Showing posts with label divine command theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divine command theory. Show all posts

Friday, February 26, 2021

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.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Wasting Time with Triablogue's morals-expert Steve Hays


Christian fundamentalist Matthew Flannagan wrote an article defending William Lane Craig's Divine-Command Theory (DCT).  Atheist scholar Richard Carrier wrote a rebuttal.  Steve Hays comments on Carrier's rebuttal.  This is my reply to Hays' criticisms.

 I'm going to comment on a screed by Richard Carrier:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/8708
That account was suspended but wayback still has it, here.
You have to wonder if Carrier had to much to drink when he wrote it.
Not even people who have that "higher" morality that Steve boasts for himself can resist calling names.  Surely we are idiots to deny how you have been transformed by Christ into a new creature who now avoids wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14).  Steve Hays has never committed that sin after he got saved, has he?
It's an attack on Matt Flanagan's Divine Command Theory. In commenting on Carrier's post, I'm not going to get into the weeds of DCT. That's Flanagan's specialty, so I will leave that to him. He can more than hold his own against the likes of Carrier.
That's quite a concession, you often don't hear hyper-Calvinists admitting the intellectual brilliance of other Christians whom the Calvinist thinks are missing the biblical forest for the trees.
But much of what Carrier says isn't tied to DCT, per se.
Before delving into the details, I'd like to make a general observation. Carrier evidently regards atheism as synonymous with secular humanism. His attack on DCT goes way beyond the negative, minimalistic definition of atheism as "nonbelief in God or gods." Rather, he proceeds as though atheism entails social obligations. 
    Theology has no salvageable theory of morality. Theists complain atheists have no reason to be moral. But in fact theists have no reason to actually be moral, as in: to elevate compassion, honesty, and reasonableness above all authority, even the authority of their own gods.
 There's nothing inherently wrong with the argument from authority if the appeal is to someone who is, in fact, a legitimate authority figure.
I would agree that some atheists try to transform the denial of god into social policy.  For my own reasons, I decline.  You also shouldn't teach children that collateral damage can be morally justified.  Some people simply aren't ready to learn certain hard truths, and will never be ready, to learn certain hard truths.
    Unless they covertly adopt a naturalistic moral theory (and most do), they are not actually moral people. They are minions. Theists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of whatever monster manufactured the universe. Or rather, whatever monster some men made up and duped them into thinking it made the universe. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever random ignorant madmen wrote their scriptures and now thumps their pulpits with sufficiently fiery claims of special divine communications at bedtime. 
Atheists are not actually moral people. They are minions. Atheists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of amoral physical determinism, which duped them into thinking their beliefs are rational. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever mindless, random natural process wired their brains and pushes their buttons. 
    I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Theism actually has no moral theory. 
I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Atheism actually has no moral theory.
 
    This is why.    Hannibal Lecter created the universe? He escaped from a future holodeck simulation and then used a stolen TARDIS to Make the Universe after evaporating God by discovering the Babel Fish? Oh crap. Well, I guess we better get down with murder and elegant cannibalism or else he’ll be angry with us and send us to hell. Because he is now eternal and the supreme being and made the universe. So we can’t deny, his will and character is now the ground of all morality. And, oh yeah. This all totally makes sense.Is that any more sensible than…? 
That's an argument from analogy minus the supporting argument.
Not every critique requires "argument". There IS such a thing as choosing, for good reason, to air one's opinion without giving the supporting argument.  Decisions on what to slice and what to keep are largely subjective and thus mostly insulated from criticism.  Before you provide examples, perhaps you should consider that, given your Calvinist statement of faith, whether the bible could have been written in a more clear way had God commissioned John Calvin to do the work?  Oh gee, no way, Romans 9 just makes Calvinism more obvious than Calvinism makes itself, amen?
Carrier needs to demonstrate that this is, in fact, parallel to Christianity. All he's done is to stipulate an invidious comparison.
Steve Hays needs to demonstrate criteria by which reasonable people would agree on what arguments to include or exclude from an argumentative article.  If you write a book defending the resurrection of Jesus, can we call you stupid because you "didn't mention" certain skeptical arguments?  Writing about a certain subject does not mean you are intellectually obligated to back up every last breath you take therein with argument.  Waxing polemical without argument is something we learned from the biblical authors, so don't be too skippy on the "need" to "provide argument".  And read Mark's parenthetical remark (13:14) before you foolishly insist that by providing no explanation, the claimaint puts no intellectual obligation on the reader.  Gee, "let the reader understand" is supposed to take the place of "argument" or "support"?
    A cosmic Jewish zombie named Jesus who telekinetically fathered himself by a virgin and now resides in outer space, is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost that is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself and an ancient Canaanite storm god, and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that has eternally tainted our mammalian flesh ever since a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. So you better do what he says. 
Carrier has strung together a series of caricatures. What does that accomplish?
Probably this:  by boiling down biblical 'truths' to the irreducible cores, such "truths" tend to strike the average reader as absurdities, and thus unworthy of being taken seriously.
Since it's not an accurate description of Christian theology, how does ridiculing a caricature disprove Christian theology? Let's run through some of these descriptors:     "Cosmic" No. The Son is not a part of the cosmos. Rather, he essentially exists outside the physical universe.
Wrong, the bible says the Son "fills all things" Ephesians 4:10, and the fact that he does so after going to the "heavens" suggests he went to a place within the cosmos.  And since "outside the universe" is about as coherent as "north of the number 4", we continue to be rational in viewing Christian theology as incoherent.
    "Zombie" No, Jesus is not an ambulatory, cannibalistic corpse with minimal brain function.
A weak criticism if scholar Carrier knew the dictionary definition of zombie and intentionally took literary license, which is likely.  If I said Jesus was a clown, Hays would probably retort that there is no biblical or patristic support for the notion that Jesus wore makeup.
Rather, he died, then was not only restored to life, but glorified, so that he now has an ageless, youthful, immortal, disease-free body. His mental faculties are fully intact.
Telling us you likely intended your criticism more for Christians than for non-Christians, as only Christians would find it the least bit compelling.  Yes, I am assuming the stupidity of the arguments for Christianity.  I'm under no intellectual obligation to provide argument for every opinion I set forth.
    "telekinetically, telepathically" Carrier uses this terminology because he thinks telepathy and telekinesis are ridiculous. Yet these are well-attested phenomena.
Telling us you are likely high on crack.  The secular evidence of such is total bullshit, we are rational to insist the studies be done while we watch in real time before we become intellectually obligated to believe any such thing is real.  Furthermore, if you were talking about "miracles" (as if you think miracles happen) I've issued a challenge to Craig Keener by email and open letter for him to show us the one miracle claim recounted in his two volume "Miracles" work that he thinks is the most impervious to falsification.  So far, zip.  I've already interacted with you before about the stupidity of claiming miracles happen in the modern world, and, characteristic of somebody who fears their bluster won't last long under cross examination, you dropped the debate after you gave your two-cents.  Perhaps you were too busy at your second job in your effort to help Engwer help fund the digitization of the Maurice Grosse's Enfield tapes so that you could then prove that poltergeists are real.  Let's just say I don't think disregarding Triablogue leaves me ignorant of any part of reality.  I choose when I'll bother with your ridiculousness the way I choose which vintage cartoons to watch during a boring moment.
    "fathered himself" I take it that Carrier is suggesting that's an oxymoron. But that ignores the preexistence of the Son.
That's right.  And because Mark wanted to prove Jesus was the Son of God, his silence on the virgin birth is less likely due to authorial intent, and more likely due to his either not knowing such stories, or disapproving of them.  Jesus also ignored issues of his own preexistence when talking to Gentiles...apparently, the canonization of the NT made Christian belief more complex for Gentiles than Jesus ever intended it to be.  We thus WORRY about "ignoring" the preexistence of the Son like we WORRY should we misquote Goldilocks.
    "by a virgin" A miracle, which functions a sign.
And assuming Matthew wrote the gospel now bearing his name, he apparently 'expected' that what he said about the virgin birth was sufficient to intellectually compel Gentiles to believe the story...despite his taking Isaiah 7:14 out of context (i.e, the more honest way of saying "typological fulfillment"). 
    "now resides in outer space" Where did Carrier come up with that?
What pre-scientific notion of the heavens did Jesus intend to encourage within his disciples when he intentionally "ascended" in their sight "into heaven"?

