No biblical justification to think God lives "outside" of time

I posted this to another forum I participate in:

I don't understand why Christians put so much effort into distinguishing the eternity of heaven from the earth-based sense of temporal progression, as if there were the slightest biblically justified reason to distinguish the two as qualitatively different.

Each and every biblical description of heaven presents events taking place there as if they are just as bound to temporal chronological progression as earth-bound events are.  Servants present themselves to kings on earth, and the sons of God presented themselves before God (Job 1).

Soldiers stand before their king awaiting orders on earth, and god's demons stand before his throne awaiting orders to go make people tell lies.  1st Kings 22:19 ff

The modern Christian belief that heaven is another dimension, is not biblical.  Nothing in the bible remotely expresses or implies that heaven is some other dimension.  Flying in heaven requires wings, which indicates heaven has air (Isaiah 6:1-7).  Such a reference also logically implies gravity in heaven (i.e., the angel would fall down if he tried to fly without wings).

There's fire in heaven (Isaiah 6:6) so the second law of thermodynamics operates there too.  What was on fire was a "coal", which indicates there are sources of fuel in heaven, such as wood.  The reality of the fire logically necessitates that oxygen is in heaven too. 

That beings in heaven are limited to time-bound temporal progression is clear from the departed souls under God's altar, who complain that God is taking too long to mete out his vengeance. Revelation 6:10.

Then there's that verse that absolutel shows heaven to be bound to time, that verse that proves there's no women in heaven.  Rev. 8:1.

Christians are not saving face or winning the debate by conjuring up clever theories to reconcile biblical statements with modern physics.  The priority is not "how can we reconcile this biblical statement with obvious reality?"

The priority is "how did this biblical author intend the reader to understand this phrase?" 

A major rule of hermeneutics is to ask how the originally intended addressees would have understood the passage in question.

Christians have no hope of pretending that such pre-scientific people would have been suspicious that the above-cited passages were mere "accommodations" to the limited mental capacities of sinful man...or that heaven was a different "dimension".  It is perfectly reasonable to take such passages literally, and the only possible motive a Christian could have to insist they are mere cases of phenomenological language is a desire to promote biblical inerrancy, regardless of intellectual cost.

What Christians will never do, in ten lifetimes, is demonstrate that the above-cited skeptical interpretations of such bible verses is "unreasonable".  But if we can be reasonable to interpret those passages literally, the inerrantist is deprived of the intellectual right to insist we give him a hearing.

Perhaps the cherry on top is the Ascension of Jesus in Acts 1.  Skeptics say Jesus did this because he knew heaven was physically "up there".

Inerrantists will say "no, he knew heaven was just a different dimension not attainable by moving in any spatial direction, but he was merely accommodating himself to the false cosmological viewpoint held by his 1st century apostles".

Have fun demonstrating THAT using normative principles of hermeneutics, such as grammar, immediate context, and genre.

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:

-----------------------------


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/

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace proves the resurrection of Jesus with blind faith in bible inerrancy.

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

A Brief Review of Explanations Offered for the Resurrection (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 04 May 2018 01:01 AM PDT

 ...The following brief summary of explanatory deficiencies is excerpted from my book, Cold Case Christianity. I’ve omitted larger observations from the book related to my own case work and experience as a detective; this abbreviated list is merely a summary of the historic observations related to each explanation. A more comprehensive examination is included in the chapter explaining the process of abductive reasoning.  If we begin with a minimal list of evidences related to the Resurrection of Jesus (Jesus died on the cross and was buried, Jesus’s tomb was empty and no one ever produced His body, Jesus’s disciples believed that they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead, and Jesus’s disciples were transformed following their alleged resurrection observations), the following explanations, along with their deficiencies, must be evaluated:

...Were the Disciples Lying About the Resurrection?

1. The Jewish authorities took many precautions to make sure the tomb was guarded and sealed, knowing that the removal of the body would allow the disciples to claim that Jesus had risen (Matt. 27:62–66).

 To the contrary, Matthew 27:62 specifies that one day seperated Joseph of Arimathea's acquisition of the body and the time the guards show up at the tomb,thus a day in which anything could have happened to the body:

 57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.
 58 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.
 59 And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.
 61 And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.
 62 Now on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate,
 63 and said, "Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I am to rise again.'
 64 "Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, 'He has risen from the dead,' and the last deception will be worse than the first."
 65 Pilate said to them, "You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how."
 66 And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone.   (Matt. 27:57-66 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

2. The people local to the event would have known it was a lie

Would the people who preserved gospel histories have preserved hostile witness testimony?  Not likely.  Matthew's story about how the Jews bribed the guards to account for the missiing body by saying they were asleep when the disciples stole the body, is not preservation of hostile witnesses, it is fictional propaganda.

(remember that Paul told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 that there were still five hundred people who could testify to having seen Jesus alive after His resurrection).

remember also that Paul, who said Christ would be of no benefit to those who receive circumcision (Galatians 5:2), was willing to act in defiance of this theological truth whenever he thought lying would make things go easier between him and the Jews (Acts 16:3), despite the fact that in Acts 16:3, Paul surely knew that the Jews there were insisting on circumcision because they thought it was the basis of salvation for the Gentile (Exodus 12:48).  See Paul's willingness to lie about his true theological convictions when in the company of those he knows disagree with him (1st Cor. 9:20-21), a matter that caused Augustine and Jerome to disagree with each other.

3. The disciples lacked the motive to create such a lie (more on this in chapter 14).

 In the context of stealing a physical human body, that might be significant, but I maintain the original reports of Jesus' resurrection consisted solely of visions, which were themselves embellishments upon a gospel whose earlier form said nothing about a risen Christ appearing to anyone (Christian scholarly consensus that Mark 16 ends at v. 8).

4. The disciples’ transformation following the alleged resurrection is inconsistent with the claim that the appearances were only a lie. How could their own lies transform them into courageous evangelists?

The following passage from Acts 9 demonstrates a) after Saul converted and became Paul, he did not face persecution and threats of death fearlessly, he escaped by being lowered in a basket outside the city walls...and we also learn that the original disciples, after their experiences of seeing the risen Christ, would not believe reports that Saul the persecutor had converted, and remained fearful until Barnabas gave them concrete evidence that Saul had really converted, so this is biblical evidence that seeing the risen Christ did not transform them into "courageous evangelists":

 22 But Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ.
 23 When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him,
 24 but their plot became known to Saul. They were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death;
 25 but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.
 26 When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.
 27 But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
 28 And he was with them, moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. (Acts 9:22-28 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Did the Disciples Hallucinate the Resurrection?

1. While individuals have hallucinations, there are no examples of large groups of people having the exact same hallucination.

But a theory that the apostles experience similar hallucinations in a religiously charged context, is enough to get the cult started, even assuming they didn't share the exact same mental images.

2. While a short, momentary group hallucination may seem reasonable, long, sustained, and detailed hallucinations are unsupported historically and intuitively unreasonable.

Google the Brownsville Revival and Toronto Blessing.  Christians don't even need "visions" to get some bullshit group started.  And the famine of 43 a.d. (Acts 11:28) would motivate many starving individuals to align themselves with groups.   The notion that nothing but true miracles can explain Christianity's start in the first century, is bullshit.

3. The risen Christ was reported seen on more than one occasion and by a number of different groups (and subsets of groups). All of these diverse sightings would have to be additional group hallucinations of one nature or another.

