Cold Case Christianity: God is unloving for sending people to a traditional hell of eternal torture

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

A loving God wouldn't send people to hell, would He?

Thu, Feb 7, 8:27 AM

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 8:27 AM J. Warner Wallace

<jim@coldcasechristianity.com> wrote:

How would you respond? 

Wikipedia describes the idea of hell as "an ethical problem in religion in which the existence of Hell for the punishment of souls is regarded as inconsistent with the notion of a just, moral, and omnibenevolent God." Is that true?

 Yes.  When you have to redefine love so that it can also correctly describe the person who allows his "loved ones" to suffer torture by fire forever, you have a serious problem.

Does the notion of hell contradict the existence of a loving God?

 When you define love by normative convention? Obviously yes.  When you toy with the definition of love so that even sadistic pedophiles could be said to be "loving"?  No.  Standard thesauruses correct the fools who trifle that only apathy is the opposite of love.  No, "hate" is also an opposite of love.  See standard thesaurus here.  And your god "hates" the workers, not just the works, of iniquity.  See Psalm 5:5 and 11:5.

How would you respond to someone who makes such a claim?

 Hopefully the Christian would respond with  "yes, I can understand why you'd automatically suppose the person who causes mindless torture to children in hell is unloving by any reasonable definition of love."

You will say "we never said God sends children to hell!"

Well Jehovah's Witnesses never call themselves heretics, so is that option off the table?  Obviously not.  You might be teaching or believing things that logically necessitate your belief that your god sends kids to hell, even if you don't actually pursue your own teaching to its furthest logical implication.

Ok...when does a child reach the age of accountability?

You can escape this dilemma by insisting the age is 18, that way, if they die as atheists at age 17 or before, your loving god forgives them by fiat and lets them into heaven.  And correspondingly, the 18 year old person who dies and goes to hell seems to be less sadistic to us than if the 11 year old child died and went to hell. 

But the cost of doing this is very high:  I cannot find any Christian that puts the age of accountability as high as age 18.  Any full-time parent, teacher, or other person who routinely works with kids and teens is quite aware that kids learn right and wrong very early. How many parents punish the 8 year old boy for throwing food at his brother?

How many times does law enforcement reasonably seek to have preteen kids charged as adults when they commit crimes?.

If you leave the age of accountability where it normally resides, that is, somewhere between 7 and 10, then that logically requires that if the 11 year old girl is an atheist, rejects the gospel invitation, then dies in a car accident on the way home from church, then she went to hell forever, because she was at or past the age of accountability and had already positively rejected the gospel, leaving her no other biblical option.

So if you don't like the mental image conjured up in your mind of an 11 year old girl being tortured in the flames of hell forever, remember two things:  it's perfectly biblical, and your sense of outage is something you attribute to God putting his laws into your heart...so there's a chance that if you have any disgust toward the traditional concept of hell, this is for the same reason you have disgust toward pedophila...God has put it into your heart to hate all such things.

So when I say your god torments children in hell, you are stuck with this unless you make the age of accountability higher than any Christian in history has ever made it.  There is also biblical precedent that God tortures children in hell even when they die before the age of accountability.  Paul said the children born to unbelieving parents are "unclean",

  14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. (1 Cor. 7:14 NAU)

He'd hardly have a point unless "unclean" was something very urgent and important to correct.  What's so bad about "unclean" here?  Read the context...it is the opposite of "holy". 

By the way, Paul's Greek word for unclean is ἀκάθαρτος/akathartos, the same Greek work Jesus used to describe demons (Matthew 12:43) as well as the same Greek word Paul uses in admonishing his followers to avoid touching any "unclean" thing (2nd Corinthians 6:17).  Clearly, Paul's description of the children of unbelievers was horrific and in no wise merely ritualistic or ceremonial.

Let's just say it's obvious that I'm so ignorant of the grammatical and contextual realities of this issue that I'm really scared to mount any skeptical attack on hell.  Hell, I probably couldn't even find any Christian authors who attack the tradition concept of hell.  I tried and all I got was links to the Giant Spider Invasion dvd.

 Yet as pointed out in Christianity Today, the attack on hell is coming from within evangelical ranks (see here and here...apparently one's being genuinely born-again and sincere toward God and walking in the light doesn't necessarily motivate the Holy Spirit in the slightest to make you believe the truth, the way he apparently is easily capable of doing in the case of unrepentant idolatrous pagans (Ezra 1:1).

For a good laugh, read about Sampson (Judges 16:1). Immediately after getting a blow-job he apparently had sufficient supernatural strength to not only remove a 2 ton city gate door off its hinges without waking the guards, but he also carried that door to a higher hill about 40 miles away (Judges 16:3).

And you "expect" people to take your bible seriously?  FUCK YOU.

