Answering cerebral faith on the absurdity of "before time"

Evan Minton admits his beliefs about god violate human language, but his case for blaming the limitations of human language, sucks.  The problem is with the concept, not the language used to convey it.

See here.   If the post gets deleted, here's how I replied:

barryJuly 22, 2019 at 11:13 AM

You say

"I suspect the biblical writers also struggled to convey God in the state of timelessness prior to (whoops!) creating all things."

------I find it quite revealing that you admit you cannot describe your god without violating language. As you struggle to maintain your god's existence as logically coherent, you are missing the point: If you cannot describe your god's existence without violating language, you cannot blame a skeptic for taking the language-violation to be a logic violation and concluding your view about God in this matter is illogical.

Secondly, you simply pontificate that the bible passages creating this problem shouldn't be interpreted too literally. But you give no grammatical or contextual justification for a less than literal interpretation. It appears you insist on it for no other reason than the fact that it is your only hope of surviving a fatal philosophical attack on what you believe. Regardless, its pretty clear the biblical authors believed in a logically invalid way about God, you cannot make that go away by merely pounding your fist and screaming that this would be too literal of an interpretation. Otherwise, gee, maybe the bible passages that say god has eternal love for us, are also not to be interpreted too literally...maybe they are just another of the many alleged cases of Semitic exaggeration?

Finally, your beliefs about God are indeed illogical:

Premise One: the phrase "before time began" is illogical.
Premise Two: you believe god existed "before time began"
Conclusion: therefore, this belief you have about god is illogical.

It doesn't matter if there really is some higher reality out there which goes "beyond" logic: You cannot fulfill the apologetics goal of "demonstrating" such "reality" if the only way you can do it is by violating logic. If language fails you as you try to "describe" your theology, you need to be open to the possibility that the confusion exists for the same reason that square circles also fail the language test.

No, none of your arguments for god's basic existence work, so you cannot fall back on a basic existence of some god and then pretend like the fault is with the limitations of human language.

Furthermore, I'm only interested in what the bible says. Every biblical description of god is most objectively interpreted in light of how the originally intended and pre-enlightenment audience would have understood it. Every biblical description of god in heaven indicates events there take place with no less a sense of temporal progression than they do on earth, and there is on textual evidence whatsoever in the bible that such descriptions are merely accommodating. You have no textual basis to justify arguing that the writer is merely using "language of accommodation" in such texts any more than you could argue they use that device when describing people talking to each other down here on earth.

Sorry, but you cannot blame a person for giving your theology the middle finger after they have successfully identified its language-violations. If there is a reality out there that is beyond the ability of human language to describe, that's your problem.

You might consider that your obsession with apologetics constitutes your implicit belief that the Holy Spirit does nothing in your ministry...you either prove it all with human argument like a lawyer in a trial, or you fear the jury will have no reason to think your case is sound. The Holy Spirit is nothing but a gratuitous afterthought, you only add it in because the bible says so...not because the evidence indicates there's any Holy Spirit doing anything whatsoever to convince people of Christianity. A lawyer may as well tell the jury that no matter how convincing his case is, the jury won't be able to appreciate its strength unless the tooth-fairy opens their eyes.

Reply to Logician_Bones on the problem of evil

One of James Patrick Holding's followers, some Christian using the name "Logician_Bones", tried to "explain" in a comment why evil is "necessary" and yet humans are still accountable to avoid what's logically necessary....and yet maintain a straight face all at the same time.  See here.  I reply in point by point fashion:

Logician_Bones18 hours ago (edited)
​@PristineKat It's the Problem of Evil argument which I've debunked, so here goes. The bad premise is implied 'underneath' "God made us who we are yes?" that he did so arbitrarily -- in reality, God had to work within logical necessity.

Well first, your attempt to explain evil is making use of an incoherent concept called "god".  This being cannot be empirically detected, but you pretend that inferring his existence indirectly makes his existence as obvious as cars or trees. Try again.

It's been shown (by analyses besides my own, but mine is definitive and fairly simple as a disproof) that allowing evil for a time was logically necessary.

Which means your god, who bitches at people for sinning, thus bitches at them for doing what was logically necessary, i.e., something they could not logically avoid doing....a divine attitude completely contradictory to the common sense notion that it is crazy to "expect" people to avoid that which is logically necessary.

If America's court judges and juries believed like your god, they'd have no moral basis for holding guilty criminals accountable.  If not even God can get around the logical necessity of evil, what fool would argue that less powerful human beings are "required" to do any different? 

Short answer is if we did not experience a fallen world like this for a time, we would not truly appreciate how bad evil, left to itself, is

We wouldn't need to know how bad evil itself is, if god kept us from doing it.   Our need to "appreciate" the evil of sin is simply a non-starter under the theory that God was capable of creating a sinless world.  And under your logic, your god is a deceptive asshole, because he sure does give the appearance in Genesis 3 that he never willed for Adam and Eve to disobey.  At least that's the appearance the illiterate farm hands living under Moses (the originally intended audience) would have gotten.  They did not have biblical inerrancy of systematic theology on the brain anymore than they had alegebra on the brain.  They would have understood Genesis 3 in the same simpleminded way that small children today get from "The Little Red Hen".

-- and we would always think it must not be that bad and would want to try it,

Then God could have created a sinless universe, and the risk we might find evil tempting, would never arise in the first place.  One conservative hermeneutic is to ask how the originally intended audience would have understood the story.  It's obviously stupid to assume Moses' mostly illiterate farm-hands would have had theological consistency, systematic theology or bible inerrancy on the brain as they sat listening to the story teller reciting from Genesis 3.  Those dolts would most certainly not have seen any ulterior divine motive, but would have believed God honestly wanted Adam and Eve to obey him, and that their doing so was just as unexpected to their god as a teen's involvement in murder was unexpected by their parents.

You cannot understand Genesis 3 correctly today because you read it through the rose colored bible-inerrancy glasses you've chosen to superglue to your nose with the help of a bulldozer.  But the understanding that makes Genesis 3 contradict the rest of the bible's fairy tales about its constantly evolving 'god' is more objective.

and, if God gave us freewill mentally at all, would always be angry at him for refusing to let us act as we wish.

Same answer:  if God created a sinless universe, there's be no "don't do this" command that would alert us to evil and possibly morph into our being mad at god in forbidding us to try knew things.

If yoru god was perfect before creation, he'd have been perfectly "content" without creatures to worship him...leaving him about as much rational motive to create anything,  as a person who just drank half a gallon of water has motive to take another swig.

