Cold Case Christianity: Why does J. Warner Wallace run away from this rule of evidence?

How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100) Posted: 28 Dec 2017 01:56 AM PST In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner continues to discuss the practices and principles of good investigators and applies these techniques to the Christian worldview. When juries are asked to evaluate a case, they are instructed in the rules of evidence. In this episode, J. Warner discusses three important evidence instructions: 1. The fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true, 2. Everything has the potential to be used as evidence, and 3. Whoever makes the claim, has the burden of proof. J. Warner demonstrates how a proper understanding of these rules can help you prepare people to hear the case for Christianity. This approach is described in more detail inForensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. Be sure to check out Forensic Faith and the accompanying curriculum. Be sure to watch the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast on NRBtv every Monday and Saturday! In addition, here is the audio podcast (the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast is located on iTunes or our RSS Feed):

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For whatever reason, Wallace never comments on why he thinks the gospels would pass the provenance criteria in the "ancient documents rule".  A recent Google search turns up nothing from Wallace on the subject, but places my blog piece, critical of him on this matter, at the top of the search hit list.

Pretty much the same is true even if one conducts a Duck Duck Go! search.

So it doesn't matter if Wallace has somehow managed to deal with this somewhere.  He apparently doesn't deal with it enough for the major search engines to pick up his discussions thereto.

I suspect that is because Wallace likes the sales gimmick of using modern American rules of evidence to govern investigation of the gospels (he has to favor that approach, that's the whole point of his "Cold Case Christianity" spiel), and he thus merely avoids discussion of any rule of evidence whose operation would  otherwise justify skeptics in dismissing the gospels as inadmissible.  I believe the laymen's term for such conduct "running away".

I explain in detail what the provenance-component of the ancient documents rule is, and why the gospels fail it with great gusto

If they do indeed fail that test, then they are "inadmissible", and no more deserve to have other rules of evidence applied to them, than is deserved by any other bit of evidence that was also rendered inadmissible.

The logical conclusion is that because the gospels do not pass muster under the rules of evidence used in American courts, the reliability of the gospels can never be sufficiently demonstrated as to intellectually or morally compel the unbeliever to acknowledge such.

However, I suspect that because Wallace is in the apologetics game to the point that he wants to make money with this crap, he has no intention of going where his own gimmickery leads, and will instead either continue avoiding the ancient documents rule or will serve up some flop-defense if his followers dog him about his silence on the matter long enough.

Wallace, if you are reading this, you have the option of breaking the silence by arguing that the ancient documents rule is so likely to result in unfair exclusion of powerful relevant evidence, that you were justified to ignore it.  

But if so, then you'll still have to follow those rules of evidence which govern admissibility of document testimony anyway.  Here are your options under FRE 901 for "authenticating" the gospels:

(1) Testimony of a Witness with Knowledge. Testimony that an item is what it is claimed to be.

(2) Nonexpert Opinion About Handwriting. A nonexpert’s opinion that handwriting is genuine, based on a familiarity with it that was not acquired for the current litigation.

(3) Comparison by an Expert Witness or the Trier of Fact. A comparison with an authenticated specimen by an expert witness or the trier of fact.

(4) Distinctive Characteristics and the Like. The appearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics of the item, taken together with all the circumstances.

(5) Opinion About a Voice. An opinion identifying a person’s voice — whether heard firsthand or through mechanical or electronic transmission or recording — based on hearing the voice at any time under circumstances that connect it with the alleged speaker.

(6) Evidence About a Telephone Conversation. For a telephone conversation, evidence that a call was made to the number assigned at the time to:

   (A) a particular person, if circumstances, including self-identification, show that the person answering was the one called; or

   (B) a particular business, if the call was made to a business and the call related to business reasonably transacted over the telephone.

(7) Evidence About Public Records. Evidence that:

   (A) a document was recorded or filed in a public office as authorized by law; or

   (B) a purported public record or statement is from the office where items of this kind are kept.

(8) Evidence About Ancient Documents (presumed deleted)

(9) Evidence About a Process or System. Evidence describing a process or system and showing that it produces an accurate result.

While FRE 901 says that list is not exclusive, expect a hell of an uphill battle if you try to authenticate a testimonial document in court in any manner other than the ways proposed in the rule.  And the great age of the gospels would make the Court even more unwilling to allow you to authenticate by means beyond those actually stated in the rule.

Here are your options under FRE 902, telling you which documents are "self-authenticating"

Rule 902. Evidence That Is Self-Authenticating

The following items of evidence are self-authenticating; they require no extrinsic evidence of authenticity in order to be admitted:

(1) Domestic Public Documents That Are Sealed and Signed. A document that bears:

(A) a seal purporting to be that of the United States; any state, district, commonwealth, territory, or insular possession of the United States; the former Panama Canal Zone; the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands; a political subdivision of any of these entities; or a department, agency, or officer of any entity named above; and

    (B) a signature purporting to be an execution or attestation.

(2) Domestic Public Documents That Are Not Sealed but Are Signed and Certified. A document that bears no seal if:

    (A) it bears the signature of an officer or employee of an entity named in Rule 902(1)(A); and

    (B) another public officer who has a seal and official duties within that same entity certifies under seal — or its equivalent — that the signer has the official capacity and that the signature is genuine.

(3) Foreign Public Documents. A document that purports to be signed or attested by a person who is authorized by a foreign country’s law to do so. The document must be accompanied by a final certification that certifies the genuineness of the signature and official position of the signer or attester — or of any foreign official whose certificate of genuineness relates to the signature or attestation or is in a chain of certificates of genuineness relating to the signature or attestation. The certification may be made by a secretary of a United States embassy or legation; by a consul general, vice consul, or consular agent of the United States; or by a diplomatic or consular official of the foreign country assigned or accredited to the United States. If all parties have been given a reasonable opportunity to investigate the document’s authenticity and accuracy, the court may, for good cause, either:

    (A) order that it be treated as presumptively authentic without final certification; or

    (B) allow it to be evidenced by an attested summary with or without final certification.

(4) Certified Copies of Public Records. A copy of an official record — or a copy of a document that was recorded or filed in a public office as authorized by law — if the copy is certified as correct by:

    (A) the custodian or another person authorized to make the certification; or

    (B) a certificate that complies with Rule 902(1), (2), or (3), a federal statute, or a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court.

(5) Official Publications. A book, pamphlet, or other publication purporting to be issued by a public authority.

(6) Newspapers and Periodicals. Printed material purporting to be a newspaper or periodical.

(7) Trade Inscriptions and the Like. An inscription, sign, tag, or label purporting to have been affixed in the course of business and indicating origin, ownership, or control.

(8) Acknowledged Documents. A document accompanied by a certificate of acknowledgment that is lawfully executed by a notary public or another officer who is authorized to take acknowledgments. 

(9) Commercial Paper and Related Documents. Commercial paper, a signature on it, and related documents, to the extent allowed by general commercial law.

(10) Presumptions Under a Federal Statute. A signature, document, or anything else that a federal statute declares to be presumptively or prima facie genuine or authentic.

(11) Certified Domestic Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. The original or a copy of a domestic record that meets the requirements of Rule 803(6)(A)-(C), as shown by a certification of the custodian or another qualified person that complies with a federal statute or a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court. Before the trial or hearing, the proponent must give an adverse party reasonable written notice of the intent to offer the record — and must make the record and certification available for inspection — so that the party has a fair opportunity to challenge them.

(12) Certified Foreign Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. In a civil case, the original or a copy of a foreign record that meets the requirements of Rule 902(11), modified as follows: the certification, rather than complying with a federal statute or Supreme Court rule, must be signed in a manner that, if falsely made, would subject the maker to a criminal penalty in the country where the certification is signed. The proponent must also meet the notice requirements of Rule 902(11).

