Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.
I've got news for Engwer. There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.
For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.
1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead. So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years. In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected. Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!" Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in. How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?
Let's inquire anyway: What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?
Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise, would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).
But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:
First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable". That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".
Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT? Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence. How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him? Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?
Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists. Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:
1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence. Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death? It doesn't.
2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)
19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)
If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.
In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are. If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.
Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life. The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap. As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist.
This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".
And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are? We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.
A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say. Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years.
For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence. After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?" And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9). The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities". Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.
Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years. Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history. Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.
Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive.
This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.
