Cerebral Faith fails to properly defend the moral argument for god's existence

 This is my reply to an article by Cerebral Faith entitled

The Moral Argument NOT Debunked - Response To YouTuber Rationality Rules

 Posted: 12 May 2019 11:57 AM PDT

After writing my blog post titled "The Kalam Cosmological Argument NOT Debunked - A Response to YouTuber Rationality Rules", one of my Facebook friends commented in one of the various places I had posted that blog post on Facebook and in the comment, he asked if I would respond to his video dealing with The Moral Argument. I agreed to it because (1) he asked me to, and (2) Rationality Rules (RR) is a very popular atheist YouTuber whose videos get thousands of views and who makes thousands of dollars per creation on Patreon. Lots of people are being exposed to his bad arguments against Christian theism, and therefore, we Christian Apologists who create online content need to interact with his work. If you'd like to watch the video for yourself before reading the article, click "The Argument From Morality - Debunked (William Lane Craig's Moral Argument Refuted)"

For the uninitiated, The Moral Argument for God's Existence is as follows

1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3: Therefore, God exists.

I have defended this argument in several blog posts on this site as well as in my recent book The Case For The One True God: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Case For The God Of Christianity.

*snip*

Let me defend this claim.

*Defense Of Premise 1

Moral Values

First off, if theism is not true, then what reason remains for thinking that human beings are intrinsically valuable?

 I'm not seeing how the question is relevant, it is assuming humans are indeed instrinsically valuable, but they are not, as the notion of "intrinsic" worth is false.  "Worth" always refers to a person making a value judgment about another person or object, there is no such thing as something having "worth" apart from another person making such judgment call.  Minton will say God values us, but since the moral argument he's trying to defend is seeking to prove god exists, he can hardly insist that god's valuation of us supports this first premise, otherwise, he's just begging the question of god's existence.  What you are "worth" must be answered with reference to an outside person or agency, not yourself alone.  So "intrinsic worth" is a nonsense concept.  Minton can trifle that a person can place a value on her own self, but that wouldn't establish actual worth, anymore than the homeless alcoholic who thinks he is "worth" $6 trillion has therefore proven he's really worth that much.

On atheism, man is just a biological organism. There are other biological organisms on the planet. What makes humans more valuable than the life of say, a cockroach, or a tree?

 The opinion of other human mammals, who do like most mammals, and naturally find the members of our own species more worthy of our time and resources, than other species.

Most people don’t believe you’re committing murder when you stomp on a cockroach or cut down a tree, but they do think you’re committing murder if you end the life of another human being.

 Because "murder" is the "unlawful" type of killing.  There's no law against stepping on bugs.

Why is it that the life of a man is of more value than that of a roach or a tree?

 You haven't established that yet.  But generally, as I said, we are mammals, and being intelligent, we naturally find preserving of our own kind of greater importance than preservation of other species.

Why is it murder to cut down a man, but not murder to cut down a tree?

 It is not "murder" to cut down a man...you have to show that the way he was cut down or killed was by unlawful means.  Human beings have set up laws that say killing another human, absent exceptional circumstances, is a crime, and we call that crime "murder".  Cutting down a tree thus wouldn't be "murder" unless somebody enacted a law saying cutting down a tree is a crime and we then started referring to tree-cutting as "murder".  Yeah right.

Both are living organisms. They’re both considered life.

 But the mammals who are more intelligent than trees have decided for themselves that certain acts of killing another human being are criminal.

Maybe humans are more valuable than these things because they’re more advanced.

 Why a trait should make something more "valuable" depends on the person who is evaluating the trait.  Many women have called their boyfriends "good-for-nothing".

A man, unlike a roach or a tree, can walk, talk, and do complex mathematical equations.

 And most people react to the wanton death of the higher mammals with emotion slightly less intense than they do in reaction to the murder of a man.  All of us feel sorry for the fawn or gazelle who gets caught and ripped apart by the lion.  Some of us have no care at all about death of such animals. People value things differently.

A person can build a rocket and fly it to the moon, build houses, and can do many things lower animals cannot do, and this is certainly something trees cannot do.

 Once again, the "worth" of a person is not determined by himself, but by others at least in the way that society functions as a whole.

But if you were to say that this is what makes a man intrinsically valuable, another question immediately arises; why is complexity a criterion for objective worth?

 You are assuming the existence of objective worth.  I deny that based on the above.  There is no such thing as objective worth.  What something costs is the price set by the actual or legal owner.

Why is a human more valuable than any other organism just because he’s higher up on the evolutionary tree?

 That's loaded question, I don't think humans have greater value merely because they are higher up on the evolutionary tree.  I decide the worth of a human being on a case-by-case basis.  I've decided to conform to society's rules and criminal codes, so when I think somebody worthy of death, I don't murder them.

Why isn’t it the case that simpler organisms have the most worth like an amoeba?

Probably beacuse as intelligent mammals we find very little use for the simpler life forms.  Then again, the simpler organisms are valued highly by the bio-tech industry, and every doctor knows that killing off all the bad simpler organisms, might be sufficient to send them on unemployment benefits.  Because the lower-life forms eat the lesser life forms, life for us would become unbearable if the simpler forms simply all died off.  We'd have ceaseless indigestion, and birds would become bold as they attack us in hunger.  So in a way the simpler organisms are very valuable to human life, but not in the direct way most people think about.

Why is the advanced-ness of man a criterion for his objective worth?

There is no such thing as objective worth.  What something is "worth" arises from another person's personal opinion, which is subject to change.

It doesn’t seem that there is any intrinsic worth of human life on the atheistic worldview.

Correct.  On atheism, what something is "worth" is completely subjective.

On atheism, man is just a bag of chemicals on bones who, because of the electrochemical processes in his brain, neurons firing, and molecules going about in motion, goes about his day thinking that his life is valuable.

Exactly.  Except that because the delusion is shared by so many, life for us is much more rewarding and satisfying if we simply live and let live, as opposed to trying to convince everybody else that we are nothing but moist robots on a damp dustball lost in space.

This, despite the fact that he was thrust into existence from a blind process which did not have him in mind, despite the fact that he’s a tiny speck on a somewhat less tiny speck of dust called Planet Earth in a massive universe that cares not whether he lives or dies.

 Exactly.  Through millions of years of evolution, it is second nature to be altruistic toward others of our same species.

On atheism, there is nothing but matter, energy, space and time. Why is one bag of chemicals on bones so sacred, but other bags of chemicals on bones not so much?

Because the other bags (the simpler life forms?) do not serve us as directly as other human beings do.

It is true though, that humans can have subjective value. After all, many people have other people who care about them. A man loves his wife, his kids, and his parents. Given that many people have other people who care about them, it may be said that they really do have value after all. But this isn’t objective value, it’s subjective. What that means is that your worth is dependent on how many people love you. This type of value that a detractor of my argument may refer to seems akin to sentimental value. A man may cherish a toy because it reminds him of the happy times he had back in his childhood. There may be thousands of toys exactly like it, but this one is special to him because it is this one that he grew up with. Replacing it is out of the question. However, the toy doesn’t have objective value (that is to say, the value in and of itself). Its value is wholly dependent upon the man cherishing it. Human beings, on atheism, seem to have that kind of value. We have sentimental value to those around us, but there doesn’t seem to be any value to the man in and of himself.

 Correct.

I can’t see how human life can have any objective worth on the atheistic view.

You are already a Christian.  You already view any system showing less than Christian worth of human beings, as offering you far less.  Most humans don't like the option that provides less.  SInce Christianity offers "more" as in "more love", people naturally flock to it and similar religions.

It seems that the first premise of the Moral Argument is correct. If God does not exist, there are no objective moral values.

 Agreed.

Man is just a bag of chemicals on bones. He is nothing but a speck of dust in a hostile and mindless universe and is doomed to perish in a relatively short time.  Without God, wherein lies the objective worth of a man’s life?