(13) Certified Records Generated by an Electronic Process or System. A record generated by an electronic process or system that produces an accurate result, as shown by a certification of a qualified person that complies with the certification requirements of Rule 902(11) or (12). The proponent must also meet the notice requirements of Rule 902(11).

(14) Certified Data Copied from an Electronic Device, Storage Medium, or File. Data copied from an electronic device, storage medium, or file, if authenticated by a process of digital identification, as shown by a certification of a qualified person that complies with the certification requirements of Rule (902(11) or (12). The proponent also must meet the notice requirements of Rule 902 (11). 

It should be clear that, given how furiously even conservative Christian scholars disagree about the authorship, audience and provenance of the 4 canonical gospels, the earliest surviving manuscripts we have would never pass these kind of tests. 

So here's the predicament Wallace is in:

a - If you leave the ancient documents rule alone, then the provenance-element remains legitimate, and the inability of Christian scholars to know or agree on the provenance or place or origin for these manuscripts ensures they fail this test.  One has to wonder what Wallace would have to say about the gospels failing authentication under the "rules of evidence".  Would he be objective and quit the gimmicks?  Or would he simply do what conservative Christians do, and insist any evidentiary rule the gospels couldn't pass, was created by Satan?  If so, on what basis does Wallace determine which Federal Rules of Evidence were created by those interested in truth and which were created by those interested in deception? 

b - If you support the modern push to delete the ancient documents rule from Federal Rules of Evidence, then because all documents in court must still be "authenticated", you'd be forced to show that the ancient gospel manuscript of your choice passed at least one of the above-cited criteria from either FRE 901 or 902, and as already pointed out, the chain of custody for ancient gospel manuscripts his hopelessly speculative and lost, thus such documents ould never pass these standard authentication tests.

For those curious to delve further into the issue, here is a reasonably comprehensive pdf on the history and purpose of the ancient documents rule, and the arguments for and against deleting it from the current Fedral Rules of Evidence.

My advice is that Wallace give up this marketing gimmick before he embarrasses himself more than he already has.  

Cold Case Christianity: purchase my marketing gimmicks, or the Holy Spirit won't do his job

J. Warner Wallace absurdly counsels other Christians on how modern American rules of evidence can "prepare" a person to hear the case for Christ.

Cold Case Christianity: How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100)

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How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100) Posted: 28 Dec 2017 01:56 AM PST In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner continues to discuss the practices and principles of good investigators and applies these techniques to the Christian worldview. When juries are asked to evaluate a case, they are instructed in the rules of evidence. In this episode, J. Warner discusses three important evidence instructions: 1. The fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true, 2. Everything has the potential to be used as evidence, and 3. Whoever makes the claim, has the burden of proof. J. Warner demonstrates how a proper understanding of these rules can help you prepare people to hear the case for Christianity. This approach is described in more detail inForensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. Be sure to check out Forensic Faith and the accompanying curriculum. Be sure to watch the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast on NRBtv every Monday and Saturday! In addition, here is the audio podcast (the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast is located on iTunes or our RSS Feed):

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Gee, Wallace, you wouldn't think the Holy Spirit needs human beings to help him do his job, do you?

If the Holy Spirit is to be solely credited with convicting sinners, and if the Holy Spirit really is the "third person of the trinity", then it would seem that merely quoting the NT to unbelievers would be sufficient, under NT principles, to discharge your obligation to present the gospel.

But no, the way you argue, its as if there's no Holy Spirit at all; if Christians don't purchase your marketing gimmicks and employ the standard persuasion tactics of secular institutions that you also apparently approve of, unbelievers won't be clobbered as strongly as they otherwise could be.

Demolishing Triablogue: how to get nowhere fast, a reply to "annoyed pinoy"

"Annoyed Pinoy" who frequents Triablogue responded to my criticism of his views.

I reply by new blog post instead of "reply" because the word count is greater than the 4, 096 allowed for "replies".

Pinoy and others raise the issue of whether Ezekiel 16:7-8 constitutes criteria for sexual readiness, and the issue of my prior lawsuits against James Patrick Holding.

Thanks AP for the reply. 

“Because of a comment HERE, I did a very quick search of your blog for my nick and I noticed you made the following response to me.”
No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. “
That's an example of poor reasoning and poor reading skills. Different types of literature should be read according to their genre and intent/purpose. Just because two criteria are given doesn't mean there are only two criteria.

 That’s technically true, but there are several problems your response creates:

1. The burden of proof is on the claimant.  You apparently claim Ezekiel and or God think more criteria than the “boobs and pubic hair” need to be fulfilled before the girl can be considered legitimately ready for marriage (since apparently you don’t like the idea that they believed only two criteria needed to be met).  I don’t know why you claim this, you have absolutely nothing in the bible to indicate God felt more criteria needed be fulfilled, than these two.  Indeed where does the bible indicate girls need to have more qualifications than signs of puberty, to be deemed legitimately ready for martial relations? 

2. If God believes just as strongly as you that more criteria than these two must be fulfilled for a girl to be deemed legitimately ready for marital relations, don’t you think he would specified what those minimum criteria are?  If he was willing to specify prohibitions against conduct that is “obviously” sinful (like homosexuality, bestiality), you cannot argue that pedophilia is so obviously immoral that he didn’t think we needed a prohibition against it.  We also didn’t need to be told bestiality is wrong, but God specified a prohibition against that act anyway.  So it is reasonable, whether detrimental to you or not, to assume that your God will not shy away from specifying a prohibition against certain acts even if he trusts us to intuitively “know” they are immoral. 

3. Your implication that more criteria than those two were needed, fails on historical grounds anyway, as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.  For example, Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-332 B.C.E., Daniel C. Snell, Yale University Press, 1997. p. 90 

“You're reading that INTO the passage. The point of the passage is that YHVH waited till the girl was mature.”

And the criteria for maturity are given by the author.  If you wish to argue ancient Jews believed more criteria for marriage-readiness were required to be fulfilled than the two Ezekiel mentions, that is your claim, for which you incur the burden of proof.  Good luck.  Evangelical scholar L. C. Allen sees no problem with the boobs and public hair being set forth as sufficient signs of sexual maturity:

“The creative command turned into fact, and the baby grew into adolescence and sexual maturity, marked by breasts and pubic hair…” Allen, L. C. (2002). Vol. 28: Word Biblical Commentary : Ezekiel 1-19. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 237). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Pinoy continues:

NOT your claim that, "...your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair."

What I said was true.  Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.   So why you insist there was more to the criteria-story than that, remains a mystery.  Perhaps your bible says things my bible doesn't?

“Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose.”

No, I’m only responding to other apologists who, in sheer desperation, resorted to Ezekiel 16 to refute my argument that the god of the bible approves of sex within adult-child marriages.  I actually agree with you that the passage was not intended to instruct the reader on what the ancient Jews believed to be the minimum signs of marriage-readiness for girls.

“Since the passage is NOT about the criteria of when it's permissible for a female to get married and become sexually active. It's about the spiritual infidelity of God's people.”

Correct.  And when you find biblical criteria telling what signs or age indicate a girl first becomes ready in her life for martial relations, let me know.  But for now, that's a change in your interpretation, as earlier this year you DID argue that what Ezekiel 16:7-8 can tell us what ancient Jews thought about the minimum age of marriage for girls:

   ANNOYED PINOY7/08/2017 3:00 PM  
    I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.
    That's a powerful statement by Steve. Christian ethics based on the Bible takes into consideration natural law. Even if Islam could theoretically do the same thing, Islam nevertheless teaches that it's okay for men to have sex with prepubescent girls. As I said in the comments of another blog:
    To add to what Steve said, if one reads Ezek. 16:1-8 (and following) God likens his relationship with His people as Him having found her like a newly born abandoned child. He waited until she was sexually mature to "marry" her in covenant. I think that suggests the same thing Steve is saying. I think we can inductively infer from this what the Jews believed during that time and what God Himself approves of regarding when it's appropriate for a female to get married.