So appeals to empathy with rape victims, murder victims, etc. are actually proving our point, and unwittingly evidencing that God had to allow this (temporarily).

Only in an evil world.  If God did what any good parent does, and prevented us stupid kids from succeeding with our stupid dangerous ideas (i.e., keeping bleach locked up), there would be no occasion for us to feel sorry for victims of evil in the first place, as such victims would never exist.

The skeptics fail to consider that their empathy (when not fake, and often it's somewhat faked just to give an excuse to be obnoxious with this argument, though many well-meaning people do honestly wonder about the argument) is not automatic. They're taking it for granted and forgetting that they got it in the first place precisely because God set things up this way.

No, empathy is part of the nature of a mammal, even if to varying degrees.  Frank Turek does a rather shitty job of trying to prove "god" is the "best explanation" for human morality.  On the contrary, an empirically undetectable something or other than people have been disagreeing on for 2,000 years, is a horrifically complex solution clearly sliced away by Occam's Razor long before any empirically based naturalistic theory would be.

If we rightly condemn a parent who constantly bitches about their kids being bad, but never does anything to physically prevent them from doing evil (i.e., negligent parenting), then we rightly condemn god, who, like the neglectful parent, constantly bitches about his kids being bad, when he is apparently even more capable of interfering with their evil plans than human parents are (coercive telepathy, Ezra 1:1).

And they are undermining it by refusing to side with the single perfect, infinite being, who actually WILL remove evil forever in heaven.

Sorry, your classical theism might be biblical, but open-theism is also biblical.  See God's regretting his own prior choice to create man in Genesis 6:6-7, then ask yourself why the literal interpretation has support from the immediate and larger context, and the "anthropomorphism" interpretation has zero contextual justification.

And you are dreaming if you think evil will be forever removed in heaven.  God approves of and commissions liars while he is in heaven (1st Kings 22:19-23), so if he is unchanging, then his approval of liars is never going to change....meaning his approval of sinners will continue existing even up in heaven.

They're actually siding WITH the very evils they pretend to oppose!

Gee, if it weren't for you, we'd never have seen this truth.

And trying to use this argument to justify arguably the greatest evil ever -- luring others into hell.

That's your god's fault, as apparently his trivializing the seriousness of sin is as easy as a wave of his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), or, if he's in the mood, getting rid of a person's sin is as easy as burning their face a little bit  (Isaiah 6:6-7).  Your classical theist notion that god "must" judge sin either through Christ's cross, or by eternal shame in hell, is bullshit even by the standards of your own bible.

Notwithstanding that we do not believe hell is literal torture, it's still endless, and we think shame matters a lot.

I'm worried.  Whenever I hear Romans 1:20, I start crying in fear and horror.  I thought you said your lesbian friends would be doing that strip tease at my house?  Beer-pong!

And actually, think about how callous the skeptics must be who actually DO think the Bible teaches literal torture!

Then you must think Hank Hanegraaff, part time employer of your James Patrick Holding savior, is callous, since all through the 1990s he was saying on the Bible Answerman show that eternal conscious torment is actually an expression of god's infinite love.  But because James Patrick Holding has no more spiritual spine than a dead-alligator, I don't suppose he'll be calling Hank a "moron" anytime soon.  We tend to think more highly of just anybody who makes our life easier to live, and play down any disagreements we have with such people.  Especially if we bask in their  reflected glory.

You spiritually alive fundamentalists disagree with each other all day every day on "basic" bible doctrine, yet you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to "recognize" biblical truth?  FUCK YOU.

Think about how risky it is for them to behave like little brats on this subject in light of the danger, from their perspective, that the Bible might be true.

About as risky as getting struck by lighting while shopping for groceries.  Let's just say I you are dreaming if you think you've said anything remotely disconcerting to an atheist bible critic. You don't have the balls to debate real skeptics, that's why you gave up your ill-advised challenge to me from some months ago.  Even stupid bullies retain their survival instincts after discovering they picked on the wrong victim.

Especially the ones who will insist 'atheism doesn't absolutely deny it, it just means we haven't see the evidence yet.'

Then count me out.  Both positions are viable, but I adopt "strong" atheism.  I'm about as confident in the non-existence of Christian hell as you are confident in the non-existence of Muslim hell.  Now what you are gonna do, fundie?  Quote the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus?  LOL.

Perhaps if they had logical disproof of God, but even informed skeptics admit that is not possible.

You cannot logically disprove lots of crazy ideas, including those found in other religions.  That hardly makes you worry they might be right.  Quit demanding from others more than you demand of yourself, and you'll successfully duck the "hypocrite" label that's currently welded to your forehead.

(And I know that's definitely impossible since I've proven God.

Your god is logically contradictory, he is "unchanging" (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8) and yet he loves sinners (John 3:16) but also hates them (Psalm 5:5).  Since the thesaurus lists "hate" as an antonym for "love", we are reasonable to see a contradiction.  You cannot argue there's no contradiction, with the trifle that "hate isn't the opposite of love, only apathy is".  You also cannot logically disprove that the Christian god is really just an advanced space alien who visits the earth every few thousand years and lies to us because he gets a thrill out of watching us fight over what he meant.  But since you don't spend too much time worrying about this logical possibility, you have more in common with atheist bible skeptics than you admit.

By the way, my main route of sound support, the causality proof, also proves he HAS to be 100% good in order to be infinite, and MUST exist, ergo MUST be 100% good. So no "immoral God" argument will ever work.

Lots of dogshit to shovel away here:

a) you are just parroting Thomas Aquinas
b) most Christians think burning pre-teen prostitutes to death is objectively evil, so since it is God's command (Leviticus 21:9), under Frank Turek's logic that morals come from God, it must be the Holy Spirit who is telling most Christians that actions like those commanded in Leviticus 21:9 are objectively evil.
c) You are merely arguing divine command theory (i.e., the goodness of an act derives from nothing deeper than the mere fact that god commanded something), but even the bible says God gave evil commands (Ezekiel 20:25).
d) is is precisely this cultic obstinacy about an idol's unquestionable goodness that motivates fanatics to hurt others in the name of their god solely for subjective religious reasons, when in fact if they acted more consistent with their mammalian nature, they would be less dangerous for society.
e) you are also assuming classical theism, but classical theism bites the dust in Genesis 6:6-7.   Google Gregory Boyd, then trifle about how even Christians far more knowledgeable than you in the bible, can still go astray...then pretend that while god knows spiritually alive Christians can get biblical things wrong, he nonetheless "expects" spiritually dead people to "know better".  FUCK YOU.