Nowhere.  But a lot of people, lacking in critical thinking skills, have been so accustomed to drawing worth for their lives from religion, than they just cannot imagine how relative or subjective worth can be equally as intensive and satisfying.

What makes human life sacred?

The other person who is evaluating whether you deserve to live, that's what.

I don’t see any reason to think that there is objective worth on the atheistic worldview.

 Good.

Moral Duties

If atheism is true, it would seem that moral values go out the window.

 No, only objective moral values go out the window.  You are doing what Turek does, and falsely assuming that if a moral is not "objective", then it is worthless. Not so.  Your moral opinion about how to raise kids is not objective, but it likely contributes to the good of your child anyway.

The life of human beings is no more worth protecting than the life of insects.

 No, other human beings are profoundly useful to other human beings, far more than insects, which is precisely why we sense a greater loss at the death of a human being than we do at the death of a bug.  You may retort that you also feel bad hearing about the murder of strangers on the national news, but I reply that your grief over the death of people you never met will not be quite as emotionally intense as your grief over the death of a human being who had repeatedly satisfied your sense of worth for most of your life (family, friends, etc).  Don't forget, families can come to hate each other and honestly not care whether one member ends up dead in a ditch.  Values change.

If moral values go out the window, then moral duties go with it.

 True, but only for objective morals and duties, not subjective morals and duties.

Why? Because if man has the same value as a flea,

Most people think a man is worth more than a flea, and that subjective opinion is enough to justify laws protecting his life, and it is natural and normal for adults to obey the same laws they observed as a child.

then you have as much of an obligation towards your fellow man as you do a flea. Since atheism robs human life of objective, intrinsic worth, why is it morally wrong to murder someone on that worldview?

 Whether it is morally wrong is something various people would answer differently.  Most would say murder is morally wrong, but their reasoning is usually superficial and stops at the point of "the law" and "how could you be so callous!?" But if a person causes sufficient unnecesary harm or trouble to others, you'll find lots of people thinking it morally good that he wind up dead in mysterious circumstances that are never solved.  Like the convicted pedophile who comes to live in your neighborhood.  If he's found dead in a ditch tomorrow with a bullet in his head, you probably won't be crying about it as loudly as you would if the same happened to the local business owner who has been donating to charity for years.

Why is it wrong to mistreat a person on atheism?

 Because other people think its wrong.  And there are times when they don't think it is wrong (fights in locker rooms, ceaseless bullying, etc), and in those cases, all you can do is side with those whom you agree with, whether the victim or the bully.

If humans have no moral value, then it seems that we have no moral duties towards one another either.

 That's true, but only for objective moral value and duties.  Once you admit the obvious reality and significance of subjective moral values and duties, your problems disappear.

To reject moral values is to reject moral duties. The denial of the former entails a denial of the latter. If human life is worthless

No, under atheism life's worth is decided by people of differeing opinion on how much your life is worth, including whether it has any worth at all.

, it seems like it wouldn’t be much of a crime to end it.

"Crime" is an "unlawful" act, an act that transgresses what our lawmakers have prohibited or criminalized.  Once again, you have insufficient reasons for trivializing the concept of subjective morals and pretending that nothing means anything without objectivity.  I can dictate the price of my used dvd player for the garage sale I plan next month, and that price is completely subjective.  Only a fool would say that price is completely useless to me or my goals merely beacuse it isn't "objective".

Why is it an atrocity to kill six million Jews but not an atrocity to exterminate an entire hill of ants?

 Because as mammals we naturally sympathize with other human beings.  But if you wish to be objective in your analysis, the fact is that lots of people don't really give a shit about the holocaust one way or the other.  Not everybody is a bleeding heart Christian who forgets Deuteronomy 32:39.

What reason is there to think that there is a real moral difference between these two situations?

There is no objective moral difference.  But there is a subjective moral difference.  Subjectivity is not a defect, it counts as part of the way normal human beings go about making value-judgements.  Just because subjectivity isn't quite as "iron-clad" as objectivity, doesn't mean subjectivity is utterly pointless.  Subjective value judgments are perfectly natural to mammals.  They don't always agree in the lower-animal world, and nothing is different in the human world.

Not only do we not have any moral obligations on the naturalistic worldview but it seems like there are no moral prohibitions either.

Once again, that is true, but only in the case of objective moral values.  If you are arguing that if there be no objective moral values, then murdering a human being cannot be reasonably or coherently argued to be far more detrimental to the democratic society we wish to live in, you are mistaken.

If human life has no objective value, then discarding it isn’t a moral abomination.

Plenty of people, including Christians, do not think all discarding of humnan life is a moral abomination.  That's because you have subjective reasons for thinking it better to kill than keep alive.  That's why you constantly try to "defend" your bible-god's requireing the Israelites to slaughter pagan children. Whether slaughtering children is a moral abomination depends on whether God commanded you to do it...right?  Or are you going to say it would be a moral abomination even if god required it?  The last I checked, you are a classical theist just like Turek...whatever God commands is holy, just and good....right? 

How ghastly it is to say such a thing, but, this is the logical implication of the atheistic worldview!

No, it's the implication when we deny objective morals.  It's not the implication as long as we follow subjective morals.

In his talk “Arguments For God’s Existence” at the Truth For A New Generation conference in Spartanburg South Carolina in 2012, J.P Moreland gives another way to think about this. Dr. Moreland explained that we can tell what is right and wrong because there’s a prescription of how something ought to behave.

 If God is so against abortion, why do Christians disagree on whether the woman has a moral right to abort a pregnancy caused by rape?  Is one of the Christian groups in this dispute just not praying hard enough, or living in sin, so that they cannot discern the position God takes in that debate?

Dr. Moreland asked the audience at Truth For A New Generation how we can tell the difference between a good carburetor and a bad carburetor? We can tell the difference because there is a way a carburetor ought to function.

As assigned by the person installing it.  If the person installing it intended it to cause the engine to backfire, than how the carburetor "ought" to be installed is completely subjective.

It ought to make the car run.

 Not if you had other plans, such as making the car run rough just to laugh at the next person who drives it.

If it doesn’t, Moreland says, we conclude that it’s defective.

 But car parts have already been assigned a function by us, so that we "know" defectiveness by the failure to perform as required.  This is not analogous to human morality...Christians themselves disagree on scores of moral topics like abortion, gun rights, death penalty, taxes, including the degree to which one must put forth effort to avoid the immorality of sin.  Shall we conclude Christianity is defective because after 2,000 years of trying to give the world objective morality, its adherents are no more in agreement than they were when it started?

It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

If you didnn't intend for the engine to backfire, then yes.

It’s not behaving the way it was designed to work. It’s not working the way that its creator intended it to work.

Now, let’s switch the analogy from carburetors to leaves from an autumn tree. These leaves fell from an autumn tree and just so happened to land on my front porch because the wind randomly blew them up there. Given that there was no design involved, there’s really no prescription of how the leaves should have landed.

 There's also no intelligent life in dead leaves that blow around in the wind, so not even subjective morals would be placed at issue.

Moreland said that he couldn’t point to one particular lead and say “You see that leaf? That’s a bad leaf! That’s a really bad leaf!” He can’t say that because there’s no purpose to the formation of the leaves on his porch. There’s no design involved.

 your logic works well enough until you remember that "god designed" the physical laws that cause leaves to fall and get moved around in the wind. If we assume ID is true, then perhaps the way the leaves get blown around could possibly be immoral.  Indeed, in Genesis God cursed the earth because of Adam, so there might be biblical precedent to say God is dismayed when he sees leaves die, fall off the tree and get blown around in the wind.  That's rather stupid, but it's still "biblical".

But with the carburetors, everyone knows there’s a way that they ought to perform,

 And it's not a "defect" if the installer intends on making the car backfire and thus configures the carburetor to do so.

and we can look at one functioning carburetor and call it “good” while looking at a non-functioning carburetor and call it “bad”.

