Cold Case Christianity: Jesus lied about how soon he would come back

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

How Ancient Eyewitness Testimony Became the New Testament Gospel Record

Posted: 30 May 2018 01:17 AM PDT

I often wonder precisely when the disciples of Jesus realized their important role in Christian History.

Unless they were just brick-stupid, one would expect that they would have seen so many real miracles and had so many late-night conversations with Jesus answering all of their detailed theological inquires, that they would have recognized within the first few weeks of being called by Jesus, that he was the real deal.  But unfortunately, the gospels, especially Mark, portray the disciples as unbelievably thick-headed, so that they fail to get the message even when miracles are done to their dazzled delights...suggesting the author is making them dumber than they actually were (i.e., a gospel author lying about history), so as to make the disciples' late realization of the "truth" all the more dramatic of a conclusion for the reader. 

For example, although Jesus had just previously caused a few loaves of bread and fish to be enough to feed 4,000 and 5,000 people (so about 10,000 when women and children are included), Mark's gospel says the disciples learned nothing from that incident about Christ's true nature and purpose:

 49 But when they saw Him walking on the sea, they supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out;
 50 for they all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke with them and said to them, "Take courage; it is I, do not be afraid."
 51 Then He got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped; and they were utterly astonished,
 52 for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened.   (Mk. 6:49-52 NAU)

This, despite God's having the magical ability to stir their hearts to believe whatever He wanted them to believe, as can be seen from God exercising this power in the case of pagan unbelievers like King Cyrus or King Pul or King Sihon, to cause them to do good or evil:

 30 "But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass through his land; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as he is today. (Deut. 2:30 NAU)

 1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying:
 2 "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. (Ezr. 1:1-2 NAU)

 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, even the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away into exile, namely the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara and to the river of Gozan, to this day. (1 Chr. 5:26 NAU)

Wallace continues:

As these men sat at the feat of Jesus and listened to everything He had to say, did they realize they would someday testify to everything He said and did?

 Assuming Jesus did real miracles, the answer favored by historical probabilities is "yes". 

If my pastor suddenly started calming storms, walking on water, and magically causing one box of fish sticks and three loaves of bread to become enough to feed 10,000 people with 12 baskets leftover, and I could not think of any naturalistic explanation for such events, I'd have little difficulty accepting whatever claims he made about himself.  So again, if the gospels are generally accurate about Jesus' miracle working ability, the gospel authors are more than likely making the disciples dumber than they actually were...which leaves us with gospel authors who are willing to lie about what happened in history for the sake of making the story more interesting.  Us skeptics say "fuck you" to dishonest ancient historians.  Perhaps because of this we are storing up divine wrath for ourselves?  Let's just say I don't exactly lose sleep wondering "what if I'm wrong!?!", any more than Christians lose sleep wondering "what if the Muslim version of hell is true?"

Most eyewitnesses I’ve interviewed in my casework had no idea they would later be called into a jury trial to testify about what they heard or observed.

Probably because they had never met some miracle worker claiming to initiate the  kingdom of god into the world.

As a result, they sometimes regret not paying better attention when they had the opportunity. But the disciples of Jesus had a distinct advantage over modern eyewitnesses in this regard. They were students of Jesus. Unlike spontaneous, unprepared witnesses of a crime, the disciples were desperately attentive to the words and actions of Jesus, and I imagine their attention to detail became even more focused with each miraculous event.

Not at all.  You've apparently never read Mark 6:49-52, where the gospel author admits the disciples failed to infer the truth about Jesus from his prior miracle of magically multiplying a small amount of food into enough for 10,000 people, making the disciples a bit more thick-headed than historical probabilities would counsel.

For this reason, the authors of the gospels became excellent eyewitnesses and recognized the importance of their testimony very early.

Not true.  For although the risen Jesus is pictured as telling the disciples that THEY are to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19-20, the "Great Commission"), according to Paul, after they had allegedly approved of his ministry, they allocated the entire gentile mission field to him, and intentionally limited their own preaching efforts solely to Jews, in direct defiance of the great commission:

 9 and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Gal. 2:9 NAU)

 No, the disciples didn't learn the truth "early on".  As late as the scene portrayed in Galatians 2:9 (Galatians 2:1 indicates 14 years had passed between Paul's conversion to Christianity, and his meeting with the Jerusalem apostles in Galatians 2:9), these Jerusalem disciples, according to v. 9, are concluding, 14 years after Paul's conversion, that they should limit their evangelism efforts to the Jews (i.e., "the circumcised").  That is, the disciples who allocate the entire Gentile mission field to Paul, are doing so 14 years after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead and gave the great commission.  14 years worth of disobedience to the great commission does not an amazingly transformed disciple make.

In Acts 11:1-3, the Jewish apostles castigate Peter for eating with a Gentile believer, and in 11:18, the Jewish church regards Gentile repentance unto salvation to be some new shocking unexpected theological development.  And Acts 10-11, of course, doesn't prevent these visions to Peter as reminders  of what he learned from the Gentile-loving Jesus from years back, it presents those visions as if this was the first time Peter found out that Gentiles could obtain salvation.  So anti-Gentile sentiment was part and parcel in the original Jewish church. 

Sorry, Wallace, but such disobedience to the risen Christ tells me the disciples were something less then "excellent" eyewitnesses.

And don't even get me started on the serious problem of how the New Testament is totally silent about the preaching efforts of most of the original 11 disciples and Matthias, when in fact, if they were "excellent eyewitnesses" as you say, we'd expect that Luke, the allegedly careful historian, author of Acts and somebody with a clear interest in telling the world about the divine approval of the nascent church's earliest preaching efforts, would have found it irresistible to tell just as many stories about Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthias, and other "excellent eyewitnesses" that he apparently did about Peter, James and Paul.  The NT's silence about most of the original disciples strongly argues that nothing happened in their lives after the alleged resurrection of Jesus that the early church's most careful and reliable historian deemed worthy to be preserved for posterity, in turn suggesting many of the original 11 either lost faith entirely or started preaching what others felt was "heresy", and by sheer random historical accident and circumstance, it was Paul's version, not their version, that ended up becoming the official orthodoxy.

While Jesus walked here on earth, His followers studied and learned from His actions and words.

They were also far dumber in the story than reasonable probabilities would allow, Mark 6, supra.

They were often mesmerized, confused and challenged by what they saw and heard.

 They probably can't be blamed for some of this, but their obtuseness persisting even after seeing Jesus repeatedly does allegedly genuinely supernatural miracles,  suggests the gospel authors are lying about them, or else they were far from "excellent eyewitnesses".  If your pastor for the next three years went around walking on water, raising the dead, feeding thousands of homeless people from just 10 or 15 cans of beans, etc, etc, how difficult would you find it to have full faith and trust in whatever he claims about himself and his mission?

