Shooting down J. Warner Wallace's "quick shots": God SENDS people to hell

This is my reply to a "quick shot" argument from J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Quick Shot: 

“A loving God would not send people to hell”

Posted: 24 Jun 2019 01:05 AM PDT 

In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, Quick Shot: “A loving God would not send people to hell.” Response #1:
“What do you mean by ‘loving?’

We mean the only kind of love you can rationally expect an unbeliever to recognize:  human love...which, if it exists, would never say that it "delights" in inflicting sadistic tortures on people, as God expressed "delight" to do in Deuteronomy 28:63.

A loving God must also be just, or His love is little more than an empty expression.

But in the bible, God's love is also manifested by unexplained apathy toward "justice" for sin, for example, while David's sin of adultery and murder required death under the Law (God's expression of justice) God also apparently was able to conveniently bypass that requirement of justice and merely 'take away' those sins in conveniently unspecified manner, in the sense of refusing to impose the just penalty on David.  God instead tortured a baby to death over a period of several days, not because of David's sin, but because the Lord's enemies were given occasion by that sin to laugh:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 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. 12:11-18 NAU)

Let's see...God finds it this easy to exempt deserving sinners of the "just" penalty God required under law?  Apparently, god's own sense of justice magically becomes malleable whenever such justice might hurt his favorite political candidate.

If everyone was offered the same experience in the afterlife, how loving (or fair) would it be for Mother Teresa and Hitler to receive the same reward?

how "fair" is it that the guilty pedophile makes it into heaven just as easily as you do?  How "fair" is it to threaten women with rape, as God does in Isaiah 13:15-17?  How "fair" is it that sinless Jesus should pay a penalty he didn't deserve?  How "fair" is it that we inherit Adam's sin even though God could just as easily have prevented future generations from inheriting that sin? 

Most of us can think of someone who should be punished: serial killers, child molesters, rapists. I bet you can also think of someone worthy of punishment, right? How loving would God be to reward these criminals rather than punish them?

Very...God's love apparently sometimes causes him to use his magic fairy dust to change the attitude of pagan idolaters so that they do whatever he wants them to do (Ezra 1:1).

How fair would that be to their victims?

If you can employ "God's ways are mysterious" to get out of a theological jam, will you extend to skeptics the same courtesy?  Or is there some bible verse that says only conservative Protestants are allowed to hide behind that dodge?

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes, God tortured David's infant son for 7 days before killing it.  See above, yet you still think God was "loving" regardless. God can also be "delighted" (Deut. 28:63) to inflict horrific torments on children, including causing parents to eat their own children during prolonged divinely-imposed famine (v. 56 ff).

How loving would God be to reward criminals rather than punish them?

How often does God "allow" criminals to escape justice?  Will you trifle that this is any different than 'rewarding' the criminal for the crime?  What else does such apathy do but embolden the criminal to engage in future criminal conduct.

If a parent "allowed" their older teen son to proceed unhindered in his known plans to shoot up the school, would they be exhibiting the same degree of respect for their son's freewill than God had for Hitler's freewill during WW2?  Is that loving?  Or did you suddenly discover how useful it can be to cry out "God's mysterious ways/God is holy and righteous no matter what" whenever expediency dictates?  Sure is funny that when "heretical" Christians use that excuse to escape their own theological difficulties, you don't find it very convincing.  Apparently, I missed that bible verse that says this excuse is exclusively owned by Protestants.

How fair would that be to their victims?

How "fair" was God in torturing David's baby to death?  How "fair" was God to threaten women with rape (Isaiah 13:15-17)?  How "fair" was God to the fetus whenforcing women to endure abortion-by-sword (Hosea 13:16)?  How "fair" is God when using force described as "put a hook in your jaws and turn you around" (Ezekiel 38:4 ff) to force certain nations to commit the sin of attacking Israel? 

If you wanna blow a mental gasket, ask yourself how god could possibly think it "sinful" for a person to act in the way that he intended (Ezekiel 38-39, forcing them to attack Israel, something he plans to "punish" those nations for doing)?  God is also telling unrepentent sinners to continue committing sin in Revelation 22:11.  Will god then bitch at these sinners when they fulfill this divine desire?

Gee, only in Christianity can God be displeased with you after do everything God wanted you to do the way he wanted you to do it!

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes.  Since it was "just" to demand the death penalty for murder and adultery, it was thus "unjust" to allow David, obviously guilty of both sins, to be exempt from said penalty. 

No, you cannot argue that David was repentant and this somehow justified lifting the harsh OT restriction. The law of Moses neither expresses nor implies that one's repentance can secure them immunity from the consequences the law imposes on their capitol crimes.  Otherwise, when adults commit adultery 70 times per day and then seek forgiveness from the ruling priests and elders for each of those 70 times, the priests would be obligated to forgive them and exempt them from the legal penalty of death.  Such a possibility is neither expressed nor implied in the OT, and is implicitly denied in the NT statement that mercy was not even available for those who transgressed the law (Hebrews 10:28).

Response #2:
“What do you mean by ‘send’?

See the word "depart" in Matthew 7:23 and 25:41:

 23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.' (Matt. 7:23 NAU)

 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; (Matt. 25:41 NAU)

In 7:21 "depart" in the Greek is ἀποχωρέω, a verb that is imperative present active 2nd person plural from ἀποχωρέω.

In 25:41, πορεύομαι is a verb, the imperative present middle 2nd person plural from πορεύομαι.  It means to "go".

As you know, an "imperative" is a command to do something.

Finally, that your stupid meandering "god doesn't send people to hell" is nothing but apostate liberalism is clear from how the NT presents the judgment of God as his sending people into eternal torment:

 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:15 NAU)

Now what?  Maybe you'll trifle that "we throw ourselves into the lake of fire by rejecting the gospel?"

Then read the context, the 'throwing' occurs in the context of God's final judgment on the wicked as the world appears before him in his heavenly court (v. 12), and it is therefore showing an outside force imposing itself on unwilling sinners no less than one observes when unrepentant criminals are convicted in courts of law.

By the way, "thrown" is the Greek verb βάλλω,  it is indicative aorist passive 3rd person singular from βάλλω.  No, that "passive" doesn't mean "self-throwing" is clear from the way most English bibles translate it:

KJV  Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
NAS  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NAU  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NET  Revelation 20:15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.
NIV  Revelation 20:15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
NKJ  Revelation 20:15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
NRS  Revelation 20:15 and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
RSV  Revelation 20:15 and if any one's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
YLT  Revelation 20:15 and if any one was not found written in the scroll of the life, he was cast to the lake of the fire.

Conservative evangelical Christian scholars agree that the heavenly justice here is reminiscent of the earthly justice of kings:

The final judgment is depicted in vv 11–15 in the traditional eschatological imagery derived from the role of kings as dispensers of justice.

Aune, D. E. (2002). Vol. 52C: Word Biblical Commentary :
Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 1104). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Then there are other NT passages that make it clear that the guilty criminals are not accepting their punishment, they are trying to avoid it out of fear of pain and misery, even if fruitlessly:

 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;
 16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:15-17 NAU)

Wallace fruitlessly continues:

Our eternal destination is predicated by our choice, not His.