 A "quick shot" response:

Only because "quick shot" sells well in this age of unavoidable attention-deficit disorder.  You don't close the sale in 5 seconds, you don't close the sale at all.  Probably has something to do with the infallible work of the Holy Spirit on people's hearts.  No wonder you need all these marketing gimmicks to make Jesus sound more plausible to non-Christians...you have the most powerful force in the cosmos working to help you sell this shit.

There are a number of ways to answer this objection.

 And all of them fail.  Bring it on.

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

“What do you mean by ‘loving?’

That's actually YOUR problem, Wallace.  YOU are calling God "loving", but you obviously don't mean it with the same definition the average person on the street has in mind when they say "loving", so right away, your telling them "god is loving" has already started the game of equivoation (using the same term but intending a very different meaning without explicitly saying so).  Regardless, since most people don't think mindlessly painful eternal torture could possibly be "loving", it will always remain reasonable to reject the traditional concept of hell, regardless of whatever semantic gymnastics you can employ in your effort to convince others that night really is day.

A loving God must also be just,

 No, parents can be loving without being "just". They'd be loving to force their 16 year old daughter out of the RAVE party and do nothing more.  "Loving" does not require an element of being "just" or meting out justice.  Otherwise, every Christian who knew his friend stole a candy bar and got away with it, could not be "loving" toward that friend unless he did what "justice" requires, and ratted him out, a bullshit concept in the eyes of most reasonable educated adults.

And "loving" can often be the opposite of justice, such as when the loving parent chooses to forgive their child, when they don't have to, and relax the restriction that they'd normally impose for disobedience.  What fool would say you aren't loving your kids unless you always impose discipline each and every time they disobey?  Gee, the only Christian parents that can be loving are those who run their houses like a drill Sergent?

And you are only pretending a loving god must be "just", solely because you know most of your Christian readers are classical theists, and would automatically applaud any argument that used the presuppositions of classical theism..such as here, where you invoke the  "justice" of your "all-just" god.

or His love is little more than an empty expression.

 Then you must think parents who show their love for their kids without also showing "justice" are just giving empty expression.  Sorry, but it is incoherent to pretend that "love" is empty unless always coupled with "justice".  I "love" my friends, even though I'm aware one of them stole a candy bar last week, and I remain unwilling to report it to the police.  Well gee, if I'm not willing to rat them out, then my "love" for them is nothing but empty expression?  I might be aware that to involve the cops would create more bad than good. FUCK YOU.

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?

Mother Theresa was a scam artist whose concern for the poor had more to do with publicity than with genuine love.  See here.  And a non-authoritative intro to the subject here.

It wasn't loving or fair by our own standards that the innocent Jesus should die for our sins, but that's your God's eccentric idea of love anyway.  So now your problem is that you have a lot of work ahead of you if you wish to pretend that because something doesn't "fair" to us humans, God also wouldn't think it fair.

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

 How loving is God to forgive the sins of the murderer Saul who became Paul?

 12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service,
 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief;
 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. (1 Tim. 1:12-14 NAU)

If God can be "loving" to forcefully show himself to such a murdering blasphemer as Saul, (and according to Acts 9, 22 and 26, God did so before Paul ever manifested the least bit of repentance or contrition) then your God can also be loving to show himself with equal force to other equally or more violent people who, like Saul are currently not showing the least bit of repentance or contrition. 

So because your God doesn't do that, it is reasonable to call him unloving and arbitrary.  I'm sure Hitler was loving to his own kids, but that hardly argues that therefore "loving" is a correct way to remember Hitler.

How fair would that be to their victims?

 How fair is it that your god allows to be born people whom he infallibly foreknows will end up in hell?  Do you commit the act when you infallibly foreknow the outcome will be disaster (i.e., allowing children to play with matches in a gasoline soaked bedroom, letting go of a baby as you hold it out over the edge of a cliff, etc)?  No.  Then your god is just as unloving to allow circumstances to come together to effect sending a person to hell, as is the drunk mother who knows her kids in the bathtub are playing with the plugged-in hair dryer, yet does nothing about it.

How fair is it that your god just stands by the bed watching, doing nothing, while the pedophile rapes a child to death? 

And you think appealing to the human sense of fairness is a convincing apologetic for your god?  FUCK YOU.

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

No, because true love requires some degree of justice.  However, it doesn't require full justice because we are reasonable to define love as sometime being the willingness to foregoe justice.  Yes, a coherent definition of love requires a presupposition of some level of "justice", but the biblical information about your god requires a radical redefinition of normative reasonable definitions of love/justice, making it reasonable to be suspicious that it has more to do with ancient theological delusion than actual reality.

Sorry Wallace, you've done precisely nothing to intellectually obligate non-Christians to find the traditional concept of hell the least bit compatible with "love".  In fact, the desperation in your contrived arguments makes it seem that the traditional concept of hell really is contrary to any reasonable definition of love.

