Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 7: Ezekiel 16 establishes nothing except more apologetics embarrassment

Most Christian apologists, once confronted with the fact that the bible never specifies the age or conditions a girl must minimally reach to be qualified for marriage (i.e., the bible god doesn't appear to think martial pedophilia is sufficiently immoral to deserve specific commentary as much as "justification by faith"), immediately cite to God's having metaphorical sex with Jerusalem:

 1 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
 2 "Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations
 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem, "Your origin and your birth are from the land of the Canaanite, your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
 4 "As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths.
 5 "No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born.
 6 "When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!'
 7 "I made you numerous like plants of the field. Then you grew up, became tall and reached the age for fine ornaments; your breasts were formed and your hair had grown. Yet you were naked and bare.
 8 "Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine," declares the Lord GOD. (Ezek. 16:1-8 NAU)

The argument goes like this:  Ezekiel's stating that metaphorical Jerusalem was ready for sex with God after her breasts had formed and her public hair had grown, necessarily implies that Israel in the days of Ezekiel, and thus likely also in the days of Moses, generally believed that the minimum age a girl must reach before she can be legitimately married and engage in sexual relations, was puberty, or about 12 years old.  And since God is speaking through Ezekiel here, that's the age God himself thinks is the appropriate marriageable age.

But there are numerous problems with using the text that way:

1 - God is concluding that the presence of boobs and pubic hair on a girl makes her ready for sex (v. 8), and yet today, if we hear anybody say girls are ready for sex after their boobs and pubic hair have grown, we assume the speakers are just stupid inbred rednecks who lack common sense and don't realize that readiness for sex is a complex thing that involves far more than what features the girl has developed.  Is your god an inbred redneck for thinking her signs of puberty means she's "ready" for sex?

2 - Ezekiel was an exilic prophet, the Israel he represented were captives of Babylon (about 600 b.c.).  Yes, he could well be representing a tradition here that goes back to Moses, but since Moses lived around 1300 b.c., you'd have to say that Ezekiel's view on this minimal marriageable age, properly represents what the Hebrews from 700 years previous also believed about the minimum age of marriage.  If you insist the tradition is consistent, you leave yourself little reason to complain that the Rabbis and Sages of the Babylonian Talmud (700 a.d), who permitted adult men to use sexual intercourse with three year old girls to achieve betrothal, properly represented the earlier Jewish beliefs of the first century and before.  And given that Judaism itself evolved many theological ideas and caused many factions (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritan Jews), the only person who would say Ezekiel is representative of the earlier Judaism from 700 years prior, would be fundamentalists who have their suicide guns at hand, ready to the pull the trigger if the least bit of imperfection should show up in the bible.

3 - I don't say marital pedophilia was normative in ancient Judaism.  All I claim is that there is no evidence from the bible that God viewed the act as "sin".  In that case, there is no problem accepting Ezekiel's view as normative of ancient Jewish morals.  What he doesn't address is how far this model could be deviated from without going off into sin.  And since James Patrick Holding has specified that he was allowing for some deviation one way or the other from the 12-year old age he proposed as the ancient Hebrew age for marriage, it would appear that where the minimal boundary age or conditions be, is more or less a subjective thing, and for that reason, Christians cannot use their subjective judgment call on the matter and pretend this is God's own view.  God thinks it normative to set the age of marriage at 12, but the question whether God views marriage below this age as "sin", is not answered.

Once again, the issue is not what was normative among ancient Jews.  The issue is whether the god of the bible views sex within adult-child marriages as sin.  Showing what God thinks is "normative" does not automatically require that any deviation from this would be viewed as "sin".  Sin is never defined int he bible as deviation from the norm, but only deviation from God's law.

And under the absolutist reasoning of Romans 13:1, it must have been God that enacted the secular 19th century Delaware rape-law that set the age of sexual consent at 7.  I've argued elsewhere that Paul appears to have meant that it truly is God who sets up even the secular governments whose laws violate the divine law.  Romans 9, God "raised up Pharaoh".

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 6: God expects Hebrews to use their "common sense"

Most Christian apologists, when confronted with the fact that the bible nowhere specifies the conditions and age that a girl must meet to be eligible for marriage, immediately mistake their cultural conditioning for the movement of the Holy Spirit, and insist that not everything was written in the bible, because God expected people to use their "common sense".

This is what John Sparks, the owner of theologyweb.com, argued in 2016:

08-11-2016, 09:20 PM #20 rogue06

Quote Originally Posted by The Thinker   
There is no age of consent in the Bible and Yahweh never says you must be over X age before you can have sex or marry. And older men marrying girls as young as 9 occurred back then. So if you feel that pedophilia is morally wrong, on what basis is it wrong on your view?     