 That's totally subjective.  Somebody might think the less efficient one is "better".  You aren't being very objective in your analysis if you simply dismiss anybody and everybody who have eccentric views about carburetors.

Now, on atheism, we are like those leaves. There’s no purpose. There’s no design. We’re just here by chance + nature. So, if atheism is true, it’s really odd to say that there’s a way we ought to behave since we were not made by anyone who intended us to behave as such.

 No, we are mammals born to other mammals that teach us what we need to do if we wish to have comfort and ease in the present world we live in.  And most of us conform thereto because we desire comfort and ease more than putting our lives and freedom at risk.

If theism is true, we’re like the carburetors. We were made on purpose and for a purpose, and when people don’t function according to that intended purpose we say that they’re “bad” people.

 The problem being that Christianity doesn't do a very good job of specifying which people are "bad" beyond those who commit actions that any self-respecting mammal would find disagreeable.  Worse, your Christianity says people are bad merely beacuse they were born in sin and are incapable of doing any "good" (Romans 3:10 ff) despite the obvious fact that most people routinely do "good".

What's worse: a completely subjective moral system?  Or a moral system that says you aren't doing good even while you are doing obvious good?

But if atheism is true, we’re kind of like the leaves on the porch. We just blew up there through blind, undirected processes. There’s really no way that we’re supposed to behave.

That's true.  There's no "really objective" way we're supposed to behave.  Once again, your falsely assume that the disappearance of objective morals constitutes the disappearance of morality altogether.  But subjective morals obviously exist, and therefore they obviously don't go out of existence if it be shown that merely "objective" morals don't exist.

So if there is an oughtness, there must be a personal being who prescribed this sense of obligation within ourselves (as Romans 2:14-15 says).

That's true, but since we were all raised by other mammals who instilled their sense of values on us, its no surprise that we generally tend to hold to the same morals our parents or caretakers did back when we were kids.  "you ought not murder other people" is only a general maxim; not everybody agrees to it, and the law cannot function properly in a democratic soceity unless it is evenly applied.  But the need to even application to achieve our democratic ends does not mean there's some transendent moral the law is based on.  The fact that murder generally hurts the pack...but not always...is precisely why we all agree murder is wrong...but some of us are willing to entertain exceptions when unlawful killing will achieve a greater moral good...which is probably why many good people are tempted to engage in vigellante justice

This is because only a personal being can give purpose to a system. Blind forces don’t care how you behave; only a person would.

No, if you have kids, you likely are aware that they needed to have morals instilled into them from outside, as even your bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. 

There is no good reason to think we get our morals from anywhere other than genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.

*snip*

See my rebuttal to Frank Turek's identical reasoning here.

Frank Turek's absurd belief in objective morality

 Christian apologist Frank Turek increased his popularity with his "Stealing from God" book that he supports with book-tours in which he attempts to argue that morals are objective, so since this requires an objective moral law giver, and atheism provides none, the existence of objective morals necessarily implies the existence of God, hence, atheism is false.


Turek says, in an article entitled Atheists have no basis for morality:

Monday night at UNC Wilmington, despite no cooperation from the school (see my last post), just over 200 people showed up for part 1 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. 

Maybe god is punishing you for misrepresenting him and mistaking your marketing bells and whistles for the wooing of the Holy Spirit.  Just a thought.

Several atheists asked questions– actually made statements– and struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. 

 Then they were not very educated about matters of morality.  You won't find the atheist writing at this blog to be struggling, to any degree, to answer your ridiculous questions and challenges.

For now, your question was illogically loaded.  The only reason to ask an atheist for an objective basis for morality, is because that atheist thinks morality does indeed have an objective basis.  Any such atheists are wrong.  If atheism is true, morality does not have an objective basis (i.e., a basis that transcends humanity).

Also, the fact that most humans are social mammals logically requires that they find unacceptable any acts that inhibit the thriving and surviving of the members.  Murder reduces the numbers of living things and deceases chances of thriving.  Rape increases the likelihood of additional children that were not planned and thus strain the group's resources.  Since no theory needs to be 100% perfect and explain every last little electron in the universe, the issue is not whether the naturalistic theory is comprehensive, but whether it is reasonable.  It is.  The naturalistic explanations for why most people find rape and murder to be immoral, are reasonable.  Merely calling them 'opinion' does nothing to show the theory unreasonable.  Some moist robots have an atomic configuration that motivates them to care about the survival of others.

On the other hand, the explanatory theory that says "God put his laws into our hearts" is beset by far worse shortcomings and fallacies:

What is the reason we cringe at the thought of burning teen prostitutes to death?  Because the god who required this in other cultures (Lev. 21:9) has put his laws into our hearts?  Or because the culture we are born and raised in can have a very profoundly strong impact in shaping our moral opinions?

Turek's explanation cannot point to any specific empirical evidence of a god putting his laws into our hearts, while the entire business smacks of telepathy and other foolishness that we know is bullshit.  At the same time, the naturalistic theory can point to the lower animal world, those who Turek agrees are not made in the image of god, and we find that those calibrated to care about survival of the group, do indeed also find murder and rape unacceptable.

What standard is Turek using to form his belief that rape is objectively evil?  It cannot be the bible or 'god', since Isaiah 13:16 would then have God causing men to rape women, that is, have God acting contrary to his own nature.

  They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. 

That's easy.  Try the Constitutions and Laws of the country you were born in.  They reflect the moral outlook of the majority of the people. 

One atheist said “not harming people” is the standard.  But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? 

If you mean "objectively wrong", then harming people isn't wrong, because there is no objective standard governing the question of which human activities constitute immoral harm.  Furthermore, "harm" is subjective and requires analysis of context.  Doctors cause harm all the time, but most of us say this is justifiable because the harm creates a greater future good.  So it is the same in other areas of life. 

If you "subjectively wrong", then the wrongness of harming people does not go any further back than the human being who is calling it wrong, and perhaps the other human beings in the world who agree with him.  But again, that doesn't establish that the moral opinion is objective.

Another said, “happiness” is the basis for morality.  (After I asked him, “Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?,”  he said, “I need to think about this more,” and then sat down.) 

 Thus indicating that these atheists were woefully uneducated about the matters to justify pontificating about them as they tried.  

This says nothing about the intelligence of these people– there just is no good answer to the question.  

 Incorrect, you appear to have been addressing absolute dolts.  The reason you find a lot of people agreeing with you that morals have an objective basis that transcends humanity is because the vast majority of people have never taken an introductory course in moral philosophy.  You are dishonestly trading on their strong personal views and their ignorance.  Your problem is that the naturalistic explanation for most humans in history agreeing certain acts are immoral, reasonably accounts for all the empirical data, at which point, there is no compelling "need" to invoke god to explain it.

Most humans are social animals who desire the company and fellowship of other humans.  Since unrestrained murder and rape would clearly hamper the human's instinctive goal to both survive and thrive, it is instinctive for humans to view murder and rape as unacceptable behavior.   You don't think the insects are made in the image of god, yet the social insects like wasps will attack you if you do thinks to disrupt their social goals, such as throwing dirt clods at wasp-nests.  The same is true for most of the higher order mammals.  Anything that inhibits their ability to survive or thrive as a group, is automatically deemed unacceptable and deserving of suppression.

You cannot avoid this rebuttal by doing what you do best, and pretending that an endless series of "but how do you know that?" will help you save face. Humans are instinctive social animals, so that is quite sufficient to explain why those who desire most to live in groups agree that things like rape and murder are unacceptable.  Questions about how humans were created, etc, are another topic.

Without God there is no basis for objective morals. 

Correct.  That doesn't mean subjective morals cannot exist.  There is no proving to another person that the subjective morals of modern-day America are "better". All we can say is that if you act contrary to those morals, you will be put in jail or killed. 