Pinoy continues:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?- Micah 6:8”29 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."- Mark 12:29-31 The former passage is a summation of Jewish theology and ethics in the OT, the latter a Christian summation in the NT. But it would be eisegetical (not exegetical) to assume that those passages are all there is to Jewish and/or Christian theology. You make a similar mistake about Ezekiel 16.”

See above.  I don’t think Ezekiel 16 is giving criteria for marriage.  I’m simply responding to Christian apologists who appeal to it as such in their desperate effort to refute my theory that the god of the ancient Jews approved of sex within adult-child marriages.  Apparently you and I agree that such apologists are using the passage in a way Ezekiel did not intend.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist.  I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments.  

“You're completely ignoring cultural context of the passage. As far as I know, there are no records that describe ante-Christian Jewish communities that regularly had problems of mothers dying or suffering from having infants at too early an age.”

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested, neither of which resolve the issue of to what extent early pregnancies were fatal in ancient Israel.  Not all arguments from silence are fallacious, but the one you now advance surely is. 

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, when in fact Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears:

 4 Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Heb. 13:4 NAU) 

 16 "Awake, O north wind, And come, wind of the south; Make my garden breathe out fragrance, Let its spices be wafted abroad. May my beloved come into his garden And eat its choice fruits!" (Cant. 4:16 NAU)

Pinoy continues: 

“Unlike what regularly happens among Muslims communities. Yet writings like the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud have many discussions about the finer aspects of the law as it relates to human living. Including addressing some medical issues.”

The Talmud also says girls at least three years and one day old are “suitable for sexual relations”, and more words to that effect.  I’ll be more than happy to discuss the context these verses sit in, to disabuse you of any possible “they-were-just-talking-technicalities-about-the-extreme-fringes-of-the-law-not-intended-to-apply-to-real-world-situations” foolishness you might share with most of the unfortunate Christian souls who attempted this fallacious trick to get rid of this rather embarrassing historical evidence.

These particular rabbis and sages are quoted in the older more authoritative Babylonian Talmud, and are they are the earlier human teachers, it is only the later teachers in the B.Talmud who voice concerns against adult-child marriage:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Niddah 44 b

Misnah: a girl of the age of three years and one day may be betrothed  by intercourse;

Gemara: Our Rabbis taught: A girl of the age of three years may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

...An objection was raised: A girl of the age of three years and even one of the age of two years and one day may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69a

R. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her...

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.”

One who is under the age of 11 must carry on her marital intercourse in the normal manner (i.e., without an absorbent [contraceptive]).(!?)

They would hardly have a rule like this, if in their law or view of the law there was some absolute prohibition against vaginal intercourse with girls under the age of 11.  Having Rabbis regulate the sex life of prepubescent girls while absolutely forbidding girls of that age from sexual activity, would be about as stupid as California telling 9 year old girls how and when they can have sex within marriage, despite California law absolutely prohibiting any and all sexual contact with a 9 year old girl.  The more reasonable interpretation of the Talmud is that the Rabbis issue such regulations because prepubescent girls having sex within marriage was not absolutely forbidden.

Gleason Archer and others have accepted that some kings in the Monarchy were fathering kids at 11 years old.“But the males didn't physically suffer from such a situation.”

But ancient Jewish boys having sex at 11 years old still bounces the vast majority of Christian apologists out of their theological comfort zones.  Years ago when I started this craze on the internet, the apologists were saying pedophilia likely wouldn’t even enter the mind of the ancient Jew.  NOW they are softening their position, and admitting that happened but was considered a crime.  Maybe in the next 10 years they’ll figure out there’s no biblical anything to substantiate their view that Moses or the bible god views sex within adult-child marriages as “sin”.  I am not an extreme skeptic, I don’t say Moses used prepubescent girls like disposable love dolls, I simply say there is no plausible biblical argument to justify the proposition that God has always thought sex within adult-child marriages was “sin”.

“Also, not everything the monarchs did were morally licit.”

I’m only using the monarchs to refute the apologists who desperately deny that the ancient Jews would ever have done any such thing.  Child sex wasn’t quite as unheard of in ancient Judaism as most of today’s apologists insist it was.

“Even assuming some pregnancies were licit, they probably impregnated women who were older than them and were mature enough to bear children without destroying their bodies.”

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited (homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, degrees of incest, etc).  Some would argue that the reason an infinitely holy God doesn’t condemn something is because he doesn’t regard it as sin.

“You're so gung-ho to refute and defame Judaism and Christianity that you fail to make a good faith argument on a topic so simple.”

You’ve got a lot to learn if you think the topic of God’s beliefs about the minimum proper age of sexual consent/marriage is “simple”.

 If I were an honest atheist I wouldn't use such a bad argument. The fact that you do use such bad argumentation gives me some reason to dismiss your other comments.”

Well now you’ve been disabused of your faulty presuppositions.  Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know.  I’ll be ready and waiting to discuss your best evidence and arguments to that effect.

(What follows are what other Triablogue posters gabbed about concerning my blog, and my replies to each): 

JBsptfn12/27/2017 11:58 PM☍

I have read that book, and I don't really think that Colton spun this all by himself. Also, his parents do seem pretty honest, although I don't know them. If it is a hoax, though, I just pray that Colton comes clean someday like Alex did.

Have you seen this, though? Apparently, a guy named Barry is attacking this blog:

Turch is Rong: Triablogue

steve12/28/2017 12:07 AM☍

Thanks for the tip. Looks like Barry has anger-management issues.

A true scholar would not indicate that the irrelevant personal gossipy issues were his first priority.  My alleged anger-management issues have nothing to do with the question of whether my arguments are correct.  But then again, spiritually dead atheists like me are prone to forget that Calvinists were infallibly predestined by God to manifest whatever degree of spiritual immaturity God wants them to manifest.

Epistle of Dude12/28/2017 1:02 AM☍

Barry Jones is just his alias (among many others). His real name is Christian Behrend Doscher. He's a militant atheist.

Correct.  But again, my real identity has nothing to do with whether my arguments are correct, raising the question as to what relevance you think my real name has to the biblical issues I raise. 

JBsptfn12/28/2017 2:21 PM☍

I think that is the guy that tried to sue J.P. Holding.

Incorrect.  I didn’t “try”, I did sue him.  And that he was sinful and immoral in his attempts to avoid the merits of my accusations, may be seen from the fact that he (at least to my knowledge) took down those internet posts that I said were defamatory.

Now the trouble is that despite his actions indicating he thinks those posts were genuinely libelous, he refuses to apologize to me, and refuses to forthrightly acknowledge the libelous character of those posts, the way you might expect a genuinely repentant born-again Christian to do when their sins have been exposed.  Actions speak louder than words, and you will know a tree by its fruit.   

An asshole like James Patrick Holding, with his sordid 20-year fruit of taking gleeful pleasure in defaming anybody who dares disagree with him, would never have folded up shop like that had he sincerely believed at the end of the litigation that the internet posts in question were legitimate non-libelous exercises of his free speech.  So they were indeed genuinely libelous, and my claims were meritorious.  I was correct when I concluded months ago that somebody with far more knowledge of the law than he, must have slapped him in the head with a legal 2x4.  

You’ll have to now decide whether Jesus would want his follows to prioritize legal tricks invented by non-Christian lawyers for helping genuinely guilty persons to avoid having to answer charges on the merits, or whether Jesus would want his followers to engage in honest acknowledgement of the truth and make a reasonable attempt to settle.  