 51 While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. (Lk. 24:51 NAU)

 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. (Acts 1:9 NAU)

Apparently, "heaven" really does exist "up there", a premise supported by scores of other bible verses. 

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

 20 For it came about when the flame went up from the altar toward heaven, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar.  (Jdg. 13:20 NAU)

Once you ask "how would these passages have been interpreted by their original pre-scientific audiences?", you know perfectly well the "heaven is up there" belief is what was held by all of the biblical peoples.  Whether you can reconcile such statements with modern cosmology is quite beside the hermeneutical point.  And only a Christian worried about biblical "inerrancy" would feel motivated to care about such a word game anyway.
The Bible doesn't say that. Does Carrier equate the Biblical concept of "heaven" with "outer space"?
Well given the bible says heaven is "up there", and means it literally, and science tells us "up there" consists of nothing more than "outer space", the answer is yes.
    "is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost" A ghost is the soul of a dead human being. The Holy Spirit isn't human, and never died. Indeed, the Holy Spirit isn't "alive" in the biological sense.
Like it matters.  "not alive in the biological sense" merely means "alive in an incoherent sense".  Now what, Steve?  Gonna point to the Enfield Poltergeist that Engwer spent all that money on trying to research, to "prove" that non-physical "life" can be real?  LOL.  If the voice is heard within the cosmos, why do you automatically suspect origination from another dimension?
    "That is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself" Carrier's attempt to parody the Trinity. A more accurate analogy would be a mirror symmetry.
Ok, Jesus sees the father when he looks in the mirror.  What are you going to do now, start the world's first Calvinist Oneness Pentecostal denomination?
    "and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension" If that's an allusion to the intermediate state, then it's not a physical dimension. Discarnate souls don't exist in space.
But since you cannot show that "outside of space" is even coherent, what you suggest can be safely and reasonably dismissed as nonsense-talk.
If that's an allusion to the final state, then that's not an alternate dimension, but the renewed earth.
Like it matters.
    "if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood" Most evangelicals don't think you acquire eternal life by celebrating the Lord's Supper.
Then apparently they never read Jesus' statement to that effect, which was taken so literally by many of his followers that they fell away, when in fact if it had been obvious when Jesus said it that he was speaking only figuratively (as evangelicals maintain), the statement would not likely have caused such controversy and apostasy.  Let's now consult the bible's "devil-verse":
 57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.
 58 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."
 59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
 60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?"
 61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble?
 62 "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?
 63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
 64 "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.
 65 And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."
 666 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. (Jn. 6:57-66 NAU)
If Jesus really did do genuinely supernatural miracles in sight of his disciples, it is absurd to think that a Christ-saying that Steve Hays, 2000 years after the fact, can still tell is merely figurative, would have caused such apostasy.  "Yeah, I know he did real miracles, but his figurative statement about eating his flesh was just too much".  LOL.
    "a rib-woman" Is there something antecedently false about the idea that God made the first woman from a tissue sample of the first man?
Fallacy of loaded question.  The concern here is what "god" did "in history", and therefore is subject to probability analysis, you don't just win merely because the allegation falls within the bounds of the logically possible.  And that's to say nothing of the growing list of Christian scholars who think the story of Adam and Eve is pure metaphor, despite the concerns of fundies that metaphorical interpretation of Adam and Eve would destroy the NT.  If Christianity's theology requires interpreting the story as historically literal, then I guess Christian theology is false.   Why would I worry about the interpretation of Adam and Eve as given by idiots who constantly took the OT out of context (Paul) as even admitted by other Christian scholars?
    "by a talking snake" The Hebrew designation is probably a pun that trades on the multiple senses and connotations of the word (snake, diviner, shining one).
And there you go again, setting up an opportunity to wrangle words and to thus disobey apostle Paul's prohibition in 2nd Timothy 2:14.
    "to eat from a magical tree" The text doesn't indicate that the tree of knowledge is a magical tree. That's like saying the ark of the covenant is a magical box, or that Moses' staff is a magical stick. Rather, what we have is a divinely assigned correlation.
I'm not seeing much of a difference.  You can make a bunny come out of the empty hat by "magic" or because God created the bunny ex nihilo after you showed everybody the hat was empty.  But since you seem hell-bent on disobeying 2nd Timothy 2:14, feel free to cherry pick your NT moral obligations.  We only expect such from those who disobey such bible passages.
These are ordinary objects. They have no special power. The result comes from God, not the object.
See above.
Is Carrier deliberately misrepresenting Christian theology, or is he actually that ignorant?
Is Steve just ignorant?  Or does he realize that "magic" in the biblical world view meant to make use of invisible people to accomplish what normal people could not?
    And lest we forget, that’s the Jesus who has nothing to say against slavery or the subjugation and disenfranchisement of women Argument from silence.
Not all arguments from silence are fallacious.  See Wigmore.  Yet you act as if "argument from silence" is all that need be uttered to reasonably view the criticized position as being fallaciously unsupported.
For that matter, Jesus said nothing against the disenfranchisement of men. It's not as if Roman rule was democratic. Most men had not vote.
Well then, Steve, what DO you think about Christians who believe God is working in them to create change in American politics, when in fact Jesus's silence about his disciples becoming involved in the world suggests he didn't want them wasting their time on "worldly" concerns?  Does there come a point when a person's misunderstanding of the Jesus in the gospels starts eroding the viability of their claim to be genuinely born-again?
    or the execution of homosexuals, other than, at best, It's striking to see contemporary atheists jump on the bandwagon of "gay rights." I don't recall atheists in the past spearheading the campaign for "gay rights." Were Antony Flew, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Paine, and Alexander White in the vanguard of the "gay rights" movement? Did I miss that? How did this suddenly become a self-evident moral maxim when so many prominent atheists of yore failed to discern it? Rather, atheists waited until it was safe to champion "gay rights." Waited until they felt the wind behind their backs.
I agree with you against Carrier on this.  I'm an atheist, yet I see nothing about my atheism that means the rational next step is to support gay rights.  I have arguments against male homosexuality that are not employed by fundamentalist Christians, which show the reasonableness of viewing legalization of the act as an absurd departure from America's values and likely contributing to further complexity and thus bobsledding this nation on the way to societal collapse.  In the ancient world and before, the male who had no sexual attraction to females was likely that way due to genetic malfunction; nature selecting him for extinction.
     that you shouldn’t invite sluts and homos to legally murder the sluts and homos because that would be hypocritical (John 7:52-8:11, a forgery). The fact that the Pericope Adulterae is a scribal interpolation is hardly news. Any standard edition of the Bible will footnote that familar fact.
     Oh no, you are supposed to wait for Jesus to murder them (Matthew 3:12). i) To begin with, that text does't single out "sluts and homos."
ii) How does Carrier infer "murder" from that text? It's about eschatological judgment.
You are a CALVINIST, and you don't think killing people is part of god's "eschatological judgment"?
It doesn't even say God kills them.
Doesn't have to, it was addressed to Jews, who would have attempted to reconcile it with Deut. 32:39.
Rather, that might well be postmortem punishment. Not to mention the figurative imagery.
And even if God did kill then, killing isn't synonymous with murder. 