There are a lot of things not specifically mentioned in the Bible because it was considered self-evident or common sense. So much for the claim that    

 If we use the "common sense" approach, then we have to ask why God placed in the bible a specific prohibition against bestiality:

 23 'Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. (Lev. 18:23 NAU)

 Indeed, God apparently thought one single prohibition wasn't sufficient:

Exo 22:19 "Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death.
Lev 20:12 If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Lev 20:15 If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal.
Lev 20:16 If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Deu 27:21 Cursed is he who lies with any animal. And all the people shall say, Amen.

If God thought the Hebrews would recognize via common sense that bestiality was sin, why did he include a specific prohibition against it in the bible?

Could it be that God's preference to specifically prohibit even the more obviously immoral sins, suggests that he didn't intend to allow humans to decide for themselves which acts were sinful?

Could it be that you really cannot fix the bible's silence on marital pedophilia by saying God expects us to use our common sense?

The Hebrews believed in burning their adolescent daughters to death should those girls have engaged in pre-marital sex:

Gen 38:24 Now it was about three months later that Judah was informed, "Your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot, and behold, she is also with child by harlotry." Then Judah said, "Bring her out and let her be burned!"
Lev 20:14 If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality; both he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no immorality in your midst.
Lev 21:9  'Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.

If the Hebrews could depart so far from what modern Christian apologists believe is common sense morality/justice, then it is rather stupid of them to just blindly assume the Hebrews thought like us, wherever the bible is silent about a moral issue.

When you think about a father tying his daughter to a post a burning her to death because she lost her virginity to her boyfriend, and you wince and are totally horrified by such a thought, is that attitude of yours from the same Holy Spirit who inspired the above-cited bible verses, yes or no?

Why is God so psychotically pissed off at this sin in the days of Moses, but according to you, today God doesn't think such girls should be burned to death?  God doesn't change, does he?

For all these reasons, it is highly unlikely that the reason 'god' stayed silent on pedophilia is because he expected people to use their common sense.  All that would prove is that the reason God prohibits bestility multiple times in the Mosaic writings is because God did not expect the Hebrews to recognize this obvious sin solely by their common sense.

This is my reply to J. Warner Wallace's article:

 Why Would a Good God Behave So Badly?  

Posted: 16 Jun 2017 04:00 AM PDT

I have many unbelieving friends who laugh when I claim the God of the Bible is both all-powerful and all-loving. As they read through the Old Testament, they point to a variety of passages and episodes where God seems to be anything but loving. They cite passages, for example, where God seems to command the pillaging and killing of Israel’s enemies with great brutality.

they should have pointed out the passages where God specifies that he will take "joy" in causing men to rape women, and causing parents to eat their own children, such as:

 15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

 16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.

 30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.

 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.

63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:15-63 NAU)

 "Delight" in both cases is the same word, whether in Hebrew or Lxx, so you won't be escaping this one on linguistic grounds.  And good luck finding a Christian commentary that provides any argument that might favor your position.  Indeed, if God really meant his threats to inflict horrific torments, to be taken seriously, then he does indeed delight to inflict such things no less than he delights to prosper those who obey.

 How can a God who would command the brutal destruction of Israel’s enemies be called moral or loving?

Easy, he isn't moral or loving in the modern American sense, he's only moral and loving in the ancient Semitic sense.

It’s easy for us to judge the words and actions of God as if He were just another human, subject to an objective standard transcending Him. But when we judge God’s actions in this way, we are ignoring His unique authority and power.

Not really, god admits in Genesis 6:6-7 he sometimes regrets his own decisions, so with precedent like that, you cannot dismiss the possibility that god is such an asshole in the OT because that was back when he had less moral maturity.  I don't believe in biblical inerrancy, so I couldn't care less that you can find another bible verse that says God is infinitely wise.  Inerrancy is so disputed even among spiritually alive people, that spiritually dead people are smart to dismiss it as speculative, and refuse to use it as tool of interpretation, and therefore, to insist we can know what Genesis 6 means without reconciling it with everything else in the bible.

