My reply to Alisa Childer's interview of J. Warner Wallace

At Childers' blog I posted the following:

To my knowledge, Wallace, for all of his promotion of the idea that we can discover truth in the gospels if we guide our investigation into them with the same evidentiary rules American courts use, never explains how the gospels would pass the provenance-authentication requirement in the ancient documents test (Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(8)(B), i.e., the documents were located in a place where, if authentic, [they] would likely be.)  

Our earliest copies of the gospels have unknown provenance outside general remarks about how they were found in some monastery or obtained from a chain of mostly unknown persons or otherwise procured through illegal antiquities sales. 

If Wallace knows what everybody else knows, that the provenance of the gospels is utterly unknown and even conservative Christian scholars disagree about where they originated, then he must either concede that the gospels can never pass muster in a court of law because they would be deemed inadmissible (which would invalidate his attempts to use other rules of evidence in investigating the gospels)...or...he should argue that there are aspects of the American courts' evidentiary rules that he thinks do more to hide the truth than enable its discovery. 

I explain why the gospels fail the ancient documents rule at my blog which has plenty of posts refuting articles Wallace has posted within the last year....https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/are-gospels-all-just-hearsay-yes-thanks.html 

Wallace also knows about my blog, but has shown no interest in interacting with my many well-founded criticisms of his arguments, his populist sensationalizing and his ceaseless relentless promotion of his imperfect commentaries on biblical matters (a sin Frank Turek and many other modern apologists are equally guilty of).

Cold Case Christianity: Why Is It So Important for Young Christians to Be Able to Defend Christianity?

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Why Is It So Important for Young Christians to Be Able to Defend Christianity? (Video) Posted: 17 Oct 2017 01:47 AM PDT

Wendy Griffith interviews J. Warner Wallace on the 700 Club and asks why it’s so important for the current generation of Christian believers to be prepared to give the reason for the hope they have in Jesus. More young people are walking away from the Church than ever before.

Gee, that couldn't have any relation to the fact that Christian apologetics arguments are unpersuasive, could it?  If Wallace is so sure his apologetics arguments are solid and convincing, why is he so deathly afraid of engaging in a real-time debate with informed atheist bible critics?  Is he aware, as an expert in marketing, that the less you subject your sales pitch to the criticisms of the other side, the more chance you have of the typical average person purchasing your product?

Gee, that couldn't possibly be it, could it?

What can we do, as older believers, to address the problem?

Maybe quit acting like God is just a higher Corporate executive who orders you to solve problems but never himself gets involved?  Maybe act in a way that shows you often step out of the way and let God do God's part?  Because from the looks of it, your claim that God does his part appears to be utterly gratuitous, the ONLY basis upon which a kid in the church grows up, makes less immature decisions, and memorizes more bible and apologetics arguments, is straight purely naturalistic learning.  What you call "spiritual growth" appears to be nothing more than the naturalistic learning and aging, with the attendant effects of such, of the person alleged to be growing spiritually.

Would you say the 50 year old atheist, who naturally doesn't wish to commit fornicatio as much as he did back in his 20's, has "grown spiritually"?  Then how can you be so sure that when young people grow up in the church, their similar pattern of growth is rooted in the invisible world?

If you think the Christian solution to the problem need involve anything more than quoting the bible and limiting your spiritual studies to just the bible, I'm afraid you'll just look like you are using Christianity to sell your absurdly unconvincing apologetics materials.  Gee, how did God sufficiently guide the church in matters of apologetics for 20 centuries when nobody could purchase your forensic faith crap?

All believers must recognize their duty and train themselves to develop a more reasonable, evidential faith, as described in the book, Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith.

That's what I thought, you dishonest greedy salesman.  Christianity just couldn't survive unless people purchased your products, amen?

Take some advice from a spiritually dead atheist whom you believe willfully rebels against the truth:

The bible is sufficient for faith and practice.  Now go google the dictionary definition of "sufficient".

