Metacrock isnt saying anything very important either

Between 1999 and 2002, I posted regularly at CARM.  I was using the alias "ohwow".  The one Christian that I battled with the most was "Metacrock" and all of his stupid trifling "you-can't-refute-the-studies" bullshit.

This page identifies Metacrock as "Joe Hinman", so unless somebody else is using the name, I strongly suspect it is the same guy.  I've now reviewed some of his arguments and he does indeed appear to be the same person.

I was asked by somebody else to respond to something Metacrock was arguing, and that reminded me of Metacrock's "atheistwatch" blog, so I went ahead and copied and pasted some of his arguments below, and respond respectively.

First, Metacrock constantly focuses on "god" as if this is supposed to be some sort of heart-stoppingly important subject, when in fact at the end of the day, he is a liberal, he doesn't think atheists will endure any afterlife fate worse than Christians, and therefore, he must always fail in showing atheists to be irrational. Metacrock may as well insist that the temperature of Pluto is vitally important, and then chide everybody who, for lack of any danger, don't see the relevance of the subject to their daily lives, and accordingly choose to ignore it wholesale.

Monday, July 1, 2019
(1) Is just plain wrong. The ordering in a snowflake or salt crystal is efficient and dependable, but due entirely to natural processes. 

that  is totally begging the question you have no proof that it;s natural you have no evidence you are asserting it because it deals with nature you assert a prori no God therefore no God

"you have no proof that it's natural"?  Metacrock hasn't changed one single bit in 20 years:  he may as well say that we cannot prove that matter itself is natural. In normal thinking you favor the empirically demonstrable stuff over the stuff that only rides on "you can't prove it false" crap.

you also misunderstand atheism's most powerful argument.  the reason we a priori dismiss "god" is because the dfinition of that word is not based on anything in the empirical world, and is no less fabricated than the "definition" of Bugs Bunny.

(2) "Usually"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

why? minor exclaims would not disprove the perponderemce of evidence

I think he meant "minor exceptions".  But either way, I've graduated far beyond Meta's concern with "god".  I've shown that the resurrection of Jesus has lower probability than any other naturalistic hypothesis, and I did this in the context of reviewing stuff like Michael Licona's "The Resurrection of Jesus: A new historiographical approach".  Even if God existed, the fact that Christianity is false would mean, at best, that Christians are no less likely to be in severe trouble with god too, not just atheists.

(3) and (4) are basically the sad out argument that a law of nature needs a law maker, failing to realise that a law in nature is quite different to a legal law. 

wrong on 2 commits: (1) I don't argue from a lawmaker analogy,I never assumed it;s a legislator and say that.(2) saying indicative of mind does not make it the legislature analogyy .The law-like dependability is that the thing being described (assuming Physical laws are observations of universal behavior ) is unfailing as though obeying.  mind is indicated due to purposiveness but not from analogy but from the behavior of the universe,

From the fact of supernovas and asteroids colliding with planets, I'm not seeing anything about the behavior of the universe that exhibits intelligent "purpose".  For one thing if you can get intelligent purpose out of "the behavior of the universe" you could also get it from why a rock breaks up the way it does upon hitting the ground, in which case because you see intelligent purpose in literally everything, you have left open no possibility of unintelligent purpose, and therefore your position proves too much.  You also soud like a Calvinist, since if there is intelligent purpose to the way the universe works, there's also intelligent purpose behind why the dice rolled the way they did.  The only reason people win or lose at craps is because God is there, causing the dice to fall the way they do.

Regardless, the god of the bible is a sadistic lunatic, so i would no more serve him merely because of his privileged power, than I'd sever equally sadistic space aliens if they came to earth and started flaunting their power.  If God wants me to believe in him, he apparently has the willingness to use his power to make me change my mind (Ezra 1:1) so you could also say my atheism is in part arising from god's being guilty of parental neglect.

(5) "fits the major job description"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

Ot's spot on and you know  ot/ Again your assumption is a priori no God therefore a prori no god. it is such an obvious fit you can;t have it,  you reonl yspoiuting ieologicalbroimides at it

Sorry, this is incoherent.

Then (6)... Well, it turns out that you do use the word "warrant" when using this argument too! 

  Not in the argument, but as the decisions making paradigm is exactly how Isaid it is sed, you do not understand the issues involved .

 Same answer.

So your claim that you do not use "warrant" in all your arguments is based on two arguments, both of which do exactly what I said! 