While great work has been done by Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God), describing the proper context of these passages in the Old Testament,

I've already refuted them; their exegesis of 1st Samuel 15 (where King Saul is dispossessed by God precisely because Saul did not completely destroy the kids as the ban had required) is foolish, and completely ignores the reason why those kids were ordered killed:  their great-great-great-great grandfather Amalek had attacked the last of the Israelites as they exodused from Egypt, an event that took place more than 400 years before Saul's time.  That is, the reason that current generation of Amalekite kids was ordered slaughtered is not because they were obstinately holding on to parts of the promised land God wished to give to Israel, but because they were corporately guilty of an ancestor's sin.  In which case they wouldn't stop deserving death merely because they fled the land. 

and by Clay Jones (Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims), describing the view God held toward the sin of Israel’s neighbors,

"Genocide" merely muddies the waters.  The problem is that this god gives every appearance of thinking his plan for Israel to go around killing off pagans is his "best" plan, when in fact he could have achieved his goal without causing children to suffer, by waving his magic wand. And his employment of an imperfect plan argues there is no god to discuss, this is just godless ancient Hebrews who are mischaracterizing their military strategies as if they were commands of God.  NOthing more significant than the modern fundie who justifies his bombing of an abortion clinic by saying "God told me to do it".

I would like to add the following observations about the nature of God as we consider His actions in the Old Testament:  God is the Greatest Artist If you and I were in an art class together and I suddenly grew frustrated with my sketch and decided to destroy it, you wouldn’t complain in the least.

That's because destroying inanimate objects doesn't create suffering of live creatures. 

If I stepped over to your easel and destroyed your sketch, however, you would certainly complain that I was doing something unjust. You see, the artist has the authority and right to destroy his or her own work.

You also have the right to burn all of your house and possession to the ground as long as you don't do it for a criminal or illegal reason.  But if you did that once per year, people would still conclude, with rational justification, that you were crazy, despite the fact that you had the "right" to do it. 

The art belongs to the artist.

And according to Genesis 6:6, the artist often screws up.  It could very well be that God today, if he exists, thinks similarly to Genesis 6:6, that is, that he regrets having been such an asshole in the OT.  Once again, that bible verse and its likely meaning will not go away just because you presuppose bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, and you think we need to reconcile Genesis 6:6 with the rest of the bible.  Bible inerrancy, for reasons already staed, does not deserve to be exalted in our mind to the status of governing hermeneutic.  Therefore, you cannot get rid of the imperfect God that verse tells about, by smothering it with something else in the bible.  And even if bible inerrancy were true, you don't know whether Genesis 6:6 should be interpreted in the light of other bible verses, or if the other bible verses declaring God infinitely wise, need to be interpreted and delimited in the light of Genesis 6:6.

If there is a God, all of creation is His handiwork. He has the right to create and destroy what is His, even when this destruction may seem unfair to the artwork itself.

Exactly why there is no rational reasoning with Islamic extremists.  YOU might not think it fair to be injured in a suicide bombing, but Allah does.  So there's no rational reasoning with you, your religious belief becomes more important to you that common sense once you get to thinking God wanted something done a certain way.

  God is the Greatest Physician If you or I suffered a snake bite on our elbow and were miles from the nearest hospital, a doctor might advise us (over the phone) to tourniquet the arm to save our life. In doing so, we would surely sacrifice an otherwise healthy hand to prevent the venom from spreading to our heart. But the doctor understands that this drastic action is required to prevent our death.

That's because the doctor is not an all-powerful genie who can cure us with a wave of his magic wand.  Your God is.  Now back to your "his-ways-are-mysterious" excuses.

You and I might not agree with the plan, or like the outcome, but the doctor knows best.

 But the doctor of Genesis 6:6-7 admits to regretting his own decisions, so it's far from rock solid that because God is God, his choices are beyond criticism.

The treatment plan belongs to the doctor. If there is a God, all of us are His patients. He has the wisdom and authority to treat us as He sees fit, even when we might not be able to understand the overarching danger we face if drastic action isn’t taken.

Such as when a little girl dies from an STD she got due to an adult man raping her.  The truth is that your god has far more in common with fairy tales than reality, the arguments for God's existence are less than convincing and suffer the fatal religious language objection, and for these reasons, we are rationally justified to limit how often we entertain your trifling excuses, as often as we are justified to limit the extent to which we entertain Mormon apologetics. But clearly, you aren't arguing to convince skeptics, you are building your argument on presuppositions you share with other Christians.

  God is the Greatest Savior If you and I live as though our mortal lives are all we have, we’ll often become frustrated that our lives seem to be filled with pain and injustice.

Too many Christians have complained that their lives seems to be filled with pain and injustice, for you to pretend that becoming a Christian will fix that attitude.

But the Christian Worldview describes human existence as eternal.

Unfortunately, the OT contains statements that cannot be reconciled with that idea, according to other spiritually alive orthodox people such as 7th Day Adventists, which means you are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists to figure out who is right in this in-house Christian debate.