 I don't see the implausibility of one religious fanatic causing others to get caught up in the moment and stand around convincing themselves they are all having the same experience.  Ask any group of fundamentalist Pentecostals to give you the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, and you'll find out rather quickly how 10 different people can falsely convince themselves that they are all having the same religious experience.

4. Not all the disciples were inclined favorably toward such a hallucination. The disciples included people like Thomas, who was skeptical and did not expect Jesus to come back to life.

While such stories might appear to fulfill the criteria of embarrassment, they likely were intended to make the lesson learned, all the more dramatic, and as such, they ARE something a forger would likely invent.  Thomas's doubt gives rise to the "blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed" stuff.  There is literary purpose to stories of apostolic skepticism.

5. If the resurrection was simply a hallucination, what became of Jesus’s corpse?

 It was buried in a common graveyard with other criminals' corpses.  Once again, the lack of a physical body for the early Christians wouldn't prevent them from seeing Jesus in visions (see Revelation 1:1-4).

The absence of the body is unexplainable under this scenario.

On the contrary, the hallucination hypothesis seeks only to explain the sightings.  There's plenty of historical evidence to warrant the other conclusion that the body of Jesus was disposed of in a common graveyard.

Were the Disciples Fooled by an Imposter?

1. The impersonator would have to be familiar enough with Jesus’s mannerisms and statements to convince the disciples. The disciples knew the topic of the con better than anyone who might con them.

2. Many of the disciples were skeptical and displayed none of the necessary naïveté that would be required for the con artist to succeed.

3. The impersonator would need to possess miraculous powers; the disciples reported that the resurrected Jesus performed many miracles and “convincing proofs” (Acts 1:2–3).

4. Who would seek to start a world religious movement if not one of the hopeful disciples? This theory requires someone to be motivated to impersonate Jesus other than the disciples themselves.

5. This explanation also fails to account for the empty tomb or missing body of Jesus.

I'm a skeptic, but I don't put any stock in any imposter-theory.

Were the Disciples Influenced by Limited Spiritual Sightings?

1. The theory fails to account for the numerous, divergent, and separate group sightings of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospels.

No, the theory simply doesn't believe that eveyrthing stated in the bible is true.  We don't need to "account" for all NT evidence anymore than Christians need to "account" for the lost origins of popular fairy tales, to know that they are false.

These sightings are described specifically with great detail.

The gospel authors were good storytellers.

It’s not reasonable to believe that all these disciples could provide such specified detail if they were simply repeating something they didn’t see for themselves.

But its reasonable once you remember that the problematic details were happening in 33 a.d., and had until 50 a.d. to work out the bugs and kinks before putting anything down in writing.

2. As many as five hundred people were said to be available to testify to their observations of the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:3–8).

You don't have the first clue as to whether Paul knew this by experience or hearsay, yet you continue talking of these "500 witnesses" as if they and what they saw was gospel truth.

Could all of these people have been influenced to imagine their own observations of Jesus?

Yes, read about how 120 people can experience delusions in groups, in Acts 2.

It’s not reasonable to believe that a persuader equally persuaded all these disciples even though they didn’t actually see anything that was recorded.

Let's first establish the veracity of these "500 witnesses" before we start pretending they are the crossbeam holding everything together.

3. This explanation also fails to account for the empty tomb or the missing corpse.

The hallucination hypothesis explains the sightings, not the empty tomb or missing corpse.  Those matters are answered under the theories of embellishment, since by Christian scholarly consensus, Mark is the earliest gospel and he stopped at 16:8, thus the original form of the gospel didn't tell about Jesus "appearing" to anyone, that crap was created later.

Were the Disciples’ Observations Were Distorted Later?

1. In the earliest accounts of the disciples’ activity after the crucifixion, they are seen citing the resurrection of Jesus as their primary piece of evidence that Jesus was God.

That's what they do in the Book of Acts, but this wasn't written until at least 62 a.d., at the earliest, and so the stories of the initial preaching had time to be embellished. 

From the earliest days of the Christian movement, eyewitnesses were making this claim.

Eyewitness also routinely provide alibis for their friends who are in court facing criminal charges.  You never suspected until just now that eyewitnesses might actually lie about something.  You gain nearly nothing by merely pointing out that eyewitnesses preached the resurrection at an early period.  Hell, the gnostics were early too (1st John 4:3), so what?

2. The students of the disciples also recorded that the resurrection was a key component of the disciples’ eyewitness testimony (more on this in chapter 13).

No, Mark was traditionally a student of Peter, and Mark's gospel ends at 16:8 by Christian scholarly consensus.  Apparently, when Peter was preaching in Rome with Mark walking behind him, Peter did not say anything about witnesses actually seeing a risen Christ, since otherwise Mark would surely have recorded such a thing.

3. The earliest known Christian creed or oral record (as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15) includes the resurrection as a key component.

 But the risen Christ himself makes his pre-crucifixion teachings the key component, Matthew 28:20.

4. This explanation also fails to account for the fact that the tomb and body of Jesus have not been exposed to demonstrate that this late legend was false.

You also fail to demonstrate that skeptics of Christianity in the days immediately following Jesus' death would have given two shits about the Christian claims enough to bother "exposing" it as false.  You also wrongfully trivialize the possibility that there was criticism, but like much else in early Christianity, records of such have disappeared.  I don't care of Acts has the disciples preaching the bodily resurrection of Jesus within two months after he died, Luke is a liar who embellishes details.

Were the Disciples Simply Telling the Truth?

1. This explanation has only one liability: It requires a belief in the supernatural; a belief that Jesus had the supernatural power to rise from the dead in the first place.

Wrong, that explanation has another liability, that those who believe it, accept as true that which was written by religious fanatics 2,000 years ago, whose identities cannot be established sufficiently to justify trusting them.

Every explanation offered for a particular set of facts has its own set of unique deficiencies. Even a true explanation will suffer from some apparent liability. As a cold-case detective, my cases (even those in which the defendant confessed to the crime following his conviction) have always presented unanswered questions and apparent deficiencies. Jurors were encouraged to make a decision in spite of these deficiencies by selecting the best inference from the evidence: the explanation that best explains the facts of the case while possessing the fewest liabilities.

 This juror gives the following explanation:  Most Christian scholars agree that Mark ends at 16:8, and if true, it means the the original Christian preaching did not say a risen Jesus was seen by anybody.  Christian scholars also agree in majority that Matthew and Luke borrowed substantial amounts of text from Mark, and its no coincidence that these later gospels suddenly come up with richly detailed resurrection narratives.  They certainly didn't get that shit from their source material (Mark).  They were making it up.

With that in mind, it’s important to recognize the deficiency of the Christian explanation: It requires a belief in the supernatural.

 And "supernatural" implies the existence of something whose location constitutes an incoherency: "above" nature, "beyond" nature, or "outside" of time.

For many people, this is a deal killer; this is the reason they simply cannot accept the Christian account.

For this skeptic, the incoherence of religious language is just one reason among many that break the Christian deal with me.  The others are the failure of Christians to make a good case for apostolic authorship of the gospels and the biblical silence toward most of the original 11 disciples of Jesus, when under Christian assumptions, they likely conducted ministries just as successful as Paul's.  I say Luke didn't give a shit about most of the apostles because he knew they left the faith.

But as I’ve written in the past, we cannot begin our investigation of supernatural claims (like the Resurrection) by rejecting supernaturalism from the onset.

 That's your problem:  you claim to be able to make a historical case that Jesus rose from the dead, then you admit that the case cannot be made if the investigator doesn't believe in magic.  FUCK YOU.

We cannot start with our conclusions predetermined.

