that murder, rape of a child, and other crimes are far worse than pre-marital sex. 

There Are Degrees of Punishment in Hell

In a similar way, God applies this principle to the next life, prescribing a variety of punishments in eternity corresponding to the crimes committed in this life (Revelation 20:12-13). This is most apparent in Jesus’ teaching on the “Wicked Servant” (Luke 12:42-48). In a straight forward interpretation of this parable, those who reject the teaching and calling of God will be harshly punished, but those who have less clarity on what can be known about God (“the one who did not know it”) will be punished with less severity. There are degrees of punishment in Hell; God is equitable and fair when it comes to the destiny of those who have rejected Him.

So God punishes also the one who "did not know it"?   How cruel and unloving is it to punish those who didn't know what they were doing was wrong?  Do you as a Christian wish to rescind the laws that protect mentally ill people from trial, on the ground that because God subjects the innocently ignorant to punishment, we should too?

By the way, Jesus concludes that parable by saying his purpose was to cast fire on the earth:

42 And the Lord said, "Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time?
 43 "Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.
 44 "Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
 45 "But if that slave says in his heart, 'My master will be a long time in coming,' and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk;
 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
 47 "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,
 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.
 49 "I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!
 50 "But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!
 51 "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; (Lk. 12:42-51 NAU)

The only way you can say this parable speaks of hell, is if you agree that hell will take place on earth.  But you don't believe that.  You agree with most other fundies that the currently existing hell that sinners are now in, is not "upon the earth".  So there is objective and legitimate room to object that you are taking what Jesus said out of context when you use it to promote your idea of hell as this other-dimensional place of suffering.  Jesus clearly thought the fire he would use in punishment would be sent "upon the earth".

Those who know more about God are held to a higher degree of accountability and responsibility. This is clear from the words of Jesus Himself (John 9:41, John 15:22-24)

Clement of Alexandria asserted that John didn't wish to repeat the "external facts" which he knew were covered in the previous Synoptic gospels, and therefore wrote a "spiritual" gospel, and the contrast requires this spirituality to constitute something different than "external facts".  So since directly quoting what the historical Jesus really said would qualify under "external facts", John's intent to write a "spiritual" gospels more than likely means his quotes of Jesus aren't always what the historical Jesus actually said, but John's own theological reflections being represented AS IF Jesus had actually said them.

and the authors of the New Testament (Hebrews 10:28-19).

Christian scholars are sufficiently divided on who authored Hebrews that skeptics are rational to toss it aside until author-identification makes a credibility assessment possible.

But God has also given us enough information in the natural world (Romans 1:18-20) and in our own moral intuitions (Romans 2:14-15) to conclude He exists.

Did the natural moral intuitions of the legislators for 19th century Delaware tell them anything about God as they concluded that the age of sexual consent should be seven years old?

For this reason, no one holds a legitimate excuse excluding them from the justice of God.

I don't serve sadistic lunatics who not only cause rape (Deut. 28:30) but who take delight to cause rape (v. 63).  I'll wear my eternal misery in hell as a badge of honor.

The Bible is clear: While all who reject God will be separated from Him for eternity,

thus contradicting the bible's other teaching that God is omnipresent or present everywhere.

not all will suffer the same form of punishment.

thus contradicting the teaching in James 2:10 that God thinks being guilty of murder proves one guilty of adultery too.

The God of the Bible is equitable and fair, loving and just.

As demonstrated by his choice to cause an infant to suffer the torment of some unspecified terrible sickness for 7 days, as opposed to just killing him quickly:

 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

Your god cannot just mercifully kill an innocent infant quickly (and too many Christian theologians, perfectly well aware of Romans 5, nevertheless deny the doctrine of original sin that you will predictably hide behind to justify your predictable  response that all infants "deserve" to be killed, you fucking scumbag), your god has to torture this baby for seven days with a terrible sickness first, as if the creator of the universe could not possibly imagine any better way to get his point across to David and Bathsheba and the rest of the onlookers except to torture this baby for 7 days.

And nevermind that if God's "taking away" David's sin was sufficient to exempt David personally from the death penalty required for adultery, then there was no sin left to punish anybody for, such as the torment of a 7-day fatal illness God "struck" the baby with.