It's not in the argument dumb ass it;s over it,
Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 8:14 AM No comments:

Same answer.

once again, Metacrock's belief that atheists are irrational to deny god's existence is a complete waste of time even if true:

a) so many Christians complain of god's hiddenness, it's enough to justify the atheist in saying that if spiritually alive people struggle so much with this, only a fool would "expect" a spiritually dead person to understand such mystical bullshit;

b) being irrational about a belief doesn't really contribute to one's harms in life, therefore, the fact that one's belief is "irrational" doesn't even "require" that they "worry" about the belief possibly being incorrect.  Let's say some dipshit believed the Bermuda Triangle is caused by space aliens.  However, he never says these aliens are going to make your life miserable if you don't believe in them (like Metacrock and his deaf, dumb and mute god).  He never says these aliens desire for you to see them (like metacrock whose god doesn't have anything to say about being "seen").  This Bermuda Triangle apologist simply carps that you are unreasonable to disbelieve his thesis because to accept it is to become more loving (like Metacrock says about atheists).

Well gee, does that mean you forget how to eat, where you work, who your kids are, or perhaps that drinking bleach would help get rid of the flu, all because one of your beliefs is "irrational"?  No.  I've been an atheist for more than 20 years.  I am not plagued with any problem that don't plague a million mature fundamentalist Christians and a million mature liberal Christians.  Ok, why should somebody worry in the slightest that their belief or lack of belief is irrational, when this alone doesn't imply the least bit of a threat to anything they care about?  It isn't like atheism is going to turn somebody into a child molester (atheism doesn't preach a morality, so an atheist's morality derives solely from whatever moral system her genetic predisposition leads her to favor).

Metacrock is merely doing what he's been doing for 20 years: screaming his head off about the serious importance of a type of "experience" that proves itself to be horrifically unreliable and deceptive.

If I wanted to believe that soda pop only comes from the planet Mercury, why should I give a fuck that the belief is irrational?  There are no hurtful consequences to such belief, so why should I give a shit whether it is "rational" or "irrational"?  I can hear Metacrock now grabbing the mic and doing the karaoke version of "Aquarius", and "expecting" the people at the bar to start acting like members of the Mormon Tabernacle choir.

Metacrock also forgets that because people are human psychological creatures, the mere fact that they gain a sense of daily fulfillment believing the way they do is precisely why "argument" alone is often very ineffective in changing people's minds.  That is, Metacrock is not going to change an atheist's mind by insisting that mystical Christian experience is found by empirical testing to enhance one's sense of love.

I'm also suspicious that Metacrock favors the liberal "love" view of God in the bible, when in fact the bible is replete with proofs that its god is a sadistic lunatic who delights to inflict harm and misery on children who disobey.  Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63...and don't forget that liberals like Metacrock automatically and arbitrarily dismiss anything in their bible that they don't like.

Metacrock also forgets that one's choice to deny religion might be the way their brain fights back against prior past abuses.  While the previously raped woman is unreasonable to thereafter think that every man is a potential rapist, you also cannot really blame her, given the hell she was put through.  It is similar to Christianity: while it might not be reasonable for the person who came out of an abusive form of Christianity to say that entire religion is a 100% bullshit, you also cannot really blame such a person for reaching such a broad-brushing conclusion.  While I find Christianity to be false, I refuse to say that anybody who joins the cause is therefore unreasonable.  Mormonism is false, but if the single girl chooses to join and just wrap her life around it because Mormon ideas of family are closest to her own, I'm not going to call her unreasonable.  People tend to go where they are loved, and they do so for reasons that often do not include "compelling argument" beyond the fact that everybody yearns to be loved by others.  And given that "theology" is about as important as the Cheshire Cat, the person who joins a church more for the empirically demonstrable social benefits and less because of its "theology" is not being unreasonable.  Mammals need food and social roots far more than they need "theology".

Are you starting to notice that Metacrock is irrational for pretending that irrationality of a belief is some show-stopping important danger?  If your belief that your peanut butter sandwich talks to Elvis, doesn't cause you to become an unsafe driver, or to set your house on fire, or let your kids starve to death, etc etc, then why should anybody care any more about that belief, than they care about what your favorite Disney character is?

Metacrock also forgets to note that his own dogshit bible encouraged people to do things that encourage their minds to become irrational, such as the biblical command that you give suffering people free alcohol for the purpose of helping them forget their troubles temporarily:

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

Sure, Metacrock doesn't like bible verses that encourage alcoholism, but given that bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, I don't really give a fuck if the alcoholism interpretation of this passage contradicts anything else in the bible, that interpretation is certainty justified by the grammar and context, and the single solitary reason Christian commentators hem and haw about this is because they know a straightforward obedience to this verse would contradict NT ethics. I have already steamrolled the fuckhead who tried his best to pretend that "give" doesn't mean "give" in this passage.  See here.

So far, I haven't seen Metacrock answer the argument from religious language, to wit: "god" constitutes an incoherent concept, because the only basis for the dictionary definition is even further ad hoc postulates that also cannot be shown to be true.  It is like pretending "Casper the Friendly Ghost" is "coherent" because somebody somewhere defines him as a "non-physical life form that likes to tell jokes".  When the definition of a word is not tethered to anything empirically demonstrable, you are ill-advised to pretend this crap you believe in is as true as the existence of trees.  That is, you are ill-advised to act like a Christian.