 25 "Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.
 26 "Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. (Matt. 5:25-26 NAU)
 40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. (Matt. 5:40 NAU)

Holding was forced to come up with a way to get around the obvious in Matthew 5:25, 40, since I continued throwing these in his face the whole time.  His absurd interpretation of those passages is contradicted by all conservative Christian scholarship, one example being Craig Blomberg’s.

Holding spent more than $21,000 on a lawyer in his effort to avoid having to litigate my accusations on their merits.    He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off, I forced Holding to disclose numerous private emails during litigation showing how Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg evinced a shocking apathy toward Holding’s immoral conduct.  See my blog, my “Open Letter” to Blomberg.

After I sent Blomberg several emails providing a very detailed documentation of evidence against Holding's fitness for the office of Christian teacher, Blomberg simply replied in private to Holding that he avoided answering me on the matter because he didn't know what was going on.

So apparently we are supposed to believe that if Craig Blomberg reads a summation of charges and evidence, he will not know what is going on.  The reaction that would have been more biblical would be to ask me for clarification of whatever he thought was ambiguous, and then inquire with Holding whether the charges were true.  If they were true, Craig as Holding's spiritual mentor was required to employ the Matthew 18 process.  To my knowledge, he not only never did, he never intended to "get involved" in the first place.  The more spiritually mature person would view the accusations as potential evidence of a fracture in the body of Christ, not merely as a scuffle between two other people.

Habermas did little better, remarking that he was glad to see Holding admitting to not caring to engage in the "strong comeback" that he used to (a conveniently timed admission of Holding, since he never indicated any such thing until after my litigation against him ended).  But in both cases, these spiritual mentors of Holding fell far short of the requirement in the Matthew 18 requirement to confront a sinful brother and eventually regard him as a non-Christian if he doesn't repent.  Holding has not repented of his having libeled me (a sin under Romans 13 because America's libel laws are substantially similar to NT prohibitions on slander).

Apparently, you can be a real smarty pants in the area of gospel reliability and the resurrection of Jesus while being severely underdeveloped in the area of basic NT ethics.  

And Christian Research Institute is equally deserving of condemnation, since regardless of all the proof on my blog that Holding is unfit to hold any office of “teacher”, CRI continues to allow Holding to exercise the office of "teacher" by asking him to write articles for their Journal, despite my having supplied them, numerous times since 2015, with fully documented proof of Holding’s homosexuality, unrepentant attitude, and shocking spiritual immaturity (most signs of which on his website he conveniently took down after I exposed all such).

Between 1992 and 1998, I listened to the many recorded lectures of CRI founder Walter Martin over and over, never dreaming that Martin was dishonest.  But I had to eventually admit it.  The same is true of Hank Hanegraaff.  So I guess proving that CRI is more interested in promoting apologetics than in making sure their writers pass NT criteria for office of teacher, isn't any shocking thing.  So I guess my new attitude toward it all is to just consign CRI a place near Benny Hinn and TBN.

My reply to CADRE: the fool who thinks biblical claims qualify as background knowledge for Bayesian prior probability

from

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-prior-probability-of-resurrection.html

 barry said...

"First, there are the evidence and arguments from natural theology that suggest the existence of God..yhe evidence for the God of Israel is important information to bring to the question of prior probability."
-----But 'god' as used in the traditional religious conception is an incoherent concept. He thinks without a physical brain, sees without physical eyes, etc. You don't stay afloat in the atheism debate by merely saying immaterial life is "possible". There are no confirmed cases of immaterial life in the first place. Your citation to God as relevant background, is about as convincing as citing to ghosts, haunted houses and ESP for relevant background on the nature of humanity.

"What is the probability that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead?""
------Well given that no person in history has been the subject of more historical dispute than any other (his existence, what he taught, how special he was, etc), I'd say the truth about Jesus is too ambiguous and obscure (beyond irrelevant details like his basic existence, his gender,) to be considered the least bit useful for relevant background.

"Jesus was widely reported by followers and detractors alike to have performed healing miracles and miracles of provision."
----Yet his brothers didn't believe in him (John 7:5) and his family concluded that he had gone crazy (Mark 3:21), both times occuring about a third of the way into his earthly ministry, when checking whether his works were authentically supernatural or something less would have been easy. How does the failure of those most intimate with Jesus to appreciate his "miracles", factor into your background knowledge data set?

"Finally, I would suggest there is precedent for a miracle, even a "raising of the dead" of sorts, in the origin of life."
-------But given that the universe is more than likely infinite, all logically possible combinations of chemicals must have happened in the infinite past, including the combinations that we call "life".

Ask yourself why you think you need to improve upon the way the Holy Spirit has caused unbelievers for centuries to "see the light". If the Holy Spirit didn't need Bayesian logic for centuries, he likely doesn't need it now, and as a Christian, your priority is what god wants you to do...not whether you can find a way to reconcile your new approach with the biblical approach.

If the bible is the biggest gun you can bring to any religious debate, I suggest you start acting like it.

12/27/2017 04:41:00 PM

 

Countering the Counter: Why evangelical defenses of the virgin birth are unconvincing

This is my reply to an article by "BK" entitled

A Brief Review of Arguments Evangelicals Use to Support the Virgin Birth  

By BK  - December 21, 2017

Christianity Today published an article on December 20, 2017 entitled The Virgin Birth: What's the Problem Exactly? by Mark Galli. In the article, Galli set forth in a very concise form the arguments by those who contend that the Virgin Birth was either not true or not part of the earliest teachings of the church, and the responses to those arguments by those who support the historicity of the Virgin Birth.

Then "very concise" was Galli's problem, since the reasons supporting the skeptical position are weighty, and the Galli's "concise" articulation of the evangelical replies wasn't sufficient to pass historiography muster.

Since I had never seen the arguments set forth in this fashion before, and since Christianity Today articles drop behind a paid wall after awhile, I wanted to share the summarized arguments on the blog. Galli writes:

For the fundamentalists, the Virgin Birth is a consequence of belief in inerrancy, Christ’s deity, and the belief in the miraculous. This is one large reason why it was singled it out for defense. A lot depended on this doctrine. The main lines of liberal argument against it were: 1. It is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament; Paul, in particular, doesn’t ever discuss it. Likewise, it is rarely mentioned in the first three centuries of the church’s existence.

And we'd naturally expect to see mention of it in such early sources if in fact that story was believed by the early Christians to be a doctrinally and historically true fact.

2. Matthew and Luke were using a faulty translation (the Septuagint) of Isaiah 7:14, which in the original Hebrew did not predict that a “virgin” would conceive a coming messiah, but only a “young woman” would. Thus they either made up the story or shaped it according to their misunderstanding.

The better skeptical argument is that a) Isaiah provided enough details in 7:13-16 to show that the "sign" was something for King Ahaz back there in 700 b.c., and b) Isaiah 7:14 was never characterized by pre-Christian Jews as messianic, or messianic prophecy.

3. It imitates pagan and Jewish myths that credit virginal conception to spiritual heroes.

It does.  Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 is the oldest of the Zeus + Danae stories, and says he got her pregnant while he was in the form of a mist of gold, then it continues to characterize her as the "virgin goddess" even while she is in the midst of labor pains giving birth to Perseus.  So that's the concept of virgin birth existing in 400 b.c.  Sorry, but all Matthew and Luke were doing was taking an older motif and putting a new spin on it.  As any dummy the least bit familiar with copyright issues knows, you don't have to imitate the original with exactitude, before the investigators can be reasonable to conclude you got your idea from a prior source.  You cannot find an exactly precursors for Medusa, but you are perfectly certain that such a story character was the result of ancient Greeks taking parts of older legends, adding some new twists, and coming up with a new idea.  The single solitary reason you don't like the idea of Matthew and Luke having done that is that such admission would destroy your wood and stone idols of bible inerrancy.  

