Nice Try, Glenn: God's creation of carnivores makes him bi-polar, at least

I've decided to do a series of blog responses to Glenn M. Miller, a Christian apologist who, IMO, has far more justification to believe his Christianity than probably any 1000 Christians combined.  His website is here.

Miller's comments are often appealed to by lesser apologists in their effort to show that the Christian or biblical viewpoint on a matter is reasonable and the atheist or skeptical perspective is irrational.

The purpose of the series (all articles will begin with "Nice try, Glenn..." is to demonstrate that even the more "scholarly" apologists fail to demonstrate the unreasonableness or irrationality of atheist bible critics.  Our basic problems with the bible-god and miracles continue standing as more than sufficient rational warrants for rejecting theism in general and Christianity in particular.

In this first article, I respond to Miller's article wherein he tries to reconcile the sadistic suffering inflicted by carnivores, with the idea that the god who created them is somehow still "loving" to create such beasts.

This is my reply to an article by Glenn Miller entitled

Good question...

...does the savagery of predation in nature show that God either isn't, or at least isn't good-hearted?

 [original piece: July 6, 1999  updated: July 18/1999]

 Introduction and Table of Contents

The biotic food-chain of the natural world, with its savage predation and suffering is often given as evidence against the God of the bible.

Perhaps only by lesser informed skeptics.  The truly smart skeptics, like me, recognize that how cruel somebody is, doesn't help inform questions of whether they exist.  However, because the bible teaches both an apathetically cruel deity AND a compassionate loving deity, we are reasonable to insist that if the bible-god exists, he is, without a doubt, bi-polar.  He can immediately turn from being compassionate to being heartlessly sadistic very quickly, and for reasons that cause even today's Christians a certain bit of unease.

The problem Miller doesn't deal with is that skeptics who bemoan the divine atrocities of the bible are indeed legitimately refuting the idiot-fundie notion that God "cares" about living things.  That might not be enough to justify saying such god doesn't exist, but the contention that this god is bi-polar is well founded.

For now, point by point analysis of these types of articles witten by "apologists" is hardly "necessary" for the atheist to be "reasonable" in their rejection of the bible and theism, as there are very powerful atheist arguments that aren't disturbed by trifles about whether god can be loving to create carnivores:

1 - God is an incoherent concept.
2 - Some gospel data, which has better claim to historical truth than most other data, justify saying Jesus died and never came back to life.
3 - Bible inerrancy is false doctrine, thus, I do not use it as a hermeneutic.  I will not give up a contextually and grammatically justified interpretation of a bible verse merely beause it would contradict reality or some other part of the bible.
4 - There are powerful biblical arguements against classical theism, hence, Miller's controlling presupposition (i.e., forever looking for just anything anywhere that might possibly protect bible inerrancy from falsification) is not anything remotely obligatory on the skeptic.
5 - Contrary to popular opinion, reasonableness isn't dependent upon actual accuracy.  Therefore, even if somebody finds Miller's trifles more convincing than my rebuttals, that hardly demonstrates that I'm "unreasonable".   Which then means the atheist can still be reasonable, within normative definitions of the word, to reject theism and Christianity.

I'm fair and consistent in this too:  I believe Christianity is "false", but I don't say the vast majority of Christians are "unreasonable", because reasonableness doesn't necessarily hinge upon accuracy.  I usually reserve the accusation of unreasonableness for special cases where certain Christians act in shocking defiance of common sense.  For example, James Patrick Holding is unreasonable, with his intentionally committing the sins of slander and gossip for more than 20 years, as abundantly documented at this blog. 

So this precise question of whether god is evil for creating carnivores, might be fun to toss around on a boring rainy day, but is ultimately about as relevant as whether somebody's interpretation of a passage in the Book of Mormon was "correct".  It isn't like a person's giving the "incorrect" answer to such a question puts them in any danger.  The vast bulk of Miller's arguments in his numerous articles are, like the bast bulk of all apologetics arguments produced by Christians, nothing more than trifles, or what court judges refer to as "purely academic" questions (i.e., questions whose correct resolution changes precisely nothing in the real world).

Miller continues:

Let me start the analysis of this by citing some different wordings/aspects of this problem (not all with theological conclusions in them):

    First, a juicy one from John Stuart Mill:

"If there are any marks of all special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals" (J.S. Mill, 1874).

And as we'll see, since the old-earth creationists have more biblical justification than young-earth creationism, that ends up requiring that God positively willed from eternity that some animals inflict horrific suffering on others.  The popular fundie Christian notion that the molars of the vegetarian tigers in the Garden of Eden suddenly morphed into fangs after sin entered the world, and degraded their brain cells sufficiently so that they started seeing other animals as food, is not biblical.  Hence, carnivores did not start existing after sin entered the world, the bible teaches they existed by God's positive decree from the beginning.

Hence, causing this god to be reasonably categorized as on the level of a 4 year old toddler who like to inflict cruelty on small animals.  If God is omnipotent, he could have achieved the goal the carnivores ostensibly fulfill, in other ways.  Just like if you are short of rent money, you can probably come up with the money in ways other than by robbing a bank.

    Then, a quote from a popular book on predation:

"Most animals are either eaten or eat other animals. Plants, too, are often consumed by animals. Consequently the chances of being devoured, or of eating some other organism in order to survive, are exceedingly high." [NS:PAP:3]

    Then, a quote from a deep-thinking, good-hearted seeker friend of mine:

"Let's face it: our life cannot exist without the *agonising* death of another breathing, feeling entity. The second law of thermodynamics is just another one, *demonstrating* (as the theories of self-organising energy fail to do) that deterioration is inherent in this universe.

"Charles Darwin wrote about the Ichneumon spider and the nightmarish sort of manner in which its very existence depends on the impregnation of its paralysed victims with its eggs so the hatchlings can have fresh, *live* meat when they hatch (kinda like the Aliens movie). Dawkins, Pinker, and pretty much the ridiculously vast majority of the scientific community keep offering demonstrable evidence of how God cannot fit in a universe where an ichneumon may be so "designed."

And if the source-book for this deity sometimes says he has compassion and other times expresses his sadism toward others, we are perfectly reasonable to say such contradictory properties mean this particular type of god doesn't exist, or is at least bi-polar.

    Lastly, a heartfelt question from a Christian:

"I think some people, Christians or not, will think this question is a little on the soft side. Never the less, in my attempt to reconcile myself to the concept of a merciful loving God in the face of tragedy and pain, I am left with some very unanswered questions. So, here goes

"How should we deal with animal suffering? Not just the idea of, for example, willful human torture of an animal. I am thinking of the whole animal kingdom suffering. Perhaps it is ruefully ironic that only a conscious mind could truly appreciate the suffering of an animal. I pray that animals are not conscious of their pain. They certainly respond to what looks like pain. Am I empathizing with the animal's pain because part of my fallen nature is in a way, animal?

