Cold Case Christianity: Is the Problem of Evil Really a Problem for Christianity? Yes

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is the Problem of Evil Really a Problem for Christianity?

Posted: 12 Oct 2018 01:14 AM PDT

I’m honored to train the adults and students at Green Bay Community Church, investigating the reliability of the New Testament Gospels and the nature of truth. Troy Murphy has done a wonderful job assembling a powerful staff at the city’s largest church. GBCC’s youth pastor, Evan Gratz, opened up his youth group to me on Sunday night. As usual, the best part of the time with students was answering questions at the end of the evening. The problem of evil was raised by a teenager who described her recent conversation with an atheist friend. As an atheist myself for most of my life, I resonated with the objection and offered a brief response: If what we believe as Christians is true, evil and suffering are only a problem for atheists. The problem of evil isn’t really a problem for Christianity.

But since what you believe as Christians is false, you are deprived of your fluffy magically wonderful after-world where nothing bad every happens.

I have already critiqued apologist Frank Turek's attempt to show that morality is inconsistent with atheism.

Evil and suffering are typically experienced and understood within the context of one’s life.

Right.  How else?

As an atheist, I hoped for (and expected) a life of approximately ninety years. In the context of this span of time, if I had developed cancer in my forties, I would have been angered by the amount of time stolen from me as I battled the disease.

 That anger would have been the result of you finding out facts about life that were contrary to your subjective desires.  Being angry about it hardly argues that your desires arise out of some objective standard of morality that transcends humanity.

In fact, if I had been diagnosed with a terminal disease at that age, I would have been outraged by the fact it was going to deprive me of fifty percent of the life I expected. When your life is only ninety years long, anything cutting the time short is evil, and any prolonged suffering along the way is unjust and intolerable.

But what if we could live more than ninety short years? What if our lives had a beginning, but no end? How would we see (and respond to) evil, pain and suffering in the context of an eternal life?

Given the incoherent nature of the question, it hardly requires a response.  What if the tooth-fairy gave you a vision showing you what the dark side of the Bermuda Triangle looked like from the Andromeda Galaxy?  How much more time would you spend analyzing the paranormal?

How many of you who can remember the painful vaccinations you received as a child?

How many of you remember Isaiah 13:16-17, where God apparently had a morally good purpose for causing men to rape women?  If the result of the pain is good (i.e., it hurts to get a shot in the arm, but the benefits of better health justify the pain), then under your own logic, because God thought the outcome of men raping women would tend toward some type of greater moral good, this would morally justify his causing rape no less than how we justify causing pain to a child when giving them a flu shot.

If you’re reading this article at the age of thirty, the small period of your life occupied by the pain you experienced during those vaccinations has been long outdistanced by the years you’ve lived since then. As time stretched on from the point of that experience, you were able to place the pain within the larger context of your life.

Correct.  But unfortunately most rape victims cannot do the same as they look back on their having been sexually assaulted.  Trust in the afterlife merely papers over the problem.  No analogy.

You don’t even remember it now. If you have pierced ears, ask yourself a similar question. The pain you experienced at the point of the piercing is nearly forgotten, especially if it has been years since it occurred. Evil, pain and suffering are experienced and understood within the larger context of one’s life.

But not rape and child murder.  You are not doing apologetics, you are warming up an already-Christian audience for the inevitable "God's ways are mysterious but we can be sure he works all things to the good for those that love him" crap.

If the Christian worldview is true, we are eternal beings who will live forever.

 The Christian world view is not true.  Hence, your conclusion doesn't follow.

We get more than ninety years, we get all of eternity.

 Now you are merely resting upon the biblical teaching about "eternal life", when in fact the reasons to reject Christianity thereby also perform the function of showing "eternal life" to have more in common with a 12 year old girl's crush on a Hollywood actor and less to do with actual reality.

Our experience and understanding of pain and evil must be contextualized within eternity, not within our temporal lives.