Nevermind that David was King, and therefore Nathan's very quick assurance that God made an exception to the death-penalty rule for adultery in the case of David, appears to be politically motivated

Nevermind that if in fact God really did successfully exempt David from the death penalty otherwise normally required for adultery, then apparently there is nothing about God's nature that "requires" him to punish sin, and therefore, God is not sending people to hell because "his righteous nature demands it", he is doing so in spite of the fact that it would be just as consistent with justice for him to exempt them from hell the way he exempted David from death.  Stop telling the world God's righteous nature "requires" God to punish sin.  God apparently can also just as easily spare a sinner from punishmen by a simple wave of his magic wand.  He punishes by voluntary choice, not any necessity.


And yet you think skeptics irrational when they laugh at the idea of your god's sense of justice?  If so, you must think winning a debate with me would be very easy.  So respond already and let's get started.  Or continue confining your frightened ass to just the narrow market of fundie Christians who already agree with you on 99% of what you say, thus showing by your actions that you care more about selling books than you care about being correct in what you believe.  You risk losing book sales if you spar with me, so you probably just "don't have the time" to engage with skeptic who use frigthtening words like "fucking scumbag", eh?  Yeah, that's believable.

He provides a pardon to everyone (through Jesus’ work on the cross) and fairly deals with those who have rejected the pardon.

 Except that Luke 12:48 indicates God will also send to hell, at least under your interpretation, even people who did not know the Master's will, which sort of makes it laughable to say your God is in the least bit "fair".  The big mystery is why you take the doctrine of God sending innocently ignorant people to hell, and do what comes naturally:  become a 5-Point Calvinist.

Might your God believe a particular girl will reach the age of accountability at 7 years old? 

If so, where would God send her if she died one day after going to church and rejecting the gospel invitation?

Does your god send 7 year old girls to hell?  or is this the part where you save face by appeal to God's mysterious ways, you know, that excuse you never find the least bit convincing yourself when you hear cultists and heretics employing to the same end?

Sometimes Christian apologists say good things

This is my reply to a post by Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie, entitled

When the Head Meets the Heart: The Art of Biblical Integrity for the Christian Intellectual

March 11, 2016

Do you really believe what you say and think you believe, and how can you know? The answer may at first brush appear obvious — “of course I believe what I say and think I do,” you might say. If you didn’t, after all, why would you be spending so much time engaged in the intellectual defense of it? This raises an interesting question: Can you believe that you believe something which you do not in fact believe in your heart? Is it possible that we deceive ourselves about what our own beliefs are?

So many people in our modern evangelical culture assent to a set of propositional truths about God but in their hearts are practical atheists.

I could not agree more.  By their works, most apologists of today appear to believe Christianity is little more than a fun game of intellectual jousting.  James Patrick Holding is the most extreme example, given his 100% apathy toward the bible being the inspired word of God, and yet despite this, manages to be published by otherwise conservative evangelical outfits like Christian Research Institute, and has, at least in the past, obtained accolades for some of his books by conservative evangelicals like Dan Wallace, Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg.  Mitigating these accolades is the undeniable fact that Haberbas is also willing to endorse resurrection apologetics books that are absurdly weak and presumptuous and little more than a repeat of what Habermas and other scholars have argued.

snip

One danger, especially for those involved in the intellectual defense of the faith (i.e. apologists), is that one’s Christianity becomes reduced to merely an intellectual belief, one that has little or no bearing on the way one lives.

I assume that is the cast for most apologists who practically live online with ceaseless apologetics blogging, but who clearly don't want anybody to know what their personal life is like, such as the imposters over at Triablogue, particularly Steve Hays and Jason Engwer.

What sets real Christians apart from any other person of any religious affiliation is that we have a genuine relationship with the God of the Universe. That is something truly phenomenal which we should never take for granted.

What is there that separates us and sets us apart from, say, the Jehovah’s witnesses or the Mormons? Is it merely a difference in theological belief? If the only thing that makes you different from members belonging to those groups is a difference in doctrinal content, then you have to answer the question “In that case, do you believe that you are saved by your doctrine?” The Bible, however, makes it clear that we are not saved by our doctrine. As James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” If your doctrine is the only distinguishing factor, then you are in effect no different from a Jehovah’s witness or a Mormon and you have much reason to be afraid. You may have the correct doctrinal content and you may even be able to articulate and defend your beliefs with clarity and precision. But at the end of the day, before God, it will really do you no good. To quote Thomas Watson again, he writes in The Doctrine of Repentance,

"Some bless themselves that they have a stock of knowledge, but what is knowledge good for without repentance? It is better to mortify one sin than to understand all mysteries. Impure speculatists do but resemble Satan transformed into an angel of light. Learning and a bad heart is like a fair face with a cancer in the breast. Knowledge without repentance will be but a torch to light men to hell."