I'll do a few more, than I'm done with this.

from http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/, Metacrock pitches his book as follows:

Arguments for God from religious experience have always been considered a secondary level of argument.

That's because the diverse nature of the alleged experiences makes their purely naturalistic basis far more probable than the trifle that they experience the same god in different ways, and since all people tested are human mammals, the traits all such experiences shared can also be explained in purely naturalistic terms.  Show me a mystical experience that gives the experiencer new knowledge they more than likely couldn't have gotten in a naturalistic way, and I'll start giving a shit about somebody else's hallucinations. Deal?

And as a reminder, once again, all Metacrock is doing is "arguing for God's existence", when in fact Jesus' remaining dead for 20 centuries makes god's existence irrelevant even if true.  IF jesus didn't rise from the dead, the fact that so many billions in history thought he DID, testifies to the horrifically deceitful nature of religion...as if Catholicism and modern Christianity didn't already.

It's always been assumed that their subjective nature makes them weak arguments.

Then you cannot fault a person for becoming a Mormon, and thus denying what you think is the "true" gospel, because they had a private religious experience they interpret to mean the Holy Spirit was telling them the Book of Mormon is true.  As soon as you say other empirical evidence shows that experience to be false, you render the experience completely unnecessary to consider.  You can know from empirical evidence alone whether a religious experience is true or false.

One also wonders what Metacrock would have to say to Aborigines and others who for centuries were happy to smoke drugs so that they could, in their subjective religious experience, talk to the spirits.  Does empirical evidence falsify their drug-induced fantasies, yes or no?

The atheist scared to death of subjectivity.

Because being led around by subjective religious "experiences" provides not the slightest protection against false belief, especially given that the bible has not motivated even thousands of "cultists" who believe in "Christ", to fear that their subjective experiences are deceptions from the devil.  Once a person chooses the subjective over the objective, there's no telling what degree of stupidity they will fall into, while with empiricism, your concern to interpret the real world correctly is a somewhat more laudable goal.

This work, compiling empirical scientific studies that show that religious experience is not the result of emotional instability but are actually good for psychologically, constitutes a ground breaking work that places religious experiences on a higher level.

Nice to know that you approve of the Mormon religious experience.  I can understand why you are a liberal.

The Trace of God is an exposition (445 pages) employing both philosophical investigation and social science research. The book analyzes and discusses a huge body of empirical research that has up to this point been primarily known only in circles of psychology of religion, and has been over looked by theology, apologetics, Philosophy of religion and more general discipline of psychology.

In other words, the religious experience of Christian "apologists" did not open their eyes to these studies that would help promote their cause...almost as if the god who is guiding them is actually dead....or doesn't care...or finds it funny to prevent his followers from knowing the best arguments...

This body of work needs to be known in each of these interested groups because it demonstrates through hundreds of studies over a 50 year period, the positive and vital nature of the kind of religious experience known as “mystical.”

Except that Jesus stayed dead, which means any "god" that is actually out there, is so utterly amorphous as to be undeserving of serious concern.

Even though most of the studies deal with “mystical” experience, linking studies also apply it to the “born again experience” as well as “the material end of Christian experience.”

What's funny about the Christian religious "experience" is that not even a combination of this and a copy of the same bible used by everybody else, is sufficient to prevent these people from disagreeing with each other, even to the point of insisting that each other's religious experiences are false.  You'll excuse me if I conclude that private religious 'experiences' heighten a person's tendency to espouse false doctrine.

Read Jeremiah 17:9.

The book opens with a discussion as to why arguments for the existence of God need not “prove” God exists, but merely offer a “warrant for belief.”

But since "warrant for belief" does not render the opposing position "foolish", your warrant for belief does not form any degree of intellectual compulsion upon the atheist, which means YOU are the fool for pretending that your case is so overwhelming.  Hell, Mormon apologists can show "warrant for" Mormon belief, but does that put you under the least amount of intellectual compulsion to adopt their beliefs?  NO.

It discusses why there can’t be direct empirical evidence for God and why that is not necessary.

In other words, the world needs to know that the literal interpredtation of the OT which most of the Christian church adopted for 2,000 years, was false, despite whatever smarts they obtained from their religious 'experience'. That is, their religious experience deluded them.

It also lays out criteria for rational warrant. In Chapter two it presents two arguments that are based upon religious experience and then shows how the various studies back them up. This is not an attempt to present directly empirical evidence for God but to show that religious experiences of a certain kind can be taken as “the co-determinate” or God correlate. It’s not a direct empirical view of God that is presented but the “God correlate” that indicates God, just as a fingerprint or tacks in the snow indicate the presence of some person or animal.

Then you misunderstand science.  Fingerprints would be direct evidence of some person, and that directness doesn't fade merely because the print can possibly be forged.  Anything can be forged or misunderstood...does that mean there's no such thing as direct evidence?

Religious experiences of this kind are the “trace of God.” These studies demonstrate that the result of such experiences is life transforming.