We have a life beyond the grave.

Not if the best that can be argued toward that end is J.P. Moreland's ridiculous The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters.

We live for more than 80 or 90 years; we live forever, either with God in Heaven, or separated from God for all eternity. If there is a God, He is certainly more concerned about our eternal existence than He is about our mortal comfort.

If he was as concerned about our eternal well-being as you say, he'd likely be doing ALL that he could to save us, not just the minimal bit he says is sufficient to compel faith.  When our kids are drowning, we don't do what we think is minimally sufficient to save them, we do all that we can until we either save them, or find that our best efforts weren't good enough.  I don't ask you whether God thinks He's done what is "sufficient" to make the gospel believable.  I ask you whether God is doing his "best" to make the gospel believable.  Could God have provided more convincing evidence than what 2,000 years of church history gave us?  He apparently doesn't mind violating freewill, how blown away do you suppose the Israelites were when they saw the wall of water on either side as they passed through the parted Red Sea?  God is NOT doing his "best" to convince unbelievers, hence, he is less concerned with saving unbelievers than you say.   And quit pretending that your view is "the" Christian view.  5-Point Calvinists quickly insist that God never wished to save those who end up in hell.

His plans are grander than our plans. His eternal desires are greater than our mortal desires.

They are also occassionally errant, Genesis 6:6-7, and the "anthropomorphism" interpretation cannot be sustained by anything in the grammar, immediate context, or larger context, hence such interpretation is likely false.

 If there is a God, He is more concerned about saving us for eternity than He is about making our mortal lives safe.

Spiritually alive Christians known as Calvinists refuse to classify all unbelievers as loved by God, the way you do.  Don't expect spiritually dead atheists to correctly figure out which of you got it right.

  Christians understand that there have been times in the history of humanity when God’s chosen people (those who placed their trust in Him) were in great eternal spiritual jeopardy from those who surrounded them. God understood the risk as the Great Physician and often prescribed drastic action to cut off the threat.

He could have used his telepathic tractor beam powers and stirred the hearts of whoever he wished away from whatever sinful goal they were trying to achieve.  God has that kind of power according to Ezekiel 38:4.

God had the authority as the Great Artist to destroy what was His in the first place,

And as noted before, if you employ your "right" to destroy your stuff too many times, most people will conclude, with rational justification, that you have mental problems.  So god's having the "right" to destroy his people, doesn't insulate him from a justified charge of being the sadistic lunatic he is.  Deut. 28:63 

and He also had the wisdom and compassion as the Great Savior to do what was necessary to protect the eternal spiritual life of His creation.

Then he failed, since he could very easily have made the gospel far more believable in past centuries, to those who rejected it and apparently went to hell, and he could have achieved that goal without violating their freewill...unless you think a jury's freewill is violated when the prosecutor's evidence is absolutely unassailable?

If God failed to act in these situations, we would hardly call him all-powerful and all-loving.

There's plenty of biblical passages that cannot be reconciled with the others that teach God is all-powerful and all-loving.  God can defeat wooden chariots but not iron chariots in Judges 1:19 (inerrantists are forced to read their speculations into the text in order to "reconcile" this with other bible passages nabout God's omnipotence, and yet you shall not add to his word, Proverbs 30:6.  And I don't care what you say, burning your daughter alive because she had premarital sex (Lev. 21:9), or putting children to death by burning because they helped their father steal a wedge of gold (Joshua 7:15) has about as much chance of being reconciled with any rational understanding of love, as beating them to death does.

God approves of alcoholism, Proverbs 31, Psalm 104

I contend that, regardless of whatever else the bible may say, there is a passage that approves of alcoholism.

 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, It is not for kings to drink wine, Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
 5 For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
 6 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, And wine to him whose life is bitter.
 7 Let him drink and forget his poverty And remember his trouble no more. (Prov. 31:4-7 NAU)

There are several signs in this passage the strong drink in question is real alcohol, not diluted wine or grape juice:

• The "wine" in v. 4 is defined as "strong drink" by hendiadys (Hebrew idiom: expressing one idea by means of two different descriptions).
• that it really is "strong" drink is confirmed from the King forgetting his own decree after imbibing (v. 5).
• Other persons are expected to forget their troubles if they partake of this stuff (v. 7)

Grape juice and diliuted or weak "wine" does not make those who drink it forget their decrees or forget their troubles.  But there's endless empirical evidence that alcohol surely accomplishes this goal.

