My response to Bellator Christi on bible inerrancy

 See 

https://bellatorchristi.com/2023/10/26/s7e8-inerrancy-does-it-matter/

In case my post gets deleted, here's a screenshot proving the post was made, followed by the actual text:

Text:

What I offer here is not proof that you are unreasonable, but that Christians who reject bible inerrancy are reasonable.

First, I have't studied your own views enough to detect what you think about this, but I will assume that you think inerrancy arises either naturally or logically, or both, from divine inspiration, on the grounds that "god cannot lie" (i.e., Geisler-flavored inerrantism, i,e., "The bible is God's word, God cannot err, therefore the bible cannot err".). So your problem is in explaining why you think the mere fact that the author is "divinely inspired" somehow necessitates that whatever he wrote during such inspiration, was inerrant. You cannot deny that the author of Revelation was divinely inspired, and yet it was WHILE he was divinely inspired that he committed the capital offense of idolatry twice, with the angel rebuking it as a sin that is to be avoided (19:10, 22:8). So if somebody wanted to stay open to the possibility that other NT authors engaged in acts of sin/imperfection while they were in the process of writing the text of their NT books, you could not rationally insist that this is completely out of the question.

Second, if you deny Geisler's version of inerrancy, then you have a version of inerrancy that is far less clearly "biblical", which might require that you stop characterizing as unreasonable those Christians who think inerrancy is modern day Phariseeism.

Third, you cannot theologically separate inerrancy from divine inspiration. You would never say that maybe Romans could be inerrant while also lacking divine inspiration. Since your position views divine inspiration as necessary to biblical inerrancy:

1 - What bible verse or verses most strongly support(s) the divine inspiration of the NT? To make things easy, feel free to provide your proofs in the same order as the order of the NT canon: Proof that Matthew is divinely inspired, proof that Mark is divinely inspired, etc. The less clear the divine inspiration of NT books is, the less unreasonable will be those who reject NT inerrancy. And yet something tells me that when you meet another Trinitarian Christian who denies biblical inerrancy, you think they are not presently experiencing all of the spiritual growth potential that god has made possible for them to presently experience.

2 - Is your inerrancy-favoring interpretation of those NT verses so clear and compelling that those who disagree with you on the point must be unreasonable to so disagree? Or could disagreement with you on the point possibly be reasonable?

3 - Most conservative and fundamentalist churches have a statement of doctrines they consider "essential to salvation", very few of them express or imply that belief in the inerrancy of the NT is essential to salvation. That is an awful lot of spiritually alive people who are failing to notice how crucial the inerrancy of the NT is, reasonably suggesting their view does not arise from ignorance, but from the non-existence of the doctrine in the first place. This renders the outsider reasonable to conclude that rejection of NT inerrancy iis not anymore unreasonable than is rejection of Preterism.

4 - Could a Christian do absolutely everything which Jesus in the 4 canonical gospels required of them, while sincerely believing the whole time that the doctrine of NT inerrancy is false? I say yes, their trust that the 4 gospels correctly convey Jesus' commands, does not demand they assent to gospel-inerrancy, only that they assent to the historical reliability of the gospels. As as I'm sure you are aware, most Christian apologists insist that belief in bible inerrancy is by no means necessary before a person can be reasonable to say Jesus' resurrection is the one theory that best explains the NT evidence..

I'm not saying inerrantists are unreasonable. I'm merely saying those who reject NT inerrancy can be reasonable to do so. Contrary to popular belief, reasonableness for one group does not dictate the limits of reasonableness for another group. And yet the humble attitude that says your opponent could possibly be equally as reasonable as you, is not only nowhere allowed in NT theology, but is explicitly condemned by Paul who seems to think that disagreement with him automatically justifies anathematizing the opponent (Gal. 1:6-9), or insisting that they "know nothing", and worse (1st Tim. 6:3, Titus 3:9-11). That is, if you refuse to become an intolerant bigot in your theological views, you are willfully disobeying apostle Paul's demand that you imitate him (1st Cor. 11:1).

If spiritually alive people cannot even agree on such spiritual things, you can hardly expect spiritually dead people, like me, to manifest more accurate discernment of such spiritual things.

Hope that helps.

==================end

My reply to R.L. Solberg on the problems of bible "inerrancy"

This is my reply to an article by apologist R.L. Solberg entitled

Can the Bible be our Authority and not be Inerrant?

Link to original article.

Look, I get it. There are a growing number of Christians who love Jesus and do not want to give Him up, but they are also uncomfortable with some of the teachings of what we might call “mainstream Christianity.”

And if you refuse to say they lack salvation, then skeptics can demand that you explain why it is that some Holy Spirit filled people affirm inerrancy, while other Holy Spirit filled people deny inerrancy.  Does the Holy Spirit "try" to convince ignorant Christians and sometimes fail?  Does the Holy Spirit know exactly what needs to be done to successfully convince an ignorant Christian of the errors of her way?  If so, then the Holy Spirit's failure to put forth such divine effort makes it God's fault if the Christian, despite sincerity toward God, continues to persist in doctrinal error.

Especially those teachings that challenge the big issues we have to wrestle with today. Things like social justice, gender quality, women’s issues, and sexual issues like LGBTQ+.

My advice is to quit trying to change things, because making even one change social policy does little more than create 4 additional problems that didn't exist before.  Keep up that shit, and you wind up with a society that is so complex that it will collapse.  America would be far better off today had it never succumbed to innovation.  Suffrage and Civil Rights might have seemed good from a short-term perspective, but in the long-term perspective, these changes emboldened the people to cry out for further and further innovation, and presto, here we are today, with some states legalizing hard drugs, and the U.S. Supreme Court having legalized gay marriage.  The Christians are correct:  America's problems all stem from its citizens' inability to be content with what they currently have.  

There’s a tension there, especially for those who care deeply about these issues and want to be right with God. I feel the tension, too. And it raises a legitimate question: How do we balance our faith and our love of Jesus with these other important issues?

Good question, if Jesus was the YHWH of the OT, he probably still wanted to kill gays even after the incarnation.  Leviticus 20:13.  Consistency would demand no less.  Of course, I don't trifle about Jesus "fulfilling" the OT laws because the fact that Protestants and Catholics disagree on the theological significance of his death despite myriad scholarly tomes from each camp trying to "explain" it, I find the death of Jesus to constitute nothing more than the death of a mammal.  Thus there is no intellectual obligation on me to consider that maybe Jesus didn't advocate the brutality of the OT morality because he "fulfilled" those laws.  Not even close.

One approach currently growing in popularity is to retain the Bible as an authority but reject the belief that it is inerrant.

A more refined version of that position would be to avoid inerrancy because the bible simply doesn't teach it.  Never having taught it, there is no bible inerrancy doctrine to reject in the first place.  Mainline Inerrancy says "only in the originals", the bible never specifies any such qualification, and only stupid people would pretend that God wants them to wrap their lives around a doctrine that they constructed partially from non-biblical "truths".  If any conception of inerrancy says something that cannot be found in the bible, then to that extend that doctrine is not "biblical".

This gives us some wiggle room to hold on to both Jesus and our social positions. Rejecting the inerrancy of the Bible can help to resolve a number of thorny moral issues. We can, for example, conclude that the teachings found in Scripture against homosexual behavior are outdated, ancient notions that are no longer appropriate. (See my LGBTQ+ sensitivity statement.)

If you don't advocate killing homosexuals, then you have concluded that at least one law in scripture against homosexual behavior is an outdated ancient notion that is no longer appropriate.

However, rejecting the inerrancy of Scripture also introduces some very tricky complications. At first glance, rejecting inerrancy seems to allow us to cut off those old, dead branches from Christian teaching that are no longer bearing fruit. But in reality, we end up sawing through the very branch that holds up our faith. Let me explain what I mean.

What is Biblical Inerrancy?
Biblical Inerrancy is simply the teaching that the Bible is without fault or error in everything that it teaches or affirms.

Only in the originals. But correctly qualifying it that way makes the doctrine unbiblical.  None of the classic biblical texts on "inerrancy" express or imply "only in the originals".  They were talking about the state of the copies that were available to the author.  So "only in the originals" might be a qualification that solves a lot of problems for the trifling inerrantist, but it's not "biblical".  

And since the biblical authors who mentioned scriptural inspiration were talking about the copies currently in their possession (2nd  Tim. 3:16, see v. 15), the bible will require any doctrine of inerrancy to ascribe inerrancy to at least some types of copies in the unqualified way that Paul did in that verse.  Welcome to hell.

This is, by nature, a binary issue. The Bible is either inerrant or it is not.

If the bible were a composite whole, that is valid.  But the bible is a collection of different works from different authors over a time span of 1500 years.  There is nothing about mistakes in Genesis that would require mistakes in Matthew.   There is nothing about the inerrancy of Deuteronomy that would require Romans to be inerrant.  There is nothing about mistakes of Southern Baptists that requires mistake among the Assemblies of God.  Dedication to the "canon" of the bible is a shockingly ignorant thing, because it has more to do with accepting what was produced by the traditions of men and less to do with following what Jesus said.  If Jesus did not require the church to create any canon, then Jesus cannot have thought creating a canon was very important to the spiritual health of his church.  So to the extent the church makes any canon fundamental to its purpose, they are doing the Pharisee-thing and adding to the word of the Lord.

It cannot be “partially inerrant,” since that would be the same thing as being errant.

That doesn't make sense.  There is nothing wrong in saying one document contains a mixture of truth and error.  The evidence in favor of the divine origin of the bible is not sufficiently weighty to justify insisting the bible should be viewed as either entirely inerrant or untrustworthy. Like any other document, there is nothing unreasonable in saying the bible also contains mixtures of truth and error.

The 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy captures the mainstream Christian position on this issue. For our purposes, here’s a simple definition of the two possible positions:

The Bible is Inerrant 

The fact that so many Christians believe this but differ on what they mean, would justify skeptics to label the matter a confusing and pointless waste of time, if they chose to avoid spending time on it.

The Bible is not Inerrant 

Jesus never talked about any NT canon, so Christians are not under any obligation to even care whether any NT book outside of their personal favorite gospel is inerrant.  If Paul the Pharisee wanted others to view his NT writings as inerrant scripture, then apparently upon converting to Christianity he didn't lose all of his Phariseeic tendencies to equate traditions of men with god's word. 

The Bible was written by men but superintended by the Holy Spirit and is, therefore, without error or fault in all that it teaches or affirms.

No, because God can guide you today, without rendering you perfect in the process.  Hence, there is no logically necessary reason to insist that if God inspired the bible, it must therefore be considered inerrant.  You'll have to plead and prove something more about the bible than merely god's "inspiring" it.

The Bible is a collection of writings from good but fallible men. Therefore, some of the things it teaches or affirms may be wrong.

No, you think Moses was the author of the Pentateuch.  You have read plenty of stories from pagans living around 1300 b.c. who slaughtered children in times of war, and you think they are all batshit crazy, not "good".  But as soon as you read that Moses specifically commanded his people to kill children and babies (Numbers 31:17), then suddenly, you insist that Moses is "good" in a very special way.  LOL.

That's the most objective position since the evidence in favor of the bible's divine inspiration is so weak that the bible does not deserve to be viewed as an exception to the rule.

Let’s take a brief look at four aspects of this issue.
“God is inerrant but the Bible is not.”
The progressive Christians that I have read or spoken with all subscribe to the idea that God is inerrant, but the Bible is not. That seems reasonable on the surface. But it opens up the proverbial can of worms.

