My reply to R.L. Solberg on Jesus and Isaiah 53

 R.L. Solberg is a Christian apologist and attempts at his blog to respond to Jewish objections to the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53, here.

I posted a reply as follows, which is crossposted here, given my experience of Christian apologists deleting my polite and scholarly challenges

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Barry Jones

June 16, 2021 8:37 pm

The NAU of Isaiah 53 translates the Hebrew words “zerah” and “tseetsa” as “offspring” and in the immediate context of each, only “biological” offspring is meant. You are thus forced to argue that the meaning of zerah in Isaiah 53:10 is an exception to the rule.

What would be unreasonable in the skeptic who says “offspring” in Isaiah 53:10 means only naturalistic biological offspring, so because Jesus didn’t have any naturalistic biological children, he is not the suffering servant of Isaiah 53?

How do you know the canonical gospel authors weren’t simply creating fictions about Jesus to make him sound more like the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 than he really was? Of course you will tout the historical reliability of the gospels, but I would provide scholarly resistance to that conclusion every step of the way. The question is not whether YOU can be reasonable to see Jesus as the Isaiah 53 servant but whether skeptics can be reasonable to deny this allegation.

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I could have thrown many other reasonable objections at him:

Isaiah 53:10 says if the servant offers himself as a guilt offering, he will prolong his days.  Christians will blindly insist that because Jesus died for our sins as a guilt-offering, God raised him to immortal life.  But because there is no record of any Jew in the 1st century or before thinking that the messiah would have to die and come back to life, its pretty safe to assume that Isaiah's originally intended recipients would have understood "prolong his days" to take the normal sense of "delay the day of his death".

Worse, if it is not unreasonable for a person to refuse to get drawn into the reasons why the U.S. Supreme Court disagrees with the 9th Circuit on whether the 2nd Amendment created a right to private gun ownership, simply because it seems to be an unresolvable quarrel of fatally ambiguous words, then the fact that Christians and Jews have been disagreeing on Isaiah 53 for 2,000 years would similarly make reasonable the unbeliever or skeptic who considered such a debate too convoluted to justify an expectation that any amount of study would be capable of yielding conclusions of any degree of reasonable certainty.  And the disagreements about the meaning of Isaiah 53's words would also constitute the "word-wrangling" which apostle Paul forbade in 2nd Timothy 2:14.

 

Jason Engwer admits professional bible skeptics have integrity

I found this posted by Jason Engwer at Triablogue here:  

Sunday, May 16, 2021

The Moral Value Of Intellectual And Apologetic Work

"On the one hand, writing the way [the apostle Paul] usually writes - developing precise arguments with cogency and clarity - is not, in my view, morally neutral. It is a sign of honesty. To give reasons for what you believe and to strive for clarity that reveals what you truly think are marks of integrity." (John Piper, Why I Love The Apostle Paul [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2019], 94)

“… the objector is right. Paul has driven himself into a position in which he has to deny that God’s freedom of action is limited by moral considerations. ‘Has the potter no right over the clay?’ It is a well-worn illustration. But the trouble is that a man is not a pot; he will ask, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ and he will not be bludgeoned into silence. It is the weakest point in the whole epistle.”

(C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, London (1932), p. 159)

"cogent"?  "clear"?  Then why do so many Christian scholars admit that Paul's use of the OT is a subject of never-ending debate?  Just how prevalent is the "problem of Paul"?

If Paul argued in "clear" fashion, why didn't anybody notice what he really meant about grace until Dodd, Sanders and others invented the "New Perspective on Paul"?

Do today's neo-evangelicals counsel unbelievers that becoming a genuinely born-again Trinitarian bible-studying praying Jesus-fanatic Christian apologist might not do all that needs doing in order to gain proper understanding of Paul?  

From Gary v. Smith, "Paul's use of Psalm 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8", JETS 18-3-pp181-190

My reply to Lee Strobel's YouTube video about Jesus' resurrection

 I posted the following comments in reply to one of Lee Strobel's videos about Jesus' resurrection and the allegedly "early" nature of the "creed" in 1st Corinthians 15:3-4.   That video is here.  I had to post my reply in two parts because it was too long as a single message.

First, even assuming the skeptical theory of legendary development is wrong, the reasonableness of resurrection skepticism does not require that the resurrection accounts be late legends. How many people who attend a Benny Hinn crusade testify just a few days later about how Hinn healed people? How soon after the alleged appearances of Mary in Fatima were they first reported? Very soon, And yet you couldn't care less, the early nature of the miracle testimony doesn't sway you in the least, you are STILL skeptical. So you have no right to pretend that if the late-legend hypothesis is refuted, this forces the conclusion that the reports are truthful. AS IF THE ONLY TIME TESTIMONY CAN CONTAIN LIES IS WHEN IT IS LATE (!?) You will say the rumor about Paul in Acts 21:18-24 was false, so apparently, thousands of Jews within the mother church CAN screw up the truth within the lifetime of the person in question. The ending of John's gospel admits that a misunderstanding of Jesus had prevailed among the "brethren". So apparently, testimony being "early" does precisely nothing to intellectually obligate an unbeliever to be more trusting that the testimoy is true. And Irenaeus says John wrote a gospel to refute Cerinthus, which logically requires that Cerinthus' more gnostic version of the gospel was even earlier than John's gospel...yet Christians today insist that Cerinthus was wrong, no matter how early his version of the gospel was. So stop telling yourself that "early" means "truthful". YOU don't even believe that.

Second, the truths in Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 are earlier than the "creed" of 1st Cor. 15:3-4, and those gospel texts show that Jesus' own family didn't find his miracles convincing. There is nothing unreasonable in saying, on the basis of these texts, that Jesus couldn't do genuinely supernatural miracles, and so, like with so many other religious fraudsters, Jesus might have been able to wow large crowds, but they were stupid and gullible. A messiah who cannot do real miracles, probably wouldn't be selected by God to rise from the dead, nor to die for anybody's sins.

Third, even assuming Jesus rose from the dead, Deut. 18 warns that even false prophets can possibly perform true miracles. Of course the test is whether the prophet spoke consistently with Mosaic law. Jesus did not, he forgave sins often in contexts neither expressing or implying he wanted them to obey the Mosaic ritual. You will say Jesus was god and could change the rules, but I deny he is god, so your presupposition of Jesus' divinity does not impose an intellectual obligation on a skeptic in any degree. I call Paul a liar, so I don't really care whether he was calling Jesus god in 50 a.d., Paul's word is not the end of an argument, but the beginning.

Fourth, if we cannot find fault with ignorant teens who accept Christ and thus make an ultimate judgment call about Jesus' resurrection before they even know about, much less have any ability to refute, all the skeptical arguments, then fairness demands that YOU cannot find fault with ignorant skeptics who reject Christ and thus make an ultimate judgment call about Jesus' resurrection before they even know about, much less have any ability to refute, all the apologetics arguments. Is it written in the stars that only Christians are allowed to benefit from ignorance? No.