So far, Jesus wants you to become a Mormon, because look at how transformed the lives of Mormons are.  Nice going.  But as a liberal, you actually embrace Christian diversity despite the fact that the NT in large part condemns the idea that Christians should be divided on doctrine.

This term is understood and used to indicate long term positive and dramatic changes in the life of the one who experiences them. People are released form bondage to alcohol and drugs, they tend to have less propensity toward depression or mental illness, they are self actualized, self assured, have greater sense of meaning and purpose, generally tend to be better educated and more successful than those who don’t have such experiences.

Are you fucking kidding me?  Its as if this dumbass never heard of "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

I have to wonder whether Metacrock's book deals with the fact that the vast majority of Christians do not claim a supernatural ability to deal with life's problems, or the fact that non-Christians notice that Christians appear to be just as limited to physical means as anybody else in trying to cope with life's issues.  Apparently, becoming a Christian involves nothing more mystical than adding biblical theology to the stuff one studies on Sunday.

These studies prove that religious experience is not the result of mental illness or emotional instability.

Studies also prove that dreaming during sleep isn't caused by mental illness or emotional instability. But its fantasy-land nonetheless.

The methodology of the studies (which includes every major kind of study methodology in the social sciences) is discussed at length. One of the major aspects of the book is the discussion of the “Mysticism scale” (aka “M scale”) developed by Dr. Ralph Hood Jr. at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The importance of this “M scale” (that is a test made up of 32 questions) is that it serves as a control on the valid religious experience.

But since "god" cannot even be coherently defined, testing for valid religious experience is sort of on the order of testing for valid alien invisibility.

One can know through the score on the test if one’s experience is truly “Mystical” or just “wool gathering.”

Except that since nobody can show increase in knowledge solely by "mystical" experience, it ultimately draws from the person themselves, not from anywhere else.

Without a control we can’t know if one has had a true experience and thus we can’t measure their effects.

Contrary to your own bible that says there IS a way to determine whether somebody's mystical experience is valid.

Being able to establish that one has had true “mystical experience” one can determine that the effects of that experience are positive and long term.

God wants people to be Mormons.

Thus that sets up the rationally warranted arguments for God.

Which are irrelevant because Jesus stayed dead, at which point you really couldn't say whether the "god" who allegedly exists finds atheism or Christianity to be more worthy of his wrath.

... It also implies that God is working in all faiths.

I think I just found out why Metacrock has never gained any traction with any serious Christian ministry.  he thinks the Mormon's "experience" is more important than the doctrinal truth that Paul said was important enough to divide fellowship over (Titus 3:9-11).  I suppose Metacrock gets rid of bible-based rebuttals by simply disagreeing with whatever part of the bible he doesn't like.

The Author, Joseph Hinman, is a Christian and he does believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ but he also recognizes God’s prevenient grace to all people.

Metacrock must think apostle Paul was a fool...the "danger" of rejecting the gospel is nowhere near the urgent level that motivated Paul to go buzzing around as if he were trying to save screaming children from burning buildings...and getting himself martyred in the process because of his intolerably high level of fanaticism thereto.

I guess the most powerful rebuttal to Metacrock's obsession with irrelevancy is the same one I hurled at him 20 years ago:  You have not demonstrated the significance of "god", nor have you demonstrated that atheism poses the least bit of a "threat" or "danger" to anybody.  You have not demosntrated that a person who would rather live life as they like instead of signing up for some mystical self-help course are "irrational" or "unreasonable".  You are instead simply screaming out that something you choose to waste your time researching is of paramount importance...only to find out later that all we are missing out on is "sunshine and candy lambs".

I'll pass.  The historical evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection is pitifully weak, and nothing about your message indicates the danger or loss of ignoring mystical experience is any worse than the danger and loss that looms when one stares at one's zits in the mirror.  Finally, too many Christians have decried the alleged "loving" benefits of being religious, for me to believe your song and dance that only good things will happen if I start telling myself the key to happiness is religious mysticism.

my challenge to Anthony Garland

Anthony Garland wrote a 2003 paper in The Conservative Theological Journal entitled "Does Dispensationalism Teach Two Ways of Salvation?"  Since Academia.edu recently recommended I read it, I issued him this challenge after downloading the paper:

Since I see no justification from the immediate context of Matthew 5:17-21 to presume the 'fulfillment' of the law meant anything other than the sinner's own fulfillment of it, it appears that Jesus really did teach legalism, which doubles as a reasonable hypothesis for why the Judaizers existed in the first place.

Since I see no justification from the immediate or larger context of Matthew 28:20 to justify delimiting the "all" in "all that I taught you", I am reasonable to believe that, at least for Matthew and his school, Gentiles don't become true disciples unless they obey all that Jesus taught according to that particular gospel.  And yet you'd have to search long and hard for any American Christian today who seriously obeyed "all" that Jesus taught the disciples in that gospel.   