 Translation:  "If Christianity is not true, there will never be ultimate justice.  You don't like that thought, do you?  Well then, doesn't it feel better to believe in eternal life and a great day of judgment?"

Reminder, the book of Revelation doesn't describe the end as the wicked finally banished, it describes them as continuing to do wicked deeds, continuing unpunished,  while others are in heaven watching:

 8 I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things.
 9 But he said to me, "Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren the prophets and of those who heed the words of this book. Worship God."
 10 And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.
 11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy."
 12 "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
 13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."
 14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
 15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.   (Rev. 22:8-15 NAU) 

Wallace continues:

Whatever we experience here in our earthly life, no matter how difficult or painful it may be, must be seen through the lens of forever.

 Then perhaps I can be reasonable to assume you aren't directing this toward atheists.

As our eternal life stretches out beyond our struggles in mortality, our temporal experiences will become an ever-shrinking percentage of our consciousness. The suffering we may have experienced on earth will be long outdistanced by the eternal life we’ve lived since then.

 Yeah right.  What else are you gonna say?  God loves you?  Well, if it sells books, I guess one man has just as much right to sell Jesus as another one does.

Our life with God will be a life without suffering, without pain and without evil. “God will wipe away every tear from (our) eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). It will also be a life where justice is realized, “for the Lord loves justice; he will not forsake his saints,” (Psalm 37:27-28) and He “will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). As our glorious eternal life with God stretches beyond our temporal experience, whatever suffering or injustice we might have experienced here on earth will seem like it occurred in the blink of an eye.

 The only problem being that if we truly do have a spirit that doesn't desire food, water, material possessions or sex, God could have created mankind on earth without bodies, and if he had, about 99% of the sins in this world would have been preempted, all without violating anybody's freewill.  This bit of bad news means you are no longer allowed to hide behind "because god respects our freewill" to "explain" the existence of evil.  And if you think somebody we'll go to heaven and never desire to sin again, then apparently you believe it is indeed possible to create a world in which free creatures authentically love and worship god, but are guaranteed to never sin.  If god can achieve that in heaven, he could have created Adam and Eve with the same constitution of the will, they would never have eaten the forbidden fruit, and sin would have been permanently preempted.  If your doctrine of freewill forces you to leave open the possibility that saved Christians might sin even after they get to heaven, perhaps apologetics isn't your calling.

In the context of the Christian eternal life, pain, suffering and evil can be faced and endured with strength, hope and confidence unavailable in an atheistic worldview.

 The Mormons can boast the same thing about Mormonism.  Under your logic, that would reasonably justify the recently raped and depressed women to go join the Mormons.  Would you encourage this if she asked you?  Or would you bother the nice lady with all of your criticisms of Mormons while this lady is living with unaddressed emotional trauma?

What used to seem so unjust to me is now less egregious.

Perhaps explaining why most Christians don't really give a shit about trying to make the world a better place.  That time can be better spent evangelizing, because somebody soon a giant Jesus will float down from the sky on a galloping horse to make everything all better, amen?

What used to seem so unbearable can now be faced with hope. The problem of evil, from my new Christian perspective, isn’t the same kind of problem it was from my old atheistic perspective, because the problem of evil isn’t really a problem for Christianity.

 Bullshit, your god caused men to rape women, by his own admission.  Search for "Isaiah 13" in one of my articles.

If your god can cause rape on earth, consistent with his allegedly infinite righteousness, then causing rape for people in heaven would also be consistent with said alleged infinite righteousness.  You will say nobody in heaven deserves to be raped, but you already say that about women on earth (don't you?)  And if God is infinitely wise, the spiritually mature person is more likely to accept God's judgments without question, so that the more spiritual you are, the less you care about whether God's ways conform to universal standards of fairness and justice.  If you see god causing a man to rape a woman in heaven, the mark of spiritual maturity is to just shut up and avoid asking "why?", see Romans 9:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?   (Rom. 9:18-20 NAU)

Follow that trail of unquestioning devotion down the road apiece and you wind up becoming an abortion clinic bomber, a hijacker, or some other idiot extremist who cannot be reasoned with, because they are so sure that God's ways are mysterious.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays doesn't notice he's complaining against what God wants

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

So many Christians–so few lions!