Fifth, the NT portrays James as a Judaizer leading a large church of legalistic Christians (Acts 21:20), and Josephus reports that the more scrupulous Jews were angered when James was put to death, which would hardly be the case if James had been preaching to them things they considered blasphemous, such as "Christ died for your sins" or "Jesus rose from the dead". And this legalistic church shows by their dumbfounded response in Acts 11:18 that they would never have guessed God granted repentance to Gentiles unless Peter revealed his vision story to them. And contrary to Christian scholarly trifles, apostle Paul is a liar, the rift in Acts 15 and Galatians 2 wasn't between him and some ultra-conservative faction of the Jerusalem church, it was between him and the entire Jerusalem church, period. So since it is reasonable to say the original apostles were Judaizers, who therefore continued seeing divine significance in Temple ritual and animal sacrifice, would never have viewed Jesus' death as an atonement, therefore, we can be reasonable to say the first part of the Corinthian creed (i.e., "Christ died for our sins") wasn't given to Paul by the original 12 apostles during the critical early period.

Sixth, Paul, using language identical to the "creed" in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, says in 11:23 that he received "from the Lord" actual words of the historical Jesus at the last supper. That is, even if Paul really did get gospel facts from the original 12 apostles, he was not willing to properly credit these human sources, he just characterizes these as facts which the "Lord" revealed to him. So the issue is not the actual historical truth, but merely what Paul meant with his words, since you as a bible believer are stuck with whatever Paul meant, you don't have the option of saying Paul got the gospel wrong, or lied about which sources he got it from. So Paul is being somewhat dishonest in 1st Cor. 15:3-4, if by "received", he means "from other apostles". But see next argument for why that's probably not what he meant.

Seventh, Paul in Galatians 1 speaks about how he "received" the gospel, and in vv. 11-12 explicitly denies that the method involved the input of any other human being. It was SOLELY by divine telepathy, at least according to Paul. So there cannot be anything unreasonable in the skeptical hypothesis which infers on the basis of Galatians 1, that when he says "received" in 1st Cor. 15:3, he does NOT mean "from other people", but rather "solely from God". All attempts to make the Corinthian creed originate from apostles earlier than Paul, are abortive.

Eighth, that the NT texts are too ambiguous to justify Christian dogmatism is clear from the fact that even Christian apologists disagree with each other about how reliable the sources are. Lydia McGrew denies bible inerrancy, but says a resurrection case should include the witness of all canonical gospels. Licona, on the other hand, explicitly refuses to characterize the resurrection testimony of Matthew and John as "historical bedrock", because he thinks apostolic authorship of the gospels is "fuzziest" when it comes to Matthew and John.

Ninth, Paul cursed other Christians whose gospel disagreed with his own (Galatians1:6-9), which means "accepting Jesus" is nowhere near as safe as you pretend when you do apologetics or evangelism on unbelievers. According to Galatians 1, and Jesus' similar warning in Matthew 7:22-23, lots of sincere people who thought they were Christians will be getting a nasty surprise on Judgment Day despite their ability to truthfully say they performed many wonderful works in his name. The Galatian churches Paul founded obviously knew him personally, yet STILL abandoned his gospel in favor of the legalistic Judaizer gospel. So the atheist is only being reasonable by refusing to do anything that might cause him to commit the additional sin of heresy. And yet doctrinal divisions in Christianity for the last 2,000 years makes it reasonable to infer that the NT text is fatally ambiguous as to meaning, and therefore, remaining an unbeliever is an evil that is less serious than the idiot who take a chance and finds out he didn't accept the right Jesus, and ends up in hell forever.

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Tenth, you preach that God wants a personal relationship with me, which means you are committing the fallacy of equivocation. You intend for us to define "personal relationship" normally but in fact you mean a relationship with an invisible man who never interacts with his followers except through writings of dubious text, origin and authorship from 2,000 years ago, and who apparently seems to think that leaving his sincere followers in the dark about important aspects of their daily lives is best...which must mean that Christian apologists are more eager to promote divine/human relations than God himself. A skeptic could not possibly be unreasonable to demand that if God wants me to make a radical commitment to Jesus, he first show me radical authentication of the relevant evidence. The arguments of apologists do not "radically authenticate" that evidence, they merely show that the evidence often conforms to rules of historiography.

Eleventh, you will insist that all skepticism toward Jesus' resurrection is unreasonable, but you are simply overstating how wonderful your "evidence" is. Reasonableness can be consistent with accuracy, but by no means demands accuracy. Not all jurors who convict an innocent person were necessarily stupid, blind, drunk, biased, bribed, etc. So even assuming skepticism is "wrong", that doesn't automatically mean skeptics are "unreasonable".

Twelfth, it is acceptable to say that this or that skeptic was unreasonable, but it is illogical to jump from there to "skepticism is unreasonable". Just like if I hear stupid arguments from stupid Christians, i should not jump to the conclusion "Christianity is unreasonable". One particular skeptic, myself, has very strong arguments showing the reasonableness of doubting Jesus' resurrection. You'll probably never know how Lee Strobel would hold up under cross-examination, because he refuses to debate informed skeptics. At my blog I've been challenged resurrection apologists for years. Aside from a few anonymous YouTube know-nothings, nobody has dared accept the challenge.

Thirteenth, more and more conservative Christian scholars are rejecting the eternal conscious torment view of hell for Annihilationism, which says God will extinguish your sense of self-awareness. Since it is reasonable to adopt that interpretation, you are deprived of the ability to use "hell" to scare the skeptic into heaven: the skeptic has already accepted that nature will extinguish her consciousness, so that rejecting Jesus is about as dangerous as rejecting Mormonism. Therefore, the skeptic cannot be said to be ignoring any serious danger "warnings".

Finally, Given that your god is hidden and allegedly infinite in his ways, you don't have the first clue what he wants me to study first, nor for how long. So you forfeit the right to balk if I answer those questions for myself. I've decided that studying Christian apologetics for 20 years justifies me to draw ultimate conclusions about the reasonableness of Christianity.

I've challenged Christian apologists for years to produce the one miracle they think the most impervious to falsification, and they never respond.

Come get you some:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-questions-to-dr-craig-keener.html

my challenge to isjesusalive.com

Today I sent the following challenge to the person or persons who post to the isjesusalive.com website:

I've asked Tim O'Neill to dialogue with me about Jesus-mythicism

 On May 21, 2021 I posted the following through Tim O'Neill's contact page:

I'm an atheist and I was advised by an anonymous Christian to reply to you at your blog.  I don't push mythicism, but I believe it boasts of equal if not better support than the historical Jesus theory boasts of.  I'd like to know if you would be willing to have a discussion with me about a) how to determine theory-reasonableness, and b) whether basing a mythic Jesus on apostle Paul's writings can be anything better than "unreasonable".

Barry Jones

 

screenshot:

my challenge to Timothy and Lydia McGrew

 I posted the following in the comment section to a YouTube video wherein Dr. McClatchie interviews Dr. Lydia McGrew and Dr. Timothy McGrew, here.