God opened a proverbial can of worms when he got bored of his perfect pre-creation state and decided to create creatures that he knew would cause him to become intensely wrathful.   That's like a man who knows he is easily pissed off at kids, deciding to have kids.  If the kids make him so angry that he kills them, who's fault is that?  The kids for misbehaving, or Dad's fault for choosing to create the condition under which he knew his wrath would become aroused to the point of killing?

If God is without error, was it His intention to give us a set of writings that He knows contains errors?

The bible doesn't answer that, so maybe Paul would have considered this one of those "foolish questions" he wants Christians to avoid? 

Was God unable to use human authors to successfully communicate His truths inerrantly?

Depends on whether you ask a Calvinist or an Arminian, who differ on whether man's "freewill" is capable of thwarting God's purposes. 

Or maybe the Bible was an entirely human idea that God did not intend we should have created?

Since you couldn't prove the divine origin of the biblical canon to save your life anyway, this seems a reasonable position. 

If that’s the case, what can we as Christians know about God apart from Scripture?

Well the fact that God doesn't want you to know anything about him except what you read in the bible, and the fact that God doesn't wish for Christians to agree on what God is like, might suggest that your religion cannot provide a reasonably certain answer to your question.

In Romans 1, Paul teaches that we can know some things about God from His creation.

Paul was a heretic and in Romans 1 and elsewhere he took the OT out of context.  In Romans 3 he condemns the entire human race on the authority of various OT texts that in their original context were not talking about the entire human race.  In the real world that's called "ripping the OT out of context".   But in Fantasyland, where nothing is ever yucky or wrong, we call it "God allowed Paul to see a deeper meaning than what the OT authors themselves intended".  LOL, is the evidence for God's inspiring Paul to write Romans so great that the only reasonable choice for the reader is to grant Paul an exception to the rule of context whenever it "looks like" he is taking the OT out of context? No.  you will do that because of your present trust in Paul's divine inspiration, but the evidence supporting his divine inspiration is so weak that it cannot possibly place the non-Christian reader under any intellectual obligation to worry about "double-fulfillment" or "sensus plenior"

This is what theologians call general revelation. From the “book of nature” alone we can learn that God is powerful, creative, intelligent, majestic, and so on.

The book of nature also has baboons eating baby gazelles alive.  So the book of nature also testifies that this god is a sadistic lunatic even if it also testifies that he is "smart", just like Nazi scientists were smart, but barbaric and cruel nonetheless.  You will say "I'm a young-earth creationist, animals didn't start brutalizing each other until Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit."  But many other Christians are "old earth creationists" who say God intended carnivores to inflict horrific misery on each other for millions of years before Adam and Eve existed.   If Nature exhibits intelligent design, you cannot avoid the question of what type of morality the "creator" of that design harbors.  If I create a robot that kills humans in complete disregard of their own feelings, individual lives and rights, what does that tell you about my morality?  That my ways are mysterious, or that I'm barbaric?  And yet because the bible uses so much exaggeration, you cannot just read the bible like yesterday's newspaper and pretend that God's "goodness" must prevail over his "works".  God's "word" always calls himself good and righteous.  But if nature exhibits his "works", well, actions speak louder than words.

But does the “book of nature” reveal to us a God who is loving and merciful?

No.  The "book of nature" consists of various different life forms, some of whom treat each other fairly, others of whom treat each other like shit.  The "book of nature" does not give you a consistent position, except perhaps n the sense of a super smart child who creates random robots just to see how they will interact with each other.

If we only study nature, we might come to the opposite conclusion. The world can be a violent and unfair and unforgiving place. Creatures violently killing other creatures for food or fun. Indeed, without the Bible how would we arrive at the idea that God is inerrant?

But some Christians who revere the bible are open-theists, who say God is imperfect and learns from his mistakes.

Wouldn’t we see the violence and injustice and suffering and evil in the world and conclude that God probably got a few things wrong?

No, the god of Deut. 28:15-63 fits perfectly a world full of sadistic lunacy.  See esp. v. 63, where God promises he will "rejoice" to inflict these horrific miseries on disobedient Hebrews no less than he rejoices to provide abundance to obedient Hebrews.  If you try to avoid that carnage by saying ancient Semitic authors often exaggerated to make a dramatic point, then we have to wonder how many other statements about God in the bible, also written by ancient Semitic people, are mere exaggeration, and if so, what damage to existing doctrine would be caused if you started trying to figure out which parts of doctrinal texts were exaggerations and which parts were true.  Does Psalm 90:2 teach that God is eternal?  Or is this merely an ancient Semitic exaggerated way of saying God is really old?  Does John 1:1 teach that Jesus is God?  Or is this just an ancient Semitic exaggerated way of saying Jesus is the greatest of all creatures?

Aside from God appearing and speaking to us directly, the Bible is our only source of direct knowledge about God — including His perfection and goodness.

and God's unwillingness to do everything he can to convince you that you are headed for disaster, also tells you something about God - his love for you is limited.  

It offers what theologians call special revelation. Scripture is God’s witness to Himself. And if that witness is full of errors, what do we really know? Can we even conclude that God is inerrant?

If your human spiritual leaders are imperfect, what do you really know?  Can you ever get the right interpretation of the bible if you are constantly at the mercy of other imperfect sinners who provide you imperfect English translations and imperfect commentaries?

Exactly how stupid is it to give an "inerrant" message to a person without also providing them with the infallible interpretive key?  "Well maybe god wants us to grope for  the "correct" interpretationi" for a few years before he will allow us to detect it!"

Blame it on my genetic predispositions, or my environmental conditioning, or both, but I don't waste my time serving fuckhead leaders who demand that I align with "truth", but who then intentionally hide the truth from me.

Inerrant bible without infallible interpretive key is just batshit crazy, at least in the case of modern Americans who cannot benefit from direct real-time apostolic oral tradition.

And if God allowed first century people to have the infallible interpretive key (i.e., Jesus and the apostles), why doesn't God allow modern America to recover the correct meaning of scripture with equal ease?  Does God hate modern America more than he hated 1st century Palestine?  

Did you ever wonder about those "corporate responsibility" texts in the bible?  Could it be that if God dislikes a great leader in America, God will not merely punish the individual leader, he will do what he did in the bible, and punish the entire nation?  In other words, because most leaders in America are corrupt, "god" punishes the entire American nation (i.e., including Christians)?  Maybe that might explain why "god" doesn't answer even sincere prayers of American citizens?  Maybe God is the type of being who will punish American churches and their members because they happen to be settled in a country that is run by corrupt politicians?

How is that different from God allowing innocent children to be swept up in disasters and crimes that they obviously aren't personally responsible for?  Maybe your god won't start healing Christianity until the American nation stops being so corrupt....because for whatever reason, your "god" coincidentally just happens to believe in the same doctrine of corporate responsibility that most ancient people believed in?

The Problem of Objectivity

A progressive Christian writer named Derek Vreeland brings up a compelling point against inerrancy. In a 2019 article, he claims that “Underneath the arguments for biblical inerrancy is the desire for pure objectivity.” He goes on to point out that there is really no such thing as pure objectivity. Any interpretation of the Bible is going to be subjective based on who is doing the interpreting. To underscore his point, he asks some tough questions:
Who determines the difference between what the Bible is recording and what it is affirming?
Who determines the criteria by which we judge the correctness of our interpretation?
Who determines the meaning of each biblical text?
Vreeland summarizes the problem of objectivity by pointing out the inherent difficulties it presents:
Fallible people have to decide what the Bible is affirming. Mistaken-prone human beings must do the hard work of interpretation. Imperfect people have to determine the meaning and purpose of Scripture.Derek Vreeland

Vreeland’s observations are current. However, what I think he misses is that problem of objectivity gets worse—much worse—if we reject the inerrancy of the Bible. If we accept the idea that the Bible is a collection of historical writings from good but fallible men and, therefore, some of the things it teaches or affirms are in error, we are left with a much scarier set of questions. Then we have to ask:
Who determines which teachings in the Bible are free of error?
Who decides which biblical affirmations can be rejected as faulty?
Who determines which verses or passages we can ignore because they got it wrong?

In all three cases, the individual interpreter.

If we accept the Bible’s inerrancy, the differences of opinion between fallible human beings are naturally addressed by comparing the opinions to Scripture.

No, because inerrantists disagree on what scripture teaches, which would hardly be the case if scripture were "clear". 

The text of the Bible becomes the arena in which the battle of interpretation is waged. On the other hand, if the Bible is errant, we can only appeal to the ever-shifting arena of public opinion to work out the differences.

I don't see the problem, YOU are errant, yet you seem to find your way in the world just fine without some infallible person showing what to do and where to go.  A better question is what's more reasonable:  denying inerrancy because it is false and accepting the consequent increase in bible-difficulties?  Or accepting inerancy despite its falsity so that you can feel secure that there's some magical book guiding your life, when in fact because of the need for interpretation, the book's magic never actually gets to you, YOU are guiding your life by YOUR interpretation of that book. How could it be otherwise?

The Authority of Scripture
Vreeland claims that the language of inerrancy grows out of an “evangelical anxiety of elevating a human critique of Scripture over the intended divine revelation within the text.” And he’s not wrong. We should have serious anxiety about elevating our own opinions over the teachings of Scripture.

But it is an "opinion" that says the bible is inerrant.  When you say "the bible is inerrant", you mean some defined canon of books, different from the Catholic and Orthodox canons.   You also mean that the teachings of the biblical authors are inerrant, which is foolish since it wouldn't matter if this were true, you are never going to successfully trivialize the need for subjectivity.  We see inerrantist Christians in constant disagreement (I'm mean the serious scholars, not just any yayhoo, see Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society).  I have to wonder how dumb it really is to insist that a text that proves to be fatally subjective in meaning, must nevertheless be "inerrant".

If we get to decide what parts of the Bible are right and which parts are in error, we are putting the Word of God under submission to (what even Vreeland would concede) are the opinions of fallible humans.

Fallible humans also wrote the originals, and later fallible humans decided which books should go together.  Belief in inerrancy might make it seem as if there is a decrease in subjectivity, but it doesn't.

In other words, we’re putting subjective human opinions in position of authority over the Bible.

What makes you think the human authors of the originals weren't putting their subjective opinions in a position of authority over God?  You'd be begging the question to say "my belief in inerrancy!" 

If Vreeland is right and the Bible is errant, we need to update his quote to read:
Fallible people get to decide what the Bible got right and wrong. Mistaken-prone human beings get to determine the meaning and purpose of Scripture.

 I'm not seeing the problem, because that has never ceased being the case with Christians for the last 2,000 years.  Once again, inerrant text without inerrant interpretive guide is just stupid, stupid, stupid.  As soon as you start in with "well maybe God wanted a person to be a Jehovah Witness for 30 years before showing them the truth..." you permanently open a door to justifying disagreement with your god.  I don't want to believe something false, EVER.  So if your god wants me to believe something false for any reason, then apparently a sinner has greater desire for truth than even your god.

If the Bible is not inerrant in all it teaches and affirms, then anything goes.

"anything goes" is what inerrantist Christians have given to the world with their contradictory "biblical" answers to issues of Jesus' resurrection, his "deity", the theological implications of his death (Protestants and Catholics disagree on this), abortion, pacifism, death penalty, dating, church attendance, creationism, Lordship Salvation, etc.

