This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled
The Fact The Other Side Can Make A Case Doesn’t Mean It’s True
So the fact that the Christians can make a case doesn't mean its true. Congratulations, genius.
I’m sometimes surprised to see how quickly young Christians are shaken when they first encounter a well-articulated objection (or opposing claim) from someone denying the truth of the Christian worldview.
Maybe that's because you preach a false gospel, and therefore, without any hope of the Holy Spirit giving a shit about them, they actually don't have anything more to facilitate their false Christian beliefs, except the marketing gimmicks that you refer to as "apologetics" or "cold case Christianity".
When we first started taking missions trips to the University of California at Berkeley, I watched my Christian students to see how they would react when confronted by impassioned atheists. Some were genuinely disturbed by what they heard. Protected by their parents for most of their young Christian lives, it was as if they weren’t even aware of alternative explanations.
That is true, i.e., Christianity's survival through the years was due to the private nature of parents teaching kids to be Christian in outlook. It isn't like in the last 20 centuries Christian parents always made sure their kids were apprised of the alternative explanations equally as much as the "Christian" explanation. We have to wonder how many kids would have grown up and given up their Christian faith if they had been exposed to the alternative explanations during childhood just as much as they were exposed to the "bible".
Now, as juniors and seniors in high school, they were hearing the “other side” for the first time, and the atheist ambassadors we placed before them were eloquent, passionate and thorough. Many of these students wondered how these atheists could be wrong, given the length and earnest (even zealous) nature of their presentations.
That's also the basis that many Christians have for attending the church they currently do. They couldn't give two fucks about spiritual progress or theological accuracy, they only care about hearing something that sounds nice.
But after sitting in hundreds of criminal trials of one nature or another, I’ve learned something important: The fact the opposition can make a case (even an articulate, robust and earnest case), doesn’t mean it’s true.
Thanks for providing atheists with another justification to disbelieve Christianity even when they hear some apologist making a "case" for it. You'll get proper credit in my future books.
Several years ago, I attended the sentencing hearing for one of my cold-case murder investigations. Douglas Bradford killed Lynne Knight in 1979 and we convicted him of this murder in August of 2014, nearly 35 years (to the day) after the murder. The investigation and trial appeared on Dateline (in an episode entitled, “The Wire”). I arrested Bradford in 2009 and he retained Robert Shapiro (famed attorney from the O.J. Simpson case). Shapiro and his co-counsel, Sara Caplan, presented a robust defense of Bradford, and he thanked both of them during the sentencing hearing. Along the way, Shapiro and Caplan articulated the opposing case thoroughly and with conviction. In addition, Bradford made a short, emphatic statement of his own at his sentencing, saying: ““The murder of Lynne Knight is a terrible tragedy. I want you to hear me very clearly now. I did not murder Lynn Knight. I am an innocent man, wrongly convicted. I’m mad as hell. I’m paying for somebody else’s crime. This is a horrendous, horrendous miscarriage of justice.” That’s a pretty direct (and perhaps convincing) denial, and these were the first words any of us heard from Bradford during the entire investigation, arrest, and trial (Bradford refused to talk to us and did not take the stand in his own defense).
So, Wallace, does God think Bradford is guilty of that murder, yes or no? Or is god so concerned about giving truth to sincere seekers that he gives you nothing but fortune cookie "answers" in an ancient book, and leaves you nothing to discern his will for today, except your imperfect ability to interpret future coincidences?
His attorneys were even more passionate and direct in their statements to the jury during the criminal trial and the sentencing hearing. They spent hours articulating the many reasons why the case against Bradford was deficient and inadequate as they continued to proclaim his innocence.
My cold-cases are incredibly difficult to investigate and communicate to a jury.
But the Bradford testimony was only 40 years old. Biblical testimony is between 4,000 and 2,000 years old...yet you act like the biblical testimony is so conclusive no rational person could disagree with the Christian interpretation of it LOL.
Most people, including Christian apologists, think personal testimony constitutes direct evidence...the problem being that Bradford never explained to the police how he could know, at the time of the first interview, that she had died.
Remember, these cases were originally unsolved, and for good reason. There were no eyewitnesses to any of my murders and none of my cases benefit from definitive forensic evidence like DNA (or even fingerprints). My cases are entirely circumstantial.
But the circumstantial evidence of Bradford's guilt is far more compelling than YOUR circumstantial case for god's existence and the bible's alleged "reliability". Bradford's appeal admits that all of Lynne's prior boyfriends were cooperative, except Bradford, who confessed in 1979 "she was dead and was somebody he wanted to put out of his mind." He also initially said he bought a necklace for her, then changed his story and said he merely helped her select it for purchase. His alibi was that he was sailing at the time of the murder, at night, without lights, and because the engine died, he had to row a 4,600 lb boat back to shore using a 4 foot paddle. Upon case-reopening, another woman Bradford subsequently dated said Bradford mislead her about how the nurse (Lynne) he had dated years prior had died. See here.