Barry Jones

if Lydia McGrew denies that her ceaseless loquaciousness constitutes the sin of word-wrangling which Paul prohibited in 2nd Timothy 2:14, will Lydia provide a few examples of fictional dialogue which she thinks DO constitute the sin of word-wrangling?  The Greek term merely means to fight over words, and since Paul left this unqualified in the context, I'm not seeing an academic basis to object to the interpretation which says it was precisely what we routinely see in modern scholarly Christian apologetics, that Paul was calling "word-wrangling.  That might be a fatal blow to Christianity, but so what?  There are arguments that are fatal to Mormonism, does that justify the Mormon to insist those arguments are false?

How does Lydia McGrew reconcile her undeniably mouthy nature, with those Proverbs that leave no logically possible room for mouthy people to be free of foolishness?

Proverbs10:19When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

Proverbs 18:2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Will Lydia argue that in the social context of the Proverbs author, speaking thousands of words literally every day was normal, therefore, because Lydia doesn't speak thousands of words everyday, she's under the limit?

What would you do if you found out that reasonableness can sometimes exist even where accurate belief doesn't (e.g., you think other Christians are wrong in their eschatology, but you refuse to call them unreasonable)?  Would you become open to the possibility that resurrection skeptics might be reasonable even if their basis for skepticism is inaccurate belief?

How long does god want me to study the differences between Christian and non-Christian scholars on the resurrection of Jesus (e.g., McGrew v. Licona;  Ehrman v. W.L. Craig) before God will demand that I start drawing ultimate conclusions?  If you don't know, don't you forfeit the right to balk if I answer those questions for myself in a way you don't like?  

What rule of historiography requires those investigating ancient truth claims to believe the declarations first and not assume fraud or error until the declaration can be proven to contradict other known realities.  Don't say "Aristotle's Dictum", Josh McDowell was lying about that, it never existed, and it is never even mentioned by non-Christian historians.  And since when do Christian apologists recommend unbelievers follow the advice of pagan idolater?  But if there is no such rule of historiography, then it must be reasonable to conclude that skeptics are not violating any rule of historiography if they choose to completely disregard any and all forms of bible study.

Suppose God wanted me to study 1st Corinthians 15 starting tomorrow at noon my time zone.  What can I reasonably expect him to do to alert me to this aspect of his will?  A stranger bringing up that chapter in conversation?  A bible hits my windshield and it is opened to 1st Cor. 15?  What exactly, and how do you know God would act that way to get my attention?  How do you know when my failure to notice God's attempts to get my attention become unreasonableness on my part?  Will god alert me to this part of his will with the same obvious undeniability that the neighbor does when he says "hello"?

If it be true that not even spiritually alive people can correctly figure out biblical matters, wouldn't you have to be a scorching stupid fool to pretend that you expect spiritually dead atheists to do better at discerning biblical truth?  Or did I forget that Lydia McGrew violates 1st Cor. 2:15 by objecting like an atheist and saying "Being spiritually alive has zilch to do with it."   http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2017/10/on_some_examples_in_plutarch.html

Posted by Lydia | November 14, 2017 5:15 PM

What is unreasonable about my demand that if God wants my attention, he stop being silent and start doing miracles?  I've already contacted the apologists like Craig Keener who hawk modern day miracles the most, with an offer to give me the one modern miracle they think is most impervious to falsification, and I'm getting no answers.  https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-questions-to-dr-craig-keener.html

Lydia will say I would deny God even if he did a miracle, but that's not true.  I've disagreed with my bosses in the last 20 years, and personally hated some of them, but I still performed whatever lawful task they asked of me because I respected the fact that they were rightfully in a position of power over me.  So it wouldn't matter if I 'hated god', that does not justify you to dogmatically conclude that surely God would be wasting his time doing a miracle for me.  You actually don't know that, and there's plenty of evidence in your bible to the contrary.  Paul was more antagonistic toward Christianity than most modern atheist bible skeptic trolls, but Lydia must confess that God's miracle convinced Paul to change his mind.  Have fun pretending that you "know" that God views the conversion of Paul as a "special exception" which "doesn't normally apply".  You don't know that.  It could just as easily be that we never see  confirmation of conversions similar to Paul's because Paul's conversion story is fiction in the first place.

If it is reasonable to require that the more you entrust yourself to somebody else's care, the more strict the tests of authentication their claims to trustworthiness must pass, then what is unreasonable with the skeptical argument that says because my decision to accept Christ will affect where I spend eternity, the proofs for the trustworthiness of the bible must pass the strictest possible tests of authenticity?   My guess is you'd confess to losing that particular debate, since too many Christian  scholars deny the apostolic authorship of the gospels to pretend that they have any reasonable chance of passing the "strictest possible" authentication tests.  When I demand that Matthew appear to me and confess to his authorship of Matthew, is that stupid because I'm asking for a miracle of the sort the bible says happened (Matthew 17:3, Acts 16:9), or is it stupid because Lydia McGrew agrees with skeptics that we all know miracles are too unlikely to justify asking god to do them? 

Would a skeptic be stupid to make sure his book was historically reliable, while doing nothing about the fact that thousands of people disagree on how to correctly interpret it?  Then what shall we say of a god who makes sure his bible is demonstrably historically reliable, but does nothing to provide them a demonstrably correct interpretive key?  All Christian scholars admit the relevance of grammar, immediate context, larger context, social context and genre, yet apparently, when you employee these just as much as the next Christian scholar, you cannot avoid arriving at interpretations they disagree with.  What's wrong with the skeptical theory that God wants people to believe the bible is historically reliable, but doesn't want Christians to obey 1st Cor. 1:10?  It doesn't matter if it contradicts the bible, it sure does look like it is supported by obvious reality...unless you  insist that the only reason other Christians disagree with your interpretations of the bible is because they are not sincere in asking God to guide them.

If "god's ways are mysterious" doesn't sound convincing to you when a Calvinist or a Sabellian uses it to get away from a problem created by their theology, why should I find that excuse compelling when YOU use it to get away from a problem created by YOUR theology?  Is it written in the stars that sacramentalism is the right form of Christianity?

Is it reasonable to infer from the fact that Lydia McGrew and Mike Licona disagree on how to argue the resurrection, that one of these people is not as receptive to the Holy Spirit as the bible says they should be?  Or does Lydia deny that the Holy Spirit enlightens those who walk in the light of Christ?  If God has his reasons for refusing to enlighten some of his sincere followers, then how could you ever pretend that a skeptic's false understanding of the bible is unreasonable?  

Can it be reasonable for a skeptic to agree with the Christian scholarly majority that Mark was the earliest of the canonical gospels to be published?  Can it be reasonable for the skeptic to agree with the Christian scholarly majority that authentic Markan text ends at 16:8.  If so, then how could it possibly be unreasonable for the skeptic to draw the inference that the earliest gospel never said anybody actually saw the risen Christ?  How could the skeptic be unreasonable to draw the further inference that the stories of resurrection eyewitnesses in the later 3 gospels are the result of fictional embellishment with the passing of time?

 

Dear Mr. J. Warner Wallace: the atheists of the world thank you for your contribution

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

The Fact The Other Side Can Make A Case Doesn’t Mean It’s True

So the fact that the Christians can make a case doesn't mean its true.  Congratulations, genius.

 I’m sometimes surprised to see how quickly young Christians are shaken when they first encounter a well-articulated objection (or opposing claim) from someone denying the truth of the Christian worldview.