In spite of this, Jesus taught them and occasionally sent them out on their own. They memorized His teaching and relied on his wisdom when they weren’t with Him.

Perhaps that explains why Matthew often corrects Mark, a gospel you think is based on apostle Peter's preaching.  Where Mark says Jesus "could not" do a miracle, Matthew tones it down to "did not", thus getting rid of a phrase that most naturally implies a limitation on Jesus' power:

Mark 6	Matthew 13
4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household."  5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.  6 And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching.	57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household."  58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

Inerrantist Commentators admit Matthew "toned down" Mark's language:

6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58. The statement should not trouble contemporary Christians. God and his Son could do anything, but they have chosen to limit themselves in accordance to human response.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System; 

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

Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but if it is as easy as pie to reconcile Mark's Jesus of limited power, with the all-powerful Jesus of modern systematic Protestant theology, then why did Matthew "tone down" Mark's language?

Mark's language neither expressed nor implies anything about Jesus at variance with modern Protestant theology, remember?  So there's no rational motive for Matthew to "tone down" perfectly acceptable orthodox language, correct?

No thank you.  The obvious reason Matthew "tones down" Mark's "could not" to a "did not" is because it was Matthew's own judgment that Mark's language was inconsistent with a higher Christology that says Jesus is omnipotent.

And don't even get me started on how Matthew's changing of Mark's text necessarily implies that Matthew did not think Mark's gospel was 'inerrant', which, if true, flushes the inerrancy doctrine down the toilet.  Doesn't matter if you can trifle some possible way to harmonize Matthew's changing of Mark, with a theory that Matthew thought Mark's text was inerrant. Your changing of a text usually doesn't imply you think the text is inerrant, it usually implies you think the text contains errors needing correction.

We don’t know how much (if anything) these eyewitnesses wrote down during this time. Did the disciples take notes? Did they keep a journal? While Jesus was alive, the disciples likely felt no need to write down his words. The Word was witnessed in these incredible days, as men and women stood in awe of the Master, watching Him perform miracles and listening carefully to what He taught about God and eternal life.

And according to Mark 6, being shockingly obtuse in their failure to infer the truth about Jesus from his allegedly genuine magic tricks.   Sort of like you failing to get the message after two years of watching your pastor do authentically supernatural miracles such as raising the dead, multiplying food, healing illnesses, etc.  Sorry, but it's just unbelievable.

During the first years following Jesus’s ascension, the apostles still may not have written immediately about Jesus. Why not? A careful reading of the Scripture will reveal a common theme: Many of the early authors of the New Testament expected Jesus to return before there would ever be a need for a multi-generational eyewitness record.

And under your trusting assumptions, they would only have adhered to that view because it was Jesus himself who taught them he would return within their natural lifetimes.

Well, Wallace...did he?  Or will you open Pandora's box by speculating that  because Jesus couldn't teach anything incorrectly, surely some of these NT authors carried their misunderstandings into their canonical writings?  Gee, i didn't know you denied biblical inerrancy, but it's a step in the right direction at least!

Don't think Preterism can save your ass at this point, it can't.  Preterism avoids many problems of Jesus' promises to come back "quickly" (and the obvious fact that he didn't)  by pretending Jesus in such instances was speaking about a "spiritual" and "invisible" second coming.  But Preterism cannot reconcile it's invisible second coming of Christ with Acts 1:11, so:

a) the original disciples, by your own admission, believed Jesus would return so soon that they deemed authoring written gospels would be superfluous, and
b) you cannot use Preterism to explain away the problem of Jesus promising to return soon, and the obvious fact that he never did.

Since Preterism fails, your admission that the disciples expected Jesus to return within their natural lifetimes requires, upon the obvious fact that Jesus hasn't returned in 2,000 years in the way Acts 1:11 says he will, that either Jesus was wrong, or some of the original disciples of Jesus are still alive on earth.  Yeah, go chase that shit down on Google.  Then goto Netflix and rent "The Seventh Sign".

They worked urgently to tell the world about Jesus, believing He would return to judge the living and the dead within their lifetime.

That's correct. Now where do you suppose they would have gotten that false notion?  Under your trusting assumptions about the origin of Christianity, might it be that Jesus actually taught this false doctrine? If you insist some NT authors misunderstood the nature and timing of Jesus' second coming, you stop being an inerrantist, and you open the possibility that not even three years of Jesus drilling truth into their heads would prevent them from teaching error later.

In the days of the Apostles, the Word was heard, as the apostles preached to the world around them. But as the Apostles began to be martyred (and those who remained realized Jesus might not return in their lifetime), the need for a written account became clear.

Translation:  "As time wore on, the church began to reluctantly realize that Jesus was wrong in promising to return within their natural lifetimes."

James, the brother of John was killed in 44AD (Stephen was killed even earlier), and not long afterward, the gospels began to emerge. The eyewitness gospel authors wrote down what they had seen so the world would have a record.

Mark and Luke are gospel authors, and they are not eyewitnesses.  All the early church fathers who tell the reader what language Matthew wrote it, say it was Hebrew, they NEVER say Matthew wrote anything in Greek, yet today's canonical Matthew derives exclusively from GREEK manuscripts, strongly suggesting that an anonymous person or persons before the 4th century, not Matthew himself, are responsible for creation of the Greek form of Matthew's gospel, and god only knows to what extent apostle Matthew's words are preserved in this canonical Greek version or translation from Hebrew.  None of the 4 gospel authors sign their names to their testimony, and none of them claim double-authorship, despite their presumed knowledge that Jesus approved of the church adhering to the OT rule about important matters being determined on the basis of at least 2 identifiable eyewitnesses:

 15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. (Matt. 18:15-16 NAU)

 19 Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. (1 Tim. 5:19 NAU)

 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Heb. 10:28 NAU)

Jesus didn't even think his uncorroborated testimony was worthy to be deemed true, he tried to show that his testimony comes to the Jews from at least two witnesses, himself and God the Father, a matter he felt was in fulfillment of the OT law requiring important matters be established on not less than two witnesses:

  31 "If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.
 32 "There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true. (Jn. 5:31-32 NAU)

 17 "Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true.
 18 "I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me." (Jn. 8:17-18 NAU)

The OT laws on the necessity of two witnesses are:

  6 "On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deut. 17:6 NAU)

 15 "A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. (Deut. 19:15 NAU)

If the gospel authors were inspired by God, they'd likely have known their gospels would be used mostly by people they never met, and therefore, you cannot explain their failure to sign their names to them by saying their originally intended audiences already knew who they were.