A standard objection to Christianity is whether inclusivism is fair.

That would likely come from unbelievers uninformed about what a piece of shit sadist the bible god really is.  Fairness isn't the problem.  Getting a thrill out of watching men rape children to death is.

Is it fair that so many never had a chance to hear the Gospel?

Yes, people who never heard the gospel were thus spared a miserable existence of telling themselves that cosmic mysteries can be explained by theologians who learn the ways of jailhouse lawyers.  Of course, some of us have far less tolerance for logical contradictions, so we can understand how Christians can have joy in the Lord and have no problems with the absurdity and inconsistency of their beliefs.  Mormons are a prime example.  So are Pentecostals and Calvinists.  Pretty much the whole bad except the liberal Christians who are honest enough to admit they do this shit more because its a club that facilitates social support.

This is an issue in freewill theism as well as Calvinism.

I don't see why Calvinists would give a shit.  If as Calvinism says, God wants sinners to sin, and therefore wants men to rape babies, you are probably better to focus your energies on problems obviously more serious than "what about those who never heard the gospel?"

There are familiar strategies in fielding this objection. But I'd like to remark on a neglected consideration. It's striking how frequently unbelievers respond to the Gospel with seething antipathy.

Why would it be striking?  Your god bitches at us all pissed off about our bad choices, despite his possessing coercive mental telepathy abilities, Ezra 1:1.  That's like an armed guard bitching at the robbers during a bank heist, and somehow just never getting around to using his gun.  But I have an explanation:  your god is a stupid bastard in most of his ways because he is nothing more than an idol made in the image of man, an idol that keeps changing as the years roll on and people become more civilized.

It's not as if they exclaim, "That's just what I was always waiting for! Where have you been all my life!"

And you naturally wouldn't expect unbelievers to respond that way to a God who secretly wills for them to disobey his revealed will, which is what Calvinism is all about, right?

I'm not saying nobody responds that way. But notice how many people, when exposed to the Gospel, how many people, when given the opportunity, far from welcoming the message, greet the message with implacable enmity, to the point of persecuting or martyring Christians. Silencing them. Torturing them to death. "So many Christians–so few lions!"

Unbelievers can get out of control.  But if Calvinism is the right form of Christianity, then indeed, there aren't enough lions.

It's not as if many people go to hell simply because they never had a chance to hear the Gospel. As though, had they only been given the opportunity, they'd be overjoyed and feel privileged.

Sorry Steve, you won't be blaming unbelievers for their predictable rejection of "truth", as you are a Calvinist.  If unbelievers reject the gospel message, its because God predestined them to do so, and their choice to do so is effected in that direction by God's sovereign will, which is somewhat akin to throwing a dish on the floor, then getting angry at the dish for doing what you wanted it to do (break).  I think this is the part where you insist that the Calvinist God who both "wills and wills not", is the supreme example of mental consistency, and all who disagree are merely blinded by the devil.

So often unbelievers react like drowning swimmers who fight the lifeguard: "How dare you save my life!"

Blame it on god, as Calvinists are inclined to do anyway.  And under Calvinism, God is not just a lifeguard, he is also a man-eating shark.  To be consistent with your Calvinism, you need to also say that some unbelievers are like swimmers who fight the shark.

I'm not saying this covers every case, but it's worth pondering. How frequently those who need it the most are the most antagonistic. Violently belligerent. 

Blame it on god.  You Calvinists think us unbelievers are only being violently belligerent toward your God because he predestined us to act that way, correct?  What fool wishes people would deviate from the path of perdition that God forces them to choose? 