Maybe that's because you preach a false gospel, and therefore, without any hope of the Holy Spirit giving a shit about them, they actually don't have anything more to facilitate their false Christian beliefs, except the marketing gimmicks that you refer to as "apologetics" or "cold case Christianity".

When we first started taking missions trips to the University of California at Berkeley, I watched my Christian students to see how they would react when confronted by impassioned atheists. Some were genuinely disturbed by what they heard. Protected by their parents for most of their young Christian lives, it was as if they weren’t even aware of alternative explanations.

That is true, i.e., Christianity's survival through the years was due to the private nature of parents teaching kids to be Christian in outlook.  It isn't like in the last 20 centuries Christian parents always made sure their kids were apprised of the alternative explanations equally as much as the "Christian" explanation.  We have to wonder how many kids would have grown up and given up their Christian faith if they had been exposed to the alternative explanations during childhood just as much as they were exposed to the "bible". 

Now, as juniors and seniors in high school, they were hearing the “other side” for the first time, and the atheist ambassadors we placed before them were eloquent, passionate and thorough. Many of these students wondered how these atheists could be wrong, given the length and earnest (even zealous) nature of their presentations.

That's also the basis that many Christians have for attending the church they currently do.  They couldn't give two fucks about spiritual progress or theological accuracy, they only care about hearing something that sounds nice. 

But after sitting in hundreds of criminal trials of one nature or another, I’ve learned something important: The fact the opposition can make a case (even an articulate, robust and earnest case), doesn’t mean it’s true.

Thanks for providing atheists with another justification to disbelieve Christianity even when they hear some apologist making a "case" for it.  You'll get proper credit in my future books.

Several years ago, I attended the sentencing hearing for one of my cold-case murder investigations. Douglas Bradford killed Lynne Knight in 1979 and we convicted him of this murder in August of 2014, nearly 35 years (to the day) after the murder. The investigation and trial appeared on Dateline (in an episode entitled, “The Wire”). I arrested Bradford in 2009 and he retained Robert Shapiro (famed attorney from the O.J. Simpson case). Shapiro and his co-counsel, Sara Caplan, presented a robust defense of Bradford, and he thanked both of them during the sentencing hearing. Along the way, Shapiro and Caplan articulated the opposing case thoroughly and with conviction. In addition, Bradford made a short, emphatic statement of his own at his sentencing, saying: ““The murder of Lynne Knight is a terrible tragedy. I want you to hear me very clearly now. I did not murder Lynn Knight. I am an innocent man, wrongly convicted. I’m mad as hell. I’m paying for somebody else’s crime. This is a horrendous, horrendous miscarriage of justice.” That’s a pretty direct (and perhaps convincing) denial, and these were the first words any of us heard from Bradford during the entire investigation, arrest, and trial (Bradford refused to talk to us and did not take the stand in his own defense).

So, Wallace, does God think Bradford is guilty of that murder, yes or no?  Or is god so concerned about giving truth to sincere seekers that he gives you nothing but fortune cookie "answers" in an ancient book, and leaves you nothing to discern his will for today, except your imperfect ability to interpret future coincidences?

His attorneys were even more passionate and direct in their statements to the jury during the criminal trial and the sentencing hearing. They spent hours articulating the many reasons why the case against Bradford was deficient and inadequate as they continued to proclaim his innocence.

My cold-cases are incredibly difficult to investigate and communicate to a jury.

But the Bradford testimony was only 40 years old.  Biblical testimony is between 4,000 and 2,000 years old...yet you act like the biblical testimony is so conclusive no rational person could disagree with the Christian interpretation of it LOL.

Most people, including Christian apologists, think personal testimony constitutes direct evidence...the problem being that Bradford never explained to the police how he could know, at the time of the first interview, that she had died.

Remember, these cases were originally unsolved, and for good reason. There were no eyewitnesses to any of my murders and none of my cases benefit from definitive forensic evidence like DNA (or even fingerprints). My cases are entirely circumstantial.

But the circumstantial evidence of Bradford's guilt is far more compelling than YOUR circumstantial case for god's existence and the bible's alleged "reliability".   Bradford's appeal admits that all of Lynne's prior boyfriends were cooperative, except Bradford, who confessed in 1979 "she was dead and was somebody he wanted to put out of his mind."  He also initially said he bought a necklace for her, then changed his story and said he merely helped her select it for purchase.  His alibi was that he was sailing at the time of the murder, at night, without lights, and because the engine died, he had to row a 4,600 lb boat back to shore using a 4 foot paddle. Upon case-reopening, another woman Bradford subsequently dated said Bradford mislead her about how the nurse (Lynne) he had dated years prior had died.  See here.

Defense attorneys love to argue against these kinds of cases, and I have seen many attorneys present compelling alternative explanations over the years. Jurors have sometimes been moved by these defense presentations. But none of them have been fooled. I never lost a single case in my career as a cold-case detective, in spite of the robust arguments of the defense attorneys involved.

Probably because the cold-case evidence you were dealing with was more compelling than the dogshit you call "apologetics".

A few years ago I investigated another cold-case (this time from the early 1980’s). Michael Lubahn killed his wife, Carol, and disposed of her body, telling her family she left him. This case also went unsolved for over 30 years. Lubahn’s attorney whole-heartedly believed Lubahn was innocent and passionately defended him in front of the jury. Unlike Bradford, Lubahn actually took the stand during his defense and repeatedly denied he was involved in any way. Lubahn and his attorney articulated their case ardently and earnestly, and Lubahn’s attorney presented a lengthy closing argument in support of his position. But, like Bradford, none of it was true. At his sentencing hearing, Lubahn eventually confessed to killing Carol. His attorney was dumbfounded. He truly believed Lubahn was innocent and had crafted a through defense. But Michael Lubahn was a killer all along (this case was also covered by Dateline in an episode entitled “Secrets in the Mist”).

And if we had eyewitness-confessions to Jesus' resurrection, you might have a point.  But since even Mike Licona refuses to use Matthew's and JOhn's resurrection narrative in his "bedrock" case, its pretty safe for atheists to conclude that the two gospels having the most prima-facie claim to apostolic authorship have too many authorship problems to pretend that clever little witticisms about "papias" and "Irenaeus" are going to solve anything.

Paul was definitely on the defensive and speaking to his gospel-enemeies the Judaizers, so we have a right to expect that he would make the best possible case that his view of salvation was what Jesus really taught...which means we have a right to expect that Paul would have made clear in Galatians that he had a vision of Jesus (Acts 26:19), at least.  But the closest Paul comes is 1:16 where he said either God was pleased to reveal his son "to" Paul or "in" Paul.  Paul's unwillingness to relate what Jesus said is a silence that screams.

Worse, Paul's trying to draw upon the OT for all Christian doctrine (2nd Timothy 2:15-16) is completely unexpected if he seriously thought the biological Jesus's theological teachings were the least bit important.  But what does Paul quote Jesus on?  The last supper, and the fact that laborers are worthy of their wages LOL.  

I’ve come to expect the opposing defense team will present a well-crafted, earnest, engaging, and seemingly true argument. But an argument isn’t evidence.