That excuse falls flat anyway:  the churches apostle Paul founded obviously knew who he was, yet Paul still clearly identified himself in the epistles he wrote to them.   He even specifies that his own signature appears in every epistle:

 17 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter; this is the way I write. (2 Thess. 3:17 NAU)

 So the failure of the gospel authors to sign their names and ascribe to the two-witness-minimum rule is a serious problem running afoul of the "identify yourself" rule of thumb, the "at least two must testify" OT law which Jesus apparently thought was a valid test that his own testimony had to pass, and their choice to remain anonymous runs afoul of Paul's own practice of signing his name to his epistles.   We skeptics have good rational warrant to suspect that the gospel authors had personal reasons for refusing to directly link their writings with their identities.  This cannot be good for those who think God inspired honest eyewitnesses to truthfully report what actually happened in history.

Following the deaths of the apostles, the early believers and leaders received the apostolic eyewitness accounts and regarded them as sacred.

"most" of the early church also thought the Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew", so says 4th century church father Jerome:

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
 Jerome, toward the end of the 4th century, is our chief authority for the circulation and use of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews," although his later statements on the subject do not always agree with the earlier. He was proud of being "trilinguis," acquainted with Hebrew as well as with Latin and Greek. "There is a Gospel," he says, "which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which I lately translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek and which is called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew" (Commentary on Matthew 12:13)

Jerome, Against the Pelagians, 3.2
In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is written in the Chaldee and Syrian language, but in Hebrew characters, and is used by the Nazarenes to this day (I mean the Gospel according to the Apostles, or, as is generally maintained, the Gospel according to Matthew, a copy of which is in the library at Caesarea), we find, “Behold, the mother of our Lord and His brethren said to Him, John Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them, what sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, haply, the very words which I have said are only ignorance.”

Notice, Jerome is quoting this "authentic Matthew" or Gospel to the Hebrews, 

 Behold, the mother of our Lord and His brethren said to Him, John Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them, what sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, haply, the very words which I have said are only ignorance.”

but his quotation of it does not refer to anything we have in canonical Matthew or any of the other 3 canonical gospels.  Clearly the ancient church was confused about which gospels were truly apostolic.

The point is that J. Warner Wallace's confident assurances of how the early church "carefully preserved" and relied upon "apostolic eyewitness testimony" is not scholarly...unless he is willing to commit himself to the premise that the quote from Gospel of Hebrews, supra, accurately represents what the original of Matthew said (i.e., modern canonical Greek Matthew is a corruption of the original and is missing some of what Matthew originally wrote)?  Not likely.  

They knew the original eyewitnesses had vanished from the scene and they wanted to retain a faithful record of their testimony.

But Jesus never told them to write anything down, but only to preach, so it is a legitimate question whether the writing of the gospel constituted the prohibited "adding to the word of the Lord" (Proverbs 30:6, Deut. 4:2, 12:32, Revelation 22:18).   Have fun emailing conservative Christian scholars and apologists to help you brainstorm plausible reasons to think Jesus intended for his followers to write down any of his teachings.  yet if you claim this was done by the will of God and is a legitimate inference from anything taught in the NT, that is YOUR horrifically difficult burden to fulfill, the burden is not on the skeptic to show that writing down Jesus' teachings was against his will. YOU claim it was in harmony with his will, so prove it. 

And 4th century Eusebius preserves a quotation from 2nd century Clement of Alexandria, saying apostle Peter refused to encourage Mark's attempt to put Peter's preaching down in written form, which, if true, spells disaster for conservative apologists who think Peter 'approved' of Mark's literary effort:

Eusebius, Church History, book 6, ch. 14------
Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters, as to the order of the Gospels, in the following manner: The Gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first. The Gospel according to Marks had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.

If this quotation accurately represents Peter, this supports Wallace's own belief that the original apostles expected Jesus to come back so soon that they would have viewed the conversion of their oral preaching to written form, to be a waste of time.  We are, again, left with historical evidence that Jesus got something wrong, here, he got wrong the time he would return.

Wallace continues:

From the earliest of times, these Christians coveted the New Testament writings. In the days of the early Church Fathers, the Word was read, as the sacred Gospels and letters were carefully protected.

If they "carefully protected" the Gospels, then you cannot explain Mark 16's failure to mention Jesus' resurrection appearances, on a theory that the last part of Mark's gospel was accidentally lost, and therefore, the reason Mark has no resurrection appearances (most Christian scholars agree that Mark's resurrection appearance story or his "long ending", i.e., 16:9-20,  was only added by anonymous copyists), is because Mark did not know of any such stories, or he did not think any such stories were true.  According to Mark the gospel ends with women leaving the tomb having been told by some anonymous man that Jesus rose (16:8), it does not end with stories of a risen Jesus appearing to anybody (the "long ending").

Under your theory, the early church's "careful preservation" of the gospel texts makes it unlikely these would have underwent corruption.  In that case, Mark's silence about a resurrection narrative is not due to textual corruption, but his never having written any such story in the first place.

That is, the gospel deemed by most scholars to be the earliest...did not have anything to tell the reader about a risen Christ being seen by eyewitnesses.... 

Wallace continues:

The earliest believers accepted the gospels and letters of the New Testament as eyewitness accounts because the authors of these texts considered their own writing to be authoritative, eyewitness Scripture:

1 Peter 5:1

Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed…

2 Peter 1:16-17

For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.

Peter's epistles do not claim he was an eyewitness to the risen Christ.

1 John 1:1-3

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life – and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us – what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us…

John's words here not claim he was an eyewitness to the risen Christ.

The apostles understood their experiences as eyewitnesses were unique, and they called for these eyewitness accounts to be read by all believers.

Benny Hinn also calls for his followers to have faith that he can do miracles by God's hand.  Big fucking deal.

Paul recognized both the Old Testament writings and the New Testament writings were sacred and God-given. He considered both to be Scripture:

1 Timothy 5:17-18

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘The worker deserves his wages.’

In this passage, Paul quoted both Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7 (“The worker deserves his wages”). He referred to both passages as Scripture. It’s clear the New Testament Gospels were already in place at the time of this writing, and it’s also clear that believers were reading these Gospels as Scripture.