And God himself in Genesis 6:6-7 must have come to feel that his prior decision to create mankind was immoral, or else he wouldn't have "regretted" doing so.  No, Turek, there is nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre of Genesis 6 to suggest that this oassage is an "anthropomorphism", so it is reasonable to take it equally as literally as the other events in the context.  In that case, your own God contradicts his own morals, since it was HE who created mankind, and HE who later discovered that said creative act was immoral.  If God didn't think creating man was immoral, what does it mean to say God "regretted" making mankind?  If you think your prior decision was morally good, could you ever "regret" it?  No, not unless you start thinking that decision wasn't as good as you had first thought. 

And Christians must be without god, because they are often dogmatic in their moral disagreements with one another:

• Does the Christian god think it morally good for a Christian adult to join a worldly military?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally good for voluntary abortion to end a pregnancy caused by rape?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does the Christian god think it morally god for married Christian couples to use condoms?  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Is corporal punishment of kids morally good?  How do you know what level of non-lethal pain is the maximum that objective goodness will allow?   Why would Proverbs 22:15 and other passages require striking kids with a "rod", if the level of force it is talking about would not produce any more pain or injury than what could be produced by the "tap" of an open hand that so many Christians think is the limit?  Proverbs 20:30 has only good things to say about beatings that produce bruises, and contrary to popular belief, "immediate context" does not always prevail when dealing with Proverbs.  While some commentators try to get away from a moral nightmare by pretending that the "immediate context" of Proverbs 20:30 restricts that passage to mere judicial beatings of adults in criminal courts:

20:30 In context this is not parental discipline but beatings administered by the king’s officers as punishment for crime. Yahweh can peer directly into a person’s innermost being (v. 27), but the king can touch the criminal’s soul by harsh retribution.

Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 179). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Other equally Christian scholars maintain that the way different Proverbs about different matters are often strung together, you cannot limit what one of them is talking about by appeal to "immediate context":

With the book of Proverbs one can select at random a single verse or two and observe a complete unity of thought in them that may not have any real connection with what precedes or follows. Yet this does not hinder interpretation of its meaning

 Ardel B. Caneday, Qoheleth: Enigmatic Pessimist Or Godly Sage?, 
GTJ—V7-#1—Spr 86—31

• And if Proverbs 20:30 is extolling the goodness of the criminal receiving bruises and welts from the corporal punishment inflicted by a court....do you agree that human courts achieve objective moral good by physically beating convicted criminals, yes or no?  Or did you suddenly discover that god's objective biblical morals don't apply if the culture in question is too different from the biblical culture?  Sound like cultural relativism to me.
• How do you know that vigilante justice is objectively immoral, given that Peter in Acts 5:29 appears to have found an exception to Romans 13?  If there are pacifist exceptions to Romans 13 wherein you can safely disregard worldly law, then how do you know that pacifist exceptions are the only types that exist?  How do you know where to draw the line?  What makes you so sure that God doesn't wish to act through you personally to murder the convicted and self-confessed pedophile living locally in your neighborhood?  Before you answer, ask how many tears you'd shed if you found that this man was found gunned down in a ditch earlier this morning.  You won't exactly be clearing your schedule just to make time to attend his funeral, amen?  And your own bible requires that the person who murdered the pedophile was doing the will of God regardless of how the death was actually achieved (Deut. 32:39, Job 14:5). 
• Is it morally good to torture babies to death?  If not, then you must think your god once violated his own objective morals in torturing to death the baby born to King David and Bathsheba:

  13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

The baby obviously wasn't "deserving" of this torture, and yet v. 18 indicates the torture lasted for seven days.  Oh, did I forget?  This doesn't even qualify as the child being punished for the sins of the father.  Before the child was stuck by God, Nathan the prophet said God had "taken away" David's sins (v. 13).  God's torture of the baby cannot be considered "punishment" in any way, since the "taking away" obviously operated to exempt David himself from the death penalty required for adultery and murder.

• If God really is the author of all murder and death (Deut. 32:39) and has set a specific number of days for each human to live, a number they cannot increase or decrease (Job 14:5), then how can you say murder is immoral?  If a man pulls out a gun and shoots the Christian bank teller dead, this is also God calling that bank teller home...it is not limited to the earthly perspective of "murder".  if those bible passages are true, you are calling God's own actions objectively immoral when you call murder immoral.  How long must the atheist analyze this in-house debate among Christians, before they are justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no objective moral law governing the question?  2 weeks?  20 years?
• Does god approve of a legislature taking the death penalty, usually applicable only to murder, and extending it to other crimes such as child rape?  Not a few people were angered when a man who nearly fatally raped his daughter, escaped Louisiana's death penalty for that crime when the US Supreme Court found such law to be cruel and unusual. 
• Does God think it is moral or immoral that America's courts have a general rule generally excluding hearsay?  The fact that most of the bible is in hearsay form and allegedly comes from God, requires that the answer is "immoral".  Yet if Christians were to start a movement to overturn the court rule banning hearsay, it would likely trigger a legal war that would produce various degrees of harmful collateral damage, such as wronged Plaintiffs preferring to take the law into their own hands instead of having the matter adjudicated in a court that foolishly allows hearsay.
• If rape is objectively immoral, why does God claim responsibility for causing men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16?  Even conservative Christian commentators admit God was "taking responsibility" for these and other atrocities in the immediate context, such as beating children to death:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.   (Isa. 13:13-18 NAU)

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which He claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

What now, Turek?  Do atheist bible critics have an intellectual obligation to study the convoluted tortured reasonings of Christianity's 500-year old in-house Calvinist-Arminian debate on the biblical extent of God's sovereignty (or the 1500 year old Augustinian/Pelagian debate),  before they can be justified to draw conclusions here?  If so, how long must the atheist study such debates before they can justifiably draw conclusions about it?  2 weeks?  20 years?

And don't forget, Turek:  Calvinists are Christians who say the bible teaches that God secretly wills for us to violate his revealed will:

If someone disobeys God's revealed will, that's because God "secretly" willed them to disobey his revealed will. (Steve Hays, from Triablogue)

• When we jaywalk, would it be objectively morally good to consider this sufficient to prove us guilty of murder?  Before you balk at the stupidity of such a suggestion, read James 2:10-11 for the first time in your life, and ask yourself how feverishly stupid it would be to try and make such careless sophistry apply in real-world situations:

 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
 11 For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. (Jas. 2:10-11 NAU)

Then tell yourself that such sophistry does apply in the allegedly real-world situation of your guilt before god.  Then tell yourself that the only people who are allowed to invoke the mysterious ways of God to get their asses out of a theological jam are Trinitarian bible-inerrancy-believing evangelical Protestants.

It is reasonable to expect that if the Christian god exists and has imposed 'objective' morals on humanity, he would not remain so silent and hidden from his own genuine seekers, as to facilitate such moral division among genuinely born-again Christians.  One reasonable conclusion is that Christians who read the same basic bible and hold the same theological tenets always disagree about moral issues they find to be "important" because there is no objective moral law giver.

It’s just Mother Teresa’s opinion against Hitler’s. 

 That's exactly right.  Most citizens of most countries are civilized and have common sense.  Nation would not likely rise against nation in war if knowing which morals come from God was the pre-skool matter that Turek pretends it to be.

The atheists’ responses to the cosmological and design arguments– the arguments that show us that the universe exploded into being out of nothing and did so with amazing design and precision– were “we don’t know how that happened.”

 Once again, you capitalize unfairly on ignorant atheists.  That would be like the atheist concluding Christianity is false because of all the stupidity he can find in a KJV Only Pentecostal church that allows its members to play with live rattlesnakes.  Stop pretending that defeating an ignorant atheist means defeating atheism.  It is illogical.