So then Christian argument isn't evidence either.  Unless you are a Pentecostal and insist that the doctrine of fairness is from the devil?

I’ve come to expect the opposing defense team will present a well-crafted, earnest, engaging, and seemingly true argument.

I've expected the same from apologists, yet never get it.  Instead I'm given some fool who thinks the rules of historiography are the 28th book of an inerrant bible, who would rather not talk about how bible inerrancy could serve a purpose given that those who believed it for centuries were not helped to be more like-minded it it.

But an argument isn’t evidence. Since that first trip to Berkeley, I’ve been teaching this to my students. Don’t be shaken just because the other side can articulate a defense.

Thanks for the advice.  So the next time an atheist hears a Christian apologist making an "articulate defense", YOUR advice to the atheist would be "don't be shaken just because the other side can articulate a defense" :) 

Wow, Wallace, I would never have expected that you desired to serve the devil by giving atheists more reason to stay confident when facing "articulate defenses" by Christian apologists.  But thanks again.

This happens all the time in criminal trials, even when our defendants are obviously (and even admittedly) guilty. Be ready in advance for passionate, robust, articulate, alternative explanations. But remember, the fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true.

And YOU remember that the fact that YOU can make a case doesn't mean its true.  And yet you refuse to remember this, and you pretend as if the fact you can make a case requires that the Protestant Trinitarian evangelical interpretation of the NT is the only reasonable one.

However, you have neglected to note that juries often deadlock because even when people are discussing modern-day testimony, and heard the original eyewitnesses live in person, jurors can still be reasonable to disagree about the significance of such testimony.  If that is true for modern court cases where evidence is relatively recent and is put through an authentication process, you are a fucking fool to pretend that 2,000 year old testimony from people who viewed each other as heretics (Gal. 1:6-8) can only be reasonably interpreted one way.   Especially given that first 100 year gap in which the gospel texts were the most fluid, but for which we have no manuscript evidence.  We know that other Christian groups had gospels, and we'll never know whether and to what extent they actually claimed the same as the orthodox that their gospels were  apostolic in origin.

Wallace, if you believe you have some methodology that enables you to discover which theory of a case is the most reasonable, why don't you sell your ideas to America's court system?  After all, we wouldn't need juries, because any judge who purchased all of Wallace's marketing gimmicks would be able to tell which theory of the case is more reasonable.  Right?

If you can be so sure that only one interpretation of 2,000 year old testimony is correct, surely your methodology makes it a snap to correctly interpret testimony that has come into existence within the last 50 years?

Gee, Wallace, you have all these capabilities, yet nothing you offer Christians enables them to resolve their differences of opinion about how to interpret the bible, even though all of Paul's theology constitutes "testimony".

The non-reliability of eyewitness testimony, a rebuttal to Paul Price

This is my reply to an article by Paul Price and promoted by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

Countering the Assault on Eyewitnesses

by Paul Price

Published: 10 November 2020 (GMT+10)Wikimedia Commons

In our opinion, the cause of justice is not served by suggesting otherwise.”The majority of the focus for the many articles and papers documenting the alleged unreliability of eyewitness testimony is on cherry-picked examples where the witnesses have been tampered with and/or memories have been contaminated.

What you miss are the study's admissions that justify skepticism toward the resurrection narratives in the gospels, for example:

A good illustration of how contamination can reduce the reliability of information obtained from a police interview comes from an archival police study of 29 people who witnessed the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (Granhag, Ask, Rebelius, Öhman, & Giolla, 2013). In this case, only 58% of the reported attributes were correct, as corroborated by CCTV. According to the authors, the most likely explanation for the poor performance was memory contamination that occurred because the witnesses were gathered together before being interviewed, and they discussed the event. These findings underscore the fact that our claims about the surprisingly high reliability of eyewitness memory pertain to tests of memory that are conducted before memory contamination... (Wixted, Laura, et al, pp. 330-331)

Did the original eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection discuss it with each other before they reported it in the canonical gospels?  Obviously yes.  So your own source-study would require that the resurrection narratives,  including Paul's "eyewitness" testimony,  constitute "contaminated" testimony.

I guess we can see how poorly James Patrick Holding will do in trial

 James Patrick Holding posted this point by point answer to another critic, and I show how fucking absurd Holding's logic is

tektontv1 day ago

All of these whines seem to designed to avoid engaging real arguments rather than answering them. It also hoists itself on its own petard repeatedly.

Empty rhetoric that any fool could use, but I'm sure your followers do what you do, and mistake rhetoric for actual substance. 

>>>"1. The vast majority of Jesus nation didn't accept him, despite the miracles he may have done.

So? the vast majority of the Egyptians, Moabites, Canaanites, etc never accepted Judaism in spite of the miracles of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, etc.

Probably because the Egyptians, Moabites and Canaanites never had any reason to think Moses, Joshua or Elijah could do real miracles. 

>>>So accepting the claims of small cult (of Jesus) is less rational than accepting the decisions of vast majority of the people back then.

You mean like Judaism, the small cult that came out of Egypt to found what, politically speaking, was a puny and insignificant nation?? Do tell.

That wasn't a rebuttal.   

>>>2. The Old Testament doesn’t prove Christianity, because we do see that Jews explain the same verses completely different. When you have more than one way to interpret something, it can't be a proof.

I don't know what he means when he refers to the OT "proving" Christianity. I would never say it does.

Then you never read 2nd Timothy 3:16.  It is talking about the OT when it says the scripture is profitable to the Christian for "doctrine", and apostle Paul curiously grounds doctrine always in the OT, never on the words of Jesus.  Paul's allegedly grounding completely obvious common sense on something Jesus said (1st Timothy 5:18) is less about grounding something and more about telling the world just how little Paul thought of the pre-resurrection Christ.  

>>>3. Christianity is no valid more than Islam or other religions, because that if God changed the religion so drastically (Old Testament commandments does not required anymore, and so on) - why stay there? Let's accept that God came again to Muhammad, or Joseph Smith.

Non sequitur.

No, your non-sequitur is a non-sequitur:  he wasn't arguing that God surely did change religions.  he was only arguing that it would be reasonable for a person to believe that was the case.  The only time "non-sequitur" can validly apply is when the critiqued argument was saying a certain conclusion "necessarily" followed.  You'd be surprised at how often apologists say "non-sequitur" to a skeptical argument, when in fact the argument is not about what is necessarily true, but what is reasonable to believe. 

>>>4. The trinity sounds absurd when you believe in monotheistic God, in comparison to the way Judaism see their God.

Too bad this dumbass never heard of Trinitarian precursors in Judaism like hypostatic Wisdom.

Except that Judaism's hypostatic Wisdom is equally absurd as Trinitarianism, unless you kick the Christians out of the room and stop pushing the personification of wisdom so literally.  But the jury will find it interesting that with the remark "dumbass", the world's smartest Christian apologist cannot stop insulting people.  Download the 534-page Complaint here, then start at page 486.  There's about 35 pages of proofs that Holding lied when he testified under oath that he has "never deliberately intended to insult anyone by his communications", a statement that both he and his lawyer choose to leave unqualified. 