Each of us get to decide—as a community or even as individuals—which teachings seem right to us. The parts we don’t agree with, or we don’t understand, or don’t “feel” right can be dismissed as ancient human errors.

Inerrantist Trinitarian Christian apologists Copan and Flannagan (2014) get rid of the bible texts showing God commanded his people to slaughter children, by saying that because the pagans living around the Hebrews in the days of Moses often exaggerated their war victories, we may safely assume the Hebrews did the same.  So since "exaggerate" means "go beyond the truth", and there is no other category this would be except "error", we have modern inerrantists admitting that biblical authors sometimes spoke errantly.

A fanatical inerrantist will narrowly define "error" as a falsehood which the biblical author intended the reader to believe...that way, when errors are proven, the inerrantist can simply scream "satire" or something else and insist that because the bible author didn't intend the reader to take the factual assertions literally, then presto, there is no genuine "error" here.  But they can know nothing about God except from the bible, and there's nothing in the bible suggesting that certain types of error, "don't count".

And, as Augustine so eloquently wrote seventeen centuries ago:

If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.—Augustine

Then all inerrantists are guilty of this, since they all reject biblical teachings they don't like.  For example, they don't like that the earliest gospel found great significance in Jesus' pre-cross teachings, but saw none in Jesus' alleged resurrection appearances.  So they come up with fancy excuses for insisting that Mark had more to say after 16:8.  Maybe the last page went missing.  Or maybe Mark disagreed with the other 3 gospel authors and decided that the resurrection appearances should be limited to the oral-stage.  Or maybe Mark wanted to be less direct in telling the reader that the risen Christ was seen by his disciples.  Etc, etc.  They obviously don't like the notion that Mark intended to end at 16:8.

We cannot claim that Scripture is our authority and at the same time exercise our own fallible human authority over what it says by vetoing or rejecting certain teachings.

That's idealistic, but inerrantists still violate this every day.  If Revelation seems to say something you don't like, you can choose from several different interpretive schools to get rid of the problem.

Recognizing Error
Here’s one way to think about this issue. In order to recognize that the Bible got a particular teaching wrong, we need to know what the “right” teaching is. In other words, we need to claim that we know better than the Scripture, that we have some level of knowledge over and above the Biblical authors.

No, we can know that one biblical teaching is false, if we can prove that it contradicts another biblical teaching.  Because they contradict each other, logically at least one of them has to be false, and whichever one is false doesn't matter, its falsity will defeat a claim of full biblical inerrancy. 

How else could we recognize an error unless we thought we knew the right answer?

By noting that two teachings contradict each other, so that logically one of them MUST be false even if you cannot know specifically which one is false. 

How does an English professor grade her student’s papers unless she knows the correct answers to the questions she asked?

Not a good analogy, the correct answers to English test questions are more obvious than the correct answers to the question of how to "correctly" interpret a bible verse.

And if we know better than the Bible, how can we claim it as an authority over our life?

Good point.  Jesus never expressed or implied that any of his followers ever had to "read the bible" to anywhere near the fanatical degree pushed by modern inerrantists.  Probably because he thought his 2nd Coming would occur sooner than any need to canonize a NT.

The spiritual and moral truths taught in Scripture are not reducible to facts on par with scientific knowledge. With science, we might come across an ancient writing that claimed the Earth was flat. But now that enlightened modern man has actually travelled through space and seen the Earth from above, we know that it is round. But the Bible is not a science book.

But if its words are "inspired by God" then the question is:  how likely is it that a god who is infinitely more fanatical about "truth" than today's inerrantists, might condescend to using mere "language of appearance" when addressing ancient mankind?  Would such a god ever tell a sinner "the sun is setting"?  We accept that language, but only because we don't care about truth to the same infinite degree that the inerrantist's god allegedly does.

This god was allegedly capable of causing even his enemies to believe whatever he wanted them to believe (Ezra 1:1).  So causing his human followers to write in the bible "the world is spherical in shape" wouldn't have been very difficult.  Not if we factor in God's sometimes granting them the ability to physically fly "up" to heaven (2nd Cor. 12:1-4) where they could presumably fly around and note that the earth is spherical.

It teaches us about issues of origin, purpose, morality, meaning, salvation, destiny. These aren’t the types of issues on which modern humanity has uncovered some enlightening new information. These are the foundational elements of the human experience.

We certainly know a whole lot more about human biology today than our ancient ancestors did. And yet, the human body still needs the same fundamentals it always has: food, water, oxygen, rest.

I think that is a valid point, but...isn't this what most apologists would label as the fallacy of uniformitarianism (the present is the key to the past)?  Wouldn't a Christian have a problem with you presuming that the way human bodies work today is the way they worked in the past?  After all, using the present to interpret the past is precisely why naturalism rejects the miraculous aspects in ancient stories.

Humans also still need—as we always have—love, meaning, moral direction, spiritual salvation. Those things have not changed since the Bible was written.

Preaching to the choir.

In Sum
The questions that progressive Christianity asks are hauntingly similar to the question that the devil asked Eve in the Garden of Eden.

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1)

Now you are just playing upon the fears of the choir. 

This is how our spiritual enemy began his campaign to draw Eve into disobeying God, and in the process, brought down the whole human race.

Blame it on God.  That's what Calvinists advise me to do. 

Progressive Christianity uses that same question today: “Did God actually say ________?”

Because if they DIDN'T ask that question, then they would have no reason to bother distinguishing alleged words of God, from other works which pretend to give, but don't really give, words of God. 

Fill in the blank with whatever biblical teaching you want. Rejecting the inerrancy of the Bible is the doorway into asking these kinds of questions.

No, acceptance of inerrancy is also the doorway into asking these questions, since as soon as the inerrantist thinks some bit of the bible wasn't in the originals, they confuse their imperfect textual opinion for God's own presence. At the end of the day, a Christian cannot possibly believe anything beyond what his fallible human mind has decided is "truth".

Did God actually say that Jesus is the only way to salvation?

Not sure that it makes any sense to remark that god "said" anything.  If God is spirit (John 4:24) and spirits are not composed of human parts (Luke 24:39), then you'll have to come up with a theory of non-physical-vocal-cords-in-another-dimension-which-can-nevertheless-disturb-the-physical-air-in-this-world, before it can make sense to further remark about the bible god "saying" anything.  It's arguments like this which justify skepticism toward biblical stories about voices coming from the sky.  Or you'll have to establish the possibility of telepathy so that God can "say" something directly to the brain of a human being.  Good luck.  What?  Daniel 9?  LOL.

The OT prophets always spoke dogmatically, yet according to Jeremiah there were many who were false. Apparently, not even when you have the very word of God delivered direct by the true prophet, would it be the least bit "clear" that God is truly inspiring him. 

Did God actually say homosexual behavior is a sin?

Did God ever tell anybody that the death-penalty for homosexuality was "fulfilled" any more than the prohibition on adultery was?  It's probably no coincidence that what "god" wants his followers to do proves to get more and more tolerant and liberal as the centuries roll on.  If you are gay in the days of Moses, you die.  If you are gay in modern America, "we'll pray for you". 

Did God actually say that the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church?

No, that was Paul the heretic. Since he perverted the basic gospel, the question of whether he had anything else useful to say at all, is about as moot as the question of whether Mormons have anything useful to say.  Yes, the probably do, but because of their great heresies, probably best to just completely avoid their advice.

If we regard the Bible as errant, these questions are all fair game for changing the teachings handed down by Jesus and the Apostles into a faith we’re more comfortable with personally.

And you just described exactly how things are in the inerrantist-camp.  They are just shrewd lawyers who pretend they aren't rejecting, but only "interpreting", whereas it appears the more honest answer is that they are doing both. 

On the other hand, if we regard the Bible as inerrant, when we come to passages that rub our modern sensibilities the wrong way, we’re forced to wrestle with them.

A completely unnecessary headache, given how obvious it is that bible inerrancy is a false doctrine. 

And in the end the question is this. Do we adjust our beliefs to align with what God teaches, or do we adjust what God teaches to align with our beliefs?

Neither, God hasn't provided an infallible interpretive key to the bible, so you are stuck forever in subjective interpretation, a thing that keeps even conservative Protestant Trinitarians in disagreement with each other, let alone with non-Protestant denominations.

Refuting Matthew Flannagan's defense of Divine Command Theory

Inerrantist Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. Matthew Flannagan continues pressing his pro-Divine-Command-Theory (DCT) arguments and thus wrangling words repeatedly about doctrine as if he never knew that 2nd Timothy 2:14 condemns word-wrangling and thus condemns all Christians who obtained higher education in analytic philosophy.  The one discipline in the world that makes you the most prone to thinking word-wrangling is godly, is analytic philosophy.

Flannagan's latest paper is "Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument" which Sophia accepted: 26 October 2020, Springer Nature B.V. 2021.

I posted the following challenge/rebuttal to him at his blog http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html

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

Your paper apparently silently presumes that God would never command a man to rape a woman (and you'd be out of a job if you ever pretended God might possibly command rape).  

And it is clear in ALL of your apologetics writings that you want the world to know that unbelievers cannot be reasonable in accusing the bible-god of atrocities.

I offer a DCT argument to refute one particular belief of yours, namely, that those who accuse the bible-god of moral atrocities are unreasonable.  On the contrary, we are equally as reasonable as anybody who accuses the KJV of having translation mistakes.

The atheist's alleged inability to properly ground morals wouldn't help you overcome this rebuttal even if that accusation was true.  YOU believe burning a child to death is worse than raping him or her, so if I can show that your own presuppositions require that God caused people to burn children to death, you will be forced to logically conclude that your god has committed atrocities worse than rape.

God said through Isaiah in 700 b.c.  that He caused the Assyrians to commit their war-atrocities:

 5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,

 6 I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture booty and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets. (Isa. 10:5-6 NAU)

Ashurnasirpal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859, and  admitted "I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.”  You may trifle that this was typical semitic exaggeration, but the fact that we have pictorial reliefs portraying Assyrians "flaying alive" their prisoners certainly makes it reasonable for a person to conclude that Ashurnasirpal's boasts were true to reality.  The production date for such relief is 660BC-650BC, so the specific sort of Assyrians that Isaiah speaks about in 700 b.c aren't likely less barbaric than Ashurnasirpal II.

To say nothing of the fact that every Assyriologist I've come across acts as if the literal truth of the Assyrian war atrocities was a foregone conclusion.  One example is BAR 17:01 (Jan/Feb 1991), "Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death"  by Erika Belibtreu, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Vienna University, where she has worked since 1963.  

You can hardly fault atheists for failing to notice all that "semitic exaggeration" when actual Assyriologists think such descriptions are  telling about actual realities.  Just like you cannot fault the ignorant teenage girl who "accepts Jesus" in an inerrantist Evangelical church on the basis of writings by Norman Geisler, and doesn't notice all the obvious philosophical blunders he committed.

 I can predict you will trifle that God's use of the Assyrians doesn't mean he "caused" them to burn children to death, but Isaiah continues in ch. 10 and uses an analogy that makes the Assyrian the axe, and God is the one who uses it to chop things with:

 12 So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, "I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness."

 13 For he has said, "By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this, For I have understanding; And I removed the boundaries of the peoples And plundered their treasures, And like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants,

 14 And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped."

 15 Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. (Isa. 10:12-15 NAU)

Hence, your theory that unbelievers can never be reasonable to accuse the bible-god of atrocities worse than child-rape, is false.