You apparently are more interested in collecting Facebook friends in modern democratic America, than you are in reading your bible.

God wants us to join Him in heaven,

5-Point Calvinism, a legitimate form of Christianity that accepts the Trinity, Jesus' full deity, his physical resurrection,  salvation by grace, justification by faith, and bible inerrancy, teaches that God does NOT love everybody, and intended from all eternity to damn certain sinners, by refusing to change their heart, to make sure they'd never "choose" god.

So your answer is merely begging for the reader to automatically construe Calvinism as false, when in fact Calvinism and Arminianism have split the church since the 17th century, and before that, Augustine and Pelagius disagreed similarly.   If Calvinism were "obviously" unbiblical, we wouldn't expect it to have divided the church anymore than we expect the question of Jesus' gender to divide the church.

but He won’t force people into his presence who don’t want to be there.

But your God is "wrathful" in doling out his justice, and his forcing people to endure his fearful judgments is also clear from the bible:

 10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. (Rev. 14:10 NAU) 

In a context describing divine "wrath" and "anger" that brims at "full strength", it is perfectly reasonable to credit the "tormented with fire" to a torment that god is inflicting on sinners unwilling to endure it by choice.

 26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
 29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
 30 For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."
 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Heb. 10:26-31 NAU)

 What a shame!  A Christian apologist, in all of his allegedly sincere "walking with Christ" and prayerful bible study, is more ignorant of the bible than an atheist!

Some people hate God;

I also hate the Big Bad Wolf and other fictional villains.  What are you gonna do, notify adult protective services that my delusions make me a danger to myself and others? 

others ignore Him entirely.

If God is going to deprive them of his direct communications they can experience with their empirical senses, God has no right to complain if sinners take their cue from him and likewise deprive him of their direct communications he can experience empirically. 

Draw close to sinners, and we will draw close to you.

They don’t choose to seek Him,

5-Point Calvinism says this is because God refuses to change their heart, which logically must come first before they can will to seek him, so blaming sinners for not seeking god is about as sensible as blaming dogs for barking.  So unless you are prepared to show Calvinism is "unbiblical", skeptics will have a valid excuse:  we refuse to seek God because only God can change our hearts, and he obviously doesn't wish to change our hearts.  If you can stop the fan's annoying rattling by fixing it, but you just sit there letting it rattle on and bother you, you have nobody to blame but yourself. 

You will say human beings are not analogous to inanimate objects, but Paul pushes his person/pot analogy to an absurd extreme in Romans 9:20-23.

and they don’t want to spend eternity with Him.

If you found out somebody tortured your baby to death over a period of several days (2nd Samuel 12:15-18), would you want to spend eternity with such a sadistic lunatic?  Me neither.  Glad we established at least some common ground!

God honors those kinds of choices.

But under Calvinism, we don't have the power to make good choices, so God's refusal to spread his Ezra 1:1 magic fairy dust on some unrepentant sinners is still the ultimate reason those particular sinners refuse to repent...and therefore you are being biblically dishonest by pretending that the sinner's accountability ends with noting that they refuse to repent.  They suffer from a freewill defect they are not capable of fixing, so they aren't going to repent in the first place unless God makes the first move.  God's unwillingness to change their heart is no less the cause of their resistance than is their own sinful state.

Who is at fault when your older teen, with your knowledge, gets drunk?  Them, because they had a choice? Or you, because you could have prevented it?

You will trifle that God makes that first move with prevenient grace which is enough to overcome the defective freewill, but which can still be resisted, but Ezekiel 38-39 proves God's ability and intent to force sinners to sin (i.e., put a hook in thy jaws and turn you around), so it follows logically that if God seriously wants you to do something, he will employ this level of force, he will not merely issue commands and arguments, then wring his hands in hopeful expectation that you'll deviate from the sinful course of action he infallibly foreknows you won't deviate from.

When you have infallible foreknowledge of how a person will respond to your command, you do not "expect" them to respond in any different way.  So if God in the bible acts as if he "expects" sinners to obey his commands, its probably beacuse he doesn't have infallible foreknowledge....or the ancient barbarians writing about him did so in an inconsistent fashion.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

And how fucked up would America become if our justice system took the same attitude, and said "convicted criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time in it."

We also won't be forced to spend eternity with those who torture babies to death.  This is a good thing, so I'm not seeing your point.

How much more loving could God be?

If he stopped threatening to "stir up" men to rape women (Isaiah 13:15-17), that might be a start.   If he stopped torturing babies to death, that might show progress?  Or did I forget that you automatically equate the inerrancy of the bible with the inerrancy of your acceptance of classical theism?

Don’t you want Him to honor the choices of those who deny Him?

No and yes.  No, because we don't want earthly judges to honor the choices of those criminals who refuse to acknowledge the judge's authority.

Yes, because we also want him to honor the choices of some of those who accept him, such as little Christian kids who end up being raped, because God just stands there at the foot of the bed, watching and refusing to protect them.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

Criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time therein.

Wallace, were you high on crack when you wrote this piece?

How much more loving could God be?

How loving is it to avoid forcing criminals into the jails they neither seek nor want to spend time in? Where did you get your idea of loving?  A toddler?

If our merely not being forced to spend eternity with god were all there was to say, that would be loving.  But the bible doesn't merely say God will honor the wishes of the unrepentant., it also says he will inflict torment on them against their will (i.e.,. "let the rocks and trees hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne", supra).  Under your idea of "love", God would not judge these people as long as they continued hiding, because they neither seek nor want that god in their lives.

(!?)

And don't forget that the case of apostle Paul (Acts 9, 22, 26) proves that if God really wants to, he not only knows about, but approves of, a forceful method of evidence-presentation convincing enough to convert even those who are in the middle of acting out their murderous hatred toward the Christian god.

What else was God doing when manifesting himself to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus, except violating Paul's freewill?

Would it take too much energy for God to give a less convincing display to skeptics who are less inclined to murder Christians?

Maybe you think causing your opponent temporary physical blindness (the way God inflicted in Paul) constitutes "respect" for their freewill?

Response #3:
“What do you mean by ‘hell’?

That's your problem, as Christians disagree about the nature of hell, and whether it is a place of eternal conscious suffering or something less.  Skeptics are under no obligation to give two shits about biblical issues that Christian scholars disagree with each other about.  When God's like-minded ones get their act together on the nature of "hell", let me know.

Most of us hold a notion of hell that is shaped more by tradition and culture than by the scriptures. For example, the Bible never describes hell as a place where people experience torture.

Then apparently you never read Luke 16:

 22 "Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.
 23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.
 24 "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'
 25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.
 26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.'
 27 "And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house--
 28 for I have five brothers-- in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
 29 "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'
 30 "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'
 31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'" (Lk. 16:22-31 NAU)

Notice that last verse:  most Christian apologists don't believe it.  They think that proving the resurrection to skeptics is far more likely to convince them Christianity is true, than would a mere bible study on Moses and the Prophets.