Then you must have been irrational everytime you strongly suspected, but couldn't immediately prove, that somebody was lying to do.

While the Christian explanation does present a deficiency of sorts, this liability is actually a matter of presupposition rather than evidential sufficiency.

 So let's debate the presupposition.  Before we ask whether God exists, we need a working definition.  You have none.  Your bible says God is inscrutible, you describe him as filling up the universe, that he is "outside of time", that he hears your prayers but doesn't have ears, he speaks without vocal cords, he causes things to happen inside time meaning he somehow transfers back and forth between the dimension of time and the dimension of eternity.  Sorry, you lose.

James Patrick Holding fails to properly define the resurrection

This is my reply to a video by James Patrick Holding entitled

The Resurrection Series, 

Part 1A: Defining the Resurrection

Arguing to persuade a skeptic, and arguing to help those who already agree with you to feel better about their beliefs being true, are wildly different goals.  Holding apparently isn't arguing to convince skeptics, but only to help his inerrancy-salivating followers to feel more confident that what they believe is actual reality.

That is, true to Holding's consistently stated goal, he only cares about making things convincing to those who already believe.  He is thus analogous to a Mormon apologist who doesn't argue to convince non-Mormons, but only to convince those who already accept the Mormon religion.  Gee, what a tough job.

Holding might consider that if he argued for the purpose of convincing skeptics, his arguments would have to be far more powerful, and would thus have even greater potential to be found persuasive by his followers.

Holding blindly presumes, throughout the video, that if he can establish that physical resurrection was known in and before the first century, then presto, that shall be the lens through which we must interpret the NT statements about Jesus rising from the dead.  Otherwise, what was the point of establishing that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection referred to a physical body?  Why did Holding think establishing such a background was a good idea before getting to the NT statements themselves?

Holding's arguments are simplistic and do not account for the conflicting views of resurrection running loose on the ancient landscape out of which Christianity grew.

Holding starts the video with the scholarly comment that it is necessary to first define what resurrection is, which makes perfect sense...but then he kills any sense of objectivity by immediately inundating the reader with his absurd and sarcastically embellished cartoon characters allegedly representing "fundy atheists".

So Holding needs to explain why he thinks his followers, who are people he would never call stupid or gullible, can be helped toward the truth by such distracting and prejudicial imagery, when in fact such imagery clearly doesn't have relevance to the merit of his arguments.  What is it about these defamatory cartoons that Holding thinks will cause his followers to find his arguments more persuasive than if he simply presented argument alone?

Also, while Holding typically chooses nearly unlistenable Looney Tunes type music as background noise for his video replies to myself and his other critics, the background music for this particular video is much more pleasant.  His employment of psychological tricks like soft background music (reminding one of fundy churches where the soothing piano or organ music isn't heard until the altar call at the end of the sermon) would seem to indicate he thinks the Holy Spirit needs marketing gimmicks used by secular capitalists to make people buy the product.  

Holding is not alone in this, of course, modern Christianity is chock full of unnecessary bells and whistles and other inventions of unbelievers who recognize it's possible to wear down a customer's initial reluctance with such things.  If Holding seriously believed the Holy Spirit doesn't need such crap, he probably would be satisfied that the argument, alone, was sufficient.  So, Mr. Holding...does the Holy Spirit need soft music to aid in his effort to convict people of the truth, yes or no?  If not, then why DO you employ tricks of pesuasion the Holy Spirit doesn't need to do his job?

Could it be that the reason you employ such bells and whistles and other reluctance-reducing tricks is because you don't believe there is any more Holy Spirit in your propaganda than there is in the pitch of a used car salesman?  Liars have to have good memories.  Your unbeliever-status will eventually show up in your works if you don't carefully suppress it at all times.  Yes, I apply the exact same logic to other Christians, which is why I say that if Christianity is true, 99% of its followers are not genuinely born again.  Frank Turek and J. Warner Wallace market their bullshit the way Taco Bell markets tostadas, and I accuse them of the same level of hypocrisy.  Why do you put forth effort to make your presentations interesting and entertaining, if the Holy Spirit does not need such bells and whistles to do his job of teaching/convicting?

timecode 0:18-23, Holding falsely accuses atheists of defining resurrection to mean whatever they want it to mean.  That is an generalization fallacy, since while admittedly not all atheists are as scholarly as they can be, the atheists that are most vocal in their resurrection-attacks do not simply mount the pulpit and scream that resurrection was some esoteric nonsense concept.  Richard Carrier has debated resurrection apologists Mike Licona and William Lane Craig, and both times, provided an objective historical biblical basis for his definition of resurrection.

0:23-0:28, "However the Jewish contextual literature of the period describes the nature of resurrection in some detail."

Apparently Holding thinks that whatever is asserted about resurrection in Jewish contextual literature before and during the first century should control our interpretation of NT statements about Jesus' resurrection.  But it is far from certain that such Jewish contextual literature is consistent enough to justify allowing it to control biblical exegesis.  First, what rising from the dead actually is, even puzzled Jesus' original disciples, which would hardly be the case if its meaning were as "obvious" as modern western Christians think it is:

 9 As they were coming down from the mountain, He gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen, until the Son of Man rose from the dead.
 10 They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant. (Mk. 9:9-10 NAU)

Holding has a choice:  either a) the reason they discussed what rising from the dead meant, is because in the first century, Jewish conceptions of rising from the dead were inconsistent/incoherent, or b) first century Jewish conceptions of rising from the dead were consistent, they obviously refer to the physical body coming out of the grave and being physically restored,  and as a result, we have rational warrant to classify Jesus' disciples as unforgivably ignorant dolts for not even being aware of basic Jewish religious concepts...a characteristic that operates to impeach their general credibility...which reduces the factual force of their alleged "Jesus is risen!" proclamations later (which is to merely pour salt in the wound, since despite Jesus having 12 apostles (Matthew 10:2 ff) , 70 lower ranking disciples (Luke 10:1 ff) and some 500 people who saw him risen all at once (1st Cor. 15:6), the only resurrection accounts in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form are Matthew, John and Paul (and that's generously granting absurdly dubious assumptions of apostolic authorship of the gospels which I am otherwise prepared to destroy).

Apparently, God was not a Christian apologist in the first century, as he didn't give a fuck about preserving the resurrection testimony of 497 of the 500 alleged eyewitnesses, d espite modern apologists who believe God is moving through them as they tirelessly tout the virtues of eyewitness reporting.

If Holding acknowledges that Jewish concepts about many subjects were inconsistent and confusing (i.e., who the messiah is, when he will arrive, what he will do, what events will precede his coming, how many books should be in the inspired OT canon, etc, etc) why does he pretend that Jewish concepts of resurrection would be helpful background to understanding the specific nuance of resurrection promoted by NT authors?

The Sadducees also had a concept of resurrection:  it was false doctrine (Matthew 22:23) (their OT canon was limited to the books authored by Moses, that's why, despite the fact that Jesus could have cited to Daniel 12 when answering a Sadducee challenge to the resurrection, he limited himself to a quotation from Exodus 3:6, since his opponents denied the canonicity of all OT books outside those authored by Moses).