Under your reasoning, saying the bible is sufficient for faith and practice is like saying water is "sufficient" nutrition for a baby.  Perhaps you should be honest, and just come right on out and bluntly admit that if people never purchase your forensic faith materials and instead rely on the bible alone as their source of Christian instruction, they won't be growing spiritually as efficiently as they might.

Why can't you just admit what logically follows from your marketing gimmicks?

Warner at video time code 0:40 ff says the resurrection of Jesus in the first century "stands up against all evidential scrutiny".  It doesn't matter if that is his sincere opinion, he would have been more aligned with "truth" and more objective to say that he disagrees with the Christian scholars who view the resurrection of Jesus differently from him (i.e., they deny the bodily nature of the resurrection, or they think it is something that cannot be proven, etc),  Clearly, Wallace is more interested in one-sided marketing here than he is in telling the view about the reality of the situation.

Wallace absolutely refuses to have any serious scholarly online or live debates with informed skeptics.  So do Benny Hinn, James Patrick Holding and many other "Christians" who do a lot of yammering and not a lot of actual interaction with skeptics themselves.

Gee, what are the odds that Wallace runs away from those atheist debate challenges because he is afraid he'll win?

I don't think so.

Wallace at time code 0:50 ff says "young people are leaving the church in record numbers".

Maybe he should consider a) that's not a problem because those who leave the Church aren't true Christians in the first place, or b) true Christians leave because i) eternal security is not true and ii) modern Christian apologetics arguments simply aren't convincing to those who give every appearance of being authentically born again, or maybe even iii) eternal security is true, and the reason so many true Christians leave the church is because the "church" of America is cursed with consumerism and materialism.

J. Warner Wallace would be a good example of a church leader who cares more about marketing his products, than much else.  In his opinion, God could not think of any way to sufficiently induce the spiritual growth of Christians for 20 centuries, then breathed a hurricane sigh of relief when Wallace started up this "God's Crime Scene" marketing gimmickry.

Cold Case Christianity: Wouldn’t A Loving God Reform Rather Than Punish?

This is my reply to a podcast by J. Warner Wallace entitled

 Wouldn’t A Loving God Reform Rather Than Punish? (Podcast)  

Posted: 27 Jul 2017 01:47 AM PDT

In this blast from the past, J. Warner responds to a common objection to the nature of God: If God is all-loving, why doesn’t he “reform” people rather than simply “punish” them in Hell? How would you answer a skeptic who argues a God who simply punishes his children in Hell is sadistic and vengeful, unworthy of our worship? J. Warner responds to this objection and answers listener email related to the nature of “election”, and the evidence for “annihilationism.”

Wallace begins the podcast with intro music and intro speech that indicate he wants to the the center of attention.  And I've been accusing him of being the Arnie's Used Car Salesman of Christianity for years.

The intro also says one purpose of the podcast is to "engage" skeptics with the Christian world view, so my Christian readers should note the day i posted this rebuttal, and start counting the days, weeks, months and years that Wallace will let my rebuttal go by before he decides to live up to his promise to "engage" this skeptic.

At 4:30, Wallace invites the listener to come to his "blog", and says he would "love" to have the listener come over and join that conversation, but when one presses the "comment" button to comment on one his articles, one is taken to his Facebook page...and despite my never having violated any of Wallace's Facebook rules or Facebook's own rules, Wallace banned me several months ago from his Facebook page.

So I continue standing by my accusation that Wallace is a liar:  he says he wants to "engage" skeptics, and yet despite my never having violated any rules of conduct from Wallace or such rules required by Facebook itself, he still banned me, rather quietly, from his Facebook "blog", several months ago.  Wallace is thus a liar; when he says he would love to have the listener join his blog conversations, the unstated caveat is that you not know enough to substantially refute his beliefs.  Nothing spells "fake Christian employing typical materialistic political marketing strategy" quite like "let's ban our more informed critics, that will prevent potential customers from being dissauded from buying our product.".