Wallace continues:

Instead, it’s described as a place where people will be tormented. You can be tormented, for example, by simply making a bad choice (like choosing to deny God’s offer of heaven).

Sorry, but your word-game is abortive:  The issue is not whether torment can result from your own realization that you made a bad choice.  The issue is what does the bible say the nature of hell-torment is?  In Luke 16, a passage that has convinced millions of Christians over 2,000 years that hell is a place of eternal literal conscious torment, the torment is inflicted by "flame", and as shown earlier, Revelation adds to that flame angels as the instruments through which the torment comes.

The Bible describes levels and degrees of punishment. Some will be punished severely, some will only experience the torment and regret of being separated from God and believing family members for eternity. Have your notions of hell be shaped by popular fiction rather than the scriptures?”

No.

Our “Quick Shot” series was written specifically for the Cold-Case Christianity App (you can download it on Apple and Android platforms – be sure to register once you download the App). When confronted with an objection in casual conversation, App users can quickly find an answer without having to scroll beyond the first screen in the category.

One wonders how the Holy Spirit obtained the success he did before the advent of the internet.   You seem to think that Christians who are without your gimmicks are thus deprived of significant apologetics sources.  One would think, from Acts, that the Holy Spirit is quite as dead as your ceaseless employment of psychological tricks implies.  If you seriously believed the Holy Spirit doesn't need your gimmicks to do his job of convicting the world of sin, common sense says you'd probably pay more attention to bible study and less attention to interesting marketing ideas that your publicist tells you will likely increase sales of your highly unnecessary book.

Use the App “Quick Shots” along with the “Rapid Responses” and Case Making “Cheat Sheets” to become a better Christian Case Maker.

And don't worry if you are just a stupid teen Christian with nearly zero biblical knowledge.  There's nothing requiring a foundation of spiritual maturity or watching out for spiritual wickedness in high places. No, arguing about Jesus no more puts demons on your trial than would arguing about the sanitation procedures that must be followed by Denny's dishwashers.

Don't worry about whether you are even "ready" to do apologetics and battle demons at this level.  JUST BUY WALLACE'S BOOK.  If you find out later you've jumped into a spiritual wrestling ring you were never prepared to enter, Wallace will be happy to send you a google search list of christian counselors and Pentecostal churches in your area.  Have a nice day.  And don't forget to make a donation to our "important" work.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, and nothing succeeds quite like money.  Have a nice day.  Sincerely, J. Warner Wallace.

Cold Case Christianity, quick shots, and stupid non-Christians

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

Quick Shot: “Truth cannot be known with any certainty”          

Posted: 15 Apr 2019 01:10 AM PDT

Our “Quick Shot” series offers brief answers to common objections to the Christian worldview. Each response is limited to one paragraph. These responses are designed to (1) answer the objection as concisely as possible, (2) challenge the objector to think more deeply about his or her claim, and (3) facilitate a “gospel” conversation. In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, “You can’t be certain about Christianity because truth cannot be known with any certainty.”

Then you are apparently dealing with a very stupid non-Christian.

snip

Response #2:

“What do you mean by certainty? Do you mean “beyond a possible doubt”? If that’s the standard, we would be paralyzed by fear and indecision. Will my car explode when I turn the key today? I can’t be sure beyond a possible doubt. Will my next restaurant meal result in food poisoning? Again, I can’t be certain beyond a possible doubt. We can’t (and don’t) live by that standard, because, if we did, we wouldn’t want to leave our homes.

So apparently, you DO find human reasoning to be acceptable.  What makes you think it isn't acceptable when evaluating other claims, like the bible-god's not needing sacrifice in order to get rid of sin?

Instead we live by a lower standard known as “beyond a reasonable doubt.” This is also the standard we apply to the most serious criminal trials. If it’s good enough to use in those trials, it’s also good enough for us to use in our daily lives.

And if it's good enough to use in criminal trials, its also apparently good enough, by your own estimation, to be used to analyze biblical claims.   Anonymous witnesses count for exactly nothing in most trials, because you cannot cross-examine them to make sure of their credibility.  If it were otherwise, anybody could get on the stand and say anything, and their anonymity would prevent the parties from uncovering truths about the witness's true level of credibility.  That is, the jury would be given nothing by which to decide whether the witness is believable.

So since most Christian scholars agree that the gospels are anonymous, and disagree more on to what extent any of their contents draw from eyewitness sources, if at all...it sucks to be J. Warner Wallace right about now.  If he had known how the gospels utterly fail the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of evidence used in criminal trials, he probably wouldn't have written the "Cold Case Christianity" marketing gimmick that currently pays for his air fare as he runs around making "appearances".

Do you honestly think truth can’t be known beyond a reasonable doubt?

In the case of ancient history, yes.  In the case of incoherent ideas like "god" that need endless ad hoc rescue to prevent them from being kicked to the curb, yes. 

Have you ever applied this standard to the case for God’s existence or the truth of Christianity?”

Yes.  Since "god" as used in traditional religious parlance is an incoherent idea (performs the physical functions of ears, eyes, etc, but without physicality) the only thing beyond reasonable doubt here is how undeserving "god" is of any serious discussion, except in the sense of explaining why it is reasonable to say "fuck you" to any Christian who wants to discuss theism.

 

I've also applied the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to the gospels, which are anonymous, and anonymous witnesses are of no value in court except in rare situations not applicable here.  The more anonymous the witness, the less you should put stock in anything they have to say.  And, of co)urse, the problem of anonymity (it prevents us from asking pointed questions) plagues apostle Paul too, since his identifying himself doesn't get rid of the problems in his "testimony".

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.

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? No.

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real?

The Argument for God’s Existence from the Appearance of Design in Biology

Posted: 22 Mar 2019 01:29 AM PDT

There are several lines of evidence related to the existence of God,

Which is unfortunate given that the traditional religious concept of "god" is incoherent.

but perhaps the most intuitive argument comes from our observations of biology.

Sooo...what yer really saying is the David Hume was correct, and we should depend upon our personal pool of life-experience.  If we have never seen order arise from disorder by purely naturalistic causes, we should conclude it never does...amen?  Sort of like, if we never see dead bodies come back to life, we should conclude they never do...amen?

  As we examine 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.

Yup, you sure were saying we should consider our personal pool of life-experience to be exhaustive, in direct contradiction to all Christian apologetics, which warns atheists to avoid assuming their experience of reality dictates what's possible for things outside their experience.

Even committed atheist, Richard Dawkins, (in his seminal work, The Blind Watchmaker), concedes the appearance of design: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”  Biologist Robert Dorit puts it this way: “…the apparent fit between organisms seems to suggest some higher intelligence at work, some supervisory gardener bringing harmony and color to the garden.” Is God real? The appearance of design in biology provides yet another piece of evidence.

Even Christians agree Occam's Razor is a valid general rule of thumb.  Well then, given that 'god' is, by your own classical theism, infinitely complex, the 'god' explanation for the order we see in the natural world will necessarily always be sliced away, because any purely naturalistic explanation will necessarily always be somewhat simpler.  And if the universe has existed for all eternity (i.e., if the Big Bang is total bullshit), then the complexity we see on earth had an entire past eternity to materialize.   You likely won't win the lottery by playing it once, but what if you play it every day for 10 billion years?  