Did you forget that you are a Calvinist?

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.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Doesn’t God Reform People Rather Than Punish Them in Hell?

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

Why Doesn’t God Reform People Rather Than Punish Them in Hell?

Posted: 01 Sep 2017 01:00 AM PDT

 258Some struggle to understand how a loving God could create a place like Hell.

Your spiritually alive brothers and sisters called 5-Point Calvinists don't.  They believe God secretly wills the teenager to steal a candy bar while telling her through the bible "thou shalt not steal".  That is, they believe God causes people to sin.  Apparently, your bible is not quite as clear on the "Christian" answer to the problem of hell, as you pretend it is.  So unless you claim all 5-Point Calvinist Christians aren't truly born again, spiritual deadness cannot be the reason somebody thinks your brand of Christianity is total bullshit.

And the fundamentalists who struggle with how a loving god could create a place like hell probably struggle because they haven't seriously considered the arguments of the liberal Christian scholars who do a fine job showing that hell "fire" in the NT is mere metaphor.  Also they probably struggle with the question since if Deuteronomy 28:30, 63 be true, their "loving" God takes just as much delight in causing women to be raped as he takes in causing prosperity to others.  I recommend that fundie Christians first make sure the biblical portrayal of God is consistent, before they start asking the larger questions. 

Either way, viewing the bible as the inerrant word of God does not appear to generate any more positive change in life than when one starts believing the Book of Mormon is the word of God. 

 Others, while understanding and accepting the relationship between mercy and justice, freedom and consequence, victory and punishment, still imagine a better way. If God is all-loving, why doesn’t He simply “reform” people rather than allow them to continue in their sin and eventually punish them in Hell? Even human prison systems understand the value of reform; isn’t a God who punishes his children in Hell a sadistic and vengeful God?

Isn't your God vengeful and sadistic for not only causing women to be raped (Deut. 28:30) but in taking "delight" to see this happen (v. 63)?

We expect that a loving God would care enough about us to offer a chance to change rather than simply punish us vindictively for something we’ve done in the past.

Then you apparently never read Romans 9, where Paul pushes the analogy of God/potter sinner/clay to such an extreme that concerns about freewill are preempted:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? (Rom. 9:18-21 NAU)

Which marketing strategy makes more money?  Providing the proper interpretation of Romans 9 to a modern audience who think human freewill is a foregone conclusion?  Or providing arguments about God's respect for human freewill, to a modern audience who think human freewill is a foregone conclusion?

As it turns out, God (as he is described in the Bible) understands the difference between discipline and punishment,

Yes, for example, his causing sickness and suffering to a baby born to David and Bathsheba, so that the child suffered several days before finally dying.  God causing babies to suffer when he can just instantly take their souls with no suffering, is the god you serve: 

2nd Samuel 12:11-18
10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!"
 

Oh, did I forget?  God did this to the baby despite telling David that David's sin had been put away, see last clause of v. 13.   The lesson we learn here is that even if God himself tells you that your sin of adultery has been "put away", that does not prevent God from punishing you and your children for it anyway.

Oh yeah, the bible god sure does know the different between suffering and punishment.

and He is incredibly patient with us,

Which is rather stupid given that if God is smarter than a con artist, he can quickly convince us, without violating our freewill, that Christianity is true, and any need for patience will be foreclosed.  Even if you read divine respect for human freewill into Ezekiel 38:4, still, the whole idea that god is like a best friend who is trying to convince you of the error of your ways, is childish and unrealistic.  If God really wanted you to do something, he could infallibly cause it to come to pass, whether to make you sin or do good.  Notice what God says about two future armies, gog and magog, through Ezekiel.  You'd think they were nothing but puppets on strings in God's hands:

 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; (Ezek. 38:3-4 NAU)

It doesn't matter if this is mere metaphor, which it is:  the metaphor still puts images in your mind of God forcing other people to sin or do whatever he wants them to do, images that are wholly inconsistent with your childish pandering to modern society's individualist cult mentality that says God respects our freewill.