4. It’s not possible for a human being to be conceived outside of intercourse between a man and a woman, and that’s the only way God providentially designed humans to be fruitful and multiply.

I'd never make that argument.

These were easily countered by fundamentalist authors. They replied:    

3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true.

On the contrary, the more Christianity looks like its pagan ancestors, the more justification we have to say Christianity was nothing more than a new twist on older motifs.

It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age.

Precisely because stories of gods having sex with humans was typical in that age.

4. More recent science has shown that parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) is possible in plants and some animals, if extremely rare (see “Virgin Births Happen all the Time,” by Ted Olsen). The fundamentalist reply of the time would have simply been to say, “Who says God could not or would not do this?”

I don't see the point, as a fundamentalist you are stuck forever with defending Matthews and Luke's specifications that the seed of Christ was planted by God in Mary's womb.  You cannot shake the parallel to pre-Christian religions by simply noting that science acknowledges parthenogenesis sometimes occurs in lower life forms.

1. It was not discussed by Paul and other New Testament writers, nor by writers in the early church, because it was not controversial.

You don't know that this was the reason for their silence toward it, that's nothing but a possibility.  The winners of the historical debate are those whose reasons are more likely true than those theories which merely stay at the "possible" level.  First, the scholarly consensus is that Mark was the earliest published gospel, so it appears conclusive that the earliest form of the gospel said nothing about a virgin birth.  Second, the virgin birth stories show Jesus to be Lord from birth and strongly support a claim that he was God's Son, one of Mark's main themes.  It doesn't matter if it is "possible" for Mark to have knowingly refused to use material he believed doctrinally and historically correct to substantiate his teachings, people don't normally walk away from their best evidence and rely on lesser sources, therefore, it is more likely that Mark's silence on the virgin birth is because he either didn't know about it, or felt it was a legend unworthy of the gospel.  Third, it is the same problem with the other NT authors.  The virgin birth story says much that would have been particularly useful to them in combating adoptionist heretics who said Jesus' sonship to God didn't start until he was baptised or resurrected, even if those adoptionists somehow still believed Jesus to be born of a virgin, because the canonical versions of the stories clearly indicate Jesus' divine sonship began at his birth.

There was no reason to argue for it because no one doubted it.

Then under your logic, everything else that the NT "argues for", it does so because the subject was doubted within the church.  Under your logic, everything Mark did jot down in his gospel, he recorded because there were doubts in the church about those things.  So I guess the reason Mark does mention the public ministry of Jesus and his resurrection is because the original church was internally split on those matters?

I guess that means that the original church was fraught with internal divisions on the resurrection of Jesus, the significance of his death and what exactly he said and did.  If you say a NT author's mentioning something doesn't imply there were doubters, then you cannot argue from their silence that it was never doubted.

There was room in the original church for the idea of maintaining silence toward a thing because it was viewed as immoral or doctrinally incorrect.  See Ephesians 5:12, where one such reason was that certain things done by others in secret was best kept out of one's conversation.

The fact that it emerges in the Nicene Creed without argument or debate suggests this was indeed the case and that it was a core belief for Christians.

If you date Mark to 50 a.d. to grant any fundies' wet dream, you've got at least 275 years between Mark and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue that is plenty of time for false doctrines to take hold.  Notably the scholarly consensus is that Mark was neglected in favor of Matthew throughout the early church, and this is easily explained as Matthew's being richer in details.  But it tells you nothing about whether Matthew's author was inventing stories or passing along false traditions.

2. Biblical prophecies work on many levels, some literally,

Not so. Take your best example of a bible "prophecy" that you believe was fulfilled, and let's get started.

some metaphorically, and some both. We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies.

So much freedom that they, like "heretics", often obtain their fulfillments by taking such bible passages out of context.  ONly desperate apologists would carp that the NT authors should be allowed to take the OT out of context.  People without an ax to grind prefer condemning everybody who take things out of context.  You cannot use "second temple exegesis" to disguise the hard truth here.  I don't care if Paul's argument from singular "seed" in Galatians 3:16 was consistent with second-temple hermenuetics, anybody who takes something out of context, deserves censure.  It's not like there's some law of the universe saying some people are correct to take the bible out of context.

Besides, Mary was clearly a “young woman,” which Isaiah foresaw under the inspiration of the Spirit; that she was also a virgin is revealed in the Gospel accounts.

Again, nothing in pre-Christian Judaism took Isaiah 7:14 as messianic, and the context makes clear that the sign was a political development Ahaz was promised to see within his own lifetime, putting the burden on the Christians to show that Matthew's use was legitimated by Isaiah's immediate context.  By so whittling down this messianic prophecy to the purely typological, it's apologetic worth is ultimately negated.  Stop wasting your time with it.

In fact, the assumptions of 19th-century liberal theologians arose not from indisputable objective starting points but from unprovable assumptions. Most were strict materialists, or close to it, and believed that anything that happened in history had to have a material cause.

Since it defies coherence to say something happened in the material world that did not have a material cause, sounds like the naturalist interpretation of history is probably going to win any specific debate on the subject. Feel free to take your best shot.

Fundamentalists countered that the Bible, in fact, has a different starting point: God intervenes in history now and then, and when he does and it defies the laws of nature, it’s called a miracle.

Oh gee, an ancient book has a different starting point than modern science.  Let's just say your doing a rather poor job of giving me the slightest reason to worry about naturalism being wrong.

What follows is the response I posted to the CADRE blog on December 27, 2017 after whittling it down to meet the word limits:
---------------

"1. Silence due to nobody doubting it"
-------The author doesn't do a very good job of supporting his interpretation of Mark's silence.  His conclusions, i.e., that no one doubted it because it wasn't controversial, don't count because they are conclusions, not arguments.  That leaves only his absurd argument that the VB found its way into the Nicene Creed without controversy.  Granting for the sake of argument the fundie dream that Mark is dated to about 50 a.d., that's 275 years between Mark's original and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue 275 years is plenty of time for false legends and fables to deceive a substantial portion of the church.  False rumors about the apostles took strong root in the original church within the lifetimes of those apostles, see Acts 21:17-27.
 "2. Biblical prophecies."
-------I've yet to see any Christian scholar or apologist convincingly argue that any bible prophecy was fulfilled literally, that is, in a way that "god" is the best explanation for the biblical data.  I'll debate anybody on Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 53-55, Daniel 9, or whatever biblical prophecy you think is most impervious to a naturalistic interpretation.
 " We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies."
------Leading to disagreements among Christian scholars on the matter (i.e., Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology, 2008, by Kenneth Berding, editor), thus rationally warranting the unbelieving reader to turn away from the entire bible prophecy business, concluding that if spiritually alive people can't figure it out, spiritually dead people are only going to fare worse.
 "Isaiah was inspired by God."
-------So apparently the author wasn't writing for skeptics, but solely for Christian readers, for whom Isaiah's inspiration and gospel accuracy are foregone conclusions.  Edifying to the Christian, laughable to the skeptic.
 "3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true."
--------You cannot find either numerous or precise parallels to Medusa in pre-Medusa pagan stories, but that doesn't slow you down from saying the Greeks more than likely just took older similar but not exact motifs and gave them a new twist to create this gorgon monster, correct?  Why should anybody think Matthew and Luke are doing anything different?  One apparent proof that Matthew wasn't above creating fiction is Acts 11:18, not at all consistent with the apostles agreeing with Matthew 4:15 that Jesus had preached salvation to the Gentiles...
 " It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age."
----It could also indicate what it had indicated to Justin Martyr, i.e., making Jesus sound more like the heroes of pre-Christian mythology would increase the odds of the unbelieving pagan audiences taking Jesus' claims more seriously than they otherwise would have.
 Fundies are committed to defending Matthew's and Luke's reasons for the story, that God really did get Mary pregnant while "overshadowing" this young teen girl.  Sorry, but this is just Zeus by another name.
 Since the consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest among the canonical 4, you likely won't be using Matthean priority to justify saying Mark intentionally omitted the VB.
 If the consensus of spiritually alive Christian scholars can be wrong, that's a powerful incentive for the unbelieving reader to conclude that spiritually dead people will only fare worse entering this fray, thus giving them rational warrant and reasonable justification to turn away from the whole business entirely.
 A copy of my comments here will be posted at my own blog.