 But not even some conservative "inerrantist" Christian scholars are willing to say Paul there was referring to Luke's gospel as scripture:

5:18 In this verse Paul supported his directive to reward worthy elders. His statements assume that financial remuneration was at least a part of the “honor” to which he referred in 5:17. First, he quoted Deut 25:4 to justify proper treatment for the pastor. Paul reasoned that if God could show concern for the laboring ox, the congregation needed to show proper concern for its pastor.¹³¹ The original intention of refusing to muzzle the ox was to allow the animal an occasional bite as it moved about the threshing floor. Paul saw expressed in this command a principle that is broader than a mere statement about care for animals. The second reference resembles the words of Christ in Luke 10:7.¹³² It is not likely that Paul was quoting the Gospel of Luke, a document whose date of writing is uncertain. Paul may have been referring to a collection of Jesus’ sayings, some of which appear in Luke’s Gospel. It is notable that Paul called both statements Scripture, and it becomes clear that such a collection of Jesus’ sayings “was placed on an equality with the Old Testament.”¹³³

131 In 1 Cor 9:8–12, 14 Paul made this deduction from Deut 25:4. His inspired interpretation in both passages indicates that God’s purpose in the inclusion of the command in Scripture is broader in intent than merely urging care for animals.

132 Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor 11:24–25 is similar to that in Luke 22:19–20. This similarity gives evidence of a close link between Paul and Luke, a point this present passage further supports.

133 Guthrie, Pastoral Epistles, 105. Spicq supports the view that the reference of the formula “the Scripture says” is to both quotations and that Paul was designating another portion of the New Testament as Scripture (Saint Paul, 176–77). Both Kelly and Fee question this interpretation. Kelly (Pastoral Epistles, 126) says that the formula may refer only to the first of the two quotations or that the second quote may be to “some apocryphal writing which counted as Scripture in the Apostle’s eyes.” Fee (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 93) prefers to emphasize that the quotation formula applies only to the first of the references. He hesitates to say that Paul was calling the second reference “Scripture” because he sees the term used only in reference to the OT by Christians until the end of the second century. 

Lea, T. D., & Griffin, H. P. (2001, c1992). Vol. 34: 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (electronic ed.). The New American Commentary (Page 155). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Yet Wallace immediate concludes, contrary to actual scholars, that the similar wording between the epistle and Luke 10:7 pretty much guarantees that Paul was calling Luke's gospel "scripture".

 Wallace continues:

Peter also attested to Paul’s writings as Scripture when writing his own letters to the early Church:

2 Peter 3:14-16

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

But most scholars deny Petrine authorship of 2nd Peter, and supporting that view is the unlikelihood that that apostle Peter, while writing under alleged divine inspiration, would admit some of apostle Paul's writings are "hard to understand" (v. 16).  It's more likely, under conservative assumptions, that whoever wrote 2nd Peter wasn't inspired by God to do so, as nobody inspired by God would find Paul's writings hard to understand, that is, assuming Paul's writings were also inspired by God, lest you trifle that being inspired by God doesn't give you infallible ability to understand all biblical matters...in which case a belief that the NT authors were divinely inspired doesn't necessarily tell you that they understood matters correctly.

In addition to this, it is clear the New Testament letters were being read and circulated among the churches as authoritative eyewitness Scripture and revelation from God:

Colossians 4:16

After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.

1 Thessalonians 5:27

I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

The early church fathers routinely accused Marcion of adding to and subtracting from the content of the canonical gospels, yet Marcion attained a large following sufficient to scare Ireanaeus, Tertullian and others into spending considerable amounts of ink, paper and time warning their churches on where exactly it is that Marcion goes wrong. Apparently, during Christianity's first three of centuries, there really wasn't any reliable way for the average pew-warmer to check on whether the Christian loudmouth trying to draw attention to himself with this Jesus-stuff, was honestly or dishonestly presenting the gospel.  You either laughed and moved on, or you believed and joined his cult.   

So it really doesn't matter how popular the NT writings were in the early church...you may as well talk about how popular Marcion's form of the gospel was with his large crowd of followers, and his tendency to persuade orthodox Christians to come over to his particular teaching.  Proves nothing except perhaps that large crowds of people can be shockingly gullible and concerned more with joining a group than in whether the group's claims are true, not a happy day for apologists who tout the "explosion" of Christianity in its first few centuries as some argument that it must be true.

The eyewitness authors of the New Testament gospels and letters understood the power of their testimony.

Paul was an author of about 13 "letters" in the NT.  Nothing in the three accounts in Acts about Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus, justify the inference that he was an "eyewitness" of a risen Jesus.  His traveling companions couldn't see the person Paul was speaking too (9:7), and Paul himself characterizes the experience as a "heavenly vision" or heaven-based vision, using the Greek word optasia, the same word he uses in 2nd Cor. 12:1 to characterize an absurdly esoteric experience that left him, 14 years after the fact, unable to tell whether he flew to heaven bodily or only spiritually (12:2-4).

Wallace, if you were charged with murder and the prosecution's only eyewitness admitted that it was during a blinding flash of heavenly light that he saw you pull the trigger, despite the fact that his traveling companions standing near him testified that at the time they could not see you, would you insist that the judge provide the jury an instructing allow them to infer a supernatural basis to suppose the eyewitness is telling the truth?

Or would you scream your head off that blinding flashes of heavenly light call for the witness to be excused and the case to be dismissed for lack of evidence?

Sometimes, you don't discover how much it sucks to be an apologist, until you dialogue with an extremely smart skeptic...like me.  Call it the sin of pride.

They witnessed the Word in the days when a written record was unnecessary, spoke the Word when they thought Jesus would return imminently,

Again, Wallace, why are you so certain the apostles were "wrong" to expect Jesus to return in their natural lifetimes?  Doesn't your trusting attitude toward the historical reliability of the gospels tell you it is more probable that the apostles held to this view because Jesus taught it?

Sure, to say Jesus taught falsely about how soon he would come back, destroys the purpose for which you currently live, but that shouldn't be a problem for you, as you wish to be known to the world as a cold-case detective whose subjective biases rarely influence his analysis of historical probabilities.

Well then, do you have a subjective bias that prevents you from entertaining the notion that Jesus made false promises to the apostles?  yes, you do.  You are a worshiper of Jesus.  You are no more likely to admit significant fault with Jesus than Mormons are likely to find significant fault with their first prophet Joseph Smith.

and wrote the Word when they realized their eyewitness record would become Scripture for those who followed them.

And as we learn from Eusebius/Clement of Alexandria, supra, some of them refused to endorse the conversion of their preaching into written form, such as was the case with Peter's attitude toward Mark's literary effort, a bit of patristic testimony that passes the criteria of embarrassment and is therefore a bit more reliable than other patristic testimony saying Peter approved of this literary effort. 

I await the day when J. Warner Wallace reconciles his trust in Mark's accuracy, with Peter's refusal to support Mark's work. Doesn't matter if it is possible that Peter had reasons other than suspicion Mark was telling lies, to refuse to support that effort...it is more probable, absent evidence to the contrary, that an apostle refuses to endorse the conversion of his oral preaching into written form, because he finds something wrong with the end product or the person doing the converting.