Sure, you can overcome that rule of thumb with good evidence that the more complex solution is more likely, but with how bad the arguments for god already are, you will never make the case for god so strong that it will deserve the benefit of the doubt, or survive the Razor.  Atheism would remain thus reasonable even if technically it was wrong.  Reasonableness doesn't mandate accuracy, only informed investigation.

The argument for God’s existence from the appearance of design is known as the “Teleological Argument” (the Greek word, “telos,” means “design”). The argument was first developed by William Paley (1743 – 1805), who argued the intricate, complex, detailed nature of a watch begs intuitively for the existence of a “watch maker”. If we see similar evidence of design in biological systems, doesn’t this also beg for the existence of a biological designer sufficient for the task?

 Once again, "god" is an incoherent concept on its own.  That's quite sufficient to justify waiting for a naturalistic explanation for complexity, even if one doesn't appear at present.  If the atheist among the Vikings in 800 a.d. couldn't provide a completely naturalistic explanation for thunder, what would be more reasonable for him to do?  Wait for science to find one (i.e., what atheists typically do), or conclude "Thor has hit the other side of the sky with his hammer" (i.e., immediately jump to the supernatural explanation)?

Here is one possible formation of the argument:

(1) Human artifacts (like watches) are products of intelligent design.

(2) Biological systems and cellular micro-machines resemble human artifacts

(3) It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, biological systems and cellular micro-machines are the product of intelligent design

(4) But, biological systems and cellular micro-machines are vastly more complex and sophisticated than human artifacts

(5) It is reasonable to conclude, then, the designer responsible for such biological systems and cellular micro-machines must be vastly more intelligent and sophisticated than any human designer

(6) God is vastly more intelligent and sophisticated than any human designer

Such infinite sophistication naturally implies this god is more complex too...in which case the more complex 'god' is, the more you are required, by your own logic, to insist he was created by a prior god...that is, your own logic inevitably requires you to believe in concepts you think are forbidden by your bible.

(7) God is, therefore, the most reasonable candidate for the Intelligent Designer responsible for biological systems and cellular micro-machines

Nope, see above.  I'll give up atheism the day you give up the doctrine of god's uncaused nature.  Deal?

It all comes down to this: can natural forces alone (i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry, unguided chance mutation, and the creative power of natural selection) account for the complexity and “appearance” of design cited by so many atheist biologists?

Suppose a similar question was asked of the atheist accompanying some Vikings in 800 a.d.. 

Vikings:  "can natural forces alone (i.e. the laws of physics and chemistry, unguided chance mutation, and the creative power of natural selection) account for thunder?"
Atheist:  No, not in the present state of scientific knowledge.
Vikings:  then the best explanation for thunder is Thor.  Your unwillingness to believe in Thor and instead just wait around for science to provide a purely naturalistic explanation for this weather phenomena merely indicates you just don't want to believe, and that you have an unfair bias against Thor.  The evidence is there, you just don't want to believe!

Yeah right.

The problems with the bible and Christianity also moot any success the ID argument would have.  So what if god exists?  It isn't like the evidence about what he is like permits drawing even remotely confident conclusions.

The complexity we see in cellular organisms must be attributed to one of three mechanisms (or some combination thereof):

Unguided chance

Physical Law

Intelligent Agency

All of us, regardless of worldview, must account for the appearance of design from one of these three causal factors, and the “burden of explanation” is equally shared. As a theist, it’s not enough for me to point to the insufficiency of naturalism and then default to intelligent agency. I must demonstrate the deficiency of chance and natural law and the positive evidence for intelligent agency (one chapter of my next book is dedicated to this cumulative case for design).

Then let's hope your next book does what you didn't do previously, and explain why god's own undeniable complexity doesn't imply god himself was created.  If god is infinite in knowledge (generously assuming the truth of the biblically false doctrine of classical theism) then his complexity is infinite, so under your own logic, its more sure that your god was himself created, than it is that physical life was created.  The more complex it is, the more it must have been made by an intelligent designer, right?

You can trifle that God's own complexity is where the buck stops, but you won't have any compelling reason to assert this.  Though it probably wouldn't be conincidence that every alleged attribute of god not supported by the bible, you automatically condemn. 

The atheist must, however, provide an account for the appearance of design from chance and natural law alone, and the burden of proof is as real for the naturalist as it is for the theist.

That burden has already been successfully shouldered by atheist scholars.  Start here.

Purposeful, intentional designs are always the creative product of purposeful intelligent designers.

You are assuming the design we see in nature was purposeful.  It wasn't.  The design the pennies take as I drop them on the floor wasn't purposeful, it was nothing but the results of the laws of physics, which are themselves axiomatic and thus properly exempt from the question of why they exist.

If we find such design features in biology, God is the most reasonable explanation.

No, the objection to god from the incoherence of religious language is strong.  You cannot even provide an empirically testable model of god, yet you run around acting like his existence is as obvious as the existence of trees.  In how many other instances do you pretend like something that has no empirically testable model, is completely obvious? Methinks your religious commitment has enticed you to overstate how good your case for theism really is. That and a desire to make money by selling Jesus.

In future ColdCaseChristianity.com articles, we’ll examine a few common evidences for design in biological systems as we make the case for God’s existence known as the Teleological Argument. Is God real? Purposeful, intentional designs are always the creative product of purposeful intelligent designers. If we find such design features in biology, God is the most reasonable explanation. Learn more about the scientific and philosophical evidence pointing to a Divine Creator in God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe.

 If your god was half as real as anything in the real world, you'd no more write articles asking "Is God real?", than you'd write articles asking "Is the Statue of Liberty real?"

Cold Case Christianity: Some parts of the bible are anti-science

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

 I got this in my email March 6, 2019:

Are Christians "science-deniers"?

Many Christians are anti-science, and they don't have a lot of difficulty justifying their position from the bible. Apparently God's motive for causing people to misunderstand each others' languages at the Tower of Babel was because God feared that their joint efforts were enabling them to make scientific achievements that, for whatever reason, this god feared:

 1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.

 2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

 3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.

 4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."

 5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

 6 The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.

 7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."

 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.

 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

 (Gen. 11:1-9 NAU)

  If this story were restricted to pagan sources, you'd be very quick to say the last part of v. 6 shows the god to be fearful that humanity is growing beyond his control.  But no...the story is in the "bible".  It is thus the inerrant word of an allegedly all-powerful god, therefore, when this god says "please stop beating on me, it hurts too much!", surely this cannot be taken literally, because other parts of the bible says god is all-powerful, and the bible can never contradict itself, end of discussion. 

Well fuck you, I consider bible inerrancy to be false doctrine, I do not immediately cry foul when an otherwise grammatically and contextually justified interpretation of a verse causes it to contradict what the bible says elsewhere. 