Since biblical inerrancy is denied by most Christian scholars, and since those who espouse it disagree with each other about its nature and scope, this is an objective justification for refusing to view that doctrine as a governing hermeneutic.  it is far more controversial than other heremenutical rules like grammar, context, genre, etc.   In short, reading Matthew's legalistic Jesus through the rose-colored glasses of Ephesians 2:8-10 is an absurdly subjective preference and does precisely ntohing to intellectually compel the non-Christian reader to think that the only correct interpretation of Jesus is the one that harmonizes with apostle Paul's opinions. 

If you want to find a lot of dispensationalists who insist that Jesus' pre-cross teachings no longer apply to the modern church, take a look at evangelical Protestantism of the last 100 years.  Jesus is the ultimate authority on how to get saved, and he said plenty about it...but today's Protestants most often leave Jesus in the dust and run immediately to Acts 16:31 and Romans 10:9 to tell others how to get saved. 

I suppose it is because they know Jesus was a legalist, and they realize that if they quoted him to others in the simplistic fashion that they quote Paul to others, the others will get the 'false' impression that salvation must be earned by good works (!?)
Would love to dialogue further with you about this.
Barry Jones
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

Will J. Warner Wallace ever stop pushing his elementary school level apologetics?

This is my reply to yet another "pushing ignorance as knowledge" article by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

“There is no evidence for God’s existence!”

8:05 AM (2 hours ago)

How Would YOU Respond?

I respond to the version I recieved in email.

How would you respond to the objection that there "isn't any 'hard' evidence for the existence of God"?

I'd respond "I agree.  You refuse to take the Mormon view that God is physical, therefore, there couldn't logically be any "hard" evidence for God unless you arbitrarily defined "spirit" as "physical".

This complaint is commonly presented to young Christians

It's also commonly presented to Christians of any age, because it forces Christians to recognize that what they believe in, cannot be "proved" but only "inferred", and as such, is subject to numerous powerful objections.

and we, as their parents, educators and leaders, have a duty to help them respond.

If the Holy Spirit actually did anything more than exist as a biblical concept, i guess he would have a 'duty' to educate you as well.  But unfortunately, like the child who rationalizes Santa's inability to fit into a chimney, you don't care that nothing at all can be rationally credited to the Holy Spirit's direct intervention, you will simply tell yourself over and over that the Holy Spirit never does anything on his own, but only works "through" Christians...that way, you can always pretend that the Holy Spirit's work is real despite the fact that your own efforts are much better interpreted as  purely naturalistic phenomena.  Nothing was ever a more gratuitous afterthought, than "the Holy Spirit".  What are you gonna say next?  Angels are the only reason you weren't killed by a meteor today?

Here is one reasonable response we can give to skeptics, excerpted from a recent "Quick Shot" article:
“What do you mean by evidence? There are two forms of evidence: direct evidence (eyewitness testimony) and indirect evidence (everything else).

You started by addressing the question of "hard" evidence.  Since "hard" obviously means "direct" in this context, we have good reason to deny that "hard" evidence can also be "indirect".

Both forms of evidence are used to make cases in a court of law.

And hearsay is typically rendered inadmissible in a court of law, which would thus dispose of 99% of the biblical 'witness' to Jesus rising from the dead.  And that's just hearsay, when in fact the gospels have already been rendered inadmissible under the ancient documents rule...a rule used in courts that, with good reason, J. Warner Wallace doesn't think can help him in his desire to do what car salesman do...create a problem...sell the solution. That's right, kiddies...you cannot possibly live out your full potential in Christ unless you purchase materials authored by J. Warner Wallace. 

There is a large body of direct evidence for God’s existence, like the testimony of those who observed the Resurrection of Jesus

The trouble being that at best the only first-hand testimony to it is Matthew, John and Paul, everything else in the NT that testifies Jesus rose from the dead is second-hand, or other disqualified phenomena like dreams/visions, or testimonies that have been changed by textual variation.  I'd say 3 first-hand testimonies, whose first-hand nature is even disputed by Christian scholars (in the case of Matthew and John), is a pretty sad case for the resurrection of Jesus.  To say nothing of the other arguments that show them to be liars or deluded, such as arguments against miracles and against the alleged eyewitnesses' identities and authorship.

and the testimony of those who have experienced the miraculous intervention of God.

Sorry, for a couple of years I've been issuing a challenge to Christian scholar Craig Keener to provide checkable documentation for any "miracle" he claims has happened within the last 100 years, that he believes is the best attested. So far, no takers.  See here.  Likewise with every other claim propounded by those in Christianity who happen to disagree with their cessationist Christian brothers. (Isn't that a hoot?  Cessationist Christians believe miracles no longer happen, non-cessationists believe they still do.  Jesus, is there anything beyond Jesus' gender and God's existence that "Christians" agree on?).

