My invitation to James A. Jardin

Mr. Jardin in 2013 wrote a paper called The Slaughter of the Midianites in Numbers 31, a Group Exegetical Paper.  I found it through Academia.edu, here.

Therein, he defends the traditional conservative Christian view that Numbers 31:18 wasn't about authorizing rape.  I sent him the following message:

Hello,
With reference to your "Numbers 31:13-24 Exegetical Paper",
 What would be unreasonable in interpreting Numbers 31:18 as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?   It's therefore not about "adultery" or pre-marital "fornication", so I'm not seeing the problem.
 I see nothing in the bible indicating the minimum age the girl must reach before she can be married, not all sexual relations require penetrative intercourse, the atrocities of the ancient Israelites prove they were nothing close to the modern democratic American, God wanted women to experience vaginal pain on first intercourse anyway, and as I'm sure you know, the Babylonian Talmud, which is reasonably presumed to reveal ancient Jewish traditions, several times indicates approval of sexual intercourse between a man and a prepubescent girl.
 In your paper you claim Deut. 21:10-14 was intended to protect female war captives from rape, but on the contrary, this authorization for a man to marry such a woman gives not the slightest indication that the woman's consent was needed, the Hebrew "anah" in v. 14 always means rape in other bible verses describing men interacting with woman, and the decidedly pro-Christian Good News Translation renders v. 14 as "you forced her to have intercourse with you..." which would hardly be the case if those Christian translators felt there was any reasonable way to spin the literary evidence to get rid of the rape-implication.
 Maybe the question should be whether the non-Christian can be "reasonable" to reject the democratic conservative Christiain interpretation of Numbers 31:18 and continue viewing it as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?
 I've done a massive amount of research on those issues, and I'd like to see how a Christian who has studied them answers my concerns.
 Thank you for your time,
 Barry  (barryjoneswhat@gmail.com)

I hope to recieve Mr. Jarden's reply, as nearly no Christians appear willing to take up this challenge.  Of course, there's always the hyena "apologist" who is frightened of real-time debate, and keeps his tithing customers happy by doing the occasional cartoon video about some argument I present here, but I'm requesting seriously interactive scholarship on the level of Outback Steakhouse.  Not the hide-and-seek bullshit one gets at Chuck E Cheese.  The last time I raised the pedophilia-issue in a Christian-chat room, noody could refute me and several admitted they couldn't say for sure whether God condemns sex within adult-child marriages.  I think it had something to do with my combining Romans 13 with a 19th century Delaware law which set the age of sexual consent at 7.

Cold Case Christianity: we are in control

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

Is God in Control or Are We in Control?

Posted: 13 Apr 2020 05:36 AM PDT 

I’m often asked where I “land” on the issue of God’s sovereignty and human freedom. How much free will do we actually have as humans? If God is all powerful and all knowing, if God knows the end from the beginning, if God has predestined us to come to faith, doesn’t it follow that humans are simply along for the ride? 

Rush has the answer:  Attention all planets of the Solar Federation:  we have assumed control...we have assumed control. (the All the World's a Stage album had the best version...RIP Neil Peart).

But seriously, a simple logically deductive syllogism shows libertarian freewill cannot exist if god's foreknowledge is infallible.

Anything God foreknows, is incapable of failing (dictionary definition of infallible)
God foreknows that Julie's will eat a candy bar tomorrow.
Therefore, Julie's eating a candy bar tomomrrow is incapable of failing.

There are only three ways to refute a deductive syllogism:  prove premise 1 is wrong, prove premise 2 is wrong, or prove the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

Sure, premise one could be wrong, but if so, then the doctrine of God's infallible foreknowledge is false.

As a Christian, it’s clear to me that God is powerful enough to accomplish his goals without limit (see Daniel 4:35, Romans 9:15-16, Ephesians 1:5-6, and Romans 1:9-11). I call this power of God to accomplish whatever He wants the “Make Sure” Will of God.

But then if God has any will beyond the "make sure" crap, then he is sort of like a drunk woman, preferrng to be uncertain.  I'll pass.

But if God is in complete control of every aspect of our lives, how do we answer the following questions?
 When people fail to come to faith, is it God who is preventing them?