And my argument against your god's goodness is airtight.  Under your stupid logic, you cannot really say that rape, kidnapping and parental cannibalism are evil, because your god not only causes such things to happen, he gets just as much thrill hurting disobedient people that way, as he gets out of granting prosperity to those who obey him (Deuteronomy 28:30, 41, 51-53, 63).

Yes, Matthew Flannagan tries to escape that biblical noise by pretending that the "context" indicates that these words are mere rhetorical hyperbole merely because not every description in that chapter is literally true.  But what Mr. Know it All fails to get is a) the rhetorical hyperbole excuse can also "explain" those passages that say god is infinitely good, and b) the presence of hyperbole doesn't imply that literal intent is entirely lacking.  If I told you I "kicked his ass", that would be rhetorical hyperbole, but it would not be merely hot air, it would only mean I described a literal reality with hyperbolic language.  If Flannagan had first thought for two seconds how the originally intended and mostly illiterate farm hands, who were the originally intended audience, would have taken Moses words when they heard Deut. 28:15-63, he might have noticed the probability that these words were meant to be taken as serious threats.  Finally, most of the threatened horrors were, in the days of Moses, realities not only in Israel's past but for most others living in the ANE.  Flannagan is a fool to think the literal interpretation is "obviously wrong".  And plenty of Christian scholars, like Bill Craig, disagree with Flannagan's "mere exaggeration" excuse to take the sting out of the divine commands to slaughter the Canaanites.  Consider shutting the fuck up before you bounce back with "anybody who disagrees with Copan and Flannagan are just morons."  Otherwise, if even the spiritually alive Bill Craig cannot detect the actual truth about the divine atrocities in the bible, how the fuck could you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to recognize it?

I show that when something is logically necessary, it cannot be the fault of the omniscient God who knew it was and allowed it.

Then you apparently haven't read those parts of the bible where God CAUSES and doesn't just "allow" evil.  Deuteronomy 28:15-63, supra.  See also 2nd Samuel 12:12.

It would be the "fault" of logical necessity itself, except that it is incoherent to speak of necessity being a "fault."

But if the evil was "logically necessary", then the humans who committed it were no more capable of avoiding it, than they are capable of creating a 4-sided triangle.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, if judges and juries believed the way you do about the logically necessary nature of evil, they would not see much difference between absolving god and absolving humans.  It isn't like humans have more ability than god to avoid logical necessities.

 The only "fault" would lie in the sinners themselves/ourselves.

how could you "fault" a sinner for doing something they couldn't avoid doing?  Oh, I forgot.  Your blind acceptance of the bible.  Like apostle Paul, you are worried less about logical consistency and more about blindly supporting biblical conclusions, regardless of the consequences.  Never mind.

So the Bible's portrayal of the relationship of God to sin is logically correct, it turns out.

Then because God can get rid of even the worst sins by simply waving his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), the parts or the bible that show him constantly bitching about his kids sinning, can be safely dismissed as nothing more than rhetorical hyperbole.  Copan and Flannagan are currently sorry about opening doors they wish to god they'd never opened with their ridiculous sins of word-wrangling.

By the way, I noticed that you don't couch your logical conclusions in syllogistic form.  I'm wondering if the reason you refuse to do that is because it will make it easier for the reader to pinpoint where exactly your reasoning fails.  If your logic is so impeccable, cast it in the form of syllogistic deductions....where the proof you are wrong is narrowed to two options:  either one of your premises is wrong, or the conclusion you drew from them doesn't logically follow.

(Unsurprisingly to me since before investigating that I had already found that the Bible had unfakeable prophecies,

"unfakable" is a strong claim, you'd have to show fulfillment of the following criteria.

(1) Your interpretation of the prophecy is settled beyond reasonable doubt (i.e., the predictive words are not sufficiently vague as to reasonably accommodate a non-fulfillment interpretation).
(2) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the the alleged prophecy's wording existed before the allegedly fulfilling event happened.  With all of the Christian scholarly disagreement about the dates of the biblical books and when the canonical form of the text was first completed, good luck.
(3) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged prophecy predated the alleged fulfillment so much as to reasonably eliminate the possibility of the prophet's prediction merely being educated guesswork.  Predicting in May 2019 that President Trump will be impeached, would mean nothing if he was later actually impeached, as any fool can currently make an educated guess that impeachment is on the table of possibilities, whose probability grows with each passing day.
(4) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the people involved in the fulfillment did not intentionally contrive the "fulfillment".  If you claim Mary's hymen was still intact during her pregnancy with Jesus, something more than "she claimed throughout her pregnancy that she was still a virgin!" must be shown.
(5) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the allegedly fulfilling event was a real event in space-time, not something restricted to "heaven".
(6) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that you used the grammatical-historical method of interpretation to reach your interpretation.  We have about as much patience for "midrash" and "pesher" as Moo had for Gundry.
(7) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that you arrived at your interpretation by employing the normative principles of historiography that are commonly agreed to by Christian and non-Christian historians.  You start complaining that Mike Licona's historical method makes it too easy for skeptics to attack something?  I start asking why James Patrick Holding doesn't publicly accuse Licona of being a "dumb ass" and "moron". Fair?
(my restatements and additions to Farrell Till's prophecy-fulfillment criteria, TSR, January/February 1996, p. 3).

Those criteria are fair because they reasonably guard against false interpretation.  Take your best shot.  I'm waiting.  What, Daniel 9 predicted Jesus? LOL.

that the Christ resurrection was historically verified,

Nope.  The identity and general credibility of each NT "witness", and their specific resurrection testimony, is severally impeached on the merits, using the same methods of historiography and hermeneutics that most conservative Christian scholars employ, to say nothing of how such ancient "witnesses" miserably fail the modern American court legal tests that John Warwick Montgomery unwisely aspires to.  Pick whatever witness or group of witnesses whose resurrection-testimony you think is most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.   Or come up with a face-saving excuse to decline the challenge, and just don't tell anybody that one of the other benefits you get by declining is avoiding getting shot out of the sky.

and that much in science clearly confirmed it in ways no primitive myth-maker could have guessed.)

Dream on.  Pick your best example and let's get started.

