Cold Case Christianity: Do Atheists Believe in Just One Less God Than Christians?

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

Do Atheists Believe in Just One Less God Than Christians?

Posted: 21 Sep 2018 01:13 AM PDT

 As an atheist, I used to challenge my Christian friends with a common objection heard across the Internet today. Although my formulation of the objection differed from time to time, it was a lot like the popular statement attributed to Stephen F. Roberts:

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

My point was simple: All of us are atheists to some degree if you really think about it; we just disagree about which gods we reject. Christians are atheistic in their attitude toward, Zeus, Poseidon, Lakshmi, Vishnu, Cheonjiwang, Na Tuk Kong, Achamán, Huixtocihuatl and thousands of other historic gods. When asked, Christians typically offer the same reasons for rejecting these other “deities” that I would have offered for rejecting the God of Christianity. So (as I often claimed), if my believing friends simply approached Yahweh in the same way they approached other mythologies, they would inevitably take the final step toward rationality and reject all false gods.

I avoid that argument because Christianity, despite being false, obviously has more historical support than do the gods of other ancient religions.  You cannot get rid of Christianity quite as easily as you can get rid of Zeus.

This objection is still popular.

That's an unfortunate truth about modern-day culture.  Critical thinking has become an industry because the internet not only enables one to know more truth, it also facilitates ignorance.

I hear it (or read it) frequently in my efforts to make the case for Christianity now that I’m a believer. While there are certainly several valid responses, I’d like to offer one from my experience as a detective and case maker. I think it provides a brief, but rhetorically powerful rejoinder to this misguided, iconic objection.

In every criminal trial, a jury is asked to evaluate the actions of one defendant related to a particular crime. While there are millions of other people in the world who could have committed the crime under consideration (and indeed, millions of these people were actually available to commit the crime), only one has been charged. If the jury becomes convinced this defendant is the perpetrator, they will convict him based on their beliefs. They will convict the accused even though they haven’t examined the actions (or nature) of millions of other potential suspects.

 using the same logic, atheists can be reasonable to look at the evidence for Christianity and draw conclusions thereto, even if they haven't examined every supernaturalism argument in existence.

They’ll render a verdict based on the evidence related to this defendant, in spite of the fact they may be ignorant of the history or actions of several million alternatives.

So, atheists also can be reasonable to "render a verdict based on the evidence related to [god] in spite of the fact they may be ignorant of the history or actions of several million alternatives"

If the evidence is persuasive, the jurors will become true believers in the guilt of this man or woman, even as they reject millions of other options.

Same answer.

As Christians, we are just like the jurors on that trial. We make a decision about Jesus on the basis of the evidence related to Jesus, not the fact there may be many alternative candidates offered by others.

Then you cannot blame atheists for making a decision about 'god' on the basis of the available evidence, not the fact there may be many alternative candidates offered by others.

If the evidence is persuasive, we can reach our decision in good conscience, even if we are completely unfamiliar with other possibilities.

 Ditto the atheist.

Christianity makes claims of exclusivity; if Christianity is true, all other claims about God are false.

Correction, this is conservative Christianity which makes the claim of exclusivity.  It isn't like the liberal Christian inclusivists who believe in many other legitimate paths to God have never seen John 14:6 or the other standard biblical proof-texts that make up the exclusivist's entire reason for processing oxygen.

If the evidence supporting Christianity is convincing to us as the jury, we need look no further. In the end, our decision will be based on the strength (or weakness) of the case for Christianity, just like the decisions made by jurors related to a particular defendant must be based on the strength (or weakness) of the evidence.

And, as usual (and probably because you need to commit this error to sell books), you once again premise Christianity's truth entirely upon where the empirical evidence points...you leave no room in your argument for the biblical fact that there is an invisible subjective convicting of sin by the Holy Spirit that is also a part of, and more important than, the empirical evidence.  If you started pushing the subjective truth that the bible connects to one's ability to determine the truth of Christianity, logic would require that you stop promoting your book sales as obsessively as you do.  God has his part to play, which you cannot play for him, and since he played it for hundreds of years before internet, videos, printing press and electricity, you might consider that there is a genuine possibility you've blinded yourself too all these years:  the bible god, if he exists, thinks it much better for today's Christians to simply preach straight from the bible, plus nothing, and God will be responsible for making anybody sitting in the pews or on the street to become interested.

At the end of a trail, juries are “unbelievers” when it comes to every other potential suspect, because the evidence confirming the guilt of their particular defendant was sufficient. In a similar way, we can be confident “unbelievers” when it comes to every other potential god because the evidence for Christianity is more than sufficient.

Ditto the atheist.  Reasonableness in denying god's existence doesn't require refuting every possible argument for supernaturalism, for the same reason that the reasonableness of believing Jesus rose from the dead doesn't require refuting every possible argument for naturalism.

Cold Case Christanity: Wallace prepares the babies for war?

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

Has the Church Surrendered Its Responsibility to the Academy?

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to train 80 high school students at Crossline Church here in southern California.  These students were capable and willing to engage the tough issues at a high level, and their churches and Christian high schools have embraced the mission.

That would be unwise from a conservative Christian viewpoint.  Today's Christians are already absurdly materialistic far beyond what the NT allows, and it can only be worse with teenagers.  Yet you seem to think it smart to prepare what can only be spiritual babies for spiritual warefare?  Notice what Paul to a bunch of adults who believed his gospel: 

 1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.
 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, (1 Cor. 3:1-2 NAU)

 Did you perform any tests to make sure these high-school kids were spiritually ready to start doing real-time battle with demons?  Or did you simply jump for joy when a request for a speaking engagements popped up in your inbox?  I'd say protecting children is more important than earning a fee.

Students have a growing number of opportunities to continue their education in Christian Case Making (Apologetics) at the University level, should they choose to do so. The number of degree programs in apologetics, Christian philosophy or Christian thought is growing every year.

Then you should make a donation to all non-Christians who disagree with your religion.  If it weren't for them, apologetics wouldn't be necessary.   And so apologetics follows the standard business model adopted by all capitalists.  Create a problem, offer to sell the solution at a reasonable price.

Students who begin training with us in high school can continue this training at the university level. While this is certainly encouraging, one thing is certain: The academy will never replace the Church.

That doesn't make sense, the church is not a building, it is the people.  You are in church every time you are around other Christians, even if not on Sunday morning.

