Cold Case Christianity: J. Warner Wallace wants 3rd graders to draw conclusions about calculus problems

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? 

The Bacterial Flagellum and the Divine Design Inference

Posted: 27 Mar 2019 01:27 AM PDT

Of all the arguments related to the existence of God, the argument from the appearance of design is perhaps the most intuitive and visual. As we examine and observe the complexity (and inter-connectivity) of biological systems, we can’t help but come away with the impression these organisms and cellular micro-machines have been carefully crafted by a master artist. One such complex micro-machine has been heralded above all others in teleological arguments for the existence of God. Bacterial flagella remain a mystery to scientists who recognize them as a marvel of machine-like precision. Harvard biophysicist, Howard Berg, has publicly described the bacterial flagellum as “the most efficient machine in the universe.”  Is God real? The bacterial flagellum is best explained by God’s existence as the Intelligent Designer of biological systems.

 A point by point reply to such cheerleading is hardly necessary.  A few points will suffice:

• The vast majority of people do not have a college-level understanding of biology, so Wallace's integrity takes a hit as he tries to wow his predominantly and mostly scientifically apathetic audience with biological issues that require a college-level education to really appreciate.  One look at his book "Cold Case Christanity" and you can only guess what level of education his expected readership has.  Let's just say you don't attempt to teach algebra to those who are still struggling with bone-head math.
  
• Enhancing the anti-science sentiment of Wallace's article, is his failure to give any meaningful consideration to the counter-arguments offered by biologists equally if not more competent in the required fields than Behe.  Perhaps Wallace was aware that because he is writing to a non-scholarly audience, one-sided cheerleading will be preferable to scholarly interchange?
  
• Because the historical argument against the resurrection of Jesus is powerful, the rational person, convinced by irreducible complexity that some god exists, would likely exclude Christianity in their search for this god.  So ID ironically has a tendency to direct the unbeliever away from the "Christian" god, when its most vocal proponents are using it to direct people toward the Christian god.
  
• Under ID reasoning emerges a conclusion that most old-earth creationists reluctantly agree with:  The traits of certain animals that make them 'carnivores' (i.e., enough intelligence to kill other life forms, teeth intended to rip flesh, highly developed ability to see prey) are the result of ID, they are not what happens to some herbivores after sin came into the world.  In other words, baboons, hawks and lions often eat prey alive (or in the case of cats and whales, terrifying their prey in sadistic fashion before killing it) NOT because of sin degrading some herbivores into carnivores, but because god intended them to do this from eternity no less than than he intended for Adam and Eve to enjoy peace in the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, God says in Genesis 1:31, after creating the world and all its creatures, that this is "very good".  We really have to wonder why many Christians have a problem seeing such sadistic misery as "very good"...is this because the god (who allegedly put his law into their hearts) is trying to tell them that the biblical portrait of God is inaccurate?  If not, then they are forced to be open to the possibility that their strong moral feelings might be entirely determined by genetics and environmental conditioning, and in that case, down the toilet goes Frank Turek's argument that our strong moral feelings usually come from God.
  
• Behe was soundly refuted in a court of law in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 - Dist. Court, MD Pennsylvania 2005.  The court's entire ruling against ID is here, and the part that kicks Behe's ass all over hell and back begins with the phrase "ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments".  Use ctrl + f to find that phrase.
  
• Behe was defeated again in a later court case:

Plaintiffs offer little admissible evidence to the contrary. Plaintiffs' Biology expert, Dr. Michael Behe, submitted a declaration concluding that the BJU text mentions standard scientific content. (Watters Decl. Ex. U.) However, Professor Behe "did not consider how much detail or depth" the texts gave to this standard content. (Watters Decl. Ex. U ¶ 4.) Therefore, Professor Behe fails to refute one of Professor Kennedy's primary concerns that the nature of science, the theory of evolution, and critical thinking are not taught adequately.

See here.  That ruling was upheld on appeal.  A webpage at USC contains more information and documents.  The page went defunct but can still be found through Wayback.  See here.