Cold Case Christianity: Dear Mr. Wallace, luck does not constitute "miracle"

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

Cold Case Christianity: Woman Says It’s a Miracle Her 

Wallet Blocked Bullets – Why Not Believe Her?

Posted: 28 May 2018 01:34 AM PDT

In a recent incident in Tennessee, a woman claimed her purse and wallet were used miraculously by God. As the woman and her husband were pulling into the parking lot of their apartment, they heard “popping” sounds. After getting out of their car, they saw several bullet holes on one side of the vehicle. A few minutes later, the woman discovered a hole in her purse and a bullet lodged in her wallet. When reporting the incident to the press, she told them she believed God used her wallet as a shield: “Just by the grace of God. It`s a miracle to keep me or him from getting hit.”

When I was an atheist, I would roll my eyes at statements like this.

You were correct to do so.  In this case, the women is not reporting a phenomenon for which it is difficult to find a naturalistic explanation.  She is reporting something that is on the order of "luck".  I've also been shot at and managed to avoid the bullet. 

In my mind, Christians were always attributing accidents, coincidences, and chance events to the “miraculous” work of God.

That wasn't just in your mind.  They do.  If they lose $50 at the casino, God must have wanted them to do without that $50.  If they win $50, surely the creator of the universe wanted them to have the extra $50.  There's no talking to committed religious freaks like you, who insist God is the basis of all "luck", but who are still unwilling to embrace 5-point Calvinism.

I rejected such nonsense. I was a “philosophical naturalist,” and as such, I believed that every event (including this one in Tennessee) could be explained with purely “naturalistic” explanations. The bullets that entered the car took a trajectory that was dictated by the material properties of the vehicle and the laws of physics. Nothing more. The bullet just happened to land in the woman’s purse. Unusual – perhaps – but no big deal, and certainly not an act of God.

Now, many years later, I’ve reconsidered my position.

Why?  Do you suppose that perhaps something more than naturalistic laws were responsible for the causes that led to the bullets finding their way into her purse?  How much time do you suppose a non-Christian should spend checking up on this story?  5 minutes?  One hour?  Several days?  Your Fox News source even admits

The woman, who was not identified, was on her way back from the hospital with her husband on Thursday, when the couple suddenly heard gunshots.

 You don't understand why a skeptic would have difficulties believing the miracle explanation provided by an anonymous source?

Your Fox News source has her being intentionally ambiguous about whether or not the bullets that hit her purse would have hit her had the purse not been in the way:

"I was like, 'Oh my God, honey! Here's another hole that came through my purse!'" she told the station. The woman's bag was sitting in the back seat, and she credits the location with possibly saving her life.

But most people would expect that if the woman wishes to make a miracle-connection, she would provide a bit more detail, such as her body being in line with the purse, so that the purse did, IN FACT, prevent the bullets from hitting her.

I admit that I also believed in miracles – of a sort – when I was an atheist. Dictionary.com provides the following definition of a “miracle”:

“An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”

They also provide this definition of “supernatural”:

“Of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.”

Given the way these terms are defined, nearly everyone believes in one kind of miracle or another, including those who reject the existence of a supernatural God. Even as an atheist, I too accepted the reasonable reality of at least one supernatural event.

I embraced the Standard Cosmological Model offered by physicists to explain the origin of the universe. It is known as the “Big Bang Theory,” and it proposes that all space, time, and matter (the attributes we typically think of when describing the natural realm) had a beginning.

That's where you went wrong.  The Big Bang is total bullshit.  The universe and matter have always existed.  But regardless, most physicists who accept the Big Bang, do not think it points to god. 

And the bigger problem for you is that the originally intended audience of Genesis 1-2 were mostly illiterate Israelite farm hands.  Moses' story of creation neither expresses nor implies some giant cosmic explosion, and it is highly unlikely the original Israelites under Moses would have read such a concept into the text, or added an explosion to the story in their mind as they heard a storyteller speaking the story to them.  If you must be a Christian before being a detective or scholar, you need to worry about how the Big Bang contradicts your own bible, before you pretend that it refutes atheism.

And one of fundamentalist Christianity's most vocal "creationist" think tanks, ICR, who require their members to uphold biblical inerrancy, entirely deny the scientific validity of the Big Bang theory.

Everything came into existence from nothing at a point in the distant past.

That's illogical.  Zero wouldn't have the function in math that it does, if it could ever produce anything.

"From nothing" is nonsense.  Yes, the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics says virtual particles can appear from nothing and disappear out of existence, but that's just one school.  There are several schools of quantum mechanics, and not all of them espouse indeterminism.

I accepted this model of the universe’s origin, even though it presented me with a problem.

If all space, matter and time came into existence at some point in the past, whatever caused them to leap into existence cannot (by definition) be spatial, temporal or material.

That's also foolish, the explosion of the singularity in the alleged big bang did not create dimensions.  Dimensions were the necessary implication of there suddenly being at least two bits of matter separated by some distance.  You may as well say time didn't exist until clocks were invented.   Worse, you posit the existence of the "immaterial" by denying the cause was material, when in fact you couldn't demonstrate the existence of any non-physical thing to save your life.

The same with your "temporal" word: you are implying that what set off the big bang set it off from within the realm of eternity, when in fact your own bible represents the passing of time in heaven no less than it represents time passing on earth, in fact, it always presents the acts of God as having a before and an after, up there in heaven:

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

What?  Was God throwing down fireballs on Sodom from the realm of eternity, and somewhere along the way down, those fireballs switched dimensions and continued coming down in the realm of time?  No, the author, obviously not concerned about biblical inerracy or systematic theology, felt free to talk about God as if his abode were in the same dimension, just higher in the sky, as man's.

In other words, the cause of the natural universe does not possess any of the attributes of the natural realm (i.e. space, time or matter). See the dilemma? My naturalistic belief in “Big Bang Cosmology” required an extra-natural “Big Banger.”

Then perhaps you were a stupid atheist and you didn't know what any fool knows, that plenty of scientists who accept the big bang, do not think it implies god.  You simply characterize it that way because of how easily such a childish view can be sustained (i.e., the bumper sticker "The Big Bang Theory:  God spoke and *bang*, it happened").   Like the toddler who thinks an invisible person causes the car to move forward.

The non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial first-cause of the universe clearly fits within the definition of “supernatural” we’ve described. The cause of the universe is, by definition, “above or beyond what is natural” (in that it does not possess the attributes of the natural realm) and cannot be explained “by natural law.”