Demolishing Triablogue: Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms

This makes a point which dovetails with a point I've made on more than one occasion. The argument from evil is typically formulated against a very abstract concept of God, a concept derived from some version of classical theism or philosophical theology, rather than a more concrete, specific concept such as biblical theism:

Then I must be doing much better than the atheists you prefer to pay attention to.   Your God causes men to rape women (Deut. 28:30, 63;  Isaiah 13:13-18).  While for most Christians rape's absolute immorality is a non-negotiable, Calvinists like yourself are required to call it just as good as Christian worship of Jesus, since both constitute something God is making people do, and you are more committed to God's acts being good, than you are in common sense, apparently.

Jeanine Diller (2016) points out that, just as most theists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists, most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God does not exist.

That's true about me and my atheism.  The gods of the bible , including everybody from Yahweh to Dagon, do not exist except in the imagination.

Indeed, many atheists are only vaguely aware of the variety of concepts of God that there are.

But atheists like me are keenly aware of the fatal problems ensconced in your biblical god.

For example, there are the Gods of classical and neo-classical theism: the Anselmian God, for instance, or, more modestly, the all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good creator-God that receives so much attention in contemporary philosophy of religion. There are also the Gods of specific Western theistic religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism, which may or may not be best understood as classical or neo-classical Gods...Diller distinguishes local atheism, which denies the existence of one sort of God, from global atheism, which is the proposition that there are no Gods of any sort—that all legitimate concepts of God lack instances.

And less informed atheists would be more rational to throw up their hands at all this confused bullshit, than they would be to just carry around a "what if I'm wrong" as a motive to ceaselessly examine every stupid claim possible.

Global atheism is a very difficult position to justify (Diller 2016: 11–16).

Not at all, the argument from religious language:  You cannot define god in a way that "coheres" with known scientific reality, hence your God is an "incoherent" concept and that's alone sufficient to win the debate.  No, you cannot show that any such thing as "disembodied intelligence" exists, even despite anything you might find in “The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters”, J.P.Moreland, Ph.d,  Moody Publishers, 2014.  So the whole idea of your god runs afoul of the evidence that claims the most successful empirical demonstration.  Your god is no more likely to exist in some place I haven't checked, than Vishnu is.

Indeed, very few atheists have any good reason to believe that it is true since the vast majority of atheists have made no attempt to reflect on more than one or two of the many legitimate concepts of God that exist both inside and outside of various religious communities.

Then count me out of the criticism.  The argument against God from religious language is conclusive against ANY life form existing without a physical body.

Nor have they reflected on what criteria must be satisfied in order for a concept of God to count as “legitimate”,

"Legitimate" would minimally require "subject to detection by empirical means".  You couldn't show that criteria to be too demanding without your own resort to empirical means to establish the rebuttal...so apparently requiring empirical confirmation really is reasonable.

let alone on the possibility of legitimate God concepts that have not yet been conceived

Disqualifying YOUR particular god from the race is all I care about.  If in fact there is some god out there not yet known, you run the risk of being in more trouble with him than I.  According to your own bible, misrepresenting god is worse than general disbelief.  Atheists might be "fools", but damnation is assured for those who teach about God wrongly  (Gal. 1:8, James 3:1).  So your own presuppositions counsel that steering clear of "God" altogether are likely the safer route, than would be taking the chance, "accepting Jesus" then flipping a coin to figure out which of the thousands of denominations isn't engaging in the sin of misrepresenting god.

and on the implications of that possibility for the issue of whether or not global atheism is justified. Furthermore, the most ambitious atheistic arguments popular with philosophers, which attempt to show that the concept of God is incoherent or that God’s existence is logically incompatible either with the existence of certain sorts of evil or with the existence of certain sorts of non-belief [Schellenberg 2007]), certainly won’t suffice to justify global atheism

Your "rebuttal" to the skeptical theory of god's incoherence, is something less than frightful.

Nor is it obvious that evidential arguments from evil can be extended to cover all legitimate God concepts, though if all genuine theisms entail that ultimate reality is both aligned with the good and salvific (in some religiously adequate sense of “ultimate” and “salvific”), then perhaps they can. The crucial point, however, is that no one has yet made that case.

Not worried; your bible god causes men to rape women and children, and causes men to to beat children to death.  I plan to have a glorious career successfully motivating Christians to use what the bible says as a perfectly reasonable justification to say the Christian god is a moral monster and thus not likely anyting more significant than the wishful thinking of the biblical authors.

PeaceByJesus12/21/2017 9:27 PM☍It seems that at least for the militant atheists who make Hitler a Christian but deny atheism had anything negative to do with chairman Mao etc,

I am in agreement with apologists that you cannot judge a belief system merely by what you find its converts doing, since they could very well be acting contrary to their belief systems.

and presume omniscient morally superiority to God when railing against Him to exterminating terminally wicked cultures (when they are not blaming Him for not dealing with the wicked), then it seems that the God they have such animus to may be a supernatural version of their own father, since it can seem so personal. Which is the nature of us after all.

Then count me out;  my reasons for calling your God a piece of shit are strictly biblical, and the fact that most Christians have had problems with the divine atrocities of the bible forbids  you from grounding my views solely in spiritual blindness or some other esoteric bullshit, unless of course you too are a Calvinist.  But if so, then because God predestined me to be blind and I cannot resist it, you'd have to call that act of God good.  Hence, atheism is good because it is an act of God who blinds men's minds.

In any case, this imaginary god is from the devil, who, right from the beginning, presented God (to Eve) as a malevolent tyrant who selfishly kept her from what was rightfully hers, thus making her a victim of injustice by God, who needed to "share the wealth" - not in mercy or grace (which is antithetical to the ethos of the devil), but as a matter of justice.

Your idiot god could have avoided the problem of the Fall by keeping the Tree of knowledge out of their physical reach.  I would advise that your god is rather stupid and mentally ill since he apparently wasn't satisfiied with the way things were going in the pre-creation state, otherwise, he'd have been content thereto and thus would have had no motive to go complicate his life.

And which was an extension of the "share the wealth" demand behind the first "occupy movement," that of the devil presuming to occupy the position of God, not at a matter of grace to an object of mercy, but as his right, as the first of the liberal self-proclaimed elites, who "climb up some other way" (Jn. 10:1) to obtain what God gives in grace in recompensing the obedience of faith, and seduce souls with the idea that they are victims of injustice if they do not have what others obtained by merit. And to such these political psychologists present themselves as saviors, though they typically will not share the plight of their victims, but present themselves as examples of what can be obtained if they are given or maintain power.

Sorry, but fools like you are beyond help, with how blindly you trust in the truth of an ANE story where a snake talks to a woman.  Snip:

I guess i got carried away, but the atheists are apostles unawares of the Evil One.

And your hero Steve Hays, a Calvinist, blames God for their "unawares", and blames God for causing men to rape children, yet inconsistently, despite his calling all acts of God "good", he refuses to say God's act of forcing men to rape children is "good".