We are definitely experiencing a renaissance in Christian apologetics, as evidenced by the number of programs emerging around the country. But I can’t help but wonder if Christian universities have simply recognized an important failing of the Church. These apologetics and philosophy programs aren’t, by and large, professional degree programs, after all. Few, if any, of the graduates from these programs become professional apologists (I’ve met many graduates from these universities who are working as tent-makers in other professions). The degrees they earn in apologetics will help them to think critically and develop a grounded Biblical worldview, but they probably won’t help them pay the bills.

Good point.  Then again, Jesus encouraged his followers to give up their earthly homes, kids and possessions just to make more time to follow him around:

  20 The young man said to Him, "All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?"
 21 Jesus said to him, "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."
 22 But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. (Matt. 19:20-22 NAU)

  28 And Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
 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.
 30 "But many who are first will be last; and the last, first. (Matt. 19:28-30 NAU)

It usually escapes the notice of most Christians that on the basis of v. 29, which says salvation involves the condition of giving up one's family and earthly possessions, Jesus was also talking about salvation when he told the rich young ruler that selling all of his things would produce "treasure in heaven". 

It's not sufficiently definitive to be proven absolutely, but Jesus is still a scumbag for encouraging his followers to believe that abandoning their kids to other people just to follow him around more often was morally good.

In this sense, apologetics programs are often more about personal growth than professional preparation.

And it's terrible that some Christians make a profit selling personal growth solutions.

Men and women often seek programs of this nature because there simply isn’t any other place where the case for Christianity is robustly studied, discussed, and evaluated.

You can say that again.  We are winning the war against you. The history of America shows a slow but steady declining of zeal for Jesus.  Amen to that.

They are keenly interested in knowing more, digging deeper, and becoming more articulate so they can share what they believe with others. Gee, doesn’t this sound like something the Church should be offering?

Yes.  But Calvinist Christians will tell you the modern church is slacking so much, because God wanted it to (i.e., his secret will).

I can’t help but wonder if the explosion of apologetics programs at the university level is inversely proportional to the disinterest the Church seems to have in apologetics. As the Church continues to relinquish its responsibility to train Christians, universities are stepping in the gap. The less people receive in the Church, the more they are seeking at the Academy.

I don't see the problem, the Academy is just as full of Christians as the church, so why does it matter what building the kids are sitting in when they receive apologetics instruction?

But here’s my concern. The church ought to be the place where we equip “the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-13).

 The spiritually mature Christian would be more likely to quote Jesus to ground doctrine, instead of taking chances quoting an obviously lesser authority whom even many Christians, today and in the original church, considered to be heretic.

The university ought to be a place where we can also prepare vocationally. Sadly, many of us graduate from apologetics programs, equipped with the knowledge and wisdom we should be getting in our churches. It’s not too late to reverse the trend. It’s time for the Church to take back its responsibility to equip the saints. It’s time for pastors to recognize their responsibilities as trainers and case makers.

Translation:  it's time for American Christians to purchase books authored by J. Warner Wallace.  You should repent of your sin of capitalism:   "If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content." (1 Tim. 6:8 NAU)

You obviously aren't content to have food and covering.  Neither are 99% of the fools who call themselves Christians.

While the academy may certainly continue to offer these important and valuable programs to those who want to reach higher levels of understanding, every church member ought to receive his or her “BA in Christian Case Making (Apologetics)” while training in the pews.

Not true, your own bible prohibits the idea that everybody has the same spiritual responsibilities:

 7 Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. (1 Cor. 7:7 NAU)

  27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.
 28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
 29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?   (1 Cor. 12:27-30 NAU)

The Academy shouldn’t replace the Church in this mission. It’s time for the Church to embrace its responsibility to train the family of God so we can all become good Christian Case Makers.

Translation:  it's time for American Christians to purchase books authored by J. Warner Wallace.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace misleads the youth to become eager to violate New Testament principles

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

Cold Case Christianity:
How Role-Playing Can Energize Your Group to Become Case Makers

 Posted: 15 Jun 2018 06:01 AM PDT

 Not long ago, Brett Kunkle, Sean McDowell and I spent several days training students for a Berkeley Missions trip. These trips are fun but challenging. Brett still leads these trips regularly, helping Christian high school students engage young men and women on the UC Berkeley campus. Once there, the students discuss issues related to theism, culture and worldview. These young Christians also interact with thoughtful atheist authors, speakers and student leaders during the trip. The resulting discussions are robust, pointed, and sometimes hostile. In spite of the challenging nature of the excursion, students usually begin this training with a naïve sense of confidence and (I hate to say it) apathy.

Only a Christian apologist would try to put a damper on a child's joy in the Lord.

And if the kids are apathetic toward the goal of the trip, that might tell you they don't have enough of the Holy Spirit to justify trying to "empower" them for the mission field, especially the type of mission field that is most likely to put them in contact with information likely to persuade them to do what many other Christians have done, and give up the faith.

Like many other Christians I meet across the country, our students need to understand the importance of case making before they will ever take a step toward becoming case makers.

That's funny, I thought that the basis for the motive to become a productive Christian was the Holy Spirit.  It's nice to know you are a cessationist, and therefore, you have about as much of a 'relationship' with Jesus as you have with Abraham Lincoln.

As we begin to train each group, we must overcome their apathy and naïve confidence.

Some Christians would argue that the more effort you put into trying to motivate Christians to become more interested in goals you think are spiritual, the less convicting power of the Holy Spirit you actually believe in.  In today's apologetics, the Holy Spirit is nothing but a gratuitous afterthought.  Fuck what the bible says, your spiritual growth will be stunted if you don't learn how to answer atheism.  How can you seriously believe God has any part to play here, if your actions make it seem as if God just sits up there looking down and expecting everybody else to do all the work?  Like I said, "gratuitous afterthought".

If you’ve tried to energize your own church, family or community about “apologetics” (Christian Case Making), you’ve probably experienced something similar.

Wow, the general apathy of today's Christians toward apologetics is so pervasive, even an apologist can complain about it.

In fact, many of you have written to me, expressing this frustration: “How can I encourage my church to understand the need for Christian Case Making?” If you’ve ever found yourself asking a question like this, I have a potential solution: consider role-playing.

That solution is nowhere expressed or implied in the bible.  But prayer is:

 24 "Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. (Mk. 11:24 NAU)

 If Christians pray, yet don't convince their church to start giving a fuck about "case-making", you might consider that God, in his sovereignty, has decided that this is one of the things he doesn't want the Christians in this church or that church to engage in.  But no, you keep on truckin' as if what you have to say applies across the board to everybody all the time.

You also might try a little common sense: If the church is not interested in apologetics, you have no reason to think they are spiritually mature enough to handle getting that close to the devil, in which case it makes more sense to either walk away, or build them up in the faith before trying to turn them into spiritual lights.