The inerrantist-driven NAC says much against my interpretation, but can be dismissed because it does so by preaching to the choir, not by evidence and supported argument:

31:4–7 Verses 4–7 advise the king to maintain sobriety in order to carry out the work of establishing justice in the kingdom.3 The queen-mother does not recommend a free beer program for the poor or justify its use as an opiate for the masses; her point is simply that the king must avoid drunkenness in order to reign properly. The comparison to the suffering poor and to their use of alcohol is meant to awaken Lemuel to the duties that go with his class and status rather than to describe some kind of permissible drunkenness.

Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). 

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 246). 

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

On the contrary, the proverb contains the mandate to "give" strong drink (v. 6).

The WBC is a bit more realistic:

6–7 The emphasis on royal justice is followed by a rather bold and singular recommendation. Instead of enjoying personal consumption of the royal cellar, the king is to provide a supply of drink for the unfortunate people who need it as a kind of comfort (?) for their misery. This strange command has provoked several hypotheses. On the one hand, it has been considered to be “cynical” and perhaps a later addition; as noted in Note 5.a.*, the command is in the plural. On the other hand, it has been interpreted as providing some relief for the unfortunate. What is to be, as it were, doled out to kings is to be provided generously for afflicted members of the realm, whose comforts are little enough. Even though this can be only a temporary measure, a kind of ancient opium (as well as modern?), it is nonetheless recommended.  

Murphy, R. E. (2002). Vol. 22: Word Biblical Commentary : Proverbs. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 241). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

It likely wouldn't have evoked several hypotheses, unless what was being commanded in the passage was something exceptionally difficult for bible believing commentators to reconcile with the rest of the bible. And indeed, that is the case.  Paul forbids getting drunk, Ephesians 5:18,

Somebody will say Paul was only addressing the church.  That doesn't make sense; Proverbs must also be viewed as God's word to the church no less than Paul's epistles.


Something in the context of Psalm 104 makes it clear that it is God who not only provides wine, but provides it for the sake of making men's hearts merry:

 14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the labor of man, So that he may bring forth food from the earth,
 15 And wine which makes man's heart glad, So that he may make his face glisten with oil, And food which sustains man's heart.
 16 The trees of the LORD drink their fill, The cedars of Lebanon which He planted,
 17 Where the birds build their nests, And the stork, whose home is the fir trees.
(Ps. 104:14-17 NAU)

Furthermore, the context is praising God for what God does, so it is absurd to expect that these words about wine were simply a neutral assertion that mankind makes wine for himself.  That wine is no less a positive thing frm the Lord the the grass for the cattle, the vegetation for man, the water for the birds, the trees of Lebanon, or the trees where birds build their homes. All that stuff is positive, not neutral.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 5: God establishes all the secular laws

Perhaps the most devastating rebuttal against James Patrick Holding's belief that his Jewish god hates pedophilic marriage, is apostle Paul's unqualified language that the secular powers over Christians are put there by decree of God, Romans 13:

1 Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.
 2 Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
 3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;
 4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
 5 Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. (Rom. 13:1-5 NAU)

If there are no secular authorities except those which are established by God, then Who was ultimately responsible for the secular authorities of Delaware in the 1800's setting the minimum age of sexual consent for girls at 7 years old?

Holding may resort to his "that's just Greco-Roman rhetoric of exaggeration", but

a) he won't be giving any evidence that this is indeed exaggeration, since he is fearful that to provide the criteria is to create the risk that somebody could invalidate the criteria;
b) you will have great difficulty convincing the vast majority of inerrantist evangelicals that Paul's language here was exaggeration, proving that Holding's predictable comeback has less scholarly rigor than his sneering would suggest; and
c) if it was exaggeration, then Paul was using exaggeration when making an important theological point, and that's a can of worms Holding will never close again if he decides to open it:  How many other theologically important statements from Paul were similarly a case of exaggeration?  Is your criteria rigid enough for typical Christian doctrines to survive, or is it sufficiently vague that pretty much anything that looks like an extreme statement in the bible, can be dismissed as being less important than the language suggests on the surface?

Does your god approve of pedophilia? Part 4: "In non-essentials, liberty"

Most conservative Christians agree with a non-biblical moral maxim:

"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity."

The origin of this phrase is not important to this argument, but for the curious, here's the Wikipedia link that will start off the newbies with non-authoritative information.

This maxim seems to be saying that, if the area of discussion is a "non-essential", then it is not rational to view a Christian as sinful or non-Christian merely because they disagree with you on said non-essential.


What criteria should we use to figure out which bible teachings are "essential" and which aren't?

