Demolishing Triablogue: Substance dualism is total bullshit

 This is my reply to an article at Triablogue by Steve Hays entitled 

Monday, October 07, 2019

Moreland–is there life after death? 

In this post I'll use "dualism" as shorthand for substance dualism. I subscribe to Cartesian interactionist dualism. I don't subscribe to Thomistic dualism (hylomorphism).

Apostle Paul forbids Christians from wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14).  Since in context he is discussing doctrine, and he concludes word-wrangling to be "useless" and harmful, the interpretation which says Paul in his old age disagreed with his prior instigating verbal wars with Jews in synagogues and otherwise defying this principle due to his youthful but ignorant zeal, is a reasonable interpretation.

Notice how little I care about "reconciling" the Paul of the Pastorals with the Paul of Acts and other epistles.  I think it has something to do with the fact that because most Christian scholars deny inerrancy or otherwise cannot agree with each other on its scope, there is no intellectual compulsion upon a non-Christian to automatically attempt harmonization of NT concepts.  If the profferred interpretation is consistent with the grammar and immediate context, that's all that is necessary to render it 'reasonable'.  Merely suggesting that we wouldn't expect one author to contradict himself, and questions of whether the larger context is "equally" important, venture into far more ambiguous areas.

However, even assuming bible inerrancy is true, reconciling my absolutist interpretation of 2nd Timothy 2:14 with Paul's previous desire to start verbal wars is easy:  What does Paul mean there?  Well, we can know what he didn't mean (if we are to assume his teaching were all consistent). He didn't mean you should engage in scholarly arguments about the meaning of words and phrases, because other related advice he gives indicates Paul thinks "teaching" and "persuading" are limited to your "preaching at" others, not interacting with the details of their arguments:

 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)

First, Steve's hardcore inerrancy and Calvinism force him to classify any arguments against anything he believes as "foolish", so the unbeliever could reasonably argue, if they wished,  that by refusing to consider Steve's arguments, they are helping him avoid foolish controversies, sonething he would be drawn into by logical necessity if he chose to reply to the rebuttals of skeptics.

Second, Paul apparently believed that if you disagree with him, his followers are to "warn" you.  Since under bible inerrancy, he cannot have contradicted his 2nd Timothy 2:14 command to avoid word wrangling, then smooshing all this biblical crap together gives us the following result:  You are to limit yourself to two warnings when replying to those who disagree with Apostle Paul's theology, and those warning cannot consist of conduct that would amount to wrangling of words.

The reasonableness of that interpretation is not going to be diminished or made to disappear merely because the inerrantist reader can thump his chest and confidently boast that surely Paul was not condemning informed sincere scholarly interchange. 

So if the unbeliever wished to use Steve's word-wrangling as an excuse to say he is a hypocrite for failing to follow his faith-hero's basic advice about methdology, they would be reasonable to do so, if they so chose. 

And if Steve obeys this interpretation and he actually stops interacting with skeptics after the second "warning" (as he did with me), then the skeptic could easily get the "last word", then boast that Steve has failed to maintain his position against criticism.  Then Steve's mind would be a whirlwind of "should I respond to protect my pride?" and "or should I just tell my friends that God infallibly predestined me to drop the debate?"

Back to Steve's comments:

A. This is a fairly useful exchange as far as it goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfsZ_-Z_OY But it tries to cover far too much ground in far too little time.

So if the unbeliever felt it was unconvincing, there might actually be an intellectually justified basis for her to dismiss this video and regard her need to do laundry as more important than using her emergency rent money to purchase Dualism books by Moreland.

Oh, did I forget?  While J.P. Moreland is hailed by all Christians as an especially smart Christian philosopher, up there with the likes of William Lane Craig, he is not a Calvinist. That is, Steve is foced to admit that not even being a very smart person in Philosophy and the bible, and not even being genuinely born again,  provide the least bit of guarantee that you will EVER correctly understand biblical truths that Steve insists are "clear".

Steve will be unhappy to know that Moreland is an evidentialist, and despite being one of the world's smartest christian "philosophers", still thinks Presuppositionalists see no reason to "correct" a fallaciously question begging approach:

One's response to this objection will turn, in part, on one's approach to apologetics. If one is a fideist or a presuppositionalist (roughly, the view that rational argumentation and evidence cannot be offered as epistemic support for Christian theism from some neutral starting point), then one may say that begging the question is not a problem here. If one is an evidentialist, as I am...

Christianity and the Nature of Science, Baker, 1989, p. 205, fn. 42)

And yes, Steve and Moreland both agree that god's word is "perspicuous" or "clear".  What could be more funny than two Christians who each believe God's word is "clear", who nevertheless still accuse each other of denying the "clear" teaching of scripture?  Steve continues:

Also, Moreland and the interviewer are talking at cross-purposes for a while, which squanders precious time.

Same answer.

B. Moreland probably has far more to say about religious pluralism, but due to time constraints, deflected that issue.

Nice to know you are willing to use your background knowledge of Moreland to justify this speculation.  It will come in handy the next time you berate a skeptic for depending upon his own background knowledge of life to justify opposition to miracle claims, the way a mother depends on her background knowledge of her daughter to justify strong suspicion the daughter is lying...at a time before the mother can conclusively prove such.  You are a fool if you think it's always irrational to use one's background knowledge to justify dismissing a truth-claim.  I don't have all the answers to every trifle a Mormon apologist could possibly raise...so is my rejection of Mormonism irrational?

C. Up to a point, dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent explanations. Both are consistent with the data that the interviewer cited, viz. memory loss, inability to form new memories, and loss of cognitive function.

Only in the opinion of somebody who thinks a theory that invokes "other dimensions" is equal to a theory that is purely naturalistic, when that clearly isn't the case.  "an angel did it" and "Bill did it" also possibly explain why a book is sitting on a table.  But the naturalist explanation obviously wins hands down apart from very compelling reasons to invoke invisible people and other dimensions.

According to dualism, the brain is an interface between the mind and the physical world.

Which means according to dualism, your mind comes into your brain from another dimension.  And yet Christian apologists want their views to be given equal consideration.

It mediates action or information in both directions. If damaged, the brain blocks input or output at both ends.

