J. Warner Wallace's fallacious method of valuing human life: quote 'da bible, bro

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

Cold Case Christianity: From Where Does Value Come? 

 Posted: 06 May 2019 01:49 AM PDT

In the midst of all my collecting, I’ve gotten to wondering about the nature of value itself. If the value of comic books work in this way, does the value of anything else also rely on these same factors?

I have long believed human beings have value.

 Whatever value they have necessarily arises from other people's judgment, and is inherently relative.

As a police officer, the protection of human life is my highest priority.

Then you chose the wrong profession.  As a Christian, evangelizing the world must always be more important than enforcing secular laws.  Read Matthew 19:29.

Police officers are often dispatched to “welfare checks.” These calls come in a variety of forms and essentially boil down to people asking the police to check on someone to make sure they are okay. For example, we might receive a call from someone who lives in another state who hasn’t heard from their grandmother in a while. In response, we will go out to the grandmother’s house to make sure they are okay or see if they need help.

What is it that makes human life so valuable? Where does our value come from? Are we like the comic books I collect? Comic books get their value from the perception people have of them. Does our value come from those around us?

yes.  you are allowed to live when you conform.  If you are convicted of certain crimes, other people will deem you of less value and worthy of the death penalty.

I hope it doesn’t. If our value comes from the way the people or culture around us view us, then we might end up like the comic books I’m looking for, worth more in one shop or place and worth less in another.

That's precisely what reality says.  Unless you've been living under a rock, not everybody assigns you the same value.

But if value does not come from those around us, where does it come from?

Your question is illegitimate, we already determined that valuation comes from outside sources.  Inherent value is a contradiction in terms.

I’ve heard some people say that they can create their own sense of meaning or value. While it sounds great from a self-esteem standpoint, I think we can all admit to times, maybe many times, when we’ve felt personal doubt about ourselves and our value.

That doesn't mean self-valuation is problematic, it just means our self-imposed value changes with time.  We might like the idea of having consistent value, but that's not reality.

Just as the comic book with the “10 cent” cover price does not decide its own current value,

But the price was put there by somebody other than the comic book itself.

we cannot determine our own.

It is perfectly rational for a human being to dictate their own value, and uphold this even if it contradicts what other people or nations think.  Value is no objective or absolute.

There appears to be nothing in our opinion of ourselves that definitively sets our “price tag” or determines how we should be valued by others.

Value doesn't stop existing merely because it isn't definitive.  Otherwise, you'd have to say a certain brand of dvd player had no value just because two different people were selling them at different prices at two different garage sales.  Relativity obviously exists, it doesn't go away just because it refuses to coddle your childish need to prove everything in an absolute way.

God, as He is described by the Bible, has the ability to ground our value in his unchanging, holy nature.

 Then read Deuteronomy 28:15-63 and see just how easily the creator who alleges places great value on you, can turn around and start treating you worse than Hitler, even "delighting" to watch you suffer things like rape and parental cannibalism (v. 63).

Theism offers an opportunity to ground human value objectively.

 No, you worth changes with god's mood.  See above.  Obey and live.  Disobey and get ready to be raped and suffer extreme hunger and delusion.

God’s assignment of value transcends our personal opinions, temporary feelings or responses from friends and family.

 Since you clearly don't give two shits about addressing the best arguments atheists have against you, all you are doing is preaching the choir, and I choose to avoid wasting my time "refuting" your sermons.  They were never intended to attack serious skepticism, as is true for the entirety of your "crime scene" apologetics marketing gimmicks.

My challenge to Evan Minton Cerebral Faith on the big bang

Evan Minton is doing pretty much what Frank Turek is doing, and is pushing the big bang as if it is the only "valid" theory of origins and that it obviously implies a spaceless timeless immaterial personal god.  See here.

I posted the following rebuttal to him:

Three objections:

First, how can you acknowledge that running the tape backwards gets us to a point of "infinite density", when in fact elsewhere you cite the "infinite" nature of something as a reason to reject it?  If reeling the tape backwards potentially shows us a point of actually infinite density, well, you insist that an actual infinite cannot exist because we cannot traverse it.  Since the density of an infinitely dense point could never be traversed, your own logic would require that you deny the possibility of a point of infinite density as strongly as you deny the possibility that the universe is an actual infinite.

(this is to say nothing of the fact that you believe your god is a case of real existing actual infinity that we cannot traverse...so apparently, by your own standards, you don't seriously believe that actual  infinites are impossible, otherwise you'd be saying your god, by being a case of actual infinitity, is thus impossible.)

Second, plenty of creationists and anti-evolutionist websites, usually run by classical theist Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy, assert that the big bang theory is contrary to Genesis 1-2.  What do you say to your brothers in the Lord who find the big bang equally as unscriptural and unscientific as some atheists do?   Is confession of the big bang a test for orthodoxy, or is asserting the unscriptural nature of the big bang a position that is within the range of biblically allowable alternatives?