And as you hopefully know, we aren't required to be infallibly certain, before we can be reasonable to consider your views to be nonsense.   In our day to day experience, we often call things "unreasonable" before we obtain encyclopedic knowledge of the situation.  Jurors are reasonable to take less then 3 days to reach a verdict, we don't require them to just sit on the fence for 80,000 years merely because it always remains possible that they will put an innocent woman in jail. 

You yourself would have to agree, Wallace...with your "quick-shot" answers wherein you expect your readers to believe you can successfully adjudicate the traditional concept of hell in your favor in less than 5 minutes.

Cold Case Christianity: Four Truths About the Universe You Can Share with Your Kids to Demonstrate the Existence of God

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

Four Truths About the Universe You Can Share with Your Kids to Demonstrate the Existence of God

Posted: 25 Sep 2017 01:19 AM PDT

If you’ve raised your children to believe Christianity is true, you probably want them to continue to believe it’s true, especially through their critical university years. There are good reasons to be concerned for young Christians once they leave our care. Statistically, most will walk away from the Church (and their belief in God) during their college years.

Probably because it is only outside their protective homes and churches that they will become exposed to truths that create serious problems for the fundamentalist view they were raised with.  There can be no doubt that the number of Christian "fundamentalists" has dwindled significantly since the explosion of the internet in the popular sphere in 1995. 

What can we, as parents, do to address this growing problem? How can we help them know that God exists?

What a shame for you that although you claim to depend on "God", the way in which you solve the problem betrays that you don't think God actually does anything more here than he does when you order fries at the drive-through.  If you are the one implementing the safety procedure, then the only reason you credit your kids' safety to God is your theological insanity.  And it gets more insane if in spite of not crediting your own good works to yourself, you readily credit your bad works to yourself (i.e., when you do good works, it's God's fault...when you do bad works, it's not God's fault).

As a cold-case detective, parent, and prior youth pastor, I have a suggestion: master the case for God’s existence and start sharing it with your kids at an early age.

And the best way to do that is to purchase your forensic faith materials and basically swallow whatever marketing gimmick you use, correct?

Sounds simple, right? Maybe, or maybe not. If your kids asked you to defend the existence of God right now, what would say? What evidences would you provide? Are you ready to make the case for what you believe, even as the world around us often makes the case against God’s existence?

Is there anything in the writings of the NT that requires Christians to make the case that God exists?  No.  You are blindly assuming that all Christians be evangelists and teachers, but not every person in the body of Christ can do this:

 11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; (Eph. 4:11-12 NAU)

 28 And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.
 29 All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?
 30 All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they?
 31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. (1 Cor. 12:28-31 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Don’t panic, you don’t have to be a theologian, philosopher or scientist to defend the truth. All you need to be is interested.

You don't even need to be interested.  The bible makes plenty of room for a person to a a genuinely born again Christian whose witness to others does not consist of learning arguments.

It’s not hard to be interested when the spiritual fate of our kids is hanging in the balance.

Here you blindly assume the stakes are high, when liberal Christian theologians make a persuasive case that everybody will be saved and a hellish afterlife are false doctrines.

Make a commitment to investigate the case for God’s existence so you can communicate it to your kids.

Translation: "purchase the materials that I so ceaselessly promote".

The Apostle Paul was correct when he said that God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:20).

Which means you are not addressing anybody here except those who believe everything Paul taught as blindly as you do.

We’ve written God’s Crime Scene for Kids to help you and your children investigate everything “that has been made.”

Which cannot be reconciled with your alleged belief that the bible alone is sufficient authority for faith and practice. God would probably worry himself sick if you stopped helping the Holy Spirit through your attention-deficit lectures and videos, wouldn't He?

Along the way, you’ll discover four truths that will help your kids demonstrate the existence of God:

Implying that God wasn't capable of demonstrating these to Christians between the 1st and 20th centuries.  But if he was capable then, he's capable now, in which case modern Christians no more need your forensic faith bullshit than hey need Benny Hinn.

Our Universe Requires a Divine “First Cause”

Scientists have determined that our universe is not infinitely old.

You conveniently leave "scientists" unqualified, thus creating the false impression that "most" scientists deny the infinite age of the universe.  You are incorrect, the number of scientists who are open to the possibility of the universe being infinite is growing.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: So it goes on, but is it infinite? Chuck Bennett is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.
CHUCK BENNETT: It is somewhat unimaginable, but quite possible that our universe simply goes on forever.

=============

  Scientists have predicted the possibility that the universe might be closed like a sphere, infinite and negatively curved like a saddle, or flat and infinite.
A finite universe has a finite size that can be measured; this would be the case in a closed spherical universe. But an infinite universe has no size by definition.
According to NASA, scientists know that the universe is flat with only about a 0.4 percent margin of error (as of 2013). And that could change our understanding of just how big the universe is.
"This suggests that the universe is infinite in extent; however, since the universe has a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the universe," NASA says on their website. "All we can truly conclude is that the universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe."