You would never say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, because its obvious from the fact of muscle damage = loss of muscular strength that the "strength" or emergent property of the muscle is no less purely physical than the muscle itself.

But no, because the bible teaches the mind can exist apart from the brain, you will fight and die before you'll draw a similar conclusion from the fact that brain injury = loss of mental ability. 

If the brain is damaged, that may block new sensory input. That prevents the mind from receiving new information from and about the sensible world.
 If, conversely, the brain is damaged, that may block the ability of the mind to communicate with the outside world. Memories are stored in the mind, not the brain. If the brain is damaged, that impedes retrieval.

Except that physical memory molecules are real (see here), therefore, when brain degeneration takes place (Alzheimer's, i.e., the actual degradation of brain tissue and not merely blockage of neurons), memories actually disappear after the disease progresses from neuron blockage to actual degeneration of brain tissue.

Sorry Steve, but your twilight zone dualism would fail Occam's Razor before any naturalistic explanation would, regardless of how petulant and petty your endless trifles of language might be when you are trying to defend your position.

The memories can't get through a washed out bridge.

You may as well say muscular damage is why the strength, coming from another dimension through the muscle, cannot manifest as perfectly when the muscle or interface is damaged. Oh wait...the bible doesn't say muscular strength comes from the spirit-world, so that's the only reason you are comfortable thinking the purely naturalistic explanation of strength is permissible.

And before you get all cocky about how the mind = the spirit, you might want to google for that verse that says the spirit can pray without the mind understanding (i.e., not every bible verse agrees that the mind equals the spirit), and then explain to atheists why Paul defended a type of communication with god that is, by definition, 100% irrational.  You don't know what the fuck is going on...but yeah...you are legitimately "praying" to god nonetheless.  LOL.

So long as the mind is embodied, that imposes limits on mental activity.

Once again, your view presupposes the mind comes from another dimension, and the efforts of your cohort Jason Engwer to prove the reality of the Enfield Poltergeist do little more than show that everybody at Triablogue have been brainwashed to the same extent as the fools who trifle that playing with live rattlesnakes is a sign of spiritual maturity.  In both cases, the fact that anybody would dare challenge what they believe, is just proof that the challenger is either biblically incompetent, or being used by the devil, or both. 

The idea that you might actually be wrong about something, is completely off the table in your mind.  In other words, you have equated the posibility of you being wrong, with the possibility of god being wrong, since you wipe both possibilities completely off the table.

What we can be sure of, however, is that the so-called "evidence" for non-physical life is complete horseshit.  I don't care how many articles you write exploiting the minutia of the Amityville Lutz family drama, to pretend that some aspects of their experiences are consistent with demon possession. Gee, I'm pissing myself with worry that there might actually be another dimension or a real god (the historical evidence supporting Jesus' resurrection is incredibly weak, therefore, he more than likely stayed dead, therefore, Christianity is false, therefore, if the emergency backup god you plan to invoke in that case is the god of the OT, then because Christianity misrepresented that god for 2,000 years [i.e.., he didn't raise Jesus from the dead], that god is likely more pissed off at Christians than he is at atheists, since Christians, as teachers, thus receive the greater judgement, James 3:1, while those who are ignorant get lesser punishment, John 9:41).

In other words, when I get rid of Jesus' resurrection, you lose on all points.  The mere existence of a god and my own atheism would not begin to suggest that I was in the least bit of danger.

All things being equal, the scales tip slightly in favor of physicalism as the simpler explanation.

Damn straight.

All things considered, additional evidence weighs heavily on the dualist side of the scales.

Sorry, I've investigated Moreland's The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Moody Publishers; New edition (March 1, 2014), and now I'm even more certain that dualism is false and requires Paul's worshippers to violate 2nd Timothy 2:14 just to make their case.  That's not the only dualist case I've considered.  (and since you think people are foolish to deny NDEs, the denial of NDEs constitutes a "foolish contention" and therefore constitutes the type of thing Paul told you to stay away from.  Titus 3:9.  You aren't "staying away" from such things when you blog about them and expect atheists to engage, that's rather intentional disobedience on your part to divine command.

D. Moreland greatly understates the evidence for the afterlife. I'll begin by proposing a more complex taxonomy:

Then apparently, if an unbeliever saw this video, wasn't impressed, and dismissed it, you really couldn't blame them.

1. Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife 2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife 3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife 4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife Let's run back through these: (1)-(2) constitute evidence for dualism. If there's evidence that the mind is ontologically independent of the brain, then that's indirect evidence for the afterlife. That's what makes disembodied consciousness possible.

Take your best shot, as I'm sure you will tell yourself you'll try.

1.  Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife i) The hard problem of consciousness. Philosophical arguments that the characteristics of consciousness are categorically different from physical structures and events. ii) Roderick Chisholm's argument: https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/body-and-soul.html

I now respond to the arguments at that link:

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Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Body and soul
The hard problem of consciousness is the best-known philosophical argument for substance dualism, but here's another argument by the eminent American philosopher Roderick Chisholm: 

In metaphysics, he held the view that ordinary objects (tables, chairs, etc.) are ‘logical fictions’, and that what exists “in the strict and philosophical sense” are parcels of matter. Parcels of matter cannot lose parts and continue to exist as the same things, according to Chisholm. But what we think of as ordinary objects are gaining and losing parts all the time, he noted. Some molecules that once composed the table in front of me no longer do so. They have been chipped off, and the table worn away with time. The same holds for human bodies. They gain and lose parts all the time, and thus for Chisholm, human bodies don’t persist through time “in the strict and philosophical sense.” But persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body.

That's foolish, people's bodies get old and then they die, they no more "persist" through time than does a tree or a dog.

Therefore, he concluded, persons are not identical with their bodies, nor with any part of the body that can undergo change.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/75/On_Roderick_Chisholm

Would love to see you work that into America's criminal justice system, something that you would agree is a place where people want to find out the "actual" truth:  the fact that the criminal's body committed the crime doesn't necessarily prove that his PERSON committed the crime (i.e., Calvinist theology:  when a genuinely born again Christian sins, this is not their person, this is only the sin WITHIN them (Romans 7:17, 25).

