Cold Case Christianity: Wouldn’t A Loving God Reform Rather Than Punish?

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

 Wouldn’t A Loving God Reform Rather Than Punish? (Podcast)  

Posted: 27 Jul 2017 01:47 AM PDT

In this blast from the past, J. Warner responds to a common objection to the nature of God: If God is all-loving, why doesn’t he “reform” people rather than simply “punish” them in Hell? How would you answer a skeptic who argues a God who simply punishes his children in Hell is sadistic and vengeful, unworthy of our worship? J. Warner responds to this objection and answers listener email related to the nature of “election”, and the evidence for “annihilationism.”

Wallace begins the podcast with intro music and intro speech that indicate he wants to the the center of attention.  And I've been accusing him of being the Arnie's Used Car Salesman of Christianity for years.

The intro also says one purpose of the podcast is to "engage" skeptics with the Christian world view, so my Christian readers should note the day i posted this rebuttal, and start counting the days, weeks, months and years that Wallace will let my rebuttal go by before he decides to live up to his promise to "engage" this skeptic.

At 4:30, Wallace invites the listener to come to his "blog", and says he would "love" to have the listener come over and join that conversation, but when one presses the "comment" button to comment on one his articles, one is taken to his Facebook page...and despite my never having violated any of Wallace's Facebook rules or Facebook's own rules, Wallace banned me several months ago from his Facebook page.

So I continue standing by my accusation that Wallace is a liar:  he says he wants to "engage" skeptics, and yet despite my never having violated any rules of conduct from Wallace or such rules required by Facebook itself, he still banned me, rather quietly, from his Facebook "blog", several months ago.  Wallace is thus a liar; when he says he would love to have the listener join his blog conversations, the unstated caveat is that you not know enough to substantially refute his beliefs.  Nothing spells "fake Christian employing typical materialistic political marketing strategy" quite like "let's ban our more informed critics, that will prevent potential customers from being dissauded from buying our product.".

And indeed, when one goes to Wallace's websites, one would think he is some ridiculous liberal who thinks God wasn't able to get His act together until Wallace began teaching Christians how to have a forensic faith.  It is not an exaggeration to say Wallace promotes his materials so relentlessly, he is making his apologetics fantasy more the center of attention than Jesus precisely because of his marketing pitch that you cannot really live up to what Jesus wants you to do without having the forensic faith that comes from purchasing Wallace's materials.

If Wallace is correct that the bible is the inerrant word of God, "sufficient" for faith and practice, then why does he so relentlessly promote, market and advertise his own opinions about what the bible means?  Why market so obstinately that today's Christians "need" his books?  If the Holy Spirit doesn't need his help, why does Wallace make it seem that he and the Holy Spirit entered a mutually beneficial marketing contract?

If we are correct to ask 1990's televangelists whether they think God cannot be activated until the evangelist recieves donations, aren't we correct to ask the same type of question of other Christians who use similar marketing gimmicks?  Sure, Wallace doesn't tell others to send in their last grocery money, but that hardly means he must be employing any more honest of a marketing ploy.  He still drowns himself in relentless ceaseless promotion of himself, and his books, and this degree of "look at me!!!" is not consistent with Wallace's alleged trust that the Holy Spirit doesn't need his help and that the bible is ALONE "sufficient' for faith and practice. 
 
Basically, the first 10 minutes of this podcast justifies more the interpretation that Wallace's first priority is Wallace, than the interpretation that Wallace's first priority is Jesus.

Wallace is never going to make God look good, no matter what excuses he puts forth to "explain" how a literal hell can be consistent with divine "love", because of one bible passage that I've been using to beat fundamentalists senseless for years, and they haven't moved even one single inch toward making this sadistic lunatic look "good", probably because common sense prevails over their theological delusions:

NAU  Deuteronomy 28:
 1 "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
 2 "All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God:
 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:
 16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
  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.
 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.

Notice, the bible teaches not only that God's curses will cause men to rape women (v. 30) children to be kidnapped by sick-minded pagans (v. 41), parents to cannibalize their own children (v. 53), but that God would be just as "delighted" to cause these curses to happen, as he is "delighted" to give prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).

One fundamentalist breathed an ill-advised sigh of relieft by pointing out that nothing in the context indicates that God said this, it was only Moses doing the speaking.

I asked him which other statements Moses made about God, that this fundamentalist thinks are wrong.  He disappeared.

I can at least buy the notion that God hurts his kids in an effort to punish them or teach them, even if we today are enlightened and know that kids don't need to be abused to be disciplined.

