My YouTube reply to Gary Habermas and Jesus' Resurrection

I posted the following comment in reply to Gary Habermas' video summarizing his "minimal facts" argument (See video here). The comments are preserved here since there is a chance that comment will be deleted from the YouTube channel:

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If Habermas were being prosecuted for murder on the basis of documents authored within the last couple of years that contain the same types of ambiguities of authorship and unknown levels of hearsay present in the gospels and Paul's 1st Cor. 15 "creed", he would be screaming for the charges to be dropped for lack of evidence.


in Galatians 1:1, 11-12, Paul specifies that when he received the gospel, it was by telepathic communication from god, and he specifies this did not involve input from any other human being. So since Paul doesn't qualify the sense of "what I received" in 1st Cor. 15:3, it is perfectly reasonable to interpret 1st Cor. 15:3 in the light of Paul's more specific comments in Galtians, and thereore interpret his phrase in Corinthians to mean "For I passed on you to that which I received apart from any human being..." If that is reasonable, then this "creed" has nothing to do with other human beings, and loses its historical value accordingly.


Since most Christian scholars deny the authenticity of Mark's long ending, the skeptic is reasonable to conclude that authentic Mark stops at 16:8, and therefore the author did not see any apologetic value in telling the reader that the risen Christ actually appeared to anybody. The mere fact that Mark has Jesus sometimes predict his resurrection appearances, doesn't count as resurrection appearances.


Since most Christian scholars say Mark was the earliest gospel, the skeptic is reasonable to conclude that the earliest form of the gospel did not allege that the risen Christ was actually seen by anybody.


Matthew with his being the longest gospel of the canonnical 4 was extremely interested in recording reams of data on what Jesus said and did, obviously. So a skeptic would be reasonable to conclude that the reason this Matthew provides for the reader no words from the resurrected Christ beyond 15-second speech from the risen Christ (28:18-20), Matthew wasn't "compressing" anything, Matthew wished to give the impression this is ALL the risen Christ said. But Acts 1:3 necessarily implies, by saying Jesus appeared to the apostles over a period of 40 days speaking things concerning the kingdom of god, that Jesus had more to say to the apostles than merely a 15 second speech. And since this was allegedly "things concerning the kingdom of God", a theme Matthew is obviously interested in, it is highly unlikely Matthew is merely "choosing to exclude" from his gospel speeches that the risen Christ made. If the risen Christ taught "things concerning the kingdom of God", a person interested in that specific topic, like Matthew, would more than likely, in light of his willingness to quote Jesus extensively elsewhere, gave the reader those speeches, had he thought Jesus spoke such things. So the skeptic is quite reasonable, even if not infallibly so, to conclude that the later version we get in Acts 1:3 is an embellishment.


Matthew's brevity suggests his account is earlier, and therefore, the story from Luke's later account that has Jesus say more than what could be said in a 15 second "Great Commission", is the embellished account.


Generously assuming obviously false presuppositions of apostolic authorship of the gospels, there are only 3 resurrection accounts in the bible that come down to us today in first-hand form; Matthew, John and Paul. Every other biblical resurrection testimony is either hearsay or vision. You won't find too many legitimately credentialed historians who will say you are under some type of intellectual compulsion to give a shit about ancient hearsay. I'd go further and say Christianity's need to tromp through ancient histority and implicate the rules of historiography, might be a fun mind game, but does not place an intellectual compulsion on anybody to believe or provide a naturalistic explanation. Juries today often deliberate for weeks after being given evidence in Court of a crime that occurred within the last year. What fool is going to say that 2,000 year old evidence of questionable authorship and origin is "clear"?


Conservative Trinitarian evangelical scholars often admit that Matthew and Luke "toned down" the text that they copied from Mark. The only reasonable interpretation of such viewpoint is that Matthew and Luke did not believe Mark's gospel was inerrant. While the inerrantists who adopt markan priority might deny this interpretation, that's exactly where their logic leads. If the math professor says 2+2=5, i don't humbly ask him to explain himself, I call him a fool and presume my own knowledge to justify giving a definitive adjudication.