Now what Steve?  Maybe the fact that mixing America's legal system with biblical ideas of self would cause America to die a horrific death just vindicates the bible?  And then you don't understand why other people say you are completely brainwashed?   How are you philosophically any less committed than the terrorist who praises Allah for each shriek of pain the child emits as he beats it to death?  "God's ways are mysterious" is therefore such a dangerous excuse that this is enough to justify the atheist to dismiss it when Christians use it, and demand either sufficient explanation or concession that the Christian has lost the debate.

CWB9/10/2019 10:57 PM☍Steve, what are your thoughts on his statement that persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body? Is that true, and how do we know, apart from our sense that we are the same person over time? I think that the strength of the argument for dualism is predicated on the fact that my (any of us) awareness of my body is an awareness of a physical object, but no part of my awareness of my personhood (which I call the me inside of me) includes awareness of anything physical, and it is not perceived through any of the [five] senses by which we perceive matter.
 steve9/10/2019 11:08 PM☍That's a good way of putting it.
-----------------

And Steve actually thinks stupid trifling pathetic bullshit like this contributes to the reasons why unbelievers are "without excuse" before God.

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife i) Veridical near-death experiences and veridical out-of-body experiences.  ii) ESP, psychokinesis. If all mental activity takes place inside the brain, then the mind can't know about the physical world or act on the physical world apart from sensory input or the body interacting with its environment. If, conversely, there's empirical evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain, then that's evidence for the metaphysical possibility of disembodied postmortem survival.

Sure.  Go ahead and give evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain.   I would have said be sure to use your brain in this endeavor, but I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence.

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife i) The biblical witness to the intermediate state.

I may as well be listening to an Arminian quote the bible to prove Arminianism.  Seventh Day Adventists cannot be considered unsaved because they fall within the pale of orthodoxy, so when they give an interpretation of the bible, you are not free to pretend it is unworthy of serious consideration because it comes from spiritually dead people who cannot possibly know better....yet they insist on soul sleep, and that the life of the sinner cannot be separate from the body.

Peter Van Inwagen in 1995 was a Christian and offered a critique of the mind-body dualism he admitted many Christians hold to.  Dualism and Materialism:  Athens or Jerusalem?, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Vol. 12, No. 4, October 1995.  See another Christian critique here.

I'm not trying to pretend these articles "refute" dualism.  I'm only showing that because even spiritually alive Christians don't find it convincing, YOU are the fool to 'expect' the spiritually dead person to appreiciate the alleged force of your own arguments in favor of dualism. Doesn't matter if dualism helps refute atheism or materialism...you have to first worry whether your own theory is "truthful", and because so many Christians reject dualism, this will always be sufficient rational warrant for the atheist to dismiss your arguments outright as leading to something other than actual truth.  What are atheists intellectually obligated to do?  Address each and every argument that any fool theist drums up?  No.  Are YOU intellectually obligated to address each and every argument for naturalism that any fool atheist might drum up?  No.  And yet it only takes one successful argument for naturalism to overturn your Christian belief.  So if you can be rational to place your own limit on how much research you need to do before you can draw ultimately conclusions about the subject matter, then atheists are going to be equally as reasonable to similarly place their own limits on how much research they need to do before they think it is enough to justify drawing ultimate conclusions.

That is, the childish "I got the last word, you didn't answer this argument over there, you are without excuse, Romans 1:20 has been vindicated!" means precisely nothing, especially to mature people.

If there's good evidence that the Bible is a trustworthy source of information, then that's indirect evidence for whatever it teaches.

And if there's an invisible taco that wants to attack you with bubbles on the planet Pluto, that's direct evidence that common sense is actually dangerous.

ii) The resurrection of Christ That's evidence, not for the immortality of the soul, but a reembodied state. That's what "Christian physicalists" pin their hopes on. However, the immortality of the soul is a bridge to the resurrection of the body. A philosophical objection to "Christian physicalism" is that if consciousness ceases at death, then what God resurrects isn't the same person who died but a copy of the person who died.

So?  We often accept copies as if they are indistinguishable from the originals, such as library books which are obviously different from the finished manuscript the authors turned over to the publishers.

Furthermore, the very fact that Christians allegedly get "incorruptible" bodies at the resurrection is already telling the reader that the person God changes you into, isn't going to have the same personal disposition toward sin that is currently the definition of your very nature.  So "copy" is actually a welcome change, not a concern.  What fool would pretend that the "you" who can never sin again is the same "you" that loved sin previously?  Some would argue that the resurrection is so drastic of a change that the new "you" really is better called a 'copy'.  I can mail you a razor blade if you don't like the parts of the bible that force you into blind stupidity.  They are just paper that can easily be easily sliced away.

And that raises questions of personal identity. If your existence is discontinuous, if there's a break or gap in your existence, then what does God restore? Is a copy of you you?

No, but because the bible says "yes", the problem is yours, not mine.

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife i) A subset of near-death experiences report meeting a decedent who wasn't known to be dead at the time. In a variation, the decedent imparts information that could not naturally be known. If the report is true, that's direct empirical evidence for postmortem survival.

Sorry, I've investigated enough NDE's and there comes a time when throwing clothes in the laundry become more important than saving 50,000 google search hits for me to 'investigate' later.  I don't ask Christians how I should limit or expand my investigations into such things, that's not for you to decide, anymore than it is for me to decide how much you should investigate Marian apparitions before you can be reasonable to draw ultimate conclusions on who or what was doing the appearing.  Unless you plan to say that atheists are under an intellectual obligation to investigate thousands of instances of whatever phenomena you boast proves your case (which would justify viewing you as a pompous fool), you are going to have to admit that there can come a time when the atheist's choice to stop investigating and do something else is NOT irrational.  Since you cannot really pin down when and where that piont would arrive, you are no authority on the matter and therefore that question is not properly yours to answer.  If I decide NDEs are fake because I read a single book by a skeptic about it, you couldn't condemn me unless you also condemn every Christian who "accepted Jesus" at a time when their knowledge of the bible was equally as limited...something you likely wouldn't do.