 23 On that day some Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) came to Jesus and questioned Him,
 24 asking, "Teacher, Moses said, 'IF A MAN DIES HAVING NO CHILDREN, HIS BROTHER AS NEXT OF KIN SHALL MARRY HIS WIFE, AND RAISE UP CHILDREN FOR HIS BROTHER.'
 25 "Now there were seven brothers with us; and the first married and died, and having no children left his wife to his brother;
 26 so also the second, and the third, down to the seventh.
 27 "Last of all, the woman died.
 28 "In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be? For they all had married her."
 29 But Jesus answered and said to them, "You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God.
 30 "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
 31 "But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God:
 32 'I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB '? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
 33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching. (Matt. 22:23-33 NAU)

Needless to say, Jesus' was squeezing blood out of a turnip in squeezing resurrection out of Exodus 3:6, as God's nature would require that he doesn't stop being the God of Abraham just because Abraham died (Romans 14:9).  Yet Jesus argues that God is not a god of the dead (v. 33).

Needless also to say, Jesus, as might be expected, evaded the point:  The issue was not whether God was a god of the dead or the living or both, and the issue wasn't whether Abraham and the others continued conscious existence beyond the grave.  The issue was resurrection from the dead (which according to Holding and his Jewish sources has to do with the dead physical body coming back to life).  And yet Jesus apparently thought Exodus 3:6 was "regarding the resurrection of the dead" (Matthew 23:31).

It is not without violent force that liberals and skeptics assert the subjective confusing manner of
interpretation adopted by Jesus and the NT authors.  Jesus could probably find dvd discs in Deuteronomy.

0:40-0:45 - "Not surprisingly, our first stop is in the Old Testament".

First, correct, coming from a false Christian like Holding who in truth doesn't believe Jesus rose from the dead (he only bothers with Christianity because it gives him numerous opportunities to revel in his sinful desire to talk shit about everything he disagrees with), it is not surprising that Holding gives exegetical first place to the older light,  when in fact common sense says it is the later light (i.e., the NT) that would provide the more comprehensive and accurate definition of resurrection, especially in light of the fact established above, that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection were not consistent.

Second, it is funny that any professing 'Christian' apologist should start their definition of resurrection with Daniel, when in fact literal resurrection was allegedly performed by Elijah and Elisha:

Elijah, who was apparently a necrophiliac pedophile since God wouldn't require you to physically lay on a child merely to resurrect the kid.  From 1st Kings 17:

 21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD and said, "O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child's life return to him."
 22 The LORD heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.
 23 Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother; and Elijah said, "See, your son is alive."

Elisha appears to be a more perverted necrophiliac pedophile, as the way he laid on the child is described with greater unnecessary detail:

 33 So he entered and shut the door behind them both and prayed to the LORD.
 34 And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth and his eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands, and he stretched himself on him; and the flesh of the child became warm. (2 Ki. 4:33-34 NAU)

Did appropriation of God's resurrection power require that this man physically lay on this child in such disgusting close intimacy?

What would you think of a Christian doctor who came out to your house, and said he could effect a divine cure for your 5 year old son's flu by laying on his body and putting his mouth on the child's mouth?

Isn't it funny that as long as its not sources from the bible, you agree with all skeptics that such acts are total bullshit?

Holding then quotes Daniel 12:2-3 and Isaiah 26:19.

At 1:00 ff, he also quotes Ezekiel 37:5-9.

1:09 ff, "these three passages, especially Ezekiel, are programmatic.  Clearly some sort of physical body is involved in these descriptions."

 Unfortunately, other conservative Protestant Evangelical inerrantist Christian scholars admit that whether Ezekiel intends anything like the resurrection in 1st Cor. 15, is a matter of scholarly dispute, and so Holding is, again, guilty of falsely pretending that ambiguous bible texts "clearly" teach whatever he says they teach. L. E. Cooper says:

This literature presented its message in symbols and visions whose meanings were not immediately apparent...

 (yet Holding just quoted Ezekiel 37 with little commentary to the viewer, as if he expects the meaning of the passage to be immediately apparent)

...Regarding the resurrection of the dead, there is nothing in the Old Testament that can compare to New Testament passages like 1 Cor 15:1–58. Most interpreters agree that teaching a doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was not the main point of Ezek 37. Zimmerli denies any thought in the passage of the resurrection of individuals. Wevers also denies any hint of the resurrection in vv. 1–14 but does acknowledge the belief that Yahweh was the author of life, and the possibility of the resurrection is left open. Cooke simply said that the passage referred to the “present state of the living, not to the future state of the dead.” But then he admitted that vv. 1–14 must have contributed to the development of the resurrection ideas in the Old Testament, especially in its most highly developed expression in Dan 12:2–3.62
Hals similarly noted that only a national resurrection was in view but admitted he found curious the imagery of vv. 1–14 portrayed on the wall of a synagogue in Dura-Europos as an illustration of the promise of resurrection from the grave.
Several interpreters deny the possibility that Ezekiel would have been aware of a developed concept of the resurrection of the human body as we already have noted. Death in most of the Old Testament was viewed as an impossible situation from which there was no return. All who died went to the grave called sheol from which no one returned. Hals was therefore surprised by the imagery of vv. 1–14, which obviously rose above this view of death.64
Ezekiel’s primary purpose was not to teach a doctrine of the resurrection. The main purpose of the vision was the restoration of Israel.
Cooper, L. E. (2001, c1994). Vol. 17: Ezekiel (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 319). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

But apparently, Holding disagrees with other inerrantist Christian scholars and thinks the meaning of Ezekiel's vision is "immediately apparent".  Fundy exegesis does that to your brain.  All the scholars who agree with you are smart guys.  All the scholars who disagree with you are just stupid morons.

And lets not forget the type of people Holding is depending on, since their ways would strongly suggest under NT criteria that they were not inspired by the God who works in the lives of today's western Christians:

Isaiah - ran naked through the streets of Jerusalem, apparently thinking the dolts to receive the message wouldn't get the point unless he made it in an absurdly graphic way that was horrifically shameful in that culture:

 2 at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, "Go and loosen the sackcloth from your hips and take your shoes off your feet." And he did so, going naked and barefoot.
 3 And the LORD said, "Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush,
 4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. (Isa. 20:2-4 NAU)

Ezekiel - thought God wanted him to eat paper:

 1 Then He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel."

 2 So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll.

 3 He said to me, "Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you." Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.   (Ezek. 3:1-3 NAU)

He uses a sword to cut off his beard, then burns and plays with the hairs:

 1 "As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair.

 2 "One third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them.

 3 "Take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes.

 4 "Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel. (Ezek. 5:1-4 NAU)

He opposes God’s command that he bake bread over human dung, so God changes his mind and decides cow dung will suffice, and Ezekiel goes along with the change:

12 "You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung."

13 Then the LORD said, "Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them."

14 But I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth."

15 Then He said to me, "See, I will give you cow's dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread."  (Eze 4:12-15 NAU)

He lays on his side for more than a year, then his other side for 40 days, all just to make a point:

 4 "As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it.

 5 "For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

 6 "When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year. (Ezek. 4:4-6 NAU)

Then he gives a speech wherein he uses unnecessarily graphic sexual language to condemn sin (if your child is reading this with you, send him out of the room first):

 17 Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust.

 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister.

 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt.

 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. (Ezek. 23:17-21 NIV)

Inerrantist commentaries agree "emission" is nothing other than explicit sexual imagery:

Also Judah’s political prostitution was presented in explicit sexual terminology. This idolatry produced the same revulsion by God that prompted him to annihilate their forefathers in the wilderness for the worship of the gods of Egypt (v. 21; Exod 32:11–18). Judah lusted for her lovers whose “genitals were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of horses” (v. 20). These proverbial phrases were intended to show divine contempt for those attracted by the military power portrayed by reference to sexual potency.