If advanced space aliens came to earth and started zapping people dead, it would be rational to accuse them of "murder" despite the technical fact that they have their own set of laws that say it is legally allowable to kill earthlings.  So the fact that murder is different than "killing" merely because it techically means "unlawful killing" is a trifle of semantics that doesn't do you much more good than proving, once again, you have no intention of obeying 2nd Timothy 2:14.  Why not just end the suspense and admit that you finally discovered a command from Paul, applicable to you, that you refuse to obey?
    if the conditions he imagines existed, rape would be ethical—namely, if it was the loving and just thing to do (and we can imagine scenarios, though Flannagan wisely avoids attempting it: like, maybe, being forced to rape someone lest, the coercer informs you, the victim will be killed instead. Carrier fails to explain why, from the standpoint of secular ethics, it would be unethical to rape someone if the alternative is the victim's death.
Shouldn't have to.  Secular ethics are necessarily relative.  Smart  secularists don't fall into the trap of pretending there's some "objective morality" out there which they aspire to.  But I have to admit lots of people are truly ignorant about moral philosophy, and yes, they will pretend as if their moral beliefs are "absolute" without realizing what that implies, or caring.
If that's a forced option, isn't allowing the victim to be murdered worse than saving the victim's life, even if that entails rape? What is the secular basis for Carrier's disapproval? In fact, Carrier later says:
     To successfully argue that “loving and just” decisions are moral requires (i) appealing to the consequences of “loving and just” decisions and the consequences of “unloving or unjust” decisions, and then (ii) appealing to which of those consequences the moral agent prefers. But DCT can accomplish neither, except in exactly the same way ethical naturalism does. Therefore, DCT reduces to ethical naturalism in practical fact. It therefore cannot be an improvement on it. So he himself stipulates that taking the consequences into account are a necessary element in ethical decision-making.
I also observe the stupidity of the anti-consequentialist camp.  What fool would ever tell a kid, in the name of moral truth, that they can be good without considering the consequences of their actions?
According to his own hypothetical, the end-result of one choice is the death of the victim, while the end-result of the other choice is saving the victim's life–albeit by rape. If ethical decision-making comes down to weighing the respective consequences, then on what secular basis does Carrier conclude that rape would be wrong in that situation?
That's a good question for atheists who think morals can be "facts".  Count me out.  I observe that moral wrongness is utterly subjective.  While I would fight off an attempted murder of myself, that too is subjective, as I really wouldn't care if the whole world agreed I should die, I'd still subjectively try to save my life and thus act against those trying to kill me.  Frank Turek is correct:  if atheism is true, morals are relative.  But Frank Turek is also wrong:  if atheism is true, then asking "who is right, Hitler or Mother Theresa" is the fallacy of loaded question, falsely assuming that because a moral disagreement exists, surely somebody has to be in the "right", or both must be in the "wrong".  Nope.  You wouldn't ask that about two wild dogs fighting over a piece of meat, why ask it about human beings, who are just more intelligent dogs?
    DCT produces “infantile” moral reasoning, not only by reducing it to obeying what someone else says God wants, rather than applying one’s own critical reasoning to ascertain what is right, but also by eliminating any stable adult motivation to be moral. As atheists well know, from all the theists who terrifyingly admit they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell, this is profoundly immature moral reasoning. Where are all the theists who allegedly admit that "they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell"?
This is an inference drawn after asking the question "why did NT authors want people to fear hell?  Were they trying to scare them into resisting their baser instincts?"
I haven't encountered them. To begin with, there's no reason to suppose theists in general even want to rape or murder everyone.
If you think that what people say in public is an accurate reflection of what they privately believe, then sure.
The actual argument is this: if a person would like to commit rape or murder, would he refrain even though he could do so with impunity?
My experience of other people tells me that a substantial number of them would commit various types of crimes if they were as sure as possible that they wouldn't get caught.  But for obvious reasons, few such people would publicly admit this baser instinct, because that admission has enough power to destroy marriages and friendships or partnerships.  If you need people to be honest about their dark secrets so you can record reliable data, you'll need all the luck in the world.
It doesn't imply that he in fact desires to rape or murder anyone, much less everyone. Rather, it's a conditional or hypothetical scenario. If someone happens to feel that way about someone else, would he act on his impulse if he could get away with it? It doesn't mean he normally has that impulse. He may never have that impulse.
Correct. 
    Adults reason differently: they won’t murder and rape anyone because they care about them.  There's no empirical evidence that atheists care about everyone. Indeed, there's abundant empirical evidence that atheists don't care about everyone.
I think Carrier meant to say that adults would never reason that raping a person they care about might possibly signify the rapist's "care" for them, which would then be completely opposite to the divine atrocities of the bible, wherein the fact that you obeyed god and forced a woman into marriage (Deut. 21:10-14) is all you need allege to show that such shot-gun wedding was "loving" toward her.   That is, Carrier likely meant that smart people gauge whether something is morally good or bad based upon the extent to which it causes others misery.  But in bible land, beating children to death is morally good solely because God willed it, and the god who willed it can never be evil, end of story.
In Christian ethics, by contrast, you should treat people justly even if you don't care about them personally.
Except that in a Calvinist's mind, God might have predestined you to commit the sin of acting unjustly toward another person, which, because it was infallibly divinely decreed, turns the unjust act into a just act, since the god who ordered it is necessarily good in all that he does, meaning god's act in forcing people to sin is a morally good act. 
You treat them justly because that's the right thing to do, and not because you care about their wellbeing. You may treat them justly in spite of what you think of them.
     on DCT, you can’t decide God is “evil” and thus to be defied, not obeyed…no matter how evil God is If an atheist came to believe in the existence of an evil God, would he defy him? That would be pretty foolhardy.
Not any more foolhardy than Jews of WW2 who preferred death over respecting Hitler.  He may indeed have had the power over their lives, but they were not irrational to decide that wearing the badge of martyrdom was better than conforming to an evil dictator's will. I'm not seeing a whole lot of practical difference between fighting Hitler to the death and fighting the biblical god to the death. Especially given that the doctrine of eternal conscious torment in the bible has a high degree of falsity to it, so that fighting the bible god becomes about as fearful as punching snowflakes.
    He never responds to Sinnott-Armstrong’s actual point: which is that either moral facts are wholly unknowable on DCT (and therefore DCT entails we can know nothing about morality, and therefore by definition cannot ground any morality), or they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT. But if they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT, then they are already sufficiently moral by virtue of those properties. So we don’t need DCT. In what sense are "moral facts" "observable properties"? In ethics, we apply moral norms to concrete situations. Moral norms or ethical standards are not observable properties. Rather, they are ethical criteria by which we evaluate events or contemplated courses of action.
     Even if God exists, indeed even if a loving God exists, this is of no use to us in ascertaining what is and is not moral. Because He simply isn’t consistently or reliably telling anyone. Which begs the question.
No, Carrier's contention about God's inconsistent revelation is not the fallacy of begging the question, as there is plenty of good reason to suppose there is no god, or that the god is very inconsistent in how he communicates his will to human beings.  Carrier is speaking from what he observed in past research. Gee, Steve, if you make a statement in support of Calvinism, but you don't follow it with an 800 page book of arguments thereto, does that mean you have "begged the question"?   Do you seriously think its "wrong" to give your opinion without providing argument to back it up? 