"In the past I tried to take a very mechanistic approach. Animals were beautifully created machines. A pain impulse would simply go to the brain as any other external signal. The brain would route the signal to provide the appropriate response, etc.

"I cannot make myself believe this. I have a dog now, which has changed things. I do not have children, but I imagine the experience would further change my views. I feel a horror for the future death of my dog.

Nature is often called "red in tooth and claw" and the quotes above point out the emotional difficulty this creates for humans. We seen the vivid cases of a lion biting the neck of a Thompson gazelle, or the Ichneumon spider example given above (which is technically incorrect--the Ichneumon is an insect order of wasps, not spiders), or the diagrams of big-bigger-biggest fish eating one another in a food chain lesson. We see chimpanzees (often portrayed as emotionally deep) tear the arm out of its socket of a captured bonobo money (and then eat it with the bonobo screaming there) [PH:GN:84]. We see killer whales, playing with their seal pup food, throwing it back and forth like a beach ball (while the terrified pup is still alive) [NS:DNNHE:xii]. We know that foxes will chase and capture the same shrew, just to let it go and repeat the process [CS:AM:60], and we use the 'cat playing with the mouse' image as a metaphor.

And we also know how tight of a grip bible inerrancy can have on the mind of its devoted disciples.

The quotes above intimate that this situation is radically inconsistent with the existence of the Christian God.

Not really, the "Christian" god as defined in the bible is bi-polar.  But the "Christian" god believed in by most Christians today is little more than a compassionate Santa.  I'm more interested in showing the problems with the biblical data.  The question of why most Christians have a higher moral view of God than the bible teaches, is not very important to me.

There are many, many issues involved in this question, so let me begin by listing some of these:

    Question One: To what extent is the existing predatory situation created by God, and to what extent does God 'endorse' it now? (In other words, has it always been like this, or to what extent is this the result of the Fall or of the Flood?)

    This question will require some basic study of what the biblical data is, and what range of options might exist for how we 'fit' predation into our view of creation, providence, etc. So the data for this will be primarily biblical.

 Jesus made clear that God is the one who feeds the birds:

 26 "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? (Matt. 6:26 NAU)

So when we see a hawk, which is a "bird of the air",  sadistically tormenting a cuckoo bird that is still alive in the effort to eat (video here, warning: graphic, not intended for children), Jesus thinks this is what the "heavenly father" intended.

    Question Two: How extensive is 'painful predation'? (In other words, DO all things REALLY live only at the expense of agonizing death by those lower on the food chain?)

 Dismissed.  No, obviously, not all food is acquired by lesser animals in a brutal fashion.

    This question will be answered by biological data. We will need to survey the food chain, and ask questions of scope of predation (as opposed to the other possible ecosystem relationships, such as parasitism or commensalism) as well as to what extent each of the creatures involved in a prey-predator relationship actually "feel agony" in a meaningful sense.

No, if your god is omnipotent, he could have created life forms that don't need to inflict misery on others.  he could cause grass to grow by creative decree, cause all life forms to eat this grass, and there you go, no "need" for god to "sustain" the food chain in ways that make predatory behavior sound "necessary".

    Question Three: Where exactly in the act of predation is the theological/moral problem?

The general consensus of modern humanity, including most Christians, that "love" is not sufficiently broad as to be part of anything that displays a level of cruelty that appears arbitrary.  Therefore, the more the bible says god is "loving", the more the existence of carnivores refutes that doctrine.  That is, reality requires either that the bible is wrong and this contradictory loving/sadistic god doesn't exist for the same reason anything else with contradictory properties cannot exist, or, the bible errs in ascribing infinite love to this god.  Sure, we can always trifle that an infinite intelligence might have higher mysterious reasons, in conformity to "love", for allowing sadism in nature, but then again, the bible doesn't consistently support classical theism, the bible god often makes mistakes, and the "anthropomorphism" excuse to get away from these passages, are never grounded in their grammar, immediate context, larger context, cultural context, or genre.  

Is there a moral problem with carrion beetles that eat the dead carcass of an animal (who obviously doesn't feel any pain)?

No, because it is be the admission of most other Christians that infliction of unnecessary pain is the opposite of love. Your trifle that maybe god wished to create a greater good by wanting carnivores to inflict misery on other animals, is easy to dismiss:  under your own classical theism, your god was not required by circumstances to use that method to achieve this unproven higher mysterious good.  If your god could maintain humans with nothing more than manna for 40 years in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35, Numbers 11:4-7), he could also just as magically supply food to all life forms, so that life can sustain itself without there needing to be any food chain involving bacteria or carnivores.

To what extent is there a problem with a gazelle having to avoid a predator every day (or every week) for decades--does this somehow cause "painful stress" for the gazelle that is radically worse (and to the point of "cruel, immoral suffering") than that of having to make a living every day by humans?

To what extent is there a problem with YOU having to avoid a predator every day?  Would you say there was a "problem" if every day you went outside your house, you couldn't stay alive unless you ran faster than the other humans chasing you with intent to kill you?   Live like that for a while, and I'm not so sure you'd continue thinking as highly about god as you currently do.

Is it in the "destructive" experience of the prey (perhaps painful)

What do you mean "perhaps"?  Gee, when the gazelle is screaming as it is being eaten alive, maybe we'd have to debate whether the gazelle was experiencing pain?

as it is being killed by the predator, implying that prey animals that feel no pain (such as zooplankton) as they are eaten are not "included" in this problem?

I'm not seeing the angle, Miller:  gazelles obviously do feel pain, and as an creationist, you are forced to credit their innate desire to avoid the predator to god, who surely is the only reasonable explanation for the gazelle's "intelligence"...right?

Is it in the fact that something dies at the mouth of another, instead of living forever, or only dying "of old age, in its sleep." Does dying of starvation (because some other animal group ate all the grass) count as predation?

 No, but I notice that you are avoiding the real issue by pretending you need to devote time to other questions that allow you to walk away from the problem at hand:  carnivores inflict sadistic misery on other animals, a reality inconsistent with any rational definition of "love".

Does dying of disease (because some very small life-forms attacked it) count?

Irrelevant.

    This, strangely enough, is a philosophical and theological question. How would we decide that it was wrong for a cockroach to die (instead of live forever)?