After becoming a Christian, I eventually wrote about this in a book called God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe. The beginning of the universe from nothing is actually evidence for the existence of an all-powerful, non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial God.

Dream on.  Being omniscient or "all-powerful" is refuted by the question "Can God make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it?".  People make boxes too heavy to lift every day, so doing this does not require a logical contradiction, therefore, if God can do all logically possible things, he should be able to make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it.  Furthermore, God regrets his own choice to make mankind in Genesis 6:6-7, and since you think everything else in the immediate context there is real and not figurative, you cannot escape this problem by pretending that God's remorse is mere anthropomorphism.  The originally intended audience for that passage were illiterate Israelites around 1300 b.c.  They would have no contextual, historical or linguistic reason to think God's regretting his own prior choices was any less literal in v. 6 than the wickedness of men mentioned in v. 5, or Noah's finding favor with God in v. 8.

And the more you talk about things non-spatial and a-temporal, the more you justify the skeptic to write you off as babbling incoherently. I don't listen to such talk any more than I listen to desperate idiot scientists who talk about "dark matter" or how worm-holes area shorter distance between two points than a straight line is.

The most spectacular and impressive miracle recorded in the Bible is recorded in the opening line of Genesis, Chapter 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Christians believe the beginning of the universe was a supernatural event.

And Christians like you add a gigantic "explosion" to the biblical record of creation, which the record itself neither expresses nor implies, and explosion other inerrantist creationist Christian scholars insist is wholly fictitious and unbiblical.  But you live in a day where religion is dismissed if it doesn't account for scientific truth.  So apparently you've chose to adulterate the biblical creation account just to make the bible sound more impressive to modern day people.

As a skeptic investigating the claims of Christianity, I eventually had to admit that I also accepted the origin of the universe as a supernatural, miraculous event, and if God had the power necessary to create everything from nothing, he could probably pull off the miracles described in the New Testament. In fact, He might even be able to use a wallet to stop a bullet.

But the claimant didn't claim anything that couldn't be accounted for by naturalistic explanations.  She didn't claim the bullet bounced off her skin, for example, or that it created a fatal wound which immediately healed because she immediately prayed over it.

What's next, Wallace?  If a Christian credits God with their winning the lottery, will you write a blog piece asking why we shouldn't believe them?

Why don't you ascribe to God's miraculous doings, the opposite type of events, that is, where poverty and injury are created?

For example, when a foreign power invades and they rape the women and beat the children to death.  After all, Isaiah 13 says it is God who will stir up the pagan Medes to do all these things to the Hebrews.

Here's the entire chapter for your convenience.  Maybe someday you can tell the Christians why it is that you refuse to speak as bluntly about God's causing evil as the biblical prophets did.  Common sense says you so refuse because you don't agree with what those prophets taught:

 1 The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
 2 Lift up a standard on the bare hill, Raise your voice to them, Wave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles.
 3 I have commanded My consecrated ones, I have even called My mighty warriors, My proudly exulting ones, To execute My anger.
 4 A sound of tumult on the mountains, Like that of many people! A sound of the uproar of kingdoms, Of nations gathered together! The LORD of hosts is mustering the army for battle.
 5 They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, To destroy the whole land.
 6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty.
 7 Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man's heart will melt.
 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame.
 9 Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.
 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light.
 11 Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.
 12 I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir.
 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.
 19 And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans' pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
 20 It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.
 21 But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will live there, and shaggy goats will frolic there.
 22 Hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged.  (Isa. 13:1-22 NAU)

 If Wallace wishes to be "biblical", he would have to add "rape" and "child massacre" to the "miracles" that God does.

And because all of God's judgments are good and righteous, Wallace would not see the slightest sign of psychological problems in the fools who praise God for ALL of His works....which would thus mean praising God for his causing of rape and child massacre.

Cold Case Christianity: Rebuttal to J. Warner Wallace's arguments for the existence of the soul

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

A Very Brief Review of Arguments for the Existence of the Soul (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 23 May 2018 01:23 AM PDT

We’ve created a free Bible insert that is a short review of the philosophical arguments for dualism (articulated more fully in a podcast). As Christians, we believe hold a dual view of world around us. We believe in the existence of the brain and the mind, the body and the soul, a material world and a spiritual realm. This concept of dualism, the recognition of two co-existent realms and realities, is critical to our faith as Christians.

And it is denied by Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, both of which teach that the soul is simply the life-force that ceases conscious awareness at death and doesn't become self-aware again until the day of resurrection or judgment.  We would hardly expect significant Christian groups to deny dualism, if its basis in the bible were "clear".  This is sufficient to rationally justify the average unbeliever to conclude the classic mind/body problem is too fraught with uncertainty to think studying it will yield anything useable, and to therefore walk away from what appears to be a furiously useless exercise in sophistry.

If dualism is not true (the opposite view is often called ‘monism’ or ‘physicalism’), there is no realm in which God exists, we are not souls designed for salvation and life with God, and there is no life beyond this one.

That only sounds bleak and repulsive to those who have already been nurturing a Christian faith for years aand have high hopes of being snatched up into the air to live on cloudy streets of gold forever.  It doesn't sound depressing at all to those who smartly refused to set their hopes unrealistically high.  When you tell a Mormon the book of Mormon is a fraud, the fact that they just cannot imagine such a negative thing being true, doesn't mean it isn't true.  It means the Mormon has set their hopes far higher than reality would have allowed.  Nothing is different in the case of the typical Christian, nor in the case of anybody who sets their hopes too high, then starts finding out that reality refuses to comply with their dreams.

So how can we begin to prove the existence of something we cannot see?

Maybe like you prove the existence of air, by tests that can detect things invisible to the naked eye?  Or did I forget that what you are talking about also cannot be physically detected in the first place?

What kind of science could we possibly use?

Did you forget that there is nothing in the NT that expresses or implies that you should ever try to make such arguments, while in fact if you simply did what Jesus and Pual clearly told you to do, you'd be too busy to indulge such trifles as the present one?

Are you positively certain that this mind/body dualism bullshit you bring up doesn't qualify as the 'word wrangling' Paul so strongly forbade in 2nd Timothy 2:14, and the sinful interest in controversial questions he forbade in 1st Timothy 6:4?

After all, science deals with the natural, physical realm, and we are trying to investigate something immaterial.

You are also trying to use science to investigate something that is "spiritual".  But this is your problem.

Is science even the right instrument to get this job done? Probably not.

Translation:  "the idea that the human body has an immaterial soul, is unscientific".

Instead, let’s examine the case from a philosophical perspective to see if there is any rational reason to believe dualism is true.