As far as the cosmological arguments, Turek has a serious problem:  Genesis 1 and 2  would NEVER have caused its originally intended pre-scientific audience to think the "beginning" started with an explosion, as nothing therein is expressed or even implied.  Nothing could be a more flagrant example of eisogesis than Truek reading modern science's big-bang theory into Genesis 1-2.  He may as well read macro-evolution into it as well.  Not only does the Big Bang contradict Genesis 1 and 2 (which set forth God's work as the result of a carpenter or artist), plenty of conservative bible-inerrancy-believing creationist Christians agree the BB is bullshit, such as Institute for Creation Research.

Now Turek cannot say it is the blinders of atheism and rebellion toward god that cause an atheist to be blind to the Big Bang in Genesis 1 and 2, unless he wishes to accuse his own born-again Christian brothers of being atheists.

   This is simply an evasion of the evidence that clearly points to an eternal, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal and moral First Cause of the universe.   Since nature itself was created, this Cause must be beyond nature or “supernatural.”

Sorry, the arguments for the universe being created, are unpersuasive to say the least, while the evidence that the field of planets and stars extends infinitely in all directions is rather clear from the fact that astronomers continue increasing their estimate of the number of stars with each passing decade:  "There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

Even astronomers who disagree with the infinite-space model agree it is at least possible, and that's a serious problem for the lemon-head apologists who want us to think an infinite universe model is "illogical" or otherwise not a valid option:

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.  

CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.

The issue is not which cosmological theory is "true", that is a child's approach.  The issue is whether theories of the universe that make it harder for you to "prove god" can be reasonable.  They can.  It isn't like the infinite universe model is on the order of flat-earth or ancient astronauts.

I end with a challenge to the stupid fundamentalists who believe hell's fire is more literal than symbolic, and who deny any possibility of second chances for those who die after knowingly rejecting the gospel:


Suppose you are the parent of a 10 year old girl who hasn't actually believed the gospel just yet, she simply goes through the motions like so many other kids.  She is invited to a church that promotes whatever  specific doctrinal bullshit you consider minimally necessary to true orthodoxy.   She goes, they tell her the true gospel, they ask if she wants to repent, she says no, and on the way home, while having no personal faith in Christ, dies in a car accident.  That is, she died immediately after knowingly refusing to obey the revealed gospel.  God then shows you a vision of her being tormented by the flames of hell, and tells you this torture will go on for all eternity, because God thinks 10 years old is the age of accountability for that particular child.

Suppose every time you attend church thereafter and sing songs about God's eternal 'love', God puts this vision of your daughter's real, current, irreversible and eternal suffering into your mind.  Your daughter is screaming in mindless agony in this torture-by-fire WHILE you are smiling and happily clapping your hands in church to songs about about the wonderfully comforting love of the God who is, at the same time, torturing your child.

Could you continue worshiping God in good conscience if you had that much precise information about the ultimate fate of a deceased child?

Or did you suddenly discover that the biggest problem in your life right now can be solved by suddenly discovering that the age of accountability is 37?

How to make all these problems disappear in one fell swoop?  Become an open theist.

Demolishing Triablogue: Annoyed Pinoy revs the engine, but still spins the wheels

Mr. Pinoy,

I'm allowing your lengthy comments one last time, to which I respond.  But I would ask that in future, you keep your "replies" limited to one specific sub-topic.  The "reply" function limits me to 4.096 letters, so if I wish to provide a point-by-point response to what you say, I have to create a brand new original post, like I'm doing here.  Try to ask concise questions one at a time, such as why I don't think a bible verse you find to be relevant, is relevant to the debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
Honestly, I haven't read all of your former blogpost, so I may say some things which you've already addressed or anticipated.

Thanks for your honesty.

I don't have the time to give my full attention to the issues brought up in both blogposts. I'm trying to give an answer as quickly as possible. My overall aim is to defend the truth of Christianity.

It would seem defending the truth of Christianity might require you to devote more effort than answering "as quickly as possible".

I wrote the following late at night, so my grammar may be messed up. Though I haven't proofread it, I think you should be able get the gist of my main points even if it might be incoherent at spots. I'm nodding off while I'm typing.
 The burden of proof is on the claimant.
 I agree. You wrote in the earlier blogpost, "No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. " That's a claim on your part. A claim that seems to assume 1. that the only criteria God gave is in that single passage,

Yes, because

a) I cannot find any more biblical criteria God thinks must be fulfilled before the girl is ready for marital sex,

b) while Mosaic law certainly isn't exhaustive in fact, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 indicate the author wished the reader to believe it was exhaustive, in which case, no, you are not allowed to add "thou shall not have sexual relations with thy wife until she [insert whatever age or signs of maturity/puberty here]" to Mosaic Law.  So because Mosaic law doesn't condemn marital pedophilia, you, the Christian, have no biblical basis for saying God's view such act as sinful.  Do not say God thinks some human action is "sin" unless you have biblical authority for saying so; and

c) if Paul couldn't know coveting was a sin without Mosaic law specifically telling him so (Romans 7:7), it would appear that no Christian can know what human acts are sinful without Mosaic law specifically telling them so.

and 2. only explicit criteria count.

But when you try to argue for identifying sin on the basis of non-explicit criteria in the bible, you open the door to others being able to justify disagreement with you.  Indeed, it doesn't matter if Ezekiel 16:7-8 really does tell us what age of marriage for girls the ancient Jews deemed normative, it certainly isn't worded in an absolute way.  People 2000 years from now could legitimately say that Americans used to believe the minimum age of sexual consent was 18, and they would be correct, but that would hardly argue that therefore Americans always held that view even in earlier days.  The age of sexual consent in Delaware in the 19th century was 7.  So learning what the Jews of 600 b.c thought about the minimum age of marriage, doesn't provide reasonably reliable guidance for how Jews of 1200 b.c. thought about the same matter.

However, one can reasonably infer from OT and (especially) NT ethical standards [the latter building on the former]

Not really.  Christians are constantly attacking each others' morals by quoting the bible.

combined with inductive medical experience that it's biologically unwise and and therefore morally illicit to engage in sexual activity that will likely result in pregnancies that will (again likely) permanently injure or kill the mother.

That makes sense to me, but leaves you without ability to explain statements in the Babylonian Talmud that says girls aged three years and one day are "suitable" for sexual relations, such as

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

If adult men having vaginal intercourse with three year old girls were as obvious a risk to the girl's life as we modern people believe it is, how do you explain these Talmudic rabbis finding girls of such age "suitable" for sexual intercourse?  How could these rabbis bother saying such things if they saw in the bible the same absolute prohibition on adult-child marriage/sex that you do?

Humans are made in God's image and therefore have dignity on that account.

If that dignity prohibits abortion, it would also prohibit infanticide, Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:3.  You are also assuming that dignity is degraded by sex within adult-child marriages, and while we see it that way today, the question is whether the ancient Jews and biblical authors saw it that way.  The Talmud rabbis and sages, well aware of man being made in god's image, didn't.

The quality and quantity of each others' lives are to be considered by fellow human beings [esp. in marriages and families]. This is true both before and after the times of Abraham, and later Moses [and the Mosaic Covenant]. The story of Cain and Abel implicitly teaches that we are our brothers keeper in some sense [especially the closer they are to us relationally, biologically, familially etc.].

If so, then you'd have to condemn Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg for a) knowing that James Patrick Holding defamed and libeled me in extreme ways, but b) never approached Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18 to deal with it, despite my having consulted them first before suing Holding.

Before the distinction of Jew and Gentile, Noah was taught about human dignity (Gen. 9) as well as the brotherhood of mankind despite the different "races" (Gen. 10).

He was also taught capital punishment, Gen. 9:6, which many Christians oppose.

There's also the natural law consideration as well.

Which doesn't help matters, since it invites questions such as why God made females capable of conceiving as early as 10 years old, if their involvement in sexual intercourse at that age was against his intended design.