It is then usually asked, why, if it was logically necessary that we sin, we are still punished. But that question contains the necessary premise that if there are good reasons why something is not suitable to a task, then you should still use it for the task. If we test this premise we see it fails. My usual analogy is to the task of needing to dig a hole to plant a small tree, and the possible tools you have to select from are a shovel and an oven. In the analogy to keep it simple, assume the human who needs to perform the task is also the maker of the shovel and the oven. This person had good reasons to design the oven the way he did, but it doesn't mean the oven is good to use to dig a hole with when a shovel is available! (Or ever!)

But if god is infinitely holy and sovereign, he would not "need" to "dig a hole" for the tree, he could simply cause the tree to magically appear out of thin air, similar to how he magically willed the earth into existence from nothing.  Or did you never read Genesis 1:1?

Also, the mere fact that there are five-point Calvinists in the world who think your theory of human accountability is total bullshit (i.e., Steve Hays, who says everything we do conforms perfectly to god's secret will 100% o the time), makes it reasonable for the skeptic, if they so choose, to kick you and Steve to the curb and consider the whole "why does god allow evil" and "how can we be condemned if we couldn't avoid doing evil" discussions to be nothing but sophistry and illusion based on broken mirrors looking at each other from across an infinite chasm of debatable darkness.  Or maybe you are expressing your Calvinist sentiments incorrectly?

NOW what you need to argue is that the Calvinist theories of human accountability for sin are so wrong, spiritually dead atheists should be able to see why, and are thus still "accountable" to "know the truth" even more than the spiritually alive Calvinists who are apparently blind to biblical reality.  DREAM ON.

The objection then is to act all miffed that people are being compared with objects. But the Bible does this frequently, in Jesus' parables such as the one about the weeds, and in Romans 9 about "ignoble vessels" made from clay for practical use versus "noble vessels."

Then the biblical authors were just as stupid as you.  Paul actually pushed the analogy to the breaking point.  If he likes the fact that the pot never does talk back to the creator (Romans 9:20), he should also like the fact that the pots never talk, act, or have thoughts.  So under his logic, because it is foolish to think the pot would object to the creator, it's equally as foolish to expect the pot to make decisions...meaning under Paul's logic, it would be better if humans, like the pots they are, never made decisions.

Paul's predictable reply, i.e.,  that this is pushing his logic too far, would only prove what's already clear about Paul, that he made arbitrary argument, did not wish to go where his own logic led, and automatically consigned any disagreement with him to the "heretic" bin (1st Tim. 6:4)...making him nothing short of a delusional cult leader.

(The latter teaches my view explicitly.) And there is no sound reason to object this way -- only an arrogance-based one.

It's not arrogance to challenge corrupt authority that rests on fairy tales drawn from a continuously evolving theology rooted in primitive culture.

We are the creations; we should be humble enough to admit to it, even hypothetically for an honestly truth-seeking nonbeliever.

That's irrational to expect of atheists, who recognize they are not created by any god.

So what it boils down to after this is (the point tekton usually makes) that it isn't God who's leaving orphans unadopted, it's people.

Sorry, but since your god empowers pagans to kidnap children (Deut. 28:32) and then says he gets a thrill out of inflicting these ad other horrors on people (v. 63), I'm sticking with specific declarations from the bible in my attacks.

And Tekton would also be disagreeing with Calvinist Steve Hays' view that we leave orphans unadopted because God secretly wanted us to (i.e., every time somebody turns away from an orphan, it was god's will).  Now what?  Maybe unbelievers have some sort of moral obligation from God to go study the Calvinist controversy, while knowing that even if we study it for 30 years, Tekton will still call us stupid if we dare conclude Calvinism is biblical?  FUCK YOU.

  Ironically it's often (though not always) the skeptic himself. (Not that I've adopted anyone, but I didn't go around being obnoxious about it.)
 I've also read Miller's analysis of this, which might interest you too; he doesn't cover the disproof that I do, but he goes into very much detail about the logical impossibility of certain goods without certain evils and so forth that might interest you (I think it wasn't direct to the problem of evil but came up as a foundational discussion in his reasons for the atonement piece).

What a waste of time.  Of course good cannot be known without having background knowledge of evil, and evil cannot be known without having a background knowledge of good.  That's a major rebuttal to the standard Christian view of Genesis 3:  How can god 'expect' Adam and Eve, who were so innocent they didn't even know they were naked, to appreciate the seriousness of his prohibitions, anymore than a parent can 'expect' a toddler, who has never been burned before, to appreciate the seriousness of the prohibition "don't touch the stove"? We are reasonable to say the story is bullshit, and there's not enough evidence in favor of your trifles to render our reasonable dismissal unreasonable.  It's not like disagreement with Genesis 3 is equal to disagreement that cars exist. But because dogmatism necessarily invades the bible study of clueless fundamentalists, I'm sure you'll pretend the one error is equally as great as the other.

And no, the Bible can't be "rewritten" in any functionally distinct way, unless we assume atheism as a premise, which would be circular reasoning, because its moral teachings (this is including the sound deductions from everything it teaches) are the result of God's omniscience.

Have fun trying to convince anybody outside of blind fundyville that there was a time when it was "good" to burn pre-teen prostitutes to death (Leviticus 21:9). Have even more fun pretending it's "obvious" that "we shouldn't do this anymore".  Whenever the ancient Jews were able, they tried to re-institute the Mosaic theocracy (Ezra/Nehemiah).  Only naturalistic evolution would explain why the later post-exillic Jews started pretending that "god" was going to start a "new" covenant (Jeremiah 31).

That doesn't change, and cannot change. Situational responses based on heirarchical moral absolutes may change, but subjective situational ethics are NOT an option for God.

Of course they are.  If God knew what the fuck he was doing, he'd no more have to start a new covenant, than a construction contractor, who got it right the first time,  needs to tear down the house he just built and start over.  Unless the contractor knew, before starting, that he'd have to demolish the completed building and start over.  He's free to spend $100k in materials and labor just to create what he knows will need to be destroyed upon completion, but he's also crazier than a shit-house rat.

Your belief that god always knew the second covenant would be needed, is also bullshit.  The second covenant's roots are no deeper than "Jews of later times became more civilized, hated the Mosaic covenant more and more, but, not willing to say god got something wrong, pretended that god surely must have always known the Mosaic covenant was temporary."  The same Hebrew word in Exodus 12:7 that meant observation of Passover was permanently permanent (olam), is used to describe the permanency of Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16:31, with absolutely nothing in the context to even remotely suggest the latter was only meant in the sense of "temporarily permanent".  You have no trouble engaging in the sin of eisogesis, where doing so will help reconcile the OT with the NT.  Sorry, you lose.