If Habermas were on trial for murder, and the only witness against him was some guy who claimed he was physical flying into the sky solely by divine power when he looked down and saw Habermas pull the trigger, Habermas would not be asking the Court for a jury instruction telling them they can consider the viability of supernatural explanations, he would be screaming his head off that such a witness is entirely lacking in credibility, and the murder charge should be dropped for lack of evidence. While that makes good common sense, Paul himself, 14 years after the fact, still didn't know whether his flying into the sky was physical or spiritual. See 2nd Corinthians 12:1-4. Yet Habermas wants people to think Paul should be taken seriously (!?). Yeah, maybe I'll also take Gnosticism seriously!


Skeptics are also reasonable to simply ignore Christianity even if they believe it true, since the case for eternal conscious torment (the fundamentalist interpretation of biblical "hell") is exceptionally weak, and therefore, skeptics have no reason to expect that God's wrath against them will involve any more danger to them than the permanent extinction of consciousness that they already expect at physical death. This is especially supportive of apathy toward Christianity when we remember that god gets extremely pissed off at people who join the wrong form of Christianity (Galatians 1:8-9). If the skeptic is already in some type of "trouble" with god, might make more sense to play it safe and not make a "decision for Christ" that could very well cause that skeptic to suffer the divine curse even more.


Let's just say Haberas's "minimal facts" are closer to laughable than convincing, for skeptics like me who actually know what we are talking about.


Find your freedom from the shackles of religious "grace" at my blog, where I steamroll Christian apologetics arguments like a brick through a plate glass window. https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/

Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's stupidity in pushing the Enfield Poltergeist

Jason Engwer can't seem to get enough of the Enfield Poltergiest case.  See here.

Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.

I've got news for Engwer.  There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.

For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.

1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead.  So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years.  In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected.  Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!"   Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in.  How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?

Let's inquire anyway:  What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?

Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise,  would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).

But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:

First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable".  That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".

Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT?  Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence.  How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him?  Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?

Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists.  Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.   (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)

But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence.  Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death?  It doesn't.

If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.

In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are.  If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.

Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life.  The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap.  As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist. 

This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".

And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are?  We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.

A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say.  Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years. 

For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence.  After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?"  And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9).  The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities".  Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.

Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years.  Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history.  Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.

Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive. 

This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.

Triablogue: Steve Hays' lies about his perfect moral character

This is my reply to a blog post by Steve Hays at Triablogue, entitled

Why not commit apostasy?

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The primary reason I wouldn't commit apostasy is because the case for Christianity is overwhelming, based on multiple lines of evidence, direct and indirect, public and private.

Sorry, Steve, but you are forgetting your own Calvinism:  The ONLY reason you allegedly find the evidence for Christianity to be overwhelming is because God has foisted irresistable grace upon you.  Consult your own irresistible grace interpretation of 1st Cor. 4:7 and John 6:44.  Your audience would have gotten a bit more honest of an answer had you said that it is only by god's grace that you are capable of appreciating the force of Christian apologetics evidences.  But the answer you gave makes it appear that you are capable of recognizing, on your own, without grace, that Christianity is true, no less than a jury is capable, without divine grace, of appreciating the force of an attorney's argument.

But for now, your attempt to sound as if you can independently vouch for the persuasiveness of the gospels, contradicts your own Calvinistic belief that you can do nothing, at all, except what God has infallibly predestined you to do.  So in your view, the ultimate reason you find Chrstianity persuasive is the same as the reason the atheist finds it unpersuasive:  God predestined us to believe the precise way that we do.  Since that predestination-decree was "infallible" (i.e., incapable of failing, see dictionary) then my espousing atheism, and your espousing Calvinism, were worldview choices that were incapable of failing. 

But either way, a skeptic could just as easily assert the contrary, that they will never convert to Christianity because the evidence is so weak.  That's exactly what I say:   After reviewing the apologetics arguments set forth by the likes of Licona, Habermas and Bill Craig, I feel supremely confident asserting that the hypothesis that Jesus has stayed dead consistently ever since he died on the cross, has far more explanatory scope and power, and is thus more likely, than the supernatural hypothesis that he resurrected.