There is also a large body of indirect evidence for God’s existence, like a universe that came into existence from nothing,

So god is like the parent who realizes the child is too ignorant to realize how dangerously they are to the camp fire, but who only uses "indirect" discussion and evidence to alert the child to this great danger.   You'll excuse me if I draw the conclusion that your camera-shy god's love for me is limited.

But for a more direct response: Since even Christian creationist organizations like AiG and ICR claim the big bang contradicts the bible and contradicts science too, you can hardly fault atheists who agree that the big bang contradicts the bible.  For example, Dr. Jason Lisle is a Christian astrophysicist who researches issues pertaining to science and the Christian Faith.  He says:

In fact, there are many contradictions between the big bang and the Bible.

...Therefore, for those who believe the Bible, the big bang is not an option. 

See here.  I'm an atheist, I'm not arguing that the big bang is false because it contradicts the bible.  That would be stupid.  I'm arguing that if even other Christians who are more educated on the big bang than J. Warner Wallace, insist that the Big Bang contradicts the bible, then atheists obviously cannot be considered 'unreasonable' to regard the big bang as unbiblical, and to accordingly laugh at J. Warner Wallace as somebody interested in pushing populist crap.  Let Wallace first engage the Christians who have formal education in astrophysics, who find the big bang unbiblical.  Let him host a debate between Christian apologists who accept it and Christian apologists who don't...then maybe his pointing to the big bang will appear to have somewhat more plausibility than the case of a child pointing to a dollar under their pillow as proof of the tooth fairy.

the naturalistically implausible appearance of fine-tuning in the universe,

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't say systems always tend toward disorder.  It says CLOSED systems tend toward disorder.

Evolution and the Second Law
Some critics claim that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because organization and complexity increases in evolution. However, this law is referring to isolated systems only, and the earth is not an isolated system or closed system. This is evident for constant energy increases on earth due to the heat coming from the sun. So, order may be becoming more organized, the universe as a whole becomes more disorganized for the sun releases energy and becomes disordered. This connects to how the second law and cosmology are related, which is explained well in the video below.

See here. Of course I would disagree with the view that it makes sense to talk about something to be true for "all" of the universe, since I view the universe as infinitely large and old, while the word "all" necessarily implies a limitation (all the bread, all the cars, etc).

The universe is full of stars which are sources of energy for the planets around them, so that entropy or disorganization can be stalled or decreased through energy input.  But for proof that complexity can increase without intelligent intervention, when water freezes, its atomic structure becomes more complex.  I guess this is the part where you insist that it never gets cold unless an intelligent god blows cold air?

the miraculous origin of life from inorganic matter,

God of the gaps fallacy.  Every time science admits it doesn't have the answer, you fill that hole with "god did it".  But it was only science alone that weaned you away from mistaking epilepsy fits for demonic possession...unless you wish to say that Jesus has imparted some of his power to epilepsy medication, and that's why this chemcical is capable of holding back the demonic manifestations?

and the improbable existence of information in DNA.

The way you idiots talk about the information in DNA, you would think that we could look at human tissue through a microscope and see various combinations of actual English letters.

All this indirect evidence is most reasonably explained by a Divine Creator.

Not when you remember that you cannot define "divine creator" or "God" in a coherent way without running back to your question-begging security blanket of "god's ways are mysterious".

Maybe I'm just stupid, but sounds to me like nobody is under the slightest intellectual obligation to worry about, or pay any attention to, concepts that cannot be coherently defined.  Pasting definitional labels on God is about as useful in the real world toward the goal of coherence, as would be insisting that Santa is a "special" human being who uses "magic" to deliver presents to the kids of the world.  That's also pasting definitional labels on Santa, yet does precisely nothing worthwhile in the real world.  Since the definition is based upon nothing in the real world, the attempt at coherence is abortive.  What else are you gonna say?  The big bag wolf takes medication for depression?

Do you think you might be interested in examining all the direct and indirect evidence related to God’s existence?”

Do you think you might be able to fulfill your Christian duties acceptably to God without purchasing anything produced by J. Warner Wallace?

As it turns out, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God.

But given that the way you define "god", this thing is infinitely more complex than anything else, thus the concept of "god" would rank as the lowest probable explanation for any phenomena under Occam's Razor...which says the simplest explanation that accounts for the data is more likely to be the correct one. Gee, how "simple" is "infinitely complex"?

Wallace then uses this pic, and I comment respectively:




First, calling the Comos a "room" logically implies there's an "outside the room", but the notion that there is any such place as "outside the cosmos" is foolish....I don't care how often you think about other dimensions, or how often you think your dead grandmother calls out to you from the clouds.

Second, the Big Bang is considered both unscientific and unbiblical even by Christian creationists and apologists.  See above.  Apparently, what exactly the bible teaches or doesn't teach on the subject is far from "clear" and only a stupid person would insist that somebody has an intellectual "obligation" to "correctly" understand unclear Iron Age texts on theology.