Cooper, L. E. (2001, c1994). Vol. 17: Ezekiel, New American Commentary

If you saw such a man doing these things in a time and circumstance where your apologetics defense mechanisms were not on red alert, you would have no trouble agreeing with everybody else that this man doesn't have the least bit of credibility and is suffering from a mental illness or is seriously stoned on drugs…or likely both.  But no, this crap is "in the bible", so surely it must be good and wise.

1:30 ff, Holding hypocritically cites intertestamental literature of 4th Ezra and 1st Enoch as if it was assuredly reliable for telling about Jewish views on resurrection, despite his other belief that these works were not reliable enough to deserve being placed in the biblical canon.

What Holding doesn't tell you is that there was an extensive literature produced by Jews up to the first century, and resurrection of the body was just one of many different conflicting evolving ideas floating around in such Jewish lore.  It would thus appear that original Christianity was nothing more than one of the many ways Judaism continued to evolve with its ever-changing fairy tales.

Holding cites to 4th Ezra, what he doesn't do is give you the context, for had he done so, the credibility of that source would have been called into question:

4Ezr 7:28-       For my son the Messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years.

4Ezr 7:29-       And after these years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath.

4Ezr 7:30-       And the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginnings; so that no one shall be left.

4Ezr 7:31-       And after seven days the world, which is not yet awake, shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish.

4Ezr 7:32-       And the earth shall give up those who are asleep in it, and the dust those who dwell silently in it; and the chambers shall give up the souls which have been committed to them.

4Ezr 7:33-       And the Most High shall be revealed upon the seat of judgment, and compassion shall pass away, and patience shall be withdrawn;

4Ezr 7:34-       but only judgment shall remain, truth shall stand, and faithfulness shall grow strong.

4Ezr 7:35-       And recompense shall follow, and the reward shall be manifested; righteous deeds shall awake, and unrighteous deeds shall not sleep.

Notice the errors of the Ezra author, which impeach his credibility on theological matters too:

7:29, all humanity will die around the time that the Messiah does.
7:30, the world at the time of the Messiah's and everybody else's death will revert to the silent way it was in primeval times, this is phrase in absolutes: "no one shall be left".  Yet obviously humanity didn't die off when Jesus died.
7:30, this primeval state will last for 7 days, but the NT does not teach any 7 day period in which all humanity is dead before the general resurrection.

As far as 1st Enoch 51, R.H. Charles says

"Conflicting views are advanced on the Messiah, the Messianic kingdom, the origin of sin, Sheol, the final judgement, the resurrection, and the nature of the future life."  (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English : with introductions and critical and explanatory notes to the several books. by Charles, R. H. (Robert Henry), 1855-1931. Apocryphile Press Edition, 2004, p. 164)

2nd Baruch says the resurrection will not change the form of the person, (50:2) and in context, that meant that just as the earth received the body, so shall the body also rise restored from the earth.  This is in conflict with Paul's doctrine of the resurrection which knows of no period of resurrected state before the change, but that the resurrection would BE the change:

 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed,
 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
 53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. (1 Cor. 15:51-53 NAU)

Also, Holding gave the citations to the intertestamental literature in the following order:

4 Ezra 7:32

1 Enoch 51:1

Sib. Or. IV

2 Baruch 50:2ff

Pseudo-Phocylides 103-4

What's interesting is that some person going under the pseudonym Socraticknight posted these references in this exact same order, on a webpage discussing the 2006 Craig-Ehrman resurrection debate:

Socratricknight said...
Evidence for the physical resurrection (as a back drop for the physical resurrection of Jesus the Christ), from other Jewish scriptures:
C) Psydo- writings
a. 4 Ezra 7:32 The earth shall restore those who sleep in her, and the dust those who rest in it, and the chambers those entrusted to them.
b. 1 Enoch 51:1 In those days, the earth will also give back what has been entrusted to it, and Sheol will give back what it has received, and hell will give back what it owes.
c. Sib. Or. IV ...God Himself will refashion the bones and ashes of humans and raise up mortals as they were before.
d. 2 Baruch 50:2ff For certainly the earth will then restore the dead. It will not change their form, but just as it received them, so it will restore them.
e. Pseudo-Phocylides 103-4 ...we hope that the remains of the departed will soon come to light again out of the earth. And afterward, they will become gods.

Socraticknight's bio is as follows:

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Apparently, Holding is either stealing somebody else's work, or Socraticknight is some of the force behind the omniscient Mr. Holding.  The order isn't likely a coincidence.  But that unfortunately means that this Socraticknight, who seems to be courteous and professional, is willing to partner with the despicable Mr. Holding who never graduated Christian ethics kindergarten.

If Mr. Socraticknight is reading this, he might wish to read some of my documented evidence that Holding's moral failures disqualify him, under NT criteria, from any teaching position.

Nobody doubts that a concept of physical resurrection existed in first-century religion.  Yes, the skeptics who allocate it all into the spiritual category are wrong.  But that hardly makes the fatal problems in the NT concepts of resurrection suddenly disappear.

2:10 ff, Holding then concludes on these historical grounds that "resurrection was a physical event involving the bodies of the deceased in real time.  Second, it was a restoration of the body the person had in life, using the same material, or stuff the body was made of.  This is clearly what we find described in the New Testament gospels.:"

First, Holding only derives the conclusion about physicality by ignoring the Sadducees who denied the resurrection in full. It is far from obvious that their denial of this and their 5-book canon constituted error. Pharisaic Judaism became more popular, of course, but popularity doesn't determine truth.  I suppose Holding avoided mentioning the Sadducees because

• to mention them is to allow his viewers to ask the question of how these particular Jews could deny a resurrection theory that Holding pretends was such an obvious clear staple of normative Judaism...
• thus leading to questions about Judaism itself being nothing more than a ceaselessly evolving religion...
• thus leading to the conclusion that what the ancient Jews thought about resurrection is too ambiguous and inconsistent to qualify as the interpretive lens through which Holding apparently thinks the NT resurrection claims should be viewed.

Second, regarding Holding's statement that resurrection was of the same "stuff" the earthly body had been made of, Mike Licona was clobbered to death on that point by Greg Cavin, goto time-code 137:15, where Cavin drills Licona on the point and demonstrates how deceptively vacuous the term "resurrected body" really is.  No wonder Cavin called it a "pixie dust" theory.  We may as well talk about Tinkerbell's magic glitter, and how it really can change a frog into a prince even though we cannot provide adequate or coherent descriptions of what it is or how it works.

Third, Holding boasts that this physical resurrection is "clearly" what we find described in the NT gospels, but while it cannot be denied they sometimes specify that Jesus appeared to them physically (Luke 24:39, John 20:27), the gospels are not consistent in this regard:

a) Matthew admits in 28:17 that some of the 11 "doubted", the only other place this Greek word distazo appears in the NT is Matthew 14:31, where Jesus rebukes Peter for lacking minimally sufficient faith, strongly arguing that in 28:17, the same author Matthew intended to convey that some of the 11 lacked minimally sufficient faith to see what the rest of the group were "seeing", suggesting that to see what the others were seeing, required minimally sufficient faith, and thus this Jesus could not be physically seen.

b) Luke strangely asserts in 24:16 that the reason the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn't notice that the stranger walking with them was Jesus, was because some supernatural power was preventing them from recognizing him.  Luke likes this motif, divinely caused stupidity is also asserted in 9:45 and 18:34.  One inerrantist Christian scholar tries to make a serious point where it is impossible to do so:

The passive “were kept from recognizing” is a divine passive, i.e., God kept them from recognizing Jesus . This lack of recognition allowed Jesus to teach the necessity of his death and resurrection and to show how this was the fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 24:25–27).
Stein, R. H. (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 610). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

That makes no sense, since in light of his allegedly three year ministry beforehand, Jesus taught the necessity of his death and resurrection and to show how this was the fulfillment of scripture.  Disguising himself would do little more than cause the skeptical disciples to write him off as just another follower with a theory, while if Jesus taught these things after convincing them it was really him, risen from the dead, these "lessons" would be etched into their memories more deeply.

c) Luke 24:31 says when they finally recognized him, he vanished from their sight.  Unfortunately 1) the idea that a physical body could just vanish is for good reason limited solely to cartoons and other fictions, such a feat is contrary to the same daily experience creationists tell us to rely on when they say "we know" that life doesn't ever come from non-life, and vanishing constitutes an incoherent idea regardless, especially in this context where it is allegedly a physical body that disappears.