What a stinging indictment of James Patrick Holding, a closet homosexual "apologist" who has never admitted wrongfully defaming or libeling anybody in his 20+ year career of doing little more than talking shit to any Christian or skeptic that happened to disagree with him.

Think about what beliefs you hold that are not reflected by the manner in which you live out your life! You believe that apart from the empowering grace of God you can do nothing in and of yourself. You are doctrinally correct, but the measure of your belief in this proposition is reflected by your prayer life — what does your prayer life say about whether you really believe this in your heart?

 Judging by his works, I'd say James Patrick Holding never prays, but is willing to go through the motions and look like he believes that crap when he thinks giving such false appearance will put him on better terms with Christians near him.   The same for Steve Hays and Jason Engwer.  Engwer clearly doesn't want his personal life to be investigated, and Hays is a 5-Point Calvinist.  When he refuses to pray as he should, this is because God predestined him to so refrain.  So he couldn't avoid it.

You believe that God’s judgment for sin is an eternity separated from God in Hell — again, you are doctrinally correct, but the measure of your belief lies in your zeal for evangelism, intercessory prayer, and seeing soul’s saved. You believe that the Bible is God’s inspired revelation to mankind — but how often do you study and meditate upon it?

 Actually, James Patrick Holding doesn't even care whether the bible is the inspired word of God, and yet he wants his followers to think him rational for dedicating his life to promoting the inerrancy of a book whose divine authorship he is so 100% apathetic about.

You believe that God is sovereign, but are you content in all circumstances as Paul was (Philippians 4:11)?

Clearly most apologists aren't, such as J. Warner Wallace, whose ceaseless promotion of his "forensic faith" gimmicks makes you think Wallace didn't believe God was capable of doing better in the world until Wallace published "Cold Case Christianity".

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays tries to justify biblical morality

This is my reply to an article by aoologist Steve Hays entitled

Moral skepticism and Scripture

From an exchange I had with an unbeliever on Facebook:

The answers you give curiously avoid quoting those parts of the bible where God takes personal responsibility for death and evil, therefore, your attempts to explain alleged evil as the result of natural earthly forces, constitutes dishonesty on your part.  You are a Calvinist.  If you believe God secretly willed for Hitler to massacre the Jews, and secretly willed for pedophiles to rape small children, you need to just come out and admit that yes, that is the way your god is.  Otherwise, the atheist to whom you give your naturalistic answers might get a false impression about how unspeakably nasty your theology actually is.

I have no theory as to why God predestines a particular hurricane to strike a particular area. In general, hurricanes are natural forces which restore the balance of nature.

If God is all-powerful, he doesn't need to use hurricanes, he can simply cause humans to desire whatever he wants them to desire with his magic wand called irresistible grace, a presupposition you Calvinists are bound to accept. 

It's not as if hurricanes are targeted to hit population centers. That's an incidental consequence of humans living in hurricane zones.

Then you aren't a very good Calvinist, since under Calvinism, the only reason anybody ever found themselves at the mercy of a hurricane, or desired to move to or stay in a location that was eventually hit by a hurricane (such as Houston Texas most recently), is because God predestined or foreordainted them to do so.  And further under Calvinism, they had no chance of successfully resisting making the movement and choices they were predestined to make.  You aren't a Molinist, are you?

In general, humans die in natural disasters as a side-effect of living where natural disasters happen to strike.

But the reason they die in natural disasters is because that was the method God used to kill them, as required by bible passages in which God claims personal responsibility for all death and murder:

 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)

Hays continues:

God created a world with natural mechanisms.
And everything happens according to his master plan for the world. In that respect, even bad things happen for a good reason. And this life is not the ultimate frame of reference.

Your skeptical opponent believes none of those propositions, so why are you using them?  Whoops, I forgot...it is because God predestined you to use them.

    When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, 12 then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity (Deut 25:11-12).
i) To begin with, who started the fight? Who threw the first punch? Who's at fault?