You'd stay more on track if you confined you analysis to the sadism in the animal world that you yourself mentioned earlier in this article (stuff like "We see chimpanzees (often portrayed as emotionally deep) tear the arm out of its socket of a captured bonobo money (and then eat it with the bonobo screaming there)"

You start losing the debate the more the life forms approach the level of human and are still subject to carnivores.

How would we decide that it was wrong for a cockroach to die suddenly by ingestion by a bird (instead of suddenly by an end-of-life(?) failure of some internal biological function, such as the heart)?

Easy: unless you simply play with words as expediency dictates, birds eating cockroaches "alive" doesn't sound very "loving", even granting that the cockroach is a mere insect with far less self-awareness or pain-receptors than humans have.  So the more you credit such unloving circle of life to your god, the more justified we are to say he is either unloving, or his ideas of love are completely opposite to most of his own people understand "love" to be.  Do I eat hamburger?  yes.  Does that mean I think I can reconcile cattle-slaughter with "love"?  No.  I happily admit not everything about me is "loving".  Your god doesn't have that excuse, unless you become an open-theist.

How would we decide that the suffering of a zebra for 3-5 minutes at the fangs of a cheetah morally "outweighed" the previous 20 years of growing, reproducing, not being eaten or mauled by a predator (being mauling by a predator generally reduced mobility and results in capture quickly thereafter), and community life for some 20+ years?

Easy, under your own creationism, you are forced to blame god solely for the zebra's desire to struggle against the cheetah and attempt escape.  Why does your god want the zebra to struggle against the cheetah, if your god intended for the cheetah to get food that way?

What, is your god like a child with toy soldiers, deliberately setting up circumstances intended to cause life forms to clash and inflict misery on each other?       

Is it "wrong" for my white blood cells to attack and devour bacteria that is harmful to me?

Only if you think the killed bacteria were able to experience as much pain and conscious suffering as the zebra does in the mouth of a cheetah.

    About all we can do with this question is expose the value assumptions that are inherent in the question, and how they are being "used" by the objection.

Then you didn't do a very good job of it.  bonobos that scream while their arms are ripped off by chimpanzees obviously reveal a far bigger contradiction between god's "love" and nature, than what you might find when bacteria are killed by white blood cells.

And once again, there would be no "need" for your god to create such a sadistically interdependent food chain, if the bible is correct in saying he could create ex nihilo and feed humans for 40 years solely on manna.  Under those assumptions, God's choice to feed carnivores by giving them the instinct to hurt other animals is about as arbitrary as the child who throws 15 different insects into a small jar just to watch them tear each other apart.  You don't want to say your god takes pleasure in sadistic shows, but that's your problem.  When you are capable of earning money to pay the rent, but you instead choose to solve the rent problem by robbing a bank, nobody really gives a shit as you testify in court about how your killing of the bank teller achieved the higher good of causing her immediate family to grow closer to Jesus.  Your higher mysterious goals do not transform an evil act into a good act.  Therefore, that also holds in the case of your god's actions in causing suffering.  It doesn't matter if he has higher mysterious reasons for doing this.  The fact that he could achieve his same goals without needing to employ such sadistic measures, shows him to be unloving by any reasonable definition.

I think this is the part where you suddenly discover how biblical open-theism is.

We might also be able to subject these assumptions to some more rigorous philosophical analysis, by examining implications of those assumptions.

Something you'd never do if you came home and found out Rover ate the cat.

    Question Four: How exactly would the predatory situation count as evidence against the Christian God, given the actual details of the food chain/web interrelationships?

Already explained that:  the more you identify the Christian god as the god of "classical theism" (i.e., your god is all-powerful, etc) the more your god could have caused life on earth to sustain itself by means other than carnivorous.  Sort of like if you have a decent education and could easily get a job to pay the bills, the jury will not listen very long as you try to explain how the larger good achieved when you murdered the bank teller (her family grieved and started going to church more) overrides the smaller good you'd have achieved by simply earning your own money.  Where you could have achieved your purpose without inflicting misery, your choice to inflict misery anyway reasonably demonstrates apathy and sadism.  Since the classical-theist god hardly "needed" to create carnivores merely for living things to stay alive, his choice to achieve that system by more sadistic means, demonstrates his apathy and sadism.

    Here we are in another philosophical arena--this is NOT a biological issue!-- and we will have to examine (1) the general evidentialist argument from evil, (2) how the biologists mentioned in the quotes (e.g., Dawkins) are using biological data in philosophical arguments to reach theological conclusions (and how trustworthy such an approach might be); and (3) what alternative scenarios for biodiversity (e.g., all creatures use photosynthesis instead of biomass consumption, all carnivores are scavengers) might be feasible and/or "more moral".

How moral was God's limiting people to eating manna for 40 years?  How moral was it for god to cause grass to grow without the aid of carnivores? How moral was it for god to limit the diet of cattle to grass?

And you wish to pretend that god "needed" carnivores"?  Sure, maybe like a kidnapper "needs" victims.

    Question Five: Are there elements in the existing predatory and/or larger ecological situation that might support the Christian claim that "God is good to all He has made"?

Only if you could, in good conscience, say "God is good to all He had made" to the bonobo while its arms are being ripped off by the chimpanzee.  And yes, I'm thinking bible inerrancy has its grip on your mind that tightly.  

Bible inerrancy caused Hank Hanegraaff (Bible Answerman of CRI) to foolishly argue in the 90's that conscious eternal torment in basically literal hell fire is "loving" of god, so there really aren't any meaningful controls here on the depths to which you are capable of sinking, where you feel doing so will rescue bible inerrancy.  Never mind that Hank eventually found fundie-evangelicalism to be bullshit and joined the Greek Orthodox church.  We have to wonder whether the passing of time will also similarly alert him to the unbiblical and sadistic nature of fire-torture.

    Here we are in another philosophical arena. Can the data of predation as it exists today be interpreted in such a way as to support the proposition that "God arranges matters such as to minimize pain in the life of non-human creatures, in the context of His overall purposes and designs?" (or similar propositions).

No.  As explained previously, the fact that God limited Israel to manna for 40 years proves that he not only can, but sometimes even does, think just magically creating food out of thin air is a legitimate way to solve the food problem, in which case he could have caused all creatures to be limited to eating such ex nihilo food, and we wouldn't be having this debate today.

Or, God have been satisfied with limiting life forms to the immaterial realm, mooting their need to eat, which means all the misery inherent in the physical food chain is avoided.

 You admit in one of your pushbacks:

Without trying to decide this issue here, let me simply point out that Dr. Ross' argument only actually applies to consumption of meat, not to the killing of it. In other words, all carnivores could have been scavengers and only eaten meat dead of 'natural causes'--predation itself is not required to solve the 'energy problem' for active creatures.