• The Christan "apologists" who have been attacking me through my prior court cases (so far, only one, James Patrick Holding and his increasingly vanishing brood of Corinthian juvenile delinquents who mistake their love of strife with spiritual maturity) are hypocrites:  They are positively certain that when a Court ruled against me in a previous case, it was completely obvious that my lawsuit was frivolous or that I was "abusing" the court system.  But when they read another Court decision indicating that Christianity was the loser, then suddenly, we need to recognize that judges aren't perfect and often get things wrong.   In other words, whether the Court's ruling is correct or incorrect depends on whether the ruling speaks favorably or unfavorably about Christians and Christianity.  How convenient.  The more apologists decry the Kitzmiller ruling, the more they assent to the obvious:  Court judges are not paragons of objectivity, despite how the people in steerage gasp for breath and bow down whenever somebody wearing a black robe enters the courtroom.  Anybody familiar with the social controversy of whom the President will appoint as a Supreme Court Justice, is quite aware that judges are human too, and they are not much better at overcoming their biases than the average person is.
  
• Plenty of scientists have criticized Behe's model.  See here and here.
  
• Behe was challenged in live debate by competent scientists.  See here.  You can find him doing more such debates by simply googling "Behe debates"

Anybody clever enough to Google "Behe" and "irreducible complexity" and are willing to acknowledge that creationist websites are not the only sites mentioning his name, can find more proof that biologists and chemists with legitimate scientific degrees are nowhere near as impressed by "irreducible complexity", as is the usually Christian and non-college graduate reader of J. Warner Wallace's populist cheerleading.

If Wallace would honestly acknowledge his article here would not be intended to impress an atheist who has a master's degree in biochemistry, then he is keeping the door open to the possibility that he is only trying to convince laypersons about complex matters because he knows their ignorance will predispose them to overlook his errors and be more quick to just draw the pro-Christian conclusion he was hoping for.

My challenge to Christian apologist Jonathan McLatchie

The following is the challenge I emailed to Cross-Examined author Jonathan McLatchie,  his reply, and my response. McLatchie is describes himself as one of the "world's leading apologists" at his youtube site, and  apparently has a master's degree in evolutionary biology and is active in other apologetics ministries involving Frank Turek and Josh McDowell, and if that is the case, then his stated reason for refusal to debate me is even less sensible, since apparently he isn't a know-nothing hack, but is quite capable of understanding what needs to be done to validly defend something he believes.
 ==============

On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com> wrote:

to
jmclatchie@apologetics-academy.org

Though I am an atheist, I agreed with and replied to your blog post about how modern Christian apologetics can reduce "Christianity" to little more than a game of intellectual jousting.

In my reply, I insist that apologists Steve Hays, Jason Engwer, and especially James Patrick Holding, bear about as much spiritual fruit as a dead alligator.  The passion for holines seen in the NT epistles and in 3 more centuries of patristic writings is screamingly absent from their online writings.

James Patrick Holding libeled me and I sued him, and instead of doing the Christian thing and apologizing, he hired a lawyer at great expense to himself and his followers, to get both cases dismissed on technicalities...then continued libeling me anyway, as if he was just brick stupid.  Holding's claim to fame is his citing the Context Group to justify his belief that the NT authorizes Christians of today to belittle and defame anybody who publicly criticize Christianity, a position he cannot find support for in any published Christian scholar, including the Context Group, who have disowned him in no uncertain terms more than once.

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/09/sometimes-christian-apologists-say-good.html

I am also finishing up a book to be marketed to doubting Christians, to motivate them to not be afraid to take that last step and actually stop having faith.  So since your goal is the exact opposite, perhaps you'd be interested in some discussions with me, especially since I use my blog to advertise reasons for doubt around the internet, potentially reaching the same Christians you are trying to protect.

As usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.

Here's a short list of matters I'm willing to discuss with apologists:

1 - There are only 3 eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection in the NT, at best, all the rest are hearsay.  And that's generously granting assumptions of apostolic gospel authorship that I am otherwise prepared to attack on the merits.

2 - Apostle Paul's gospel contradicts the one Jesus preached.

3 - The actions of the 11 apostles after allegedly experiencing the risen Christ indicate what they actually experienced, if anything, was something less than the "amazing transformation" lauded so loudly by apologists.

4 - Because Matthew is in all likelihood not responsible for the content in canonical Greek Matthew, he and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

5 - Because John was willing to falsely characterize divine words he got by vision, as if they were things the historical Jesus really said and did, John and his gospel are disqualified as witnesses.

6 – John’s intent to write a "spiritual" gospel as opposed to imitating the Synoptics which he knew had already disclosed the “external facts”, argues that “spiritual” here implies something different than mere writing down of eyewitness testimony.  The historical evidence that is accepted by even fundamentalists makes clear that John’s source for gospel material included visions and not just memory.