And indeed, when one goes to Wallace's websites, one would think he is some ridiculous liberal who thinks God wasn't able to get His act together until Wallace began teaching Christians how to have a forensic faith.  It is not an exaggeration to say Wallace promotes his materials so relentlessly, he is making his apologetics fantasy more the center of attention than Jesus precisely because of his marketing pitch that you cannot really live up to what Jesus wants you to do without having the forensic faith that comes from purchasing Wallace's materials.

If Wallace is correct that the bible is the inerrant word of God, "sufficient" for faith and practice, then why does he so relentlessly promote, market and advertise his own opinions about what the bible means?  Why market so obstinately that today's Christians "need" his books?  If the Holy Spirit doesn't need his help, why does Wallace make it seem that he and the Holy Spirit entered a mutually beneficial marketing contract?

If we are correct to ask 1990's televangelists whether they think God cannot be activated until the evangelist recieves donations, aren't we correct to ask the same type of question of other Christians who use similar marketing gimmicks?  Sure, Wallace doesn't tell others to send in their last grocery money, but that hardly means he must be employing any more honest of a marketing ploy.  He still drowns himself in relentless ceaseless promotion of himself, and his books, and this degree of "look at me!!!" is not consistent with Wallace's alleged trust that the Holy Spirit doesn't need his help and that the bible is ALONE "sufficient' for faith and practice. 
 
Basically, the first 10 minutes of this podcast justifies more the interpretation that Wallace's first priority is Wallace, than the interpretation that Wallace's first priority is Jesus.

Wallace is never going to make God look good, no matter what excuses he puts forth to "explain" how a literal hell can be consistent with divine "love", because of one bible passage that I've been using to beat fundamentalists senseless for years, and they haven't moved even one single inch toward making this sadistic lunatic look "good", probably because common sense prevails over their theological delusions:

NAU  Deuteronomy 28:
 1 "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
 2 "All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God:
 15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
 16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
  30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
 41 "You shall have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.
 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
 63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.

Notice, the bible teaches not only that God's curses will cause men to rape women (v. 30) children to be kidnapped by sick-minded pagans (v. 41), parents to cannibalize their own children (v. 53), but that God would be just as "delighted" to cause these curses to happen, as he is "delighted" to give prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).

One fundamentalist breathed an ill-advised sigh of relieft by pointing out that nothing in the context indicates that God said this, it was only Moses doing the speaking.

I asked him which other statements Moses made about God, that this fundamentalist thinks are wrong.  He disappeared.

I can at least buy the notion that God hurts his kids in an effort to punish them or teach them, even if we today are enlightened and know that kids don't need to be abused to be disciplined.

What I cannot buy is that a god can be "good" while "delighting" to cause women who disobey the 10 commandments, to be raped.  Worse, v. 63 intentionally defines God's delight in inflicting such curses, as being the same type of "delight" he has to prosper those who obey him.  So if you think God is gleeful, happy and cheerful to grant you prosperity, you cannot subtract those emotions from him when you speak about him causing rape, kidnapping and parental cannibalism.

When you think of an ancient Hebrew woman being raped, you didn't envision God standing next to her and "delighting" to watch it, until just now, did you!

God's "delight" to cause rape rationally warrants the atheist to say "fuck you" to your bible religion and do more productive things like smashing beer cans on his forehead.

Who would you rather have babysit your kids?  Some spiritually dead dork who smashes beer cans on his head?

Or some bible-believing inerrantist who seriously thinks there are times when it can be good and moral to be happy cheerful and "delighted" to cause women to be raped, children to be kidnapped and parents to eat their kids?

Tough question, eh?  You need to weigh your pride against the obvious stupidity of allowing sadistic lunatics to babysit your kids, you cannot just suddenly give up your faith of 30 years, can you?

Go ahead, check all the Christian commentaries you please.  Let me know when you find exegetical and contextual argument that God's "delight" in v. 63 in inflicting such curses is something other than the happy gleeful cheerful "delight" this verse says he takes in prospering other people.

And if you are really stupid and insist that this is just Moses speaking with typical semitic exaggeration, let me know the critiera you use to figure out which extremist statements in the bible are mere exaggeration and rhetoric.