Wallace continues blindly appealing to what his intended audience already believes:

In fact, they now believe that everything in the universe, all space, time and matter, had a beginning in the distant past. Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. What could account for the beginning of the universe?

 No, see above, you are giving the false impression the only respectable scientific theory on the universe is that it is finite.  You apparently know not even that which can be determined with a quick Google search, or you are dishonest.

One thing is certain: whatever caused the cosmos must be something other than space, time or matter (since these didn’t exist prior to the beginning of the universe).

Well since the universe is infinitely old, the problem of where the universe came from, disappears.

That means we’re looking for something non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material, and incredibly powerful. Sounds a lot like God, doesn’t it?

It also sounds like a fairy-tale solution more in line with religious belief than empirical observation.  There are no concretely established cases for the existence of anything that is "non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material", so until the day you establish such, you cannot get rid of the possibility you'd like to get rid of, that what you are talking about is pure nonsense.

Life in the Universe Requires a Divine “Author”

Scientists have also determined that life in the universe is formed and guided by information. Biological organisms (like humans) possess deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. The nucleotide sequence in DNA is an incredibly long (and sophisticated) code that guides the growth, development, function and reproduction of every living organism.

But where does the information in DNA come from? Did this incredibly complex series of instructions come about by chance? Was it caused by the laws of physics or some process of evolution? No. The best explanation for information is intelligence. The information in DNA requires an intelligent author. Once again, God is the most reasonable explanation.

Why do predator birds have very sharp eyesight?  If the world of lving things was vegatarian before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, then nobody would need eyesight any sharper than that of a cow, to locate and eat foilage and fruit.  In which case you cannot cite the degrading effects of the Fall to account for today's predatory birds having super-sharp eyesight.  If you continue denying evolution's ability to increase the complexity of creatures over time, you are forced to blame God for predatory birds gaining an increase in their visual acuity at some point after they stopped being vegetarians in Eden.  In which case your god is personally responsible for causing eagles to be motivated to inflict the misery that carnivores typically inflict on other animals.  And your god's doing this is arbitrary since apparently becoming carnivorous wasn't a requirement after the fall as so many billions of cows testify.

And if you say predatory birds were carnivorous even before any sin entered the world, then it is a world full of tooth and claw misery and pain, that God is calling "good" in Genesis 1:31, using the Hebrew word "tob" for "good" that is used in 2:17 to signify the moral opposite of evil.  In which case God in 1:31 is asserting the full moral goodness of a world full of carnivors inflicting misery and pain on each other.

That should come as no surprise, for when God inflicts rape upon disobedient women (Deut. 28:30), this is something he "delights" to do no less than he "delights" to grant prosperity to those who obey him (v. 63).

That's how you cause the intelligent design argument to back-fire in the face of Christian apologists.  Since you deny that random chance and evolution can account for why eagles desire to kill, lions and others have fangs suited to little more than ripping flesh, etc, only intelligent design can account for these, in which case your God's idea of "good" is so alien to everything you stand for that it can only be by a truly "blind" faith that you insist this God is always "good".

Moral Laws in the Universe Require a Divine “Law Giver”

All of us recognize the existence of moral laws and obligations. While some behaviors (like stealing or lying) may be justified on rare occasion (to save the life of an innocent person, for example), it’s never morally acceptable to steal or lie for the fun of it.

Your 5-Point Calvinist brothers and sisters in Christ, whom you aren't likely to deny the salvation of since they accept all doctrines you say are "essential" to salvation, assert that a person is fulfilling God's secret will when they sin, even if with such act they are also contradicting god's "revealed" will.  So if some criminal steals a six-pac of beer from the corner store mostly because she thinks it "fun", this must be credited to God, and that sucks for you, because you insist that anything which God wills, is righteous by definition.

If even spiritually alive Calvinists can "misunderstand" the nature of God's sovereignty in a sinful universe, as you will likely accuse them, you are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists and non-Calvinist Christians to think your views on this matter are the end of the discussion. 

This is true for all of us, regardless of when we have lived in history or where we have lived on the planet. These objective moral laws also describe obligations between persons. No one, for example, is morally obligated to the laws of physics or chemistry.

All laws such as these require law givers.

No, the laws that most humans agree on, they agree on because obeying them conduces toward facilitating easier survival, that's all the rationale needed to explain why most human beings think torturing babies for fun is immoral. We are social animals the the acts we think of as crimes, just happen to be those that end up playing a significant part in breaking up society which inhibits survival.

Objective laws and obligations that transcend all of us require an objective, personal law giver who transcends all of us. Once again, God is the best explanation for the moral laws and obligations we all recognize.