 Precisely.  God could have made any life system he wished, including one that involved no carnivore activity. Once again, if you could have solved the rent problem by getting a job, but no, you instead chose to solve it by robbing a bank and killing one of the tellers, nobody will listen to you as you insist that the greater good of the teller's family growing closer to Jesus through their grief, outweighed your evil in murdering her.

Us atheists don't listen to such excuses, even when they are applied to "god".

We would have to conclude that a very basic (low-carnivory, low dietary restrictions, "CNS non-violent") food-chain was created by God, but that the eco-dynamics of the system were substantially modified at/after the Fall and the Flood. 

 That's irrelevant, life didn't suck after the Fall merely because of the Fall, as if the original sin automatically degraded nature.  Life sucked thereafter because God chose to curse the creation:

 14 The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life;
 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."
 16 To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you."
 17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
 18 "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;
 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return."
 20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. (Gen. 3:14-20 NAU)

 Miller continues:

Nevertheless, the modifications allowed to be introduced were calculated, designed, and are regulated in order to preserve bio-diversity and life on the earth, and still achieve overall "more good than bad" in the system. 

 You've never shown that the current system produces more good than bad.  In fact your own bible characterizes the entire world as evil (1st John 5:19), and that the world does little more than give its creatures a reason to groan (Romans 8:22).

Thus the predator-prey relationships (broadly considered) that we see today will have more elements that are "positive" (e.g., defensive modifications, poisons that eliminate feeling/pain as they kill, underdeveloped nervous systems of the largest number of prey) than elements that are "negative" (e.g., violent death involving actual suffering for long periods of time in higher mammals). 

 And since god's merely producing manna by magic and limiting all life forms to eating this would completely eliminate any "need" for carnivores, your god's refusal to do it that way was arbitrary:  he created the carnivore system because he enjoys watching life forms endure horrific misery, not because he couldn't think of a better plan.  

We are also told that God is only 'tolerating' and 'regulating' this situation at the present,

 Implying everything that is implied when a parent doesn't endorse, but only "tolerates" and "regulates" the times in which the babysitter is allowed to sexually molest the child. Yet the more "holy" you pretend god is, the less likely such a fantastical being would "tolerate" or "regulate" anything unholy.  Sort of like the more homophobic the neighbor is, the less likely they would "tolerate" or "regulate" gay men acting gay within their own house.  It just goes without saying.

 and that His purpose in history of rich bio-diversity, in community balance, in loving affirmation, and in the harmony of peace and companionship will eventually be achieved. 

 The hope of the hopeless. 

And then the "lion will lay down with the lamb."

Not sure whether I'll bother to answer Miller's "pushback" commentary, since my arguments against his main points here are powerful and not disturbed by the pushbacks.  The observation that God can approve of a feeding system for life that involves no pain (i.e., creating manna ex nihilo), does a pretty powerful job of demonstrating the evil of a god who chooses to create a painful circle of life anyway.  Trifles about "god's ways are mysterious" are never accepted by Christians when such trifle is is used by 'heretics', so fairness dictates that Christians likewise be prohibited from hiding behind this excuse.

Apologist Clay Jones fails to morally justify Joshua's massacre of Canaanite children

This is my reply to a lecture by Christian apologist Clay Jones, Phd., uploaded to YouTube by Biola University, entitled:

Killing the Canaanites Was Justified Capital Punishment

1. Before we get started, I recently made a debate offer to Dr. Jones concerning his online articles about how sinful the Canaanites allegedly were (i.e., his attempt to convince modern western readers that the Canaanite kids being killed by Hebrews was actually consistent with modern western notions of deserved justice).  He first replied asking where my blog was.  When I told him, he sent a final email saying he is just too busy to debate the issues raised in his articles.  Now, I'm not saying he is lying.  I'm just saying if he really was too busy, he likely would have said this before asking where my blog was.  I think what happened was that he believed he could make the time to debate me if he liked my blog site, but after reading it, then “discovered” that he didn’t have enough time to do such a debate.  

2. Dr. Jones starts out with the NT and its out-of-context OT quotes for original sin.  So apparently he seeks to restrict his persuasion power not just to "Christians", but to specifically only those Christians who regard bible inerrancy + doctrine of original sin as a foregone conclusions.

That's a problem:  Does Jones recommend that his Christian audience take any of his pro-bible inerrancy apologetics arguments and try them out on atheists?  Or he is just giving the lecture to help those already committed to his version of Christianity, to feel better about serving a Christian god that used to ask his followers to kill children? 

3. Be that as it may, Jones cites Romans 3 to “prove” that everybody “deserves” to die because of “original sin”.  Unfortunately, Paul here was taking Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 out of context.  Psalm 14:5 says God is with the righteous generation, thus meaning the universal condemnation words immediately preceding weren’t intended in absolute fashion..  In Psalm 53, the Psalmist obviously excludes himself from the others he accuses of having gone astray.  Apparently, Paul was misinterpreting Psalmic hyperbole as if it was literal, and in a way that ignored the context of those passages.  The same is true for the case of Psalm 10:7.  Romans 3:18 quotes Psalm 38:1, but in v. 10 the Psalmist admits the existence of those who are righteous.  Evangelical Inerrantist scholars agree that Paul thought he could help god by "adapting" God’s originally inerrant wording in the OT, to a context the OT author did not have in mind:

"Also a New Testament author would quite often, under the inspiration of God and to accentuate a specific point, adapt an Old Testament verse to serve his immediate purpose. Furthermore, the practice of precise citation and scholarly acknowledgment is a modern phenomenon. It was not at all a customary practice in antiquity."-----------Romans 3:9-12, Mounce, R. H. (2001, c1995). Vol. 27: Romans (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 108). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers. 

4. Clay is apparently only talking to evangelical inerrantists, since his blind presumption of the doctrine of original sin would not be taken well by nearly half of the evangelical world “only fifty-two percent of evangelicals held to the doctrine of original sin.” See also Danielle, MDiv Princeton Theological Seminary, author of Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place,

Even conservative Christians deny original sin, such as the “Churches of Christ".  The bible and especially the book of Jeremiah are full of references to the wrongness of a person in shedding "innocent" blood, which would doesn't make sense if in truth a) nobody is sufficiently innocent to deserve protection from murderers, and b) God numbered our days and thus logically also decreed the act that would take our lives, which often would be murder (Job 14:5).