And you certainly aren't putting any intellectual obligation on the skeptic to think the last part of v. 6 is surely non-literal.  There is no grammatical or contextual justification for pretending the last part of v. 6 in this long passage is the only part that conveniently isn't literal.  Mormons can always think of some damn theory to reconcile their Book of Mormon with it's infamous lack of archaeological support...but do such self-serving theories place YOU under any intellectual compulsion?  Hardly.

The same with Jews and their non-Christian interpretation of the OT "messianic prophecies".  They aren't placing YOU under any intellectual compulsion merely because speech is non-absolute and any fool with 5 minutes education in sophistry can always think of some damn excuse or other to make his false theory seem something less embarrassing than willful stupidity.

Then fundies also provide biblical justification to be anti-science by noting that the bible never expresses or implies that illiterate people should learn to read and write.

Well gee, if the Christianity of the NT can be lived out while the convert is unable to read and write, how much emphasis do you suppose Jesus and the apostles would place on Christians performing scientific tests?
Gee, maybe God wants people who cannot read or write to engage in the scientific enterprise? 

What would YOU, the INERRANTIST, think today about the "scientist" who wants to be regarded as legitimate, but who cannot read or write?

The bible's utter apathy toward illiteracy is a powerful indirect argument that its authors thought their originally intended addressees should not be wasting their time doing "science", when actually the problem of "sin" is sufficiently severe as to justify devoting one's attention entirely to rooting it out.  Modern day Christians who bother to obtain scientific credentials could do far better to simply preach the gospel and rebuke heretics.  The example of Jesus and the apostles needs to be followed, not trifled with.  If that leads to disaster, that's your problem, Jesus should have known better than to give you partial instructions that cause the church to by plagued by in-house bickering for 2,000 years.

According to many skeptics, "Anti-science attacks come from conservative Christians who believe it is their moral duty to fight perceived evils that often include science researching areas that fundamentalist faith already has 'answers' for." Is this true?

 Yes, lots of fundamentalist Christians feel that way about "science", and they have biblical justification to condemn "worldly" pursuits.  YOU have ZERO biblical justification for even starting to give a shit about anything the non-Christian world might have to offer.  If you can fulfill your duty to God well enough by focusing solely on bible study and evangelism (Matthew 6:31-34, God will provide your daily needs when you make preaching the gospel your top priority...why would Matthew provide these particular words for posterity? Probably because he thought such words applied with equal force to later generations of Christians, and weren't restricted to just the 1st century).

Are Christian believers afraid of scientific study?

That's an unfairly loaded question, some are, some aren't.

Are Christians "anti-science"? How would you respond to this common objection?

By informing the "apologist" that it sure is funny how anti-science the church was when Galileo came along.  The Catholics forbade him teaching anything he thought "scientific" if it contradicted their geocentric bible.

Lest you think you can escape this condemnation merely because you aren't Catholic, John Calvin agreed that Michael Servetus should be put to death for teaching against the trinity doctrine (as documented by attorney and former Calvinist Standford Rives, see here, which shows Calvin's anti-scientific bigotry and unwillingness to allow for opposing but equally justified views), Calvin thought that the bible's teaching of geocentricism was clear and compelling enough to justify labeling any gainsayers as fools (see here) and Martin Luther's geocentrism is well documented (see here and here).

The issue is not whether you promised to promote Luther and Calvin as god's infallible teachers.  You probably didn't.

The issue is whether Christians throughout history have found what they felt was clear biblical justification to deny scientific truths or otherwise act in a way that hinders rather than helps science advance.  They did.  You don't shake off these cobwebs by simply carping that they were wrong. These men weren't dolts, they were practiced in the art of hermeneutics and would hardly have said what they said if they felt the bible supported their giving the other side a fair hearing.

A "quick shot" response:

 Probably because you are more interested in hooking people with quick one-liners than in asking them to use their brains to properly analyze in-depth argument. 

Here is just one suggestion (of three) from the Quick Shot section of our phone app:

Gee how did the Holy Spirit manage to do his job effectively before humans discovered electricity?  Gee, maybe your next book will be "The Holy Spirit didn't know how to effectively promote the gospel until I invented Cold Case Christianity" ?

“Christianity isn’t anti-science, but it is anti-scientism. ‘Scientism’ is the belief that science is the only way to know anything.

Then you are horrifically stupid, because you cannot show that anybody ever discovered new truth by means other than their five physical senses.  I say this being perfectly well aware of Daniel 9 and Acts 9.  I also say this being aware that some people believe in the tooth fairy. 

But there are many things we know without the benefit of science at all,

 Ok, so you are a rationalist, I'm an empiricist.  Sure is funny that you cannot even BEGIN to demnonstrate the truth of rationalism, without appealing to at least one of my 5 physical senses.  Rationalism is laughable nonsense.

like logical and mathematical truths (that precede scientific investigations),

No, you wouldn't know mathematical truth if you never had any physical sensations, as inferred by the fact that even most people with functioning senses have difficulty with math.

The same with logical truths: If you had no physical sensory experience whatsoever, you wouldn't know the difference between logic and lollipops, since you wouldn't learn language and thus you'd only think at the level of the lower mammals.    Humans learn by analogy and illustration, you don't get that if you are completely deprived of all physical sensation for your entire life.

metaphysical truths (that determine if the external world is real),

If you think metaphysical truth, like "god" can be known without science, then go head, and demonstrate god's existence without using any type of scientific method to make the case.  Thus you are not allowed to observe data, formulate hypotheses, test the hypotheses, and repeat.  Good luck.

moral and ethical truths (that set boundaries for our behavior),

No, the Christian apologetic argument that some morals are "truth" is utterly misguided and just plain wrong, and you fallaciously always assume, but never explain, why you think human consensus is a marker of divine input.  You just automatically assume it must be god's law in our heart if most of us condemn child rape, while in fact you refuse to blame god for the human consensus that it is immoral to burn children to death, despite your bible-god thinking such punishment to be morally good (Leviticus 21:9, Joshua 7:15).

aesthetic truths (like determining beauty)

Sorry, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that's why although somebody can think some woman to be beautiful, you think she's a warthog.  See here.

and historical truths.

No, historical truths might not be as solid as scientific truths due to non-repeatability, but the scientific process of drawing data, testing hypotheses and peer-review are all the same.

Feel free to believe you can communicate telepathically with people living in the sky, but such flight of fancy doesn't remotely place the skeptic under the least bit of intellectual obligation.  All it does is provide you with a 60-second answer that is tapered to the likes of today's attention-deficit people.  It promotes book sales, and little more.

Christians believe that science can tell us many important things, but not all important things.

The trouble being that you cannot demonstrate that anybody has ever discovered truth in ways other than their physical senses.  Yet you act like this rationalist perspective is "clear".  Dream on.

How could science possibly tell us anything meaningful about the historicity of Jesus or the historical reliability of the Bible?”

 Easy: "science" doesn't necessarily imply "test tubes" or "chemicals".

"Science" is simply a method of analysis that involves drawing data, making observations, inferring hypotheses and submitting one's tentative theory to peer-review.  Repeat.

If you keep these distinctions in mind, then it is accurate to characterize historiography as 'science'.  It's just not "hard" science.