Well since your own god takes credit for motivating pagans to inflict horrible miseries on the Israelites:

  15 Though he flourishes among the reeds, An east wind will come, The wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; And his fountain will become dry And his spring will be dried up; It will plunder his treasury of every precious article.
 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:15-16 NAU)

 ...you cannot assert that humans are rebelling against god's moral will when they murder each other.  You are forced to agree with your bible that they were empowered by God to do these things.

You will say God doesn't force people to hurt others, but that in his judgment he sometimes withdraws his prevenient grace so that such humans naturally inflict the misery they are already naturally inclined to inflict, so that God is free from responsibility for the evil he knew would happen as a result of his own choices, but this is about as convincing as the dog owner who intentionally unleashes his pit bull for the purpose of mauling you, then arguing later in court when you sue for injuries, that because he didn't maul you himself but only removed the restraints on his dog knowing the dog would maul you, he is thus not responsible for your injuries.  Yeah right.

Evil in the Universe Requires a Divine “Standard”

Some people point to evil as an evidence against the existence of God. Why would an all-powerful, all-loving God allow bad things to happen?

Maybe because his idea of love is so different from ours, the acts we perceive to be unloving, he thinks are loving?  And therefore, when you assert "God is loving" to the average person, you are guilty of deception and equivocation?

If God's "love" cannot be construed as an absolute guarantee that he will do all in his power to, say, prevent a child from being raped, then why are you so sure God is "loving" toward children?  Answer: your blind faith that because the bible says God is loving, that must be the end of the discussion. 

Is He unable to stop them?

Yes, the God who was helping Judah win a war, wasn't able to overcome the power of iron chariots:

 17 Then Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they struck the Canaanites living in Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the city was called Hormah.
 18 And Judah took Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory.
 19 Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.
 20 Then they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had promised; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.
 21 But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.
 (Jdg. 1:17-21 NAU)

 Even Christian scholars who accept and defend biblical inerrancy, are forced to speculatively "presume" something not implied in the text, in order to "explain" this surprising admission that God's power wasn't enough to do the intended job:

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

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; 

The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Wallace continues:

Is He simply unwilling to prevent them?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  God not only "allows" evil (i.e., rape, v. 30, parental cannibalism, v. 53), but he takes credit for causing or inflicting it.  Worse, he "delights" to inflict such atrocities on them, v. 63.

In either case, the existence of evil seems to invalidate our definition of God as an all-powerful and all-loving Being.

It wouldn't make much sense for you to defend God's all-loving nature, if you have to argue that certain acts we find unloving, God thinks are loving.  If God's idea of "love" is so contrary to our own beliefs about it, you aren't "defending" anything, you are simply preaching the bible and reminding the believing audience that God's definition of love is more accurate than the definition accepted by civilized societies.  Which then involves you in the stupidity of asserting that God condemns the evil men that God uses...sort of like paying a hit-man for murder, then telling everybody that while what he did was evil, your using him to commit murder was not evil for YOU.  Well fuck you.

But what defines something as evil in the first place?

How about your bible?  Since God in Ezekiel 39 is punishing the Gog and Magog armies because they warred against Israel, we can soundly presume God thought these armies had done evil...but in Ezekiel 38:4, it is God himself who is forcing these armies to commit this specific evil (i.e, "hook in your jaws", a metaphor that puts images in the mind that are wholly contradictory to any notion that God "respects human freewill" or that God doesn't want people to do evil.)

Is something “evil” simply because we don’t personally approve of it,

Yes, there's no natural law that says a person's subjective beliefs about evil are disqualified.  If I think it is evil for fundamentalist Christians to evangelize unbelievers, I am rational to think that way despite the fact that other people would disagree.  Nothing else is more common than people disagreeing on what constitutes evil.

or do we believe some acts are truly evil, regardless of our opinion? If the latter is true, we would need an objective, transcendent standard of good by which to judge any particular act.

And since we all agree that a) sex within adult-child marriages is evil, and b) God doesn't have jack shit to say about this evil, you don't have an "objective, transcendent standard of good by which to judge" this particular act as evil. You have nothing but your own conscience, and some would argue your conscience is hardly objective or transcendent.

The existence of God offers such a standard,

And used car salesmen offer used cars to solve your transportation problems too. Many of those cars are lemons, and so is yours, you shameless salesman.

and God often allows and uses temporal evil to develop our eternal character,

If I cannot justify murder by saying the emotional outrage this causes will develop the survivor's moral character, then when you try to justify God with the same argument, you are doing so because of blind and arbitrary choice to believe God just cannot do anything wrong.  You have defined God as "good", so to you, trying to allow that God could do wrong is, in your mind, equal to suggesting that the word "good" could sometimes mean "evil".  Well in light of Genesis 6:6-7, God is quite capable of making the wrong decision and regretting it later, and your "this-was-just-an-anthropomorphism" excuse derives neither from the genre of Genesis, the context nor the grammar of the passage, and is therefore most likely a false interpretation forced on the text because of your prior belief that other bible passages are correct in saying God is always infinitely good.

draw us to himself, and achieve a greater good (if not immediately, over the course of history).