5. Clay also overlooks that if he wishes to credit God with the modern Christian moral disdain for murder, he opens the door to the possibility that it is also something from God in the heart that causes many Christians to disdain the doctrine of orginal sin.  Doesn't do much good to talk about how our sense of morality comes from God placing his laws on our hearts, if in truth human intuition really isn't a criteria for deciding what morals come from god.

6. Clay overlooks that Jeremiah and Ezekiel set forth new dogmas of individual guilt, intended to replace the older dogma of corporate guilt, and the new dogma appears to conflict with original sin, since the new dogma promises protection from the guilty conduct of others: 

29 "In those days they will not say again, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge.'

 30 "But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.

 31 "Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. (Jer. 31:29-32 NAU)

20 "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. (Ezek. 18:20 NAU)

7. Clay then cites to atrocities committed by other nations on their own people, but this is rather disingenuous, since to be consistent, Clay would have to draw similar inferences from the fact that people and leaders also do much good to their people too.  Why doesn’t America’s creation of the U.S. Constitution show good in people just as much as tyrants of other countries show the bad?  Could it be that we are simple minded idiots and feel more comfortable labeling somebody fully good or bad, and would rather not admit the complex truth that most people are an inconsistent mixture of both?

8. Clay overlooks the fact that the vast majority of people on earth have not been egregious tyrants or criminals outside of their country requiring them to participate in war or battles.  The vast majority of people in history do not exhibit the atrocities Clay documents from a handful of tyrants like Stalin and Hitler.  The point is that Clay's unwillingness to credit people properly with being good for their good works, makes him inconsistent to say the only works they can be properly credited with are their bad works.

9. Clay says Jesus never implies that those who die might be undeserving of death, but he overlooks Exodus 32:9-14, where God backs off of his original intent to kill the Exodusing Hebrews, because Moses slapped some sense into the divine head.

  

9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.

 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."

 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.

 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"

 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.

 (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

10. Clay presumes that all of God’s judgments are good and right, but in this overlooks the plain fact that given his presuppositions about the nature of sin and man, God either knew or should have known that flooding the world in the days of Noah would not accomplish his goal.  God appears to admit he should have known that the flood was a bad idea.  Genesis 8:21 makes no sense unless it means that God discovered at some point after flooding the world that this response to man’s sin was inappropriate or inadequate:

21 The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. (Gen. 8:21 NAU)

11. at timecode 26:20 ff, Clay says Canaanites fully indulged their sins, thus trading on the western individualist ethics of his modern Christian hearers to make Canaanites seem “deserving” of being massacred, but in this he overlooks that the Hebrew god command things just as atrocious.  We are most offended at the idea of Canaanites throwing their live children into burning furnaces, but God commanded death by burning for teen girls who lost their virginity and/or engaged in prostitution during pre-marital sex while living in their fathers house:

9 'Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. (Lev. 21:9 NAU)

12. refers to reader to “we don’t hate sin” article, and at time code 27:17 says bestiality and other sins were ‘rampant’, but as I show in my own blog post, one author Clay relies on for his bestiality comments frankly admits she cannot find any Mesopotamian sources asserting anybody ever had sex with animals. 

13. Mr. Jones than cites to a Baal poem of the Canaanites saying baal committed rape incest bestiality a lot, and he says we may thus infer the people worshipping said god did the same.   But that is ludicrous.  Christians believe their God is responsible for all murders (Deut. 32:39), should we assume that Christians imitate this divine practice?  Christians believe their God causes ceaseless conscious torment in mind-numbing pain for those who die in unbelief (hell), should we assume Christians do something similar?  Christians believe God credits himself with why pagan nations brutalize the Hebrews by beating children to death and forcing women to endure abortion by sword (Isaiah 13:15-16, Hosea 13:15-16), should we assume Christians engage in whatever acts they believe their god does?

14. 28:15 ff says our modern liberal culture is against death penalty because sin has corrupted us, but one wonders how strongly Jones would fight to save his daughter, should she be falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to capital execution.  Would he tell her that her deserving death from original sin, and suffering for righteousness sake for Christ, was more important than the fact that she was actually innocent of the charges?

15. Clay at timecode 21:45 ff deflects question on whether some Canaanites might have been moral among the many depraved, like Lot, by assuming that because God destroyed Sodom despite promising to spare it should he find 10 righteous people (Genesis 18:32), the slaughter of the Canaanites can only have taken place by reason that not even one of them were righteous.  But the possibility that some of the Canaanites weren’t deserving of death is found in the story of Rahab the innkeeper or “harlot”, wherein she is the only person spared in the sacking of Jericho because she assisted the Hebrew spies.  But nothing in the story from Joshua 2 expresses or implies that Rahab was doing anything more than pretending to align herself with the views held by spies whom she believed were part of an army easily capable of massacring her city, when in fact she didn’t really give up her pagan faith, she was only pretending so as to save her own skin.  There’s no evidence that she actually repented, and the Christian view is even more unlikely if she was actually a prostitute and not mere innkeeper.  What she did is what anybody in her position would have done had they felt the coming destroyers of her city would be successful. And if she was a Canaanite prostitute, she probably had much practice in pretending to believe things she didn’t really believe.

  

16. Matthew Flannagan who co-authored the “Genocide” book with Paul Copan, believes no children were present in Sodom when it was destroyed, because Genesis 18-19 indicate God would spare it if 10 righteous people could be found there, but then he didn’t spare it.  Flannagan thinks children are righteous by default because of their innocence.  But despite Flannagan’s belief being unlikely given that Sodom and the cities of the plan were a rich metropolis, the point is that Jones and Flannagan still disagree about the moral status of kids.  Can they blame the atheist bible critic for saying such disagreement is not likely if their god is true and they both seek god’s truth sincerely as equally authentically born again Christian scholars?  How many times must you pray for God to lead you into a correct understanding of the bible, before it becomes God’s fault that you continue to misunderstand it?  If God can make even pagans willing to do whatever he wants or believe whatever he wants them to believe (Ezra 1:1), then why does God prefer to “toy” with you and make you plead for truth over and over before he implants the truth and right motive in your heart? 

17. Jones then adds to the word of the Lord by saying God’s choice to kill Canaanites is based on his foreknowing who would respond to the truth and who wouldn’t.  But that is unfalsifiable nonsense.  Had the story of Rahab the harlot ended with her being accidently killed in the sacking of Jericho, Clay would have just as blindly assumed that God “knew” Rahab’s “faith” was fake.  Jones treats his view of God’s goodness as some untouchable icon of presuppositional glory, when in fact it is the bible itself that testifies that God often learns and regrets his own actions no less than imperfect humans often learn and regret their own prior acts.