We are not unreasonable to say the person who authored the Mosaic Theocracy intended it to be permanently permanent, and probably would have stoned Jeremiah to death, had he lived in the days of Moses, for daring to teach god wanted the Mosaic economy to end.

If you'd just specify in your apologetics writings that you are like James Patrick Holding, and you don't write to convince skeptics, but only to reassure Christians, you could save me a lot of time.

I've notified Logician Bones that this reply to him exists:

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.

My challenge to Evan Minton Cerebral Faith on the big bang

Evan Minton is doing pretty much what Frank Turek is doing, and is pushing the big bang as if it is the only "valid" theory of origins and that it obviously implies a spaceless timeless immaterial personal god.  See here.

I posted the following rebuttal to him:

Three objections:

First, how can you acknowledge that running the tape backwards gets us to a point of "infinite density", when in fact elsewhere you cite the "infinite" nature of something as a reason to reject it?  If reeling the tape backwards potentially shows us a point of actually infinite density, well, you insist that an actual infinite cannot exist because we cannot traverse it.  Since the density of an infinitely dense point could never be traversed, your own logic would require that you deny the possibility of a point of infinite density as strongly as you deny the possibility that the universe is an actual infinite.

(this is to say nothing of the fact that you believe your god is a case of real existing actual infinity that we cannot traverse...so apparently, by your own standards, you don't seriously believe that actual  infinites are impossible, otherwise you'd be saying your god, by being a case of actual infinitity, is thus impossible.)

Second, plenty of creationists and anti-evolutionist websites, usually run by classical theist Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy, assert that the big bang theory is contrary to Genesis 1-2.  What do you say to your brothers in the Lord who find the big bang equally as unscriptural and unscientific as some atheists do?   Is confession of the big bang a test for orthodoxy, or is asserting the unscriptural nature of the big bang a position that is within the range of biblically allowable alternatives?

Third, every biblical description of god's activities in heaven would give the ancient reader the distinct impression that events happen up there in temporal chronological progression no less than they do on earth.  They would never have gotten the idea that the "eternity" god lives in is some sort of 'ever present now' or "other dimension" that is impossible for finite creatures to comprehend.  The bible talks about what goes on in heaven no less plainly than you'd talk about what happened at bible camp last year.

That being the case, how long do you suppose the list of god's prior acts is, and why doesn't your argument about the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite compel you to say the list of god's prior actions is limited?  If our inability to traverse an actual infinite proves the infinite is a faulty concept, then our inability to traverse the entire list of god's prior acts would, under your own logic, prove the notion to be a faulty concept.

The way i see it, the bible itself forces you to one of two conclusions, either of which do violence to what you currently believe:  either a) because the list of god's prior acts is infinite, the impossibility of our traversing an actual infinite does nothing to disprove the infinite, it merely speaks to our current inabilities, or b) the list of god's prior actions is NOT infinite...and at that point you can kiss your classical theism goodbye.  You suggest the list of god's prior actions is finite, and you wind up with a finite god and thus that much closer to Mormonism.

By the way, the Court has decided to allow my libel lawsuit against James Patrick Holding to go forward, so if you did in fact pray about this, you might consider that it was God who opened that door, when in fact the earthly judge was initially threatening to dismiss the case.  If prayer works, then thanks for your prayers. 

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

Minton also asks whether we have examples of things beginning to exist.  See here.

Minton failed to deliver the goods, the for the reasons outlined in my rebuttal, which was:

    barry
May 8, 2019 at 1:05 PM

    No, Mr. Minton, things beginning to exist in the sense of new atoms popping into existence, is NOT "self-evident". Those closest you could get is the Copenhagen school of quantum physics, but even that is too tenuous to be taken seriously in your effort to "prove" something.

    The only type of "begin to exist" we have any evidence for, is where the new thing is merely a rearrangement of pre-existing matter. You have no evidence that matter itself ever came into existence, and unfortunately, that's the precise sense you need to justify, in your effort to justify Kalam's first premise. Kalam doesn't say everything that begins to exist, was a re-arrangement of pre-existing matter. But its nice to see that you've pretty much admitted you don't have any serious evidence of anything popping into existence from nothing, rather, you have to "get around" the temporal-origin of things by bringing up the general bb theory. That is, you have no real-world analogies to show Kalam's first premise to be true, outside of the already-questionable and unconvincing BB theory.

    You challenge the atheist reader with:

    "If you, my dear reader, disagree, then let me ask you a question. Where were you the night the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor? Were you lying back in a canopy sipping coconut milk? Now that I think of it; where was I when that happened? I have no recollection of seeing the meteor wipe out the dinosaurs. Maybe the presupposition behind these questions is wrong. Maybe we weren’t there at all. Maybe, just maybe, we didn’t exist yet."

    -----I reply, correct, we did not exist in the days of the dinosaurs. But that doesn't mean our current existence implies creation of new atoms. We are STILL nothing more than a rearrangement of previously existing matter. This is rather obvious, while at the same time, your theory that some of what makes up a human being is "non-physical" has no compelling evidence whatsoever. Just read Moreland's treatment of the subject, and see what ridiculous warps the brain needs to entertain in order to continuing telling itself that thinking comes into the brain from another dimension. Nothing is quite as crazy as the efforts of Christian apologists to "prove" that the mind is different than the brain. When we say thoughts are always influenced by physicality such as brain damage or drugs, you can give nothing in reply, except that these proofs do not absolutely exclude the possibility of mind/body dualism. Well gee, the power of muscles doesn't absolutely exclude the possibility that the muscular power originates in another dimension and merely comes into the body using the muscle as an interface. Do you think the non-absolute nature of this proof is a compelling reason to leave open the option that the ultimate source of muscular power resides in another dimension (!?)

    You then argue "The reality is that we actually have a lot of examples of things coming into being; cars, trucks, galaxies, planets, people, houses, computers, telephones, animals, etc. These things didn’t always exist even if it were true that the matter these things were made of always existed."

    ----I reply, no; car, truck and galaxy did not come "from nothing", so they do not suffice to support your specific contention that things can come into existence "from nothing". When you say matter itself popped into existence from nothing, you are talking about something that has no analogy to how cars, trucks and galaxies come into existence. Creation ex nihilo is obviously quite different from the case of the auto manufacturer who takes pre-existing iron ore and turns it into a car.