>>>>5. Judaism apologists disprove Christianity proofs easily. As Judaism is non-missionary religion, they have no motive to religion debate everywhere. That’s why most of the "proofs" over internet are one sided and you miss the Jews real point of views in the matter.

I smelled the elephant he hurled but I don't see it.

Then read 2000 years of church history, that's how long the Jews have failed to be impressed by Christian arguments, so apparently, the OT statements that NT authors use to prove something about Christianity, are not quite as rock-solid as the tearful inerrantist on Sunday morning would like to think. 

>>>Most people are not resisting to Christianity or any other religion because they are evil or stupid or stubborn. There are many rabbis, priests, Muftis and others that knows the truth and can win any debate.

Basically this guy has nothing but slogans to offer.

That would hardly matter.  I could kick your fucking head off in a debate about bible inerrancy and Jesus' resurrection, and the most you could do about it is post a defamatory cartoon video to YouTube.  Then YOU accuse other adults of having the mentality of a two-year old (!?) 

By the way, Mr. Holding, if you are so fucking serious that God approves of you calling your enemies "dumbasses", do you plan on calling ME a dumbass when you take the witness stand in front of the jury?  It doesn't matter if the earthly judge prohibits this, the true Christian obeys the higher spiritual moral where it conflicts with an earthly secular rule.  Acts 5:29, "we must obey God rather than men", so you can forget about pretending that Romans 13 requires that you obey secular authorities.  The earthly judge would be violating your idea of higher spiritual ethics in telling you to address me in a courteous manner.

Answering R. Scott Smith on murder and rape

 This is my reply to an article by Dr. R. Scott Smith entitled:

Making Sense of Morality: Bentham, Mill, and Utilitarianism 

January 11, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

There definitely is a place for appeals to utility in moral reasoning. E.g., when crafting public policy, we should consider the likely consequences of a proposed action, even when a deontological principle clearly applies.

So when Christian women consider the consequences of their decision to have an abortion (i.e., the child goes immediately to heaven and all chance they might end up in hell is infallibly preempted), then it is clear that the abortion has greater moral good, while allowing the child to grow up, gain freewill, and thus open up the possibility of being tortured in flames forever, is clearly immoral. Especially given that the aborted baby's entry to heaven is necessarily approved by God (how else would he let them in)?  

You couldn't be immoral to murder anybody, because according to Job 14:5, God has set an unchangeable number of days for a person to live.  If you murder somebody, you are necessarily carrying out god's will on what happens to them when their number of days are expired.  Gee, I never knew that obeying the will of God was immoral!

After all, people have to live with such decisions. Moreover, utilitarianism appeals to people, especially in secular societies, as apparently being morally neutral. There is no appeal to God or some other set of values to determine what is moral.

Fair enough. 

However, what gets to count as a “good” or “bad” consequence in the first place? Who gets to decide that?

In America, the "who" are the people who decide whether to vote on proposed legislation.  In certain parts of Africa, it is a witch-doctor.

According to whom is something (or someone) more valuable than another?

See above. 

Biases easily could enter the calculation here.

It would be impossible if they didn't, since morality is ultimately subjective.  There is no such thing as moral neutrality in that group of people who desire to cast a vote about proposed legislation.

To make such judgments seems to presuppose some outside standard, beyond utility.

No, making such judgments presupposes the basic morality of the individual that they have by reason of genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.  Many people mistake such morals as objective, but they do, in fact, spring from those two sources, no need to posit any moral source that is "above humanity".

Another issue is that utilitarianism seems inadequate in terms of how it treats motives.

Indeed, because morality is relative, there is not going to be any system that will be satisfactory to everybody.  Some people simply prioritize the long-term and others the short-term, and history tells us nothing if it doesn't tell us that we are incapable of creating moral utopia.  There's enough commonality to explain creation of different moral groups (nations, states, towns, clubs, churches) but not enough commonality to justify efforts to unite the whole world in morality.  Exactly what we'd expect on naturalism.

Yet, surely they are morally important. If someone kills another, it makes a major difference if it was done intentionally or accidentally. We rightly recognize that difference in the law.

But only for people who care about the long-term stability of society, not for those of more independent persuasion.  That's a lot of people.  Most people do in fact go faster than the speed limit, cheat on their taxes, and many refrain from calling the police if they have seen a crime, judging the judicial system inadequate to meet their needs.

Relatedly, utilitarianism undermines acts of moral supererogation, ones that are heroic and praiseworthy, yet not required. Suppose someone is jogging but notices another person in danger of being attacked by a third person with a knife. While we should expect that jogger to at least call for help (call the police or cry out, to scare off the attacker), it would be above and beyond the call of duty for that jogger to fight off the attacker and save the would-be victim. Yet, on utilitarianism, that act would be obligatory if it would result overall in net good consequences.

Then have fun refuting utilitarian advocates who think their system covers all possible moral situations.  Count me out.

Perhaps most significantly, utilitarianism makes net utility the basis for what is moral.

That's why it cannot be the answer to all moral situations, as most people do not agree that whatever is best in the long term for the majority of people is best.  People will flout the law for their own personal moral reasons often without caring whether this would help or hurt the larger concerns. 

Consider again our core morals: murder and rape are wrong, and justice and love are good.

Murder is not always wrong, its a question of whether the law which criminalize certain types of killing might end up operating to create a greater injustice, which discussion is not pointless merely because morals are relative.  We live with each other hear on earth, we don't need to claim we speak for God in order to legitimately seek what we believe is moral justice.

If you think rape is always immoral, then you are saying God is morally wrong.  See the Good News Translation of Deuteronomy 21:14.  Christian translators would hardly render the Hebrew as "forced her to have intercourse with you" if they could have grammatically justified any less rape-sounding translation. 

If the good consequences of a murder outweigh the bad, then that act would be justified and even obligatory.

But whether the good consequences DO outweigh the bad, is a moral judgment call that not even Christians can agree on.

The same goes for rape, whether under act or rule utilitarianism.

No, you only establish this "core" value by arbitrarily preempting the opinion held by remorseless rapists.  That's not very objective or clinical, that's nothing more than "those people are yucky so their opinion doesn't count."  And there are plenty of women who have a "rape fetish", and there is counseling available for rape victims who orgasmed during the rape.  But the victim having an orgasm during the rape probably isn't something you hear about in the mass media.  But an atheist could pounce on that as a proof that either your god doesn't exist, or the god who exists is a barbarian.  But that's not difficult anyway:  girls become capable of bearing children when they reach 12 years of age.  The male's sex drive is strongest during their teen years.  Why?  Might it be that your god seriously thought that having a family and working the farm was far more important than literacy, college and capitalism?

But these results clearly are deeply mistaken, to say the least. If this justification held, it could be moral to rape another person,

You don't have an argument indicating that rape is objectively immoral.  You just blindly presuppose that is the case because you know most people will agree with it.  But popularity doesn't equal truth.  You have to ask WHY most people think rape is wrong.  That's easy, the way they were raised:  most of us were not raised to take advantage of other people., and we were raised to believe that we shouldn't be subjecting somebody else to misery unless only a greater evil would occur without it, so since the satisfaction of the rapists sexual drive is not viewed by most people as a high priority, while their being born and raised in a democratic nation tells them the girl doesn't deserve to be raped, most people naturally eschew rape.

or murder a racial minority person who is protesting peacefully for civil rights.