The Psalms magnify God and extoll his goodness like no other book in the world.  Are this book's extremist statements about God's eternal goodness also a case of mere Semitic exaggeration?  If not, why not?  Where is your sociological evidence that the only time ANE peoples exaggerated about their god, was when they were describing his wrath?

Cold Case Christianity: Is “Right” and “Wrong” Simply a Matter of “Human Flourishing”?

  J. Warner Wallace, author of "Cold Case Christianity", banned me from his Facebook page despite the fact that I did not engage in any rule violations, and so it would appear that he simply got fed up with the fact that informed bible critics like myself find it rather easy to point out the flaws in the arguments he expects his followers to be amazed at.    

I also emailed Warner, twice, with an offer to engage in a written debate with him about any apologetics topic he wished.  He never answered.

In light of this, and in light of his relentless promotion of his books, I am forced to conclude that Mr. Wallace is dishonest in the sense that he will stifle criticism of his views, where possible, if he feels that criticism is likely to reduce sales of his books.  
My answer to J. Warner Wallace's Article entitled

 Cold Case Christianity: Is “Right” and “Wrong” Simply a Matter of “HumanFlourishing”?   Posted: 24 May 2017 01:02AM PDT 

 When it comes to moral truth, where do we get our notions of right and wrong?

 Answer: Since the bible says you should raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and everybody agrees you can warp a child’s mind and morals by raising them wrong, its perfectly reasonable to conclude that we get our notions of right and wrong from the environment we were raised in.  And because all mothers will insist their babies showed unique personality characteristics as far back as birth, it would appear that some of the way we determine morals comes from our genetic predispositions.

Can we generate binding, obligatory concepts without grounding them in the nature of a Holy God?

No, what we do is talk to each other, find out who agrees with our morals, organize ourselves into cities and nations, elect leaders to pass laws consistent with the morality in our group, then tell everybody that you either conform, or face civil and criminal penalties.  On the other hand, it is the belief that obligatory moral absolutes come from God, that is precisely why fundamentalists can never resolve their disagreements with each other.  Calvinists have no problem believing it is consistent with God's love and justice for some people who die in infancy to end up in hell, while most other Christians are instinctively repelled by it.   This would provide a rational basis for dismissing the biblical view of God and thus dismissing the concept of absolute morals.  Worse, the God of the bible manifests conflicting morals within himself.  His first moral inclination is to go down the mountain and kill the disobedient Israelites, but he changes his mind after Moses talks some sense into His head:

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.

 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."

 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.

 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"

 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.

 (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

  

As an atheist, I thought so for many years. Like Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values), I argued that we can establish the moral value of any particular action by simply evaluating its impact on human well-being (something Harris typically refers to as “human flourishing”). Harris, a committed and vocal atheist, accepts the existence of objective moral truths but likens the establishment of such truths to a game of chess.

I am an atheist and I do not believe in objective morality, that is, that any morals are absolute.  I don’t know why you would ask me whether I think torturing babies for fun should is immoral.  Yes, I believe it is, but I am a human being, and a human being’s opinion does not an absolute moral make. 

In any particular game, each player must decide how to move based on the resulting effect. If you are trying to win the game, some moves are “good” and some moves are “bad”; some will lead you to victory and some will lead you to defeat. “Good” and “bad” then, are evaluated based on whether or not they accomplish the goal of winning the game. Harris redefines “good” (in the context of human beings) as whatever supports or encourages the well-being of conscious creatures; if an action increases human well-being (human “flourishing”) it is “good”, if it decreases well-being, it is “bad”.