Of course, you are a Calvinist and thus a presuppositionalist, and you will assert that my denial of theism (and other things like Total Inability) is precisely why I cannot see the power of resurrection evidences. What you are obviously missing is that I don't just opine that Licona, Habermas and Craig are wrong.  I have specific articulable reasons for finding many of their arguments fallacious, or their evidence unpersuasive.  The only fool here is the idiot who thinks Romans 1:20 is the answer to why unbelievers think the gospel is false.  At least I'm not resorting to the words of some 2,000 year old pagan rambler to "explain" why Steve Hays doesn't see the truth of naturalism.

But there are additional considerations:
i) It would be a betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline.

Then you cannot fault skeptics if one of their reasons for refusing to apostatize from skepticism is that it would be a "betrayal of my own generation, as well as younger generations in the pipeline."

I care what happens to them.

Skeptics also care what happens to the younger generation of skeptics.  If such care is sufficient to justify your own stability of worldview, why wouldn't it be sufficient to justify my stability of worldview? Is there some law of the universe that says only bible-believing Christians are allowed to make use of convenient excuses?

It would be as if I know the way out of the cave, but I keep that to myself. I refuse to show lost men, women, and children the way out of the cave. I leave them there to die in the dark, leave them there to die of thirst. Even if I personally wanted to commit suicide in the cave, I have a duty to show the lost the way out of the cave, and go back for more.

We skeptics feel the same duty to show the lost the way out of the fundamentalist cave.

ii) As a Christian blogger, I've had enormous exposure to apostates and atheists.

As a skeptical blogger, I've had enormous exposure to Christian apologists.

I find them repellent.

I find Christian apologists repellent.

Even if I lost my faith, I'd far rather continue attending church than spend my time in the social company of apostates and atheists.

But since you couldn't attend church as an atheist being honest about your atheism for very long before the congregation sees you as an "apostate" and wants to kick you out, the only way you could avoid being exposed like that is to lie and pretend you are still a Christian.  being honest with them about your apostasy means you'd bounce around from church to church.  Which would then mean that as an atheist you were trying to subvert 2nd Cor. 6:15 and cause your darkness to have fellowship with their light.  Those churches would have obvious biblical justification to demand that you leave, so, like I said, bounce.  Perhaps you meant that if you became an atheist, you'd prefer to attend liberal churches?

Which is exactly why my argument about certain Christian apologists secretly being atheists, but not daring to admit it, is a powerful consideration.  If Steve Hays actually was an atheist, there is no reason to think he would honestly admit it, as he has invested far too much time and energy into getting others to be dazzled at his intellectual brilliance in accepting Christ and defending the faith. 

But for all we know, you are just another Ted Haggard waiting to be exposed.

The day you admit being an atheist is the day you admit that Christianity is so deceptive, even "smart guys" like you can get hoodwinked by it for decades.  You want the world to believe you are a smart guy.  You are not about to honestly admit it if you seriously become an atheist.  Smart guys don't miss the forest for the trees for decades at a time, remember?

They'd make dreadful company. People who think this life is enough are unbearably shallow, and willfully superficial.

Thanks for confirming that you mistake atheism as being limited to the personas emitted by those select atheists who specialize in bashing Christian fundamentalist.  There is no reason to think you have any real-time experience with atheists who stay away from religious debates.  If you were a "smart guy", you'd know that in real life, most atheists do not simply bash Christianity 24 hours per day.  As you admit, your interactions with atheists have more to do with their online presence as skeptics, and little or none to do with living with them on a day-to-day basis. 

Surely a smart guy like you realizes that you don't get a correct impression of a person simply because you see what they blog about.  Reading their posts doesn't cause you to notice other truths that come from interacting with them in real-time face to face.  But your incessant addiction to blogging has probably caused you to mistake your computer screen for actual human compansionship.  You probably get more pleasure from email than an handshake.

And how many would take a bullet for a friend.

That's a rather useless comparison, you have no fucking clue whether "Christians" would be more willing to die for each other than atheists would be willing to die for each other, especially given Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace's constant dirge that today's Christians are falling away from the faith faster than they did in previous generations. See here.

But in fact the comparison is invalid, as you are assuming that "true" friends would be willing to lay down their lives for each other, when in fact what friendship "must" minimally consist of is horrifically subjective, there is no absolute moral that says one's relationship iwth another cannot be "friends" until they both agree that they would die for each other. 