Actually, you didn't support your contention that Carrier "begged the question"...so does that make you guilty of the same fallacy?  Must people ALWAYS follow their statement of belief with an argument before they can correctly avoid "begging the question"?  Obviously not.
    So all we have left is the ethical naturalist’s best alternative: an increasingly well-informed moral agent who cares about herself, and a body of advisors who care about her (crowdsourced knowledge, tested and accumulated from past to present). That’s the best you get. You don’t have access to an omniscient advisor. So you have to make do. And that means caring about whether you have enough information (about yourself and the world), and caring how to make the information you get more reliable, and caring whether you are reasoning from that information without logical fallacy or cognitive error. That’s the only way to get closer to the truth in matters of morality. Phoning God simply isn’t an option.  How does that rise to the level of moral realism?
That's a good question for an atheist who aspires to moral realism.  Count me out.
    Notice that this is Flannagan’s moral theory, minus the primitive hocum about sky spirits.
 In classical theism, God is not a "sky spirit." In classical theism, God subsists outside the physical universe.
And "outside the physical universe" is no less incoherent than "sky spirit".  If your god is so wonderful that human language fails to do proper justice, you might concede that words are not always good enough for you to convey to skeptics your other-worldly ideas.  Have you ever tried telepathy?
    DCT is therefore unlivable, even if it were correct. It puts moral truth inside an inaccessible black box, the mind of one particular God, whom we cannot identify or communicate with in any globally or historically reliable or consistent way. We therefore cannot know what is moral, even if DCT were true. Which assumes, without benefit of argument, that we don't have access to divine revelation.
Not necessarily.  The disagreements of Christians over morals would make it reasonable to assume that there is no more god concerned to resolve those disputes than there is a god who cares about resolving disputes between the ACLU and Trump.  Especially given that many Christians in such debates are not morons, but are skilled in apologetics and are serious about their faith.  That is, it doesn't even matter if you are a genuinely born-again Christian sincerely seeking god's will, not even THAT is enough to break into that black box and discover what moral god wants you to follow.

This is even worse for Calvinists like Steve Hays, who say God wants the world to believe He doesn't want them to commit adultery (revealed will, the Law), but that God secretly wills all adulterous acts before they take place, and wills them "infallibly".  You know, the parent who says "don't eat the cookies before dinner", but then sets up everything to increase the odds as much as possible that the child will disobey this and conform to the parent's "hidden" will...then when and if the child disobeys, the parent punishes the child for engaging in the disobedience that the parent secretly intended the whole time.  THIS is "god" according to Steve Hays.  And he seriously thinks atheists should view such a large bucket of morally duplicitous horseshit as some type of "threat".
    The supernaturalist is stuck in the exact same position as the ethical naturalist: attempting to ascertain from observable facts what the best way is to live. It's not the same position if the theist relies on moral intuitions which have their source in natural revelation whereas the atheist relies on moral sentiments that have their source in social conditioning and amoral evolutionary psychology.
I think you missed the point:  You cannot have a "Christian morality" unless you cite observable "facts" to support such morality.  DCT doesn't merely get up, shout "I'm correct", then walk away, as if the report came hot off the plates from Mt. Siani. DCT'rs do indeed cite to what they regard as "observable facts" to justify it.  Otherwise, Flannagan's articles on DCT would not require more than once sentence.
    But we cannot demonstrate that the “God” (or “ideal agent”) we have thus modeled in our mind or intuition is the “one true” God or not, except by appeal to natural facts that require no actual God to exist. Which disregards theistic proofs that appeal to "natural facts."
So? There IS such a thing as regarding your presuppositions as so settled that you can be reasonable to rely on them when debating people who disagree with them.  Such as you just did by pretending that the theistic proofs were some sort of formidable obstacle that Carrier was fearfully avoiding.  You "disregarded" showing that such theistic proofs were powerful.  Shame on you.
    Otherwise, we cannot know the God informing the intuition of Islamic suicide bombers is the incorrect God.
 If Muhammad appeals to the Bible to vouch his own prophetic credentials, when, in fact, his message contracts the Bible, then he's falsified his own claims.
Stick with the subject, Hays.  Carrier wasn't talking about Islamic suicide bombers who cite the bible to justify their crimes.  He was talking about how, if we have no reliable to way to discern the "true" god's morality, then whether god is or isn't inspiring the Isalmic suicide bombers is not the kind of question that can be resolved, therefore, the DCT'rs who think it can be resolved, are incorrect.  His larger point was that DCT lands us at a dead end, proving itself to be useless.  If god refuses to specify which religion is true, in a way that people can agree on, why would it matter than the moral goodness of an act is rooted in his nature?  Jesus stayed dead, so if there really is some "god" out there, you have no reason to think he would be more angry with atheists than with you.  Worse, if Christianity is false, the first god-option you'd likely exercise is the god of Judaism.  But if Christianity is false, that means its use of OT scripture was false, which means Jesus wasn't the real messiah, whcih means the god of the OT probably views Christians as promoting idolatry. Go ahead, Steve, how often in the OT does god display wrath against "atheism", and how often does he display wrath against idolatry?  or did you suddenly discover how late you are for church?

Of course you will pretend the bible is more reliable than the Koran and extremist Muslim theology, but I would argue that because your god committed so many 'divine atrocities' in the bible, you cannot realistically deny that Isalmic suicide bombers are reflecting the morality of your Christian god. 

Worse, as a Calvinist, Steve Hays also believes that God infallibly predestined any and all bombings caused by suicidal converts to Islam.  That is, when we look at the worst evil in the world, we are seeing things that God thinks are morally good.  After all, if God is morally good by nature, whatever he approves of must also be morally good, since by nature such morally good God would not approve of morally bad acts.  This gets Calvinist Hays in more trouble, though, because Hays will say God's expressed hatred of certain 'bad' things is merely god's "revealed" will, and you cannot really know whether such expressions are telling you the actual truth about God's hidden will.  I've been saying for 20 years that Calvinists are idiots if they wish to take part in DCT discussions.  The Calvinist God's distinction between good and evil is an absolute farce, and a misleading one at that.
    And the most important turning point here, is where theists simply can’t defeat Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma from 2400 years ago.
 i) Even a secular ethicist like Richard Joyce has argued that the Euthyphro dilemma is a failure:
http://personal.victoria.ac.nz/richard_joyce/acrobat/joyce_2002_euthyphro.dilemma.pdf
ii) Likewise, in a book which Flannagan recently coauthored with Paul Copan (Did God Really Command Genocide?), they devote two full chapters (chaps 13-14) to the Euthyphro dilemma.
So Carrier has his work cut out for him. He can't win the argument by taking intellectual shortcuts.
Sure, there's always the 'mysterious ways' third option, but even if the ED isn't a logically necessary deduction, the fact that it reasonably justifies atheism is enough.  Because we are people, we aren't going to maintain objective neutrality toward the truth of a highly improbable conclusion merely because it doesn't go all the way and become logically impossible.  We are going to live as if those things that are highly improbable are logically impossible, despite the fact that these are different things.  What is the practical difference between "i don't care about your idea because it is too improbable to deserve consideration", and "I don't care about your idea because it is logically impossible"?  In the real world, NONE.
    Because for DCT to be true, what Flannagan needs to say is, “we should obey whatever character God happens to have,” which would mean, we should all be the mass murderers that the God of the Old Testament actually wants us to be. Which begs the question of whether Yahweh is a mass murderer.
Probably because Carrier expected his readers would already know that truth.  Hays' word wrangling attempts to trifle that God's demand that children be massacred (the Flood, 1st Samuel 15:2-3, etc) is something other than mass murder (all because it cannot be "murder" if the lawgiver has authorized it) merely fails to intuit that Carrier was using "murder" in the colloquial sense of killing.  You'd be a fucking idiot to reply "which begs the question whether god's killings in the bible were unjustified" since even you yourself often make points without providing supporting argument.
    Or admit the Old Testament God is a demon the worthy of any horror film villain himself, and somehow convince everyone that we are lucky enough that that God just happens not to exist. (Oh wait. Atheists are already doing that.)
 How do you disprove the existence of a Being who, if there is such a God, exists outside the physical universe?
By pointing out that "outside the universe" constitutes an incoherent concept, and therefore, is sufficiently false as to intellectually justify those who choose to infer that it is positively false.
What would count as evidence for his nonexistence?
Well given that the place he exists doesn't even qualify as coherent thought, none.
    The commands of a loving and just person is a conceptual category that does not require that person to exist for their commands to be loving and just. If it is good to obey such commands, it is good regardless of whether they are fictional or real. To the contrary, good commands involve social obligations. We have no social obligations to fictional characters. Nonentities cannot oblige us.
If it is good to obey a man's advice "don't steal", that would generally remain a good idea even after the man dies. So he doesn't exist anymore, but that doesn't mean his advice suddenly becomes a bad idea.
    or not punishing rapists by legally ordering them to continue raping their victims (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). That's an inept misinterpretation of the passage. It is dealing with a hypothetical situation in which sex could either be coercive or consensual. There are no witnesses. A Jewish judge has no independent evidence to determine if the sex was coercive or consensual.
In that culture, loss of virginity made a single woman far less eligible for marriage. So the law represents a practical compromise: either a shotgun wedding or financial compensation in lieu of marriage.
Gee, Steve, where does that passage allow for the other option of "financial compensation in lieu of marriage."?