18. Jones’s assumptions would require that he view Lot as righteous and godly, no matter what, all because the NT characterizes Lot as righteous and godly (2^nd Peter 2:7-9), when in fact, if today’s apologist doesn’t already have his defense mechanisms on red alert, he would automatically conclude that any “Christian” who sought to protect his house-guests from homosexual rape, by appeasing the mob with invitation to rape his own virgin daughters, was not righteous nor godly in any sense of the word, yet Lot committed such atrocity:

8 "Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof." (Gen. 19:8 NAU)

If today’s atheists do not stoop this low into immorality, would it be fair to say that they are more righteous than Lot?

19. Jones at time code 32:20 ff uses his foster parenting history to argue that kids who are corrupted at early age simply do not learn better regardless of whatever new parents they are placed with,  but he overlooks that child-rearing was much stricter and violent by OT policies than he would have been as a modern Christian foster parent.  The OT advocates beatings with a rod that leave welts, believed to be the body removing evil (Proverbs 20:30), and that specifically the rod must be used on children to cure them of their foolishness:

 15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him. (Prov. 22:15 NAU)

13 Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

 14 You shall strike him with the rod And rescue his soul from Sheol. (Prov. 23:13-14 NAU)

How can Jones know that the child abuse policies approved by God in proverbs likely wouldn’t have changed the disposition of disobedient Canaanites kids orphaned by Joshua?  Did Jones use a rod to beat his foster kids, only to find there was no positive change?  If so, was that true even in those cases where he beat the child to the point of leaving the bruises and welts the bible says perform the good of cleansing away evil (Pr. 20:30)?  Or can he not answer because he never actually did use a rod to beat his foster kids?  Doesn’t matter if the Proverbs are guarantees.  If Christians are still supposed to apply the proverbs in faith and not discard them merely because they don’t promise guaranteed success, then Jones cannot argue that the risk of discipline failing to correct the child was sufficient to justify Joshua in putting Canaanite kids to the sword.

20.   Again, when Jones assures us the Canaanites would not have repented, he is ignoring the important bible teaching from Ezekiel 38:4 – 39:7 that God can and does force people to do whatever he wants them to do, and that God can cause even pagans to become motivated to do God’s will (Ezra 1:1)

21. Jones at time code 32:55 ff, says such kids will bring their bad behaviors with them, as if this justified killing them, and at 33:20 ff Jones asks if we have any logical reason to believe Canaanite kids would not have retained the sinful ways of their parents.  Yes, Jones overlooks how his “these kids were incorrigible” excuse gets him in trouble with bible texts where Hebrews, presumably knowing this truth Jones gives us, nevertheless chose to assimilate pagan kids into their lives anyway by God’s authority. In Numbers 31:17-18, Moses requires his people to kill the male babies and boys of the pagan POW’s, but allows his men to take alive the little virgin girls for themselves (v. 18).  If Jones denies the interpretation that says this was permission for the men to marry and have sex with prepubescent girls, then he is committed to the premise that these girls would become house-servants…in which case Jones must say Moses intended for Canaanite kids to be assimilated into Hebrew homes and family life.  So… did Moses require this because he disagreed with jones and believed proper training could purge a pagan child of her prior rebellious conditioning?  Or did Moses require this because he knew about, but didn’t care about, the ability of pagan kids to corrupt the Hebrew culture? 

22. Will Jones foolishly trifle that because it was only Midianite virgins who were spared here, they were spared solely because they did not participate in the sexual sin at Peor (Numbers 25:1) that was being avenged here in Numbers 31 (i.e., these kids exhibited potential for not corrupting the Hebrews)?  Last I checked, virgin girls can do plenty of sinful sexual acts without losing their virginity, so that the unbroken hymen tells you NOTHING about whether she became involved with and helped facilitate the sin in question.

23. If virginity of pagan girls overshadows the question of their specific propensity to sin, in Numbers 31:18, we have to wonder how Jones explains that the virginity of young Canaanite girls in the promised land doesn’t overshadow their propensity to sin in the case of Joshua massacring the Canaanites in the promised land.  Will Jones trifle that the pagan corruptions of the Midianites at Peor (Numbers 25) were somehow less grostesque than the sinfulness of the Canaanites in Jericho?

24. Jones is confronted the same problem of God’s people appearing arbitrary in whether to spare pagans, from Deut. 21:10-14, which allows the Hebrew man to marry a female pagan war captive.  Tellingly, the text nowhere expresses or implies that the captive first repent of her paganism, nor that she make clear her adoption of the YHWH cult beliefs, as a pre-condition to the marriage.  And if the GNT is correct in saying the sexual consummation was rape, then it is even more clear from the context that here God was authorizing his Hebrew men to marry pagan women unwilling to be with them, which justifies the inference that such pagan women still clung to their pagan religious beliefs the whole time.  God’s basis for massacring some and sparing others is truly arbitrary and likely the result of commingling disparate Hebrew religious traditions by the OT editors, than that God really does things like this for sovereign mysterious reasons.

  

25. Jones at 33:38, says God doesn’t do wrong in taking the life of children because God foreknows they wouldn’t repent, but if so, he opens the door to the possibility of those kids going straight to hell for the same reason (i.e., they wouldn’t have repented).  Jones is also deceptive since he gives the impression God could be proven immoral if we should show God kills kids despite believing they would repent later in life.  Not true.  If we found such biblical text, Jones would simply insist that God’s ways are mysterious, he always does good, and that we are nobody to question God’s reasons or his morals.  Jones is thus deceptive for pretending God’s goodness can be substantiated on the merits, when in fact he removes the issue from the merits whenever expediency dictates.  Jones would NEVER accept ANY evidence that God ever did anything immoral.

26. At 33:50 ff, Jones agrees with Paul Copan there is possibility god by killing pagan kids thus saved them from further harm since their death placed them into heaven, but if removal from sinful earth is good, then neglecting children and leaving them to grow up in the sinful earth is bad, and God certainly allows children to strive on the earth and slowly die of starvation and abuse.  Once again, Jones gives the appearance that God’s goodness can be demonstrated by reasoned argument on the merits of God’s acts, but in fact is quite willing to say God’s ways are good even if they don’t prove to be good by human examination on the merits.  Hence, the effort to show goodness on the merits in god is deceptive, since they don’t believe the merits actually matter anyway.  They will pick and choose that which looks like it can be argued, and insist the yucky stuff be resolved into the mystery of God. 