    Either come up with real world examples of objects popping into existence without the help of preexisting matter, or we are rational and reasonable to deny that any such thing has ever happened.

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? No.

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real?

The Argument for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology

Posted: 22 Mar 2019 01:29 AM PDT

There are several lines of evidence related to the existence of God,

Which is unfortunate given that the traditional religious concept of "god" is incoherent.

but perhaps the most intuitive argument comes from our observations of biology.

Sooo...what yer really saying is the David Hume was correct, and we should depend upon our personal pool of life-experience.  If we have never seen order arise from disorder by purely naturalistic causes, we should conclude it never does...amen?  Sort of like, if we never see dead bodies come back to life, we should conclude they never do...amen?

  As we examine the complexity and inter-connectivity of biological systems, we can’t help but come away with the impression these organisms and cellular micro-machines have been carefully crafted by a master artist.

Yup, you sure were saying we should consider our personal pool of life-experience to be exhaustive, in direct contradiction to all Christian apologetics, which warns atheists to avoid assuming their experience of reality dictates what's possible for things outside their experience.

Even committed atheist, Richard Dawkins, (in his seminal work, The Blind Watchmaker), concedes the appearance of design: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”  Biologist Robert Dorit puts it this way: “…the apparent fit between organisms seems to suggest some higher intelligence at work, some supervisory gardener bringing harmony and color to the garden.” Is God real? The appearance of design in biology provides yet another piece of evidence.

Even Christians agree Occam's Razor is a valid general rule of thumb.  Well then, given that 'god' is, by your own classical theism, infinitely complex, the 'god' explanation for the order we see in the natural world will necessarily always be sliced away, because any purely naturalistic explanation will necessarily always be somewhat simpler.  And if the universe has existed for all eternity (i.e., if the Big Bang is total bullshit), then the complexity we see on earth had an entire past eternity to materialize.   You likely won't win the lottery by playing it once, but what if you play it every day for 10 billion years?  

Sure, you can overcome that rule of thumb with good evidence that the more complex solution is more likely, but with how bad the arguments for god already are, you will never make the case for god so strong that it will deserve the benefit of the doubt, or survive the Razor.  Atheism would remain thus reasonable even if technically it was wrong.  Reasonableness doesn't mandate accuracy, only informed investigation.

The argument for God’s existence from the appearance of design is known as the “Teleological Argument” (the Greek word, “telos,” means “design”). The argument was first developed by William Paley (1743 – 1805), who argued the intricate, complex, detailed nature of a watch begs intuitively for the existence of a “watch maker”. If we see similar evidence of design in biological systems, doesn’t this also beg for the existence of a biological designer sufficient for the task?

 Once again, "god" is an incoherent concept on its own.  That's quite sufficient to justify waiting for a naturalistic explanation for complexity, even if one doesn't appear at present.  If the atheist among the Vikings in 800 a.d. couldn't provide a completely naturalistic explanation for thunder, what would be more reasonable for him to do?  Wait for science to find one (i.e., what atheists typically do), or conclude "Thor has hit the other side of the sky with his hammer" (i.e., immediately jump to the supernatural explanation)?

Here is one possible formation of the argument:

(1) Human artifacts (like watches) are products of intelligent design.

(2) Biological systems and cellular micro-machines resemble human artifacts

(3) It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, biological systems and cellular micro-machines are the product of intelligent design

(4) But, biological systems and cellular micro-machines are vastly more complex and sophisticated than human artifacts

(5) It is reasonable to conclude, then, the designer responsible for such biological systems and cellular micro-machines must be vastly more intelligent and sophisticated than any human designer

(6) God is vastly more intelligent and sophisticated than any human designer

Such infinite sophistication naturally implies this god is more complex too...in which case the more complex 'god' is, the more you are required, by your own logic, to insist he was created by a prior god...that is, your own logic inevitably requires you to believe in concepts you think are forbidden by your bible.

(7) God is, therefore, the most reasonable candidate for the Intelligent Designer responsible for biological systems and cellular micro-machines

Nope, see above.  I'll give up atheism the day you give up the doctrine of god's uncaused nature.  Deal?

It all comes down to this: can natural forces alone (i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry, unguided chance mutation, and the creative power of natural selection) account for the complexity and “appearance” of design cited by so many atheist biologists?

Suppose a similar question was asked of the atheist accompanying some Vikings in 800 a.d.. 

Vikings:  "can natural forces alone (i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry, unguided chance mutation, and the creative power of natural selection) account for thunder?"
Atheist:  No, not in the present state of scientific knowledge.
Vikings:  then the best explanation for thunder is Thor.  Your unwillingness to believe in Thor and instead just wait around for science to provide a purely naturalistic explanation for this weather phenomena merely indicates you just don't want to believe, and that you have an unfair bias against Thor.  The evidence is there, you just don't want to believe!

Yeah right.

The problems with the bible and Christianity also moot any success the ID argument would have.  So what if god exists?  It isn't like the evidence about what he is like permits drawing even remotely confident conclusions.

The complexity we see in cellular organisms must be attributed to one of three mechanisms (or some combination thereof):

Unguided chance

Physical Law

Intelligent Agency

All of us, regardless of worldview, must account for the appearance of design from one of these three causal factors, and the “burden of explanation” is equally shared. As a theist, it’s not enough for me to point to the insufficiency of naturalism and then default to intelligent agency. I must demonstrate the deficiency of chance and natural law and the positive evidence for intelligent agency (one chapter of my next book is dedicated to this cumulative case for design).

Then let's hope your next book does what you didn't do previously, and explain why god's own undeniable complexity doesn't imply god himself was created.  If god is infinite in knowledge (generously assuming the truth of the biblically false doctrine of classical theism) then his complexity is infinite, so under your own logic, its more sure that your god was himself created, than it is that physical life was created.  The more complex it is, the more it must have been made by an intelligent designer, right?

You can trifle that God's own complexity is where the buck stops, but you won't have any compelling reason to assert this.  Though it probably wouldn't be conincidence that every alleged attribute of god not supported by the bible, you automatically condemn. 

The atheist must, however, provide an account for the appearance of design from chance and natural law alone, and the burden of proof is as real for the naturalist as it is for the theist.

That burden has already been successfully shouldered by atheist scholars.  Start here.

Purposeful, intentional designs are always the creative product of purposeful intelligent designers.