 25 "But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die.
 26 "But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.
 27 "When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.
 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.
 30 "A man shall not take his father's wife so that he will not uncover his father's skirt. (Deut. 22:25-30 NAU)

Looks to me like this is no "either/or", but a "both/and", i.e., the man must BOTH pay financially AND marry her.

You also overlook that because not much more is stated, the "marriage" would then authorize the sexual union, and the burden would be on you to show that further sexual activity was prohibited.  That is, the rape victim would be expected not to resist the rapist-husband's attempts at sex after marriage.  Some apologists scream to high heaven that this marriage would not authorize sex, but then that means God thought that depriving the rape victim of the joy of sex for the rest of her life was the best thing to do, which is obviously stupid under the popular Christian belief that the sexual joy evinced in Song of Songs was something to be aspired to by all married believers.  And God depriving the victim of this joy certainly opens the fundies' mind to the prospect that the bible god probably is a bit more sadistic and callous than Sunday's well-wishers give him credit for.
    As I commented for Loftus in The Christian Delusion (p. 101), “any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong.” That's willfully naive. Serial rapists know how raped women feel, which is precisely why they rape them. They hate women. The psychological damage is intentional. How women feel is a presupposition of the serial rapist. He aims to inflict maximal harm.
I agree, Carrier got this one wrong.  He has far more faith in humanity's basic goodness than I ever would.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

my latest challenge to Matthew Flannagan

Readers of this blog will note that Christian philosopher Matthew Flannagan, who makes such a big deal out of the "fallacy" of moral relativity, quietly and conveniently stopped responding to me after I started battering him with justifications for moral relativity.

I recently posted another challenge to him at another one of his blogs, see here.  In case that comment gets deleted, I'm preserving it below:
Barry Jones 11 minutes ago
Dr. Flannagan,
What do you believe is unreasonable about the person who uses your professed degree in contemporary analytic philosophy, and their reading of the book you co-authored with Paul Copan (i.e., "Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God", specifically the parts defending Wolterstorff's Appropriation Model and Speech Act Theory), that you live in sin (i.e., for many years into the past up to and including the present, you have been and always are intentionally seeking out opportunities to "wrangle words", the sin forbidden in 2nd Timothy 2:14)?
14 Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.(2 Tim. 2:14 NAU)
Is that verse so clear from its grammar and context that you can safely determine that the hair-splitting trifles of language you undeniably engage in, surely aren't what Paul was condemning in that verse?
If the atheist was forced to make a choice, which person should he view as more likely to engage in the sin of word-wrangling? The average Christian walking down the street? Or a Christian with a degree on contemporary analytic philosophy?
If you wish to insist that your ceaseless arguments with other people about the meaning of words and phrases ISN'T the type of "word-wrangling" that Paul was condemning in that verse, then please provide at least 3 different dialogue examples of the sort of arguing over the meaning of words, that you believe Paul meant the reader to understand in that verse. From the immediate context, it sure looks like Paul was condemning word-wrangling involving Christian doctrine.
What's Matt gonna do?  Wrangle with me over the proper meaning of "don't wrangle words"? LOL.

Does the bible require Christians to do apologetics?  Yes.  Does the bible allow them to do the type of apologetics that involves their wrangling of words?  No.  According to Titus 3:9-11, you don't have interactive dialogue with those who deny Paul's veracity.  You "warn" them twicej (warnings don't require dialogue), then you are to have nothing to do with them.
 9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning,
 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned. (Tit. 3:9-11 NAU)
Apparently, Paul placed more restrictions on his followers, than what he allowed for himself.  Probably because he felt that apostles had more privileges than non-apostles, or had greater spiritual power so that apostles could play such games with people without being as subject to the temptations of the devil as non-apostles.  So I don't care if Paul himself wrangled words, that doesn't automatically imply he wanted his followers to imitate everything he did.  Common sense says what the NT directly commands of Christians in general is far more imposing on their conduct, than their more indirect argument that they are allowed to do just whatever they find the apostles doing.  Paul also enraged entire cities to the point of his being arrested.  Gee, does that mean Paul necessarily wanted his followers to enrage entire cities and get themselves arrested?  If you did that, you wouldn't be able to form churches and obey the stuff in the pastorals on church government.  The last comment in Acts about how the Romans soldiers allowed Paul to promote, during house arrest, the very things that got him arrested, is absolute fiction.

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Reply to Logician_Bones on the problem of evil


One of James Patrick Holding's followers, some Christian using the name "Logician_Bones", tried to "explain" in a comment why evil is "necessary" and yet humans are still accountable to avoid what's logically necessary....and yet maintain a straight face all at the same time.  See here.  I reply in point by point fashion:
Logician_Bones18 hours ago (edited)
​@PristineKat It's the Problem of Evil argument which I've debunked, so here goes. The bad premise is implied 'underneath' "God made us who we are yes?" that he did so arbitrarily -- in reality, God had to work within logical necessity.
Well first, your attempt to explain evil is making use of an incoherent concept called "god".  This being cannot be empirically detected, but you pretend that inferring his existence indirectly makes his existence as obvious as cars or trees. Try again.
It's been shown (by analyses besides my own, but mine is definitive and fairly simple as a disproof) that allowing evil for a time was logically necessary.
Which means your god, who bitches at people for sinning, thus bitches at them for doing what was logically necessary, i.e., something they could not logically avoid doing....a divine attitude completely contradictory to the common sense notion that it is crazy to "expect" people to avoid that which is logically necessary.