There is no doubt that such a statement as this will garner an awful lot of support for you because America as a whole is steaming over the white cops killing black men.  But again, you have nothing but popularity on your side.  Once again, you cannot prove the objective immorality of a racist cop killing a black man in a way contrary to the applicable state and federal laws.   

But, we deeply know such acts are wrong; otherwise, why would there be such uproars against these acts?

But WHY do we "deeply know" such acts are wrong?  Gee, is it sheer coincidence that our viewpoint on such things is in harmony with the way most of us were raised, and in harmony with the kind of mammalian genetic predisposition most of us are born with (i.e., don't do something which threatens the survival of the group)?

Furthermore, your implied belief that murder is objectively immoral is disproven from the bible, in which God takes personal responsibility for all murders (Deuteronomy 32:39, Job 14:5, see Deut. 28:15-63).  You don't have to be a hyper-Calvinist to argue as a Christian that god is responsible for evil and works it to his own good.  That logically requires that when some white cop guns down a black man, God was more responsible for why the atoms in the cops brain did what they did, than the cop himself.  Biblical statements about God's omnipresence contradict biblical statements supporting libertarian freewill.  There is no place God is absent from, and that includes brain synapses.  Unless you wish to argue that ancient Semitic peoples tended to include exaggeration in their religious texts?  Gee, that wouldn't create a serious problem for inerrancy, would it? A Bible whose statements about God often exaggerate him?  How about a Court of law declaring the Affidavit of some witness "inerrant" despite its containing exaggerations?

Likewise, justice would be reduced to whatever is the result of the calculation. A rape or murder would be just in a society that is predominately one race if that act would maximize the overall benefits for the majority. Yet, if these acts can be just on this moral system, we have lost justice.

No, we'd have lost our current sense of justice.  Once again, your arguments blindly and wrongly presuppose that you DO have unchallengable "core" moral elements.  You don't.  You just have a lot of mammals in the world whose genetic predispositions are similar enough to explain their grouping together, but not similar enough to create moral utopia...exactly what we'd expect in a godless mammalian world where trying to stay alive and thrive is the ultimate purpose.

Indeed, murder’s and rape’s wrongness, and justice’s and love’s goodness, seem to be intrinsically so.

And there you go again appealing to the emotions of the reader, but surely an apologist can do better to prove objective morality, than by remarking that certain morals "seem" intrinsic.

But "intrinsic" doesn't have to imply transcendance.  Morals become lodged in our minds as we are raised by our caregivers.  I'm not seeing why that naturalistic explanation is leaving anything unexplained. 

Answering R. Scott Smith on subjective morality

 This is my reply to an article by R. Scott Smith entitled

Making Sense of Morality: An Introduction to Naturalism 

January 25, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

What should we make of these noncognitivist views? First, by reducing away any cognitive content from moral sentences, they end up being merely descriptive. But, morality deeply seems to be about what is normative, or prescriptive.

"Seems"?  Surely you have something to ground objective morality more than this?  

It also "seems" that Leviticus 21:9 is mere barbarism from an Iron Age culture.  Is "seems" sufficient for argument, yes or no? 

If people protest against a miscarriage of justice (e.g., an unarmed African-American man who was walking down a street, but was murdered by white men), they are not merely emoting. Instead, they deeply believe there was an injustice done, which is why they are upset.

But "deeply believe" doesn't an objective moral make.  The Nazi's "deeply believed" that the Jews deserved to be exterminated.  Christian Reconstructionists "deeply believe" that replacing all American law with the moral commands of the Pentateuch would be morally good.  But surely Christian moral scholars could not possibly agree on whether it was good.   Thus leaving skeptics no reason to think that God's absolute viewpoint is in there somewhere.

Second, moral judgments are not identical with feelings or commands, for the former can occur without the latter.

The show me a moral judgment that isn't identical with a feeling or a command.  Good luck.

We do not need to have any feelings when we state, “Murder is wrong.”

False, feelings reduce to 'thoughts', so you are saying we don't need to have thoughts when we state "murrder is wrong".

But even assuming your logic is correct, then we also don't need to have any feelings when we say "some moral situations would justify disobeying the law and committing vigilante justice."

But again, the wrongness of murder is inherently tied to the moral goodness of the law that is making such killing illegal.  If state law criminalized use of deadly force in self-defense, the fact that it thus became "murder" would not convince most Christians to conform, most would still use lethal force if they thought doing so was necessary to save them from an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm.

So then you can know that murder is sometimes morally good if you can spot moral flaws in the law which criminalizes certain types of killing.  What constitutes a moral 'flaw' is, of course, relative.  But that hardly means it is pointless.  Your liking the taste of some food that others hate is equally subjective, yet that doesn't require that it is flawed.

That's a big problem with you moral objectivists: you always act like the subjectivity of a moral opinion means that opinion is somehow defective.  Not at all. One parent in the neighborhood has her own dogmatic belief that the kids shouldn't be playing outside after 7 p.m., the parent down the street has the same attitude but her limit is 8 p.m.  These moral stances are subjective, but that hardly means that either of them are "flawed".

So stop telling yourself that "subjective" equals "flaw/defective".  It doesn't.  Even if it would make things difficult for inerrantists.

And, we can have feelings without moral judgments.

Sure, but not when it comes to morality.  If the store owner feels like he should call the police about the teen who stole a soda, I'm not seeing how that could possibly be distinguished from his moral judgment that such theft be prosecuted. 

Third, there is no room for any moral education or training on these views, since there is no cognitive content to learn and therefore no real moral disagreement.

No, moral disagreements don't require that at least one party hold to a moral that is objectively real or transcendent.  see above example about parents disagreeing about the latest time in the day to allow their kids to play outside.  Each parent can profitably teach their subjective moral to their kids, even if there is no god who has an absolute time for kids to stop playing outside.

But, this result undermines any training in moral virtue, such as in why we should address examples of injustices in society.

No, there is nothing about subjective morality that "undermines" requiring kids to obey their parents' subjective morals.  The only question is where we draw the line, and this, again, is subjective.  You continually presume that if the moral in question is not objective, then it is either wrong or pointless to deal with it.  This is absurd.

It also wouldn't matter if you were correct.  I too hear about racism in America's police department, and guess what:  I don't "address" those "examples of injustice in society", in the serious way that you obviously intended the word "address".  I might mention some such examples here or there, but I don't "address" them seriously. My life has enough of its own issues without needing to "address" such issues.  What are you going to say now?  All atheists who don't participate in political protest rallies aren't living consistently with atheist morality?

It also does not do justice to the fact that many of us do disagree morally. This is plain to see when we look at the many social and moral issues we deliberate and debate.

Once again, the moral disagreement between two persons doesn't have to implicate objective morals before their disagreements on it can be profitable.  Such as the child who doesn't want to wear the particular shoes the parent wants them to wear.  I can't see any divine oversight about such a trifle, and yet even most Christians would say the parent should discuss this with the child, since maybe one of them will discover some truth (i.e., the shoes give the child blisters, or the child is lying about the blisters, etc).