In 1st Corinthians 12 Paul insisted that not everybody has the same spiritual gifts:

 27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.
 28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
 29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
 31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way.
 (1 Cor. 12:27-31 NAU)

 Paul admitted elsewhere that while he has the ideological goal of others being like him in their actions and life-choices, he also knows that this is unrealistic because not everybody has the same gifts.  Notice what he says about the goodness of men remaining single, but the stupidity of expecting this of every man:

 5 Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
 6 But this I say by way of concession, not of command.
 7 Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. (1 Cor. 7:5-7 NAU)

Yet Wallace is so stuck on his "case-making" bells and whistles, he leaves no room for the obvious biblical truth that not everybody has the gift of teaching, and certainly not "youths" (!?)...and of course "teaching" is precisely what Wallace is having these kids doing when they try to 'answer' atheists and bible skeptics. 

Wallace is so focused on his goal of selling Jesus in Wallace-style that he has completely forgotten that there are probably millions of Christians he is speaking who are not and never will be fit to hold the office of a teacher.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that he is asking youngsters to be "teachers", when in fact not only is there no biblical precedent for this, but the biblical precedent warns even adults that most of them should not consider becoming teachers:

Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. (Jas. 3:1 NAU)

Other biblical criteria for teachers necessarily imply the teacher is not a youth but well-seasoned by experience to handle the crap that normally comes with being a teacher:

 23 But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels.
 24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.    (2 Tim. 2:23-26 NAU)

First, given Wallace's insanely obstinate stance that Christianity is true and atheism false, we might very well force Wallace to take the position that he believes atheism and all of its challenges to theism constitute "foolish and ignorant speculations" which Paul said to avoid (v. 23).  And indeed, other parts of the bible force Wallace to view atheism as not merely wrong, but foolish (Psalm 14:1) and thus, the New Testament, in telling Wallace to stay away from foolish and ignorant speculations, is telling him to stay away from atheism.

Second, the teacher cannot be "quarrelsome" (v. 24), yet I would imagine that any school-aged child who really liked apologetics, would likely harbor such desire because it gives them a way to vent their sinful lust to argue, a lust they wish to indulge merely because they get off on being contentious with others.

Many kids and teens are attention-whores, and Wallace runs the risk that many of the youth in his audiences will look upon their bible and faith as an excuse to draw attention to themselves, as indeed happens to most apologists, including Wallace himself, when in fact the alleged goal is to transfer focus off of oneself and onto Jesus.  Wallace's trying to turn kids into spiritual lights is like trying to promote a teenager to the position of overseer.  He is about as pathetic as the 18 year old Mormon missionaries who call themselves "Elder" so-and-so.  Elder?  Really?


Paul also presumes folly in the young when he says young widows are not to be placed on the church's charity list until they are old, because, Paul presumes, they will more than likely give in to their animal instincts and end up wanting to get married again, or gossiping again:

 11 But refuse to put younger widows on the list, for when they feel sensual desires in disregard of Christ, they want to get married,
 12 thus incurring condemnation, because they have set aside their previous pledge.
 13 At the same time they also learn to be idle, as they go around from house to house; and not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention.
 14 Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach;
 15 for some have already turned aside to follow Satan. (1 Tim. 5:11-15 NAU)

It is clear that Wallace doesn't give two shits about this biblical precedent; if you wanted your 3 year old to learn apologetics, Wallace would probably write a book on it and then tour the U.S. giving lectures on how important it is to buy his books and turn toddlers into spiritual warriors.  Doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, most of the crap Wallace teaches also doesn't make sense (as can be presumed from his carefully efforts to avoid debating me and avoid responding to my challenges and indeed to any challenges from other informed bible critics), but that doesn't slow him down in the least from being utterly obsessed with selling, selling, selling.  He is nothing but a 1950's Jehovah Witness with a bullhorn on his car.  If you wish to make money selling Jesus, advertise, advertise, advertise.

As Christ followers, we typically surround ourselves with other like-minded believers.

Which is the reason you and Christian "heretics" are so difficult to dissuade, you purposefully create a happy social bubble that makes it nearly impossible for truths you don't agree with, to significantly impact your life (to be fair, Wallace is into apologetics so he is less inclined to say inside his happy Christian bubble than most Christians).  I suppose that if I surrounded myself only with other atheist bible critics, I would create a happy bubble around myself, but I can afford to be more objective than Christians can.

In the comfortable worlds we inhabit and create for ourselves, we seldom encounter people who challenge us or make us uncomfortable.

That can only be a good thing in the bible, since it is precisely the outsider's challenging and making you uncomfortable that leads straight to your apostasy or heresy.   Wallace doesn't consider that some Christians are likely so fragile in the faith that they aren't ready to join god's "army".

Many of us don’t even understand the extent to which our Christian beliefs are being challenged by the increasingly antagonistic culture. We’ve insolated (sic) ourselves to the point of apathy.

That might give you a clue, Wallace: the only reason you have an apathetic Christian demographic to market your materials to in the first place, is because those people either lack salvation, or are otherwise not intended by God to be spiritual soldiers. 

Because we’re never challenged, we fail to see the need to study.

Blame it on the Holy Spirit, since he is allegedly capable of making even unbelievers do what he wants (Ezra 1:1), so he has no excuse for not exerting the same magically coercive telepathy on his own followers.

Most of us don’t start thinking about dinner until we get hungry.

Telling you that most of your readers have more in common with elementary school kids than they have with city planners.  School kids?  Not the kind of people that should be teaching atheists...the devil's most clever disciples.

We don’t start shopping for a car until our current car isn’t working.

Ditto.

Similarly, most Christians don’t recognize the need for Case Making until they’ve been challenged to make a case.

But you haven't shown biblical justification for saying ALL Christians need to be case-makers.  Apologetics puts you in contact with some very smart people who have a track record of successfully deconverting Christians.  You are rather stupid if you think you aren't putting kids in spiritual danger by blindly assuming its always good for them to do the work that not even most adult teachers are prepared to do.

That’s why role-playing is so effective. Last night, as in most of our prior training sessions, we began with some acting. We spent an hour challenging the students as though we were non-believers. We did our best to portray the opposition with clarity and fairness, but we pressed our students as much as possible. We presented the arguments we typically encounter when talking with atheists (or held ourselves when we were non-believers).

They'd be better prepared for real-world encounters if you have them try to handle a real atheist or bible critic.  If you are going to ignore biblical restrictions, then go for gold.