If you stand around doing nothing while a child in yoru custody fails to use chemicals correctly and endures injury, is it YOU who is preventing their proper use?  If not, you must think we should get rid of our system of civil law, which charges people all the time with "negligence" (i.e., failure to act when acting was within one's power and acting would have prevented an injury without causing another)

 When evil happens in the world, is it God who is responsible?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then you tell me what is implied by your 2nd Timothy 3:16 trust that such scripture remains profitiable for doctrine, reproof and correction TODAY.

How could God ever hold us responsible for anything?

The same way we capture a wild animal on the loose in the neighborhood.  It's inability to control its dangerous desires doesn't mean we are obligated to turn away.

Is the ‘will of God’ a divine plan for our lives?

As a Christian bible-believer that's YOUR problem. You cannot show from the bible that God has a plan for any particular individual, and you cannot show that the bible has the least bit of relevance to modern humanity beyond the useless trifle of being a historical curiosity.  The question is whether God gives a shit about you at all.  The answer from actual reality is "no".  The answer form the bible only works for the people to who those books were originally intended.  Sucks to be you.

While the Bible affirms the sovereignty and power of God, it also provides examples when God does not seem to be able to accomplish something He desires. In Matthew 23:37-38, Jesus seems to be unable gather Israel because they were unwilling.

Agreed.  But as an atheist, I deny biblical inerrancy, and thereore do not expereince any compulsion to decide whether the bible teaches Arminianism or Calvnism.  It teaches both, which means the bible contradicts itself on doctrine.

In 2 Peter 3:8-10, We are told that God does not wish that anyone of us should perish (but that all of us should come to repentance), yet we know that many people in our world will NEVER accept Jesus, never come to repentance, and simply will not be saved. So what’s up with God’s sovereignty?

A better questoini would be:  Why should be blindly assume an apostle's theological viewpoint is necessarily correct?  Especially an apostle who denied Jesus three times, and who, even after experiencing the gift of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2, was condemned as a moral hypocrite by Paul.  Methinks the inerrantist's trust in biblical infallibility is just shy of foolhardy.  It is anything but realistic.

How can it be that something can be within ‘God’s will’ (God can desire something) yet He seems to be unable to make that something happen?

Easy, the bible contradicts itself.  Will that answer cause J. Warner Wallace to stop using Jesus to attract attention to himself?

I think the Bible actually describes two kinds of “will of God”.

That's a sobering admission, coming from an inerrantist.  No, you won't be "haronizing" freewill with God's sovereignty anytime soon, will you.

The first is what I call the “Make Sure” Will of God, the second is what I have come to call the “Sure Wants” Will of God.

Then god is fucking stupid, since if he "sure wants" something and has the "make sure" power to get the job done, then only he is to blame if he refuses to resolve the problem by exercise of his powers.

God wants all of us to be saved;

You cannot show that anything in the NT was intended to apply to modern-day people.  If we can show the NT authors intended to address 1st century people, YOU acquire the burden of showing they intended to address anybody else.  No sophistry about how God can intend a wider audience than the human author intended.  If the authors didn't intend something, then since the author was your only hope of showing the author's divine inspiration, any god who allegedly inspired them also didn't intend that something.  The reaosnableness of that inference is not going to disappear merely because you can preach about how God can have greater plans for a person than their own plans.

He wants all of us to come to faith in Jesus;

Even the people whom he ordained by his providence to live in times and circumstances preventing them from hearing about Jesus? 

He wants all of us to reflect his moral precepts;

He wants us to use fire to kill little girls for engaging in pre-marital sex (Leviticus 21:9)? Or did some dickhead "apologist" on the internet suddenly discover how easily the "satire" excuse can be exploited to defend biblical "inerrancy"?

He wants all of us to love one another.

Even those whom he instructs us to hate (Deut. 23:6)?

But he also knows that none of this is truly possible unless each and every one of us is allowed to have the ‘freedom’ to love, obey and follow (see Mark 3:34-35, 1 John 2:17, Ephesians 6:5-6, Romans 12:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and 1 Peter 2:15-17). Without ‘free will’, humans are simply robots who respond according to pre-programming rather than from a position of true love and obedience.

you are assuming true love cannot exist without the libertarian notion of freewill existing.  Not true.  obviously dogs and lower mammals love their young, yet you would probably argue that as creatures of instinct they do not have "freewill".