Let's review what modern conservatives have to say:

Credo House gives the following criteria:

1. Historicity: Does the doctrine have universal historical representation?

2. Explicitly Historical: Does the history of the church confess their centrality?

3. Biblical Clarity (Perspicuity): Is the doctrine represented clearly in Scripture?

4. Explicitly Biblical: Does any passage of Scripture explicitly teach that a certain doctrine is essential?

...Again, these four criteria, I propose, must all be present. I think I am committed to this. If one or more is lacking concerning a particular doctrine, I believe that it is not possible for one to legitimately argue for its core necessity. As well, all four feed off each other and are somewhat self-regulating. In other words, if someone doubts whether something is clear in Scripture, all he or she has to do is look to history.  If something is not clear in the Scripture, we will not find that it passes the test of historicity. This is why it is of vital importance that Christians not only be good exegetes, but also good historians.

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no "universal" historical representation.  That subject is not made "universal" by either the bible or the church fathers.  Singular expressions of opinions do not make something "universal".  Tertullian was a Montanist, but that hardly makes his opinion a universally recognized teaching.  The same with Origen's spiritualizing the text to get rid of contradictions/errors, and Irenaeus' belief that Jesus lived to be around 50 and had an earthly ministry of more than 10 years.

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no history of the church confessing it's centrality.  Nowhere in church history do we ever find statements about minimum age for marriage being declared to be "central".

 The minimum age and/or other traits a girl must reach/acquire before she can be legitimately married in God's eyes, has no clear basis in the bible.  When we think of doctrines that have "clear basis in the bible", we think of monotheism, existence of God, Jesus being the son of God, his rising from the dead, etc, etc.  Apparently then, "clear basis in the bible" requires multiple attestation.  God's opinion on the minimum age of marriage is hardly witnessed in the bible to that degree.

Norman Geisler's criteria for identifying essential teaching is to stress the creeds, and give the reader an overview of the Roman Catholic, the Reformed, and the Anabaptist criteria for essential doctrine.  But this doesn't help, since none of those sources even talks about the minimum age of marriage.

From this brief survey, it would appear that the minimum age a girl must be in order to be eligible for marriage in God's sight, cannot be "essential" teaching, it can only at best be "non-essential" (i.e., your salvation or orthodoxy cannot be compromised by the age you believe a girl becomes ready to marry), in which case, by your own creed, you must allow "liberty".  That is, you cannot disfellowship or excommunicate the man in your African congregation who is a member of a Bushman tribe and who has married a 9 year old girl consistent with the tribe's beliefs.

As an atheist, I'd cease being friends with anybody if I found out they were a pedophile, since I detest the practice in all forms.  There is no "how do we know what essential teaching is" to muddy up my moral intuitions.

You can escape this rebuttal by refusing to believe in the maxim stated at the beginning of this article, but you'd probably take a very big hit socially and personally, since you'd then become a bigot, and you'd give up on Christian friends as soon as they disagreed with  you on anything in the bible.

Face it, friend, you are sure that your god hates marital pedophilia as much as he hates bestiality, yet your god apparently chose to plainly prohibit the latter and say absolutely nothing about the former.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 3: We can know what sin is by intuition?

 13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit."
 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."
 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
 17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.
(Jas. 4:13-17 NAU)

This verse proves nothing, for even if we accept it as true, it is only saying that it is sin when we already know what the right thing to do is, yet we don't do it.

The question of what criteria we should use so that we can correctly identify what "the right thing to do" would be, is left unanswered.

Does your God approve of pedophilia? Part 2: We can know what sin is by our conscience?

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Some Christians will try to argue that because we can know sin by our conscience, as the bible says, then we can know that sex within adult-child marriages is sin even if biblical law is silent about the subject:

 12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.
 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
 17 But if you bear the name "Jew " and rely upon the Law and boast in God, (Rom. 2:12-17 NAU)

I don't see how this passage proves anything.  The world is filled with shameless pedophiles whose consciences don't bother them regarding their sexual life.  

The only way this verse can be used to support identifying pedophilia as sin, is to favor the conscience of all people who decry this sexual practice, and arbitrarily discount the conscience of those who see nothing wrong with it.  That is anything but objective.  You might get the congregation to signal their agreement with your view by clapping, but locating groups of other people who have the same conscience as you, is hardly an objective argument that you've got the morals figured out correctly

---------Update:  March 20, 2023

Romans 2:15 ("...work of the law written on their conscience") is surrounded in the immediate context with references to the Mosaic Law.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to conclude that many conservative scholars are wrong when trifling that "work of the law" is something different than the moral precepts of the Mosaic law.  And indeed, that makes practical sense:  Did or didn't God put "thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14) on your conscience?  