At first, it didn’t take much effort to stump the group or frustrate them with our atheistic objections. Within minutes, the students realized they were unable to defend what they believed as Christians. After an hour, their frustration was palpable. They were irritated with their inability to defend what they believed, and while this incompetence made them uncomfortable, it served our purposes perfectly. Suddenly, Christian Case Making became important to these students; they understood their inability and the magnitude of the challenge.

Probably because they were youthful, and youths have more tendency to want to win an argument for reasons other than long-term spiritual good.  Impressing one's cohorts with flashes of intellectual brilliance are also among the reasons many Christian  youths would wish to become involves in apologetics.   

Once again, the bible says atheism is foolish (Psalm 14:1), and the Christian teacher is to avoid foolish subjects (2nd Timothy 2:23 ff, supra).  I find it disturbing, to say the least, that Wallace can forge ahead with his new marketing scheme, while being so blissfully ignorant of (or apathetic toward) the New Testament restrictions on just who is supposed to be a teacher.

When I am asked to do longer, multi-session training with a group, I sometimes begin without revealing my Christian identity at all. I’ll introduce myself as the old atheist I used to be. Without revealing who I am today, I’ll spend an hour demonstrating the defensive shortcomings of the group.

Hard to believe that the Holy Spirit, whom you credit as the reason you have joy in the Lord, would approve of you misleading others about what you really believe.  YOU might play games, but the Holy Spirit likely doesn't.

When I finally reveal I’m a Christian, the group is typically relieved to find out I am on their side. If my time with a group is much shorter, I’ll still find a way to “role-play” the position of those who oppose the Christian view. If nothing else, I’ll simply provide a series of quotes (or even a short video) demonstrating the strength of the opposition.

If you want to turn them into spiritual giants, have them meet with me or some other bible critic who specializes in answering apologists.   I'll start them off on why it makes no sense to say that causing men to rape women can possibly be "loving".  Isaiah 13, Hosea 13.  Either the god of the bible has a history of actions utterly inconsistent with "love", or the definition of "love" becomes intolerably and uselessly malleable.

If we are supposed to believe that God "loves" the women that he causes other men to rape, that is a horrifically ignorant and desperate view that that nobody finds the least bit compelling...except Christian apologists whose solitary goal in life is to transform ancient tribal barbarian philosophy from the OT prophets, into something more acceptable to modern western notions of justice and common sense.

In other words, I begin by creating a hunger for the meal we are about to eat.

In other words, like a salesman, you create a problem for which your materials, on sale now,  provide a solution.  Standard operating procedure for any car salesman.

I try to demonstrate the urgency of the questions so the answers will be embraced more eagerly.

Very sad that an alleged "bible-believer" like you causes youth to eagerly involve themselves in answering atheism, when your own NT directly forbids any Christian from becoming involved in such "foolish speculations".  You need to check yourself, Wallace, you are missing the forest for the trees.

If you’re a “One Dollar Apologist” and you’re struggling to introduce Christian Case Making to your Christian brothers and sisters, consider the importance of role playing. If nothing else, present the opposing case prior to making the case for Christianity. When you demonstrate the strength of the challenge, people are far more willing to strengthen their ability to respond.

But whatever you do, don't trust in the power of the Holy Spirit nor in the power of prayer.  No, you are hopelessly stuck in mire unless and until you purchase Wallace's materials. Maybe he can explain how the bible alone can be sufficient for faith and practice, yet also be insufficient until it is supplemented by commentaries written by sinful men far less inspired than the biblical authors.

Cold Case Christianity: The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

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

The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 05:49 AM PST

Skeptics sometimes portray Christians as both “unreasonable” and “unreasoning”. The Christian culture only exacerbates the problem when it advocates for a definition of “faith” removed from evidence.

Blame it on Hebrews 11:1 which says faith "is" evidence, and speaks about faith in a way that today's apologists wouldn't be caught dead speaking.   If Hebrews 11:1 doesn't promote blind faith, why don't more apologists quote it in non-defensive contexts?

Is true faith blind?

Yes:

 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (Jn. 20:29 NAU)  

The hope that saves is the kind that doesn't see:

 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom. 8:24-25 NAU)

Wallace continues:

How are true believers to respond to doubt?

Like a child, i.e., when you doubt, that's just the devil trying to steal your joy:

...Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
 9 But resist him, firm in your faith,  (1 Pet. 5:8-9 NAU)

Wallace continues:

What is the relationship between faith and reason?

It isn't good.  When Paul addressed the Corinthians, he specifically disclaimed any attempt at persuasive reasoning:

 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
 3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,
 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:2-5 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Richard Dawkins once said:
 “Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”
 This view of Christian belief is common among skeptics and believers alike.

Then you cannot blame the skeptics for viewing faith as blind assent the way so many Christians do.  If spiritually alive people can't even get it right, you are a fucking fool to expect spiritually dead people to do any better.

Critics think Christians accept truth claims without any evidential support and many Christians embrace the claims of Christianity unaware of the strong evidence supporting our worldview.

Dream on, none of the evidence supporting Christianity is strong, it is rather weak, full of holes, and that's probably why the Christian scholars who go around trying to prove this crap are a decided minority.

Dawkins is correct when he argues against forming beliefs without evidence.

Then apparently you never read Hebrews 11:1

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1 NAU)

Wallace continues:

People who accept truth claims without any examination or need for evidence are prone to believing myths and making bad decisions.

Which must mean the original Jerusalem church under James was prone to believing myths:

 17 After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
 18 And the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
 19 After he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
 20 And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;
 21 and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
 22 "What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.
 23 "Therefore do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow;
 24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law. (Acts 21:17-24 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Christians Are Called to A Reasonable Faith
Christians, however, are not called to make decisions without good evidence.

Yes they are.  The Jesus whose miracles during his earthly ministry were so fake that his own family didn't believe him (John 7:5, Mark 3:21) wanted any mothers and fathers following him to give up custody of their kids just to follow him around, with a prosperity gospel promise that they'd get eternal life by doing so:

 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)

Wallace continues:

The God of the Bible does not call his children to obey blindly.

then why does apostle Paul think he can persuade a bitterly immoral and divided Corinthian church that he might possibly have physically flown up to heaven, by simply telling them a story?

 1 Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows--
 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.   (2 Cor. 12:1-4 NAU)

If Paul expected such a congregation to believe this crap, then trust me, his god wanted them to believe blindly.  Wallace continues:

The Gospels are themselves an important form of direct evidence; the testimony of eyewitnesses who observed the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Correction, only two of them could possibly claim to be eyewitness testimony, Matthew and John.  If hearsay was so clearly useful for establishing facts, to the point that Mark's and Luke's non-eyewitness status ends up being no problems, I don't think most modern courts of law would routinely exclude hearsay.   Most Christian scholars deny apostle Matthew wrote the gospel now bearing his name, and with conservative scholars like Craig A. Evans admitting in his debates with Bart Ehrman that Jesus never actually said "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), you've got serious problems pretending the gospel authors only wished to assert facts.