27. Jones at 34:00 ff says Joshua’s conquest of the promised land was not genocide but capital punishment, but a) the dictionary definition of genocide does not take the motives of the killers into account, only that they systematically remove some religious or political group; and b) it wouldn’t matter if Joshua’s conquest wasn’t genocide, the brutal war-atrocities God causes the pagans to inflict on the Hebrews as revealed by Isaiah 13:15-16 and Hosea 13:15-16 and 2^nd Samuel 12:15-18, show God willing to do worse than genocide, and cause children to suffer horrific miseries before experiencing the release of death.  Will he say God also “knew” the fetuses of the pregnant Hebrew women God caused to endure abortion by sword (Hosea/Isaiah, supra)  would otherwise have grown up to imitate their sinful parents?  Then how does Jones explain God allowing to live those kids that never repent and die of old age as unbelievers?  God must have known they wouldn’t repent either, yet the fact that he allowed them to live means God did not feel “compelled” simply by reason of foreknowing a person’s consistent stay in unbelief throughout their life, to just kill them in their infancy.  If God can allow some incorrigibles to live despite his foreknowledge, then his killing off only some is nothing he was morally compelled to do.  Once again, Jones’s god is utterly arbitrary in a way that reference to god’s mysterious ways will not fix.

28. Clay’s pessimistic outlook on disobedient children overlooks the other reality that many kids enduring a horrible childhood turn out better than their parents?  Are we quite sure that the Israelites, so infected with original sin, surely had no selfish patriotic genocidal motive in killing non-Hebrew kids?  Can we really say it was at all “likely” that allowing the orphaned Canaanites to live would have led to infecting Israel with idolatry/corruption?

29. Jones says the best proof that the Canaanite massacre was capital punishment and not genocide was that God exacted the same punishment when Israel did the same type of sins.  But that the Hebrews imposed on themselves the same ethics they imposed on others only shows they weren’t as inconsistent as they could have been.  This argument doesn’t take away from the fact that the Hebrews and other ANE nations were far more brutish than evangelicals are today. Clay further blindly presupposes the people who authored these stories were just passing down intact traditions, when critical scholars have made it pretty clear that it is later editors that are taking Israel’s military histories of various origins, stitching it together and infusing it with explanatory glosses about how losses were the result of sin and wins were the result of obeying God, etc.  Not much different than a reporter who takes raw footage of what happened, and turns it into a documentary where her after-the-fact commentary “explains” the footage.  For all we know, Moses and Joshua were genocidal maniacs who thought they were their own gods, and it is only dishonest priests and scribes of hundreds of years later who infuse these earlier raw stories with theological commentary to make it seem like Moses and Joshua only did what they did after being given moral and theological justification by God.  The conservative view that all we read in the current canonical form of the Pentateuch was written by Moses before he died, is precarious.  Even such an evangelical commentary as the Word Biblical Commentary finds that stories like those in Numbers 31 have “little realism”:

  

In an idealized way this section tells of a battle against the Midianites, and of its consequences…The story has little “realism,” and is best understood as a midrashic construction,

Budd, P. J. (2002). Vol. 5: Word Biblical Commentary : Numbers. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 332). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

  

30. Jones at 34:30 ff says God promised capital punishment to them if they mingled with Canaanites, but a) we don’t see this happening in Numbers 31:18 where virgin pagan girls were spared despite the fact that virgin girls can do plenty of sexual sins without losing their virginity and b) we don’t see God imposing the death penalty on anybody in any consistent way in the Monarchy, particularly the time of Solomon and other kings who allowed intermarriage and mixed Yahweh and pagan worship.  So we have to entertain the prospect that, like many other matters, exactly to what degree to enforce Mosaic legislation was often unclear, justifying the belief that the law of Moses was an ambiguous thing that developed throughout an inconsistent history between Moses and the exile.

31. Clay’s blind trust in Deuteronomy 20:18 and in God’s alleged belief that the pagans would surely corrupt Israel if allowed to live next to each other, overlooks that Saul believed the Kenites worthy to be spared despite living so close to the doomed Amalekites (1^st Samuel 15:6…did the Amalekites corrupt the Kenites by close living proximity?  If so, then apparently, Saul believed a prior act of kindness from the Kenites overshadowed the fact that they were equally as deserving of death as the Amalekites.  If the Kenites kept free of Amalekite corruption despite such close proximity to each other, then Deut. 20:18 and other passages speaking in absolute terms about how Hebrews sparing the pagans will surely cause the Hebrews to imitiate the pagan sins, are the passages that must be viewed as hyperbole…in which case the urgency to rid the land of the pagans was nowhere as extreme as the biblical narrative makes it seem.).

32. Jones at 35:25 ff. cites to Jeremiah 5 where God says he will forgive the sinful city if even one person who deals honestly can be found therein.  Jones overlooks that this supports the doctrine of corporate responsibility (i.e., that doctrine that says a group will be found equally as guilty as the actually guilty member even if the rest of them didn’t partake of his sin, the doctrine that most modern western Christian cannot stand).  Jones also overlooks that this passage from Jeremiah contradicts the statements in Numbers 14:18 saying God will “by no means” clear the guilty.  In this, Jeremiah has a friend in 2^nd Samuel 12:13, where God, with nothing more than a wave of his magic wand, clears David from guilt deserving of capital punishment, or at least chooses to exempt David from the capital punishment requirement otherwise mandated by his acts of adultery and murder of Uriah.  Dr. Jones isn’t being biblically consistent in pretending that God feels some type of moral compulsion to hold people guilty for sin.  God could have waived his magic wand and exempted Canaanites from their death-deserving sins of bestiality and child-sacrifice no less than he did when exempting David from his death-deserving acts of adultery and murder.  Biblically, Jones gets nowhere pointing out that somebody “deserved” the fate god imposed on them.  God does not impose punishment and sparing in a uniform way, strongly suggesting that the real reason is that there is no god behind this stuff, it is just a canonical bible of today that is the result of a long process of stitching together ancient stories and adding theologically appropriate commentary where expediency dictated.

33.  Jones at 36:15, cites to Ezekiel 14:12 ff, but Ezekiel’s statements that the three most righteous men in bible history could only save themselves when god’s wrath hits the sinful city, contradicts the deal god made with Abraham to spare Sodom if even 10 righteous people could be found in it.  How can God be willing to spare Sodom on the basis of 10 righteous men, but be unwilling to spare the Jews if a few righteous men were found living among them?  It’s called theological evolution, not bible inerrancy:

 12 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,

 13 "Son of man, if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it and cut off from it both man and beast,

 14 even though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves," declares the Lord GOD.

 15 "If I were to cause wild beasts to pass through the land and they depopulated it, and it became desolate so that no one would pass through it because of the beasts,

 16 though these three men were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their sons or their daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the country would be desolate.