Shall we trifle about whether God did or didn't place some Mosaic moral law on your conscience?  Of course not.  Therefore, there is no room in Romans 2 to justify pretending that our "conscience" is an independent basis upon which to judge some human act to be sin.  That basis for the conscience in condemning some act as sin is still Mosaic law regardless, along with all of its omissions.

If Romans 2:15 is true, then your conscience troubling you as you think about pedophilia is not something that arises from the OT YHWH who gave the law.  

Inerrantists will carp that the OT YHWH also cleared up much in the NT thus it is the same God in both testaments, thus both words of God should be read harmonistically, but of course there is no universally recognized hermeneutic that says compilations of theological material produced by two different ancient religions who often disagree with each other on major points of doctrine (as Jews disagree with each other, Christians disagree with each other, and Jews disagree with Christians) still somehow "deserve" to be read harmonistically.  So when I refuse to do so, all I'm "violating" is a rule of exegesis that not even all Christians agree to (most Christian scholars deny inerrancy, it just seems otherwise because of how loud the inerrantist-minority bark about shit).

I lose no sleep violating a Jehovah's Witness's request that I clear all my bible interpretations with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

I also lose no sleep violating an inerrantist's request that I forget about all the numerous interpretive differences between Jews and Christians, and simply do whatever needs doing in order to find harmony between the OT YHWH and the NT Jesus.  I prefer rather to adopt the view of the 2nd century Marcion, who correctly held that the god of the OT was a demon, and not the father of Jesus.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

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

Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

Posted: 14 Jun 2017 06:00 AM PDT

 Whenever I start writing about morality or the existence of evil, I almost always get an email (or two) from people who point to the historic actions of alleged “Christians”. For many skeptics, Christianity is the source of much evil in the past (i.e. the Crusades and the Inquisition). For this reason, some skeptics point to “Christian” evil as evidence against the existence of a good Christian God.

That's about as fallacious as saying the evil of the Nazis argues Hitler didn't exist.

While history may include examples of “Christian” groups committing evil upon those with whom they disagreed, a fair examination will also reveal Christians were not alone in this sort of behavior.

That's right, using religion to violently promote causes is a brain fart that infects all religions, Christianity included.

Groups holding virtually every worldview, from theists to atheists, have been mutually guilty of evil behavior. Atheists point to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition when making a case against Christians, theists point to the atheistic regimes of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung when making a case against atheists. Death statistics are often debated in an effort to argue which groups were more violent, but all this seems to miss the point. The common denominator in these violent human groups was not worldview; it was the presence of humans.

It is also illogical.  How many people Christians killed not only cannot be used to falsify Christianity, but according to the bible, it remains a valid possibility that God inspired the Inquisition and the Crusades.  Those who think their NT god of love would never do such at thing, apparently never read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

History has demonstrated a human predisposition toward violence.

And Jesus is no exception:

 12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. (Matt. 21:12 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  Regardless of worldview, humans will try to find a way to justify their evil actions.

And the biblical authors were no exception, who think "shut up" is the best answer to the problem of God causing evil:

 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)

(Wallace continues:)  The question is not which group is more violent but which worldview most authorizes and accommodates this violence.

Then the Christian theistic view wins, since it's pretty hard to find a stronger authorization for evil, than God's admitted "delight" in watching those who disobey him, raping each other and eating their own kids:

  30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
  63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from th (Deut. 28:30-63 NAU)

 If that's mere "Semitic exaggeration", and you don't have solid criteria for deciding what impreccatory language in the bible is literal and which is exaggeration, you open Pandora's Box:  why isn't it mere "Semitic exaggeration" also when biblical authors talk about hell or hell fire or eternal conscious suffering in the afterworld? 

Christians who commit horrific evil toward other humans actually have to act in opposition to the teaching of their Master, Jesus Christ. The Gospels repeatedly demonstrate that Jesus came to “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79), and Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have had to do so in rebellion; they ignored or were ignorant of the teachings of Jesus.

You completely ignore the well-known divine atrocities of the OT, such as God's command that babies should be slaughtered and pregnant women should be forced to endure abortion by sword or "ripped up"

NAU  1 Samuel 15:1 Then Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen to the words of the LORD.
 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:1-3 NAU)

 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. 13:16 NAU)

 Copan and Flannagan, of course, say this is typical exaggeration language because the pagan nations in those days also exaggerated their divine threats and war victories.  Although I've written a strong unpublished rebuttal to this nonsense, the strongest rebuttal is the fact that we also believe a person can be guilty for allowing that which they know to be evil.  If you see a man raping your daughter, and it can be proven in court that all you did was stand there and watch, with no evidence the rapist was a danger to you or had threatened you, you become responsible for ALLOWING despite the fact that you didn't CAUSE.