You are assuming the design we see in nature was purposeful.  It wasn't.  The design the pennies take as I drop them on the floor wasn't purposeful, it was nothing but the results of the laws of physics, which are themselves axiomatic and thus properly exempt from the question of why they exist.

If we find such design features in biology, God is the most reasonable explanation.

No, the objection to god from the incoherence of religious language is strong.  You cannot even provide an empirically testable model of god, yet you run around acting like his existence is as obvious as the existence of trees.  In how many other instances do you pretend like something that has no empirically testable model, is completely obvious? Methinks your religious commitment has enticed you to overstate how good your case for theism really is. That and a desire to make money by selling Jesus.

In future ColdCaseChristianity.com articles, we’ll examine a few common evidences for design in biological systems as we make the case for God’s existence known as the Teleological Argument. Is God real? Purposeful, intentional designs are always the creative product of purposeful intelligent designers. If we find such design features in biology, God is the most reasonable explanation. Learn more about the scientific and philosophical evidence pointing to a Divine Creator in God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe.

 If your god was half as real as anything in the real world, you'd no more write articles asking "Is God real?", than you'd write articles asking "Is the Statue of Liberty real?"

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's question-begging attempt to salvage the argument from logic

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real?

Examining Atheistic Explanations for the Laws of Logic as “Brute Realities”        

Posted: 11 Jan 2019 01:38 AM PST

All rational discussions (even those related to the existence or non-existence of God) require the prior foundation of logical absolutes.

Which is precisely why you are never going to "show" that such a foundation has a foundation.

And by the way, Wallace, your answers here are logically consistent...meaning your attempt to account for the laws of logic are already presupposing the validity of the very logic you pretend to be giving an independent accounting of. 

That's called begging the question.  You can coherently talk about the time before Billy tied his shoe, but you cannot coherently talk about the time before time.  Likewise, you can coherently talk about where babies come from, because the answer wouldn't require you to beg the question of the baby's existence, but you cannot coherently talk about where logic comes from, because your answer would have to be in conformity to logic first, before anybody would be intellectually obligated to pay attention to it. 

You can possibly do that, of course, by giving a non-logical explanation for the laws of logic.  That will safeguard you from begging the question, but then the fact that the answer is "non-logical" is more than sufficient to reasonably justify the atheist to toss it aside immediately without even bothering with it.  

Face it buddy, you cannot coherently talk about where logic comes from, unless you wish to get stupid and pretend that some non-logical explanations are superior to the pro-logical explanations?

Only theism, however, can adequately account for the existence of the transcendent Laws of Logic. If God exists, He is the absolute, objective, transcendent standard of truth; the Laws of Logic are simply a reflection of His nature.

Not true. God's existence doesn't tell you to what degree he controls reality, anymore than saying "space alien" necessarily implies an eternal intelligence that can create other worlds with a snap of their fingers. All you are doing is blindly insisting on the conservative Christian definition of God (i.e., classical theism), and pretending such definition is the only one that is plausible.  All you are doing is appealing to presuppositions your mostly conservative Christian audience already hold.   You are like the open-theist who tells his followers: "If God exists, he is changeable, imperfect, and learns."

God did not create these laws. They exist as an extension of His rational thinking, and for this reason, they are as eternal as God Himself.

You provide no biblical basis for this, you are just preaching to the choir.  Furthermore, there are sufficient problems with the general concept of theism, that you are foolish to pretend that a theory of an intelligent invisible immaterial spaceless timeless thing is supposed to be "better" than any theory atheists might have, which would necessarily be somewhat more plausible by being grounded in empirical realities that can be checked and verified, at least somewhat more so than your invisible undetectable "god".

Is God real?

No.  But like the prosperity gospel and voodoo, as long as you think god is real, you can help yourself feel better about the cold cruel world.  The same is true with respect to Hinduism and Mormonism.  These aren't true religions either, but that does precisely nothing to ebb their popularity.  Mormons are often confronted with hard times just like any Christian, and just like Christians, Mormons find great comfort and solace in prayer and in fellowship with others who share their specific theological presuppositions.  But since you don't believe God is really giving them any comfort, we discover then the ability of human beings to be so deceived, they can feel comforted by mere thoughts about something that doesn't exist, in this case, the Mormon god.

Without God as a source for the transcendent Laws of Logic, this question (and any logical journey toward the answer) would be impossible to examine.

 Logic is axiomatic.  You don't "examine" it, because the framework you'd have to use for analysis would be the assumption that the laws of logic are indeed valid, otherwise known as begging the question.

As an atheist, I rejected the existence of God and offered a number of objections and alternative explanations in an effort to account for the Laws of Logic.

No doubt because you were an ignorant atheist and didn't realize what axioms were, and why they are exempt from explanatory theories.

In yesterday’s post we outlined the theistic explanation for these laws. Today and tomorrow we’ll examine several naturalistic objections to see if any of them might offer a viable alternative. We’ll begin with efforts to describe the Laws of Logic as “brute realities” of the universe:

Objection:

Aren’t the Laws of Logic simply the “brute” characteristics of reality? Both material and immaterial things must abide by boundaries of existence in order to exist in the first place. The “Laws of Logic” are simply a part of these boundaries. They are not transcendent laws from a Transcendent Mind; they are simply among the natural boundaries of existence.

Both theists and atheists agree the Laws of Logic are brute somethings.

Correct.

Atheists might claim Logic is a brute, innate fact of existence, while theists might argue Logic is a brute, innate reflection of the nature and thinking of God. In either case, these laws would have to be eternal, uncaused and necessary.

 Correct.

Nothing can exist without the simultaneous existence of these laws.

Which means arguments about why logic exists, cannot exist without the simultaneous existence of these laws.

But let’s now look at how both sides account for their existence:

On Atheism

The brute Laws of Logic simply exist. They are eternal and uncaused. Nothing can exist without them. That’s just the way it is.

On Theism

God is eternal, uncaused, omniscient and omnipotent.

Your explanation is far more complex, controversial and contradictory than anything the atheist has to offer.  The whole idea of a spaceless timeless immaterial intelligence is just stupid, and there is no compelling evidence that any such thing has ever existed, I don't give a shit how many times you refer to the mysterious deaths that occurred on the set of the Exorcist, or how the Lutz's seemed to be telling the truth about things that go bump in the night.  You simply recite "eternal, uncaused, omniscient and omnipotent", and your devoted Christian followers come running to you like hungry cowboys come running at the sound of the dinner bell.  You are preaching the choir, you are not refuting the atheist position.  You are not a scholar providing rebuttal to another theory.  You are a pastor banging his fist in church.