According to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, God also inflicts and causes evil solely for the purpose of causing the misery and destruction of the people he is hurting.   Yet, you will never tell Christian parents that God allowed their child to be raped because God was angry with them because of some sin.  You are more interested in telling people what comports with their existing beliefs, than in telling them the more harsh brutal biblical truth.

Evil doesn’t disprove God’s existence, but instead requires a standard of good to be anything more than a matter of opinion. Only God can provide such a standard.

There’s much more to examine in the universe, and you can help your kids make the case for God at www.CaseMakersAcademy.com. They’ll solve an intriguing mystery, as they also learn how to investigate the truth about the cosmos. They’ll also have a chance to become Case Making Cadets and earn a Certificate of Graduation after completing our free Case Makers Academy. It’s never too early to master the truth. Help your kids defend with they believe so they can worship God with their hearts, souls, and minds.

This article first appeared at Crosswalk.com.

 And the fact that you make money of of this marketing gimmick makes us wonder how God was able to teach before you came along, suggesting Christians don't "need" your materials half as much as you pretend.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

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

Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

Posted: 06 Sep 2017 01:01 AM PDT

240I was interviewed recently on a large Los Angeles radio station about the existence of Hell.

Did you tell them about the liberal Christian scholars who say hell-fire in the NT is mere metaphor? 

One caller objected to the duration of punishment in Hell. From his perspective, the idea our temporal, finite sin on earth warrants an eternal punishment of infinite torment in Hell was troubling, at the very least. The punishment does not seem to fit the crime; in fact, the disproportionate penalty makes God seem petty and vindictive, doesn’t it? Why would God torture infinitely those who have only sinned finitely?

Did you have any callers who objected that the bible god sometimes gets rid of sin by simply waving his magic wand, no atonement needed?  Or were the callers just a bunch of ignorant skeptics who didn't know the bible as well as I do?

Better, the OT God makes it clear that human sin is completely forgiven by means of animal sacrifice, even if the sin was one normally calling for execution, such as adultery:

  20 'Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment; they shall not, however, be put to death, because she was not free.
 21 'He shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering.
 22 'The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him. (Lev. 19:20-22 NAU)

 The bible also says Yom Kippur completely cleansed Israel of sin:

 30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. (Lev. 16:30 NAU)

But no, J. Warner Wallace believes Hell is literal and eternal, and thinks the bible doesn't have any mistakes, and so insists that regardless of how this passage reads, it cannot mean that you are "really" cleansed of sin before the Lord, because we have to account for why requires an eternal hell of torment in the NT.  Well excuse me, but biblical inerrancy is total bullshit, so you cannot get rid of Leviticus 19 by pointing out that Jesus taught a literal hell in Luke 16.

If this sexual sin was rape, the easy way to obtain divine forgiveness makes God a mysoginist prick.

If this sexual sin wasn't rape, it was likely intentional, for what sexual sin between consenting adults wouldn't be?  But then the forgiveness here for this intentional sin contradicts the explicit teaching of the bible that intentional sins cannot be forgiven:

 30 'But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.
 31 'Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him.'" (Num. 15:30-31 NAU)

 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. (Heb. 10:26-28 NAU)

Wallace continues:

I think it’s important to define the nature of Hell and sin before our discussion of the eternal nature of punishment can have any meaning or significance.

And good luck in your attempt to show that any Christian scholars who define hell a pure metaphor, are just spiritually dead. 

Objections related to the eternal nature of Hell result from a misunderstanding of four principles and terms:

Those objections also arise from a belief that the bible has mistakes, another presupposition you won't be refuting anytime soon, indicating that while you pretend to be writing to equip Christians to answer skeptics, the truth is, you are only writing to convince people who carry around the same basic Christian convictions that you hold.

We Fail to Understand the Meaning of Spiritual “Torment”

The Bible says those who are delivered into Hell will be tormented, and the degree to which they will suffer is described in dramatic, illustrative language. But, the scripture never describes Hell as a place where God or His angels are actively “torturing” the souls of the rebellious.

Yes it does:

 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)

 8 "But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Rev. 21:8 NAU)

The Revelation author was pro-Jewish and lived in the first century, where prisoners were routinely tormented or punished in the presence of, and by the authority of, the local king or other ruler.

 Jesus likened God to a king who beat his subjects:

 45 "But if that slave says in his heart, 'My master will be a long time in coming,' and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk;
 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
 47 "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,
 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few.  (Lk. 12:45-48 NAU)

Why should the rational person distinguish Wallace's god who doesn't "actively" torture anybody, from the biblical god Jesus taught, who apparently throws unbelievers into a furnace of fire?  What's the difference between selectively burning a person on their body with a blow torch, and throwing them into a furnace intended to burn them without killing them?