What I cannot buy is that a god can be "good" while "delighting" to cause women who disobey the 10 commandments, to be raped.  Worse, v. 63 intentionally defines God's delight in inflicting such curses, as being the same type of "delight" he has to prosper those who obey him.  So if you think God is gleeful, happy and cheerful to grant you prosperity, you cannot subtract those emotions from him when you speak about him causing rape, kidnapping and parental cannibalism.

When you think of an ancient Hebrew woman being raped, you didn't envision God standing next to her and "delighting" to watch it, until just now, did you!

God's "delight" to cause rape rationally warrants the atheist to say "fuck you" to your bible religion and do more productive things like smashing beer cans on his forehead.

Who would you rather have babysit your kids?  Some spiritually dead dork who smashes beer cans on his head?

Or some bible-believing inerrantist who seriously thinks there are times when it can be good and moral to be happy cheerful and "delighted" to cause women to be raped, children to be kidnapped and parents to eat their kids?

Tough question, eh?  You need to weigh your pride against the obvious stupidity of allowing sadistic lunatics to babysit your kids, you cannot just suddenly give up your faith of 30 years, can you?

Go ahead, check all the Christian commentaries you please.  Let me know when you find exegetical and contextual argument that God's "delight" in v. 63 in inflicting such curses is something other than the happy gleeful cheerful "delight" this verse says he takes in prospering other people.

And if you are really stupid and insist that this is just Moses speaking with typical semitic exaggeration, let me know the critiera you use to figure out which extremist statements in the bible are mere exaggeration and rhetoric.

The Psalms magnify God and extoll his goodness like no other book in the world.  Are this book's extremist statements about God's eternal goodness also a case of mere Semitic exaggeration?  If not, why not?  Where is your sociological evidence that the only time ANE peoples exaggerated about their god, was when they were describing his wrath?

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

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

Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

Posted: 14 Jun 2017 06:00 AM PDT

 Whenever I start writing about morality or the existence of evil, I almost always get an email (or two) from people who point to the historic actions of alleged “Christians”. For many skeptics, Christianity is the source of much evil in the past (i.e. the Crusades and the Inquisition). For this reason, some skeptics point to “Christian” evil as evidence against the existence of a good Christian God.

That's about as fallacious as saying the evil of the Nazis argues Hitler didn't exist.

While history may include examples of “Christian” groups committing evil upon those with whom they disagreed, a fair examination will also reveal Christians were not alone in this sort of behavior.

That's right, using religion to violently promote causes is a brain fart that infects all religions, Christianity included.

Groups holding virtually every worldview, from theists to atheists, have been mutually guilty of evil behavior. Atheists point to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition when making a case against Christians, theists point to the atheistic regimes of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung when making a case against atheists. Death statistics are often debated in an effort to argue which groups were more violent, but all this seems to miss the point. The common denominator in these violent human groups was not worldview; it was the presence of humans.

It is also illogical.  How many people Christians killed not only cannot be used to falsify Christianity, but according to the bible, it remains a valid possibility that God inspired the Inquisition and the Crusades.  Those who think their NT god of love would never do such at thing, apparently never read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

History has demonstrated a human predisposition toward violence.

And Jesus is no exception:

 12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. (Matt. 21:12 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  Regardless of worldview, humans will try to find a way to justify their evil actions.

And the biblical authors were no exception, who think "shut up" is the best answer to the problem of God causing evil:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? (Rom. 9:18-20 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  The question is not which group is more violent but which worldview most authorizes and accommodates this violence.

Then the Christian theistic view wins, since it's pretty hard to find a stronger authorization for evil, than God's admitted "delight" in watching those who disobey him, raping each other and eating their own kids:

  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.
 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 th (Deut. 28:30-63 NAU)

 If that's mere "Semitic exaggeration", and you don't have solid criteria for deciding what impreccatory language in the bible is literal and which is exaggeration, you open Pandora's Box:  why isn't it mere "Semitic exaggeration" also when biblical authors talk about hell or hell fire or eternal conscious suffering in the afterworld? 

Christians who commit horrific evil toward other humans actually have to act in opposition to the teaching of their Master, Jesus Christ. The Gospels repeatedly demonstrate that Jesus came to “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79), and Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have had to do so in rebellion; they ignored or were ignorant of the teachings of Jesus.