He is the all-knowing and all-powerful Creator; the necessary, uncaused first cause of all matter, space and time.

 Is this the part where your audience is supposed to shout "amen!" ?

There is no such thing as the universe being caused, the universe is eternal and infinite.  Otherwise, you'd have to admit it can be coherent t talk about the time before God created time, which is, of course, not coherent.  Feel free to google William Lane Craig for the next 50 years, his foolish distinctions between logical and temporal causality do not make it possible to talk coherently about the beginning of time.  The beginning of "time" is necessarily stupid and question-begging.  Not to mention that "time" is completely man-made, and the bible does not express or imply God lives in some type of eternal "now" that is different than the temporal progression of events we experience on earth.  That's just modern Christianity finding it irresistable to go beyond biblical revelation in their spiritually immature zeal to provide more specific rebuttal to the world than what God saw fit to authorize.

Unless you are a Pentecostal and you think every time you set forth theology not specifically backed up in the bible, this is supposed to be new revelation?

By the way, the bible never teaches that god created time, in fact, every biblical description of heavenly events portrays them as being limited to temporal progression no less than biblical authors describe earth-based events to be.  Before you impress the babies with talk about God creating time, be sure you are on biblical footing.  You aren't. 

He has thoughts and possesses a particular character, essence and nature.

Which only make sense if he is physical, since your alleged "evidence" that intelligence can exist without physicality, is absurd, I don't care how many books by J.P. Moreland are on your library shelf.

Because He is all-powerful and all-knowing, these attributes are perfected (an all-powerful and all-knowing God has the power to eliminate imperfection).

I'm an atheist, yet you are asking me to now suddenly discover that the Christians who are open-theist are wrong.  Gee, how long would it take for us to get over that hurdle before you could legitimately continue to blindly presume the truth of your classical theism?  5 minutes?  50 years?

And if god has the power to eliminate imperfection, then he is no less responsible for continued imperfection on this earth, than the parent is responsible for the house burning down if they knew their kids were playing with matches, and chose to do nothing but sit there and watch...like god does.  We call it "neglect".

The Laws of Logic are simply an attribute and reflection of God’s perfect existence; God does not create these laws, they are an innate and immutable aspect of His nature.

 Then the bible cannot be the word of god, because it contradicts itself.   Compare John 3:16 with Psalm 5:5, and check a thesaurus before you assure me that the opposite of love isn't hate but apathy.   And be sure to specifically note: Psalm 5:5 doesn't say God merely hates the sin.  In that verse God's hatred in upon the sinner or "worker" of iniquity, i.e., the person themself, not merely their sin.  But there is no law against using your faulty concept of the NT to blind yourself to unChristian OT realities.  There's also no law preventing toddlers from dumping a full bowl of cereal on their face and thinking this is the proper way to relieve hunger.

As God is necessary for all else to exist, so are the Laws of Logic. They are merely a reflection of His Being, and they permeate all of His creation.

No, that's the fallacy of begging the question.  Your answer is already presupposing the validity of logic, when in fact you are supposed to be independently accounting for logic itself.  Either break the circle by giving a non-logical answer, or admit that you cannot answer the question of why logic exists, without committing the fallacy of begging the question.

Both the atheist and the theist agree something is eternal, uncaused and necessary.

yup, the universe.

But when the atheist says the Laws of Logic “simply exist”, he’s begging the question; he’s not providing an explanation for the eternal, uncaused and necessary existence of the laws (saying they exist does not provide us with an explanation for their existence).

 That's your fault for asking us to give a logical answer to the question of where logic comes from.  Your asking of such question is the problem, since what you ask cannot be answered without begging the question, which means the problem is with the person formulating the question.  Any question that requires your answer to take the form of a logical fallacy, is therefore a fallacious question. 

When you blame God for logic, you say so with words that conform to the laws of logic...hence, begging the validity of the very logic that you are pretending to provide an independent accounting for.

Theists, on the other hand, can make a case for God’s existence from a number of evidential lines, providing a reasonable foundation from which logical absolutes can then be elucidated.

 Your case for theism sucks, as I've shown repeatedly at this blog.  While god might be one explanation for what you perceive to be intelligent design, he isn't the only explanation, and by god being so complex himself, Ocaam's Razor would counsel that the god-explanation is less likely than any other.

In addition, atheism fails to explain how the Laws of Logic can be eternal and uncaused and what role they play in causing all other contingent realities.

That's your fault.  If you correctly realized that logic is axiomatic, you'd understand why it is stupid and illogical to even ask why logic exists. Axioms are not subject to analysis.  If they were, they wouldn't be "axioms".

Theism, on the other hand, accounts for the existence of the Laws of Logic by pointing to the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent uncaused, first cause possessing perfect rationality (by virtue of His limitless power) who also acts as the first cause of all other dependent (contingent) creations.

Sorry, Wallace, but you are preaching to a narrow choir, there are plenty of Christian scholars who deny the bible-gods omniscience and omnipotence.  You need to stop talking all bigoted like that if you wish to take on atheists. They are not going to shove aside every other viable Christian interpretation of the bible and "just" allow your blind assumption of classical theism to slide by without criticism. God's imperfection is clear from Genesis 6:6-7.  The entire chapter is believed by classical theist Christians to be describing literal history, so there's no contextual justification to pretend that this particular passage therein is an "anthropomorphism" or something other than literal language.  And the original recipients of that story certainly wouldn't have had systematic theology or bible inerrancy on the brain, so they more than likely took the claim at face value, without trifling about semantics the way an inerrantist or jailhouse lawyer would.  So the passage is reasonably understood to be literal, and thus, God's regretting his own prior decision to create man is a strong indication of his imperfection.  Did he know from all eternity that he would regret creating man?  If God does things he knows he will regret, he has more in common with the impulsive teenager than he has with intelligence.

Objection:

Aren’t the “Laws of Logic” simply the result of observations we make of the world in which we live? We discovered the Laws of Physics from our observations of the natural world; can’t we discover the Laws of Logic in a similar way?

I've deleted your answer here because I'm one of those atheists who doesn't account for logic that way.


Your argument to God from logic does precisely nothing to intellectually obligate the atheist to admit God's existence.  You would have glorified your god more had you simply quoted the bible.  Going beyond what is written is dangerous, and the devil can make you think your intellect is sufficient to fill up the theological gaps left by your bible.  Don't be stupid.