 40 "So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.
 41 "The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness,
 42 and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:40-42 NAU)

 Jude describes the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire as "punishment"

 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7 NAU)

To make sure you cannot quibble, the bible specifies that God was hurling fireballs "from heaven" down onto these two cities:

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

Now are you still sufficiently fundamentalist so as to admit that God does the punishing?


And the idea of God causing endless unbearable suffering is perfectly consistent with God threatening to cause parental cannibalism, kidnapping, rape and other horrific atrocities in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Read it, then you talk to me again about about how wrong it is to call your god a sadistic lunatic.  Is it really true that the all-powerful creator of the universe could not, during the days of Moses, think of any more humane way to successfully dissuade his people from sin, except to threaten them with horrific plights?

“Torture” is the sadistic activity that is often perpetrated for the mere joy of it.

No, "torture" is intentional infliction of pain, but whether it is inflicted sadistically goes beyond the dictionary definition:

“Torment” results from a choice on the part of the person who finds himself (or herself) suffering the consequences.

No, "torment" is the experience of anguish and pain as the result of harsh circumstances, the dictionary definition does not link the experience to the suffering person's "choices"

However, it is obvious that you've inserted "choices" into the definition of "torment" because of your arbitrary desire to blame hell's torments on those who suffer it, as required by your religion.  You have done an unconvincing job of trying to disconnect Jesus from the cause of those hellish torments.

One can be in constant torment over a decision made in the past, without being actively tortured by anyone.

Immaterial, the bible god actively tortures people on earth AND in hell, see above.

We Fail to Understand the Insignificance of Sin’s “Duration”

If someone embezzles $5.00 a week from their employer’s cash register they will have stolen $260.00 over the course of a year. If they’re caught at the end of this time, they would still only be guilty of a misdemeanor in the State of California (based on the total amount of loss). Although the crime took a year to commit, the perpetrator wouldn’t spend much (if any) time in jail. On the other hand, a murder can take place in the blink of an eye and the resulting punishment will be life in prison (or perhaps the death penalty). The duration of the crime clearly has little or nothing to do with the duration of the penalty.

And according to Leviticus 16 and 19, supra, sins in general and the sin of adultery in particular cease their duration upon sacrifice of an animal.  If the Book of Hebrews in the NT teaches that sin is not "fully" dealt with by animal sacrifices, then the author got it wrong, since full expiation and cleansing before the Lord is exactly how Leviticus' originally intended recipients would have taken those words, and it is what they signify in their immediate contexts anyway.  The whole business of Jesus fulfilling the animal sacrificial system with his own death is total bullshit...how could Jesus "forgive" sins during his earthly ministry as he is alleged to have done (Mark 2:10), if after such forgiveness, the sin still required some type of sacrifice?  But the theological problem of Jesus needing to die for previously forgiven or previously atoned-for sins, is yours and yours alone.

We Fail to Understand the Magnitude of God’s “Authority”

If your sister catches you lying about your income last year, you might lose her respect. If the IRS catches you lying about your income last year, the resulting punishment will be far more painful. What’s the difference here? It certainly isn’t the crime. Instead, we recognize the more authoritative the source of the code, rule or law, the greater the punishment for those who are in violation. If God is the Highest Authority, we should expect that violations of His “laws” would result in significant punishment(s).

No, see Leviticus 19:20-22, supra.  If a slave-owner has sex with his female slave after she had been betrothed to another man, the slave-owner who committed this adultery is spared from the mandatory death penalty because the slave-girl wasn't "free" (she wasn't important enough by god's standards to infuse the sexual act with that much importance or significance), and he will obtain divine forgiveness by nothing more than his giving a sacrificial animal to the priests for slaughter.

Oh, and don't miss the fact that no matter how many times you read that passage, the slave-girl in question is never penalized or punished in any way, despite the fact that, if you deny this act was rape, she consented to the sexual liaison and therefore was no less guilty than the man and thus just as needful of expiation as the man.  So either a) she isn't penalized because the sex act described here was rape (in which case the man obtained divine forgiveness for rape by simply allowing one of his animals to be slaughtered, showing that the god of the OT thinks rape does not require the man to suffer any punishment beyond giving up an animal, when in fact the man being a slave-owner implies he was rich and could afford to give up several animals without feeling any financial sting), or b) she consented and was guilty of adultery as much as the owner, but God for whatever reason finds it unnecessary to address her part in the sin.

We Fail to Understand the Depth of Our “Sin”

Finally, it’s important to remember the nature of the crime that eventually leads one to Hell. It’s not the fact you kicked your dog in 1992. It’s not the fact you had evil thoughts about your teacher in 1983. The crime that earns us a place in Hell is our rejection of the true, living, eternal God.