If you told somebody that the gallon of milk you were carrying home from the store suddenly 'vanished', even fanatically obsessed apologists who go around trying to make the case for miracles, would harbor initial skepticism, knowing, like David Hume, that this kind of crap doesn't happen and therefore either you are lying or deluded, 2) if you were watching a criminal trial in which a man was being prosecuted for theft and the only witness against him said that while the thief was standing two feet in front of the witness, he just vanished and suddenly wasn't there anymore, would you strongly suspect the witness has severe credibility problems?  Or would you want the judge to instruct the jury that they are allowed to infer the supernatural if they feel the Defendant used supernatural power in the commission of the crime?

d) the same problem of physical humans doing that which is physically impossible appears in John 20:26, where Jesus materializes inside a closed room.  The only reason anybody thinks this crap plausible is because they've been conditioned to accept it as plausible by watching too many cartoons, movies, and reading too many fiction books.

e) for those who think Mark is the author of Mark 16:9-20, this text blatantly asserts that after Jesus appeared to Mary, he appeared to the disciples "in another form":

 9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.
 10 She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping.
 11 When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.
 12 After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. (Mk. 16:9-12 NAU)

The Greek word for 'form' is morphe, and means form or shape and most inerrantist scholars think it means "what a thing really is as opposed to what it looks like" when it is used in Philippians 2:6 to say that Jesus was in the "form" of God.  So apparently this physically resurrected Jesus also had the cartoon-attribute of changing his physical attributes and so disguise himself so convincingly that not even those closest to him for the last three years would recognize it was him.

In summary,

• Holding blindly and falsely assumes that pre-Christian concepts of resurrection were consistent, they were not.  
• He also assumes OT texts like Ezekiel 37 have a meaning that is apparent on their face, when other inerrantist Christian scholars deny this is the case.  
• He seems to think that because the NT gospels at certain times speak about a physically resurrected Jesus, a physically resurrected Jesus is the only way they describe him, which is also untrue. 
• Holding doesn't deal with something any alleged "apologist" should have dealt with, the problem of the resurrection definition being fallaciously question begging by necessitating belief in other things for which there is no evidence, such as physical bodies that can vanish like cartoon characters. To say the resurrected body is "physical" means nothing if this must be qualified to mean that the body doesn't age, doesn't get hurt, can disappear, float, etc.
• Finally, he violated the order of exegesis required by the resurrected Jesus, for while Holding wished to start with sources other than the NT, the resurrected Jesus's explanation of pre-Christian concepts of resurrection is the logical place for the "bible-believing" inerrantist to start (Luke 24:27), as in the Christian world view, Jesus is the "later light", there is no more authoritative definition for anything, than the definition Jesus himself gives.

But if, like Holding, you aren't really a Christian in the first place, and you simply side with Christianity because doing so gives you something to bitch about,  you aren't likely to view the NT as the interpretive lens through which to see the OT, you are likely to invert this divine method of exegesis.

My rebuttal to Kalam, posted to NAMB Apologetics

Here's what I posted over at NAMB's Apologetics Blog:
--------------

Dr. Craig states the Kalam's first premise as follows:
"Everything that begins to exist has a cause." 

There is no evidence that anything has ever "began to exist", except in the sense of rearranging pre-existing atoms.
Rearranging pre-existing atoms is seen every day, cars, babies, books, etc.  These all 'come into existence' only in the sense that they make use of pre-existing matter.   

But that is not the sense Craig and most apologists intend in Kalam's first premise.  Otherwise they'd merely be saying rearrangements of pre-existing atoms requires a cause, which is hardly controversial and proves nothing. 

The sense they intend is "the beginning of the existence of new matter must have a cause".
THAT sense is not confirmed by any scientific evidence.  We have no evidence that matter itself was ever created, or ever once didn't exist; we only have evidence that matter, already existing, rearranges itself into new configurations.  

Therefore, the first premise of Kalam appears certainly false, and as such, the whole of the argument topples, and as such, Kalam does not require a beginning to the universe.  Our intuitions about things needing a beginning never arise from observed instances of creation of new matter, but only arise from observed instances of pre-existing matter being continuously reconfigured.  Hence, our intuitions do NOT tell us that matter *itself* ever had to "come from" anywhere.

my reply to 60 Second Bible Answers-Why does God command Genocide in the Bible?

Here are my replies to Pastor Paul Jennings of Stockport Evangelical Church, who tried, in a 60-second Youtube video, to defend the Copan/Flanagan thesis that the divine commands in the bible to slaughter women and children did not result in the killing of any women and children.

Jennings refused to answer my questions directly and simply contented himself largely with hiding behind a rather lengthy quote from William Lane Craig which raised the off-topic point that atheists have no justification for moral indignation toward other life forms.  Apparently exasperated, Jennings, indicated in his last comment that he felt whatever he had to say could always be responded to and thus lead to an endless discussion he didn't have time for. 

=================================

Barry Jones1 week ago

If the promised land was well watered with vegetation to accommodate these staples of ANE life, then wouldn't making the pagans flee to outside the promised land, constitute forcing them to resettle in parched arid desert of far less water and vegetation? MOving would mean losing everything they had and increasing the likelihood that they would starve or thirst to death, as the Israelites complained about during the exodus, would it not? In which case, your attempt to use the "give them a chance to flee" stuff actually makes God a greater moral monster than if he just required all Canaanites be killed. Really now, when you read the Pentateuch, do you ever get the idea that God would have the least bit of tolerance for the pagan acts which the bible characterizes as abominations? God would mercifully give the pagans a chance to perform their abominations outside the promised land?

Stockport Evangelical Church1 week ago

Barry Jones Nice try! Geographically speaking, Israel is in an area known as the Fertile Crescent. So unless the canaanites fled to the desert that the Israelites had just come from, which would involve them fleeing through the Israelie army, rather than from them, thats not too likely. Secondly, God is going to punish people for their sin, because He is a holy God, whether they are canaanites, Jews, Christians...whatever! So it is not because they were either in that land or out of it, its the fact they are still sinning against Him.

Barry Jones5 days ago

Mr. Jennings,

When Saul obeyed the divine order to slaughter Amalekites (1st Samuel 15:2-3 ff) he pursued the Amalekites as far as Shur, see v. 7. That means Saul pursued them to a place that was situated between Egypt's outer western territory and the promised land's western border.