The universe does not appear fine tuned.  The creation of stars and planets is understandable in completely naturalistic terms once you know what you are talking about.  There is no such thing as full destruction of matter or energy.  The carbon and iron which result from a dying star flying through space, degrade and eventually get used again in the formation of other stars and planets.  See the First law of thermodynamics: neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.  There is no such thing as brand new creation, anything that exists outside the mind is never more than just the reconfiguration of previously existing atoms.

Abiogenesis has not been proven yet, but the surprising results from the Miller Urey experiments showed that the building blocks of life did not need any intelligent designer to put them together.   See here for a primer, see here for more scholarly stuff.

Personally, given the fact that life is purely naturalistic, while "supernatural" is plagued by incoherence at the definitional level), I don't find panspermia (life originated elsewhere and arrived on earth via aliens or comets) to be more improbable than "god did it".  The truth is that the universe is infinitely large and old, which gives it plenty of time to eventually chance upon the right combination of materials that result in self-replication.

I cover the "limited universe" bullshit in my rebuttal to Frank Turek's objective morality arguments here.

See here for more of my answers to Wallace on similar issues.

If biological organisms display attributes of intelligent design, then apparently the reason carnivores inflict misery on other creatures is because god wanted them to be this sadistic before sin came into existence (see here).  Genesis 1:31 says God's creation, before the Fall, was "very" good, and this has created a storm of controversy among Christian apologists and creationists, because if the old-earth creationist model be correct, then the pre-Fall world, which God was calling "very good" was at that time filled with carnivores inflicting misery on other animals merely out of need to eat (i.e., God thought a world full of carnivores that inflict misery on other animals was "very" good)...which conclusion the young-earth creationists insist makes God into an evil sadist, since they say carnivorous attributes didn't start forming in animals until after the Fall. See  Kent Hovind clobber Dr. Hugh Ross on this point here at time code 1:28:00 ff.  Hovind says he doesn't think it "very good" that a lion should rip the guts out of a zebra...to which Ross had nothing much to say except how that the new creation, still in the future, would be "better"  (despite the obvious objection that if God is perfect, then whatever he created in a pre-fall world would have been not only perfect, but morally perfect, so that since nothing can be better than perfection, nothing in the future could ever possibly be "better" than the pre-fall state of life).

Wallace says 'evil and injustice persist' but this is only because he has a child's view of god's love...in the bible, the "loving" god sometimes takes "joy" in inflicting death, disease and torture on his followers when they stray (Deuteronomy 28:63).  the Christians who blindly assume abortion is sin apparently never read that part of the bible where god credits himself with all death (and since god is perfect, anything that god does, is morally perfect, such as doing what he does behind the scenes to facilitate killing).  See Deuteronomy 32:39.  I do not ask whether God can be morally good to kill.  I ask whether God can be morally good to cause one human to kill another.  But if you say the mob boss was morally good to plan and authorize a killing, you just said the punk who actually pulled the trigger was doing something morally good.  So that if you seriously believe that bible verse, then you are morally justifying all human murder, even if you don't realize it.

If you insist that the analogy to the mob-boss and his punk is not sufficient, maybe you should ask yourself why you bother attempting to use "human reasoning" in the first place, since in fact you'll quickly toss it out the window merely because it rebuts your theology. You are like a cashier who decides, based on her  mood, whether or not she will employ correct math when handing change to the customer.

Wallace then says ""Outside" the natural realm"", apparently aware that the concept of "outside the natural realm" is incoherent and would only be found plausible by those who already believe such "place" exists, despite the sheer lack of evidence for any such thing.

Wallace then says transcendent objective moral truths exist, but I've already destroyed Christianity's most vocal champions on that point.  Matthew Flannagan could not answer my criticisms of his objective-morality model and quietly stopped responding when I turned up the heat and asked him why he assumes child-torture is absolutely immoral.  He simply thought his position necessarily true and those who disagree with it necessarily wrong, no need to actually prove anything  See here.  I also clobber Frank Turek's best efforts to show objective morality.  See here.

Wallace then says "humans possess free agency", thus playing into a very popular concept held by people for reasons having nothing to do with actual study of philosophy.  But the term "freewill" begs the question "free from what?".  Free from the laws of the physics?  Free from the brain?

The trouble for the libertarian and others who believe in genuine free agency is that such absolute freedom logically results in irrationality...that is...when you wish to eat fast food and on the way you eventually decide against Burger King and for Taco Bell, genuinely free agency means there was, ultimately, no reason that compelled you to choose the way you did.   Your agency was just a coin standing on its edge, it happened to fall over toward the Taco Bell side of things, and there is no "reason" why it fell that way...just "just" decided at the moment to choose that choice.  Thus to say our agency is truly "free" is to say it is also free from the laws of causation, which automatically puts the libertarians in the same fantasyland as Eden and "other dimensions", and therefore imposing not the slightest scintilla of intellectual obligation on the materialist atheist to bother with such stupidity.