That’s why the scriptures repeatedly call us to have a reasoned belief in Christ, and not to resort to the behavior of unreasoning animals:

Jude 4, 10
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

That passage is not calling anybody to anything, it is labeling heretics in a defamatory way.

The Bible uses this word for “unreasoning” in a pejorative manner; to be unreasoning is to act like a brute animal. God clearly wants more from beings created in His image.

Paul cursed his judaizer opponents in Galatians 1:8-9, this might suggest Paul approved of childish reasoning that automatically sides with whoever appears more serious or more flashy.

Christians Are Called to An Examined Faith
In fact, God wants us to examine all the evidence at our disposal and to study the things of God with great intensity. When we do this, we truly begin to worship Him with our mind:

But you cannot say what exact degree of intensity, which makes the statement useless.  Does God want a Christian wife and mother to quit her job and homeschool her kids so she can keep her kids' minds unstained from the world?  You wouldn't try to answer that in a definitive way to save your life, despite the fact that it agrees perfectly with all the rest of the fanatical devoted bullshit in the bible a bout how the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Matthew 22:37-38
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.”

Because if you don't, he will foist innumerable atrocities on you, like rape (Isaiah 13:13-16) and parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:53-57).  Obviously God calls you to a reasoned faith.  Nobody wants to get raped, so the other option is to believe what the sky-tyrant tells you.  That's "reasonable".

This kind of faith is unafraid of challenges.

Then apparently J. Warner Wallace doesn't have Christian faith, because I've been challenging him routinely on everything he believes, and yet he bears more "self-promotion/marketing gimmick/just-ignore-the-competition" fruit than he bears "unafraid of challenges" fruit.  Of course you don't have "time" to debate me, you are always flying around the country so you can appear on another Christian's t.v. or radio show.  Should we just call you J. Warner Commercial?  How did the world ever get along before you were born?

In fact, Christians are encouraged to examine what they believe critically so they can be fully convinced:
 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21
Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good…

And in context, "everything" is limited to prophetic utterances.  If you don't arbitrarily limit the "everything" even further, than apparently God wants Christians to fully inspect anything and everything in their lives that has to do with god, which would leave them no time to cook, clean, or purchase books by self-promoting attention-whore apologists.  You wouldn't want that, would you?

1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Verses 2 and 3 indicate the test wasn't for everything, but only for whether a spirit did or didn't confess that Jesus had come in the flesh:

 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 Jn. 4:2-3 NAU)

Romans 14:5
Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

And the part that you missed is "let", since apparently you do not "let" people believe what they want, you instead force your religion on other people.

2 Timothy 3:14
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them…

Rather bad advice for any Christian who is starting to recognize that the church she joined is heretical.  Apparently this verse doesn't apply as broadly as you thought it did.

Christians Are Called to An Evidential Faith
Critical examination requires us to investigate the evidence,

and contrawise, love "believes all things" (1st Cor. 13:7).

and God holds evidence in high regard.

Not when it comes to the type of hope that saves.  Hope that is seen is not hope.  Romans 8:24 supra.

He wants us to be convinced after we examine the facts. Jesus valued evidence and continually provided evidence to make his case:
 John 14:11
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

Apparently you didn't notice that Jesus distinguishes there two possible bases for conversion, and only one of them required drawing conclusions from the evidence.

Jesus continued to provide evidence to the disciples, even after the Resurrection:
 Acts 1:2-3
…until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Nevermind the fact that while this alleged 40-days of kingdom-of-God preaching by Jesus surely must have been as important if not more important than his pre-Cross teachings, the NT authors don't give us shit from those 40-days, despite Matthew's admission that the risen Christ wanted future Gentile followers to obey "all" that he had taught the disciples (Matthew 28:20).

The earliest Christians understood the connection between reason, evidence and faith, and they did not see these concepts as mutually exclusive.

Wrong, Paul refused to use persuasive reasoning, see 1st Cor. 2:4

In fact, Paul often used direct evidence to make his case for Christianity:
 Acts 17:30-31
“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Nevermind that Paul there was quoting Aratus out of context and applying his Stoic polytheism to Christian monotheism.  Nevermind that the philosophers laughed him off (v. 32).  Nevermind that Paul left immediately after their skepticism manifested itself (v. 33).

Acts 17:2-3
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead

The same Paul would later write in contradiction to his younger contentious days, and require that anybody who doesn't see things his way after two warnings (not two lessons) must be shunned and avoided thereafter, Titus 3:9.

Christians Are Called to A Case-Making Faith
When believers use their minds, investigate the evidence and become convinced, something wonderful happens: We have the courage to defend what we believe using the same evidence, logic and reasoning power we used to come to faith in the first place:

And Mormons would testify in agreement with you that something wonderful happens when they use their minds to investigate the evidence and become convinced that the book of Mormon is the inspired word of God.

1 Peter 3:15
…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…

Christians in all disciplines of inquiry and discovery have used their reasoning power to investigate the evidence. Christians are not irrational, and Christian faith is not blind. The rich intellectual history of Christianity calls each of us to have a reasonable, examined, evidential, case-making faith. This kind of faith honors God and withstands skeptical criticism and personal doubt.

The part you left out is that the doctrinal divisions of "true" Christians are so serious and deep, your customers could not even believe obtaining a Ph.d in New Testament studies would help them restore unity to the body of Christ.  Calvinists don't just disagree with Arminians, they disagree with fellow-Calvinists (5-Point Calvinism, 3-point Calvinism, infralapsarianism, supralapsarianism, and many Christians' hostile attittude toward Calvinism suggests they perceive Calvinism to be faulty on essentials, not peripherals).  Apologists don't just disagree with skeptics, they disagree with other apologists (Presuppositionalism?  Evidentialism?, including even on how to argue the resurrection of Jesus, Geisler, v. Licona, Dan Wallace, etc?).  Creationists don't just disagree with evolutionists, they disagree with other creationists (young earth v. old earth?  Ken Ham v. Hugh Ross?).  Conservatives don't just disagree with liberals, they disagree with other conservatives (is bible inerrancy true?  What is it's scope and extent?  Geisler v. Licona?).

You want your customers to believe the Trinitarian Protestants involved in the above-cited debates are genuinely born again, yet you also want them to believe that the holy spirit won't necessarily give them the correct interpretation of a bible passage despite their seeking such with a right heart for perhaps decades?