 17 "Or if I should bring a sword on that country and say, 'Let the sword pass through the country and cut off man and beast from it,'

 18 even though these three men were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their sons or their daughters, but they alone would be delivered.

 19 "Or if I should send a plague against that country and pour out My wrath in blood on it to cut off man and beast from it,

 20 even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their son or their daughter. They would deliver only themselves by their righteousness."

 21 For thus says the Lord GOD, "How much more when I send My four severe judgments against Jerusalem: sword, famine, wild beasts and plague to cut off man and beast from it! (Ezek. 14:12-21 NAU)

34. Jones at 37:52 ff, says we have no basis to intuit that Canaanites would have repented had they been allowed to live, but Jesus made clear the exact opposite concerning other cities and how they would have repented had they been allowed to see more of God:

20 Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent.

 21 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

 22 "Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

 23 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.

 24 "Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you."

 (Matt. 11:20-24 NAU)

12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city.

 13 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

 14 "But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you.

 15 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades!   (Lk. 10:12-15 NAU)

Will Jones trifle that Chorazin and Bethsaida were significantly different from the Canaanites Joshua killed throughout the promised land?

35.  Jones at 38:05 ff, says Lord is indifferent to whether we die of old age or by tooth and claw, and that seems to be a pretty good case for God’s sadism, confirmed in Deut. 28:63, where God says he gets the same “delight” in inflicting atrocities that he gets in prospering the faithful.  Some atrocities God would delight in (v. 63) include rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53-57).

36. Jones at 38:30 ff specifies the biblical descriptions of atrocities are not metaphor or hyperbole, therefore making perfectly clear that he is not impressed with the thesis of evangelicals Copan/Flannagan, that most such descriptions are hyperbole.

37. Jones again at 39:15, argues that since god foreknew who would repent, we can be sure he did no wrong in killing children.  This is deceptive, because he implies he would accept that god’s judgment is immoral if god killed kids despite knowing they would have repented, when in fact even if confronted with such a nuanced bit of theology from the bible, Jones would simply run to sophistry fortress #521 (God’s acts can never be immoral or evil regardless of how they might appear to us).  But Exodus 32:9-14 forbids trust in the goodness of god as if it was some untouchable icon or foregone conclusion.

38. Jones quotes Genesis 6:5 about man’s heart being always evil, but the next verse shows god regretting his own prior choice to make man, and because a) context favors literal interpretation while b) anthropomorphic interpretation is premised on nothing more objective than the need to maintain biblical inerrancy, the open theist interpretation here, asserting God’s regret signifies his imperfection, is more objective.

39. At 40:20 ff Jones says there is a cosmic lesson for “free beings”, but a) the sinner’s ability to repent is hotly disputed within conservative Christian scholarship, and b) if God knew the kids he killed would not have repented, and if God’s foreknowledge is infallible, then those kids were not “free” to deviate from their foreknown fate (i.e., not free to make freewill choice to repent).  If God’s foreknowledge is infallible, then whatever it contains in incapable of failing.  If God infallibly foreknows what will actually happen, and thus infallibly foreknows you will actually drop a pan on your foot tomorrow at noon, then dropping a pan on your foot tomorrow at noon is not capable of failing.  How you reconcile that with “freewill” is immaterial and will not change the definition of “infallible”.

40. Jones at 40:45 ff ends with preaching, but the entire experience of “getting saved” and “new nature” and “adopted into god’s family” is 100% theoretical and has no empirical justification beyond a few bible verses which talk the same way.  It is deception to say the least to speak about the born-again experience with the same type of language one uses to describe how one became a member of a local organization.

41. Jones at 41:20 ff, answers question as to why other peoples on earth, allegedly as deserving of death as the Canaanites, aren’t killed off by God too.  Answers the Canaanites had given themselves over more thoroughly to evil.  But as I show in my blog post cited above, the specific accusations that Canaanites burned children to death and engaged in bestiality cannot be verified by actual literary or epigraphic evidence.  Jones may point to the bible, but we accuse the bible of misrepresenting the Canaanites, so it would be the fallacy of begging the question to quote the bible as proof when the reliability of the biblical record is precisely the issue. Furthermore the bible has two stories indicating “pass through the fire” was a symbolic rite not intended to cause pain or death to a child.  2^nd Kings 16:3, Ahaz made his “son” (singular) pass through the fire, but then his “son” (singular) Hezekiah took over the throne (v. 3) (!?).  Well gee, because God can do miracles, maybe Hezekiah took over the throne as a zombie rising from the ashes?   Manassah also made his “son” (singular) pass through the fire (2^nd Kings 21:6), but then his “son” (singular) Amon took over the throne (v. 18).  Since the context provides no reason to think the kings had more than one son a piece, it appears the Kings author did not believe the “pass through the fire” was a ritual intended to cause the child to die.

  

42. Jones at 42:20 ff,. resorts to Genesis 15:16 and the story bit about how God refused to clear out the Canaanites since the time of Abraham because their sin was not yet complete.  But there are serious problems with this verse;  a) all scholars admit the Pentateuch was edited to include information moses didn’t write, so it remains a possibility that this blurb is a bit of theological explanation that was added to the text of Genesis between authorship by Moses and its current canonical form; b) the very idea that god would spare people so they could fill up the measure of their sins, contradicts the Christian interpretation of this verse saying God waited those 400 years for them to repent.  No, he was waiting them to become exceedingly sinful, he wasn’t waiting for them to repent.  And if God’s foreknowledge was infallible, then i) infallible means incapable of failing, which would mean the Canaanites could not deviate from becoming more and more sinful, since god cannot be surprised,  and ii) God therefore wasn’t “hoping” the Canaanites would prove his foreknowledge wrong, anymore than you wait two years “hoping” your two year old will prove wrong your predictions about their behavior two years into the future, and pass college tests in advanced statistics.  The standard Christian view that God waits around “hoping” for an outcome that by his infallible foreknowledge he is perfectly certain has no chance of actually materializing, is a serious blight on Christian doctrine.

43. Basically, Jones’s traditionalist stance makes it ironic that he seeks to appeal to our human reasoning to make his 44 minute argument justifying God’s acts as good, since he has already committed to the premise that human reason is corrupt.  Jones would be more consistent to bypass human reasoning altogether and simply quote the bible without his imperfect commentary.  How can it be meaningful for Jones to satisfy our sense of justice by saying Canaanites deserved to die for acts like bestiality and child-sacrifice, if in truth he will merely run and hide behind the mysterious ways of God when confronted with biblical instances where God killed others in ways that don’t satisfy modern western reasoning?