As Copan and Flannagan well know, God "allows" the worst imaginable evils to take place daily in this world.  No, the "God gave us freewill" excuse doesn't work, because that doesn't get god off the hook any more than it would the owner of a dog, known to be violent, who chooses to unleash the dog and let it run loose anyway.  The owner didn't CAUSE, but the owner did ALLOW, and we still say failure to restrain dogs who bite others, makes the owner liable.  The point is that if God knew we'd do all this evil after he gave us freewill, God is not in a different moral position than the pit-bull owner who gives his dog freedom despite knowing the damage the dog will do.

So if our ALLOWING evil is not morally distinguishable from our CAUSING it, then there is no rational reason to think the matter is different with God, in which case, the undeniable fact that God ALLOWS evil, as Copan and Flannagan must admit, operates to make God just as culpable as if he had CAUSED said evil.

Indeed, what fool would say there's a moral difference between a Hitler who allows his nazis to gas Jews to death, and the Hitler who actually orders such death?  Not much!

But in an atheistic worldview (where humans are not specially designed in the image of God), there is little or no reason why any of us should feel compelled to treat other people with the respect that Jesus taught his followers to have for their enemies.

That is stupid, we are social animals, we recognize there's safety in numbers, so it only makes perfectly good sense under completely naturalistic reasoning to band together, elect leaders, vote laws over us to keep the peace, etc, so as to further promote flourishing.  Since we are civilized, that's the way we get things done, even if in nature there are less civilized life forms that get things done more barbarically.  We can obtain all the moral justification we need for our moral outlook by simply saying we were born and raised to think and act like this.  If a terrorist from another country comes to us and does criminal acts under our laws, we prosecute him because we think we are "better", but because we recognize that we need to do this in order to continue achieving our naturalistic goal of keeping the peace.  Although some atheists believe in objective morality, I don't.  The Christians are correct:  if atheism is true, then there's not going to be any objective way to prove that life in 1950's America was "better" than life under Stalin.

If the world is simply filled with species and groups competing for the same resources, and if history belongs to those species and groups who are best suited for survival and reproduction, why should we be concerned with those groups who are not “fit” enough to survive?

It is sufficient to argue that being social animals logically compels us not to just toss the sick to the side of the road and move on.  That is, we show compassion for the purely naturalistic reason that we all desire to live and flourish.  We don't need to prove that view better than the view of a psycho who wants to nuke everybody, before we can have rational justification to see things that way.

History is filled with examples of one population group replacing another in the natural struggle for resources. If atheism is true, and survival and reproduction are the only true concerns, then the struggle for resources authorizes and justifies human violence.

But we are social animals, so it's only natural that we don't automatically wish to war with each other just to weed out the weak.   

Unlike Christians, atheists can commit genocide without ignoring their worldview; atheists have the freedom to eliminate competing groups as a faithful expression of their worldview.

Indeed, America's compassion for the poor has shown the ugly consequence...the poor and degenerates and mentally ill have increased in number.  Evolution is not perfect, and we apparently evolved to have a bit more compassion than is consistent for the long-term good.  Providing for safe needle-exchange, and free STD testing, does little more than help the freeloaders flourish.  We've already decided to limit welfare more than we ever did in its' history, so apparently we are starting to discover that we need to make and enforce decisions that prioritize long-term good of the nation, over the short-term relief of suffering for individuals.  I hope we turn further and further toward meritocracy.  

God has given us the freedom to follow our own nature or to follow the teaching of Jesus.

And there you go again, talking in complete defiance of your Calvinist Christian brothers.  We can rationally dismiss your argument here until you first show the world that you and Calvinists have resolved your differences of opinion over the bible's teaching about human freewill.

Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have simply submitted to their natural inclination rather than to the foundational teaching of the Christian Worldview:

Matthew 7:24-26

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Not everyone who calls himself a Christian is listening to the words of Christ (Matthew 7:21). Those of us who have identified ourselves as Christians, yet have perpetrated evil, are willfully resisting or rejecting the words of Jesus.

 But Jesus overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the OT god's atrocities are too well known from Deut. 28:15 ff to need repeating here.  Your idea that the true Christian of modern times is one who doesn't commit "atrocities" simply denies large sections of the bible.

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.