You are also forgetting the deductive syllogism I started this post with.  If God's foreknowledge is infallible, then those human acts (such as love) that he foreknows are "incapable of failing", which logically prevents the person from withdrawing the love at the time God infallibly foreknows they will show that love.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’),

Bullshit, the way he turns humans to carnage in the bible, god is quite capable of simply using his power to rescue you from anything.  Telling yourself maybe God allowed you to do evil because of Frank Turek's "Ripple-Effect" sophistry is mere self-delusion.  The ripple-effect theory does nothing to render the atheist theory of evil "unreasonable".

but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

Then he is fucking stupid and his problems are his own fault.

Yes, it is God’s will that no evil should exist in the world (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that evil is eliminated.

Yes, it is dad's will that his baby son not get raped, (it's protection dad 'sure wants'), but this does not mean that dad will 'make sure' that such rape possibility is eliminated.  Nice going.

Yes, it is God’s will that we should live a certain way and seek to know His heart and character, but this does not mean that he will ‘make sure’ that no one behaves immorally.

I'd say you've ventured further out into the surf than atheism can permit.  This Arminian/Calvinist debate is YOUR problem.

There are two kinds of ‘will of God’ passages in the scripture. Some describe God’s sovereignty and some describe God’s moral character and desire for our lives.

And there is no reason to think the bible is inerrant.  So there's nothing unreaosnable in assuning the bible gave rise to churches with contradictory theology, beause the bible itself teaches contradictory theology.

While it is certainly within God’s power to eliminate all evil, to control our behavior and to allow none of us the possibility of rejecting Him, to do so would eliminate the possibility for something precious to God: the ability to love. (I’ve written more on this in the section on Evil here at ColdCaseChristianity.com

So what's more important to god?  The criminal's ability to love?  Or the child's safety from rape?

Under God's stupid reasoning, America's love would be more god-like if jails removed their locks and incarcerated only those who chose to endure their punishment.  if God is going to let rapists and murders run free, how could we have less love than god if we also allowed such criminals the same freedom?  If God isn't going to stop evil, then it must be good to let evil exist.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

You are only saying that because of the bible's contradictory statements, not because it is at all clear that this is in fact the case.  What a fool to pretend that so many ancient authors, seperated from each other by centuries, nevertheless wrote in perfect harmony about subjects philosphers have disagreed on for millenia.  Not even most Christian scholars accept biblical inerrancy!

How exactly do your musings do ANYTHING to disturb atheism?

Cold Case Christianity: Did Jesus think he was God?

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Did Jesus Think He Was God?

Posted: 07 Apr 2020 12:00 PM PDT

In this video, J. Warner discusses the language Jesus used when describing Himself. Did His words demonstrate what He believed about Himself?

But as I've already demonstrated ad nauseum, many conservative Christian scholars think the Christ-sayings in John's gospel reflect more John's theological views and less what Jesus "actually" said.  So trying to establish high Christology by using John's gospel is foolish.

Mike Licona might argue that you can get Jesus beng God out of Mark, the earliest gospel, but I don't see the point.  Yes, people before the 1st century believed the gods could come down to the them in the likeness of man (Acts 14:11), so the skeptic who tries to argue that the NT's Christology is only high beacuse it is late, is not doing her homework.

At the same time, low Christology can be gleaned from Paul (Jesus was declared the son of God with power by resurrectoin from the dead, Romans 1:5).  Fundies will carp that this doesn't imply Paul thought Jesus lacked divine attributes until the resurrection, but Paul doesn't show much interest in Jesus' earthly life, so fundies have no basis to think Paul thought Jesus was always Lord from birth.  Fundies will cite the kenosis in Phil. 2:5-8, but the "mind" that is spoken of is the one which was in "Christ Jesus", the name given to him at his birth, but not before.  Paul is likely referring to the attitude Jesus had as a man on earth, not as the prexistent logos.

Mark 6:5 said Jesus "could" not do a miracle, but the parallel in Matthew 13:58 changes this to "did" not do a miracle, that is, Matthew the later author is changing Mark's earlier negation of Jesus' abilities, with a phrase that no longer implicates Jesus' abilities.  That is, the earlier version of Christianity had a lower Christology.  We can only wonder how many other changes scribes made to the text of Mark during the first 250 years for which we have no manuscripts, to "assimilate" it back to Matthew.  I think this is the part where desperate inerrantists suddenly discover that the Synoptic Problem doesn't exist, and the similarities of Matthew and Mark imply nothing more than their drawing upon a common core of oral tradition. 

Except that wiggling out of the problem like that doesn't render the skeptical hypothesis unreasonable, it just show you have the same face-saving capabilities that the Mormons have.