I wonder how many homeless people on the street end up in hell because you prefer to trifle about controversial philosophical topics on the internet instead of prioritizing the face-to-face preaching Jesus clearly commanded.  What if an unbeliever is so intrigued by this article of yours, that they wish to investigate further, and while on their way to the library, they die in a car crash?

Now if you hold to the standard conservative Christian view that ALL people who died before repentance go to eternal hell, then because this unbeliever died in a car crash before actually having repented and believed the gospel, he not only goes to hell, but stays there for all eternity.  And the reason he delayed repentance is because your argument here made him more interested in figuring out whether you were right or wrong, and less interested in the danger that he is always one heartbeat away from the dates of hell.

Doesn't it bother you that the more you indulge in theological controversies, the more you imply to unbelievers that they actually DO have tomorrow and the next day and the next few years to safely delay repentance without fear of the horrific consequences?

But once you try to duck this argument by parting ways with conservative Christian scholars and pretending you think some unbelievers are allowed a second chance to repent in the afterlife, you help skeptics and unbelievers confidently conclude that the bible-god probably isn't as fearsome and sadistic as Jonathon Edwards and most fundamentalists say, and therefore, another justification to delay repentance.

While much can be written on this issue, this short post will simply review the case for the soul based on the evidence from the Law of Identity:

A = A

The Law of identity simply states that something on one side of the equal sign is identical to something on the other side of the equation if they have the exact same qualities or properties.

Yes.  When we say the mind = the brain, we are not equating a non-material thing with a material thing.  The mind is purely physical.  What fool thinks there's no molecular basis to memory?  What fool doesn't notice that as Parkinson's disease erodes the physical brain, the memories stored there, which make up most of the the "mind" also disappear?  No reason to see this as any different than a computer memory card which no longer holds certain data because it was erased by a computer virus. What fool would say maybe the data still exist in the spiritual realm, and it only uses the physical disk as the doorway through which to enter into the physical world?  FUCK YOU.

If this is true, we can say that they have an “identity relationship”. When applied to our examination of the soul, monists describe the following identity relationship:

the brain = the mind

the body = the soul

If this is true, all the properties and qualities on one side of the equations should be identical to all the properties on the other side of the equation.

Not true.  Apple = fruit.  But not everything true about "fruit" is true of "apple".  Fallacy of equivocation.  So the mind can = the brain, without implying everything true about the brain is true of the mind.  But regardless of your technical error, there is no evidence that the mind is anything other than the physical brain, except of course the dualists whose controversial theological opinions motivate them to define "mind" more esoterically than most people.

If there are differences in the qualities and nature of the items on opposite sides of the equation, we have two realities, just as Christians have argued all along. Here then, is the brief summary of arguments describing the differences between our bodies and who we are as souls:

Difference One: “Public” Versus “Private”

(The Private Knowledge Argument)

Physical Properties Can Be PUBLICLY Known

We can look at a piece of sculpture, for example. The sculpture is physical and can be seen (accessed) by everyone.

Maybe that's why scientists and geologists disagree about what makes up the core of the earth...because these physical properties can be publicly known?

Mental Properties Are Only PRIVATELY Known

Not true.  When your mind is shocked by a frightening thing, your body reacts, even if only subtly, so even if dreams are private, not all mental properties are restricted to the private realm.  When we see a baby jump, twist her face, then start crying, its pretty obvious that her mind had perceived some type of pain or fright or frustration.

And if the private nature of mental properties be true, you just proved that insects and lower animals have souls that survive death, since according to your logic, if their mental properties are private (and they surely are no less private than human thoughts), such properties cannot be equated with the bug's physical brain and thus necessarily imply, under your reasoning, that their sense of identity arises from something more than their physical brain.

Will you go where your own logic leads?

Or will you insist that your reasoning can only be validated where it agrees with the bible?

If the latter...so much for your pretense of objectivity.

How the sculpture makes you feel is impossible for us to access publicly.

Not true.  If the man is heterosexual and the sculpture is of a scantily clad sexualized woman, a penile plethysmograph would detect what's going on in his mind, even if not perfectly.   Suppose you know a local man was convicted of child rape and went to prison and was released.  You see him on the sidewalk, staring at your kids for no earthly reason.  Your inability to be positively certain what his thoughts are, wouldn't slow you down from being confident that your suspicions about what's going on in his mind are likely correct, and reacting accordingly. 

Again, many people react physically to nightmares when sleeping.  Pretty easy to tell what they were thinking even if not perfectly so.  Mental events are not always private.  You lose.

You would have to tell us. We cannot determine this from a physical examination of your brain unless you tell us what you are feeling.

See above.

THEREFORE: Mental Properties Are NOT Physical Properties

The physical brain is something different than the immaterial mind. They are different because one possesses privately held knowledge (the mind) and the other (the brain) does not.

That doesn't follow.  you also cannot see the atoms responsible for exerting force on a piston in an engine as the result of a gasoline explosion, but you hardly conclude that the exerted force and the responsible atoms are different from each other.  

Or gee, I don't know...maybe you'll argue that the force that drives the piston down comes from the spiritual dimension and only uses the exploding gas as an interface by which to enter the physical realm?  How different is that from the trifling stupidity that says our thoughts originate with our soul/spirit in another dimension and only come into the physical world through the portal of the brain?

Difference Two: “I” Versus “My Body”

(The First Person Argument)

Like Everyone, I Only Use First Person Possessive Pronouns to Indicate Possession of Something Other Than “Me”

I use expressions like, “This is my toothbrush,” or “This is my mom,” because I am describing someone or something other than me.

Like Everyone, I Commonly Use First Person Possessive Pronouns When Describing My Body

I also find myself using expressions like, “This is my body,” or “This is my hand” when describing my physical body or some portion of my body.

A theory that, if true, would wreak havoc on the justice system.  Apparently, when the intruder said "this is my gun", he was describing someone or something other than himself, hence, his testimony, captured on home video, is inadmissible.  

Gee, Wallace, did you ever consider becoming an attorney? There's big bucks in dishonest sophistry.

THEREFORE: My Body Is Something Other Than “Me”

So because courts of law require the pursuit of actual truth, it would behoove you to convince America's courts of the "truth" that the criminal suspect's body is different than himself.  Under your Christan assumptions, adding this truth to the justice system can only help the cause of truth.  What a laugh.

Just like my toothbrush is something other than me, my physical body is also something other than me. I am not my body.  These are two different things.

Use that excuse as your alibi in a criminal trial. See what happens.  You'll soon find that the devil has blinded the minds of the jurors to spiritual truth...and maybe God decreed from all eternity that you conduct your ministry from a prison cell.

There are two realities, the material and the immaterial.

No, the "immaterial" constitutes an incoherence no less foolish than "dark matter", an thing its supporters admit they cannot even coherently define.