But it was never any secret that you are doing Christianity mostly because of the money you can make convincing people that God wasn't able in the past to do as much as he wished until you came along with your "forensic faith" marketing gimmick.

And if God is eternal, than his attributes will be eternal as must logically be the case in any other situation, which means his attribute of patience is no less eternal than his attribute of love.  Feel free to trifle that an infinite being his a finite trait all because the bible presents him that way, but remember that you only sound convincing to your religious fanatic friends, nobody else.   But that assumes you care about being wrong, when in fact it is clear you are more concerned with making money off of Christianity than you are in being correct

allowing us an entire lifetime to change our minds and reform our lives.

Not true, plenty of children die less than year after they reached the age of accountability, whatever you think that age is.  Only a fool makes the generalized statement that God allows people a lifetime to change.

This is easier to understand when we think carefully about the definitions of “discipline” and “punishment”:

Discipline Looks Forward

All of us understand the occasional necessity of disciplining our children. When we discipline, we are motivated by love rather than vengeance.

That might be the politically correct party line, but the truth is some parents discipline their devil-children out of sheer exasperation, and desire to see the child suffer punishment and discipline at the same time.

We hope to change the future behavior of our kids by nudging them in a new direction with a little discomfort.

Most modern Christians think the the biblical model of beating kids with rods constitutes something more than a "nudge":

NAU Prov. 22:15  Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.
 13 Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.
NAU Prov. 29:15  The rod and reproof give wisdom, But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.

Wallace continues:

God also loves His children in this way and allows them the opportunity to reform under his discipline.

Which makes no sense once you remember that kids die at all ages all the time, and therefore, their dying shortly after the age of accountability occurs statistically just as often as kids dying in any other age-group.  Your generalization is too hasty, you wouldn't be talking that way to a Christian family who just lost their rebellious 9 year old daughter in a bus accident.  You'd have to tell them you believe that since he lived past the age of accountability and still wasn't a Christian, she is in hell right now...and that means you won't be achieving record sales of your books in her town any time soon.

This takes place during our mortal lifetime; God disciplines those He loves in this life because He is concerned with eternity.

Then he is stupid, because he has an infallible way of making sure they avoid hell:  killing them within a month after they are born.  If aborted babies go to heaven by default, then you need to remember infant death brings eternal good, as you sob about how abortion "kills".  And abortions doctors cannot do any wrong:  when they abort a baby, God takes the credit, because God takes personal responsibility for all murder:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

Discipline, by its very definition, is “forward-looking” and must therefore occur in this world with an eye toward our eternal destiny:

Hebrews 12:9-11

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Punishment Looks Backward

There are times as a parent, however, when our loving efforts to discipline and reform are unsuccessful; our kids are sometimes rebellious to the point of exhaustion. In these times, our love requires us to deliver on our repeated warnings. Our loving sense of justice requires us to be firm, even when it hurts us to do so.

yeah, but you would never cause your rebellious teen daughter to be raped just because she is rebellious...but God causes women to be raped, and takes "delight" in this, in Deut. 28:30, 63.  So your attempted analogy to human instances fails miserably, your God's ways are too extreme to permit analogy to any human instance, except perhaps deranged lunatics.

Our other children are watching us as well, and our future acts of mercy will be meaningless if we fail to act justly on wrongdoing. In times like these, we have no alternative but to punish acts that have occurred in the past. Punishment need not be vindictive or vengeful. It is simply the sad but deserving consequence awaiting those who are unwilling to be reformed in this life.

Hebrews 10:28-29

Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

God is patient.

If so, it's only because sinful Moses talking 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)

He’s given each of us a lifetime to respond to His discipline and change our mind. It cannot be said that God failed to give us the opportunity to repent.