Furthermore, the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount are often unrelated despite following each other in chronological fashion.  Most scholars explain this by saying the author has simply made a pastiche of various sayings Jesus spoke in various different circumstances, and grouped such aphorisms into one bunch.

That is, most scholars think the gospel authors replaced the original context of the Christ-sayings with the author's own created literary context, so that we can never really be confident that the "context" we read today is accurately reflecting the oral "context" Jesus originally spoke those words in. 

That creates a further problem:  the gospel authors did not care about "original" context as much as today's inerrantists do, and this justifies the atheist to infer the sources are not sufficiently reliable to attempt getting confident conclusions from.  There was a textually dark period between Jesus' life and the earliest manuscripts, and nobody has any idea how many times scribes in that critical period did what Metzger and Aland contantly accuse them of ('assimilating' one gospel statement with another) so that for all we know, the degree to which the gospels currently agree on facts has more to do with post-authorship emendation, and less to do with what the original authors actually said. 

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is possibly a late legend

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Is the Resurrection Account a Late Legend?

J. Warner April 3, 2020

Two answers from an atheist:

No, and the rumor about Paul, held by "thousands" of Jewish Christians, that he flouted Mosaic law, also wasn't a late legend.  Acts 21:18-24.  As long as you say that rumor was false, you agree that falsity can exist in the early church, without being "legend" or "late".

Yes...it is reasonable to say the resurrection appearance stories in the gospels are late legends for two reasons:  a) it is reasonable to agree with most Christian scholars that Mark is the earliest published gospel, and b) it is reaosnable to agree with most Christian scholars that the long ending of Mark was a later interpolation.  If both premises are reasonable, then it is reasonable to draw the inference that the earliest form of the resurrectin story was limited to the women hearing about Jesus' resurrection solely from some unidentified man at the suspiciously opened tomb.

Certain dickhead apologists will scream that Mark's resurrection appearance ending would have been necessarily implied due to the oral preaching behind that gospel, is foolish:  the other three gospel authors give plenty of resurrection appearance detail, so it is far from obvious that the reason a gospel author leaves out a detail is because he is expecting the originally intended reader to rely on the oral preaching to fill in the blanks left by the written account.

And now a point by point reply to Wallace:

How can we be sure that the story of Jesus wasn’t changed over time?

You can't:  reconstructing history from ancient sources only supplies probabilities, especially in cases where the ancient assertions are by no means "obvious" and not corroborated by other verifiable details. No, you aren't proving John's resurrection testimony reliable by nothing that archaeologists have found the Pool of Siloam.  What are you?  6?  What are you gonna say next?  Mommy loves you because she took you to McDonalds? Grow the fuck up and quit committing the fallacy of hasty generalization.

How do we know that the virgin conception, the miracles and the Resurrection weren’t added to the story late?

First, your question is irrelevant.  Jesus made clear that christian discipleship depended on generations of Christian leaders passing on for posterity all the things which he had taught the original apostles (see the part of the Great Commission nost people miss, Matthew 28:20).  Not only did Jesus never say one damn thing about his virgin birth, he castigated another person who's comment to him had created the perfect justification for him to mention it (Luke 11:27-28).

Second, given that most Christian scholars agree Mark's gospel is the earliest and lacks the virgin birth narrative despite how its content would have strongly supported Mark's "Son of God" theme, it's reasonable to infer either a) Mark never heard of the VB (justifying the inference it was late) or b) Mark knew of it but considered it fiction (justifying the inference that it is fiction).  The third option screamed about by apologists, c) Mark knew the VB story was true but "chose to exclude" it for his own reasons, cannot be demonstrated with any degree of probability.  Since the inference that Mark never heard of the VB or had rejected it as fiction does rest upon a probability argument, the skeptic has a probability and the apologist has only possibility.  So skeptics are reasonable to draw the negative inference even if there's always that trifling "possibility" that the VB was true.

Similar arguments could be made on the basis of John the latest gospel.  He too doesn't mention the virgin birth, despite how it would have strongly supported his high Christology.  That makes the skeptical hypothesis reasonable, and our reasonableness therein doesn't require that we bat out of the ballpark every stupid trifle any apologist could possibly conjure up. 