Demolishing Triablogue: that material in Luke is NOT against his interest

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer entitled

Material Against Luke's Interest In Luke 1-2Posted by Jason Engwer at 4:32 AM 

Some examples of how Luke's material on Jesus' childhood is different than we'd expect under skeptical scenarios: 

- Even though so much space is given to discussing John the Baptist, there's no anticipation of his work as a baptizer. Francois Bovon remarks that "The lack of any preliminary announcement of John's baptizing [in Luke 1:13-17] is surprising…

No it isn't.  Not every omission of useful information constitutes a conservative's argument.  But Luke's willingness to try to convince his readers on the basis of some story about angelic vision is sufficient to justify skepticism of his reliability.  If it weren't, Christians would have argued that the revelatory Jesus of Revelation is just as strong of a proof of the resurrected Jesus as the gospels and Paul's writings were.

The Benedictus surprisingly conceals John's primary activity, his baptizing." (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 37, 75)

Inerrantist R. H. Stein explains "Luke’s readers already knew of John the Baptist and his role in salvation history..." (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.).  New American Commentary (Page 75).

Bovon goes on to say (75) that there's probably an allusion to baptism in the reference to forgiveness of sins in Luke 1:77, though he acknowledges that baptism doesn't "grant forgiveness" in Luke's writings. It's doubtful that Luke is alluding to baptism. Even somebody who thinks he is alluding to it, though, like Bovon, finds it "surprising" that baptism isn't referred to explicitly anywhere in Luke's material on Jesus' childhood.

Sorry, I'm not seeing why you think a skeptical view of Luke would expect Luke to pay any certain degree of attention to John the Baptist.  Luke's fanciful tale about the conception and birth of John the Baptist is quite sufficient to justify skepticism toward his honesty.

- Not just with regard to baptism, but more broadly as well, Bovon notes that "the Christian traces are minimal in the birth legend of the Baptist" (ibid., 30).

Nobody said a forger has to stuff his narrative to bursting at the seams with Christianity-biased information.  The fact that Luke doesn't tie Jesus into John the baptist at this point is hardly noteworthy.  You don't explain how skeptics are put at a loss to explain this phenomena in Luke.

- The premarital timing of Mary's pregnancy is unnecessary,

The timing of Danae's pregnancy in Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 was also "unnecessary".  Not enough about Luke's audience can be known to explain why Luke thought having God impregnate a single girl was better than God impregnating a married girl.

a departure from the precedent of Old Testament accounts of supernatural births,

Agreed,  nobody said 1st century Christians were incapable of putting new twists on old motifs.

and highly susceptible to moral objections.

but not in the context of the blindly trusting believers Luke most likely wrote for.  If you include skeptics in Luke's originally intended audience, you turn Luke into an unspeakably stupid historian.

As Raymond Brown wrote, if Luke or his source made up the account, "one must deem it a great religious blunder; for it gave rise to the charge of illegitimacy against Jesus that was the mainstay of anti-Christian polemic for many centuries."(The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], n. 28 on 143)

Not a blunder, early Christians misunderstood Isaiah 7:14 to be speaking of Mary, and were thus required to conjure up circumstances of the messiah's birth that would "fulfill" the prediction that a "virgin" would get pregnant.  Having Jesus' mother be a virgin was required, and the girl most likely to be a virgin is the unmarried girl.

 Bovon refers to the premarital timing of the pregnancy as "shocking" (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 85).

Not shocking in the least.  Luke needed Jesus' mother to be a virgin because he and other early Christians misinterpreted Isaiah 7:14 to be God giving a sign to Ahaz that wouldn't materialize until 700 years after Ahaz died, and since they falsely thought the sign was the virgnity of the pregnant girl, their story of Jesus' birth had to tell about a literal virgin becoming pregnant, and literal virginity is mostly found in girls before marriage.  Having married get pregnant before marriage was required, not "shocking".

- The Messianic hopes of figures like Mary and Zechariah seem more nationalistic, political, and militaristic than what Jesus' ministry and his movement in general would turn out to be later in Luke's gospel and Acts.

That's correct.  But sometimes Jews and Gentiles can get caught up in stupid fanciful "spirituality" in which all empirical problems melt away in visions and hallucinations.

Bovon goes as far as to contrast the highly nationalistic views of Luke's infancy material with how "at the end of his two volumes, Luke has little hope left for the people of Israel" (ibid., 103).

We also don't know how early Luke wrote, and yet to what degree Christians of his period were already indoctrinated into the subtleties of how the predicted OT physical ruler could be an invisible spirit, cannot be known, but Paul's stupid spiritualistic bullshit might give us a clue as to how esoteric Luke's originally intended audience was.

- The portrayal of Jesus' parents and their relationship with him at the close of Luke 2 is unusually negative.

No, even supposing Luke was telling the truth, they were right to be offended at their allegedly divine son simply disappearing among the people and not telling them where he was.

2:44 says they supposed him to have been traveling with others in the group, and make it seem like they were conmfortable with that assumption, which is unbelievable if we are to accept that they both "knew" on the basis of rather memorable assurances from angels and other matters that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

James Edwards makes a lot of good points on the subject in his recent commentary on Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2015). For example:
 "In the male-dominated temple one would expect Joseph rather than Mary to address Jesus [in Luke 2:48]

Perhaps Luke is telling the truth about Mary confronting Jesus in the temple?  How would that import credibility to the miracle-portions of Luke's story?  Skeptics do not generally hold that where there's a miracle story, the entire matter is 100% fictional.

….She addresses him not as pais (v. 43, 'boy, young man'), but with a more juvenile and subservient term, teknon (v. 48; 'child,' NIV 'Son')…. Her reproach expresses less concern for Jesus than for what he has done to them….

Perhaps she was really pissed at him, which would suggest the prior story about her knowing the boy was conceieved by power of the Holy Spirit, is bullshit.

Mary's distress is a first fulfillment of Simeon's prophecy that a 'sword will pierce her soul' (v. 35)." (94-95)

unspeakably weak argument.

Additionally, Jesus rebukes them in verse 49, and Luke comments on their lack of understanding in verse 50.

So v. 50 gives you Luke's literary reason for having Jesus' parents act in such ways.  No skeptic would require otherwise.

Brown comments that Mary's reproach of Jesus in verse 48 is "all the more startling since Luke tends to avoid reproaches to Jesus by the disciples during the ministry….For instance, in 9:21-22 in reporting Jesus' reaction to Peter's confession, Luke drops the reproach by Peter found in Mark 8:32. The Lucan disciples are more reverential to Jesus." (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 489 and n. 35 on 489)

Where exactly an ancient historian has fudged the facts is often hard to tell, especially where, as with Luke, there's only his version of the story of how Mary responds to Jesus in a reproachful way.

- John the Baptist is referred to as having had an unusual upbringing in the wilderness (Luke 1:80), reminiscent of Moses' upbringing in the house of Pharaoh and Samuel's upbringing in a sanctuary setting with Eli, for example. But Jesus just grows up in an ordinary home with his parents (Luke 2:51).

Probably because Luke writes for Gentiles, and thinks pitching Jesus to them will be more successful the less Jewish Jesus is.

Luke gives Jesus a less auspicious upbringing than John and makes no attempt to parallel Jesus with individuals like Moses and Samuel, even though we're so often told that the infancy narratives are unhistorical efforts to parallel Jesus to such Old Testament figures.

I'd disagree with any such skeptics.  The infancy narratives are unhistorical for reasons far outweighing any theory that they are trying to make Jesus parallel to OT figures.

Cold Case Christianity: Christmas is Christmas Because Jesus is God

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

Cold Case Christianity: Christmas is Christmas Because Jesus is God

Posted: 22 Dec 2017 01:53 AM PST

79As we approach Christmas in just a few days, I’ve been thinking about what separates Jesus from other great religious figures of history. Many faith traditions lay claim to famous religious leaders and founders, but Jesus is different.