Update August 13, 2021:

Matthew Flannagan's blog usually allows the reader to post a response, and the bottom part of his blog posts looks like this:

see, e.g., http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/03/12473.html#respond

But Flannagan has configured the webpage containing my rebuttal remarks, so that it no longer allows replies:

See, e.g., mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html#comment-260033

No, clicking the the "respond" button doesn't work.  I don't know if Matt will admit that he deliberately disabled the possibility of further commenting on that specific blog post, or if he will do what he did before, and claim ignorance as to why his blog often doesn't allow me to post replies.

Either way, Flannagan's question was insulting and in no wise a reply on the merits.  His Sophia article drew the following conclusion:

Emphasis added by me.

Therefore, it should be clear that my argument that God has commanded people to do things worse than child rape was a very relevant refutation of the the God-is-essentially-good presupposition which Flannagan based his Sophia article on.

It is not false to accuse the bible-god of being essentially evil (i.e., evil according to the standards of Christians, who always presume the evil of any person who would facilitate or command child rape).

My response to Flannagan's blog post was in rebuttal to Flanngan's concluding remarks in the linked SOPHIA article, therefore, my remarks could not have been MORE relevant.  Yet Flannagan has a nasty habit of constantly and falsely accusing his critics of either not reading his argument or misunderstanding him.

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast)

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

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast) 

Posted: 11 Dec 2019 01:40 AM PST

In this episode of the podcast, J. Warner joins Bill Arnold on Faith Radio to respond to listener questions. How do we present the Gospel to people who are dying of a terminal disease?

You tell their relatives to follow Jesus, and use the phrase "let the dead bury the dead" to discourage their attendance at the inevitable funeral:

 21 Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead." (Matt. 8:21-22 NAU) 

 59 And He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 60 But He said to him, "Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God." (Lk. 9:59-60 NAU)

Then you tell them Jesus came for the purpose of breaking up families:

34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
 35 "For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW;
 36 and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (Matt. 10:34-36 NAU)

Jesus being the perfect example of such since his own immediate family saw nothing compelling about his miracles and continued failing to properly honor him:

 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." (Mk. 6:4 NAU)

Then you tell them exactly what actions Jesus thought this information implied, such as Jesus promising that those of his followers who abandon their own children will receive salvation and other rewards:

 29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. (Matt. 19:29 NAU)

That's how you act when you want to be more "Christ-like".   Wallace next asks:

Can we make a decision for Jesus even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can we make a decision for Mormonism even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can skeptics be reasonable to make a decision about the resurrection of Jesus, even if they have big, unanswered questions?

That puts Christian apologists in a pickle, as they are rather hypocritical and arbitrary. as the following represents how most "apologists" feel:  

"you can always be rational to make a decision for Christ no matter how stupid you are, as putting off the day of your salvation is quite dangerous in light of even the non-flame version of hell, and the fact that you could die any second.  But skeptics?  They are not reasonable to deny the resurrection of Jesus even if they delayed that decision while they conducted 20 years of research into the arguments of Habermas, Licona and William Lane Craig.  Such blind dogmatism is the way we fundies continually foster a protective 'us v. them' mentality, keeping them in the faith is more important than whether their reasons for staying are academically rigorous.  But only for Protestant Trinitarians.  All other "Christians" are intellectually obligated to keep saying "I don't know", no matter how much research they do, until they find a reason to join the Protestant Trinitarians."

Except that a skeptic could easily undercut such self-serving idiocy by raising the specter of the unbeliever who is tempted to make a decision for Christ... that is, the Christ of Jehovah Witnesses.  Ahhh, then suddenly, you "must" recognize that Jesus is god or else the Christ you accept will false and thus insufficient to actually save you, and picking the wrong form of Christianity increases how much trouble you are in with God (Galatians 1:8-9).  FUCK YOU.   Wallace continues:

Why does the Bible seem to condone slavery?

There's no "seem" about it:  the kind of slavery Moses wanted his Hebrews to practice was as follows:  Go make war against that nation over there, kill everybody including the male babies, spare only the prepubescent girls so they can become your house slaves, and remember, if any such recently traumatized girl refuses to do the dishes like you ask her to after you get her back to your house, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft":

 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Num. 31:12-18 NAU)

 23 "For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.  (1 Sam. 15:23 NAU)

That is how you say "fuck you" to Paul Copan, Matthew Flannagan, and other allegedly Christian "apologists" who prefer to spend their every waking moment pretending there's nothing more to say about Hebrew slavery except what can be extracted from the more politically correct portions of the "Law".

I could go on on that subjet alone, for example, Moses in Numbers 31 is reasonably construed as thinking that those little girls did not have the stain of the sexual sin at Peor which was being avenged (Numbers 25).  But even assuming the girls' virginity was still intact, did Moses not realize there are other ways to sexually sin beyond vaginal intercourse?  If one of those prepubescent Midianite girls engaged in cunnilingus with a Midianite man, wouldn't this count, in the eyes of Moses, as making her guilty of sexual sin?  What, did Moses think the sin of pedophile cunnilingus was more forgivable than the sin of pedophile intercourse?  How would that help the apologist who wants to eliminate every possible vestige of pedophilia from the Israelites?

How would the Hebrews have determined whether a girls' hymen was still intact?  If it was typical back then for virgin girls to wear clothing distinctive from the clothing worn by non-virgin girls, then all of the Midianites would have known this, and if as Christian apologists allege, rape was an inevitable war atrocity among the pagans, then the non-virgin Midianite women would have recognized the value of dressing in the clothing of virgins as soon as they detected their nation was under attack....in which case we have to wonder how many Midianite woman, non-virgin and stained with the Midianite sexual sin, brought their sinful selves into the homes of the Hebrew army men.

In light of how important virginity was to the Hebrews, they might have felt this justified using their eyesight to confirm the virginity of the spared girls...just like nobody likes to stick something up their ass, but when you doctor says its time for a checkup, you generally subjegate your normative preferences for others, for the sake of higher good.  So it doesn't matter if you can't stand the thought of the Hebrew army men viewing the vaginas of kidnapped prepubescent girls recently traumatized by watching their families be slaughtered by the same Hebrew men, skeptics are more worried about actual reality, than in helping you spin history to make yourself feel better about what must have been horribly brutish culture wars that now stain the pages of your bible.

Notice also, Moses didn't need a specific word of the Lord, his men would obey his atrocious orders even if he didn't specify that he was speaking for God at that particular moment. So the Hebrews would that much more stupid and brutish for being willing to kill kids merely on command of their human leader, in absence of any proof that such command was required by their 'god'.

Christian apologists know perfectly well that if what happened to those poor Midianite girls happened to themselves in very similar circumstances, they would immediately conclude, from the barbarity alone, that their captors are nothing but brutish sociopathic slugs.  They would not trifle about all the possibilities that the bible-god willed this and perhaps their sinful imperfect selves might have read too much evil into the possible "good" of massacreing people and kidnapping some to use as slaves.

But no, when its in the bible and approved by god, you cannot do anything else except automatically call it good. You have all the objectivity of a hysterical Pentecostal during an exorcism during a 1960's tent-revival.  FUCK YOU.

What did early Christians believe about hell?

Irrelevant, the one place where Jesus (the gold standard by which anything else must be judged, at least as far as Christian apologists are concerned) most clearly presented eternal conscious misery as a possible fate for Gentiles is Matthew 25, and after the quote, I follow with some disconcerting concerns:

 31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?
 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'
 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'
 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?'
 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:31-46 NAU)

The following considerations are reasonable, and their reasonableness is not going to disappear merely because a desperate Christian apologist misrepresents some other legitimate possibility as if it was the only "correct" interpretation:

First, my rebuttals to Licona, Turek, Habermas and Craig on the resurrection of Jesus are weighty and substantial (e.g., the 1st Corinthians 15 "creed" has no historical value, there are only 3 eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus, all three of these are easily falsified on the merits, nothing in the NT or extrabiblical historical evidence such as Josephus justifies inferring Jesus' brother James ever actually converted to Christianity, Paul was a deluded maniac who thought he could physically fly up into heaven, the kind of witness any juror would not only disbelieve, but murder as well, the multiple attestation of Jesus' burial is rather weak, Jesus' family not finding his miracles the least bit credible and their committing the unpardonable sin justifies concluding Jesus was more like Benny Hinn than a truly miracle working prophet, Deut. 13 reminds us that even false prophets can work true miracles so that Jesus' miracle of resurrection would not answer the question of whether he was truly the son of God, The earliest gospel did not allege the risen Christ was seen by anybody, there is no rule of common sense or logic that requires any living person to ever give two fucks what is stated in religious documents more than 1,000 years old, etc, etc, etc), so in light of how reasonable it is to view evidence of Jesus' resurrection as incredibly weak and unworthy of credit, what exactly Jesus taught and what exactly he meant or how best to interpret his surviving words, is about as relevant to a person's eternal safety as is which box of cereal they should buy to shut up their screaming tykes.

Second, even assuming Jesus rose from the dead and therefore unbelieving Gentiles endure a real risk of entering an eternity of misery and shame upon death, nothing about "faith" is expressed or implied anywhere in this Matthew 25 "judgment of the nations".

Third, those who according to this teaching make it into heaven likely did not have specifically Christian faith, because they honestly did not realize what anybody with Christian education would know, that to help the poor is to help Jesus (vv. 37-39).  Jesus certainly cannot be talking about the Gentiles who actually heard him teach, since they would then not expres that ignorance on judgment day.  So Jesus was likely mostly talking about Gentiles that never actually heard his teachings.  Inerrantist Craig Blomberg trifles:

25:37–39 Many of the sheep are understandably surprised. No doubt several of these conditions did characterize Christ at various stages of his earthly life, but the vast majority of the “righteous” will not have been present then and there to help him. So how did all this happen? Many interpreters have seen this surprise as indicating that these people were “anonymous Christians”—righteous heathen who did good works but never heard the gospel. But the text never says they were surprised to be saved, merely that they did not understand how they had ministered so directly to Jesus.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 377). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

What Blomberg is missing is that the one kind of people most likely to fail to realize that their helping the poor constituted helping Jesus, would be non-Christians.   And since Jews wuld likely know that Proverbs 19:17 defines helping the poor as helping God, it is highly unlikely that the righteous crowd expressing surprised at Jesus are Jews.  "The least of these my brethren" more than likely means the poor in general, which is consistent with Luke's Christ-Beatitudes, where the author does not qualify "poor" or "hungry", reasonably implying that Jesus thinks just anybody that is poor and/or hungry in any way, deserves to be called "blessed".

Fourth, this teaching on 'how to get saved' is perfectly legalistic: not only is there evidence against the righteous here having any 'faith' whatsoever, that is the context within which Jesus makes clear that it was because they engaged in good works that they are given salvation (vv. 34-36). What theory best explains the tendency of 90% of fundamentalist Christians to immediately quote from Paul but never Jesus on the subject of "how to get saved"?  Easy:  Jesus was a legalist...today's protestant fundamentalist are not.  You tend to avoid quoting authorities you disagree with.

Fifth, I have very good reasons for saying bible inerrancy is a confused hurtful doctrine that cannot even be resolved by those who adopt it, and is likely false anyway, therefore, I am reasonable to regard it a false doctrine, and therefore, obviously disqualified from consideration as a hermeneutic (i.e., there is no intellectual constraint upon me to worry that I need to reconcile my interpretation of a bbile verse with the rest of the bible, before I can be confident my interpretation of the verse is accurate). 