Beasley-Murray refuses to decide the matter:

The external evidence for the pl. is overwhelming, and most adopt it without hesitation…The decision is more difficult than is generally acknowledged, and we leave it open.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (2002). Vol. 36: Word Biblical Commentary : John.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 2). Dallas: Word, Incorporated

Inerrantist Christian scholar Borchert does not understand why some scholars, despite knowing the plural is the correct reading, still insist the passage is about the virgin birth:

Some scholars have argued that the verse is describing the virginal conception of Jesus, and they have chosen to read the singular form instead of the plural (haimatōn) “bloods.” But the textual evidence for such a reading is virtually nonexistent, and the logic of the text definitely argues against such a view. 

No Greek MSS support the singular reading, yet M. Ē. Boismard, in St. John’s Prologue (Westminster: Newman, 1957), s.v., and others have argued for such a view. Cf. D. M. Crossan, “Mary’s Virginity in St. John—An Exegetical Study,” Marianum 19.1 (1957): 115–26, and “Mary and the Church in John 1:13, ” Bible Today 1.20 (1965): 1318–24. Beasley-Murray (John, 13) relying on E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey (The Fourth Gospel [London: Faber & Faber, 1947], 164–65), thinks that even though the plural is clearly the correct reading and even though the virgin birth may not be in mind, the incarnation could have been in view here. I find this argument difficult to accept.

Borchert, G. L. (2001, c1996). Vol. 25A: John 1-11 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 118). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Bruce Metzger, otherwise considered by conservative Christian apologists to be the last word on NT textual variation, dashes cold water on the hopes of those fools who insist John 1:13 is talking about Jesus' virgin birth:

Although a number of modern scholars (including Zahn, Resch, Blass, Loisy, R. Seeburg, Burney, Büchsel, Boismard, Dupont, and F. M. Braun)³ have argued for the originality of the singular number, it appeared to the Committee that, on the basis of the overwhelming consensus of all Greek manuscripts, the plural must be adopted, a reading, moreover, that is in accord with the characteristic teaching of John. The singular number may have arisen either from a desire to make the Fourth Gospel allude explicitly to the virgin birth or from the influence of the singular number of the immediately preceding auvtou/.
--------Metzger, Textual Commentary, Page 169

Furthermore, most English translations don't use the singular, they use the plural, so that 1:13 is referring to Christians, not Jesus:

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NAU) 

 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NRS) 

 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NIV) 

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NKJ)

But no, I'm sure that because fundie Chrstianity is dogmatic by nature, fundies who are frightened at the prospect of not being able to harmonize all NT statements with all NT statements, will insist skeptics are "dumb" or "morons" for adopting the plural in harmony with many conservative evangelical Christian scholars.

I wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, shivering with fear, wondering whether my above-cited arguments are sound.  I'm also a millionaire.

Furthermore, given that out of 27 NT books, only two even mention the virgin birth, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the earliest Christians did not think that part of Jesus' life was too important. 

Why would Paul think the resurrection proved Jesus to be the Son of God, but the VB wasn't worth discussing?  If we are to presume Paul was a modern-day inerrantist who trusted Joseph's and Mary's stories about portents during her pregnancy as necessarily true, wouldn't it follow that Paul would find the VB story equally as supportive of his view of Christ as the resurrection?  And given that Christianity had major obstacles to getting started, wouldn't shameless promoter like Paul insist on using ALL of his guns?

And don't forget, Paul asserted that Jesus' flesh came from David's "seed" (Romans 1:3, neither genealogy of Jesus makes Mary a descendant of David, but they specify Joseph was a descendant of David, Luke 2:4), and further, that Jesus' divine sonship was declared due to his rising from the dead (v. 4).  Had Paul approved of the VB stories, he would likely would have cited the VB and not just Jesus' resurrection as the basis for Jesus' divine sonship.  That naturalistic problem looms large also in Acts 13:33, Jesus was divinely begotten at his resurrection...how many times was he begotten? Another sign that the speaker (Paul) did not think Jesus recieved such divine titles any earlier.

I'm quite aware of the stupid trifles of internet apologists concerning Mark 6:3 and have answered them here.  Since Christians themselves cannot even agree on whether the VB story is true, or if so, whether it qualifies as essential or non-essential doctrine, the skeptic is certainly reasonable to consider it nothing more than trifling about the details of fairy tales.  You don't know the credibililty of Matthew or Luke, you have no fucking clue how they gained thier material.  Your hypothesis that they asked eyewitnesses is no less conjectural than the skeptic's theory that many gospel stories are just made up