Christianity's internal divisions and splintering of sub-groups is more likely the result of god not existing, than of God having mysterious reasons for refusing to do his part to enable Christians to obey his command to be like-minded in all things (1st Cor. 1:10)  FUCK YOU.

Cold Case Christianity: Why You Don't Have a Duty to Be A Christian Case Maker

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Why You Have a Duty to Be A Christian Case Maker (Video)

Posted: 03 Oct 2017 01:32 AM PDT

Aaron Klemm from Summit Ministries in Colorado talks with J. Warner Wallace about the evidential nature of Christianity in this edition of the Summit Forum. J. Warner describes why every Christian has a duty to make the case for what he or she believes. For more information about the incredible two-week worldview conferences offered by Summit Ministries (J. Warner is a member of the faculty there), please visit the Summit website. To sign up for the next Summit Forum, visit the Forum Page at Summit Worldview Conference.

Some would argue that it is not by reason of coincidence that Wallace's position here just happens to also work toward the goal of convincing you to purchase his gimmicks.

First, Jesus never taught that all of his followers have to go around making the case for the gospel, or disproving the objections of critics, and we see nothing of the sort in any of the 4 gospels.  Yes, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for falsely interpreting the scriptures and for being hypocrites, but while the same can be safely inferred about first century pagans, nobody in the gospels is bothering to refute and rebuke the pagan criticisms of Jesus or his beliefs.

Second, Jesus charged his followers to teach the Gentiles to obey his original teachings, Matthew 28:20.  You can do that quite easily without needing to defend your beliefs from skeptical attacks.  Most Catholic and Protestant churches teach Jesus' stuff to billions of people every year without explaining how it is that some skeptical attack is faulty.

Third, Jesus charged his immediate followers to be his "witnesses", Acts 1:8, and according to the context, to be Jesus' witness meant to preach the gospel and declare that one had seen the risen Christ for oneself, it did not require one to study the arguments of the gainsayers and provide any type of informed rebuttal remarks, Acts 2:32,  3:15,  5:31, 10:39, etc.  The choice of Paul and others to get into long debates with Christianity's most obvious critics, the orthodox Jews (Acts 18:4), Apollos refuting the Jews in public (18:8) and Paul disputing with pagan critics (Tyrannus, Acts 19:9), only shows what was true about them, it does not provide a contetxual basis for taking the "witnesses to me" in 1:8 as requiring all Christians to conduct their witness the exact same way the men most focused on in the NT happened to do t.

Fourth, anything found in the pastorals is written to church leaders.  So the exhortion for Timothy to reprove and rebuke others (2nd Tim. 4:1ff) is made to a Christian leader, leaving open sufficient room to legitimately dispute whether all that is required of leaders is required of the laity.

Fifth, nothing in the context of 2nd Timothy 4 requires that Timothy know about the arguments of unbelievers/critics and to rebut them on the merits.  In the immediate context, everybody worthy of reproof or rebuttal would be a church-member.

Sixth, Paul characterizes Timothy's need to reprove and rebuke with all patience and teaching, as the work of an "evangelist" (4:5), but Paul also believed there were different types of ministry work:

 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.
 5 And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.
 6 There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.
 7 But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
 8 For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit;
 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,
 10 and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues.
 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. (1 Cor. 12:4-11 NAU)

And in the same chapter Paul denied that individual Christians had a duty to manifest each of the different ministry styles:

 27 Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.
 28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
 29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
 31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. (1 Cor. 12:27-31 NAU) 

Seventh, Paul's admission that he tears down speculations and anything which exalts itself against the knowledge of God (2nd Cor. 10:5) arises from an immediate context that makes it clear he is limiting his remarks to issues of church discipline (v. 6-8).

Eighth, Jude's famous remark in v. 3 about contending earnestly for the faith, is made in a context of a complaint that many false teachers/converts have entered the fold and corrupted it (v. 4, 12), these were people who caused church divisions (v. 19).  Jude 3 is not authorization to spend your money on scholarly books refuting Christianity so you can be prepared to answer informed criticisms.

Ninth, Peter's famous remark that Christians should be ready always to give a defense to everyone who asks a reason for the Christian hope, and to do so with gentleness and respect (1st Peter 3:15) likely has reference to defending the faith to outsiders, but even so, one can make a defense without needing to reply to the rebuttal materials submitted by the gainsayers.  And in context, it is a defense to those who ask a reason for the hope that lies within you...so those who think this also applies even in cases where the unbeliever hasn't asked a reason for the hope that lies within you, are the ones who have the burden of proof to show this more broad interpretation is what Peter meant.

While one might be justified to say the bible allows for Christians to be case-makers if they so chose, there is certainly nothing in the bible that places a "duty" upon them to minister this way.

Hence, Wallace's subtle intent to make Christians believe they have a "duty" to purchase his marketing gimmicks, fails.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Make the Case for Christianity, If God Is in Control?

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

Why Make the Case for Christianity, If God Is in Control?

Posted: 31 Jul 2017 01:58 AM PDT 

 

I’ve written a Christian apologetics book that makes the case for making the case.

No doubt because you have perfect confidence that God doesn't need your help on anything, having already Himself written a book that you publicly profess to be not just divinely inspired, but also "sufficient" for faith and practice.  I'm getting the idea of a dad who installs training wheels on his daughter's bike, but insists to hell and back that he isn't trying to "help" her do what she wants to do by making the bike a bit "better".

I argue that Christians ought to embrace a more evidential, thoughtful faith and accept their duty to become Christian case-makers.

And since your Reformed and 5-Point Calvinist brothers in the faith strongly insist that the evidentialist approach to apologetics is both flawed and unbiblical, you are also involving your intended unbelieving readers in a debate that not even spiritually alive people can resolve, how irrational is it, then, to pretend that spiritually dead unbelievers could possibly find the truth here?

Many people, after reading the book and thinking about this call to become better case makers, have asked, “If God calls His chosen, can’t He achieve this without any case-making effort on our part?”

Probably because they know about bible verses which teach that God not only can, but often does, force people to do what he wants them to do, and apparently he doesn't stay up late at night worrying about whether their freewill was violated:

 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; (Ezek. 38:4 NAU)

Sure, that "hook" is metaphorical, but the metaphor cannot be defined as irrelevant; it still brings to mind an obvious level of force overriding any contrary intent by the humans themselves.  And why would God use a metaphor that brings images of absolute force and overriding of freewill to mind, if that mental image is somehow inaccurate?

I also pondered this question as a new Christian, and I think the following analogy is helpful, although certainly imperfect.