Presumably God intends women to bear children in such a way and in such a time that the likelihood of permanent injury and/or death is not maximized, but minimized.

But Triablogue Calvinist Steve Hays thinks it is God who causes the pedophile to rape girls, and that it is God who causes men to get barely pubescent girls pregnant.  You should go further with your point until Steve explains to you how it makes sense for God to inflict shame and guilt upon those who He causes to fulfill his "secret" will.  If God secretly wills for a 30 year old man to have full vaginal intercourse with a 4 year old girl, God can hardly condemn the acts that He desires to take place.

By "intends" I mean by God's Will of Delight, and God's Will of Design (see my 6 distinctions of God's will blogpost if one is curious, HERE). Someone might argue that God apparently didn't design pregnancy and birthing very well since infant skulls are so large that they can barely narrow pelvises. But if we really do live in a fallen world, then such an apparent flaw might be due to such a Fall.

True, but the biblical explanation for the "Fall" is that God intentionally "cursed" women to endure that pain and injury during child-birth, Genesis 3:16.  So God is still the cause, you cannot relegate it to the naturalistically degrading effects of Adam and Eve's bad freewill choice to disobey God.  David also disobeyed God by committing adultery with Bathsheba, but God apparently has the option to arbitrarily exempt David from the otherwise applicable death penalty ("the Lord has taken away your sin..." 2nd Samuel 12:13).

Even assuming a historical Fall didn't really happen, a design need not be perfect for it to genuinely be designed.

And the more you attribute to God the abilities of the human eye, the more you attribute to God the ability of 10 year old girls to get pregnant.  YOu cannot attribute precocious puberty to the Fall, since the Fall is a degradation, while puberty constitutes an increase in the young girl's complexity.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
If God intends humans to be fruitful and multiply, then that assumes they do it in such a way that it doesn't leave the wife (or wives given OT polygamy) chronically sick and/or otherwise diminished in her ability to continue bearing healthy children.

No, read Genesis 3:16, God wanted women to endure injury and pain during childbirth.  So the fact that girls endure injury and pain if they give birth at 10 years old, isn't sufficient for you to prove your point.

If the wife dies, then she obviously cannot reproduce any more children, assuming the first one even survived. The common (though not universal) Islamic practice of not waiting for a female to be physically mature to engage in intercourse (IMO) stems from pedophilic desires of their men. With Mohammed being both the Prime Example and Exemplar.

Agreed, but again that leaves you unable to explain the above-cited Talmud passages.  One explanation is that the pedophile rabbis who made such statements believed that instead of delaying sex with girls until they were old enough to safely give birth, God would miraculously protect them from getting pregnant, meaning any girls who got pregnant and died, were those God intended to kill by that method:

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.14”

 Footnote 14 reads:  

Ps. CXVI, 6; sc. those who are unable to protect themselves. From this it follows that a girl under the age of twelve is incapable of normal conception.

So the answer of Talmud Sages is that girls under the age of 11 are not allowed to use a contraceptive, because God would keep them safe from getting pregnant at such a young age. You really need to work on avoiding seeing the ancient Jews through the rose-colored glasses of your modern eyes.  Excuses we today find stupid, were deemed just back then.

I'm not aware of any passage of Scripture where God permits or encourages as morally licit sexual activity for prepubescent females.

Then read 2nd Samuel 12, the account of David's adultery with Bathsheba.  That she was prepubescent or near is legitimately inferred from Nathan's analogizing her to a young ewe lamb who was taken from her rightful owner.  God condemnation of the sex act implies pedophilia was considered acceptable, since God condemns the adulterous aspect, but says nothing about the fact that she was so young, yet you'd figure if God was as against pedophilia as you are, God would have cited her prohibitively young age first, since under your own reasoning, there is more that is sinful and wrong with specifically pedophilia than there is with general adultery.  Once again, the ancient authors did not always see things the way we do today.  The only thing you get from God's condemnation of David is that he sinned by committing adultery with another man's wife.

The fact that in the allegory YHVH WAITS for the female to develop breasts should say something.

Not according to your prior post, where you said "Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose..."   apparently indicating that we shouldn't be drawing conclusions about what the ancient Jews believed about the minimum age of girls for marriage, from Ezekiel 16

He didn't marry her when she was prepubescent.

But Calvinist Steve Hays thinks adult men are still fulfilling god's "secret" will when they vaginally rape 4 year old girls.  Again, Pinoy, it appears you are asking me to decide that Hays' views about what God wants are incorrect, but if spiritually alive people cannot even agree on whether or how god "wills" such things, you should conclude that spiritually dead people, which is the way you see me, will only fare worse, hence counseling that you shouldn't be telling me about what God "wills" until you resolve your disagreements with other Christians

Likely because He cared for her and wanted to bless her, not harm her. What's missing in your interpretation is how lovingly and tenderly YHVH took care of the child during her prepubescent years.

Ok, so apparently you've changed your mind, again, and now consider the allegory to be suitable for drawing conclusions about ancient Jewish morality?

Again, this is Ezekiel in 600 b.c, whose authority for representing the morals of Moses from 1200 b.c. is anything but clear, and about as prone to fallacy as using the morals of Americans in 2017 to tell us what the morals of Americans were like in 1417.  600 years more than likely introduces some changes.

Read the passage again:

 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.
5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
6 "And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
 YHVH waited all this time and can't wait a few more months or a year(s) till it's relatively safe for her to have children, as opposed to when it's relatively and statistically risky?

The ancient Jews apparently thought the risk was negated by biblical promises that God would protect the simple.  See above.

You apparently are so hostile to Christianity and want to attack it so much that you have to take THE MOST Uncharitable interpretation as the natural and ONLY interpretation, contrary to the tenderness and patience YHVH is described as having exercised in the previous verses. [*cough* eisegesis *cough*] Your interpretation goes against the whole tenor of the passage.
CONT.

You first used the passage to draw conclusions about what God or the Jews believed about pedophile marriage, THEN you changed your mind and told me it was allegory and not to be pressed for details, NOW you changed your mind again and have decided the allegory does indeed reflect on what Jews thought about the proper age for marriage.  Some would argue that your own inability to keep to one interpretation suggests that the passage is too ambiguous to be useful in our debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:10 AM
In the ESV (v. 7) she is likened to a plant in a field "...and arrived AT FULL ADORNMENT. Your BREASTS were formed..." [ESV]. Other versions translate the verse differently. For example, in the ASV she is told, "...thou didst increase and wax great". The sense I get in some translations is that she is like a plant (or a field of plants) that's ready to be reaped because nearly fully ripe. That's contrary to your interpretation that reduces YHVH to a buck in heat that's ready to mate as soon as the gate is opened.

It's also contrary to the Talmud rabbis who felt three year old girls were "suitable" for sexual relations, see above, a view they'd hardly hold if there was something else in their religion that absolutely forbade girls of such age from having marital sex.

Notice too that verse 8 indicates even more time passed, when it says, "When I PASSED BY YOU AGAIN and saw you, behold, you were at the AGE FOR LOVE". Apparently the "age for love" is some time AFTER the mere and first appearance of (to use your words) "boobs and pubic hair".

I don't deny that the Jews of Ezekiel's day felt sex within adult-child marriages was taboo.  What I deny is your ability to establish from the bible that breaking such taboo would have been considered "sin".   God's original model for marriage was monogramy, yet evangelical scholar Richard Davidson (Flame of Yaweh) and others say God "tolerated" polygamy.  So even if you are correct that Ezekiel 16:7-8 provides the divine blueprint for minimum age of marriage for ancient Jewish girls, you aren't showing that the model is absolute.

It should be noted that not everything OT people (or ANE Semites in general) did was necessarily moral.

But what they did is material toward modern people drawing conclusions about what was acceptable and unacceptable to them.

The same is true for post-Tanakhian Jews (e.g. Talmudists). And even if some things were permissible or a concession on God's part, that doesn't mean it's the ideal.