You completely ignore the well-known divine atrocities of the OT, such as God's command that babies should be slaughtered and pregnant women should be forced to endure abortion by sword or "ripped up"

NAU  1 Samuel 15:1 Then Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen to the words of the LORD.
 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:1-3 NAU)

 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. 13:16 NAU)

 Copan and Flannagan, of course, say this is typical exaggeration language because the pagan nations in those days also exaggerated their divine threats and war victories.  Although I've written a strong unpublished rebuttal to this nonsense, the strongest rebuttal is the fact that we also believe a person can be guilty for allowing that which they know to be evil.  If you see a man raping your daughter, and it can be proven in court that all you did was stand there and watch, with no evidence the rapist was a danger to you or had threatened you, you become responsible for ALLOWING despite the fact that you didn't CAUSE.

As Copan and Flannagan well know, God "allows" the worst imaginable evils to take place daily in this world.  No, the "God gave us freewill" excuse doesn't work, because that doesn't get god off the hook any more than it would the owner of a dog, known to be violent, who chooses to unleash the dog and let it run loose anyway.  The owner didn't CAUSE, but the owner did ALLOW, and we still say failure to restrain dogs who bite others, makes the owner liable.  The point is that if God knew we'd do all this evil after he gave us freewill, God is not in a different moral position than the pit-bull owner who gives his dog freedom despite knowing the damage the dog will do.

So if our ALLOWING evil is not morally distinguishable from our CAUSING it, then there is no rational reason to think the matter is different with God, in which case, the undeniable fact that God ALLOWS evil, as Copan and Flannagan must admit, operates to make God just as culpable as if he had CAUSED said evil.

Indeed, what fool would say there's a moral difference between a Hitler who allows his nazis to gas Jews to death, and the Hitler who actually orders such death?  Not much!

But in an atheistic worldview (where humans are not specially designed in the image of God), there is little or no reason why any of us should feel compelled to treat other people with the respect that Jesus taught his followers to have for their enemies.

That is stupid, we are social animals, we recognize there's safety in numbers, so it only makes perfectly good sense under completely naturalistic reasoning to band together, elect leaders, vote laws over us to keep the peace, etc, so as to further promote flourishing.  Since we are civilized, that's the way we get things done, even if in nature there are less civilized life forms that get things done more barbarically.  We can obtain all the moral justification we need for our moral outlook by simply saying we were born and raised to think and act like this.  If a terrorist from another country comes to us and does criminal acts under our laws, we prosecute him because we think we are "better", but because we recognize that we need to do this in order to continue achieving our naturalistic goal of keeping the peace.  Although some atheists believe in objective morality, I don't.  The Christians are correct:  if atheism is true, then there's not going to be any objective way to prove that life in 1950's America was "better" than life under Stalin.

If the world is simply filled with species and groups competing for the same resources, and if history belongs to those species and groups who are best suited for survival and reproduction, why should we be concerned with those groups who are not “fit” enough to survive?

It is sufficient to argue that being social animals logically compels us not to just toss the sick to the side of the road and move on.  That is, we show compassion for the purely naturalistic reason that we all desire to live and flourish.  We don't need to prove that view better than the view of a psycho who wants to nuke everybody, before we can have rational justification to see things that way.

History is filled with examples of one population group replacing another in the natural struggle for resources. If atheism is true, and survival and reproduction are the only true concerns, then the struggle for resources authorizes and justifies human violence.

But we are social animals, so it's only natural that we don't automatically wish to war with each other just to weed out the weak.   

Unlike Christians, atheists can commit genocide without ignoring their worldview; atheists have the freedom to eliminate competing groups as a faithful expression of their worldview.

Indeed, America's compassion for the poor has shown the ugly consequence...the poor and degenerates and mentally ill have increased in number.  Evolution is not perfect, and we apparently evolved to have a bit more compassion than is consistent for the long-term good.  Providing for safe needle-exchange, and free STD testing, does little more than help the freeloaders flourish.  We've already decided to limit welfare more than we ever did in its' history, so apparently we are starting to discover that we need to make and enforce decisions that prioritize long-term good of the nation, over the short-term relief of suffering for individuals.  I hope we turn further and further toward meritocracy.  

God has given us the freedom to follow our own nature or to follow the teaching of Jesus.

And there you go again, talking in complete defiance of your Calvinist Christian brothers.  We can rationally dismiss your argument here until you first show the world that you and Calvinists have resolved your differences of opinion over the bible's teaching about human freewill.

Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have simply submitted to their natural inclination rather than to the foundational teaching of the Christian Worldview:

Matthew 7:24-26

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Not everyone who calls himself a Christian is listening to the words of Christ (Matthew 7:21). Those of us who have identified ourselves as Christians, yet have perpetrated evil, are willfully resisting or rejecting the words of Jesus.

 But Jesus overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the OT god's atrocities are too well known from Deut. 28:15 ff to need repeating here.  Your idea that the true Christian of modern times is one who doesn't commit "atrocities" simply denies large sections of the bible.

Cold Case Christianity: Why would a Good God allow Natural Evil?

This is in reply to a post from J. Warner Wallace, entitled

Why Would a Good God Allow Natural Evil?  

Posted: 12 Jun 2017 04:20 AM PDT  251

As a police officer and homicide detective, I’ve seen my fair share of injustice and hardship.

 But because the bible says God takes personal responsibility for murder (Deut. 32:39) and causes other horrific atrocities such as rape and kidnapping (Deut. 28:15-63), you overlook the grim biblical possibility that what you call "injustice" is the work of God, in which case logically you are accusing God of injustice.

 Every time I’m asked to defend the existence of God in light of the evil we observe in our world, I take a deep breath and try to separate the emotional nature of this issue from the rational explanations I might offer.

 Then you aren't very godly.  God "delights" to inflict horrific suffering on people, such as rape (Deut. 28:30, 63) so if God delights to see men rape women (v. 30), you cannot possibly go wrong in sharing God's same attitude.

 I recognize the impotence of my rational response when trying to address to the emotional pain people experience when they suffer evil.

 Be careful that you don't automatically classify rape and parental cannibalism of children as evil, otherwise, you will be saying that God is the author of evil, since Deut. 28:15-16, 30, 53, asserts that God causes people to do those things.

At the same time, I think it’s important for us explore reasonable explanations. Natural evil is perhaps the most difficult category of evil we, as Christians, can address. It’s one thing to explain the presence of moral evil in our world (the evil actions of humans);

Correction, according to Deut. 28, supra, the man who rapes a woman just might have been caused by God to do it, you don't know, but the point is that you cannot dismiss that possibility.  You'd have been more accurate to expand your definition of moral evil from "evil actions of humans" to "evil actions of humans that God sometimes causes them to do".

it’s another to explain the existence of natural evil (earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters).  If an all-powerful and all-loving God exists, why does He permit natural evil?

And how much time should we devote to that question, if it can be shown that God doesn't likely exist? 

If God exists, it is certainly within His power to prevent such things.

No, God was incapable of overcoming certain armies because they had chariots of iron:

 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots. (Jdg. 1:19 NAU)

Inerrantist scholars cannot resolve this contradiction with God's omnipotence, without inventing additional material neither expressed nor implied in the story:

In our text (v. 18a) the narrator explicitly attributes Judah’s successes in the hill country not to equivalent military power but to the presence of Yahweh. Then why could they not take the lowland? Why is Yahweh’s presence canceled by superior military technology? The narrator does not say, but presumably the Judahites experienced a failure of nerve at this point, or they were satisfied with their past achievements.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 100). 

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Most scholars think Mark was the earliest gospel, and if so, then Jesus "could" not perform miracles in the presence of unbelief:

 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household."
 5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.
 6 And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching. (Mk. 6:4-6 NAU)

Most scholars think Matthew borrowed much gospel text from Mark.  If that is true, then because Matthew changes the "could not" to a "did not", and changing Mark's "no miracle" to "not many miracles" it is reasonable to infer that the Matthew-author thought Mark's phrase could be reasonably interpreted to mean that God's power was something less than absolute:

 57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household."
 58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. (Matt. 13:57-58 NAU)

(Wallace continues)  :Why wouldn’t He?  The problem of natural evil is irreconcilable unless there are necessary or good reasons for God to permit such evil.

 There aren't.  God created a perfect Eden and populated it with Adam and Eve.  If God never allowed the serpent into the garden, it is not likely the first two humans would have done anything more than remain the blissfully ignorant children they were.  And again, we need not entertain the question of natural evil too long, if a case can be made that it is unlikely that a god exists.

If God exists, it is reasonable to believe that He would design a world in which free agency is possible (this is a necessity for true love to be achievable).

You are dismissed.  5-Point Calvinists are Christians, and they deny that human beings have "free agency" the way you define it, and yet you talk as if "free agency" is a presupposition you can safely assume any reader would agree with you on.  Nope.  Atheists are not morally obligated to take sides in that in-house Christian debate.  If spiritually alive people cannot even figure out freewill, you are irrational to expect spiritually dead people to do better on the subject.