Third, every biblical description of god's activities in heaven would give the ancient reader the distinct impression that events happen up there in temporal chronological progression no less than they do on earth.  They would never have gotten the idea that the "eternity" god lives in is some sort of 'ever present now' or "other dimension" that is impossible for finite creatures to comprehend.  The bible talks about what goes on in heaven no less plainly than you'd talk about what happened at bible camp last year.

That being the case, how long do you suppose the list of god's prior acts is, and why doesn't your argument about the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite compel you to say the list of god's prior actions is limited?  If our inability to traverse an actual infinite proves the infinite is a faulty concept, then our inability to traverse the entire list of god's prior acts would, under your own logic, prove the notion to be a faulty concept.

The way i see it, the bible itself forces you to one of two conclusions, either of which do violence to what you currently believe:  either a) because the list of god's prior acts is infinite, the impossibility of our traversing an actual infinite does nothing to disprove the infinite, it merely speaks to our current inabilities, or b) the list of god's prior actions is NOT infinite...and at that point you can kiss your classical theism goodbye.  You suggest the list of god's prior actions is finite, and you wind up with a finite god and thus that much closer to Mormonism.

By the way, the Court has decided to allow my libel lawsuit against James Patrick Holding to go forward, so if you did in fact pray about this, you might consider that it was God who opened that door, when in fact the earthly judge was initially threatening to dismiss the case.  If prayer works, then thanks for your prayers. 

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Minton also asks whether we have examples of things beginning to exist.  See here.

Minton failed to deliver the goods, the for the reasons outlined in my rebuttal, which was:

    barry
May 8, 2019 at 1:05 PM

    No, Mr. Minton, things beginning to exist in the sense of new atoms popping into existence, is NOT "self-evident". Those closest you could get is the Copenhagen school of quantum physics, but even that is too tenuous to be taken seriously in your effort to "prove" something.

    The only type of "begin to exist" we have any evidence for, is where the new thing is merely a rearrangement of pre-existing matter. You have no evidence that matter itself ever came into existence, and unfortunately, that's the precise sense you need to justify, in your effort to justify Kalam's first premise. Kalam doesn't say everything that begins to exist, was a re-arrangement of pre-existing matter. But its nice to see that you've pretty much admitted you don't have any serious evidence of anything popping into existence from nothing, rather, you have to "get around" the temporal-origin of things by bringing up the general bb theory. That is, you have no real-world analogies to show Kalam's first premise to be true, outside of the already-questionable and unconvincing BB theory.

    You challenge the atheist reader with:

    "If you, my dear reader, disagree, then let me ask you a question. Where were you the night the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor? Were you lying back in a canopy sipping coconut milk? Now that I think of it; where was I when that happened? I have no recollection of seeing the meteor wipe out the dinosaurs. Maybe the presupposition behind these questions is wrong. Maybe we weren’t there at all. Maybe, just maybe, we didn’t exist yet."

    -----I reply, correct, we did not exist in the days of the dinosaurs. But that doesn't mean our current existence implies creation of new atoms. We are STILL nothing more than a rearrangement of previously existing matter. This is rather obvious, while at the same time, your theory that some of what makes up a human being is "non-physical" has no compelling evidence whatsoever. Just read Moreland's treatment of the subject, and see what ridiculous warps the brain needs to entertain in order to continuing telling itself that thinking comes into the brain from another dimension. Nothing is quite as crazy as the efforts of Christian apologists to "prove" that the mind is different than the brain. When we say thoughts are always influenced by physicality such as brain damage or drugs, you can give nothing in reply, except that these proofs do not absolutely exclude the possibility of mind/body dualism. Well gee, the power of muscles doesn't absolutely exclude the possibility that the muscular power originates in another dimension and merely comes into the body using the muscle as an interface. Do you think the non-absolute nature of this proof is a compelling reason to leave open the option that the ultimate source of muscular power resides in another dimension (!?)

    You then argue "The reality is that we actually have a lot of examples of things coming into being; cars, trucks, galaxies, planets, people, houses, computers, telephones, animals, etc. These things didn’t always exist even if it were true that the matter these things were made of always existed."

    ----I reply, no; car, truck and galaxy did not come "from nothing", so they do not suffice to support your specific contention that things can come into existence "from nothing". When you say matter itself popped into existence from nothing, you are talking about something that has no analogy to how cars, trucks and galaxies come into existence. Creation ex nihilo is obviously quite different from the case of the auto manufacturer who takes pre-existing iron ore and turns it into a car.

    Either come up with real world examples of objects popping into existence without the help of preexisting matter, or we are rational and reasonable to deny that any such thing has ever happened.

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