But it can certainly be said that God did not do everything he could possibly have done, to convince freewilled humans to do what he says.  If he was willing to part the Red Sea in face of faithless Israelites and skeptical Egyptians, then God doesn't think doing monster-miracles violates anybody's freewill.  Or he doesn't respect freewill the way you think he does.

And it is rather difficult to believe that after this particular miracle, the Israelites continued to complain against god (Exodus 16:3).  If this part of the story is historically true, then God is stupid for "expecting" such human beings to materialize a strong faith on the basis of the 10 plagues and parting of the Red Sea, especially when he infallibly foreknow these miracles would not produce such a faith.  Don't you worry though, these stories are just religiously embellished kernels of historical truth, for not more more purpose than religious edification of the tribes.

When we are rebellious to the point of exhaustion, however, God has no choice but to deliver on His warnings.

Not true, according to you and the bible, the Canaanites were sinful to the point of exhaustion for 400 years before god punished them:

13 God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.
 14 "But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.
 15 "As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.
 16 "Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." (Gen. 15:13-16 NAU)

 In other words, God recognizes the Amorites as sinful to the point of exhaustion, both in reality and in his allegedly infallible foreknowledge, and yet doesn't act there and then, but waits 400 years, not for the Amorites to change their ways, but so their sinful iniquity will become "complete".

Sort of like you knowing you have a devil child who hurts others, but you still put him in the same room with other kids and then don't immediately punish him when he hurts other kids, because you don't think he iniquity is yet complete.

Let's just say that J.Warner Wallace's apologetics argument don't exactly cause me to break out in nervous sweats.  And I say that after multiple demonstrations that his arguments are wrong and inconclusive on the merits.

Cold Case Christianity: Why would a Good God allow Natural Evil?

This is in reply to a post from J. Warner Wallace, entitled

Why Would a Good God Allow Natural Evil?  

Posted: 12 Jun 2017 04:20 AM PDT  251

As a police officer and homicide detective, I’ve seen my fair share of injustice and hardship.

 But because the bible says God takes personal responsibility for murder (Deut. 32:39) and causes other horrific atrocities such as rape and kidnapping (Deut. 28:15-63), you overlook the grim biblical possibility that what you call "injustice" is the work of God, in which case logically you are accusing God of injustice.

 Every time I’m asked to defend the existence of God in light of the evil we observe in our world, I take a deep breath and try to separate the emotional nature of this issue from the rational explanations I might offer.

 Then you aren't very godly.  God "delights" to inflict horrific suffering on people, such as rape (Deut. 28:30, 63) so if God delights to see men rape women (v. 30), you cannot possibly go wrong in sharing God's same attitude.

 I recognize the impotence of my rational response when trying to address to the emotional pain people experience when they suffer evil.

 Be careful that you don't automatically classify rape and parental cannibalism of children as evil, otherwise, you will be saying that God is the author of evil, since Deut. 28:15-16, 30, 53, asserts that God causes people to do those things.

At the same time, I think it’s important for us explore reasonable explanations. Natural evil is perhaps the most difficult category of evil we, as Christians, can address. It’s one thing to explain the presence of moral evil in our world (the evil actions of humans);

Correction, according to Deut. 28, supra, the man who rapes a woman just might have been caused by God to do it, you don't know, but the point is that you cannot dismiss that possibility.  You'd have been more accurate to expand your definition of moral evil from "evil actions of humans" to "evil actions of humans that God sometimes causes them to do".

it’s another to explain the existence of natural evil (earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters).  If an all-powerful and all-loving God exists, why does He permit natural evil?

And how much time should we devote to that question, if it can be shown that God doesn't likely exist? 

If God exists, it is certainly within His power to prevent such things.

No, God was incapable of overcoming certain armies because they had chariots of iron:

 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. (Jdg. 1:19 NAU)

Inerrantist scholars cannot resolve this contradiction with God's omnipotence, without inventing additional material neither expressed nor implied in the story:

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.