Exactly, you could have chosen anything from the bible, but no, you are a marketing genius, you recognize like other authors that you can increase sales if you infuse personal stories into your books.  This is probably because you are aware of how strongly the Holy Spirit controls the lives of true Christians and doesn't need your help in any way whatsoever.

When my son David was a young boy, he hated mushrooms. If salvation were dependent on voluntarily ordering a mushroom pizza, David would never experience heaven because he would never, on his own accord, order such a pizza. In fact, I once took David to a pizza restaurant and cleverly removed the mushrooms from a pizza in an effort to convince him to eat it. He refused. “I can see the shape of the mushroom right there!” He knew it had been poisoned by “mushroom juice,” and no amount of effort on my part could change his mind, in spite of my best mushroom-pizza case-making efforts.

But what if there was some way to remove David’s hatred of mushrooms prior to entering the restaurant? If David no longer hated mushrooms, he would be open to my mushroom-pizza case-making efforts. Then, if I was able to make a “five-point case for the deliciousness of mushroom pizza,” David would, under his new nature (having had his hatred for mushrooms removed), choose to voluntarily order the mushroom pizza.

 I think you ate some mushrooms without pizza right before you wrote this.

In this admittedly imperfect analogy, David’s salvation was clearly dependent first on the role God played in removing his enmity for mushrooms. But once this enmity was sovereignly lifted, David was open to my case making. God allowed me to play my role as a case maker, and David responded to my effort in a way he never would have if God hadn’t first moved.

And the bible-god's ability to sovereignly override human freewill to force whatever he wants to happen, is precisely why your god is a fucking liar for pretending that we make him mad or angry.  If you can prevent your child from playing in the street, but you let them do it anyway, you have nobody to blame but yourself if they get ran over.  Nobody will listen during your parental-neglect arraingment that you issued clear warnings and the child willfully disobeyed.  They will say that if you are such a loving father, you wouldn't just stand there issuing edicts, you'd FORCE them out of the street, because true love will employ such force to protect the loved one from the consequences of their own stupidity or rebellion.

God’s incredible love for us is evident in this process.

But it's not evident when he just stands at the foot of the bed and watches as a little girl is raped to death.

God loved my son enough to remove his hostility,

Does he love little kids enough to remove the hostility of the man raping them?

and He loved me enough to disciple and encourage me. Even though God is clearly sovereign, He graciously allowed me to play a part in reaching David.

If the bible has anything to say about it, the part you played was that of a puppet.  Or so say your 5 Point Calvinist spiritually alive brothers who think your apologetics are a load of crap.

I got to make the case for what I know is true about salvation, and in the process, my confidence grew as I mastered the evidence for Christianity. God’s sovereign purposes and amazing love were ultimately expressed both in the son He called and in the son He encouraged.

Sounds like your editors and ghost writers did a good job agreeing on the best way to rouse the emotions of the Christians you market your shit to.

Cold Case Christianity: Volitional Resistance to Christianity Often Masquerades as Rational Opposition

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

Volitional Resistance to Christianity Often Masquerades asRational Opposition

265In another blog post I offered three reasons why people typically reject a truth claim. Sometimes folks simply have rational doubts based on the evidence, some people have doubts that are purely emotional, and others deny the truth for volitional reasons.

But if Enns and other liberal Christians can have doubts about fundie claims such as Jesus' resurrection being provable, or bible inerrancy, then unless you say liberal Christians are spiritually dead, you cannot assert the spiritual deadness of atheists as the likely reason atheists deny what you consider to be "truth".  You must find another excuse, and the truth is that your fundy claims are easily criticized as irrational, unreasonable, and unlikely.  You automatically suspect falsity when a stranger on the bus tells you they can levitate their body with mental power alone, and I suspect falsity when a stranger on the bus tell me they have an invisible friend who died 2000 years ago.  But until critical thinking skills become common place, room will always be made for apologists to make money pretending that God never had a chance until somebody invented the phrase "forensic faith".

 Until the age of thirty-five, I rejected the claims of Christianity (and theism in general). As an atheist, I adamantly identified myself in the first category of skeptics: I was a rational objector. When asked about my resistance, I repeatedly told people it was based on the lack of convincing evidence for Christianity and an abundance of evidence supporting naturalistic processes (like evolution). After examining the evidence and changing my mind, I revisited my prior opposition and realized much of my resistance was simply a matter of volition.

Then that helps explain why you started thinking Christian evidences were convincing.  Your basis for unbelief was more volitional than rational.  Glad I don't have that problem.

At some point I had to ask myself, “Am I rejecting this because there isn’t enough evidence, or because I don’t want there to be enough evidence?”

Gee, how many apologists are guilty of not "wanting" there to be any evidence for atheism?

After writing the post related to rational, emotional and volitional objections, I received the following note from an atheist who comments occasionally:

“I would place myself firmly in your first category, Jim: I’m not convinced by Christianity because I don’t see evidence for it. But I would not say it’s because I lack information – it’s rather that I have too much information, especially information about how the real world works. Your placing yourself in the third category, that of volitionally rejecting God, is telling. Almost all the Christians I know who were once atheists place themselves either here or in the second category, rejecting God because they hate Him. And almost all the atheists I know fit into the first, rational category. I would almost be tempted to say that you were never a ‘true’ atheist. It seems also to be a widespread belief among Christians that most of us atheist are god-haters or self-lovers. I guess that fits in with numerous Scriptural verses, but it doesn’t reflect reality on the ground in my experience.”

I immediately recognized the words of this atheist reader. They are my words, spoken many years before I became a Christian. All the atheists I knew (virtually all my friends at the time) identified themselves in the first category as rational objectors. I’ll bet Antony Flew, the famous British philosopher and atheist, would also have identified himself in this camp prior to becoming a theist. I don’t know anyone who was once an atheist who would ever have identified themselves as anything other than a rational objector. This really shouldn’t surprise us.

Then I would surprise you:  Not only do I reject your god and bible inerrancy because the evidence against those things is as conclusive as possible in this world, I also reject your god on volitional grounds, because he not only causes evil, but "delights" to cause men to rape women, to grant success to kidnappers,  and cause parents to cannibalize their kids.  Deuteronomy 28:30, 41, 53, 63: 

15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

 30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.

 32 "Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually; but there will be nothing you can do.

 41 "You shall have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.

 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.

 63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.