 You shall not add to the word of the Lord.  See Deut. 4:2 and 12:32.  If the law doesn't speak about who started the fight, neither should you.  So you only do so because you wish to make the Calvinist god look more politically correct in the eyes of modern people whose individualist sense of justice naturally prompts them to ask such clarifying questions. 

ii) You also disregard the nature of the offense. Grabbing the genitals risks rendering the man impotent. A harsh penalty for a harsh crime. The penalty is completely avoidable by avoiding the crime.

But in Calvinism, if a woman does grab a man's testicles to help her husband win a fight, God predestined her to do this.  So if God wants a woman's hand cut off for grabbing another man's testicles, God desires to horribly harm and maim a woman for successfully carrying out the divine will.  Your distinguishing between God's revealed will and his secret will, doesn't get rid of the moral atrocity just described.  Even assuming Calvinism to be the most biblically justified form of modern Christianity, God is still horribly and shockingly cruel for inflicting pain and misery upon people simply because they successfully carried out his true will.


What would be wrong with making this a federal law for America today, especially since you believe it was a harsh crime?  If God wanted women who grab a man's testicles during a fight to have their hand cut off back in the days of Moses, and if God doesn't chance, what makes you think God today thinks a less harsh penalty is somehow "better" today?  Or did God predestine you to avoid answering this?

    18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear (Deut 21:18-21).

 

i) I didn't say if that was the thing to do now. Not everything that God commanded ancient Israel to do is a direct command to or for Christians.

But adultery in its original OT context was to be answered with the death penalty, Leviticus 20:10.  If your NT somehow imposes the prohibition against adultery on Christians, but not the death penalty that originally attached to it, I'd say that means the NT authors are guilty of picking and choosing in arbitrary fashion what they please from the OT.   You appeal to the authority of Jesus and the NT writers to overcome the picking-and-choosing criticism?  I have good reasons to view Jesus as a non-divine human revolutionary, and Paul as an intentional perverter of what Jesus said.  You don't do Calvinist apologetics to convince anybody at all except other Calvinists, that's for sure.

ii) You fail to grasp the nature of the Mosaic penalty structure. As various scholars contend, the death penalty was generally a maximum penalty, not a mandatory penalty (first degree murder might be a notable exception).

You shall not add to the word of the Lord, Deut. 4:2, 12:32, which is exactly what you are doing when you try to get away from the plain meaning of the text via "scholars".   If the bible doesn't express or imply that the given law/penalty has exceptions, then you shall not add to the word of the Lord, it's real simple.

ii) The fact that the legislator invokes the purgation formula in the case of the incorrigible son indicates to me that in this case (and other cases in kind), the penalty is indexed to the cultic holiness of Israel. If so, that doesn't carry over into the new covenant era.

The Jews of the first century apparently reached for rocks to stone Jesus to death for blasphemy, apparently because, despite living in the first century, they nevertheless thought that the judicial penalty demanded in the Pentateuch (death, Lev. 24:16) applied in their own day too.  So if NT authors and Jesus clearly taught such judicial penalties no longer applied, there is excellent biblical and historical reasons for saying they got it wrong.  But to discuss that in depth would be to assume the bible gives the "correct" answer, when in fact as a skeptic I believe the biblical teaching on "new covenant" is hopelessly confused if not contradictory to the theocratic regime of the Mosaic legislation.  I would be pointing out that "we know" bears cannot talk in English, and you'd be responding that Goldilocks was a fine little girl whose testimony cannot be impeached.  But I'll toy with you further for the benefit of the reader who might think you could possibly win such debate if you carped long enough about it.

By contrast, the penalty for murder antedates the Mosaic covenant. The penalty for murder is indexed to the image of God rather than holy land.

Which sounds like excellent reason to believe that because sinners in the New Covenant are no less made in the image of God than Moses was, the death penalty required for marring God's image under the Old Covenant still applies under the New. 

Deuteronomy has a refrain about "purging evil" (Cf. Deut 13:5/6; 17:7,12; 19:13,19; 21:9,21; 22:21-22,24; 24:7). A dramatic illustration is the ceremony to cleanse the land of blood guilt (21:1-9). These penalties operate within a framework of ritual holiness, where the land is culturally holy, and transgressions defile the land, necessitating punitive actions that reconsecrate the land. But that principle doesn't carry over into the new covenant, because the holy land category is defunct.