Here's the problem: Shur was apparently a waterless desert that was part of Isreal's Exodus wilderness wanderings, such that thirst could only be remedied by divine miracle, Exodus 15:22. Every other time the bible mentions "Shur", it is a place that is not desired. Hagar was by a spring on water not in Shut but ON THE WAY to Shur (Gen. 16:7). Abraham settled BETWEEN Kadesh and Shur; (Gen. 20:1). Ishmael similarly settled in the same general area just before entering Shur (25:18). Shur is a desert wasteland with no water (Ex. 15:22, supra). The Amalekites who escaped Saul in 15:7, apparently regrouped, but when David meets them for battle, they are found not IN, but NEAR "Shur", 1st Sam. 27:8.

If the consistent biblical witness is historically and geographically accurate, this "Shur" was parched arid land utterly inhospitable to life. That is, Saul put Amalekites and their kids in the position of slowly starving/thirsting to death (or facilitating death by disease, since hunger and thirst would also inhibit the immune system), and Apologist Glenn Miller cites the inhospitable ANE as the reason why immediately slaughtering the Amalekite children was more humane.

Another possible definition of "Shur" in scholarship is the one that says this was a place of Egyptian fortresses, what Egypt would logically do with its military to protect its borders from invaders.

If that is the particular "Shur" to which Saul chased the Amalekites, then Saul was chasing them toward another enemy (If apologists are correct to say Amalekites were incorrigible brutes, Egypt would resist them with military force too, and not exactly bring camel loads of food and water), in which case Saul, a military leader, surely knew that chasing the Amalekites so close to Egyptian fortresses would subject Amalekites to further battle with Pharaoh, likely making the allegedly incorrigible Amalekites even more desperately barbaric to plunder any smaller bands or groups that might be found traveling along the way, so they could to avoid being wiped out by Egypt in that generally inhospitable region.

That is, the two most popular scholarly opinions about this "Shur" each does a fair job of justifying the theory that Saul intended for Amalekites to suffer a slow miserable death.

And apparently you didn't notice: the thesis of Copan and Flannagan, that pagans who chose to flee would not be wiped out, is disproved by Saul's chasing them such a great distance from Havilah to Shur, and one conservative Christian inerrantist commentator says Saul's "ambush" in 1 Sam. 15:5, 7 was intended to trap and kill any Amalekites who tried to flee the battle:

"His troops were now poised for a frontal attack on the major Amalekite settlement as well as an attack on the Amalekites attempting to escape the main Israelite force..." Bergen, R. D. (2001, c1996). Vol. 7: 1, 2 Samuel (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 169). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

For these reasons, I believe apologists are incorrect when they say the genocide-thesis is unreasonable and unscholarly. The more you have God intending only to "dispossess", the more this God appears willing to subject women and children to a method of dying involving far more misery and suffering than simple death-by-sword.

Stockport Evangelical Church5 days ago

Wow! That's a lot of copying and pasting! So Shur is an inhospitable land where no one can live, or survive, apart from the Egyptians, apparently! The video and remember, these are '60 second' answers...not in depth apologetics, concerns the accused genocide of the Canaanites by Joshua, not warfare by King Saul. Try and stay on topic...

Barry Jones3 days ago

If you believe you can defend the Copan/Flannagan thesis somewhat more in-depth than in a 60-second answer, contact me at my blog and we can discuss it there, or at any internet location of your choice. http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

First, the Egyptians did not live in "Shur", what they did was build military outposts between Egypt and Shur.

Second, it wouldn't matter if the Egyptians did live in Shur; they were a more advanced well-connected nation who could afford to take the supplies necessary to live there. This wouldn't change the fact that Shur was a waterless wasteland that would have caused the Israelites to die of thirst were it not for a miracle of God (Exodus 15:22). So if God intended for the Amalekites to be shooed into Shur, this would be a greater cruelty than death by sword.

Third, it doesn't matter if you are correct about Joshua never being commanded by God to commit genocide...the case of Saul and the Amalekites in 1st Samuel 15 shows God being sadistic toward Amalekite children nonetheless. If you think God didn't intend any cruelty to the Amalekites in 1st Samuel 15, maybe you'd like to do a 60-second video on that?

Fourth, there are absurdities and unlikelihoods in the book of Joshua. If the Canaanites were as evil as you say, how could Joshua's spies be so willing to spare Rahab and her house, when the only sign of her "faith" and turning from their allegedly evil ways was her willingness to save her own skin by helping the Hebrews successfully attack Jericho?

Fifth, my argument for divine genocide by citing the case of Saul is not off-topic. You were answering the question of whether God commanded genocide, and you chose to delimit your answer to the general question with the particular case of Joshua. The case of Joshua does not tell us what was true in the case of God, Saul and the Amalekites which occurred 400 years later. You cannot resolve the problem of biblical genocide by citing to the instance of Joshua

And I have to wonder why you have a problem with Canaanites burning their children to death anyway: Your God neither expresses nor implies any other method of executing a girl except by burning, should she lose her virginity while living in her father's house, Lev. 21:9. There's also no expression or implication of stoning to death first, in Genesis 38:24, where Judah's reaction to a girls' alleged sexual immorality is to demand that the girl be burned to death.

Some would argue that one's beliefs or motives don't matter; if you think it good to burn a child to death for any reason, you are just as sick in the head as any Canaanite who did this in effort to appease Molech. That would follow under Christian assumptions, so the problem remains for you even if you are correct that atheists cannot justify their own morality.

Why limit yourself to 60 seconds? Is that about all you can manage? Or are you just marketing your videos to the modern attention-deficit culture who cant' stay tuned to any subject longer than 60 seconds?

Stockport Evangelical Church3 days ago

Not all our videos are 60 seconds, there are over 1,000 videos on this channel that cover a multitude of topics, from Bible translation, to healthy relationships. But the purpose of this playlist is, yes, primarily engage with "modern attention-deficit culture who cant' stay tuned to any subject longer than 60 seconds!" If you don't like that approach, I would suggest you don't watch this playlist! With regard to longer answers in which I can deal with your presuppositions, particularly with regard to the Copan/Flanagan thesis, I guess I would cite Dr William Lane Craig's response:

"I find it ironic that atheists should often express such indignation at God’s commands, since on naturalism there’s no basis for thinking that objective moral values and duties exist at all and so no basis for regarding the Canaanite slaughter as wrong. As Doug Wilson has aptly said of the Canaanite slaughter from a naturalistic point of view, “The universe doesn’t care.” So at most the non-theist can be alleging that biblical theists have a sort of inconsistency in affirming both the goodness of God and the historicity of the conquest of Canaan. It’s an internal problem for biblical theists, which is hardly grounds for moral outrage on the part of non-theists. If there is an inconsistency on our part, then we’ll just have to give up the historicity of the narratives, taking them as either legends or else misinterpretations by Israel of God’s will. The existence of God and the soundness of the moral argument for His existence don’t even come into play. The topic of God’s command to destroy the Canaanites was the subject of a very interesting exchange at the Evangelical Philosophical Society session last November at the Society of Biblical Literature Convention in Atlanta. Matt Flannagan defended the view put forward by Paul Copan in his Is God a Moral Monster? that such commands represent hyperbole typical of Ancient Near Eastern accounts of military conquests. Obviously, if Paul is right about this, then the whole problem just evaporates. But this answer doesn’t seem to me to do justice to the biblical text, which seems to say that if the Israeli soldiers were to encounter Canaanite women and children, they should kill them (cf. Samuel’s rebuke of Saul in I Sam. 15.10-16). Old Testament scholar Richard Hess took a different line in his paper: he construes the commands literally but thinks that no women and children were actually killed. All the battles were with military outposts and soldiers, where women and children would not have been present. It is, in fact, a striking feature of these narratives that there is no record whatsoever that women or children were actually killed by anyone. Still, even if Hess is right, the ethical question remains of how God could command such things, even if the commands weren’t actually carried out. Whether anyone was actually killed is irrelevant to the ethical question, as the story of Abraham and Isaac illustrates. So even if Copan is right, I’m still willing to bite the bullet and tackle the tougher question of how an all-good, all-loving God could issue such horrendous commands. My argument in Question of the Week #16 is that God has the moral right to issue such commands and that He wronged no one in doing so. I want to challenge those who decry my answer to explain whom God wronged and why we should think so. As I explained, the most plausible candidate is, ironically, the soldiers themselves, but I think that morally sufficient reasons can be provided for giving them so gruesome a task. There is one important aspect of my answer that I would change, however. I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God’s command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land. It was the land that was (and remains today!) paramount in the minds of these Ancient Near Eastern peoples. The Canaanite tribal kingdoms which occupied the land were to be destroyed as nation states, not as individuals. The judgment of God upon these tribal groups, which had become so incredibly debauched by that time, is that they were being divested of their land. Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples. It is therefore completely misleading to characterize God’s command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. There may have been no non-combatants killed at all. That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined. Such scenes may have never taken place, since it was the soldiers who remained to fight. It is also why there were plenty of Canaanite people around after the conquest of the land, as the biblical record attests. No one had to die in this whole affair. Of course, that fact doesn’t affect the moral question concerning the command that God gave, as explained above. But I stand by my previous answer of how God could have commanded the killing of any Canaanites who attempted to remain behind in the land."