On the contrary, the bible says people are judged for all of their acts and words, not just the act of rejecting the gospel:

 32 "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
 33 "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.
 34 "You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
 35 "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
 36 "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.
 37 "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matt. 12:32-37 NAU)

  27 "For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. (Matt. 16:27 NAU)

  12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. (Rev. 20:12-13 NAU)

 No, "according to their deeds" cannot be whittled down to "only because they rejected the gospel".

The rejection of God’s forgiveness is not finite. People who reject Jesus have rejected Him completely.

First, that's just plain stupid.  If I reject my neighbor because I don't like his morals, that doesn't mean I'd just stand there and do nothing while watching him drown, or refuse his offer of money if I needed it to avoid being evicted.  What are you going to say next?  That we only reject the light lest our evil deeds be exposed?

Second, those authentically born-again spiritually brothers in the faith you call 5-Point Calvinists believe that God has predestined people to do all that they end up doing, including their sins, which makes God's sending unbelievers to hell even more atrocious, since the only reason they desired to sin was because God forced them to desire this.

Then there's Ezekiel 38:4, where God describes his sovereign forcing of a foreign people to attack Israel, by saying he will put a hook in their jaws and draw them against Israel, and ch. 38 and 39 go on to say God will then punish by great slaughter these foreign nations for doing what he forced them to do.

Wallace, who are you trying to impress here?  The people who already believe everything you say (gee, real toughie there)?  or the skeptics and atheists who agree with most Christian scholars that bible inerrancy is total bullshit?   Given how obscenely weak your theology is, I'd say you've chosen the low-road, and you intend more to make Christians feel confident that their beliefs are true, and less to convince skeptics of the alleged error of their ways.

They have rejected Him as an ultimate, final mortal decision. God has the right (and obligation) to judge them with an appropriate punishment.

Don't call God a punisher unless you credit him with the torments the sinners experience in hell.  Sorry, Wallace, but you are not going to reconcile the biblical picture of God as tormentor, with the modern Christian belief that God doesn't himself torment anybody.  Again, read the most depressing news in the world in Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then come back here and tell me God doesn't inflict torment and torture.

To argue that God’s punishment does not fit our crime is to underestimate our crime.

And although God could have caused Bathsheba to miscarry early after her adultery with David so that the child conceived would never experience any torment, God did not.  And although God could have simply caused the born baby to die immediately, he did not, but struck the child, so that it suffered a tormenting  sickness before finally expiring after 7 days:

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

To argue that a teenager stealing a pack of bubblegum deserves to be roasted alive in hell in screaming mindless agony forever, indicates you deny those parts of the bible that delimit God's power and holiness.  It also tells me you think God's plan to deal with sin is perfect, when in fact you should know from Genesis 6:6-7 and Exodus 32:9-14 that God sometimes discovers later that his original plan was less than perfect.

Your belief that people "deserve" hellish torments forever for temporal sins also indicates you reject those parts of the bible that teach that God was capable of getting rid of somebody's sin by simply waving his magic wand, as he apparently did in the case of David's adultery with Bathsheba:

 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." (2 Sam. 12:11-14 NAU)

If God is capable of just "removing" even sins otherwise requiring death, such as adultery, then you need to stop pretending that God's holiness "demands" that he punish sin.  He "needs" to punish sin about as much as a morbidly obese woman "needs" to eat ice cream. 

How do you expect this senseless rambling of yours to strike the fear of God into the hearts of unbelievers, when it is clear you simply reject any biblical teaching on God that doesn't fit the traditional conservative Evangelical understanding of sin and punishment?

The Bible describes Hell as a place where those who have rejected God will suffer the torment of their decision.

It also says they will suffer burning from fire and brimstone, see Revelation, quoted supra, and the last I checked, there is no logically necessary connection between stealing a candy bar and being burned by fire and brimstone, which means somebody else is responsible for forcing the sin and the punishment to be connected to each other, and since God is the one who punishes sin, it is God who is causing the fire and brimstone to burn the sinner.

It is only jailhouse lawyers like Wallace who would try to explain away the video showing his client murdering another person with a gun, by arguing that it was the bullet, not the client, who "caused" this death.

It’s an appropriate punishment given the magnitude of God’s ultimate authority and the mortal opportunities for each of us to choose otherwise in this life.

Then arbitrarily exempting adulterers from the death-penalty is also consistent with God's nature, 2nd Samuel 12, supra, in which case there is room in God's "nature" to simply eternally avoid punishing a sin.  Your portrait of a God whose nature mandates that he punish sin, reflects less from the bible and more from your choice to be a modern-day fundamentalist intent on selling books to the people who already believe everything you believe.

I'm not exactly quaking in my boots over J. Warner Wallace's pitiful attempts to justify the doctrine of literal torment in a literal Hell.  To quote one of my favorite songs from Deicide, fuck your god.