Sorry Wallace, you have failed in your quest to pretend we can know any "truth" without employing the scientific method to some degree.  The day you start demonstrating that you came to discovery previously unknown truths by means not involving use of any of your 5 physical senses, is the day I reconsider my position on this matter.

Cold Case Christianity: THIS is why missing data in the gospels justifies skepticism

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

Cold Case Christianity:

How Can I Trust the Gospel Accounts When Some Are Missing Important Details? 

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 01:56 AM PDT 

A visitor to ColdCaseChristianity.com wrote recently to express her concerns and growing doubts about Christianity.

Or maybe you are concerned about a criticism I wrote against one of your beliefs, and you are just pretending the concern originated in what this unnamed Christian said.  We must consider all options.  You are a sinner, your honesty is far from deserving of presumption.

Raised in the Church, she finds herself questioning the reliability of the Gospel authors because some of them failed to mention important events in the life and ministry of Jesus.

 Congrats to atheist bible critics like me, because such a concern likely wouldn't originate from within her faith or her church.  It was likely a skeptic who motivated her to grant legitimacy to the argument from silence.

Why does only one Gospel writer mention the Raising of Lazarus?

Given that John has no problems lying about what Jesus said and did, the other 3 likely didn't mention it because it never happened.

Why does only one writer mention the dead people who rose from the grave at Jesus’ crucifixion?

Christian apologist and inerrantist Dr. Mike Licona credits this to the Matthew-author's desire to mix history with fiction.



See here.

You can hardly blame skeptics for agreeing with him. Unfortunately, Matthew also explains the empty tomb in spite of the guards, with a dramatic tale of an angel with appearance of lightning frighting the guards into comatose state (28:4).  That easily qualifies as "apocalyptic imagery" no less than the zombie resurrection. Gee, when did the average evangelical fundamentalist Christian ever learn in church that just because the gospels report something in a manner that looks like historical reporting, doesn't necessarily mean it was actual history?  NEVER.

There are many examples of singular, seemingly important events mentioned by only one of the four Gospel authors. Shouldn’t all of the alleged eyewitnesses have included these events, and doesn’t the absence of information in a particular Gospel cast doubt on whether or not the event actually occurred?

 Since you are so quick to use American law to analyze the reliability of the gospels, you'll be disappointed to know that American law allows the jury to interpret a witness's omission or silence to be the logical equivalent of a positive denial:

"Impeachment by omission" is a recognized means of challenging a witness's credibility. "A statement from which there has been omitted a material assertion that would normally have been made and which is presently testified to may be considered a prior inconsistent statement." State v. Provet, 133 N.J.Super. 432, 437, 337 A.2d 374 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 68 N.J. 174, 343 A.2d 462 (1975); see also Silva, supra, 131 N.J. at 444-45, 621 A.2d 17; State v. Marks, 201 N.J.Super. 514, 531-32, 493 A.2d 596 (App. Div.1985), certif. denied, 102 N.J. 393, 508 A.2d 253 (1986). This principle is widely accepted. Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U.S. 231, 239, 100 S.Ct. 2124, 2129, 65 L.Ed.2d 86, 95 (1980) ("Common law traditionally has allowed witnesses to be impeached by their previous failure to state a fact in circumstances in which that fact naturally would have been asserted."); Kenneth S. Broun, McCormick on Evidence § 34 (7th 784*784 ed. 2013) ("[I]f the prior statement omits a material fact presently testified to and it would have been natural to mention that fact in the prior statement, the statement is sufficiently inconsistent."); 3A Wigmore on Evidence § 1042 (Chadbourn rev. 1970) ("A failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of the fact.")

 from Manata v. Pereira, 93 A. 3d 774, 783-4- NJ: Appellate Div. 2014

That is cut and pasted from my more in-depth article that shows how the basics of American jurisprudence render the gospels unreliable and inadmissible.  See here. 

Wallace continues:

My experience working with eyewitnesses may help you think clearly about these issues and objections. You can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details:

 Then you are already contradicting modern laws of evidence.  Wallace...you are not allowed to automatically assume that any possible "how-it-could-have-been" scenario you conjure up to explain an eyewitness's silence, is the only reasonable way to interpret said silence.  We the jury shall make our own decision whether the witness was silent because she thought it false, or merely "chose to exclude" it for her own unknown reasons.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Scope

When I interview an eyewitness, I am very careful to set the parameter for the testimony before I begin.

Something you obviously cannot do with ancient written testimony whose authors have been dead for 2,000 years.

I usually frame the interview by saying something like, “Please tell me everything you saw from the moment the robber came in the bank, to the moment he left.”

A request you don't know the gospel authors were intending or not intending to fulfill , in their motive to write.  I'd really like to ask Matthew "please tell me everything the risen Jesus told you during those 40 days of appearances which Acts 1:3 says you experienced, not merely the 15 second snippet you limited yourself to in your last chapter."

Unfortunately, such a request for greater quantity is useless in light of the death of the gospel authors.

If you believe in the power of prayer, why don't you ever tell your followers to ask God to fill out for them the factual details they wish the gospel authors would have included?  Or do we all recognize that nothing fails quite like prayer?  If the gospels are divinely inspired, such a prayer to God would be perfectly reasonable.  Yet you've never dared embark on such a futile undertaking as that.

I make sure to set the constraints the same way for each and every witness.

 And since you do nothing of the kind when restricted to documents authored by currently dead witnesses, as is the case with the gospels, all you are doing here is sounding intellectual without actually being intellectual.

Without these parameters, the resulting testimony would vary wildly from person to person.

So since you cannot impose those parameters on the 4 gospel authors, you are required to conclude their testimony varies widely from author to author for reasons not controlled for by your "parameters".

Some would include details prior to or after the robbery, some would include only the highlights, and some would omit major elements in the event.

 That's also because the eyewitnesses didn't all see the same thing or hear the same sounds.  That being the case, why do you automatically reject conservative Christian scholar Dr. Craig Evans' skeptical explanation for the John 11 raising of Lazarus being omitted by the Synoptics (Evans denies that we'd hear Jesus talking the way John's gospel presents, if we cold go back in time and listen to Jesus for ourselves, see here)?  How the fuck would you know whether the people who authored the Synoptics did or didn't know about that event?

But the skeptical solution (i.e., that assuming eyewitness gospel authorship, Matthew would surely have seen Jesus raise Lazarus, and with his desire to use apocalyptic fiction in his resurrection narrative anyway (Matthew 27:53, the zombie-resurrection story Licona denies the historicity of), and in light of the fact that Matthew alone has the risen Christ require his apostles teach the Gentiles "all" of the pre-Cross teachings (28:20), Matthew is especially likely to have mentioned the raising of Lazarus, were this a truely "historical" event).  So his omission reasonably implies he either never knew about it (suggesting it never happened), or he thought the story false (goodbye bible inerrancy). We are not limited to just picking an explanation that supports gospel reliability. 

If I want to be able to compare the testimony of two or three witnesses later, I’m going to have to make sure they begin with the same scope and framework in mind.

Something you cannot control for when dealing with documents authored by witnesses who have been dead for 2,000 years.