If you wish to understand what Theologians call the Civil Law and/or the Moral Law found in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) I would recommend John Wesley's Notes on the Old Testament, which are available for free, online. Beyond entering into personal and frequent dialogue with you which (as a full-time Pastor and busy Father of five) I do not have the time to do, the only other option I can give, is that you visit our church and attend the meetings! I feel I have done justice to your questions with reasonable responses, but I cannot continue to endlessly answer specific (and sometimes off topic questions), when they are always going to be followed by another question. I also try not to let one person dominate the page...so, with all due respect, I thank you for your comments and hope my answers have been helpful.

Barry Jones5 minutes ago

Thank you for honestly admitting that your purpose on this channel is to engage with modern attention-deficit culture who can’t stay turned to any subject longer than 60 seconds”.

Your citation to Craig’s observation that atheism cannot justify moral indignation, remains a fallacious red herring even if Craig's arguments are correct. Us atheists have common ground with most modern Christians, we both automatically abhor a culture who treats their people the way Moses and Joshua treated the Canaanites. When us atheists therefore point out that God ordered the slaughter of children, we are bringing up for Christians a matter in their own bible that they quite naturally find repulsive, and the goal is to get the Christian to admit some of God’s ethics in the OT are contradictory to some NT ethics.

Exactly whether and how an atheist could rationally justify expressing moral indignation toward another atheist’s actions in an atheist universe, might be an interesting topic, but is not the issue here... though I am willing to explain to you how an atheist universe allows rational justification for its life-forms to accuse each other of immorality. We can debate that elsewhere, the problems with your genocidal god are quite enough for this particular discussion.

No, the whole problem does not evaporate if Paul’s thesis about Israelites imitating pagan literary methods of exaggeration is correct. If there is any historicity to the narratives at all, Moses and Joshua slew plenty of women and children in their lifetimes, even if the absolute wording in their war-records is “exaggeration”. The boxer who says “I’m going to slaughter you” is exaggerating, but that doesn’t mean he plans to entirely refrain from inflicting serious injury nonetheless.

Craig trots out the old “God-has-the-right-to-take-life” argument, but in actual fact, my criticism of OT ethics draws the conclusion that there is no ‘god’ inspiring the OT prophets or military leaders, rather, these people simply knew what all ANE groups knew, to acquire land and resources was key to survival, and most of the “god-told-us-to-do-it” stuff is later interpolation by the editors who patched these various barbaric strands of Hebrew history together.

And if you'd suspect a man of insanity for intentionally burning down his house and destroying everything he and his family own once per year just because he has the "right", then the fact that God has the "right" to take life, does not mean all exercises of that right are legitimately free from criticism. I have the "right" to swat flies, but what would you think if I took a flyswatter and just walked through my neighborhood trying to swat every fly I could see? Does my "right" to do this, insulate my actions from moral criticism? No.

Craig says “Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated.” Well gee, given the harsh realities of the ANE and life within the allegedly “promised” land, we can expect that those most likely to stay behind would be those most unable to flee the battle…women and children, and further, that they would naturally move over to their cities’ military posts or other fortified places, using common sense to conclude they’d have a better chance there than in simply fleeing for parts unknown. So the more Copan and others argue that the Hebrews only attacked Canaanite military fortresses, the more likely the Hebrews intended to make sure the slaughter of women and children was as extensive as possible.

Craig says “There may have been no non-combatants killed at all.” That makes no sense; Moses’ command to slay the male babies in Numbers 31:17 indicates this wasn’t some traumatic decision he had to make for the first time in his life, slaying children was par for the course, and he clearly had expected his returning army to have done a complete slaughter anyway, that's why he was angry when they returned with POW's (v. 14).

Craig’s comment is also problematic under 1st Samuel 15:2-3, where God specifies that children and infants also be slaughtered. If we presume as Copan does that Samuel and Saul understood the divine order to be limited to a command to attack only military outposts were women and children likely wouldn't be (at least in Copan's view), then God’s specifying that even children and infants also be slaughtered (v. 3) makes no sense. Why mention children and infants, if in fact such human beings were not expected to be present? When pagans exaggerate their own war victories, do they always assert their massacring of women and children even when the battle involved no women and children?

You also fail to consider that there is no record of the Hebrews giving advance warning to the Canaanites (their assertion that God will send the hornet and his terror ahead to drive them out is absurdly ambiguous, and a failure anyway in most cases, apparently, when in fact God could have exercised the high level of power he wields in Ezekiel 38:4 ff and force the pagans to go wherever he wished them to). If in fact the Hebrews gave the Canaanites no advance warning, then if any Canaanites fled, they only did so when battle was imminent, which means they didn’t have time to pack, and thus they not only fled out of their settled areas, but did so with no supplies, which means “allowing them to flee” subjected the Canaanite children to additional unnecessary suffering of starvation and thirsting.

Maybe Copan and Flannagan's next book will be "Why God created food stamp and welfare offices outside the promised land, and why His people never knew this until just now" ?

Craig says “That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined.” Apparently he never read Numbers 31:17 or Deuteronomy 2:34. While it is historically true that ANE people's exaggerated their war victories, it is equally true that children were killed in times of war.

Regardless, your god's desire to cause rape and parental cannibalism to those who disobey him, and his specifying that he would take "delight" to cause this no less than he delights to grant prosperity and peace to those who obey him (Deut. 28:30, 53-57, 63), limits your options:

1 - God's threats are real. He really does "delight" to cause rape.

2 – God's threats are empty. He wants you to believe he'll cause you to be raped if you disobey, but he actually won't make good on his word in this case.

If Copan/Flannagan are correct, we have to wonder how many other ways of the pagan history writers the Hebrews also imitated.

The pagans also lied about history...should we thus conclude that because they did this in the culture that the OT authors lived in, the OT authors thus likely imitated this pagan practice no less than they imitated the pagan practice of exaggeration?

If you ever wish to sustain your position on these matters in a more scholarly and comprehensive way, you can contact me. You have expressed desire to end the debate, so thanks for the discussion. Barry Jones

barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

 

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