And you are a fool to pretend that atheists "should' check out your claims, since checking them out requires time.  But if you believe I'll go to hell immediately and forever upon physical death, and you believe I cannot really predict when I'll die, you have to believe that every moment I delay repenting, the more chance I take of ending up in hell.  Given your beliefs about the afterlife and how urgent the danger is for with every passing second, all you are doing when telling me to check out your arguments, is telling me that I can safely delay the day of my repentance, or, If I should happen to die while in the middle of checking out your claims, that's an exceptional situation that means I'll be given a second chance in the spirit-world...you know...the position taken by Lydia McGrew...or...you don't really care whether I actually end up in hell or not.  Reconcile THAT bullshit with the bible!

ii) Veridical postmortem apparitions, viz. poltergeists, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, Christophanies.
Posted by steve at 8:57 PM 

But enough skeptical debunking of such things has been done as to rationally justify the atheist wife who thinks that in her busy family life, any "free" time she might have would be better spent on family activities that have nothing to do with religion or the paranormal.  That is, the mere fact that you could trifle that some apparitions are true and thus another dimension exists, would not be sufficient to intellectually compel the atheist to "check it out".  I'm no Mormon scholar, but the fact that Mormon apologists continue on and on, relentlessly trifling away in the effort to show the historicity of the book of Mormon, does NOT operate to intellectually obligate anybody to either keep abreast of the latest such trifling, or admit that they are without reasonable justification for Book of Mormon skepticism.  There comes a time when not having the last word or not having a rebuttal argument, no longer counts as evidence of being "inexcusable".

But I'm quite sure that the fools at Triablogue are positively certain that their god would punish them severely if they didn't keep themselves updated on every biblical and metaphysical trifle under the sun.  After all, if they dared admit that their own chosen time to limit their study and start drawing conclusions, left them rational and reasonable, the skeptic could cite such arbitrary choice to justify the skeptic's similarly choosing to limit how much 'evidence' they investigate before it becomes safe to start drawing ultimate conclusions.  That would hurt Triablogue, who insist blindly that because they can come up with arguments an unbeliever refuses to deal with, said unbeliever is being irrational.

And don't even get me started on how the contradictions in the bible on god's justice reasonably justify the skeptic to view biblical hell as completely figurative...so that rejecting Christianity is about as dangerous as rejecting Mormonism, leaving the skeptic free from any intellectual obligation to "check it out".

Cold Case Christianity: Rebuttal to J. Warner Wallace's arguments for the existence of the soul

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

A Very Brief Review of Arguments for the Existence of the Soul (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 23 May 2018 01:23 AM PDT

We’ve created a free Bible insert that is a short review of the philosophical arguments for dualism (articulated more fully in a podcast). As Christians, we believe hold a dual view of world around us. We believe in the existence of the brain and the mind, the body and the soul, a material world and a spiritual realm. This concept of dualism, the recognition of two co-existent realms and realities, is critical to our faith as Christians.

And it is denied by Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, both of which teach that the soul is simply the life-force that ceases conscious awareness at death and doesn't become self-aware again until the day of resurrection or judgment.  We would hardly expect significant Christian groups to deny dualism, if its basis in the bible were "clear".  This is sufficient to rationally justify the average unbeliever to conclude the classic mind/body problem is too fraught with uncertainty to think studying it will yield anything useable, and to therefore walk away from what appears to be a furiously useless exercise in sophistry.

If dualism is not true (the opposite view is often called ‘monism’ or ‘physicalism’), there is no realm in which God exists, we are not souls designed for salvation and life with God, and there is no life beyond this one.

That only sounds bleak and repulsive to those who have already been nurturing a Christian faith for years aand have high hopes of being snatched up into the air to live on cloudy streets of gold forever.  It doesn't sound depressing at all to those who smartly refused to set their hopes unrealistically high.  When you tell a Mormon the book of Mormon is a fraud, the fact that they just cannot imagine such a negative thing being true, doesn't mean it isn't true.  It means the Mormon has set their hopes far higher than reality would have allowed.  Nothing is different in the case of the typical Christian, nor in the case of anybody who sets their hopes too high, then starts finding out that reality refuses to comply with their dreams.

So how can we begin to prove the existence of something we cannot see?

Maybe like you prove the existence of air, by tests that can detect things invisible to the naked eye?  Or did I forget that what you are talking about also cannot be physically detected in the first place?

What kind of science could we possibly use?

Did you forget that there is nothing in the NT that expresses or implies that you should ever try to make such arguments, while in fact if you simply did what Jesus and Pual clearly told you to do, you'd be too busy to indulge such trifles as the present one?

Are you positively certain that this mind/body dualism bullshit you bring up doesn't qualify as the 'word wrangling' Paul so strongly forbade in 2nd Timothy 2:14, and the sinful interest in controversial questions he forbade in 1st Timothy 6:4?

After all, science deals with the natural, physical realm, and we are trying to investigate something immaterial.

You are also trying to use science to investigate something that is "spiritual".  But this is your problem.

Is science even the right instrument to get this job done? Probably not.

Translation:  "the idea that the human body has an immaterial soul, is unscientific".

Instead, let’s examine the case from a philosophical perspective to see if there is any rational reason to believe dualism is true.

I wonder how many homeless people on the street end up in hell because you prefer to trifle about controversial philosophical topics on the internet instead of prioritizing the face-to-face preaching Jesus clearly commanded.  What if an unbeliever is so intrigued by this article of yours, that they wish to investigate further, and while on their way to the library, they die in a car crash?

Now if you hold to the standard conservative Christian view that ALL people who died before repentance go to eternal hell, then because this unbeliever died in a car crash before actually having repented and believed the gospel, he not only goes to hell, but stays there for all eternity.  And the reason he delayed repentance is because your argument here made him more interested in figuring out whether you were right or wrong, and less interested in the danger that he is always one heartbeat away from the dates of hell.

Doesn't it bother you that the more you indulge in theological controversies, the more you imply to unbelievers that they actually DO have tomorrow and the next day and the next few years to safely delay repentance without fear of the horrific consequences?

But once you try to duck this argument by parting ways with conservative Christian scholars and pretending you think some unbelievers are allowed a second chance to repent in the afterlife, you help skeptics and unbelievers confidently conclude that the bible-god probably isn't as fearsome and sadistic as Jonathon Edwards and most fundamentalists say, and therefore, another justification to delay repentance.