So if I can be reasonable to avoid using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, then there is no intellectual compulsion on me to "harmonize" my interpretation of this "judgment of the nations" Christ-teaching with anything else in the bible.  So I don't give a shit if concluding Jesus was a legalist would require that he taught contrary to apostle Paul.  I have definite reasons to assert, on the merits, that Paul's gospel was in contradiction to the one Jesus taught.  Therefore I remain reasonable to limit my interpretation of Jesus' words to just the teaching itself, and not give a fuck whether that interpretation would make the bible contradict itself.

that Jesus taught leglism sure seems clear if we allow the immediate context to have primary importance when interpreting Matthew 5:17-20:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

Fundies will insist righteousness is imputed to us from the cross, but unfortunately:

a) what Jesus meant must first be gleaned from the "immediate context".  Romans 4:4-5 and Galatians 2:21 are not the "immediate context" for Matthew 5.  Slopping different parts of the bible together the way a little girl makes one big ball of ice-cream out of two scoops might be the manner of a fundamentalist who thinks "proof-texting" is the human body's only hope of processing oxygen,  but I prefer a method that is a bit more exegetically responsible.  The immediate context here would be Matthew 5:21 ff, where Jesus makes it clear that he demands his followers evince actual personal righteousness.  The burden is therefore on the fundie who would trifle that nobody can produce righteous works until they first undergo righteousness by imputation.  once again, with good reason, I'm not an inerrantists, so I'm not the least bit unreasonable in refusing to "harmonize" my interpretation of Jesus in his own context, with anything the apostle Paul taught.

b)  Since the allegedly risen Christ said ALL of his pre-Cross teachings apply to Gentiles after the Cross (Matthew 28:20), and since, obviously, the alleged author Matthew certainly seems to believe the gospel to the Jews is identical in every way to the gospel to the Gentiles, you cannot even escape the legalism with dispensationalism and pretending "the cross changed the covenant".  What Jesus actually meant in his own context is probably more important than the fallible inferences you draw based on your equally fallible and more than likely false belief in biblical inerrancy.   Wallace's next question:

What does it mean to “trust” the Gospel?

Whatever it means, it cannot mean "Lordship salvation", and it doesn't mean "walking daily with Jesus", since Jesus explicitly forbade the Gentile Gerasene demonic, who converted to Jesus and wanted to become his close compansion, from staying near him, and in such a charge Jesus did not express or imply that the man ever needed to get near Jesus in the future:

38 But the man from whom the demons had gone out was begging Him that he might accompany Him; but He sent him away, saying,
 39 "Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. (Lk. 8:38-39 NAU)

Therefore, Jesus thinks one can reasonably be construed as trusting the gospel even if the way they converted did not and does not lead to them "walking daily with Jesus".

Fudies will scream that this is false, but on the contrary, Jesus' interactions with actual gentiles in actual instances consistently show that he felt he needed no more association with them than to grant their particular request.  The real Jesus had nothing to do with the fundamenetalist Jesus that demands a close daily walk with Gentiles, and warns them to constantly study the scriptures, etc, etc:

 22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed."
 23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us."
 24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
 25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, "Lord, help me!"
 26 And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
 27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."
 28 Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once.   (Matt. 15:22-28 NAU)

 5 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him,
 6 and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented."
 7 Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him."
 8 But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
 9 "For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it."
 10 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.
 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;
 12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
 13 And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment.   (Matt. 8:5-13 NAU)

Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman in John 4, but she leaves with intent to tell others (v. 28) and we never hear about her again.

Jesus had an initial ministry to Gentiles (Matthew 4:15) and was often followed by large crowds likely including Gentiles, but according to Mark 1:45, Jesus didn't always want fellowship with those who desired to hear him preach.  That doesn't mean such crowds were only superficially interested in Jesus, as he refused to immediately dismiss such crowds (John 6:26, where John unwittingly testifies against the credibility of Jesus' miracles by alleging that that lots of people were following Jesus not because he did "signs" but because he gave them food).

Once again, the babies will scream that our interpretation cannot be correct unless it can be harmonized with everything else in the NT, but this is false on two fronts:

a) as I already explained, bible inerrancy is not nearly so clear that it deserves to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic, so that failure to do so does not render us "unreasonable" as inerrantists would otherwise scream, and

b) when you seek to harmonize your interpretation of one verse with the "rest of the bible", it is more correct to say you are trying to reconcile your interpretation with your interpretation of the rest of the bible.  Fundies often say "this part of the bible is so clear it doesn't need interpretation', but that's just ignorance.  When it comes to correctly understanding ancient texts, by necessity they cannot ever be as automatically clear in meaning as, say the headline for yesterday's edition of the New York Times.  The very fact that smart Christian scholars and apologists disagree with each other about nearly every biblical matter (except perhaps Jesus' gender) robustly witnesses to the fact that "letting the bible speak for itself" is nothing more than a dangerously stupid colloquialism.  Therefore, using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic really IS a case of insisting there is harmony between your interpretation of a bible verse, and your interpretation of the rest of the bible.

But if this be a more accurate way to describe the "inerrancy-as-hermeneutic" phenomenon, then this boils down to merely you trying to make the whole collection of your interpretations of the bible harmonize...which means you are blindly assuming that your imperfect interpretations are indeed correct beyond question.

c) KJV Onlyists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Disciples of Christ, Oneness Pentecostals Calvinists, dispensationalists and others you accuse of inaccuracy or "heresy" also believe in biblical inerrancy and use it as a hermeneutic.  But since you agree their using bible inerrancy as a final check on any one of their particular interpretations has not helped them to see the true biblical light, you can hardly blame the outsider or skeptic for concluding that bible inerrancy really isn't a legitimate tool of hermeneutics, it only looks like that because of the dogma that naturally comes with preaching inerrancy.   You can hardly blame the skeptic who thinks bible inerrancy is, at the end of the day, a completely useless tool, and perhaps a harmful tool; one that would help insulate them from reason should they pick the wrong church and then start insisting that their particular doctrines are "consistent" with the "rest of the bible". 

Therefore, the skeptic has full rational warrant to reject bible inerrancy and limit their tools of interpretation to simply grammar, immediate context, larger context of the author, genre of the book and perhaps insights from the social sciences.   Any interpretation that results from use of these universally acknowledged tools of interpretation is going to remain reasonable regardless of how much a fundie can trifle otherwise.  Wallace next asks:

Is Christianity “anti-science”?

Some factions are more so than others.  Young Earth creationists are high on crack.  Old Earth creationists have not done worse than chug a few beers.

However, the very fact that the Roman Catholic Church cited scripture against Galileo's heliocentric model and found nothing persuasive in Galileo's trifle that maybe scripture speaks "phenomenologically", conclusively proves that, where one is not already aware of scientific facts supporting heliocentricity or the stationary status of the sun, they will more than likely conclude the bible teaches the geocentric model.

Sure is funny that before heliocentricity was confirmed scientifically, no Christian ever noticed that scriptural statements about the movement of the sun were mere "language of appearance".  They didn't start wondering about that until they learned about scientific findings suggesting a spherical earth or a stationary sun.. except of course Galileo, a person who believed the bible was the word of God and thus felt forced to find some way to harmonize the bible with truths he saw through his telescope.

In other words, the pre-scientific people who were the original addressees would never have thought such bible texts were mere "language of appearance".  And every Christian knows about that hermeneutic that says we need to ask ourselves how the originally intended audience for the biblical books would likely have interpreted them.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to interpret the bible as teaching geocentrism.

How NOT to concisely argue for a Traditional view of Jesus' childhood, a reply to Jason Engwer

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Jason Engwer entitled

How To Concisely Argue For A Traditional View Of Jesus' Childhood

Monday, December 09, 2019

Engwer, true to form, once again choose to pay attention to meaningless trifles.

Engwer is forced to agree with his apostle Paul that to disprove the resurrection of Jesus is to turn Christians into false witnesses who are still in their sins, 1st Corinthians 15:15 (which then means they deserve the death penalty even if they do real miracles in support of their theology, Deut. 13).  Since I have demolished Jesus' resurrection by showing that the naturalistic theory has more explanatory scope and power, I must conclude that arguing about Jesus' childhood can never be sufficient to fix the wormwood infecting Christianity's linchpin doctrine.

I therefore only answer Engwer point by point on Jesus' childhood solely out of my preference to demolish fundamentalist Christianity in all its forms, not because of any stupid worry that justifying the canonical Nativity stories somehow makes Christianity worthy of the slightest credence. 

There are a lot of ways to argue for a traditional view of the childhood of Jesus, and we've been making those arguments for a long time. But it's often helpful to be able to argue concisely for what you believe. That can be hard to do when a subject is as large and complicated as the earliest years of Jesus' life.

Actually, its not complicated at all.  The gospel authors say nearly nothing about Jesus' childhood, likely because they knew that trying to convince the public that some infant crapping his diaper was the creator of the universe just sounded a bit too stupid even for pre-literate religious fanatics, and most people would more readily accept divine-man claims if the person at issue was at least an adult.  By limiting Jesus' miracles to some life-point past his infancy, stupid shit questions about how a baby could be god and yet still not have control of his own bowel movements are conveniently avoided.

For example, to say that Jesus was the creator is to imply that he never sinned.  A child who never disobeys his parents?   How believable is that?  Since people who believe in miracles don't always think the most outlandish things, it appears the gospel authors, despite willingness to tell miracle stories, still recognize that some miracle stories can go too far.  The mark of a good professional liar is that they know where employing circumspection will cause their story to "ring" more true.

We are addressing years of his life, after all, unlike the narrower focus of Easter, for example. But here are a few summary arguments I recommend using:

If you paid more attention to what Jesus actually told you to do, you would have no time to engage in the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).  The very fact that Paul showed zero interest in Jesus' childhood should be enough to prove that Paul doesn't think anything is missing by simply leaving Jesus' childhood completely alone.  So your desire to engage in such debate anyway is reasonably construed to signify your lack of satisfaction with Paul's gospel.  But again, if you spent more time doing what Jesus and Paul demanded of their followers, not only would you have no time to spend on debatable pionts, but your obedience to clear commands would make it more likely your efforts would reap spirtiual reward.  you cannot really say whether God gives a fuck whether you say anything about Jesus' childhood or not.  Clearly, you have a morbid interest in controversial questions, the trait that apostle Paul said renders you a stupid heretic (1st Timothy 6:4).

The NT authors never made Jesus' childhood that big of a deal, so you run a significant risk of trying to do better than your god by attempting to satisfy public curiosity about a subject that your god did not see fit to provide any answers to.

Furthermore, if you believe Matthew was written to non-Christian as well as Christian Jews, you get in more trouble, since that would mean that Matthew, the alleged apostle and author, seriously thought that a mere story about Jesus' childhood should "suffice" to "convince" non-Christain Jews, showing your Matthew to be far more anti-intellectual than you'd ever dare credit to him.

You cannot say Matthew would have been there to explain the story, as the patristic evidence, that you treat as infallible without honestly admitting it, says Matthew wrote the gospel to make up for his absence given his intent to leave Jerusalem and travel abroad:

Eusebius, Hist.Eccl. 3:24
Nevertheless, of all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew and John have left us written memorials, and they, tradition says, were led to write only under the pressure of necessity. For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence. 