Most scholars think Mark was the earliest gospel, and if so, then Jesus "could" not perform miracles in the presence of unbelief:

 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household."
 5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.
 6 And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching. (Mk. 6:4-6 NAU)

Most scholars think Matthew borrowed much gospel text from Mark.  If that is true, then because Matthew changes the "could not" to a "did not", and changing Mark's "no miracle" to "not many miracles" it is reasonable to infer that the Matthew-author thought Mark's phrase could be reasonably interpreted to mean that God's power was something less than absolute:

 57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household."
 58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. (Matt. 13:57-58 NAU)

(Wallace continues)  :Why wouldn’t He?  The problem of natural evil is irreconcilable unless there are necessary or good reasons for God to permit such evil.

 There aren't.  God created a perfect Eden and populated it with Adam and Eve.  If God never allowed the serpent into the garden, it is not likely the first two humans would have done anything more than remain the blissfully ignorant children they were.  And again, we need not entertain the question of natural evil too long, if a case can be made that it is unlikely that a god exists.

If God exists, it is reasonable to believe that He would design a world in which free agency is possible (this is a necessity for true love to be achievable).

You are dismissed.  5-Point Calvinists are Christians, and they deny that human beings have "free agency" the way you define it, and yet you talk as if "free agency" is a presupposition you can safely assume any reader would agree with you on.  Nope.  Atheists are not morally obligated to take sides in that in-house Christian debate.  If spiritually alive people cannot even figure out freewill, you are irrational to expect spiritually dead people to do better on the subject.

In order to understand why God might allow natural evil, we have to do our best to examine the nature of the world around us, the nature of humans and the desires of God: 
Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of Necessity
God may tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of a free natural process that makes it possible for freewill creatures to thrive.

Again, your Calvinist brothers and sisters think such talk is theological heresy, you can hardly expect atheists to take side in that in-house Christian debate.  The more you depend on the "freewill" angle, the more justification you give atheists to dismiss your argument.  Atheists are smart to insist that they won't be getting involved in such debate unless Christians all agree on how the bible defines "freewill", since if we are going to convert on the basis of apologetics arguments, it's only common sense that we first make sure those arguments are biblically justified.

Scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne suggests that God has created a universe with particular natural laws that make life on earth possible so that humans with free will can exist in the first place. As an example, the same weather systems that create tornadoes that kill humans also create thunderstorms that provide our environment with the water needed for human existence.

But that's like saying that because daddy has a gun that can kill game for us to eat, it is a necessary evil that he also use it to kill innocent people.   In Deut. 32:39, god credits himself with causing all murders and death, so God's creation of stormy weather systems isn't the issue, we've discovered that the problem is god himself and his "delight" to cause parents who disobey him to eat their own kids (Deut. 28:63).

The same plate tectonics that kill humans (in earthquakes) are necessary for regulation of soils and surface temperatures needed for human existence.

Naw, your god is omnipotent, remember?  God can cause an earthquake while also protecting children from being killed by it, so again, the problem is not earthquakes, but god himself.  Or maybe you deny that God is all-powerful?  If so, you probably account for the omnipotence-passages in the bible by saying they are a case of typical Semitic exaggeration, which is probably correct.  In that case, I'd like to know why you don't think that view opens Pandora's Box:  I wonder how many other theologically important statements in the bible are in reality nothing more significant than typical Semitic exaggerations?  When Isaiah strongly argues for absolute monotheism (44:6), is this literally true, or just Isaiah employing typical Semitic exaggeration?

  Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of the Nature of Free Agency
God may also tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of human free agency. Humans often rebuild along earthquake fault lines and known hurricane pathways, and they frequently cut corners on building guidelines in order to save money. Much of this activity results in the catastrophic loss that we see in times of ‘natural’ disaster. There are times when ‘natural’ evil is either caused or aggravated by free human choices. 