While much can be written on this issue, this short post will simply review the case for the soul based on the evidence from the Law of Identity:

A = A

The Law of identity simply states that something on one side of the equal sign is identical to something on the other side of the equation if they have the exact same qualities or properties.

Yes.  When we say the mind = the brain, we are not equating a non-material thing with a material thing.  The mind is purely physical.  What fool thinks there's no molecular basis to memory?  What fool doesn't notice that as Parkinson's disease erodes the physical brain, the memories stored there, which make up most of the the "mind" also disappear?  No reason to see this as any different than a computer memory card which no longer holds certain data because it was erased by a computer virus. What fool would say maybe the data still exist in the spiritual realm, and it only uses the physical disk as the doorway through which to enter into the physical world?  FUCK YOU.

If this is true, we can say that they have an “identity relationship”. When applied to our examination of the soul, monists describe the following identity relationship:

the brain = the mind

the body = the soul

If this is true, all the properties and qualities on one side of the equations should be identical to all the properties on the other side of the equation.

Not true.  Apple = fruit.  But not everything true about "fruit" is true of "apple".  Fallacy of equivocation.  So the mind can = the brain, without implying everything true about the brain is true of the mind.  But regardless of your technical error, there is no evidence that the mind is anything other than the physical brain, except of course the dualists whose controversial theological opinions motivate them to define "mind" more esoterically than most people.

If there are differences in the qualities and nature of the items on opposite sides of the equation, we have two realities, just as Christians have argued all along. Here then, is the brief summary of arguments describing the differences between our bodies and who we are as souls:

Difference One: “Public” Versus “Private”

(The Private Knowledge Argument)

Physical Properties Can Be PUBLICLY Known

We can look at a piece of sculpture, for example. The sculpture is physical and can be seen (accessed) by everyone.

Maybe that's why scientists and geologists disagree about what makes up the core of the earth...because these physical properties can be publicly known?

Mental Properties Are Only PRIVATELY Known

Not true.  When your mind is shocked by a frightening thing, your body reacts, even if only subtly, so even if dreams are private, not all mental properties are restricted to the private realm.  When we see a baby jump, twist her face, then start crying, its pretty obvious that her mind had perceived some type of pain or fright or frustration.

And if the private nature of mental properties be true, you just proved that insects and lower animals have souls that survive death, since according to your logic, if their mental properties are private (and they surely are no less private than human thoughts), such properties cannot be equated with the bug's physical brain and thus necessarily imply, under your reasoning, that their sense of identity arises from something more than their physical brain.

Will you go where your own logic leads?

Or will you insist that your reasoning can only be validated where it agrees with the bible?

If the latter...so much for your pretense of objectivity.

How the sculpture makes you feel is impossible for us to access publicly.

Not true.  If the man is heterosexual and the sculpture is of a scantily clad sexualized woman, a penile plethysmograph would detect what's going on in his mind, even if not perfectly.   Suppose you know a local man was convicted of child rape and went to prison and was released.  You see him on the sidewalk, staring at your kids for no earthly reason.  Your inability to be positively certain what his thoughts are, wouldn't slow you down from being confident that your suspicions about what's going on in his mind are likely correct, and reacting accordingly. 

Again, many people react physically to nightmares when sleeping.  Pretty easy to tell what they were thinking even if not perfectly so.  Mental events are not always private.  You lose.

You would have to tell us. We cannot determine this from a physical examination of your brain unless you tell us what you are feeling.

See above.

THEREFORE: Mental Properties Are NOT Physical Properties

The physical brain is something different than the immaterial mind. They are different because one possesses privately held knowledge (the mind) and the other (the brain) does not.

That doesn't follow.  you also cannot see the atoms responsible for exerting force on a piston in an engine as the result of a gasoline explosion, but you hardly conclude that the exerted force and the responsible atoms are different from each other.  

Or gee, I don't know...maybe you'll argue that the force that drives the piston down comes from the spiritual dimension and only uses the exploding gas as an interface by which to enter the physical realm?  How different is that from the trifling stupidity that says our thoughts originate with our soul/spirit in another dimension and only come into the physical world through the portal of the brain?

Difference Two: “I” Versus “My Body”

(The First Person Argument)

Like Everyone, I Only Use First Person Possessive Pronouns to Indicate Possession of Something Other Than “Me”

I use expressions like, “This is my toothbrush,” or “This is my mom,” because I am describing someone or something other than me.

Like Everyone, I Commonly Use First Person Possessive Pronouns When Describing My Body

I also find myself using expressions like, “This is my body,” or “This is my hand” when describing my physical body or some portion of my body.

A theory that, if true, would wreak havoc on the justice system.  Apparently, when the intruder said "this is my gun", he was describing someone or something other than himself, hence, his testimony, captured on home video, is inadmissible.  

Gee, Wallace, did you ever consider becoming an attorney? There's big bucks in dishonest sophistry.

THEREFORE: My Body Is Something Other Than “Me”

So because courts of law require the pursuit of actual truth, it would behoove you to convince America's courts of the "truth" that the criminal suspect's body is different than himself.  Under your Christan assumptions, adding this truth to the justice system can only help the cause of truth.  What a laugh.

Just like my toothbrush is something other than me, my physical body is also something other than me. I am not my body.  These are two different things.

Use that excuse as your alibi in a criminal trial. See what happens.  You'll soon find that the devil has blinded the minds of the jurors to spiritual truth...and maybe God decreed from all eternity that you conduct your ministry from a prison cell.

There are two realities, the material and the immaterial.

No, the "immaterial" constitutes an incoherence no less foolish than "dark matter", an thing its supporters admit they cannot even coherently define.

(By the way, although we sometimes use the expression, “my soul” this is an inaccurate use of the term. We don’t have souls, we are souls.)

That's exactly what Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists believe.

Difference Three: “Temporary Parts” Versus “Transcendent Identity”

(The Parts Argument)

Physical Entities Are Dependent on Their Parts for Their Identity

We know the difference between our car and someone else’s car in a parking lot, and we know the difference between our cell phone and someone else’s phone left behind in a library. We know this because we recognize parts are what establish the identity of physical objects

Which makes a powerful argument that my body parts are what establish my own identity.  Or maybe you never heard of DNA?  Your identity isn't lost if you lose an arm or all four limbs...but what if you lose your head?  Does the remaining torso still constitute "you"?  Probably not.  Hence, the physical head/brain are essential to identity.