 [1] Schaff, Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 1

Of Matthew again it is said, that when those who from amongst the Jews had believed came to him, and besought him to leave to them in writing those same things, which he had spoken to them by word, he also composed his Gospel in the language of the Hebrews. And Mark too, in Egypt, is said to have done this self-same thing at the entreaty of the disciples.

This is quite sufficient to allege that what we find in Matthew's Nativity story is what Matthew preached.  It is also likely that beacuse the gospel followed Matthew's preaching, the written nativity story is likely a polished form of that preaching, so that the written form provides more details than Matthew's oral preaching did.  he was an anti-intellectual.  John was the same way, he expected faith to just magically materialize in the hearts of his readers merely because they read his words (Matthew 20:31).

- Reliable sources on Jesus' childhood were available to the early Christians and their opponents for a long time.

Mary allegedly had visions.  So since Christian apologists never attempt to justify visionary material in the NT, even they agree that when a source is a 'vision', it can be safely discounted.

Close relatives of Jesus lived for more than half a century after his birth.

Which only hurts your cause, as those relatives found nothing in Jesus' public ministry to convince them Jesus was a truly divine person, see Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4 and John 7:5.  You have no interest whatsoever in evaluating the testimony of these alleged eyewitnesses to Jesus' alleged "miracles".  Your other comments that perhaps they were too overcome with jealousy, or they "just didn't understand" are too foolish to deserve comment.  What the fuck would even a stupid person do, if their brother was going around town raising the dead and curing diseases science still deemed incurable?

For a discussion of the credibility of the early reports about Jesus' relatives in general, see here. Regarding how long individuals like Mary and James lived, see here and here.

In the first linked article, you say "He had siblings, and they were initially unbelievers." That's an understatement.  Those siblings committed the unpardonable sin (Mark 3:21, to say somebody was insane was to accuse them of demon possession, see John 8:52, 10:20) and even after a full year into Jesus' public ministry, his brothers were refusing to believe in him and mocking his ability to do miracles (John 7:1-5).  Worse, Jesus himself testified after coming home from his first preaching tour that his own relatives did not properly honor him (Mark 6:4).  In all fairness, though, in the first linked article you admit:

Furthermore, some of the gospel accounts are particularly unlikely to have been fabricated, because of their embarrassing nature. Jesus' mother and brothers refer to Him as insane (Mark 3:20-35), Jesus considers His unbelieving brothers (future church leaders) incompetent to care for His mother (John 19:26-27), etc. John 19:27 tells us that Mary lived past Jesus' death for some unspecified period of time as well, which is corroborated by Acts 1:14 (which, like John 19, has Mary in the region of Jerusalem around the time of Jesus' death).

And I couldn't agree more.  The embarrassing nature of these admissions gives them slightly more historical likelihood than statements that Jesus did real miracles or was the son of god.  Engwer continues:

And those relatives held some prominent positions in the early church, as we see in Acts,

I'm not seeing anything in Acts that definitively puts a relative of Jesus in a prominent place.  Two Jameses were original apostles (Mark 3:17-18), so when two Jameses appear in Acts 1, the more likely truth is that these were the same exact men, and since neither of them can possibly have been the James the brother of the Lord (i.e., he was son of Joseph and thus not a son of 'Zebedee' or son of 'Alphaeus'), and most Christian apologists say the specific brother of Jesus named James was among the relatives in Mark 3:21 who rejected Jesus' message before the crucifixion, therefore, neither James in Acts 1 can be James the brother of Jesus.

Yes, there is an unqualified James in Acts 15, but since there were two different Jameses who were original apostles (supra), saying the James of Acts 15 was one of the original apostles with the same name requires less ad hoc speculation than the hopeful theory that the James of Acts 15 was specifically Jesus' brother.

Galatians 1:19, 2:9-12,

No, inerrantist Christian scholar George, T. admitted that Galatians 1:19 is ambiguous as to whether Paul was saying James the Lord's brother was one of the apostles.  George says:

1:19 Paul claimed that he saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. The expression is ambiguous in Greek, so we cannot be sure whether Paul meant to include James among the other apostles.  Did he mean: “The only other apostle I saw was James,” or “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”? Probably he meant something like this: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

(2001, c1994). New American Commentary, Vol. 30: Galatians,  p. 74)

The James of Galatians 2:9 ff is at least 15 verses away from 1:19, so it clearly isn't close enough to justify pretending that Paul was talking about the same exact person, he could just as likely have been referring simply to another apostle James whose headship of the Jerusalem church did not need to be specified.  But I would argue that because Paul refers to Peter (Cephas) James and John (2:9), it is most reasonable to assume these men achieved leadership in the Jerusalem church because they were previously among Jesus' inner circle, the precise type of apostles most likely to attain a high leadership position. See Mark 5:37, 13:3 and Matthew 17:1, 9).  The reasonableness of this interpretation is not going to disappear merely because there are other bare possibilities.  However,

Engwer continues:

1 Corinthians 9:5,

First, the mere fact that early church fathers debated whether Jesus had multiple brothers is itself enough to justify the person who says 1st Cor. 9:5 is too ambiguous to think it can yield conclusions of reasonable certainty.  See here.

Second, Paul distinguishes the "rest of the apostles" from the "brothers of the Lord".  This is naturally expected if Paul felt Jesus' brothers did not qualify as apostles, and merely sometimes accompanied the apostles during missions.

Third, Mark 6:3 lists 4 brothers of Jesus, James being one, so that the plural "brothers" in 1st Corinthians 9:5 would still be accurate even if we asserted one specifc brother, James, never converted to Christian faith.

Fourth, the mere fact that the head apostles gave Paul the 'right hand of fellowship' (Galatians 2:9) need not imply those apostles agreed with Paul's gospel, so that even if 1st Cor. 9:5 proves that James the brother of Christ sometimes accompanied other apostles on missions, his presence in such context doesn't demand that he was a convert to Christianity.  In the mid-40's there was a terrible famine in and around Palestine, and the Jerusalem apostles could very well have viewed Paul as a meal-ticket and that's the only reason they pretended to support his version of the gospel (though it is weird that in Gal. 2:9, they allocate the entire Gentile mission field to Paul and confine themselves solely to Jews,  when in fact the risen Christ allegedly said THEY were to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19).

Fifth, other historical "facts" about James the Lord's brother show that he did not agree with Paul's theology, he was a Judaizer and likely for that reason was held in high esteem among non-Christian law-observant Jews, which would hardly be the case if this exact James preached the same message Jesus did, you know, the one that incurred the wrath of the Jewish people (Matthew 12:14, 27:25).

the letters of James and Jude, etc.

There is nothing about the authorship of James' epistle that suggests he was specifically a brother of Jesus, and there were two original apostles of Christ named James whose authorship could just as easily account for that epistle's echoing some of Christ's alleged sayings.  I would argue their aurthorship is ore likely than by James the brother of Christ since they spent three years with Jesus before he died, whereas the brother of Jesus name James was a late-comer, so that naturally either of the two original apostles of the same name are more likely to have more familiarity with Jesus' sayings.

For both epistle of James and epistle of Jude, it is quite difficult to believe, in light of Jesus granting specific authority to certain apostles (Matthew 16:18), and in light of Paul's admission that the early Christian laity recognized certain apostles as authoritative (Galatians 2:6), and in light of Peter's belief that only TWELEVE men could possibly be legitimate apostles (Acts 1, his seeing a need to replace Judas with Matthias), that the authors, if they are true apostles, would fail, as they do, to specify their authority and position.  1st Peter starts out with the author declaring he is an "apostle", 2nd Peter doesn't matter because it is reasonably construed a forgery despite the trifles of fundamentalists otherwise, and Paul is always identifying himself as an apostle and authority.   Yet James and Jude place themselves at the level of other Christians by declaring themselves "bond-servants" of Christ (James 1:1, Jude 1:1).  The reasonableness of saying the true authors were not the leaders bearing those names, but lesser persons who either had the same names, or wrote what they thought such leaders would have written, is not going to disappear merely because other authorship theories are also within the realm of viable possibility.

Keep in mind that Jesus' relatives were critical of him at times, so his enemies would have had an interest in and ability to get information about his background from those relatives.

Agreed.  Which probably accounts for why we have no surviving records from the 1st century of those hostile to Jesus.  When the enemies can use Jesus' family against him, us Christians must "destroy the memory of Amalek from under heaven..."  Paul wanted to 'stop' the mouths of Jewish Christians who were teachings things he didn't approve of, see Titus 1:11.  That's not calling for democratic debate, and its not asking those listening to the jewish Christians to "check out" Paul's competing claims, that's asking for the Jewish Christian assertions to cease circulation altogether.

Some of Jesus' neighbors, coworkers, and contemporaries in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth also would have lived past the time of his death, even for decades in some cases. The same is true of the religious authorities and others who opposed him and had him executed. Just as the early Christians passed on information from generation to generation, so did their enemies. The early Christians and their opponents produced many documents in the earliest decades of Christianity, not just the ones we possess today, as I argue here.

 Except that it is also reasonable to conclude that the Judaizers wrote letters critical of Paul (their ability to convince Peter and "even Barnabas" (Galatians 2) might suggest the case for the Judaizer gospel is more powerful than what you can tell from mirror-reading Galatians and Acts 15), yet we have no such thing from the 1st century.

And see here for some comments from Larry Hurtado about how the literacy of the early Christians is often underestimated.

Many of Paul's converts were illiterate (1st Corinthians 1:26).  perhaps you will argue that the Greek word for "many" need only mean "two".

- We have a lot of evidence for a traditional view of Jesus' childhood.

The significance of which is completely debunked by Jesus' own complete apathy toward and silence on his own childhood, as if he was of the belief that what happened in his childhood had no significant bearing on his claim to the Messiah.  Add to this the fact that 25 of the 27 NT books show zero concern for events in Jesus' childhood, and you are a fool to insist that skeptics are somehow intellectually obligated to give two shits about these speculations that you just cannot resist wasting your time with.  Then again, Jason Engwer thinks it is proper use of God's money to help digitize and preserve the audiotapes of the Enfield Poltergeist, which according to his bible constitutes using god's money to preserve records of the manifestations of demon activity.  We can safely assume Engwer is so fanatical in his desire to prove bible inerrancy and apologetics, he ends up often contradicting the bible.

I don't think the evidence supporting a traditional view of Jesus' childhood is consistent, for example, Luke 2:52 doesn't say Jesus' human nature increased in wisdom, it says "Jesus" increased in wisdom, and it is eisogesis to read the orthodox resolution to the Arian and Nestorian "heresies" back into the earlier text, when it is more objective to prioritize the author's own context.  If that requires that Luke was saying all parts of Jesus (i.e., both divine and human) grew in wisdom, that will only bother fundamentalist Christians, skeptics will not worry too much that this makes for a bad day in classical theism-land.  Let's just say that the average person of the first century appears to have believed, in rather uncritical unquestioning way, that the gods could take on human form, Acts 14:11.  The point is that these kinds of statements make the historical Jesus so utterly unbelievable that what one might "prove" from his childhood is absurdly irrelevant.