My question to Christian philosopher R. Scott Smith

 At the Christian apologetics site  https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/msm13

  R. Scott Smith's article is linked.  So I went to his contact page and sent him the following questions:

Hello, 

I am an atheist, and I was wondering what you think of the following argument:  When most people really think about it, they do not seriously believe that unreasonableness is an essential component of faulty argument.  For example, jurors are "wrong" to convict an innocent person, but if trial consisted of the right combination of clever prosecutor and incompetent defense attorney, you could hardly blame the jury for thinking it reasonable to view the suspect as guilty.

If then it be true that unreasonableness doesn't necessarily inhere in all faulty arguments/beliefs, aren't you admitting there is at least a possibility, even if not a probability, that one's denial of God might remain "reasonable" despite being "false"?

I ask because it is my experience that Christians are constantly equating a skeptical belief or skeptical denial with "unreasonableness", as if they thought "inaccurate" and "unreasonable" were necessarily synonymous, which not even a thesaurus will confirm.

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

I now answer the relevant portion of his argument at 

moralapologetics.com/wordpress/msm13

Now, we will see when we explore ethical relativism that while there is a fact of moral diversity amongst people and cultures, nonetheless those differences may not be as wide or deep as we have been taught.

So I guess apologists are wrong when they get from the bible the notion that hundreds of thousands of Canaanites lived a morality that was diametrically opposed to the morality of the Hebrews.

Instead, we can identify common morals that may be applied differently (e.g., how people in one culture show respect for their elders, versus how people in another culture do so).

I'm not seeing the point, the fact that we are all mammals and desire to live together means were are going to discover that the best way to facilitate this is to agree on some common morality.  Frank Turek's statement that atheists cannot sufficiently or reasonably account for why most humans in history have eschewed rape, is absurd.  If you desire to live in groups, outlawing rape is one definite way to enhance group survival.  On the other hand, God's requirement to burn pre-adolescent girls to death (if she is having illicit sex in her father's house, she is likely not married and still living there, thus she is likely 12 years old or younger since marriage took place at early age back then) is so despised by Christians that we could use Turek's logic "we all know that rape is wrong" and say "we all know that burning teen and preteen prostitutes to death is wrong", and we'd have set a basis for beliving that God wanted us to believe that Leviticus 21:9 wasn't from Him.

Further, just because there is a descriptive fact of diversity, that alone does not give us ethical relativism, which is a normative thesis.

Correction, doesn't "necessarily" give us ethical relativism.  But I myself do not argue that my conclusions abuot such matters follow "necessarily", especially in the area of which morals are "right".  

Which means I don't need to argue necessity to win the debate, all I have to show is that my position on the matter is reasonable.  Reasonableness can exist even if the opinion in question doesn't follow "necessarily".  Just like we can be reasonable to call the police only to find out later that we misinterpreted the scene.

Granted, too, irreducibly moral properties would be rather “queer” given naturalism. But, perhaps there are independent reasons why we should question that assumption. In later essays, I will suggest a few such reasons.

I've been analyzing Christian moral apologetics for several years now.  Matthew Flannagan did little more than run away when I debated him at his blog and asked what moral yardstick he uses to decide whether some human act is morally good or bad.  I documented many such failures on his part.  Here's two:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/matthew-flannagan-fails-to-show-child.html

 https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-latest-challenge-to-matthew-flannagan.html

Moreover, it is true that we may speak in ways that do not necessarily commit us to the reality of things we are talking about.

That's right.  The atheist who views his own morality as "absolute" is a fucking fool.

Generally, mere word uses do not have power to cause things to come into existence (except, for instance, stories). A scientific example was talk of phlogiston to explain combustion. Later, however, scientists discovered it was not real; instead, oxygen was what was involved.

Further, error theory does not explain why we find morality to be such a ubiquitous aspect of life.

Maybe so, but other atheist theories DO explain it.  Morality is found everywhere in human life because we are mammals and hard wired to be societal, and thus to prioritize that which contributes to group survival above that which inhibits it.  Little wonder then why most people eschew rape, child molestation, murder and theft, and have only good things to say about getting a job, raising kids, going to college, disinfecting the bathroom, etc, etc. 

After all, why talk morally if there are no morals?

Straw man, morals obviously exist, the problem is that they appear to be nothing more than opinions.  Atheists have just as much justification to talk about adultery as they have to talk about politics.  Nothing about those conversations express or imply that we are speaking about things that originate in something transcendent to humanity.

While error theory explains why we can talk morally, given naturalism, it still does not give us an adequate explanation of what morals are.

Easy:  when you say "you shouldn't steal" and "you shouldn't use the tv remote", these ultimately reduce to thoughts.   

If they are just the way we use words, then we can change morals by changing how we talk. In that case, murder could become right, and justice could become bad. But surely that is false.

What do you mean "surely"?  So at the end of the day, your argument for objective transcendent morals is nothing more than the fallacy or argument from outrage?

Murder is not intrinsically wrong merely because it is the "unlawful" killing of another human being, because this begs the question of whether such prohibitive law is itself always a good thing.  If the state law criminalized use of deadly force in self-defense, then killing in self-defense would be "murder", but that would hardly justify pretending that the law making it so was completely beyond criticism.

Probably wouldn't take me long to find many normal typical every day mature adult fathers who would make effort to murder the babysitter for molesting their child, even if the molestation did not put the child's life in danger (i.e., inappropriate touching, a crime that wouldn't justify use of lethal force).  Again, most of us are shocked by the news that a dead body with a bullet hole in its head was found in some ditch outside of town...but most of us stop crying if the news continues and says it is the body of a convicted pedophile who was recently paroled.  Our inability to cry equally giant tears when we hear of the death of a pedophile as when he hear about the death of a pedophile commits us to the premise that while the state law against murder is generally good for society, we are not foolish enough to think that it is an absolutely exceptionless standard.

Once again, most of us don't like gang warefare.  But if we heard on the news that two rival gangs met in a parking lot outside town and killed each other in a gun battle, most of us would be happy that additional human scum are not longer a threat.  It was murder, but the moral goodness of the result is no less apparent than the moral goodness of eating nutritious food.  And like it or not, yes, most people do believe the ends justify the means, even if they are willing to take the personal risks that would materialize if they lived in total consistency to that viewpoint.

As far as relative morality committing itself to the premise that in some situations, it would be morally good for justice to become bad, this seems to be a bit convoluted.  But even so, it isn't hard to imagine scenarios where a person believes that the way the law operates results in "bad justice", but where that person decides to just conform to it anyway.  The innocent suspect might be looking at only 2 years on a plea deal, but risks 20 years if he goes to trial.  He views his guilty plea as resulting in "bad justice", and yet it was morally good to him because he was forced to choose this evil over the greater evil of losing trial and getting 20 years.  Can it possibly be good for justice to be bad?  Yes.  In the civilized world we live in, any justice system is eventually going to put an individual in the situation of being required to either choose a lesser evil or a greater evil, so that their choosing the lesser evil ends up proving to be the "good" choice.