But We, as Humans, Are NOT Dependent On Our Parts for Our Identity

But no matter how much we have changed (even if we have an organ transplant), we know our identity is not at risk.

But if we managed to succeed in transplanting a brain (cell phones were absurd ideas 1000 years ago, god only knows what breakthroughs await us in the future, there appear to be few absolute limits), you'd be quietly shitting yourself with worry that a man actually became another person solely for physical reasons.

I am still me, regardless of the fact I am now made of a completely different set of cells compared to my youth.

But the cells will always have your DNA and genetics. The day we can replace a person's DNA with different DNA, we will be looking at one person becoming a different person.  Sorry, but you cannot defeat the problem of human identity being tied to the physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are NOT Purely Physical Entities

For this reason, we know that we are more than mere physical entities, dependent on our parts for our identity. Once again, we know intuitively we have a transcendent identity. We are souls.

Now you aren't being biblical.  First, you don't know whether the bible distinguishes soul from spirit.  Are you a dichotomist or trichotomist?  Second, Peter clearly taught that the flesh wars against the "soul", apparently teaching that the flesh can exhibit desires and motives independently of the "soul", 1st Peter 2:11.  That's contrary to your own belief that it is from our soul that we make choices. The biblical view is that the man who chooses to use the services of a prostitute has made a choice independently of his "soul".  This is parallel to apostle Paul's teaching that the flesh and the spirit are contrary to each other in Galatians 5:17.  You don't really know from the context whether "spirit" there should have a capital or lower-case "s".

That the bible does little more than mislead on this issue may be legitimately inferred from the horrifically confused self-deluded speech we get from Paul, who says sometimes when he sins, it isn't him doing it:

 14 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
 16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
 17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
 19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
 20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. (Rom. 7:14-21 NAU)

 If that spiritual concept is true, then that truth should be lobbied by Christians into America's court system. After all, if there is a spiritual reality that says if you desire to do good but end up sinning anyway, the sin wasn't committed by "you", but by the sin itself (!?)

Good luck with that.

Note also that this contradicts modern Christian theory on soul and dualism.  Paul believed some choices could be made solely by the "sin that dwells in me", contrary to the popular modern view that all choices we make, are made at the level of the soul, and the body is merely reacting.  Apparently Paul believed it legitimate to credit nothing but "sin" as responsible for his body choosing to do something immoral.

Difference Four: “Measurable” Versus “Immeasurable”

(The Measurement Argument)

Physical Entities Can Be Measured Using Physical Measurement Instruments

We can take out a ruler and measure the width and length of your brain. We can weigh it and calculate it’s mass.

But As Humans, We Possess Mental Entities (Thoughts, Wills, Desires and Sensations) That Are Not Measurable By These Methods

We cannot use physical measurement tools to examine our thoughts. Propositional content cannot be measured in this way.

Not true.  Thoughts are formed mostly of memories, and memories are encoded in molecules, and molecules, being physical, have obvious detectable sizes.  So you and Frank Turek and other apologists are wrong, thoughts are physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are More Than Physical Beings

There is a physically immeasurable dimension to our beings. We are more than matter. We are physically immeasurable souls.

If it keeps junior on the straight and narrow, he can go on pretending to be whatever combo of moisture and invisible man he pleases. Atheists should be practical, not militant.  Leave the Mormons alone, some fools bring much good, and even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Difference Five: “About Others” Versus “About Themselves”

(The Self-Existence Argument)

Mental Entities Are Not Self Existent

Our hopes, fears, concerns and worries are always about something else; something outside of themselves

Not true, delusional people have brain disorders that often cause them fear of things that don't exist, this is also true with many children who irrationally fear the dark and the monster under the bed that always goes invisible when mom checks...and therefore, the feared thing did not originate from anywhere except within their physical brain.

But Our Brains, As Physical Entities, ARE Self Existent

Physical things are not about something else; they simply exist on their own and do not rely on other physical objects for their definition

THEREFORE: Our Brains Are NOT The Same As Our Minds

Brains are physical, self-existent entities, minds contain mental entities that are dependent on outside entities for their definition.

Nope, see above.

Difference Six: “Morally Determined” Versus “Morally Free”

(The Free Will Argument)

Oh fuck you, this is where not even many Christians agree with you.  Unbelievers can reasonably decline an invitation to become involved in one of Christianity's numerous in-house debates.

No Physical System is a Free Agent

They are either determined (one event following the other) or random

Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility

Because moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

Moral responsibility cannot exist unless somebody insists that somebody else is morally responsible.  So moral responsibility can just as easily be a social fiction necessarily conjured up to make socities like America possible.   Children can be just as easily raised to feel no moral responsibility as raised to agree they have moral responsibility.  Babies and toddler need to be 'taught' to mimic the morality of the parent, because the morality they are born with is selfishness.  A sense of moral responsibility cannot be shown to transcend environmental conditioning.

Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility

We have the innate sense that each of us has the responsibility to act morally, and indeed, we observe we are free agents who do choose right from wrong freely

This is not true of sociopaths.  You can get rid of that rebuttal by arbitrarily excluding them as disqualified misfits, but the point is that your theory doesn't account for all the relevant data, you can only make your case by appeal to what some or most humans are like, not all. 

Sociopaths are just as human as anybody else, so we cannot automatically assume their sociopathic condition constitutes a misrepresentation of human reality.  To be human might indeed require that you have little to no concern for other people's feelings.

THEREFORE: Therefore Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems

If we are purely physical entities, we can only act as a series of events, and we are unable to act freely (this is the nature of physical things). Our free agency demonstrates we are more than simple physical objects.

Tell that to Christians who adopt 5-Point Calvinism, and they'll scream back that the ease with which you assume humans have "free agency" makes it appear you never read the bible in your life.   I suggest god's like-minded ones get their act together before they present their in-house controversies to the world as if they were absolute truth.

Cold Case Christianity: Dear Mr. Wallace, stop trying to prove Christian crap without the bible

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

Are There Any Good Reasons to Believe in Heaven 

(EvenWithout the Evidence from Scripture)?