On the contrary, there is nothing about the changes in the political climate of Judea and Palestine between Moses and Pilate to suggest that it ever stopped being "holy land".   You think God inspired the captivity Psalms, some of which show desire for bloody Mosaic-style reform (Psalm 137:9), despite the fact that these were written after the Hebrews were taken captive and prevented from going back to Jerusalem.  Sorry Steve, but you don't justify a new plan by proving that God's original plan didn't work.

Furthermore, Jesus prefaced his Sermon on the Mount requirement of cutting off a hand (Matthew 5:30) with a general admonition that it was folly to attempt to avoid obeying even the least of the Mosaic law (5:17-20), so that's a pretty stiff argument that, contrary to the much-easier-to-accept modern view, Jesus really meant the hand-amputation part in v. 30 no less literally than he meant the mental adultery (v. 28) and the basis for divorce (v. 32) literally.  Or doesn't Calvinist exegesis require you to give due regard to the immediate context?  If you as a Calvinist can believe God sends to hell forever the 5 year old girl born to unbelieving parents all because she rejected the gospel at church the Sunday before dying in a car accident (children of unbelievers are not holy until at least one parent becomes a Christian (1 Cor. 7:14, and where do you think people go if they die in a state of being unholy? Purgatory?)), then you should have no trouble believing equally horrifying atrocities, such as your Jesus being far more fanatical against sin than anybody on earth ever was, seriously believed that literally amputating the offending limb (the psychological effect of which would profoundly dissuade from future like-sins) was the better way.  Think real hard before you say literal amputation of a limb doesn't change the heart.  If you were caught stealing in fundamentalist Arabia and endured the involuntary amputation of your hand as a result, you'd be fanatically hesitant before you stole something again, as literal amputation is naturally presumed traumatizing physically and psychologically for all except the truly incorrigible.

iii) Your position suffers from self-referential incoherence. On the one hand, you appeal to stock arguments for moral skepticism. If I was born at a different place and time, I'd have different views.

On the other hand, you attack OT ethics. But your moral skepticism neutralizes your ability to attack OT ethics.

No, we can attack OT ethics by showing that YOU Christians disagree with what your own God approves of, forcing you to admit you lost the debate, or forcing you to foolishly argue that atrocities most common sense people are shocked by, could somehow yet be "good". 

You can't say that's wrong.

 We don't have to day it's wrong, all we have to ask is whether you think Jesus approved of rape.  If you answer "no", then we just found a contradiction in God's attributes, since the God of the OT approves of rape (search for the phrase "The American Bible Society produced the "Good News" bible" in my article containing my exegesis of Deut. 21:14), you would be required to condemn this god because your own morals do not make any room for the possibility of morally justifying rape.

Do you believe it is always absolutely wrong to derive pleasure from causing rape and parental cannibalism?  If so, you must join us in criticizing the morals of your god, because he causes, rape and parental cannibalism (Deut. 28:30, 53), and says he will take just as much "delight" to cause these atrocities as he takes in granting prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).  If you sinply hide under the "God's ways are mysterious" then because you don't find it persuasive when "heretics" appeal to God's mysterious ways just to get their asses out of theological jam in a way that saves face, neither do we skepics find it persuasive when you employ the exact same excuse for the exact same reason...at which point you drop the debate because you are intellectually incapable of going any deeper, at which point the readers recognize you are not doing apologetics to convince anybody except those who already agree with you that Jesus is the Son of God and the bible is the inerrant word of God. 

Ironically, I agree with moral skeptics that moral intuition is unreliable, given the fact that different cultures have different taboos. What's admirable in one culture is abominable in another, and vice versa. So we need something over and above moral intuition to correct or corroborate our moral intuitions.

And since you don't think getting delight out of causing women to be raped can be morally justified, we can safely dispense with any foolishness that says the God of Deut. 28:30, 63) is the proper moral authority.  Otherwise, it would be "godly" to derive pleasure from causing women to be raped, raising the question of why it would be wrong for Christians today to rejoice in rape similarly to the way OT Hebrews rejoiced at the thought of slaughtering the children of their captors (Psalm 137:9).

You attack OT ethics, but obviously the Pentateuchal legislator didn't share your outlook.

And we skeptics are frightened by the prospect that an ancient crazy man disagreed with common sense civility.

You have your convictions and he had his. So what brokers the disagreement? Who's the referee? What makes your moral opinion superior to the viewpoint of the Pentateuchal narrator?