Unless you wish to argue that a woman is irrational to scream out against the local pedophile who just came to town, you cannot argue that I'm being irrational to use your god's above-cited moral failures to justify saying these traits are contradictory to the idea of "love" that god allegedly put in our hearts which was based on our being made in his "image".  Instead of worshipping Irenaeus and Tertullian as inerrant prophets, Mr. Wallace, you might consider that Marcion was correct, and the god of the OT was a demon.  Subjecting his people to punishment is one thing, "delighting" to watch rape after you have empowered the rapist through a curse to sexually violate Hebrew women, is quite another.  And yet in v. 63 is it specified that the type of "delight" God will take to inflict these atrocities, is the same "delight" he takes to grant prosperity to those who obey him.  So when you try to subtract happiness and cheer and glee from the delight God takes in causing these atrocities, you necessarily subtract it also from the delight he takes in granting prosperity.

Be sure your bible teaches the infinitude and perfection of god consistently, before you mouth off that we are in no position to judge God.  Moses successfully judged God's quick intent to kill people as irrational, and God apparenly saw the error of His way and changed His mind: 

 9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU) 

You can cite other parts of the bible that speak of God's foreknowledge and pretend that when you smoosh that and this together, you wind up with God not "really" changing his mind because he already knew what Moses' reaction would be, but that argument presupposes the truth of the certainly false doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and since so many spiritually alive Christians and their scholars deny inerrancy to various degrees, that doctrine has far less universal acclaim than other tools of interpretation such as "immediate context" and "grammar".  Therefore, I am not irrational to refuse to exalt bible inerrancy in my mind up to the status of governing hermeneutic.  If the way I interpret Exodus 32 causes it to conflict with something else in the bible, that is no reason whatsoever, to suspect that the interpretation is wrong.

Looking back at my own life as a young man who spent nine years in the university (prior to returning for seven more), I now recognize a simple truth: The more I thought I knew, the less teachable I became.

How boastful was the apostle Paul that he had the truth?  He cursed even angels from heaven should they preach a gospel different than his own (Galatians 1:8-9).   Will you say the more Paul thinks he knows, the less teachable he becomes?  What makes you think that his sometimes allegedly being "inspired by God" exempts him from your general rule?  Peter was sometimes inspired by God to the point of having trances: 

 9 On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray.
 10 But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance;
 11 and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground,
 12 and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air.
 13 A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill and eat!"
 14 But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean."
 15 Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy."
 16 This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.
 17 Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might be,  (Acts 10:9-17 NAU)

and yet we know from Galatians that Peter around that time was a Judaizer:

 14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? (Gal. 2:14 NAU)

So no, Mr. Wallace, you cannot use the occasional divine inspiration of the apostles to justify your exempting them from that rule you wish to apply to everybody else, that the more they think they know, the less teachable they become.  So if that rule does indeed apply to the apostles too, then by your own rule, because they thought they knew great mysteries, they must have become correspondingly less teachable.


Thanks for your personal testimony, but only a fool would assume his personal problems as an atheist count as evidence that other atheists are plagued with the same problems.   I have above-average knowledge of the bible, and I'm willing to discuss whatever apologetics arguments you think are the most unassailable.  You will find that what you think shows unteachableness, is really just genuine scholarly knowledge that overcomes your popular-level efforts.  Maybe knowing this is why you banned me from your facebook page despite the fact that I never violated any of your rules or Facebook's rules.  Hard to make the commercial persuasive if your competitor is always right there to explain why you are wrong.

My educational self-confidence led to a form of self-reliance in many aspects of my life, including the foundational worldview I constructed along the way.

Will you admit this was true of the apostles after they became born again, yes or no? 

My “rational” resistance to theism was deeply tainted by my desire to be the author of my own worldview (rather than the acceptor of someone else’s). I don’t think this is all that uncommon for people who think they know something.

Was it uncommon for the apostles, who clearly thought they knew something? 

That’s why virtually every skeptic identifies himself as a rational resistor, and I think this is also why those who consider themselves educated often reject any theistic worldview that requires them to submit their authority.

But since you cannot rationally claim to know what's going on in the mind of any other atheist, you need to candidly acknowledge that at this point you are pushing speculation to its limits.n  The truth is that there are plenty of skeptics who are ready and willing to take you on in a formal debate, live or over the internet, and you not only refuse to acknowledge these challenged, but you relentlessly promote your books as if they are explosive rebuttals to skeptical critiques, highly inconsistent with your track record of never having a full scale debate with an informed skeptic.  You are a fool if you think allowing comments at your Facebook page constitutes proof that you are willing to have such debates.  I was there for several months before you banned me, and you never responded to anything I had to say.

Theistic claims are unlike virtually any other claim we might consider. Every day we weigh the evidence related to all kinds of important decisions. Which car would be the best for my family? What school should I attend? Which career path is best suited to my skill set? We evaluate the evidence and options without thinking much about the role volition and emotion are playing. But make no mistake about it, our wills and emotions are always at work, even when we would deny this is the case.

Thanks for saying "we", because you condemn all Christians here when you condemn skeptics.  What fool would deny that most Christians do Christianity because it offers emotional fulfillment? 

Our decisions related to theistic claims are far more critical than other decisions we might make. As C.S. Lewis wrote in God in the Dock, “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, is of infinite importance.

Incorrect: plenty of liberal Christians say Christianity is true and everybody is going to be saved, in which case, dying as an atheist involves no more risk than dying as a Christian.  You are just passing off Lewis' fundamentalistic view as if it were gospel, sorry, it ain't.

The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” Even before we begin to examine the evidence related to Christianity, we understand the implications of any future decision. If we reject Christianity (or theism broadly), we get to continue living as the ruling authority of our own lives. If we accept, we must submit to a much greater authority.

Moses didn't submit to that authority in Exodus 32:9-14, so the door is open to the possibility that your God is just plain stupid at times, and needs human advice in order to see the error of his ways.  When God disagrees with me, that's where the problem starts, not where it ends.

Our decision related to God’s existence has a deep impact on every other decision we make going forward. This decision related to theism is foundational in a way unlike any other. It’s foolish to think this plays no part in how we might consider the question in the first place.

Our wills and desires are often deeply connected to the rational resistance we offer prior to submitting to the truth of theism. I would never have admitted to any volitional resistance as an atheist,

Indicating you were less honest than me.  I have no problems admitting I volitionally resist your magic genie for the same reason I resist the god of Mormonism:  they don't exist, but belief that they exist causes terrible emotional distress for some even if it creates joy in others. 

and it shouldn’t surprise us when other atheists also deny this to be the case. Volitional resistance to Christianity often masquerades as rational opposition.

 and it shouldn’t surprise us when Christians also deny this to be the case. Volitional resistance to atheism often masquerades as rational opposition.