There Are Good Reasons to Believe God Exists

If so, you have to first get over the impossible problem of incoherency.  Nothing depends so critically on the fallacy of special pleading, than the god-hypothesis.  You say God "sees" me, but he doesn't have physical eyes.  God has beliefs about me but doesn't have a physical brain.  Given there is not even one confirmed case of non-physical intelligence, your god will always remain an incoherent idea until you find a haunted house whose bumps in the night cannot be explained naturalistically.

While this may seem controversial to those who dismiss the existence of God out of hand, there are several lines of evidence supporting this reasonable conclusion. The reality of objective moral truths,

Go ahead and name whatever moral you think is binding upon all people at all times.  Let me guess:  "Don't torture babies solely for entertainment", right?  Why do you believe this to be binding on all people?  Because the bible says?  Because the Pope says?  How far in the toilet would this argument get you, if you were presenting it to somebody who thought torturing babies solely for entertainment would be morally justified in certain situations?  It's an absurdly weak argument that the only way you can establish it is if your opponent agrees with it?  And some would argue that because God is all-powerful and thus can achieve whatever purpose he wants for children without causing them to be tortured, God's torturing of the baby born to David and Bathsheba, could not have been for any other reason than God's good pleasure.  God could have killed the baby immediately, he didn't have to cause it to suffer severe illness for 7 days first:

15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

Finally, Calvinists are Christians who say God causes people to commit all the sins they actually commit, so since some people torture babies solely for entertainment, Calvinists say God is responsible for such heinous acts, which destroys any argument that baby-torture-solely-for-entertainment is objectively immoral.  Read Isaiah 13:13-18 (God causing pagan men to rape Hebrew women and beat Hebrew toddlers to death) and Ezekiel 38:4 - 39:6 (using hooks-in-your-jaws metaphor to describe the degree to which God controls the choices and actions of men, specifically in causing pagan men to attack Israel), before you insist that baby-torture is surely not something God would ever cause.

Wallace continues:

the appearance of design in biology,

But a) the design is also full of defects, yet you only wish to credit god with the design and not the design's defects, yet you have no objective reason for suppressing the latter, which means the defective design argues that whatever intelligence is responsible for them, is not perfect, and b) the argument that all complexity required design, requires your god, who must himself possess at least as much complexity in order to produce complex stuff, to have been designed by an intelligent mind.  Simply insisting that biblical monotheism forbids you from riding the logic train all the way to the end, doesn't mean the train actually stops where you need it to.  As an atheist, I love using the argument from design to falsify the biblical teaching of monotheism.  If extremely complex things like the human brain strongly imply an intelligent designer, then the infinitely more complex god who created the human brain, was even more likely the result of an intelligent creator.

the existence of a universe that has a beginning

The evidence for the beginning of the entire universe is absurdly weak.  First, the big bang doesn't prove god even if it is true.  That theory doesn't say the singularity popped into existence from nothing, but says the universe we know resulted from the pre-existing singularity exploding.  How the singularity got there, or whether it always existed, isn't answered by the Big Bang.  Second, if Hubble inferred taht red-shifted star light implies stars rushing away from the earth, then starlight at the other end of the spectrum, blue, would logically require blue stars to be rushing toward earth.  The Andromeda galaxy is blue-shifted.  But if the big bang theory be true, something must have caused that galaxy to slow down and eventually turn back toward the place where the big bang occurred.  Only gravity could cause that, but alas, there is nothing between us and the Andromeda galaxy that would create the massive amount of gravity needed to make it do a u-turn.  So redshift and blueshift likely do not speak to whether the star is moving, hence, redshift, does not support the big bang.

and the presence of transcendent laws of logic are best explained by the existence of God.

One law of logic is the law of identity ("A = A").  If God exists, he would already be subject to the law of identity, which means he could not cause, or be prior to, the logical law of identity, and therefore, at best, logic governs god, god does not govern logic.  If God is the reason the law of identity is valid, then he could conceivably exist before it and without being governed by it.  Now how reasonable is the idea of a being who is free from the law of identity?

The laws of logic are not transcendent, they are a function of language.  The logical law of identity says "A is A".  When you ask where logic came from, you may as well be asking why a thing is what it is, and why it isn't something other than itself.  If you don't see the stupidity of asking why a thing is what it is, then it is little wonder that you think asking where logic came from is just as legitimate as asking where burritos come from.  Just because this world is full of physical things that were caused by prior means, doesn't mean that just anything you can possibly put into words, needs to have a cause.

Logic, being axiomatic by being required for even the absolute starting point of all chains of reasoning, is thus itself immune from the question of its origin.  To properly ask where logic came from, you have to employ logic itself, which means the matter in question is being presumed in the question before the answer is given, otherwise known as the fallacy of begging the question.  To avoid the fallacy, whatever produced logic must not be logic itself, which means the causal mechanism can exist without being bound by logic, just like a woman exists before, and is not bound by, her child.  You would also avoid the fallacy by framing your question in a non-logical way.  But while that would protect you from begging the question, the non-logical question doesn't function as legitimate inquiry.  Nothing is more reasonable than refusing to answer questions that defy logic.

Some apologists point out that even if there were no intelligence in the universe, a square shaped rock would still be logically distinct from the other one that is shaped like a circle, so that logic seems to pervade reality even in the absence of intelligent minds.   But this rebuttal backfires, however, since if the universe had no intelligent life, then "god" wouldn't be there either, in which case one rock maintaining its logical distinction from another, despite the absence of god, would show that logic exists even in the absence of god. 

There Are Good Reasons to Believe God Is Good (In Spite of the Problem of Evil)
Skeptics sometimes point to the problem of evil (in one form or another) to argue against the existence of God (or His good, all-loving nature). But when examined closely, the presence of moral evil, natural evil, Christian evil, “theistic” evil, or pain and suffering fail to negate the existence of God, even as they fail to blemish His righteousness.

God causes pagan men to rape women and beat toddlers to death, Isaiah 13:13-18.  There's no mystery of evil, its what humans do.  If your god exists, then, by his own admission, he is responsible for all the evil.

There Are Good Reasons to Believe Humans Have Souls
In addition to this, there are many good reasons to believe humans are more than simply physical bodies. The arguments from private knowledge, first-person experiences, part-independency, physical measurements, self-existence and free-will make a powerful, cumulative circumstantial case for the existence of our souls.

Maybe for Christians for whom just any damn thing you say will be deemed a powerful argument.  But not for atheists.  Nothing could be more obvious than that mental states are entirely dependent on brain states.  If the bible hadn't alleged the existence of immaterial souls or spirits, you wouldn't be wasting anybody's time with this sophistry.

And indeed, some Christians are dichotomists (they believe the bible teaches man is only two things, body and soul) and other Christians are trichotomists (they believe the bible teaches man has a body, a soul and something different called "spirit").  Then there's the inconvenient fact that you sit around pretending the immaterial nature of the soul is just as obvious as is the existence of trees, when you don't have one single confirmed case that souls even exist.

There are Good Reasons to Believe Souls Are Not Limited to Physical Existence
While our physical bodies are obviously limited to their physical existence and cease to function at the point of material death, there is no reason to believe the immaterial soul is similarly impacted.

If the soul wasn't affected by the body, we'd expect people not to undergo the personality changes and memory lapses they do after severe head-trauma.  The injury is obviously physically affecting the mind, and only Christian apologists, crazed to defend biblical inerrancy at all costs, would trifle that "maybe" the immaterial soul seems affected by the physical, for reasons other than the soul being physical.  If the bible had said the ultimate basis of muscle-power is spiritual, you'd be insisting that just because there is a physical explanation for muscular power, doesn't necessarily prove there's no spiritual causal mechanism at work.

If we are truly “soulish” creatures, our immaterial existence can reasonably be expected to transcend our physical limitations.

And since you haven't the least bit of evidence for such a thing, I sleep well at night in my confidence that immaterial things are about as coherent as flying elephants.  The possibility of an eternal hell doesn't exactly give me insomnia.

There are Good Reasons to Believe a Good God Would Not Make Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Elusive
All of us, as humans, yearn for justice, satisfaction and joy. These are good goals and ambitions.

Such as pedophiles, who think America's current laws on sexual age of consent are unfair and need to be lowered?  That's the stupidity your argument leads to.  Not all senses of injustice justify inferring that justice is some divine thing.

A good God (if He exists) would make these expectations attainable for His beloved children.

Are you drunk?  You just made a good argument that God does NOT love any followers who have suffered for years and died due to breaches of "justice".  Preaching to your trusting audience of Christians that God will someday set justice right, doesn't answer this criticism.

There are Good Reasons to Believe Complete Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Are Elusive in Our Temporal, Material Lives
Our daily experience demonstrates a simple reality, however: justice is not always served here on Earth (bad people often get away with their crimes), and while we continually pursue satisfaction and joy, we find they are fleeting and elusive.

Irrelevant.  And a person's sense of justice changes as they age.  The young Christian get made at god for being unable to find work and the resulting homelessness.  The older Christian is more likely to conclude that being homeless is, spiritually speaking, a good thing because it works spiritual maturity and causes you to make more conscious efforts to depend on God.  So the human sense of justice/injustice is sufficiently ambivalent that there's probably not an objective standard of right and wrong sitting in back of it.

There are Good Reasons to Believe a Good God Would Provide Complete Justice, Satisfaction and Joy in the Eternal Life He Offers Beyond the Grave

Well gee, if you already presuppose that god is "good", then obviously....you could rightfully expect him to correct injustices at some point.

If these worthy desires for justice, satisfaction and joy are unattainable in our material existence, where could they ultimately be experienced?

For some people, never.  Like the Canaanites attacked by Moses and Joshua, such people were fatal victims of crass injustice.

If God has designed us as dualistic, “soulish” creatures, these innate desires could eventually be realized in our eternal lives beyond the grave. If a good God exists (and there are many sufficient reasons to believe this is the case),

And every single of one of them evaporate in light of your own bible teaching that God causes men to rape Hebrew women, Isaiah 13:13-18.   Now what?

the expectation of an afterlife is reasonable.

It is the hope of the hopeless in their god and his mud-pit profit.

Heaven is the place where God will accomplish everything we would expect from Him and everything we (as living souls) desire.

Preaching to the choir.  Dismissed.

I don’t have to be a Christian in order to take this kind of reasonable approach to the issue.

Yes you do, unless you are convinced by Isaiah 13 that the god of the bible is a piece of shit.

Maybe that’s why many non-Christians have developed similar views on the nature of the next life. Long before Christianity, ancient Egyptians believed the afterlife was a place of final satisfaction and joy for those who were able to obtain a life with the gods in the “Sekhet-Aaru of the Tuat”. The followers of Zoroastrianism believed those who died would eventually be brought back to life and judged so final justice could be served. There are many similar examples of such expectations of an afterlife throughout the history of humanity. Even those who knew nothing of the truth of God’s Word held an intuitive understanding of what the next life might be like. This is still true today.

And since those religions came before Christianity, its pretty clear who is borrowing afterlife concepts from whom.

Our non-believing friends and family have an instinctive sense there is more to this life; a sense there must be a place where justice is finally served and where joy and satisfaction will finally be found.

And that argument gets beaten down from the fact that many convicted pedophiles sincerely believe the current American laws are unjust.  So under your logic, we should seriously consider that in heaven, pedophiles will joyfully experience the righting of the wrongs they suffered under prudish American law?

Or did you suddenly discover that not all human senses of injustice imply a pie-in-the-sky wonderland where everything will be made all better like the end of a fairy tale?

They have an innate expectation of Heaven, and they are simply waiting for God to reveal the truth to them. Maybe they’re waiting to hear about Heaven from us, if only we are willing to begin a reasonable discussion.
And as usual, you have no confidence in the power of the sovereign Holy Spirit at all, since at the end of the day, you equate your apologetics dreams with his activity in your heart, when for all you know, the Holy Spirit's goals are diamentrically opposed to Christians pretending that convincing unbelievers Christianity is true need not involve the Holy Spirit's work any more than does convincing a jury that a criminal suspect is guilty.

Clearly, Wallace, you are horrifically dissatisfied with the idea that God doesn't need your help.  What will be the title of your next article?  Maybe "If you don't learn how to defend your faith forensically by purchasing my books, Jesus might go back into the tomb!"