Much of what the early Christians report about the childhood of Jesus meets modern historical standards, like multiple attestation,

First, multiple attestation is a weak criteria, it assumes that if you have at least two witnesses who agree on a fact, the jury has no choice but to consider the fact established.  That's just stupid, especially in the first century where thousands of Christians testified in favor of the "fact" that Paul was hypocritical in his preaching (Acts 21:20) and is therefore an example of how even today's Christian apologists will quickly dismiss multiply-attested "facts".  How many thousands of witnesses testify to Roman Catholic miracles at Fatima and elsewhere?  Engwer will trifle that he doesn't deny their miraculous nature but only the conclusion that God approves of Roman Catholicism, but that misses the point:  God's approval of Roman Catholicism is ALSO what's multiply attested in such modern-day miracles.  That is, Engwer will find it impossibly difficult to continue parading multiple attestation as the final nail in the skeptic's conffin.  If he dares attempt to look objective by pretending he doesn't necessarily always believe miracles merely because they are multiply attested, then he cannot blame skeptics who, like him, cite other evidentiary shortcomings in a claim and its evidence which they feel are greater than its "multiple attestation".

Second, Matthean priority is also meets multiple attestation in the church fathers, but most Christian scholars insist in Markan priority.  Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name is also multiply attested in the patristic literature, but because it appears the latter fathers are basically all merely echoing the Papias-tradition, such multiple attestation is more correctly characterized is mere echoing, not independent corroboration.

Third, multiple attestation barely operates here in the debate about Jesus' childhood:  you only have two accounts.  You are not going to place intellectual compulsion on skeptics by trifling about John 1:13 and Mark 6:3.  The very fact that no other NT author finds Jesus-childhood- stories edifying enough to warrant mention would justify the view that the earliest apostles were not in agreement on whether the virgin birth story was true (they would have to agree that if true, it would certainly do as much to support their claims about Jesus as do their own unique claims about the miracles he did in adulthood).   So the silence of most NT authors on the virgin birth remains significant.  That's not going to disappear merely because you can always posit some other possibility to explain such silence such as "maybe they knew their audience accepted it so it didn't need to be repeated".

the criterion of embarrassment,

Which justifies skepticism in the case of Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  Then again, Matthew and Luke obviously weren't "apologetics" by any stretch, and their fallacy of argument by assertion (i.e., preaching to the choir) might warrant the conclusion they were written only for believers, in which case, the authors would not think their tales of Jesus' nativity were "embarrassing", so that such tales do not "pass" the criteria of embarrassment.

and the criterion of coherence.

Nah, that's just another way for you to say "bible inerrancy".  Plenty of scholars find real discrepancies between the gospels, including Mike Licona, who remains unimpressed with Lydia McGrew's sin of word-wrangling.

For some examples, see here and here.
 - There's a significant lack of support in the ancient sources for skeptical alternatives to a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus.

First, not if common sense is allowed in.  If Jesus' human vocal cords necessarily implicated his divine nature when he spoke a phrase that many conservative Christian scholars don't think he actually spoke (John 8:58), then there is nothing necessarily fallacious in saying Jesus' human acts implicated his divine nature, in which case it follows with equal logic that when the baby Jesus' mouth was spilling slobber, his was also implicating his divine nature (i.e., the creator of the universe slobbered).  The logic of the incarnate logos does not allow desperate Trinintarians to decree which acts of the human Jesus implicated his divine nature and which didn't.  Any such attempt would be necessarily arbitrary.  Jesus' human nature never implicates his divine nature, where doing so would overturn your cherished doctrine of classical theism.

Second, thanks for indicating that you don't think the argument from silence is always fallacious.

Third, you are assuming that the Christian claims in the early period would have so interested skeptics as to not only prompt them to research Jesus' childhood, but to publish the results in a way that would have survived the next few centuries in which Christian leaders insisted on burning "heretical" books which disagreed with orthodox doctrine.  In truth Jesus was at best a local miscreant whom history would have nearly completely forgotten had it not been for the efforts of his fanatics to keep his memory alive.  Jesus was not such a big deal in his own lifetime nor in the lifetime of Paul for anybody outside that religion to give two fucks about documenting facts about Jesus' childhood in a way likely to survive the burn barrels of the next 4 centuries.  25 of the 27 NT books make absolutely zero effort to preserving Jesus' childhood events for posterity.  The fundamentalist is going to spin that silence in a way that foists any intellectual obligation on a skeptic to either agree or admit being unreasonable.

Fourth, our knowledge of the early Christian sects that denied Jesus' divinity and virgin birth are limited to church fathers who always embellished their descriptions of the sects with hateful vitriol, justifying a degree of hesitancy before blindly accepting all negative slurs therein as objective unbiased historical truth.

Justin Martyr describes some such Christians.  Dialogue, Chapter XLVIII

For there are some, my friends,” I said, “of our race,150 who admit that He is Christ, while holding Him to be man of men; with whom I do not agree, nor would I,151 even though most of those who have [now] the same opinions as myself should say so; since we were enjoined by Christ Himself to put no faith in human doctrines,152 but in those proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by Himself.
150 Some read, “of your race,” referring to the Ebionites. Maranus believes the reference is to the Ebionites, and supports in a long note the reading “our,” inasmuch as Justin would be more likely to associate these Ebionites with Christians than with Jews, even though they were heretics.
151 Langus translates: “Nor would, indeed, many who are of the same opinion as myself say so.”
152 [Note this emphatic testimony of primitive faith.]
Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Irenaeus A.H. Book 3, ch. XI:

For the Ebionites, who use Matthew’s Gospel¹⁴¹ only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord.

141 Harvey thinks that this is the Hebrew Gospel of which Irenaeus speaks in the opening of this book; but comp. Dr. Robert’s Discussions on the Gospels, part ii. chap. iv.Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Obviously Engwer has forgotten that the views of the Ebionites count as "ancient".  Engwer will trifle that the Ebiontes are not as early as the the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but he doesn't actually know that.  All he knows is that references to the Ebionites are later than the gospels, he cannot establish that they originated in the 2nd century.  Furthermore, most Christian scholars date Matthew and Luke to about to 80 a.d. or even later, which means those who denied the virgin birth wouldn't be doing so until late 1st century.  Gene Bridges from Triablogue apparently thinks the Ebionites of the 2nd century were the outgrowth of the Judaizers present at the Council of Jerusalem:

And as matter of fact, we can see that the Judaizers of the First Century are the very ones who turn into Ebionites of the second order later on. That's what the conflict that the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts was meant to address. (link here).

So it remains reasonable, even if not infallible, to infer that the Judaizers of the Council of Jerusalem were not merely demanding Gentile circumcision, but were also denying Jesus' divinity and virgin birth. I defy anyone to dare attempt to show that the specifically Jewish Christians believed Jesus to be god manifest in the flesh.

Dr. James Tabor, Professor of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, thinks the Ebionites were the original followers of Jesus, see here, so the position adopted in responsible scholarship must remain reasonable despite Engwer's ceaseless trifles otherwise.

Eusebius significantly says that while Ebionites could not get some Christians to agree with all they believed, they were successful in getting such Christians to adopt other forms of "heresy", so that the Ebionites position, could be sustained against rebuttal to some degree, that is, the "heresy" had some teeth to it and wasn't just the casual unthinking uncritical happenstance conjuring up of doctrine that Engwer seems to think characterizes everything christian alternative he doesn't agree with:

Eusebius, church history, Book 3, ch. 27

The Heresy of the Ebionites 

The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes. The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ. For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with Mary. In their opinion the observance of the ceremonial law was altogether necessary, on the ground that they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone and by a corresponding life. There were others, however, besides them, that were of the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But nevertheless, inasmuch as they also refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed, being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside into the impiety of the former, especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily worship of the law. These men, moreover, thought that it was necessary to reject all the epistles of the apostle, whom they called an apostate from the law; and they used only the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews and made small account of the rest. The Sabbath and the rest of the discipline of the Jews they observed just like them, but at the same time, like us, they celebrated the Lord's days as a memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour. Wherefore, in consequence of such a course they received the name of Ebionites, which signified the poverty of their understanding. For this is the name by which a poor man is called among the Hebrews.  

Engwer continues:

For example, the early opponents of Christianity not only don't seem to have opposed the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus, but even corroborated it.

The evidence that Jesus stayed dead is overwhelming, whether he was "really" born in Bethlehem is something I couldn't give a shit about.

Not only does Celsus not agree with the popular modern notion that the virgin birth claim didn't arise until decades after Jesus' death, but he even attributes the claim of a virgin birth to Jesus himself (in Origen, Against Celsus, 1:28). See here for a further discussion of how inconsistent many modern skeptical views of the virgin birth are with ancient non-Christian sources.

Well gee, apostle Paul was "inconsistent" with the Judaizer gospel.  How ancient is the Judaizer gospel, and do you personally give a fuck? No.  Then quit being a hypocrite and pretending the ancient Christian sources YOU favor are somehow more deserving of credence.

Secondly, if Justin attributes the virgin birth claim to Jesus himself, sounds like your star church father had a nasty habit of drawing inferences from the canonical NT that it could not logically support.  Sure is funny that you don't really care how "heretical" your own church fathers were when they say something that supports your particular view.

For more examples of what ancient non-Christian sources said about Jesus' childhood, see here.

I believe there is basic historicity to the nativity stories (when Jesus was born, the family had to move around), I simply assert that they do indeed justify the charge of tension or contradiction, and of course I always use Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4, John 7:5 and other arguments to justify the conclusion that the miraculous portions of the nativity stories are total bullshit.  For example:  most Christian scholars understand Mary to be among the family members who in Mark 3:21 conclude Jesus is "insane" and try to publicly arrest him.    Minority scholars who trifle that Mark 3:21 isn't talking about Jesus family might exist, but do not render unreasonable the skeptics who side with the majority of Christian scholars and apologists on the matter.  And even if we forget Mark 3:21, the hatred Jesus' family had toward him during his alleged "miracle ministry' is still clear from Mark 6:4 and John 7:5, texts that apologists cannot get rid of with trifles about errant translation.

Engwer himself sees James being skeptical of Jesus in Mark 3:21, see here, so I'm not seeing what explosion of exegetical dishonesty anybody would allege is involved in my seeing Jesus' mother in the same verse, a conclusion held by most Christian scholars, including conservatives.

It doesn't matter if excuses can be made to "explain" how Mark 3:21 can be harmonized with the Nativity stories (i.e., maybe Mary experienced amnesia after the visions, etc), it is reasonable to conclude that any woman who experienced the divine confirmations alleged in the Nativity stories would not likely ever conclude that her son was "insane" unless she saw later proof that he prior visions were mere delusion.  Such is not probable, and probability is the key to historicity.  Unless apologists can show that Mary's later becoming forgetful, dismissive or apathetic toward her prior alleged visionary experience is MORE LIKELY than her continuing to trust that it was real, the skeptical position derived from Mark 3:21 will continue being reasonable.

And since they lived in an honor/shame society, the fact that Jesus' immediate family intended to publicly "arrest" him (Mark 3:21) reasonably implies that they had inquired diligently into his claims to make sure they were not basing their shaming behavior on a mistaken notion.  So if they intended to actually arrest him, they more than likely didn't reach that conclusion willy-nilly but only after robust discussion they decided that lesser means would be insufficient.  That is, apologists cannot reasonably charge Jesus' family with impulsiveness or stupidity, as that would then have consequences when such apologists later assert that some of Jesus' stupid impulsive family became leaders in the early church.  Once again, Mary's desire to arrest a son she concluded was "insane" is reasonably viewed as irreconcilable with her having experienced real divine visions while pregnant with Jesus that allegedly confirmed he was the son of God.  "Maybe she just forgot about those when she wanted to arrest Jesus" does not foist an intellectual compulsion on a skeptic, whatsoever, and of course, the paucity of NT evidence on Mary makes it impossible to "argue" that Mary's skepticism of Jesus in Mark 3:21 resulted from some type of mental or psychological imperfection.