If America's court judges and juries believed like your god, they'd have no moral basis for holding guilty criminals accountable.  If not even God can get around the logical necessity of evil, what fool would argue that less powerful human beings are "required" to do any different? 
Short answer is if we did not experience a fallen world like this for a time, we would not truly appreciate how bad evil, left to itself, is
We wouldn't need to know how bad evil itself is, if god kept us from doing it.   Our need to "appreciate" the evil of sin is simply a non-starter under the theory that God was capable of creating a sinless world.  And under your logic, your god is a deceptive asshole, because he sure does give the appearance in Genesis 3 that he never willed for Adam and Eve to disobey.  At least that's the appearance the illiterate farm hands living under Moses (the originally intended audience) would have gotten.  They did not have biblical inerrancy of systematic theology on the brain anymore than they had alegebra on the brain.  They would have understood Genesis 3 in the same simpleminded way that small children today get from "The Little Red Hen".
-- and we would always think it must not be that bad and would want to try it,
Then God could have created a sinless universe, and the risk we might find evil tempting, would never arise in the first place.  One conservative hermeneutic is to ask how the originally intended audience would have understood the story.  It's obviously stupid to assume Moses' mostly illiterate farm-hands would have had theological consistency, systematic theology or bible inerrancy on the brain as they sat listening to the story teller reciting from Genesis 3.  Those dolts would most certainly not have seen any ulterior divine motive, but would have believed God honestly wanted Adam and Eve to obey him, and that their doing so was just as unexpected to their god as a teen's involvement in murder was unexpected by their parents.

You cannot understand Genesis 3 correctly today because you read it through the rose colored bible-inerrancy glasses you've chosen to superglue to your nose with the help of a bulldozer.  But the understanding that makes Genesis 3 contradict the rest of the bible's fairy tales about its constantly evolving 'god' is more objective.
and, if God gave us freewill mentally at all, would always be angry at him for refusing to let us act as we wish.
Same answer:  if God created a sinless universe, there's be no "don't do this" command that would alert us to evil and possibly morph into our being mad at god in forbidding us to try knew things.

If yoru god was perfect before creation, he'd have been perfectly "content" without creatures to worship him...leaving him about as much rational motive to create anything,  as a person who just drank half a gallon of water has motive to take another swig.
So appeals to empathy with rape victims, murder victims, etc. are actually proving our point, and unwittingly evidencing that God had to allow this (temporarily).
Only in an evil world.  If God did what any good parent does, and prevented us stupid kids from succeeding with our stupid dangerous ideas (i.e., keeping bleach locked up), there would be no occasion for us to feel sorry for victims of evil in the first place, as such victims would never exist.
The skeptics fail to consider that their empathy (when not fake, and often it's somewhat faked just to give an excuse to be obnoxious with this argument, though many well-meaning people do honestly wonder about the argument) is not automatic. They're taking it for granted and forgetting that they got it in the first place precisely because God set things up this way.
No, empathy is part of the nature of a mammal, even if to varying degrees.  Frank Turek does a rather shitty job of trying to prove "god" is the "best explanation" for human morality.  On the contrary, an empirically undetectable something or other than people have been disagreeing on for 2,000 years, is a horrifically complex solution clearly sliced away by Occam's Razor long before any empirically based naturalistic theory would be.

If we rightly condemn a parent who constantly bitches about their kids being bad, but never does anything to physically prevent them from doing evil (i.e., negligent parenting), then we rightly condemn god, who, like the neglectful parent, constantly bitches about his kids being bad, when he is apparently even more capable of interfering with their evil plans than human parents are (coercive telepathy, Ezra 1:1).
And they are undermining it by refusing to side with the single perfect, infinite being, who actually WILL remove evil forever in heaven.
Sorry, your classical theism might be biblical, but open-theism is also biblical.  See God's regretting his own prior choice to create man in Genesis 6:6-7, then ask yourself why the literal interpretation has support from the immediate and larger context, and the "anthropomorphism" interpretation has zero contextual justification.

And you are dreaming if you think evil will be forever removed in heaven.  God approves of and commissions liars while he is in heaven (1st Kings 22:19-23), so if he is unchanging, then his approval of liars is never going to change....meaning his approval of sinners will continue existing even up in heaven.
They're actually siding WITH the very evils they pretend to oppose!
Gee, if it weren't for you, we'd never have seen this truth.
And trying to use this argument to justify arguably the greatest evil ever -- luring others into hell.
That's your god's fault, as apparently his trivializing the seriousness of sin is as easy as a wave of his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), or, if he's in the mood, getting rid of a person's sin is as easy as burning their face a little bit  (Isaiah 6:6-7).  Your classical theist notion that god "must" judge sin either through Christ's cross, or by eternal shame in hell, is bullshit even by the standards of your own bible.
Notwithstanding that we do not believe hell is literal torture, it's still endless, and we think shame matters a lot.
I'm worried.  Whenever I hear Romans 1:20, I start crying in fear and horror.  I thought you said your lesbian friends would be doing that strip tease at my house?  Beer-pong!
And actually, think about how callous the skeptics must be who actually DO think the Bible teaches literal torture!
Then you must think Hank Hanegraaff, part time employer of your James Patrick Holding savior, is callous, since all through the 1990s he was saying on the Bible Answerman show that eternal conscious torment is actually an expression of god's infinite love.  But because James Patrick Holding has no more spiritual spine than a dead-alligator, I don't suppose he'll be calling Hank a "moron" anytime soon.  We tend to think more highly of just anybody who makes our life easier to live, and play down any disagreements we have with such people.  Especially if we bask in their  reflected glory.

You spiritually alive fundamentalists disagree with each other all day every day on "basic" bible doctrine, yet you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to "recognize" biblical truth?  FUCK YOU.
Think about how risky it is for them to behave like little brats on this subject in light of the danger, from their perspective, that the Bible might be true.
About as risky as getting struck by lighting while shopping for groceries.  Let's just say I you are dreaming if you think you've said anything remotely disconcerting to an atheist bible critic. You don't have the balls to debate real skeptics, that's why you gave up your ill-advised challenge to me from some months ago.  Even stupid bullies retain their survival instincts after discovering they picked on the wrong victim.
Especially the ones who will insist 'atheism doesn't absolutely deny it, it just means we haven't see the evidence yet.'
Then count me out.  Both positions are viable, but I adopt "strong" atheism.  I'm about as confident in the non-existence of Christian hell as you are confident in the non-existence of Muslim hell.  Now what you are gonna do, fundie?  Quote the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus?  LOL.
Perhaps if they had logical disproof of God, but even informed skeptics admit that is not possible.
You cannot logically disprove lots of crazy ideas, including those found in other religions.  That hardly makes you worry they might be right.  Quit demanding from others more than you demand of yourself, and you'll successfully duck the "hypocrite" label that's currently welded to your forehead.
(And I know that's definitely impossible since I've proven God.
Your god is logically contradictory, he is "unchanging" (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8) and yet he loves sinners (John 3:16) but also hates them (Psalm 5:5).  Since the thesaurus lists "hate" as an antonym for "love", we are reasonable to see a contradiction.  You cannot argue there's no contradiction, with the trifle that "hate isn't the opposite of love, only apathy is".  You also cannot logically disprove that the Christian god is really just an advanced space alien who visits the earth every few thousand years and lies to us because he gets a thrill out of watching us fight over what he meant.  But since you don't spend too much time worrying about this logical possibility, you have more in common with atheist bible skeptics than you admit.
By the way, my main route of sound support, the causality proof, also proves he HAS to be 100% good in order to be infinite, and MUST exist, ergo MUST be 100% good. So no "immoral God" argument will ever work.
Lots of dogshit to shovel away here:

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

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

Yes, Matthew Flannagan tries to escape that biblical noise by pretending that the "context" indicates that these words are mere rhetorical hyperbole merely because not every description in that chapter is literally true.  But what Mr. Know it All fails to get is a) the rhetorical hyperbole excuse can also "explain" those passages that say god is infinitely good, and b) the presence of hyperbole doesn't imply that literal intent is entirely lacking.  If I told you I "kicked his ass", that would be rhetorical hyperbole, but it would not be merely hot air, it would only mean I described a literal reality with hyperbolic language.  If Flannagan had first thought for two seconds how the originally intended and mostly illiterate farm hands, who were the originally intended audience, would have taken Moses words when they heard Deut. 28:15-63, he might have noticed the probability that these words were meant to be taken as serious threats.  Finally, most of the threatened horrors were, in the days of Moses, realities not only in Israel's past but for most others living in the ANE.  Flannagan is a fool to think the literal interpretation is "obviously wrong".  And plenty of Christian scholars, like Bill Craig, disagree with Flannagan's "mere exaggeration" excuse to take the sting out of the divine commands to slaughter the Canaanites.  Consider shutting the fuck up before you bounce back with "anybody who disagrees with Copan and Flannagan are just morons."  Otherwise, if even the spiritually alive Bill Craig cannot detect the actual truth about the divine atrocities in the bible, how the fuck could you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to recognize it?
I show that when something is logically necessary, it cannot be the fault of the omniscient God who knew it was and allowed it.
Then you apparently haven't read those parts of the bible where God CAUSES and doesn't just "allow" evil.  Deuteronomy 28:15-63, supra.  See also 2nd Samuel 12:12.
It would be the "fault" of logical necessity itself, except that it is incoherent to speak of necessity being a "fault."
But if the evil was "logically necessary", then the humans who committed it were no more capable of avoiding it, than they are capable of creating a 4-sided triangle.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, if judges and juries believed the way you do about the logically necessary nature of evil, they would not see much difference between absolving god and absolving humans.  It isn't like humans have more ability than god to avoid logical necessities.
 The only "fault" would lie in the sinners themselves/ourselves.
how could you "fault" a sinner for doing something they couldn't avoid doing?  Oh, I forgot.  Your blind acceptance of the bible.  Like apostle Paul, you are worried less about logical consistency and more about blindly supporting biblical conclusions, regardless of the consequences.  Never mind.
So the Bible's portrayal of the relationship of God to sin is logically correct, it turns out.
Then because God can get rid of even the worst sins by simply waving his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), the parts or the bible that show him constantly bitching about his kids sinning, can be safely dismissed as nothing more than rhetorical hyperbole.  Copan and Flannagan are currently sorry about opening doors they wish to god they'd never opened with their ridiculous sins of word-wrangling.

By the way, I noticed that you don't couch your logical conclusions in syllogistic form.  I'm wondering if the reason you refuse to do that is because it will make it easier for the reader to pinpoint where exactly your reasoning fails.  If your logic is so impeccable, cast it in the form of syllogistic deductions....where the proof you are wrong is narrowed to two options:  either one of your premises is wrong, or the conclusion you drew from them doesn't logically follow.
(Unsurprisingly to me since before investigating that I had already found that the Bible had unfakeable prophecies,
"unfakable" is a strong claim, you'd have to show fulfillment of the following criteria.

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

Those criteria are fair because they reasonably guard against false interpretation.  Take your best shot.  I'm waiting.  What, Daniel 9 predicted Jesus? LOL.
that the Christ resurrection was historically verified,
Nope.  The identity and general credibility of each NT "witness", and their specific resurrection testimony, is severally impeached on the merits, using the same methods of historiography and hermeneutics that most conservative Christian scholars employ, to say nothing of how such ancient "witnesses" miserably fail the modern American court legal tests that John Warwick Montgomery unwisely aspires to.  Pick whatever witness or group of witnesses whose resurrection-testimony you think is most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.   Or come up with a face-saving excuse to decline the challenge, and just don't tell anybody that one of the other benefits you get by declining is avoiding getting shot out of the sky.
and that much in science clearly confirmed it in ways no primitive myth-maker could have guessed.)
Dream on.  Pick your best example and let's get started.
It is then usually asked, why, if it was logically necessary that we sin, we are still punished. But that question contains the necessary premise that if there are good reasons why something is not suitable to a task, then you should still use it for the task. If we test this premise we see it fails. My usual analogy is to the task of needing to dig a hole to plant a small tree, and the possible tools you have to select from are a shovel and an oven. In the analogy to keep it simple, assume the human who needs to perform the task is also the maker of the shovel and the oven. This person had good reasons to design the oven the way he did, but it doesn't mean the oven is good to use to dig a hole with when a shovel is available! (Or ever!)
But if god is infinitely holy and sovereign, he would not "need" to "dig a hole" for the tree, he could simply cause the tree to magically appear out of thin air, similar to how he magically willed the earth into existence from nothing.  Or did you never read Genesis 1:1?

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

NOW what you need to argue is that the Calvinist theories of human accountability for sin are so wrong, spiritually dead atheists should be able to see why, and are thus still "accountable" to "know the truth" even more than the spiritually alive Calvinists who are apparently blind to biblical reality.  DREAM ON.
The objection then is to act all miffed that people are being compared with objects. But the Bible does this frequently, in Jesus' parables such as the one about the weeds, and in Romans 9 about "ignoble vessels" made from clay for practical use versus "noble vessels."
Then the biblical authors were just as stupid as you.  Paul actually pushed the analogy to the breaking point.  If he likes the fact that the pot never does talk back to the creator (Romans 9:20), he should also like the fact that the pots never talk, act, or have thoughts.  So under his logic, because it is foolish to think the pot would object to the creator, it's equally as foolish to expect the pot to make decisions...meaning under Paul's logic, it would be better if humans, like the pots they are, never made decisions.

Paul's predictable reply, i.e.,  that this is pushing his logic too far, would only prove what's already clear about Paul, that he made arbitrary argument, did not wish to go where his own logic led, and automatically consigned any disagreement with him to the "heretic" bin (1st Tim. 6:4)...making him nothing short of a delusional cult leader.
(The latter teaches my view explicitly.) And there is no sound reason to object this way -- only an arrogance-based one.
It's not arrogance to challenge corrupt authority that rests on fairy tales drawn from a continuously evolving theology rooted in primitive culture.
We are the creations; we should be humble enough to admit to it, even hypothetically for an honestly truth-seeking nonbeliever.
That's irrational to expect of atheists, who recognize they are not created by any god.
So what it boils down to after this is (the point tekton usually makes) that it isn't God who's leaving orphans unadopted, it's people.
Sorry, but since your god empowers pagans to kidnap children (Deut. 28:32) and then says he gets a thrill out of inflicting these ad other horrors on people (v. 63), I'm sticking with specific declarations from the bible in my attacks.

And Tekton would also be disagreeing with Calvinist Steve Hays' view that we leave orphans unadopted because God secretly wanted us to (i.e., every time somebody turns away from an orphan, it was god's will).  Now what?  Maybe unbelievers have some sort of moral obligation from God to go study the Calvinist controversy, while knowing that even if we study it for 30 years, Tekton will still call us stupid if we dare conclude Calvinism is biblical?  FUCK YOU.
  Ironically it's often (though not always) the skeptic himself. (Not that I've adopted anyone, but I didn't go around being obnoxious about it.)
 I've also read Miller's analysis of this, which might interest you too; he doesn't cover the disproof that I do, but he goes into very much detail about the logical impossibility of certain goods without certain evils and so forth that might interest you (I think it wasn't direct to the problem of evil but came up as a foundational discussion in his reasons for the atonement piece).
What a waste of time.  Of course good cannot be known without having background knowledge of evil, and evil cannot be known without having a background knowledge of good.  That's a major rebuttal to the standard Christian view of Genesis 3:  How can god 'expect' Adam and Eve, who were so innocent they didn't even know they were naked, to appreciate the seriousness of his prohibitions, anymore than a parent can 'expect' a toddler, who has never been burned before, to appreciate the seriousness of the prohibition "don't touch the stove"? We are reasonable to say the story is bullshit, and there's not enough evidence in favor of your trifles to render our reasonable dismissal unreasonable.  It's not like disagreement with Genesis 3 is equal to disagreement that cars exist. But because dogmatism necessarily invades the bible study of clueless fundamentalists, I'm sure you'll pretend the one error is equally as great as the other.
And no, the Bible can't be "rewritten" in any functionally distinct way, unless we assume atheism as a premise, which would be circular reasoning, because its moral teachings (this is including the sound deductions from everything it teaches) are the result of God's omniscience.
Have fun trying to convince anybody outside of blind fundyville that there was a time when it was "good" to burn pre-teen prostitutes to death (Leviticus 21:9). Have even more fun pretending it's "obvious" that "we shouldn't do this anymore".  Whenever the ancient Jews were able, they tried to re-institute the Mosaic theocracy (Ezra/Nehemiah).  Only naturalistic evolution would explain why the later post-exillic Jews started pretending that "god" was going to start a "new" covenant (Jeremiah 31).
That doesn't change, and cannot change. Situational responses based on heirarchical moral absolutes may change, but subjective situational ethics are NOT an option for God.
Of course they are.  If God knew what the fuck he was doing, he'd no more have to start a new covenant, than a construction contractor, who got it right the first time,  needs to tear down the house he just built and start over.  Unless the contractor knew, before starting, that he'd have to demolish the completed building and start over.  He's free to spend $100k in materials and labor just to create what he knows will need to be destroyed upon completion, but he's also crazier than a shit-house rat.

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

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

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

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










Wednesday, September 27, 2017

William Lane Craig's dishonesty

Christian Apologist William Lane Craig in 2015 posted to youtube an excerpt from one of his lectures wherein he defends as morally good the ancient Israelites carrying out their belief that God wanted them to slaughter the children of the pagans who were originally living in that land.

As might be expected, comments are disabled for this video, so the reader will have to ask whether the uploader left this alone as the default position solely by accident, or intended to preempt comments.  One this is for sure, whoever posted this surely knew that the biblical commands of God that the Hebrews should slaughter children have horrified many Christians and not just the average unbeliever.

The video at time code 11:55 ff has an audience member ask a 2-part question, 1) if the bible is correct that God is not a respecter of persons, then why did God treat ancient Israelite children better than God treated the Canaanite children, and 2) at time code 12:07 ff, what is Dr. Craig's response to other Christian scholars who have interpreted the genocide texts as non-literal.

Unfortunately, this audience member could not finish the second part of the question after he said "genocide" because at 12:08 ff, Dr. Craig, in screeching voice indicating worry, interrupts him and from there until the end of the video, gives his reasons for saying God did not intend his "slaughter the Canaanite" commands to be taken by the Israelites as permission to subject the Canaanites to "genocide".

Dr. Craig's interruption of this audience member was dishonest, since the video ends after Craig ends his speech about how calling it genocide is incorrect, thus indicating either a) he intentionally avoided explaining why his explanation is rejected by other Christian scholars, or b) he answered that part too, but chose to avoid including it in the portion he chose to upload, which still smacks of dishonesty, since the fact that other Christian scholars of the evangelical persuasion reject Craig's "apologetics" on this issue, indicates that those atheists who likewise reject his apologetics, are not doing so merely because they are spiritually blind and rebellious, but the option remains on the table that they have solid objective reasons to reject Craig's thesis.

Craig's reply was also dishonest because whether ancient Hebrews slaughtering children technically justifies being characterized as "genocide" or something different, is useless semantics.  The biblical texts showing God commanded his people to slaughter children are not a problem merely due to the average person thinking these actions fulfill the definition of "genocide".  We have a problem with them for the same reason we'd have a problem with anybody asserting that God told them to slaughter children.  The problem would exist whether you characterize such divine commands as genocide or Gong Show.

It is clear the audience member had a legitimate question as to how Craig answers other Christian scholars who disagree with Craig, who say these kinds of divine commands were never intended to be fulfilled in an absolute literal sense of exterminating all pagan men woman and children.  Two such scholars the audience member likely had in mind are Paul Copan and Matthew Flanagan, who jointly authored a book in which they make explicit how wrong they think Dr. Craig is to take these slaughter-passages literally.

The fact that Craig has publicly acknowledged elsewhere why he thinks Christian scholars like Copan and Flanagan get this wrong, does not erase the fact that whoever posted the video conveniently ended it with Craig avoiding answering this rather important concern with the fallacious red-herring of "it's not genocide!".

Now beyond the issue of Dr. Craig's dishonest attempt to avoid having to publicly acknowledge that other people equally spiritually alive as himself, do not find his apologetic argument at this point very convincing...

a - The problem of biblical genocide cannot be solved by appeal to a technical definition of "genocide".  It is the average person on the street, whether unbeliever, atheist bible critic, or Christian, not merely the liberal college professor, who finds immoral the general idea that God would ever tell his followers to kill children. So a technical discussion of what genocide is and is not, is nothing but dishonest distraction.

b - at 5:10 ff, Craig absurdly argues that by bringing about the deaths of these Canaanite children, God ensured their eternal salvation.  However this does nothing but rip the door of Pandora's Box off the hinges:

If God likes the idea of giving people a shortcut to heaven (i.e., killing them before they reach the age of accountability) then we have to wonder why God thinks allowing most of mankind to grow past this age and thus endure the horrible risk of eternal hell fire, is supposed to be better than the guarantee of heaven that results from all infanticide.  Some would argue that if we can do anything at all that will motivate God to grant salvation to a person, we should dedicate our lives to doing exactly this, and our motive is the fear of hell that God himself placed in our hearts.  Salvation can never possibly cost too much.

If Craig's theology is correct, every "baby" that is aborted goes directly to heaven, a good result.  This creates another problem because the vast majority of people naturally adopt consequentialism (i.e., whether an act is morally good or bad depends on what kind of effect it produces).  If abortion sends the baby directly to eternal salvation, that is an effect of abortion too, and it is improper for Christians to ignore the higher spiritual reality involved here and simplemindedly focus solely on the fact that abortion is a violation of God's prohibition on murder.

Worse, God himself takes personal responsibility for all murder in general anyway, and for forced abortion-by-sword and infanticide in particular:
 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU) 
 15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)
So Craig's theology confronts us with the classical conundrum of why God wants us to believe murder and abortion are immoral, when in fact on biblical grounds that logically necessitates the conclusion that what God does is immoral.  How can our murders and abortions be immoral for us, if the biblical truth is that God is causing us to commit these acts?  Isn't that rather like the puppeteer condemning the puppet for doing what the puppeteer wanted?

Craig admits he adopts divine-command theory (i.e., if God commanded it, it is good by definition, end of discussion) and if that is true, then the acts of the pagans in subjecting the Israelites to infanticide and forced abortion-by sword (Hosea 13, supra) is morally good, end of discussion.

Here is my reply to Dr. Craig's article on the subject of atheists, Christian scholars and  the issue of the divine command to slaughter pagan children.

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