Philsophically, it is unlikely that an infinitely perfect God, allegedly as angry at pedophilia-marriage as you are, would ever "tolerate" deviations from his original model of marriage.  So if Richard Davidson and other Christian scholars on marriage are correct that the bible god "tolerated" polygamy, then this god's perfection is not "infinite".

Moreover, there's God intended moral development within the OT as well as between the Testaments. For example, the ideal in the NT is monogamy, though polygamy in the OT was permitted/tolerated.

An infinitely perfect God who hated polygamy as much as you think he does, would not "tolerate" it, but would, like you, specify it to be sin.  Nowhere does the Mosaic law specify polygamy to be sin.  Deuteronomy 17:17 no more means a King cannot have two wives than it means he cannot have two horses.  He is not allowed to "multiply" wives to himself.  The infinitely perfect God is regulating, not condemning, polygamy

Jesus Himself taught that the OT Jews often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT laws. Or didn't interpret them in a truly consistent way.

And I teach that Jesus and Paul often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT Laws.

Had they, they would have had a more Christonomic interpretation of the Torah.

I'm an atheist, I don't find non-Christonomic Torah-interpretation to necessarily be faulty.

Finally, it's the Christian claim that its morality is higher than that of Judaism.

No, it was the claim of Jesus that his followers be careful to obey the spirit and letter of Mosaic law, see Matthew 5:17-20.  Paul's view of the Law was often at odds with the legalistic view held by Jesus.

The Messiah would magnify the law and make it glorious (Isa. 42:21).

Which seems to indicate that Christian parents need to burn their teen prostitute daughters to death.  Leviticus 21:9.

That's why Jesus could say, "BUT I say unto you" without contradicting the the OT (Matt. 5:17). And why Jesus said of the Jews that they added to the Word of God by teaching as doctrine the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).

I see no reason to distinguish Jesus' view of the law from Moses' view, for purposes of this discussion.

BTW, I'm not a "Theonomist" as it's commonly understood. I agree with much of what they say, but I have enough disagreements to not use that term. I prefer, "Christonomist".
 as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.
 Ready in what sense? Ready to marry, or start considering marriage?

Well according to Ezekiel 16:7-8, ready to actually marry, not merely consider it.

Since there was often a betrothal period that was also considered (in some sense) marriage even before consummation, that delayed period allows for even more time for the female to sexually mature even more.

But the betrothal itself was created by the act of vaginal intercourse with the three year old girl:

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69aR. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her... 

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:11 AM
What I said was true. Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.
 Now you seem to be reducing your claim to only Ezek. 16, when your original claim seems (?) to include ALL of Scripture (or at least the Tanakh).

No, I'm only pointing out that you have no textual justification for asserting that Ezekiel 16:7-8 expresses or implies that any criteria beyond boobs and public hair need be fulfilled to declare the girl ready for marriage.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist. I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments. 

IF Christianity is true, then the OT can not only be interpreted in isolation, but also in light of the later fuller revelation.

But since Christianity is not true, I am free to limit my understanding of an OT text to just what the author intended by examination of his grammar, immediate context, chapter, and genre.  Discerning meaning that way is objective, while trying to read the OT through Christian-colored lenses is absurdly controversial.

Also, it touches on the issue of the consistency of the Testaments. I would seek to defend it. While you'd be fine with there being irreconcilable contradictions between the two. You wouldn't take the NT to be authoritative, but the consistency between the Testaments has some abductive argumentative force.

I don't see the point, not only is there nothing in the NT against sex within adult-child marriages, there is the theological principle that you cannot know a human act is a sin unless there is a prohibition against it specified in Mosaic Law.  See Romans 7:7.  Either Paul was wrong for speaking in such absolute terms about how sin cannot be identified apart from Mosaic law, or he, and by extension Christians, cannot know what acts are sin without Mosaic law telling them so.  If Paul wouldn't have known coveting was a sin without Mosaic law, YOU don't know that sex within adult-child marriages is a sin without Mosaic law telling you so.  Are you smarter than apostle Paul?

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested... 

Apparently you claim we do have enough records from those very sources to tell us that adult-child marriages were accepted.

No, I think they were accepted on the basis of the biblical and Talmudic statements.

I'm dubious of the claim, but even if true, that doesn't make it morally licit according to the Mosaic Covenant or the teaching of the rest of the Tanakh. If it does, I'm not aware where.

See Romans 7:7, supra.  If you don't have a Mosaic Law specifying a human act as sin, you have no warrant for calling it sin in the first place.  So either find a Mosaic law that prohibits sex within adult-child marriages to the same degree that it prohibits coveting, and you'll dodge the Romans 7:7 bullet.  If you cannot provide such a text, then you never had any theological justification for labeling sex within adult-child marriages to be sinful in the first place.

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, 

Not necessary attempts, but that they always had that potential.

Well then the man could easily limit himself to sex acts that cannot make the girl pregnant, in which case  your rebuttal based on the dangerousness of potential pregnancy, is deprived of force.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears: 

Hebrews 13:4 says nothing about oral sex.

It also doesn't say anything about vaginal intercourse, but you certainly feel free to infer that the author's words "marriage bed undefiled" are saying vaginal intercourse between monogamous Christian couples is undefiled.

While Canticles MIGHT refer to oral sex in one or more passages, it's not certain.

Most conservative Christian scholars take it in its obvious sexual sense.  From the inerrantist-driven New American Commentary:

4:16 This, with 5:1, is the high point of the Song of Songs. She calls on the winds to make her fragrance drift to her beloved, thus drawing him to herself. Maintaining the metaphor of the garden, she invites him to come and enjoy her love. This is the consummation of their marriage.

...5:1 a,b The man responds. The poetry is discreet and restrained; it conveys the joy of sexual love without vulgarity; at the same time, the meaning is quite clear. The catalog of luxuries here (garden, myrrh, honey, wine, etc.) imply that he has partaken of her pleasures to the full.
Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 407). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The important point is that in marriage coitus is the norm and would be expected to begin the marriage.

I don't see how that trifle helps you.  That's also the norm for marriage today, yet I've known many Christian couples who said they abstained from sex on their wedding night.  So again, while coitus was probably normative among ancient Jews for consummating the marriage, that doesn't argue that deviations were disallowed.

Without consummation via coitus the marriage wouldn't be fully legal. A bleeding hymen was meant to signify the cutting/enacting of the covenant of marriage.

By that logic, the marriage wouldn't be fully legal if the man had erectile dysfunction.  You need to stop interpreting what Mosaic law presents are normative, as if it was absolute and exclusive.

You refer to adult-child marriage, but I don't know what you mean by, and how you define "child".

In this discussion, by "adult-child marriage" I mean men who are in their 20's or older, getting married to girls who, by reason of lack of puberty, can still be called "child".

Or in what way you (presumably) frown upon adult-child marriages.

I frown on them for the same reason the Legislators and Congress do:  such unions are more productive of lasting physical and emotional harm to the girl.

I don't deny that a some females consummated marriage at an early age. Maybe even at 12. But some girls enter puberty earlier and progress faster than other girls.

That's right. the reality of precocious puberty means it is possible that in Ezekiel 16:7-8, God was thinking about a 9 year old girl whose breasts and public hair had grown, as the template for his allegorical language.

This is also true of the girls of some ethnic groups as compared to others. So, randomly citing the age of 12 is meaningless unless one also addresses and acknowledges the issue of the fact that different female would be sexually mature sooner than others.

I don't see your point, most scholars of the ANE agree that these people usually delayed marriage until puberty.  You appear to be concerned to make your trifles look like serious objections.  No dice.

I don't know what you're entire claim is, but my claim is that given OT ethics (and especially NT ethics), it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications.