Correct.  Most religious leaders don't have half the self-contradictory and absurd descriptions as are given to Jesus.  Blame the stupidity on Philo and the Council of Nicaea.

Jesus claimed to be more than a good teacher or leader. Jesus claimed to be God. Some deny this truth about Jesus’ teaching, but the New Testament leaves little room for doubt: Jesus claimed to be God and taught this truth to His followers.
 He Spoke As Though He Was God

He also spoke as if he wasn't god.

While all Biblical prophets of God made statements on God’s behalf, they were careful to preface their proclamations with “This is what the LORD Almighty says,” or “This is what the LORD says,”

No, it is not always possible to distinguish the prophet from God.  Remember the story of God telling the Israelites how to use the bathroom?

 12 "You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there,
 13 and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement.
 14 "Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you. (Deut. 23:12-14 NAU)

In describing God as "walking among you" and in teaching that God cannot see feces after it is buried in the ground, the author is ascribing limits to God that normally aren't admitted.  This is likely because God's presence among the Israelites constitutes nothing more than Moses' presence, in in that ancient context, such confusion of identities was accepted as something profound.

Otherwise, you'll have to explain how the omniscient all-seeing all-knowing creator of the universe can be prevented from seeing feces merely by burying it in the ground.  Stop pretending as if the only correct interpretation is the one that "makes sense".  You don't have the first fucking clue whether the author intended to "make sense" in the first place.  But you presume such anyway because you care more about impressing the Christians whom you mostly write for, than you do for the scholarly skeptics who continually refute your nonsense.

but Jesus never used such a preface. Instead, Jesus always prefaced his statements with, “Verily, verily, I say to you,” (KJV) or “I tell you the truth,” (NASB). Prophets spoke for God, but Jesus consistently spoke as God.

So then apparently it was a schizophrenic god who cried from the cross "why have you forsaken me"  Mark 15:34?  You will say Jesus only said that from his human nature not his divine nature.  But "nature" is not something that can be implicated or avoided.  If it is your "nature", then it is implicated in ALL that you say or do, it cannot be avoided.  So assuming for the sake of argument the logical absurdity that Jesus had "two natures", BOTH of them would be equally implicated in whatever he did, which would then mean you cannot allocate Jesus' cry of the Father's abandonment to just Jesus' human nature.   Therefore if Jesus said this, he also said it from his divine nature and not merely his human nature.

He Claimed the Title Used by God
Faithful Jews recognized the fact that God identified Himself to Moses as the great “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Yet Jesus (in referring to Himself) told the Jewish religious leaders that “before Abraham was born, I AM”. They immediately recognized that He was identifying Himself as God and were so angered by this ‘blasphemy’ that they “picked up stones to stone him.”

But Jesus' attempt to use Psalm 82 to justify his claim to deity in John 10 strongly suggests that he was only claiming to be god in the same sense that Psalm 82 says human judges of the OT were sometimes referred to as Elohim.  If Jesus was God by nature and not by mere association or label, he would hardly use the humans-are-also-called-gods argument of Psalm 82 to convince the Jews that his claim to be god was accurate.

 30 "I and the Father are one."
 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.
 32 Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?"
 33 The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God."
 34 Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, 'I SAID, YOU ARE GODS '?
 35 "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),
 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God '?
 37 "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;
 38 but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father."   (Jn. 10:30-38 NAU)

It is Jesus' fault if I misunderstand his nature, since, allegedly as God, he could have made far more clear his relation to the Father, than he did with this controversial citation to Psalm 82.

God apparently loves us so much that whether we fry in hell forever depends on whether we can properly decipher his fortune cookie bullshit.

(Jesus also identified Himself as the great I AM in Mark 14:62, John 18:5-6, 8:24, and 8:28).

No, in Mark 14:62, Jesus is only saying "I am" in reply to the question "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One", which no more shows a claim to deity than if you say "I am" when somebody says "are you the owner of this car?":

 61 But He kept silent and did not answer. Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?"
 62 And Jesus said, "I am; and you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN."
 (Mk. 14:61-62 NAU)

In John 18:5-6, there's a "he" following "am", in which case, Jesus is simply admitting to being a specifically named person:

 3 Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
 4 So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them, "Whom do you seek?"
 5 They answered Him, "Jesus the Nazarene." He said to them, "I am He." And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them.
 6 So when He said to them, "I am He," they drew back and fell to the ground.
 7 Therefore He again asked them, "Whom do you seek?" And they said, "Jesus the Nazarene."
 8 Jesus answered, "I told you that I am He; so if you seek Me, let these go their way,"
 9 to fulfill the word which He spoke, "Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one."
 (Jn. 18:3-9 NAU)

In John 8:24 and 28, is the same, except for Jesus saying "I do nothing on my own initiative", a thing God the Father would never say:

 23 And He was saying to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.
 24 "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins."
 25 So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" Jesus said to them, "What have I been saying to you from the beginning?
 26 "I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world."
 27 They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father.
 28 So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.
 29 "And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." (Jn. 8:23-29 NAU)

You will say that the "I do nothing on my own initiative" was spoken solely from his human nature, but as I argued above, "nature" is not something that can be selectively implicated.  Whatever your nature is, is necessarily implicated in ALL that any person says and does.  So if Jesus had two natures (an absurd supposition on its own anyway), BOTH natures would be equally implicated in what he said or did, in which case it was also his divine nature implicated too, when he said he didn't do anything on his own initiative.

He Claimed the Home of God
Every time Jesus was asked about where he came from, He told His listeners that He came not from Bethlehem or Nazareth but from the same realm where God abides.

Which could just as easily be claimed by Enoch, Elijah or angels.

Jesus claimed to come “from above”. He repeatedly said that He was “not of this world” (John 8:23-24) and even told Pilate that he was a King whose Kingdom “is from another place” (John 18:36-37).

Apparently Jesus toned down his kingship claims when on trial.  Nothing in the Synoptics teaches that Jesus is anything less than the earthly King for his followers.  So when he says at trial "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36), he is clearly trying to pawn off on the Roman authorities (i.e., he was answering Pilate there) an interpretation of his purpose that would show no threat to the Romans.   Quite a dumbing down from his extroverted in-your-face claims to the contrary in Matthew 4:17.  Matthew 11:12 implies Jesus' kingdom was presently on the earth.

He Claimed Equality With God
Jesus said that God’s angels were His angels and that God’s Kingdom was His Kingdom (Matthew 13:41). Jesus even said that the judgment typically understood to be reserved for God was actually Jesus’ judgment to make (Luke 12:8-9). Jesus told His followers that when they saw Him, they saw God; if they knew Him, they knew God, and if they loved Him, they were loving God (John 14:6-9 and John 14:23).

He Saw No Distinction Between Himself and God
Finally, Jesus simply and plainly told His followers that there was no distinction between Himself and God the Father. When talking about the manner in which saints are selected for Salvation, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:29). He did not mean that they were ‘one’ in purpose or power, but that they were one in identity. His hearers understood what He was saying and picked up stones again to stone him “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).

Once again, you obviously don't give one holy fuck about answering skeptics, you write solely to make money helping other Christians feel better after the fact.  John was written last, all scholars acknowledge that in John there is a greater theological reflection going on than can be seen in the Synoptics, in which case you don't really know whether John is quoting Jesus in the way newspapers quote politicians, or if John is putting in Jesus' mouth a reworked version of what Jesus originally said.

Yet you run around acting as if the gospel of John was the equal of video tape despite many of your own conservative scholar brothers refusing to go that far.  Your blindly trusting proof-texting guarantees you intend to market to a gullible audience.

Like I said, you don't write to refute skeptics.  You write for the same reason most Christian con artists write, to use the Jesus-scandal to make money off of his gullible followers.