(By the way, although we sometimes use the expression, “my soul” this is an inaccurate use of the term. We don’t have souls, we are souls.)

That's exactly what Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists believe.

Difference Three: “Temporary Parts” Versus “Transcendent Identity”

(The Parts Argument)

Physical Entities Are Dependent on Their Parts for Their Identity

We know the difference between our car and someone else’s car in a parking lot, and we know the difference between our cell phone and someone else’s phone left behind in a library. We know this because we recognize parts are what establish the identity of physical objects

Which makes a powerful argument that my body parts are what establish my own identity.  Or maybe you never heard of DNA?  Your identity isn't lost if you lose an arm or all four limbs...but what if you lose your head?  Does the remaining torso still constitute "you"?  Probably not.  Hence, the physical head/brain are essential to identity.

But We, as Humans, Are NOT Dependent On Our Parts for Our Identity

But no matter how much we have changed (even if we have an organ transplant), we know our identity is not at risk.

But if we managed to succeed in transplanting a brain (cell phones were absurd ideas 1000 years ago, god only knows what breakthroughs await us in the future, there appear to be few absolute limits), you'd be quietly shitting yourself with worry that a man actually became another person solely for physical reasons.

I am still me, regardless of the fact I am now made of a completely different set of cells compared to my youth.

But the cells will always have your DNA and genetics. The day we can replace a person's DNA with different DNA, we will be looking at one person becoming a different person.  Sorry, but you cannot defeat the problem of human identity being tied to the physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are NOT Purely Physical Entities

For this reason, we know that we are more than mere physical entities, dependent on our parts for our identity. Once again, we know intuitively we have a transcendent identity. We are souls.

Now you aren't being biblical.  First, you don't know whether the bible distinguishes soul from spirit.  Are you a dichotomist or trichotomist?  Second, Peter clearly taught that the flesh wars against the "soul", apparently teaching that the flesh can exhibit desires and motives independently of the "soul", 1st Peter 2:11.  That's contrary to your own belief that it is from our soul that we make choices. The biblical view is that the man who chooses to use the services of a prostitute has made a choice independently of his "soul".  This is parallel to apostle Paul's teaching that the flesh and the spirit are contrary to each other in Galatians 5:17.  You don't really know from the context whether "spirit" there should have a capital or lower-case "s".

That the bible does little more than mislead on this issue may be legitimately inferred from the horrifically confused self-deluded speech we get from Paul, who says sometimes when he sins, it isn't him doing it:

 14 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
 16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
 17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
 19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
 20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. (Rom. 7:14-21 NAU)

 If that spiritual concept is true, then that truth should be lobbied by Christians into America's court system. After all, if there is a spiritual reality that says if you desire to do good but end up sinning anyway, the sin wasn't committed by "you", but by the sin itself (!?)

Good luck with that.

Note also that this contradicts modern Christian theory on soul and dualism.  Paul believed some choices could be made solely by the "sin that dwells in me", contrary to the popular modern view that all choices we make, are made at the level of the soul, and the body is merely reacting.  Apparently Paul believed it legitimate to credit nothing but "sin" as responsible for his body choosing to do something immoral.

Difference Four: “Measurable” Versus “Immeasurable”

(The Measurement Argument)

Physical Entities Can Be Measured Using Physical Measurement Instruments

We can take out a ruler and measure the width and length of your brain. We can weigh it and calculate it’s mass.

But As Humans, We Possess Mental Entities (Thoughts, Wills, Desires and Sensations) That Are Not Measurable By These Methods

We cannot use physical measurement tools to examine our thoughts. Propositional content cannot be measured in this way.

Not true.  Thoughts are formed mostly of memories, and memories are encoded in molecules, and molecules, being physical, have obvious detectable sizes.  So you and Frank Turek and other apologists are wrong, thoughts are physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are More Than Physical Beings

There is a physically immeasurable dimension to our beings. We are more than matter. We are physically immeasurable souls.

If it keeps junior on the straight and narrow, he can go on pretending to be whatever combo of moisture and invisible man he pleases. Atheists should be practical, not militant.  Leave the Mormons alone, some fools bring much good, and even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Difference Five: “About Others” Versus “About Themselves”

(The Self-Existence Argument)

Mental Entities Are Not Self Existent

Our hopes, fears, concerns and worries are always about something else; something outside of themselves

Not true, delusional people have brain disorders that often cause them fear of things that don't exist, this is also true with many children who irrationally fear the dark and the monster under the bed that always goes invisible when mom checks...and therefore, the feared thing did not originate from anywhere except within their physical brain.

But Our Brains, As Physical Entities, ARE Self Existent

Physical things are not about something else; they simply exist on their own and do not rely on other physical objects for their definition

THEREFORE: Our Brains Are NOT The Same As Our Minds

Brains are physical, self-existent entities, minds contain mental entities that are dependent on outside entities for their definition.

Nope, see above.

Difference Six: “Morally Determined” Versus “Morally Free”

(The Free Will Argument)

Oh fuck you, this is where not even many Christians agree with you.  Unbelievers can reasonably decline an invitation to become involved in one of Christianity's numerous in-house debates.

No Physical System is a Free Agent

They are either determined (one event following the other) or random

Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility

Because moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

Moral responsibility cannot exist unless somebody insists that somebody else is morally responsible.  So moral responsibility can just as easily be a social fiction necessarily conjured up to make socities like America possible.   Children can be just as easily raised to feel no moral responsibility as raised to agree they have moral responsibility.  Babies and toddler need to be 'taught' to mimic the morality of the parent, because the morality they are born with is selfishness.  A sense of moral responsibility cannot be shown to transcend environmental conditioning.

Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility

We have the innate sense that each of us has the responsibility to act morally, and indeed, we observe we are free agents who do choose right from wrong freely

This is not true of sociopaths.  You can get rid of that rebuttal by arbitrarily excluding them as disqualified misfits, but the point is that your theory doesn't account for all the relevant data, you can only make your case by appeal to what some or most humans are like, not all. 

Sociopaths are just as human as anybody else, so we cannot automatically assume their sociopathic condition constitutes a misrepresentation of human reality.  To be human might indeed require that you have little to no concern for other people's feelings.

THEREFORE: Therefore Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems

If we are purely physical entities, we can only act as a series of events, and we are unable to act freely (this is the nature of physical things). Our free agency demonstrates we are more than simple physical objects.

Tell that to Christians who adopt 5-Point Calvinism, and they'll scream back that the ease with which you assume humans have "free agency" makes it appear you never read the bible in your life.   I suggest god's like-minded ones get their act together before they present their in-house controversies to the world as if they were absolute truth.