7 - The NT admission that most of Paul's converts apostatized from him for the Judaizer gospel, warrants skeptics to be a bit more hesitant than Christians before classifying Paul as a truth-robot.  The NT evidence against Paul's integrity is many, varied and strong.

8 - Papias asserted Mark "omitted nothing" of what he heard Peter preach.  Because Bauckham is wrong when saying Papias here was using mere literary convention, Papias meant that phrase literally...in which case Mark's silence on the virgin birth is not due to his "omission" of it, the virgin birth doesn't appear in his gospel because there was never a virgin birth story available for him to omit in the first place...a strong attack on Matthew's and Luke's credibility.

9 - Paul's belief that Mark's abandonment of ministry justifies excluding him from further ministry work (Acts 15) will always remain a justifiable reason (assuming Acts’ historicity here) to say Mark wasn't too impressed with gospel claims, even assuming he later fixed his disagreements with Paul and wrote the gospel now bearing his name.

10 - Mark's strong apathy toward writing down Peter's preaching supports the above premise that he was less than impressed with the gospel, and likely only joined himself to the group for superficial reasons.  Not a good day for fundamentalists who think Mark was inspired by God to write his gospel.

11 - Peter's explicit refusal to endorse Mark's gospel writing, militates, for obvious reasons, against the idea that Peter approved of it.

12 - stories of women becoming pregnant by a god in a way not disturbing her virginity, are securely dated hundreds of years before the 1st century.  The copycat Savior hypothesis is virtually unassailable, once the admittedly false skeptical exaggerations of the evidence are excluded, and rationally warrants skepticism toward Matthew's and Luke's honesty.

13 - The failure of Jesus' own immediate family to believe his ministry-miracles were genuinely supernatural (the logical inference from John 7:5 and Mark 3:21-31) provides reasonable and rational warrant for skeptics to say the miracles Jesus allegedly did, were no more real than those done by Benny Hinn and other wildly popular religiously fanatical con artists.

14 - The evidence for the specific contention that most of the apostles or earliest Christians died as martyrs (i.e., were forced to choose between death or committing blasphemy, and chose death) is furiously scanty and debatable, justifying skepticism toward this popular apologetic argument.

15 - the mass-hallucination hypothesis does not require the exact same mental images to have been shared by the original apostles.  Mass-hallucination need not require such impossibility any more than Pentecostals being slain in the spirit requires them to all move and talk in the exact same way before they can validly claim to have shared the same experience.

16 - There are contradictions in the resurrection accounts that are not capable of reasonable harmonization.

I am also willing to discuss whatever apologetics argument you think is the most clear and compelling.  Intelligent Design?  You'd be surprised at how easy that is to refute and how it justifies Marcion's heresy.  Messianic prophecy?  I'll discuss whichever one you believe is the most compelling.  Atheism?  I argue that "God" as believed in the Judaeo-Christian heritage is an incoherent concept, which provides all the rational warrant necessary to dismiss it just as quickly one dismisses pyramid power or telepathy. Epistemology?  I advocate empiricism, namely, you cannot give a convincing argument that anybody has ever learned a fact completely apart from their 5 physical senses, therefore, believing facts never come to our minds except via one or more of our five physical senses, is about as invalidly presumptuous as believing the cars I see continue to exist after I shut my eyes. 

I will discuss any other topic you wish. 

Sincerely,

Barry Jones

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Jonathan McLatchie <jmclatchie@apologetics-academy.org> wrote:

So let me get this straight: you have a history of suing people, and you are basically saying that if I don't accept, you're going to assume that you won? I'm going to save us both the trouble now, because I am not predicting a fruitful exchange of ideas. Best wishes on your future endeavors.

Jonathan

Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com>           

12:14 PM (8 minutes ago)   to Jonathan

First, I said good things about you and agreed with your basic premise, so I'm a bit less incorrigible/ignorant than you imply.

Second, if you really are the good conservative Christian you paint yourself to be, then you have no rational basis to believe I might take something you tell me and sue you for it.  If you didn't plan to libel or defame me, then you leave yourself no reason to avoid debate with me, especially in light of the fact that in your reply you don't mention any such thing as lack of time or being too busy. If you are fearful that I twist the law to frivolously sue people for libel, feel free to request from me a copy of my two lawsuits against James Patrick Holding, and you'll quickly discover that I don't twist the law or the facts when I sue people for libel.  You might have to face the grim possibility that your Christian brother Mr. Holding is every bit the unrepentant dishonest scumbag my lawsuits and my blog allege that he is, whether this truth upsets you or not.