First, under atheism, the fact that we cannot prove the U.S Constitution morally "superior" to the barbaric practices of the Congolese army, does not mean there's no rational answer.  We are still people with genetic predispositions living in a country that has evolved to give us the right to condemn in free speech the contrary morals held by other nations.  Rape is a naturalistic evil because the unwillingness of the female usually implies she is not ready to provide for offspring, and that is counterproductive to the naturalistic goal of survival, which is not to have kids merely to let them die of exposure,  and indeed, though rape be found in the lower order animals, it isn't very common and can safely be chalked up to a flaw in evolution, since clearly the willingness of the female to be made pregnant strongly implies an ability to provide for such offspring thus achieving the naturalistic goal of survival.  We evolved from animals and they do not just do nothing all day because there is no way to prove which of their conflicting moral predispositions is "better" than the others.  Two bucks continue to butt heads to gain the affections of the female in the group, despite the fact that by being without God, there is no way to prove which one of the bucks morally "deserves" to get the female.  So it does not follow logically that without an ultimate moral law-giver, we "should" do anything, such as just sit around and let anybody do whatever they want.

And in case you didn't know, moral relativity under atheism does not automatically favor the man trying to stab me to death....it also justifies me, the other atheist in the fight, to do whatever I want to do in that situation, such as inflict fatal injuries on my attacker.  So stop telling atheists their belief logically compels them to just sit back and let an attacker harm them.  Relativity doesn't merely tell attackers they are free to do whatever, it says the victims enjoy equal freedom to do whatever too.

So if atheism is true, I am not doing anything inconsistent with the moral relativity of the universe, when I physically resist somebody trying to stab me to death.  And the world doesn't show us much more than that winners in a conflict are those who have the most power, legally, physically or otherwise. Moral disagreements are nearly NEVER decided by on party convincing the other that the latter's moral view has fatal rational or logical deficiencies.

Therefore we should only expect that despite the relative equality of morality in life, human beings are going to continue clashing with each other about it regardless.  Nobody can prove that one form of government is "better" than another either, but that hardly convinces most people to just shut up about politics.  The need for self-preservation and preservation of one's preferred group logically implies one will naturally speak out against and react against any known contrary morality.  If you wish to avoid dying, you are naturally going to oppose the views and acts of those who wish for you to die. 

Second, the question could similarly be put to you as to why you, an alleged follower of God, think rape is absolutely wrong, when your Calvinist viewpoint requires you to ground rape in the secret will of God even if not the revealed will, prompting questions that make you look stupid as soon as you try to answer them, such as "if God wills rape, how can it be ungodly to praise God for causing rape?"  What now, Steve?  Will you go out on a limb and publicly state that rape must be good because God's good nature is necessarily implicated in his secret will no less than in his revealed will?

In light of biblical evidence against God's intellect and rationality, any biblical statements assuring you that God is good no matter what, are legitimately open to falsification and more than likely better interpreted the way Copan and Flannagan interpret the wholesale slaughter statements of the Pentateuch: mere Semitic exaggeration.  Only god's jailhouse lawyer would insist that Christians who adopt open-theism are spiritually dead.  They don't just say God is limited because that's how they feel, Christian scholars like Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd have stepped into the intellectual arena and have provided biblical explanations supported by appeal to standard hermeneutics for why it is that when the bible says God repented of his own choice to create man (Genesis 6:6-7) this is not language of appearance or mere anthropomorphism, but was understood by its originally intended audience as a reality about god (your belief in biblical inerrancy is sufficiently minority among Christian scholars that it hardly requires anybody to attempt to "reoncile" the open-theistic interpretation of Gen. 6:6 with other biblical statements about God's perfection.   Sorry Steve, but the falsity of open-theism is not quite as obvious as you would wish.  Your controlling presuppositions buckle rather quickly under attack.

You're using the same argument John Loftus employs, but it disqualifies you from assuming the posture of a moralist.

 Maybe that was the case with the skeptic you were talking to, but now you are talking to an atheist/former Calvinist, me, who is more than adequately prepared to kick your moral teeth out the back of your skull (probably more because your Calvinism is an absurd travesty of morality, given that in your world, the good God's willing of anything infuses good into it, even if what was willed was rape).  Let me know when you have the guts to put your money where your triablogue mouth is. I've already reviewed Turek's insane "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist", so when you reply, I hope you have something a bit more serious than asking atheists how they know that Hitler was wrong, or blindly presuming the nations surrounding the ancient Hebrews threw live babies into burning ovens.