The family's desire to arrest Jesus also reasonably justifies the assumption that they didn't experience anything about Jesus in his childhood that would have tipped them off that he is a divine being.  Yet if we are to believe Jesus was god, that necessarily implies that Jesus never, between birth and age 30, sinned.  How many Jews in the first century believed that a regular human being could avoid committing sin for the first 30 years of their life?  So if the Nativity stories were true, the mother of Jesus in Mark 3:21 wasn't just desiring to dishonor her son, but desiring to dishonor that son despite her having noticed that Jesus never sinned in his 30 years.  Now what, Engwer?  Was Mary just high on crack when she concluded Jesus was insane and tried to have him arrested? 

The brothers continuing to persist in unbelief toward Jesus as late as the completion of the first third of his public ministry (John 7:5) is also reasonably interpreted to mean that those brothers did not see anything in Jesus' alleged "miracles" that justified drawing the conclusion that he was the true son of god.  And since John 7:5 passes the criteria of embarrassment, it has greater likelihood of being true, than the laudatory statements in the gospel that Jesus performed miracles.

On the modern skeptical assertion that Luke's census account is radically inaccurate, see this post.

Nothing about my skepticism is affected in the least by admitting that Luke got this right.  Only fools who see so much non-existence relevance to biblical inerrancy would waste their time trifling about this bullshit.

On modern skeptical claims about the authorship of the gospels, see here.

That link goes to a defense of Matthew's authorship of a gospel.  Your arguments are largely irrelevant to my skepticism of his authorship:  you cannot accuse a skeptic of being unreasonable to adopt the position that most Christian scholars adopt:  markan priority (Mark was the first gospel written, and Matthew extensively copies off of Mark).  Yet, I'm sure that as Christian apologists, you will blindly insist that any Christian scholarly theory that happens to also help the skeptical case, is "unreasonable".

Mark was not an eyewitness, Matthew allegedly was, so that's the first problem:  Matthew's use of mark is so extensive that it implies Matthew's author was far more ignorant about the details of Jesus life than Mark was, making it reasonable to conclude Matthew's author was not an eyewitness.  The reasonableness of that theory is not going to disappear merely because you can conjure up another reason, such as Matthew experiencing amnesia (unlikely given your completely gratuitous and unprovable theory that Matthew was inspired by God).  There are no other examples from the 1st century of an eyewitness relying this extensively on a non-eyewitness version of events.  Mike Licona also says apostolic authorship is the "fuzziest" in the case of Matthew and John, which thus prevents you from saying denial of Matthean authorship is "unreasonable".  Your ability to trifle about the patristic details does not suddenly convert Licona's position over to "unreasonable".  You are the one calling the Matthean authorship denial "unreasonable" so YOU have the burden to demonstrate that the denier's interpretation of the internal and external evidence is "unreasonable", and you are never going to do that, and you know it.  The more you condemn such Christian scholarly majority view, the more rational justification I have to conclude, as a skeptic, that serious study of the gospels does precisely nothing to increase the chances that my views of such matters will be reasonable, justifying the further conclusion that atheists who choose to disregard the gospels completely, are not doing anything except protecting themselves from plaguing their lives with ultimately pointless complexities and uncertainties.

Most Christian scholars think authentic Mark ends at 16:8, which makes it reasonable to conclude the earliest form of the gospel did not say a risen Christ actually appeared to anybody, making Matthew's resurrection appearance narrative less likely an "addition" and more likely an "embellishment", as most scholars agree Matthew was published after Mark, and embellishment is more normally found in the later accounts, not the earlier accounts.  Engwer will trifle like N.T. Wright that the various resurrection predictions in Mark scream out for the reader to insist on a resurrection appearance narrative ending that simply got lost.  Unfortunately, apologists never explain where they get this idea that if a gospel story character predicted something,  we are obligated to believe the gospel author added a fulfillment story about it to the gospel, even if the present canonical form of the gospel lacks such addendum.

Acts 1:3 says the risen Jesus spoke to the disciples things concerning the kingdom of God over a period of 40 days, which is reasonably construed to signify speech slightly more extensive than a 15-seconds worth of talking, even if it doesn't mean Jesus spoke like an auctioneer from 9 to 5 for each of those 40 days.  Yet in Matthew, the risen Christ's total words to the apostles take less than 15 seconds to speak.  

You will automatically say "compression!", but because the author of Matthew has such an extensive interest in both sayings of Christ in general, and "kingdom of God" Christ-sayings in particular, it is highly unlikely that such author would have knowingly "chosen to exclude" most of the kingdom-of-God statements which Acts 1:3 alleges the risen Christ uttered, and to instead compress it all down into a 15 second summary that does precisely nothing to guide the nascent church through the Judaizer controversy, despite the fact that even conservative dates for Matthew (50 a.d.) still place it after the Council of Jerusalem (49 a.d.).

There are many examples where Matthew expands on Mark in circumstances that increase the probability that Matthew is simply fabricating Christ sayings.  According to Mark, Peter's confession of Christ consisted of "thou art the Christ" and nothing more from Jesus on that occasion...but in the undeniably parallel account in Matthew, which is obviously talking about the same exact occasion, Peter's confession is longer and more theologically sophisticated, and is followed by what must have been a very important teaching from Christ about Peter's authority, Christ sayings that Mark's account also lacks.  See here.  Since inerrantists and fundies insist that Matthew is reporting what really happened, they are thrown into a dilemma because of Mark's shorter version:  If we must assume Mark's source was Peter, how likely is it that Peter would have said the fuller form of the confession now confined to Matthew, but only gave the shorter form to Mark?  How likely is it that Peter didn't tell Mark about Jesus' important authority-establishing statement, or that Mark knew about it but "chose to exclude" it?  What exact rule of hermeneutics or historiography is the skeptic violating by saying a person like Mark would not likely have "chosen to abbreviate" this kind of information?

All of this makes it reasonable to conclude that the reason the risen Christ in Matthew only gives 15 seconds worth of speech is because that's all the author thought this risen Christ had to say, not because the author is knowingly excluding such words through the artifice of "compression,  thus contradicting the 40-day period of risen Christ speeches alleged in Acts 1:3...a book that comes along LATER and is therefore the logical choice to blame for embellishment.

You will say Mark was based on Peter's preaching so Matthew was actually borrowing text from another apostle, but since it was already shown that Mark's version of Peter's confession is shorter than Matthew's, Matthew's dependence is more upon Mark than on Peter...who surely would have given to Mark all those extra details now confined to Matthew's account.

Finally, patristic accounts allege that Mark was writing for a Roman audience, so that if all else be true, Matthew was not merely relying on "Mark" or "Peter", he was relying on a version of Christ's sayings that Peter had adapted to his Roman audience...which is highly unlikely for the Matthew-author, whose gospel all scholars agree is the most intensely "Jewish" of the 4 canonical gospels.  What, did eyewitness Matthew RE-adapt the secondary Roman form of the the Christ-sayings for his Jewish audience?  Does that sound like somebody who was in a good position to have first-hand knowledge of Jesus' teachings?  Of course not, so then authorship of Matthew by the apostle of the same name, highly unlikely and profoundly irrelevant regardless.

And so on. As with the other two points above, you'd have to be selective in choosing one or more examples to illustrate the point, but we've provided many to choose from.
 To summarize these three points even further:
 1. the presence of reliable sources
2. the presence of evidence for a traditional Christian view
3. the absence of support for skeptical alternatives among the ancient sources
 And you could make it even easier to remember as: presence, presence, absence.
 The importance of these three points can be seen by thinking about how easily the relevant circumstances could have been different than they are and what implications would follow if they were different. What if individuals like Mary and James hadn't lived as long as they did, the earliest Christians hadn't shown so much interest in writing, etc.? What if there wasn't so much information about Jesus' childhood that meets the evidential standards for historically reliable material?

In light of the admissions of Christian scholars like Licona that Matthew wasn't as concerned about historical accuracy as inerrantists are, and in light of the fact that you don't have the first fucking clue how Matthew came up with the Nativity story material (if "how-it-could-have-been" scenarios work for you, you must accord that luxury to skepics also, to avoid charges of hypocrisy).

I'm not aware of any rule of historiography that says a person is intellectually compelled to give the benefit of the doubt to just whatever ancient document he looks at, until somebody comes along to prove it false.  That crap only started with Josh McDowell's dishonest reference to "Aristotle's dictum", but even if such initial trust is legitimate rule of historigraphy, so what?  How many historians say this benefit of the doubt must be given?  Mike Licona's admissions about how historians cannot even agree on methodology, reasonably justifies the conclusion that unless ancient words can be demonstrated to have relevance to the skeptic today, the skeptic cannot be unreasonable if they choose to completely ignore all things from ancient history...which is what the vast majority of people do their whole lives, except for religious fanatics and historians.

Refusing to give the benefit of the doubt to the document isn't like denying a law of physics, as historiography is an art, not a science.  Refusing to waste time learning what ancient authors had to say, can never be shown to result in the same level of disaster that looms over the person who chooses to disagree with the laws of logic, physics or math.  You'd have to show that a skeptic's disagreement with what most historians care about, makes the skeptic unreasonable, but then again, you don't think the skeptic unreasonable to dismiss from consideration the vast majority of ancient religious material.  It's only when we tell YOU to fuck off, that suddenly the only rational people in the world are those who give a fuck about ancient religious sources.

So if skeptics simply laugh at the NT and dismiss it, they aren't committing any academic "error", they are merely making life very hard for a few dipshits at Triablogue who themselves cannot even agree on what the bible teaches (Hays is a Calvinist, Engwer is not, etc).

Nevermind that there is no evidence, whatsoever, that anything stated in ancient history has any significance to modern-day people beyond one's personal preferences and intellectual curiosity.  If we were as objective about ancient history as christian apologists require, we'd never have time to investigate Christianity, because there are so many other possibly true religious claims from the ancient world, whose veracity we'd have to kindly presume true until they were proved false, an enterprise that would take a lifetime.

Gee, what rule of common sense, historiography or literary analysis dictates how long the skeptic should study a religious rooted in ancient claims, before the skeptic can be justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about it?  Christian apologists will necessarily have to insist that it should take less than a lifetime, so that the skeptic can free up some time to bother with Christianity, but since there is no such rule, the amount of time the skeptic deems sufficient is a highly subjective affair and hence cannot be dicated by worried apologists at Triablogue who are guilty of the sin of ceaseless word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).

What if the early opponents of Christianity had made significantly different claims about Jesus' childhood, such as by corroborating the Christian claims much less than they did?

What if they did, and those records were destroyed just like thousands of other ancient christian writings?

What if most of the Arian bishops had shown up at the Council of Nicaea?  What if Constantine hadn't bribed anybody but bade them attend at their own expense?

What if the gospel alleged that Jesus sinned a few times during childhood?

 This approach I've outlined doesn't cover every issue, and you still have to address whatever objections are raised. It's a good way to start a discussion and summarize your view, even if it doesn't end the discussion.

And my rebuttal to you is a good way to show that skeptics are not being "unreasonable" in alleging that Jesus was an imperfect child whose history was embellished more than 50 years later, in a way that most NT authors did not seem sufficiently edifying to justify repeating, despite their willingness to repeat most of their issues.