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that individuals have consistent personality characteristics.  Did you ever wonder why it is that kids, even twins, raised in the same house by the same parents, often display very different personalities even in infancy?  Since you cannot blame their environment, you have no other option except to blame the only other possible culprit...genetic predisposition.  This is why some kids survive abuse just fine, while others are turned into criminals because of it.  While I understand crime victims who say 'I was abused as a child too, but I didn't turn into a criminal because of it", the scientific truth is that a person's ability to counter the influences of their environment cannot be anything other than their genetic predispositions..

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that ingestion of physical chemicals can cause us to make much different choices than we normally would.  The child who climbs the walls all day long is doing so for chemical-brain reasons which we now call ADHD, which can be controlled by Ritlan.  What...does Ritlan have a spiritual effect on a child's freewill?  Did God invent Ritlan, or toss it down from heaven? Of course not, our decision- making mechanisms in the brain are nothing but pure electrochemical reactions.  That's precisely why physical substances are capable of causing us to decide things in ways we normally wouldn't.  Depressed people stop being depressed when they smoke drugs.  The good girl can be convinced to act immorally at the party if she drinks enough alcohol.  Calm people can be short-tempered if they drink too much coffee.  Etc, Etc.

Wallace will say that the brain's being affected by physical substances doesn't completely cancel the possibility that perhaps the mind merely comes into the body using the brain as an interface, and when the interface is chemically damaged, the resulting choices and personality are too.  But the stupidity of this response is found in the question "comes into the body from where?"  You guessed it...from another dimension.  Christians literally believe the mind originates in the twilight zone. They also believe in other stupid things...like the idea that atheists are under some sort of intellectual obligation to "answer" bits of ignorance like this.

Also, only stupid people think babies have freewill, so since everybody agrees babies don't have freewill, and most people think adults do, the question naturally arises:  why don't human beings exhibit freewill from birth...if in fact freewill is "free" from physical limitations, coming as it allegedly does from the spiritual dimension?  The honest answer is that our ability to make rational choices is an attribute we gain over time and growth, which therefore means the ultimate basis of our will is firmly rooted in the physical world, leaving Christians and their 'spiritual dimension' crap out in left field.

Finally, that the bible is of no help whatsoever in answering this question is clear from the fact that the bible did nothing to resolve the Augustine/Pelagius debates, and did nothing to resolve the Calvinist/Arminian debates, and did nothing to resolve the disagreement between Luther and Erasmus on the nature of the will, and has done nothing to reconcile the current church splits over this doctrine that these prior debates spawned.

Did those debates do anything to help today's apologists come to resolution on the issue?  No.  James Patrick Holding wants the world to view him as a "smart guy", yet adopts Molinism (the abused child produced by the Calvinist/Arminian stalemate), a stance that Calvinist "smart guys" Steve Hays and Dr. James White consider ridiculous and unbiblical.

And for the Christians who foolishly equate the mind with the spirit, they will find their dreams dashed under 1st Corinthians 14:15, where Paul necessarily distinguishes the mind from the spirit, which thus leaves open a biblical door to the possibility that the bible will allow for the "mind" to be purely and wholly physical.

And don't even get me started on the fact that Christians also disagree on whether the bible says man is a dichotomy (body + soul or body + spirit), or trichotomy (body + soul + spirit). Google "trichotomist debate".

So you are a rather stupid fuck if you think opening your bible will do anything toward guiding you toward "truth" about the matter of human freewill.  What...maybe you think the Holy Spirit is more interested in guiding YOU into the truth of such matters than he was in guiding past Christian giants like Augustine, Calvin or Luther?

Finally, Wallace says "consciousness exists in the universe", but even pretending for the moment the naturalistic explanations for this are weak, "god" remains an incoherent concept, so that because the naturalistic explanations are less incoherent, the rational person should favor them above the "god did it" excuse.   Learn how the advocates of various views respond to each other in Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer, eds., In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005; 2^nd ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).  See Christians disagreeing with each other about trichotomy here.

And I do not concede the weakness of naturalistic arguments for consciousness.  The discussion about freewill, supra, also shows the purely naturalistic and physical nature of the mind.  If a person can undergo a major personality change due to brain injury or disease affecting the brain (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, including old folks forgetting names of family and forgetting who they are or where they live), then we do not immediately leap to "but couldn't there be another dimension that the mind comes into the body from, and when the interface is damaged, it falsely makes the will appear to be physical only?"

Instead, we draw a conclusion similar to the one we draw when we notice that a person's bicep is responsible for their during curls in the gym, and when that muscle is severed or severely damaged, they can no longer do those curls:  We conclude the basis for muscular power is purely physical...we do not conclude that maybe the muscle power comes into the bodily tissue from another dimension, and the physical injury giving rise to weakness merely inhibits the spiritual aspect from manifesting itself fully.

However, you can bet your life savings that if the bible had said the power of our physical muscles comes from the spiritual world, every Christian apologist in creation would be insisting my above-logic is merely "worldly" and "incorrect" and "not according to Christ".