Two guys meet at Starbucks and become "buddies" who sometimes go out chasing woman at bars together, or hand each other work every now and then.  This qualifies as "friendship" even if it doesn't imply that one would be willing to give up their lives to save the other.  Then we have the man who meets the woman, they have sex, they like each other, but not in the relationship way, so they maintain "fuck buddy" status.  Your bible is not their standard, so if they choose to call their interactions "friendship" despite your automatic resorting to the bible, they are not unreasonable, as once again, "friendship" is highly subjective, and isn't dictated by what the bible says.  It's dictated by how two people feel about each other.  Otherwise, you'd have to say kids cannot be friends with one another, since the interactions with each other that they call "friendship" often do not evince the deep concern for other's lives that implies willingness to die for others.

And since atheists don't believe in an afterlife, their prioritizing their own lives above those of their friends is merely consistent with their beliefs, and represents a harsh truth that a lot of people are guilty of lying about.  We can only wonder how many smooth talking Christians ("I'd die for you") would be proven liars if placed in a situation that put that claim to a real test. 

Have fun pandering to the stupid idiot masses that Christianity facilitates that  deeper camaraderie we all wish for, but then you'll be deluged by an onslaught of Christians who will happily testify to how they were shit-canned as soon as the church found out they didn't believe precisely as the church required.  Friends "in Christ" means exactly that and nothing more:  No longer in Christ?  No longer your friend.  FUCK YOU.  

In fairness, there's the occasional atheist who will take a bullet for a friend, but nothing is dumber than idealistic atheists. That's not an attitude I respect or admire.

Then you are just as ignorant about morality's relationship to atheism as Frank Turek is.  I've already refuted his bullshit thesis that atheism leaves a person with no ability to justify having any specific morals.  I've also refuted his bullshit thesis that there are some morals that cannot be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms (i.e., moral argument for god).  See here.

I'm not talking about friendship evangelism or outreach to unbelievers. I'm talking about the notion that the company of apostates and atheists would ever be an appealing alternative to Christian friendship and fellowship.

Then the fact that atheists can be mature adults and yet derive just as much sense of fulfillment from their interactions with one another, as you allegedly derive from interactions with other Christians, opens the door to the highly probable possibility that atheist have a side to them that doesn't involve promoting gay pride parades or other liberal agendas.  I'm an atheist, and I think male homosexuality is revolting.  The atheists who think atheism automatically means duty to jump on the gay support band wagon are just stupid.  What works for two individuals in the privacy of their own home, obviously doesn't automatically translate into good national policy, because certain things that consenting adults do in private have a nasty habit of bring more and more corruption into being.  If I had my way, I'd enforce the death penalty for the manufacture, distribution or possession of alcoholic beverages and pornography, with profoundly persuasive justifications for the collateral damages that would inevitably ensue.

I'm afraid that you think the asshole atheists you've dealt with online constitute the sum and substance of all that real-time interaction with atheists has to offer. It isn't. It's not like every atheist in the world bashes Christianity.  You might try getting off the computer for once in your life and seek out atheists in real time to see how they interact with you where religion and apologetics are never the issue.  You might be surprised to discover that being a slave of Jesus isn't the only context within which legitimate friendship can emerge.  But alas, you only view this from the Calvinist side, you cannot help but maintain consistency and boo anything that might claim authenticity apart from the imperfect apostle Paul.

Hey Steve, how many times did you enjoy the company of an atheist (i.e., waitress, auto mechanic, librarian, cop, homeless, employer, etc,) without realizing that they were atheists?   You don't know, and you'll never know, but the odds are, you probably had plenty of friendly quick interactions with atheists.

Do you pay attention to Paul as often as atheists pay attention to money, fame, sex, power?  If so, then why doesn't the logic that says those atheists are "worshiping" that stuff, also require that YOU are "worshiping" Paul? 

I'd add that some people who lose their faith regain their faith. So maintaining Christian fellowship wouldn't just be a palliative.

I'd add that some skeptics who become Christians regain their skepticism.  So maintaining fellowship with other skeptics wouldn't just be a palliative.

Sorry Steve, but it appears that it sucked being you a LONG time ago.