Furthermore, I object to your constant resort to "witness" and "eyewitness" in this analysis, as there are numerous cogent arguments that the gospels are at best a tangled pastiche of late Christian tradition and a few things Jesus really did say.  John Meier, Christian scholar, author of the comprehensive 4-volume "Jesus: A Marginal Jew", says that numerous times in the Synoptic gospels, a story about what Jesus said or did is in reality something created by Christian Jews, for example:

 See here.  I think this is where you try to do god service by exclaiming that just because a scholar more competent than you in the gospels, disagrees with you, doesn't necessarily mean he is in the right.  Well he doesn't have to be.  You can hardly label as irrational the skeptic who says the odds of who is right favor Meier far more than they favor you.

The Gospel authors clearly did not testify with the same initial instructions. There was no unifying investigator present to set the framework for their testimony, so their responses vary in the same way they would vary today if the scope of their testimony was not established from the onset. Mark, according to Papias, the 1st Century Bishop of Hierapolis, “became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.” More concerned about accuracy of individual events than the order in which they occurred, Mark offered details like many of my witnesses who are interviewed without a unified parameter. Mark is simply recording the preaching of Peter, and Peter only referred to portions of Jesus’ life and ministry, making no effort to order them for his listeners.

Your uncritical acceptance of Papias' comment that Peter is Mark's source, is found faulty even by conservative evangelical standards.  Guelich says in the evangelical Word Biblical Commentary:

How is one to accept Papias’s testimony? On the one side, the preponderance of scholarship over the centuries has accepted this witness in total. It has its defendants among critical scholars today (e.g., Cranfield, 5; Kürzinger, BZ 21 [1977] 245–64; Hengel, Studies, 47–50). On the opposite side, many contemporary scholars have totally rejected Papias’s views (e.g., Niederwimmer, ZNW 58 [1967] 172–88; Kümmel, Introduction, 97; Körtner, ZNW 71 [1980] 171). Somewhere in the middle are those who accept Papias’s identification of the writer as Mark but question his explanation of Mark’s material as reminiscences of Peter’s preaching (e.g., Pesch, 1:9; Ernst, 21; Lührmann, 5).

Without doubt a close examination of Mark’s material will show that the evangelist did not simply write his Gospel based on his notes or memory of Peter’s teachings. The amazing similarity in language, style, and form of the Synoptic tradition between the Markan and non-Markan materials of Matthew and Luke (cf. John’s Gospel) hardly suggests that Mark’s materials were shaped by one man, be he either Peter or Mark. Furthermore, the Commentary will demonstrate the presence of multiple traditional milieus (e.g., the two Feedings), stages in the development of traditional units (e.g., 5:1–20), and the thematic combination of units into collections (e.g., 4:1–34) within the Markan materials that point to a more complex traditional background than mental or written notes of another’s preaching. Therefore, while Papias may accurately identify the author as Mark, his description of Mark’s source and content is oversimplified at best.

Guelich, R. A. (2002). Vol. 34A: Word Biblical Commentary : Mark 1-8:26.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page xxvii). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 I'm not saying you lose merely because I can find Christian scholars who disagree with your simplistic uncritical trusting acceptance of patristic testimony.  I'm saying you incorrect to charge skeptics with being unreasonable merely because they hesitate longer than you before accepting patristic sources.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Perspective and Purpose

They also vary sometimes because eyewitnesses tell lies or are sincerely mistaken. Funny how you never give that possibility any consideration.  Actually not really, you are an inerrantist:  You are not here to be objective, but to push the inerrancy agenda.  And if you started personally doubting biblical reliability, the fact that you have a history of making money selling biblical reliability justifies the suspicion that you'd never honestly or publicly admit it.  You become a liberal, and you can look forward to being abandoned by the inerrantist apologists you currently network with.  Most people aren't stupid enough to nuke their opportunities to make money and preserve stability.

In addition, the witnesses I interview often want to highlight a particular element in the crime scene or a particular suspect behavior they think is important. Sometimes their choice of detail is influenced greatly by their own life history. Their values, experiences and personal concerns guide their selection of which details they include, and which they omit. Witnesses also typically try to offer what they think I am looking for as the detective rather than every little thing they actually saw. They are speaking to a specific audience (an investigator), and this has an impact on what they choose to include or omit. When this happens, I have to refocus each witness and ask them to fill in the details they skipped over, including everything they saw, even if they don’t think it’s important to me as a detective. If I don’t encourage eyewitnesses to be more inclusive and specific, they will omit important details.

The Gospel authors were not similarly directed. They had specific audiences in mind and particular perspectives to offer, and none of their testimony was guided by a unifying investigator who could encourage them to fill in the missing details.

 Then you are denying their inspiration by God, whom you say could very well have had them fill in the missing details had He wished them to.

Luke clearly had a particular reader in mind (Theophilus): “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught (Luke 1)”. Like other witnesses and historians, Luke likely allowed his intended audience to influence his selection of details. His testimony was also most certainly shaped by his own life experience (as an educated man),his own personal history, and his values.

 And conservative Christian scholars can also be found who say this "Theophilus" was just a figure of speech, and that Luke used this name to characterize any Christian reader:

Where did Luke write from, and to whom did he write? These questions probably are unanswerable. Luke dedicated the book to Theophilus, and Theophilus is a Greek name. Did Luke then write primarily to Gentiles? If so, why did he concern himself so much with Jewish questions? Why the elaborate messianic proofs of Peter’s sermons in Acts 2 and 3 if not to provide his readers with a pattern for witness to Jews? The most likely answer is that Luke intended his work for Christian communities that included both Jews and Gentiles—mixed congregations such as those we encounter frequently in Paul’s epistles.

Polhill, J. B. (2001, c1992). Vol. 26: Acts (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 31). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

In other words, Acts was written for believing communities, and thus not intended to satisfy skeptics, rationally warranting skeptics if they choose to ignore Luke and Acts.  They'd be acting more in conformity to the author's wish, than Christian apologists today who ignore authorial intent and childishly splatter every biblical thing to every part of the cosmos. 

Matthew did something similar when he highlighted the details of Jesus’ life most relevant to Matthew’s Jewish audience.

 But patristic accounts make clear that he wrote for Jews:

The Gospel according to Matthew was written to the Jews. For they laid particular stress upon the fact that Christ [should be] of the seed of David. Matthew also, who had a still greater desire [to establish this point], took particular pains to afford them convincing proof that Christ is of the seed of David; and therefore he commences with [an account of] His genealogy.

See here.

That is, the author of Matthew seriously expected for unbelieving Jews to find his story of Jesus' virgin birth to be true, and to find his use of Isaiah 7:14 to be legitimate.  In other words, if you are going to be so accepting of patristic testimony about gospel authorship, the apostles were rather gullible and anti-intellectual.  Any self-respecting non-Christian Jew, knowledgeable of the OT, would not be persuaded by such presumptive storytelling.  Scholars complain there's no evidence in pre-Christian Judaism that Isaiah 7:14 was considered messianic prophecy.  