In order to understand why God might allow natural evil, we have to do our best to examine the nature of the world around us, the nature of humans and the desires of God: 
Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of Necessity
God may tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of a free natural process that makes it possible for freewill creatures to thrive.

Again, your Calvinist brothers and sisters think such talk is theological heresy, you can hardly expect atheists to take side in that in-house Christian debate.  The more you depend on the "freewill" angle, the more justification you give atheists to dismiss your argument.  Atheists are smart to insist that they won't be getting involved in such debate unless Christians all agree on how the bible defines "freewill", since if we are going to convert on the basis of apologetics arguments, it's only common sense that we first make sure those arguments are biblically justified.

Scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne suggests that God has created a universe with particular natural laws that make life on earth possible so that humans with free will can exist in the first place. As an example, the same weather systems that create tornadoes that kill humans also create thunderstorms that provide our environment with the water needed for human existence.

But that's like saying that because daddy has a gun that can kill game for us to eat, it is a necessary evil that he also use it to kill innocent people.   In Deut. 32:39, god credits himself with causing all murders and death, so God's creation of stormy weather systems isn't the issue, we've discovered that the problem is god himself and his "delight" to cause parents who disobey him to eat their own kids (Deut. 28:63).

The same plate tectonics that kill humans (in earthquakes) are necessary for regulation of soils and surface temperatures needed for human existence.

Naw, your god is omnipotent, remember?  God can cause an earthquake while also protecting children from being killed by it, so again, the problem is not earthquakes, but god himself.  Or maybe you deny that God is all-powerful?  If so, you probably account for the omnipotence-passages in the bible by saying they are a case of typical Semitic exaggeration, which is probably correct.  In that case, I'd like to know why you don't think that view opens Pandora's Box:  I wonder how many other theologically important statements in the bible are in reality nothing more significant than typical Semitic exaggerations?  When Isaiah strongly argues for absolute monotheism (44:6), is this literally true, or just Isaiah employing typical Semitic exaggeration?

  Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of the Nature of Free Agency
God may also tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of human free agency. Humans often rebuild along earthquake fault lines and known hurricane pathways, and they frequently cut corners on building guidelines in order to save money. Much of this activity results in the catastrophic loss that we see in times of ‘natural’ disaster. There are times when ‘natural’ evil is either caused or aggravated by free human choices. 

Atheists are perfectly rational to rebut you with your 5-Point Calvinist Christian sisters who insist that human freewill cannot be significant because it is God who causes people to choose they way they choose, and therefore, the problem of evil is with God himself.  If your Calvinists insist that the bible doesn't teach that humans genuinely contribute, but only react like puppets, atheists have perfect rational justification to dismiss your argument and insist God's like-minded ones get their act together first.  Otherwise, you are expecting spiritually dead atheists to correctly figure out which of the two contradictory theological systems (Calvinism, non-Calvinism) are biblically correct, and that's foolish.

Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of God’s Nudging
God may permit some natural evil because it challenges people to think about God for the first time.

If true then God is stupid, since all through the bible he not only "stirs the heart" of various people to successfully motivate them to do what he wants: 

1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying: (Ezr. 1:1 NAU) 

but God also sometimes forces unbelievers to sin, and then punishes them for it:

  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)

 16 and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog." (Ezek. 38:16 NAU)

 21 "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. (Ezek. 38:21 NAU)

1 "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal;
 2 and I will turn you around, drive you on, take you up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel. (Ezek. 39:1-2 NAU)

Does literally control people like this?  Or is this semitic exaggeration?  If Semitic exaggeration, then what criteria do you use to decide when a theologically important passage in the bible is mere exaggeration?

For many people, the first prayers or thoughts of God came as the result of some tragedy.

Which doesn't count for much, since your all-powerful God can cause people to yearn for him simply by waving his magic wand:

 14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. (Acts 16:14 NAU)

(Wallace continues:) When our present lives are in jeopardy or in question, we find ourselves thinking about the possibility of a future life. If an eternal future life is a reality, God may use the temporary suffering of this life to focus our thoughts and desires on eternity. 

Which makes God stupid and wasteful since according to Ezekiel he can cause us to think whatever thoughts he wants us to think.  If God wants me to prioritize the spiritual side of my life, he doesn't need to step out of the way and allow me to endure horrific catastrophes, he can simply put those motives into my heart the way he allegedly did similarly to other people all through the bible.  

Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of God’s Nurturing
God may permit some natural evil because it provides humans with the motivation and opportunity to develop Godly character.

Which is counterbalanced by the obvious fact that half the people who experience evil don't turn to god, but become more closed to the idea that any god exists.  Again, if God would just wave his magic wand and use his telepathy on us today like he allegedly did in bible times, he would need to allow a little girl to be raped just to get her to sympathize in adulthood with other rape victims...he can cause her to sympathize with such people by putting such motives into her heart directly.

You need to be careful with the argument that says good comes out of evil.  yeah, sometimes it does, but the means don't always justify the ends.  We could fix a lot of problems by nuking America's ghettos too.  But if you think the resulting benefit didn't cancel the fact that this was murder, then you might wish to stop telling yourself that God is morally justified because his purpose is good.  The ends don't justify the means...do they?

Or are you a Republican?

A world such as this requires human beings to cooperate and peacefully co-exist in order to successfully respond to its challenges.

That preaches nice, but it is also true, according to your bible, that for thousands of years, the earth and God were doing just fine while this place was little more than a battle field where competing tribes killed each other and whoever won, was considered to be in the right.

The best in humanity often emerges as people respond in love and compassion to natural disaster.

Which makes sense from a naturalistic point of view, but creates unending problems from a classical Christian theist point of view such as yours.

It’s in the context of disaster that moral character has the opportunity to form and develop. Good character (acts of love, compassion and cooperation) must be freely chosen. God has provided us with a world that provokes us to improve our situation, care for those who are in need, and become better human beings in the process.  There are a number of ‘necessary’ or ‘sufficient’ reasons why God might create a world in which natural evil is occasionally permissible, particularly if God chooses to provide, protect and preserve the freewill of His children.

Your Calvinist brothers are as spiritually alive as you, and they deny that we have freewill.  You are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists to figure out which interpretation of scripture is the right one.

An attack on the "God is always good" presupposition

On what basis is God "good"?  Does he conform to a standard of good outside of himself?  No.  Christians say God is himself the highest logically possible standard.

But if that is the case, then the statement "God is always good" means nothing more than "God always conforms to his own standard of morality."  How useful is it to point out that an intelligent person always acts in conformity to their unique personal moral code?  Isn't that the actual case with most intelligent beings anyway?


If the phrase "Martha conforms to her own standard of goodness" does not establish her goodness, then

The phrase   "   God  conforms to his own standard of goodness"  by logical necessity cannot establish God's goodness either, as both statements are logically equal.

 Are you ready for the kill-shot?

God himself regrets his own prior choice to create man, over in Genesis 6:6-7, a choice which he himself earlier had said was "good" (Gen. 1:31), and nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context, chapter or genre of Genesis 6 will support the "anthropomorphism" interpretation.  That means the more likely true interpretation is that God really did literally regret his prior act of creating mankind.  That will remain supported by the context, whether or not that interpretation would cause the passage to contradict something else in the bible.  And since bible inerrancy has nowhere near the universal acclaim that other interpretation-tools like "grammar" and "context" have, non-Christians are fully rationally justified to refuse to exalt bible inerrancy in their minds to the status of governing hermeneutic.  So if it be true that the literal interpretation of Genesis 6:6-7 makes it contradict something else in the bible, it could still enjoy support from the grammar, context and genre nonetheless.

If it be true that God can start out thinking his creation of man is 'good' (1:31), then later regret that very act (6:6-7), then it is the bible's own witness that prevents us from saying anything and everything god does is always good.

You can avoid this logic by saying God was wrong to regret his prior creation of man, but if God was wrong to so regret, then he not only can, but did misconstrue the moral goodness of his own prior creative act, and that kind of thinking would bobsled you faster toward my conclusion than my own argument would have.

I conclude that a) God being the ultimate standard of good renders the statement "God is good" utterly redundant and meaningless, leaving no rational reason for Christians to convey such a thing to an unbeliever, and b) because the "anthropomorphism" interpretation of God's regret over his own prior acts in Genesis 6 cannot be sustained on the basis of any universally recognized hermeneutic such as grammar, context or genre, the bible is teaching there that God actually did change his mind on whether his prior creative act was good, and God changing his mind about whether an act was morally good, spells disaster for the fundamentalist Christian who insists that God's goodness is without exception.

If God's goodness isn't absolute, you then err by constantly talking of God's goodness as if it was some foregone conclusion utterly immune to criticism.