That's not good enough.  Your claim is that your god views sex within adult-child marriages as "sin", so it is perfectly legitimate to ask why you call it a sin when you cannot provide any biblical evidence that it is.  Sin is trangression of God's law (Romans 7:7, 1st John 3:4), it is not "deviation from what's normative".

Regarding pedophilia of prepubescents in the Talmud, even if your interpretation were correct, that doesn't tell anything certain about the beliefs and practices of Jews during Biblical times.

It does it we accept the conservative Christian assumption that oral traditions among the ancient Jews were carefully handed down from generation to generation.  If you start screwing with the reliability of those oral traditions just to get out of this jam, then you increase the likelihood that the oral traditions laying behind the OT text were corrupted before being written.

Even then, the beliefs and practices of Biblical Jews is not sure indicator of what the OT law itself requires or allows.

I don't need to have a "sure" indicator.  I will be rationally warranted in my arguments if I have a "reasonable" indicator.

Since many things recorded are explicitly or implicitly taught to be wrong. Think for example of how the book of Judges records the general degradation and moral decline in Israel.

But from a historical perspective, it is how the ancient Jews were, not whether their acts squared up with their religious claims, that helps one form an opinion on which among the historical possibilities is most probable.  If the ancient Jews allowed pedophile-marriages, then it is unjustified for modern-day apologists to be shocked at my argument, as if the ancient Jews' morals were a mirror image of those held by modern conservative Christians.  What's "obvious" to us today doesn't tell us what would have been allowed by ancient Jews.

Much of the OT is a record of how the majority often disobeyed God, from generation to generation.

And the most substantial portion is the Mosaic Law.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited... 

That is or close to an argument from silence.

So?  Arguments from silence are not automatically fallacious, which is the sense you appear to be intending with your short unqualified sentence.  It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if the bible god exists and really does regard sex within adult-child marriages as abominable as you do, he would have specified a prohibition against it.

Laws and Case Laws are meant to be studied and applied to cover situations not mentioned.

And I see no biblical warrant to suppose that, where the 3 year old bride's father agreed to give her in marriage to an adult man who paid the dowry, the sexual relations between this couple after the wedding would constitute a legal case requiring application of law.

In America, one state's criminal law code is limited to less than 100 pages, so if Moses was inspired by God, he has no excuse for failing to specify as sin any and every human act god thought was a sin.  We specify the minimum age, why couldn't god?

Your duty as a Christian to obey Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 is more important than your desire to come up with a clever way to read things into the law.

In fact, if the Mosaic Law included every possible situation the Pentateuch would be larger than the U.S. Library of Congress.

How much extra room in Moses' books would "you shall not marry a girl until she is at least 16 years old" have taken up?

Also, Natural Law gives us some indication.

You mean like the natural fact that most girls become capable of getting pregnant around 11 or 12 years old?  Does this natural law tell us anything about what God intended?

Especially when it's coupled with the OT Revelation. For example, the very passage you cite (Ezek. 16). If females should wait till sometime after puberty begins to get married and be sexually active, then it makes sense that that's the case for boys too. Nocturnal emissions happend after the onset of puberty, not before. Prior to that a boy is not fertile. The libido of both sexes kicks in at high gear at puberty. Since one of main the reasons for marriage is to propogate the species (Gen. 1:28), AND since the OT prohibits extra-marital sexual relations, AND since fertility only occurs after the onset of puberty, it therefore makes sense that the consummation of marriage was meant to also be after the onset of puberty in both the male and female.

I don't see the point, you are only specifying what makes sense and what's normal, you are not making a case that God believed sex within adult-child marriages was "sin".   "Sin" is not merely "deviation from the norm".

Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know. 

I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin.

!?

At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex.

You haven't made a very convincing case that your god thinks marital pedophilia is sinful.  If my blog educated you, a thanks would be in order.

Another issue that one would expect some atheists to look down upon is arranged marriages (AM). AMs could potentially motivate adult-child marriages. Or what of the hypothetical where two groups of parents arrange the marriage of prepubescent children and foregoing the betrothal period. Would it necessarily be sin if a 7 year old "husband" and a 7 year old "wife" engaged in sexual intercourse? I'm not sure.

Well, if your God hasn't made clear to you that prepubescent kids having vaginal intercourse is "sin"...

What's clear to me is that if such a situation continued the girl would likely get pregnant long before her body could handle giving birth.

And since puberty is an increase in the girl's complexity, you cannot relegate the problem of girls becoming capable of conception while it is still dangerous to give birth, to the Fall. The "Fall" didn't cause human beings to increase in complexity, the Fall was a degradation.  So it would seem that nature's equipping girls to get pregnant at such dangerously young ages can be blamed squarely on your god, not the Fall and not "evolution".

Leading to the likely death of both her and the child. Also, I think an adult male with fully developed sexual organs engaging in coitus with a prepubescent girls can do serious damage.

That was probably also obvious to the Talmud Rabbis who said three year old girls are "suitable" for sexual relations:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

There are modern cases where death or infertility ensued. Whatever nearly ensures injury or death would likely be considered sin.

How much did the odds of injury/death increase when Moses roused the Hebrews to dispossess the Canaanites and make war?

Apostles boldly confronting their captors with the gospel would likely ensure their deaths, so perhaps there are times when preaching the gospel would be a sin?

The difficulty women have in childbirth is not due to "sin", but God's voluntary choice to curse the woman, Genesis 3:16.  From 2nd Samuel 12:13, God's nature does not "require" him to punish sin in any certain way, he can exempt a sinner from punishment by simply waving his magic wand.  So under your logic, God was sinning since his curse on the birthing process increased the odds of a women suffering injury or death.

The case of Adam and Eve is our exemplar. They were man and woman, not boy and girl when God presented them to each other for marriage.

But because God made concession for one deviation from this model (polygamy), you have to be open to the prospect that he'd make similar concessions for other deviations from the model.

He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off,
 I have no knowledge about the dispute between the two of you. I'll leave that between the relevant parties and the law. When it comes to Matt. 18, I think that's in the context of internal matters within the church.

No, Christians, especially Christians who take up the office of teacher, are required to have a good reputation with unbelievers, 1st Timothy 3:7, so when they fail Paul's standard, they fail their own self-imposed standard and have engaged in the biblical equal of sin.

Disputes between Christian brothers. If so, then it doesn't apply to you since you're not in the church.

So under your logic, if you murder me, none of your Christian brothers have a biblical duty to confront you about this sin since I'm not in the church.

You mention Rom. 13. That's the very chapter that acknowledges the state's role in the punishment of crimes. If there's a place for ministers to address Holding's sins, it would be his immediate elders and not random spiritual mentors who don't know or have the time or resources to investigate the issues.

Which is precisely the problem since Holding is the type of apostate who believes himself spiritually above any immediate elders.  Blomberg and Habermas would have known this, so because they chose to discuss the matter with him a little bit, they committed themselves to rebuking him for his sin.

When it comes to CRI, I suspect that folks like Perry Robinson who have complained about Hanegraaff's behavior for decades seem legitimate (from my limited knowledge). Also, I think the role of teacher and apologist are two distinct things. One can be one, or the other, or both. The role of a teacher implies authority and reliability in doctrine. Whereas neither need be the case with an apologist.

Yes, they do, at least for the apologist who thinks god works through him to promote the gospel.

Finally, what lies of Walter Martin are you specifically referring to?

He claimed to have been a descendant of Brigham Young

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:51 AM
What's the NAU translation?

New American Standard, 1995 Update.  You can't be serious.

Re-reading my comments I see I may have been slightly inconsistent. For example, in one place I wrote, "it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications." Yet, in another place I wrote, "I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin. At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex. "
 But those two statements need not be contradictory. In the former quotation I wasn't speaking absolutely, but generally and usually. While in the latter I was speaking in terms of absolute and unchanging designation and moral evaluation.

I think the fact that you can't make out a biblical case for saying God views marital pedophilia as "sin" speaks clearly enough.