Atheists are perfectly rational to rebut you with your 5-Point Calvinist Christian sisters who insist that human freewill cannot be significant because it is God who causes people to choose they way they choose, and therefore, the problem of evil is with God himself.  If your Calvinists insist that the bible doesn't teach that humans genuinely contribute, but only react like puppets, atheists have perfect rational justification to dismiss your argument and insist God's like-minded ones get their act together first.  Otherwise, you are expecting spiritually dead atheists to correctly figure out which of the two contradictory theological systems (Calvinism, non-Calvinism) are biblically correct, and that's foolish.

Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of God’s Nudging
God may permit some natural evil because it challenges people to think about God for the first time.

If true then God is stupid, since all through the bible he not only "stirs the heart" of various people to successfully motivate them to do what he wants: 

1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying: (Ezr. 1:1 NAU) 

but God also sometimes forces unbelievers to sin, and then punishes them for it:

  4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords; (Ezek. 38:4 NAU)

 16 and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog." (Ezek. 38:16 NAU)

 21 "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. (Ezek. 38:21 NAU)

1 "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal;
 2 and I will turn you around, drive you on, take you up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel. (Ezek. 39:1-2 NAU)

Does literally control people like this?  Or is this semitic exaggeration?  If Semitic exaggeration, then what criteria do you use to decide when a theologically important passage in the bible is mere exaggeration?

For many people, the first prayers or thoughts of God came as the result of some tragedy.

Which doesn't count for much, since your all-powerful God can cause people to yearn for him simply by waving his magic wand:

 14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. (Acts 16:14 NAU)

(Wallace continues:) When our present lives are in jeopardy or in question, we find ourselves thinking about the possibility of a future life. If an eternal future life is a reality, God may use the temporary suffering of this life to focus our thoughts and desires on eternity. 

Which makes God stupid and wasteful since according to Ezekiel he can cause us to think whatever thoughts he wants us to think.  If God wants me to prioritize the spiritual side of my life, he doesn't need to step out of the way and allow me to endure horrific catastrophes, he can simply put those motives into my heart the way he allegedly did similarly to other people all through the bible.  

Some “Natural Evil” May Be the Result of God’s Nurturing
God may permit some natural evil because it provides humans with the motivation and opportunity to develop Godly character.

Which is counterbalanced by the obvious fact that half the people who experience evil don't turn to god, but become more closed to the idea that any god exists.  Again, if God would just wave his magic wand and use his telepathy on us today like he allegedly did in bible times, he would need to allow a little girl to be raped just to get her to sympathize in adulthood with other rape victims...he can cause her to sympathize with such people by putting such motives into her heart directly.

You need to be careful with the argument that says good comes out of evil.  yeah, sometimes it does, but the means don't always justify the ends.  We could fix a lot of problems by nuking America's ghettos too.  But if you think the resulting benefit didn't cancel the fact that this was murder, then you might wish to stop telling yourself that God is morally justified because his purpose is good.  The ends don't justify the means...do they?

Or are you a Republican?

A world such as this requires human beings to cooperate and peacefully co-exist in order to successfully respond to its challenges.

That preaches nice, but it is also true, according to your bible, that for thousands of years, the earth and God were doing just fine while this place was little more than a battle field where competing tribes killed each other and whoever won, was considered to be in the right.

The best in humanity often emerges as people respond in love and compassion to natural disaster.

Which makes sense from a naturalistic point of view, but creates unending problems from a classical Christian theist point of view such as yours.

It’s in the context of disaster that moral character has the opportunity to form and develop. Good character (acts of love, compassion and cooperation) must be freely chosen. God has provided us with a world that provokes us to improve our situation, care for those who are in need, and become better human beings in the process.  There are a number of ‘necessary’ or ‘sufficient’ reasons why God might create a world in which natural evil is occasionally permissible, particularly if God chooses to provide, protect and preserve the freewill of His children.

Your Calvinist brothers are as spiritually alive as you, and they deny that we have freewill.  You are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists to figure out which interpretation of scripture is the right one.