Defense attorneys love to argue against these kinds of cases, and I have seen many attorneys present compelling alternative explanations over the years. Jurors have sometimes been moved by these defense presentations. But none of them have been fooled. I never lost a single case in my career as a cold-case detective, in spite of the robust arguments of the defense attorneys involved.
Probably because the cold-case evidence you were dealing with was more compelling than the dogshit you call "apologetics".
A few years ago I investigated another cold-case (this time from the early 1980’s). Michael Lubahn killed his wife, Carol, and disposed of her body, telling her family she left him. This case also went unsolved for over 30 years. Lubahn’s attorney whole-heartedly believed Lubahn was innocent and passionately defended him in front of the jury. Unlike Bradford, Lubahn actually took the stand during his defense and repeatedly denied he was involved in any way. Lubahn and his attorney articulated their case ardently and earnestly, and Lubahn’s attorney presented a lengthy closing argument in support of his position. But, like Bradford, none of it was true. At his sentencing hearing, Lubahn eventually confessed to killing Carol. His attorney was dumbfounded. He truly believed Lubahn was innocent and had crafted a through defense. But Michael Lubahn was a killer all along (this case was also covered by Dateline in an episode entitled “Secrets in the Mist”).
And if we had eyewitness-confessions to Jesus' resurrection, you might have a point. But since even Mike Licona refuses to use Matthew's and JOhn's resurrection narrative in his "bedrock" case, its pretty safe for atheists to conclude that the two gospels having the most prima-facie claim to apostolic authorship have too many authorship problems to pretend that clever little witticisms about "papias" and "Irenaeus" are going to solve anything.
Paul was definitely on the defensive and speaking to his gospel-enemeies the Judaizers, so we have a right to expect that he would make the best possible case that his view of salvation was what Jesus really taught...which means we have a right to expect that Paul would have made clear in Galatians that he had a vision of Jesus (Acts 26:19), at least. But the closest Paul comes is 1:16 where he said either God was pleased to reveal his son "to" Paul or "in" Paul. Paul's unwillingness to relate what Jesus said is a silence that screams.
Worse, Paul's trying to draw upon the OT for all Christian doctrine (2nd Timothy 2:15-16) is completely unexpected if he seriously thought the biological Jesus's theological teachings were the least bit important. But what does Paul quote Jesus on? The last supper, and the fact that laborers are worthy of their wages LOL.
I’ve come to expect the opposing defense team will present a well-crafted, earnest, engaging, and seemingly true argument. But an argument isn’t evidence.
So then Christian argument isn't evidence either. Unless you are a Pentecostal and insist that the doctrine of fairness is from the devil?
I’ve come to expect the opposing defense team will present a well-crafted, earnest, engaging, and seemingly true argument.
I've expected the same from apologists, yet never get it. Instead I'm given some fool who thinks the rules of historiography are the 28th book of an inerrant bible, who would rather not talk about how bible inerrancy could serve a purpose given that those who believed it for centuries were not helped to be more like-minded it it.
But an argument isn’t evidence. Since that first trip to Berkeley, I’ve been teaching this to my students. Don’t be shaken just because the other side can articulate a defense.
Thanks for the advice. So the next time an atheist hears a Christian apologist making an "articulate defense", YOUR advice to the atheist would be "don't be shaken just because the other side can articulate a defense" :)
Wow, Wallace, I would never have expected that you desired to serve the devil by giving atheists more reason to stay confident when facing "articulate defenses" by Christian apologists. But thanks again.
This happens all the time in criminal trials, even when our defendants are obviously (and even admittedly) guilty. Be ready in advance for passionate, robust, articulate, alternative explanations. But remember, the fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true.
And YOU remember that the fact that YOU can make a case doesn't mean its true. And yet you refuse to remember this, and you pretend as if the fact you can make a case requires that the Protestant Trinitarian evangelical interpretation of the NT is the only reasonable one.
However, you have neglected to note that juries often deadlock because even when people are discussing modern-day testimony, and heard the original eyewitnesses live in person, jurors can still be reasonable to disagree about the significance of such testimony. If that is true for modern court cases where evidence is relatively recent and is put through an authentication process, you are a fucking fool to pretend that 2,000 year old testimony from people who viewed each other as heretics (Gal. 1:6-8) can only be reasonably interpreted one way. Especially given that first 100 year gap in which the gospel texts were the most fluid, but for which we have no manuscript evidence. We know that other Christian groups had gospels, and we'll never know whether and to what extent they actually claimed the same as the orthodox that their gospels were apostolic in origin.
Wallace, if you believe you have some methodology that enables you to discover which theory of a case is the most reasonable, why don't you sell your ideas to America's court system? After all, we wouldn't need juries, because any judge who purchased all of Wallace's marketing gimmicks would be able to tell which theory of the case is more reasonable. Right?
If you can be so sure that only one interpretation of 2,000 year old testimony is correct, surely your methodology makes it a snap to correctly interpret testimony that has come into existence within the last 50 years?
Gee, Wallace, you have all these capabilities, yet nothing you offer Christians enables them to resolve their differences of opinion about how to interpret the bible, even though all of Paul's theology constitutes "testimony".