An excellent reason to say Harris is wrong and that objective morality doesn’t exist, since obviously, what’s “good” to one person is “bad” to another, and if humans are the highest standard possible (as atheism would require), then the fact that human beings disagree on what’s good and bad is proof positive that there are no objective morals.  But lets not forget that even if we allow that Christianity is true, the god of the bible manifests conflicting morals.  In the NT, sex itself, not “illicit” sex, is still considered to be defiling and less than God’s highest good, when in fact sex is believed by most Christians to be a gift from a perfect god:

4 These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they have kept themselves chaste. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the Lamb. (Rev. 14:4 NAU)

They didn’t remain undefiled from prostitutes, but undefiled from “women”, i.e., the sex act itself, regardless of whether it takes place inside or outside the marital bond, is still considered by this biblical author to be something that “defiles” a man to a certain extent, a view totally opposed to most modern Christians who think sex within a Christian marriage is a blessing from God, and therefore hardly "defiling".  Here the Revelation-author seems to be contradicting the forthright statement in Hebrews 13:4 that marital sex does not defile.

 What, however, do we mean when we talk about “flourishing”? It’s one thing to evaluate a behavior in terms of its impact on survival, and if we are honest with one another, this is really what drives Natural Selection. But Harris recognizes survival, as a singular goal, can lead to all kinds of morally condemnable misbehavior. History is replete with examples of actions that secured the survival of one group at the immoral expense of another. Harris suggests the goal is something more; the goal is “flourishing”. Human well-being involves more than simply living, it involves living a particular way. Human flourishing comprises a particular quality of life; one in which we honor the rights of others and seek a certain kind of character in order to become a particular kind of human group that has maximized its potential. See the problem here?  Harris has already imported moral values into his model, even as he seeks to explain where these values come from in the first place. One can hardly define the “maximization” of human wellbeing without asserting a number of moral values. What, beyond mere survival, achieves our “maximization” as humans?

I agree with you that Harris is wrong to believe in objective moral values, given that atheism would logically preclude objective morals.  But I deny that the last question above is legitimate.  The whole idea that we should strive for “maximization” stems from a greedy capitalist predisposition, which has manifested its true fruits clearly for the last 100 years.  It is enough to live life where we find ourselves and solve problems in our personal circumstances (i.e., paying debts, resolving family issues).  The drive of most people to “maximize” is precisely what has turned America into the ridiculous cesspool of hedonism it is.  I say chop wood, carry water, and put down that fucking cell phone.

 What does this even mean? The minute we move from mere survival to a particular kind of “worthy” survival, we have to employ moral principles and ideas. Concepts of sacrifice, nobility and honor must be assumed foundationally, but these are not morally neutral notions. Human “flourishing” assumes a number of virtues and priorities (depending on who is defining it), and these values and characteristics precede the enterprise Harris seeks to describe. Harris cannot articulate the formation of moral truths without first assuming some of these truths to establish his definition of “flourishing”. He’s borrowing pre-existent, objective moral notions about worth, value and purpose, while holding a worldview that argues against any pre-existing moral notions.  If, as a police officer, if I was watching Harris’ chess game and observed one of the players make a “bad” move, could I arrest the player? No. the definitions of “good” and “bad” Harris offers here are morally neutral. On the other hand, if one of the players was able to successfully cheat (without detection) and managed to win the game in this manner, could we call this behavior bad? He did, after all accomplish the goal of winning the game. We can only call this behavior “bad” if we begin with a notion about winning that identifies undetected cheating as a prohibited act; a moral truth that pre-exists the “chess game” and ought to govern its moves. Even though there are times when cheating can help us win (or survive) without any physical or emotional consequence, we theists recognize we’ve done something that “damages our soul” and offends the Holy nature of God (even if our behavior goes undetected by our peers).

Again, I disagree with my fellow atheists who think objective moral values exist.  Harris is just as wrong as Barker. 

When the atheist recognizes human flourishing as something more than mere physical or emotional survival, he too acknowledges the spiritual and moral nature of our existence, as he borrows from our theistic view to construct his own.

That is perfect nonsense.  Human “flourishing” is a very subjective thing, with greedy prosperity preachers saying you aren’t really flourishing unless you are rich, and the other Christians who contend that flourishing does not involve ease and comfort in this world.  My suggestion is that it is unreasonable for Christians to think spiritually blind atheists are obligated to figure out which of the spiritually alive people got the bible wrong.  Let God's likeminded one's get their act together, THEN they can have a hope of morally obligating non-Christians to see things their way.