Yet we have to believe that the author of the most Jewish sounding gospel, surely knew that non-Christian Jews do not just buh-leeve any interpretation of their OT that outsiders give.  Yet Matthew engages in precisely zero attempted justification for his use of Isaiah 7:14, nor does he provide anything useful to help non-Jews track these things down.  He had the objectivity-level of a KJV Onlyist who thinks screaming bible verses at people causes the Holy Spirit to do things.  He seems to think that there's just no rationality in questioning anything he has to say, thus preempting any need for him to bother with the least bit of documentation of sources.  No thank you.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Knowledge of Other Testimony

Sometimes an eyewitness will only provide those details he thinks are missing from the testimony of others. This is most likely to occur if the witness is the last one to be interviewed and he (or she) is already familiar with the testimony of the other witnesses. When I see this happening, I ask this last witness to pretend like he or she is the only witness in my case, “Try to include every detail like I’ve never heard anything about the case. Pretend like I know nothing about the event.” Once the witness has done that, I may go back and re-interview the prior witnesses to see why they didn’t mention the late details offered by the final witness. In the end, my reports related to everyone’s testimony will be as complete as possible, including all the details remembered by each person I interviewed.

The gospel authors were not similarly directed and re-interviewed. John was the last person to provide an account, and he clearly selected those events important to him, given his stated goal: “…many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name (John 20)”. John knew what had already been provided by others, and he selected specific events (some which were previously unreported) to make his case.

 And as usual, you tell your followers nothing about the growing conservative Christian scholarly view that John's gospel attributes to Jesus things Jesus never actually said or did.  This, despite your quickness to believe everything you read in the early church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria's statement, which clearly differentiates John's subject matter from the "external facts" subject matter in the Synoptics:

But, last of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. This is the account of Clement. ( Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., 6:14)     

But John, the last of all, seeing that what was corporeal was set forth in the Gospels, on the entreaty of his intimate friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. (ANF, Vol. II, Fragments of Clement of Alexandria, From the Books of the Hypotyposes)

 It doesn't matter if you can trifle that Clement's remarks can be plausibly interpreted to say John also provided "external facts", you certainly cannot condemn as unreasonable my own interpretation that says Clement here was saying John's purpose was not to convey external facts.  The fact that my interpretation would kill evangelical conservativism in its cradle, doesn't suddenly mean the interpretation is wrong or unreasonable. 

Wallace continues:

He acknowledged his limited choice of data: “…there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written (John 21)”. John admitted what we already know: witnesses pick and choose from their own observations unless they are specifically directed to do otherwise.

I don't have a problem with the gospel authors picking and choosing what material to include or exclude.  I have a problem with modern-day Christian apologists who blindly assume that only the explanations for this, which help defend biblical inerrancy, are the only explanations that have any significance.  Once again, you also know that eyewitnesses will differ because they are lying or mistaken, but you never entertain this obvious reality here...probably because to suggest the gospel eyewitnesses differ from each other due to lying or mistake, is to raise possibilities you don't wish to raise...such as bible inerrancy being a false doctrine.

Because the gospel authors were not specifically instructed, guided or re-interviewed by a single detective, we simply cannot conclude much from the differences between the accounts.

Bullshit.  If you think Peter was the source behind Mark's gospel, you'll have a hard time explaining one of Mark's more striking and unexpected omissions:

“Messiah”?  or “Messiah, Son of the living God”?
Mark 8	Matthew 16
27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, "Who do people say that I am?"   28 They told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets."   29 And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ."  (omitted!)    30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him.  31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must  suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes,	13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,   He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"  14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."  15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.  19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."  20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. 21 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.

 Now what, Wallace?  Do you seriously think that Mark knew Jesus' answer was as long and theologically significant as the one we today see in Matthew's version, and Mark merely "chose for unknown reasons to exclude" such critically important part of Jesus' answer?  FUCK YOU.

Conservatives defend by saying Peter didn't wish to impose his authority on others, but this is total bullshit, since if Jesus really did give the longer answer preserved in Matthew, we are reasonable to assume Peter would not sideline Jesus' statement, but would have properly done what even Paul did, and make clear how and why he possesses the authority that he does.

Nah, the authority that Jesus bequeaths on Peter in Matthew's longer version is not something Mark would likely have omitted (Mark never has Jesus giving anybody "keys to the kingdom", so you cannot even pretend that "Mark covered the matter once and didn't feel it needed repeating"), had he known Jesus' answer was that long.  Therefore, you cannot blame me, any skeptic, John Meier, or most Christian scholars, for concluding that Mark omitted it because he and Peter remembered Jesus' answer being shorter, and therefore, Matthew's longer version is not what Jesus really said, it is what Matthew has falsely fabricated and embellished in the effort to give more dramatic effect to this particular scene.

Skeptics sometimes infer more from omissions (or inclusions) in the Gospels than what is reasonable, especially given the manner in which the Gospels came to be written.

And inerrantists sometimes give more weight to inerrancy-favoring explanations than the evidence will allow.  But surely its only the skeptics who are dominated by their presuppositions, while Christian inerrantists are objective calculators pushing no agenda.

Because the four authors were not specifically instructed, guided or re-interviewed by a single detective, we simply cannot conclude much from the differences between the accounts.

That's stupid, there's no Christian gospel scholar on the face of the earth that will say our modern inability to get the authors to fill in the blanks means we cannot draw reasonable inferences from the way they differ from one another.  Even inerrantist Christian scholars, such as J.A. Brooks,  explain Matthew's and Luke's softer form of a story than the version Mark gave, is because they are "toning down" language of Mark that they believe is errant or likely to support an errant view:

Mark 6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

If Matthew thought Mark's gospel was "inerrant", he'd no more "tone down" Mark's choice of wording than YOU would.  

We must, instead, do our best to employ the four part template we use to evaluate eyewitness reliability after the fact.

 No, we should examine the gospels using standard techniques that all historians use to analyze the probable truth-content of other similarly ancient documents.  There is some overlap between the methods of historiography used by historians, and rules of evidence as used in modern American courts, but the issues with ancient testimony are far more complicated than modern court rules of evidence were intended to address.  Wallace, do you know of any court cases where trial was allowed on a question that required the truth to rest upon what a 2,000 year old document said?  Obviously not.  When I accuse you of using clever marketing bells and whistles as gimmicks to con Christians into buying your stuff, that's not as inaccurate as you'd wish.  What's your next book going to be?  "True Colors:  How Techniques used by Painters Reveal the Truth of Bible Inerrancy?"

The fact that it doesn't make sense is precisely why there's money in it, remember?

This template (as I’ve described it in Cold-Case Christianity), provides us with confidence in the trustworthy nature of the Biblical narratives. That’s why you can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details.

I find it funny that you never considered an equally likely explanation, that eyewitnesses often differ from one another because some of them are lying or mistaken.  That's also a stark reality daily experienced in courts of law, but you omit this genuine possibility as if only a crazy person would consider it.

Probably because to even start talking about the possibility of eyewitnesses lying or being mistaken, opens the door to kissing bible inerrancy goodbye forever.   Wow, even criminal investigators are blinded by their own biases.  Thanks for the lesson.