Third, I did not express or imply that I'd win a debate with you all because you refused to step in the ring.  What I said was

    As usual when I contact Christian apologists, I will be posting this email to you at my blog, to make sure that if you choose not to respond, you will likely be asked why by Christians who read my blog, and they can then decide whether your reason for refusal to engage was because you think I am not intellectually qualified, or because you were fearful that you could not defend your faith in light of my attacks.

That neither expresses nor implies "if you don't respond, I win!".  I leaves it to the reader to decide whether your excuse for refusing to debate is genuine, or pretext.

Fourth, I'm not seeing how my history of suing people is relevant to you and I discussing your favorite apologetics arguments.  You cannot avoid the criticism "the 'sign' in Isaiah 7:14 was not the girl's virginity while pregnant, but the timing between the defeat of the two rival kingdoms Ahaz feared, and the boy's ability to distinguish good and evil" by saying "you've sued people in the past!"   My suing people in the past wouldn't help you escape the sad fact that there are only 3 resurrection testimonies in the NT that come down to us today in first-hand form.  If you think 3 is sufficient to compel belief upon pain of being proved irrational, you can surely attempt to sustain that thesis without needing to bring up the fact that I sued people in the past.

Fifth, You don't say so, but I cannot help believing that some of the reason you are so terse with me is that I really slaughtered the reputation of James Patrick Holding in a rather brutal way, and you are merely miffed at this gaping wound in the body of Christ left by a person you think is a disciple of the devil.  All factual allegations I made against anybody in any of my lawsuits were true, especially the two lawsuits I filed against James Patrick Holding.  Mr. Holding, dishonest fake Christian that he is, chose to pay a lawyer $21,000 to obtain dismissal of my lawsuits against him on technicalities so that he wouldn't have to answer my charges on the merits...instead of settling with me for thousands of dollars less as Jesus required of him in Matthew 5:25, 40.

Mr. Holding's refusal to agree to reasonable settlement was in violation of Jesus' legal advice, supra, and when he finally couldn't stand the pressure anymore, he posted a video giving an interpretation of that passage that he still cannot find any support for from any Christian scholar, liberal or conservative.  Worse, his interpretation contradicts the one espoused by conservative evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg, as I prove in one of my blogs.

Sixth, shame on you for dishonestly pretending my litigation history makes you think I'd be an unworthy or unqualified debate opponent.   I offered you specific debate challenges on specific debate topics that do not require either of us to bring up any living person's litigation history or reputation.  The reader will have to decide what makes more sense:  You really think my lawsuit history somehow proves I'm either dishonest in my bible arguments or too stupid to be deemed a worthy opponent, ...or you are instead fearful that you would lose a debate with me, but saving face is more important than letting the gazing public know the humbling truth.   You are an apologist.  You cannot exactly afford to admit your true fears.  You wish to lead others to the light.  You cannot achieve that goal if you admit there are some unbeliever-arguments that really kick your theological ass to the moon and back.

Well given that my suing people in the past doesn't have jack shit to do with whether my views of the bible are correct, I'm guessing that you are genuinely fearful you could not sustain a reasonable defense of your faith in debate with me, and the reason you lie about why you refuse to engage is because your desire to save face is stronger than your desire to be honest.

One of these days, a doubting Christian will take you up on your offer to help them get over a biblical problem, and will mention that something at my blog encouraged their doubts, then you will have to explain why you think the fact that I sued a lot of people in the past is sufficient reason to turn away from my bible criticism and tell yourself I surely must have gotten something wrong somewhere.  Good luck with that.

I continue to say that your bible-god approves of sex within adult-child marriages.  You have no rational warrant to charge me with foolishness and cataclysmic ignorance until AFTER you have debated me and found out for yourself how much or little I can sustain that thesis as you try to refute it.

When you become prepared to handle academic criticisms of your cherished beliefs in a way that doesn't involve the childish irrelevant subject matter you are currently trying to hide behind ("you've sued a lot of people!", etc), you know how to contact me.

Best wishes,

Barry Jones

http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

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 Update: September 9, 2017:  I just found Mr. McLatchie's Youtube channel, and thus found out he has also formally debated atheists and others, so when this is combined with his academic degrees in evolutionary biology, his "you've sued a lot of people!" excuse for refusing to debate me is even less sensible than I first asserted, but for now, this is what I posted at his channel, and I predict that it will be deleted by him as soon as he notices it:




I responded to another of his youtube videos:




I posted the following to another one of McLatchie's videos, here: