Demolishing Triablogue: Apparently, Steve Hays doesn't have serious answers

This is my reply (revised/updated January 5, 2018) to an article by Steve Hays entitled:

Ten questions Christians must answer!

I ran across a village atheist website with "Ten Questions a Christian Must Answer". At last count it had about 1250 comments.
 I'm going to ignore most of the questions because I've answered them or questions like them before. These are cliche questions. But there's one question I'll single out. Indeed, I've seen two variations on the same question:

How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Jesus is all-powerful and timeless, but if you pray for Jesus to appear, nothing happens. You have to create a weird rationalization to deal with this discrepancy. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? Jesus could appear to you, but he doesn’t. He appeared to Paul after he died, so it’s not like he hasn’t done it before. He could appear to give you advice for a tough decision, give you comfort in person like a friend would, or just assure you that he really exists.

 i) I explain the fact that Jesus never appeared to me because I never asked him to appear to me.

Perhaps as a Calvinist your answer should have been that Jesus hasn't appeared to you because he didn't want to.  Saul the Pharisee didn't ask Jesus to appear to him either, but Jesus allegedly appeared to him nonetheless.

ii) In addition, Jesus never promised to appear to every Christian, so there's no expectation that he will appear to every Christian.

But according to Mark 11, Jesus did promise fulfillment for the wishes of those who, when praying, believe that they have recieved the requested item:

 21 Being reminded, Peter said to Him, "Rabbi, look, the fig tree which You cursed has withered."
 22 And Jesus answered saying to them, "Have faith in God.
 23 "Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.
 24 "Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.
 25 "Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. (Mk. 11:21-25 NAU)

Since the prior verse speaks metaphorically about moving mountains, Jesus was apparently broadening his promise so that as long as what the Christian was praying for wasn't sinful, then the only reason they didn't get what they prayed for is because they didn't believe strong enough that they had received it.  Some would argue that Jesus consistent failure to personally comfort his followers constitutes a "mountain" most believers would wish to be cast into the sea.  Matthew has Jesus speak similarly:

 5 "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
 6 "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
 7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
 8 "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
 9 "Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?
 10 "Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?
 11 "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matt. 7:5-11 NAU)

Perhaps Steve will counter by saying Jesus is not good, therefore, an appearance of Jesus wouldn't be included in the list of good things God intends for his followers to receive?

iii) Moreover, I don't view Jesus as a genie whom I can summon to do my bidding.

Then you need to take a more careful look at the prosperity gospel bullshit that Jesus taught as represented above.

iv) As far as decision-making, that doesn't require private revelation. Throughout Scripture, you have people making decisions because God providentially orchestrated events in a certain way or implanted subliminal suggestions. So I can do God's will without even thinking about it.

Under your Calvinism, you are doing god's will should you rape a little girl to death.  You probably shouldn't boast about how you do god's will no matter what.

And even at the level of private revelation, that doesn't require a dominical vision.

But Jesus promised those who were sufficiently faithful that their requests would be granted.  Have fun trying to pretend that despite Jesus issuing such promises in broad terms, he expected his readers to believe that some morally good requests would never be granted even in situations where his required criteria were fulfilled.

What about an audible voice or revelatory dream? To demand a personal audience with Jesus is an arbitrary stipulation, even if we grant the general principle.

Nobody is "demanding", the challenge was why a "prayer" for Jesus to personally appear, is never fulfilled.

And if God wants believers to view him as a father in intimate terminology (Romans 8:15), then God is to be blamed for giving believers the false expectation that God is willing to personally interact with them.

v) There are many well-documented reports of Jesus appearing to people, viz.,
 https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/visions-of-jesus/

Well first, the author of the Jesus Vision book dude is quoting there, doesn't think his descriptions constitute "well-documented", since he cautions that they are merely "exploratory"



Steve isn't different from most apologists.  He will push another's testimonial evidence farther than those who supplied it wanted him to.

Let's take those miracle allegations quoted by "dude" one at a time:

Case 2: Robin Wheeler 

A google search for "miracles 'Robin Wheeler' turned up nothing to help investigate this, beyond Dude's blog piece and the google books version of the book Dude was referencing.

Attention, dude and Steve Hays:  Please provide this Robin Wheeler's true current legal name, current residence or mailing address, phone number and email address, so that I can begin my investigation. Otherwise, admit that you think criminal investigators are wrong when they are dissatisfied with the mere existence of filed affidavits, and wish to depose alleged witnesses to find out whether there are errors, deception or misunderstanding in their affidavits.

In addition, I emailed the following to the author of the book epistleofdude is referencing:

Dr. Wiebe, 

The miracle testimonies contained in your Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, are being used by Christian apologists to fend off skeptics who say miracles don't happen.  See https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/visions-of-jesus/

Steve Hays references that website, saying the cases in your book are "well-documented", see http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/01/ten-questions-christians-must-answer.html 

Can you put me in contact with the persons in that book whom you say experienced visions of Jesus?  Please provide any currently valid contact information for them.  Seems obvious that if the Christian god exists, he wouldn't want unbelievers to trust in Jesus-vision testimony that turns out to be false. 

If you cannot provide their current contact information, please specify why, and forward to them my email address, telling them that I am interested in investigating their stories as they appear in your above-referenced book. 

Thank you,
Barry

Also, neither Hays nor "dude" tell the reader that the cases they quote were placed by Dr. Wiebe under his own chosen heading "Group 1: Trance and Dreamlike Experiences"

One has to wonder whether any amount of documentation would ever be sufficient to morally compel skeptics to trust that some trance or dreamlike "experience of Jesus" was something above and beyond naturalistic human imagination.

Also, Steve Hays asserted that atheists were irrational to require interviewing miracle claimants and that we are irrational for thinking email and telephones aren't sufficient to the task:

If, however, an atheist is so irrational that he refuses to believe testimonial evidence unless he personally conducts the interview, then that's his self-imposed burden of proof.  

....ii) I'd add that his complaint is very quaint, as if he were living in the 18C, and had to interview witnesses face-to-face. Has he never heard of email or telephones? 

So perhaps Steve similarly feels Dr. Wiebe is irrational for wanting to conduct face-to-face interviews and do more research into specific claims where the claimaints refuse to participate by telephone:



Wieber also admits excluding out-of-body claims, other claims and one where the claimant said it was God but not Jesus, when in fact including these might have made the study a bit more objective (i.e., the tendency for visionaries to have theologically incorrect views of Jesus suggests "heretical" Jesus' visions arise from nothing more than the heretic's naturalistic imagination, arguing that the same is true for those claimants whom apologists think describe a theologically correct Jesus.

Wieber also said there that some of the claimants were "reticent" to speak about their experiences, which is problematic since it implies the claimant isn't so sure it was Jesus that they are willing to do with the experience what the Jesus of the NT wants them to do with it (i.e., the Jesus of the bible wants his followers to evangelize the world, and apparently wanted his original followers to use their visionary experiences to underscore their preaching).

dude continues:

Robin had very little contact with the church or with Christians for the first thirty-eight years of his life. He occasionally went to a Catholic or an Anglican church when he was young, but he had no interest in religion until neighbors moved in who were quite religious. His wife became a Christian as a result of their influence. This annoyed him greatly, especially when she prayed openly for him. One Saturday night several weeks after her conversion he had what he described as a battle with an evil creature as he was trying to sleep.

"trying to sleep"?  So was he actually asleep during this confrontation (which would initially argue it was a dream) or, did it take place before he actually nodded off (which would initially argue the event had reality outside of his own mind)?

Its face resembled a human face without skin, and it frightened him. 

Sorry, but too many people have been frightened by the likes of Freddy Kruger, to say this alleged event had serious plausibility, sounds like Wheeler saw one too many horror movies (even if this vision took place before the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie came out, it isn't like Kruger was the first time movies had ever depicted monstrous humans lacking facial skin), and while dreaming, Wheeler's unconscious mind did what it routinely does for billions of other people during sleep, and mixed up various realities in his life, here, mixing images he'd seen before, with the religious influences in his life.

He tried to fight off this creature, but he was not successful.

What was the creature doing to attack him.. Trying to bite him?  Drag him down to hell?  What exactly was the monster's act that was being interpreted as Wheeler's lack of success?

Just off to his right

Surely Jesus' standing to a person's "right" is sheer coincidence with the biblical teaching that standing on a person's "right" symbolizes agreement between the two?

stood a man wearing a brown sackcloth robe with a sash around his waist.

Jesus hasn't upgraded his wardrobe since the 1st century?

Robin never did see above the shoulders of this second figure,

And if you were on trial for murder, and the only witness against you admitted they couldn't see the upper half of the person who pulled the trigger, you'd no doubt scream your head off that the testimony is more prejudicial than probative and seek to have it thereby excluded.

but he considers it to have been Jesus.

So not even the claimant can be sure, but "considers" it to be Jesus.  Let's just say I'm not pissing myself with worry that Jesus is the least threat to anything I hold dear.  Especially given that God predestined me to think the way I do.

Robin tried to tie up the creature with the sash from Jesus, and as he did so Jesus disappeared. Again and again he would struggle with the monster, and each time Jesus would appear long enough for Robin to grab the sash, and then would disappear. 

Robin’s wife was with him while this struggle was taking place. She told me that he levitated for long periods of time that coincided with the struggles,

Please provide the full current legal name of Robin's wife and her presently valid contact information.  I'd like to do what criminal prosecutors do, and conduct a deposition to see whether or not the testimony can hold up under cross-examination.

I think this is the part where Steve argues, without actually saying so, that he thinks it is methodologically improper to peer into miracle-testimony that deep.  Of course you think that way Steve; if you were to think otherwise, it would take less than a week to debunk your bullshit fantasies.

So by pretending further investigation is not "needed", Steve also achieves his secret goal of keeping a kick to the teeth from actually reaching his teeth.  The less we investigate, the less change that Steve will endure his opponent positively discrediting the female religious fanatic who swears she saw her husband levitate while battling demons...and where positive discrediting cannot actually be achieved, the loser in the debate can always say "my theory remains a valid possibility".

One wonders whether smart guy Steve is aware that you don't stay afloat in a debate by merely correctly noting that your theory remains a possibility.  You only stay afloat where you show a) your theory is no less justified than your opponent's, or b) your theory is more justified than your opponent's.

and seemed to go in and out of consciousness. 

She says that Robin floated in midair in a horizontal position about a foot above the bed.

And Steve probably thinks only fools would automatically assume this couple's prior viewing of the "Exorcist" movie had something to do with this.

His body was in a perfectly rigid position, and all the veins in his body were bulging.

Aha!  A difference from the portrayal of levitation in the Exorcist, so obviously, that movie surely had nothing to do with this testimony.  Snip:

 COMMENT This is one of the few experiences involving a struggle with forces considered to be diabolical. Robin’s wife clearly understood the levitation she witnessed to be an intersubjectively observable concomitant, but no one else was there to see it. Their children and pets were elsewhere in the house, and slept through the bizarre events, even though Robin shouted all night long.

The children stayed asleep while Robin shouted all night long?  Give me a fucking break.

Robin and his wife said that they interpreted this deep sleep as indicative of unseen forces that were controlling the events of that night. Robin’s wife evinced no surprise at the fact that he had levitated, for she said she had witnessed levitation of other people on several occasions.

Now these miracle-claimants are claiming to have seen real levitation concerning other people.

Both said they had been involved in “occult” practices earlier in their lives.

So they were prone, beforehand, to be open to nonsense crap like dreamvisions and levitation.

I would challenge Hays, again, to produce the one Jesus-vision story in the book he thinks is the most credible and explain why, and stop pretending that the high number of the stories intellectually compels the objective person to believe that at least one of them is genuinely supernatural in origin.

By the Holy Spirit of atheism, I predict that Steve, worried sick as he obviously is that actually putting his money where his mouth is will open him up to the real possibility of being steamrolled, will fight tooth and claw like he has in the past, to avoid doing this, and instead argue that the sheer number of reports, without consideration of their respective merits, still makes a resurrected Jesus a greater likelihood than a Jesus who stayed dead.

Unfortunately, because he takes a stupid position, he can be forced into such a dilemma.  Steve clearly has no desire to open Pandora's Box by citing to the one Jesus-vision of modern times he thinks most impervious to falsification, and in normal every day life, a person doesn't run from such a challenge because they are afraid of winning, but because they are afraid of losing.

So...Steve...what exactly is unreasonable or irrational about the skeptic who asks the Christian apologist to cite the one modern-day miracle claim they think most impervious to falsification?

In what way does the challenge to produce your best case, suffer from any methodological flaw or epistemological shortcoming?

Or does there come a time when the objective reader is intellectually compelled to conclude that the reason you dance around these legitimate challenges is because you are, with very good reason, deathly afraid that once you commit to a specific case, it will, upon analysis, start falling apart at the seams?

Back to Hays:

 To say Jesus doesn't appear to people because he doesn't exist backfires, considering the many reported examples to the contrary. There's no dearth of evidence.

There's also no dearth of evidence for UFO's but they are still bullshit, lies and misunderstandings when specific cases are examined more closely.

And since you refuse to distinguish in the many reports between encounters with the real Jesus and encounters with a demon imitating Jesus, then under your logic, we need not distinguish between encounters with the real Mary and encounters with a demon imitating her, in which case your logic would require the conclusion that "to say Mary doesn't appear to people because she didn't exist, backfires, considerating the many reported examples to the contrary.  There's no dearth of evidence."

But if YOU can overcome quantity with quality (i.e., closer analysis of specific Marian apparition claims reveals misunderstanding and outright deception), then skeptics can also overcome quantity with quality (i.e., closer examination of Jesus-vision stories reveals misunderstandings and outright deception).

So apparently, Steve will have to take the position that the only time quality of investigation can trump sheer numbers of reported cases, is when Christian apologists need to employ that tactic to get rid of supernatural events they deem heretical.  Nobody else is allowed to use quality of investigation to trump sheer numbers of reported cases.

I don't title these blog pieces as "Demolishing Triablogue" for nothing.

 And if an atheist discounts these reports as tall tales or hallucinations, then his challenge was duplicitous. If, when you call his bluff, he says it doesn't matter, then he was arguing in bad faith all along.

Then I'm not with those skeptics, I've issued a clarifying challenge to help guard against fraud or misunderstanding.  Asking you to produce the one case you feel is most impervious to falsification, is rational, reasonable and legitimate.  And if your theory is true, you shouldn't have any trouble or hesitation putting your money where your mouth is and committing to any specific case.

 vi) From what I've read, reports of Jesus appearing to people typically involve situations where they didn't ask or expect Jesus to appear to them. It wasn't in response to prayer, but an unsolicited visitation.

Provide the one case you think is the most impervious to falsification.

 vii) Furthermore, when Jesus appears to people, it may be to summon them to a life of costly discipleship. So there's a tradeoff. A grueling vocation in exchange for the vision. I don't envy St. Paul's life.

It "may be".  No argument.  Atheism "may be" true.

 ix) I'm not vouching for any particular report.

Because you know that if you did, you'd get the shit kicked out of you in every way conceivable, so, being forced to become an atheist or adopt a weaker methodology making Christian claims easier to "prove", you choose the latter, no doubt through holy tears of indescribable joy.

I'm just responding to the atheist on his own grounds. I don't presume that every reported dominical apparition is legit.

And you carefully dodge the bullet thereby.  Again, Steve, pick the one vision story from these sources you think is the most "legit" and let's get started.

I can't assign percentages. But I do think that if you have enough reports by prima facie credible witnesses, that makes it likely that some reports are true.

But you cannot know the witnesses are "credible" until you submit their claims to analysis and cross-examination, since both sides agree the world is full of false miracle reports.  Yet this need to examine on a case by case basis is exactly what you so feverisly insist isn't necessary.   Well then what, Steve?  Maybe if I pray to God, God will tell me in a vision which of the modern-day miracle claimants are credible and which aren't?

Under your logic, because other religions also report tons of religions visions, some of them must be true as well.  You will say its just the devil who is responsible for non-Christian visions, but on the contrary, you don't allege merely that some Jesus visions are "supernatural", you are arguing from sheer numbers that some Jesus-visions really involve the real Jesus.

So if Mormons or whoever also report Jesus visions, then by your own logic, some of those reports are not merely real supernatural experiences, some of those reports really are Jesus, i.e., the real Jesus really is advocating Mormonism.  If you don't like that conclusion, then provide criteria by which a person can tell whether the Jesus in the vision is the real deal or a mere demonic imitation.  And when you say "the bible", prepare to agree that it is reasonable for the objective reader to take your advice, discover that "biblical Christianity" is equally as internally splintered on everything conceivable as "American politics" is, and to thereby stop giving a shit about modern day miracle claims while they take the next 50 years to make sure they've understood the biblical message correctly, since they know at present that men who have already accomplished that much learning still disagree with each other on every biblical subject imaginable...thus justifying the observer to reasonably conclude that their present kids, family, job and life deserve more attention than does that field of esoteric quantum mechanics otherwise known as Christian apologetics.

Sorry Steve, but the threat of a suffering conscious eternal torment would only compel rather stupid and gullible people to prioritize biblical truth as highly as you think it should be prioritized.

By the way Steve, can you really say it is unreasonable for skeptics to deny the miraculous?

Under your stupid Calvinism, I only deny the miraculous because God predestined me to.

What could be more reasonable than me doing what your God wants me to do?

Then again, you are comfortable with the stupidity of a doctrine that says God gets angry at people for doing what he caused them to do, so no, I don't expect that reasoning with you has the least potential to do anything more than what it does for barking Pentecostals.  You'll just tell yourself that if I'm actually in the right on the point, well, God predestined you to misunderstand me.  There's no reasoning with the idiot who thinks Allah wants him to fly a plane into a building, and there's no reasoning with an idiot who blames his inability to see reason on fatalistic determinism.

Now rattle off the names of 20 Calvinist theologians who insist it is error to equate predestination with fatalism, so people who need to work to pay the bills can just sit home on the internet worrying about all your trifling dogshit.

 x) Likewise, I don't need to personally experience something to know it's true. Secondhand information suffices for most of what we know.

No, most of what I know doesn't come from second-hand sources, but from my own personal experience of the world.  The only time I believe second-hand information is when it conforms to my prior experience of the world, or I am able by investigation to verify by other means that the secondhand sources were truthful (otherwise, you'd have to argue that we are always irrational to suspect somebody of lying before we have tangible evidence of such).

Why carve out an ad hoc exception in this instance?

Maybe because while Christians themelves cannot even agree on which single modern-day miracle claim is true, both Christians and atheists agree that plenty of them have been legitimately debunked (in which case, the exception wouldn't be ad hoc)?

Maybe we carve out an exception for the same reason you don't think every reported Jesus-vision is true. So far, you haven't told us why you doubt ANY of them.  But the fact that you don't believe all of them means you cannot criticize the atheist who says it makes more sense to deal only with the specific cases the apologists consider the most impervious to criticism, otherwise the sheer numbers would not justify believing Jesus merely lives, but that he also confirms theology that you believe is "heretical".

Since you don't have any criteria by which to decide whether a god who sends strong delusion to people would or wouldn't ever appear by vision and 'confirm' false theological beliefs of heretics, your predictable knee-jerk reaction that it is just Satan who pretends to be Jesus and confirms false theology in many modern-day vision claims, is so highly speculative and self-serving that there is no compelling reason to give two shits about it.

In that case, the more you accept that Jesus really is appearing to people today, the more you have to accept that he is confirming theology you think is false.

 meyu1/04/2018 2:42 PM☍I saw this also. What I have found on this site are atheists who just want to trip up Christians while not willing to defend their atheism.

Then come to my blog, where I trip up Christians and defend atheism.  When Steve advises you against it, just tell him that God gave you a vision of his secret will, and God's secret will is for you to come to this blog.  That'll shut him up.

Cold Case Christianity: Dear Mr. Wallace, stop trying to prove Christian crap without the bible

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

Are There Any Good Reasons to Believe in Heaven 

(EvenWithout the Evidence from Scripture)?

There Are Good Reasons to Believe God Exists

If so, you have to first get over the impossible problem of incoherency.  Nothing depends so critically on the fallacy of special pleading, than the god-hypothesis.  You say God "sees" me, but he doesn't have physical eyes.  God has beliefs about me but doesn't have a physical brain.  Given there is not even one confirmed case of non-physical intelligence, your god will always remain an incoherent idea until you find a haunted house whose bumps in the night cannot be explained naturalistically.

While this may seem controversial to those who dismiss the existence of God out of hand, there are several lines of evidence supporting this reasonable conclusion. The reality of objective moral truths,

Go ahead and name whatever moral you think is binding upon all people at all times.  Let me guess:  "Don't torture babies solely for entertainment", right?  Why do you believe this to be binding on all people?  Because the bible says?  Because the Pope says?  How far in the toilet would this argument get you, if you were presenting it to somebody who thought torturing babies solely for entertainment would be morally justified in certain situations?  It's an absurdly weak argument that the only way you can establish it is if your opponent agrees with it?  And some would argue that because God is all-powerful and thus can achieve whatever purpose he wants for children without causing them to be tortured, God's torturing of the baby born to David and Bathsheba, could not have been for any other reason than God's good pleasure.  God could have killed the baby immediately, he didn't have to cause it to suffer severe illness for 7 days first:

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

Finally, Calvinists are Christians who say God causes people to commit all the sins they actually commit, so since some people torture babies solely for entertainment, Calvinists say God is responsible for such heinous acts, which destroys any argument that baby-torture-solely-for-entertainment is objectively immoral.  Read Isaiah 13:13-18 (God causing pagan men to rape Hebrew women and beat Hebrew toddlers to death) and Ezekiel 38:4 - 39:6 (using hooks-in-your-jaws metaphor to describe the degree to which God controls the choices and actions of men, specifically in causing pagan men to attack Israel), before you insist that baby-torture is surely not something God would ever cause.

Wallace continues:

the appearance of design in biology,

But a) the design is also full of defects, yet you only wish to credit god with the design and not the design's defects, yet you have no objective reason for suppressing the latter, which means the defective design argues that whatever intelligence is responsible for them, is not perfect, and b) the argument that all complexity required design, requires your god, who must himself possess at least as much complexity in order to produce complex stuff, to have been designed by an intelligent mind.  Simply insisting that biblical monotheism forbids you from riding the logic train all the way to the end, doesn't mean the train actually stops where you need it to.  As an atheist, I love using the argument from design to falsify the biblical teaching of monotheism.  If extremely complex things like the human brain strongly imply an intelligent designer, then the infinitely more complex god who created the human brain, was even more likely the result of an intelligent creator.

the existence of a universe that has a beginning

The evidence for the beginning of the entire universe is absurdly weak.  First, the big bang doesn't prove god even if it is true.  That theory doesn't say the singularity popped into existence from nothing, but says the universe we know resulted from the pre-existing singularity exploding.  How the singularity got there, or whether it always existed, isn't answered by the Big Bang.  Second, if Hubble inferred taht red-shifted star light implies stars rushing away from the earth, then starlight at the other end of the spectrum, blue, would logically require blue stars to be rushing toward earth.  The Andromeda galaxy is blue-shifted.  But if the big bang theory be true, something must have caused that galaxy to slow down and eventually turn back toward the place where the big bang occurred.  Only gravity could cause that, but alas, there is nothing between us and the Andromeda galaxy that would create the massive amount of gravity needed to make it do a u-turn.  So redshift and blueshift likely do not speak to whether the star is moving, hence, redshift, does not support the big bang.

and the presence of transcendent laws of logic are best explained by the existence of God.

One law of logic is the law of identity ("A = A").  If God exists, he would already be subject to the law of identity, which means he could not cause, or be prior to, the logical law of identity, and therefore, at best, logic governs god, god does not govern logic.  If God is the reason the law of identity is valid, then he could conceivably exist before it and without being governed by it.  Now how reasonable is the idea of a being who is free from the law of identity?

The laws of logic are not transcendent, they are a function of language.  The logical law of identity says "A is A".  When you ask where logic came from, you may as well be asking why a thing is what it is, and why it isn't something other than itself.  If you don't see the stupidity of asking why a thing is what it is, then it is little wonder that you think asking where logic came from is just as legitimate as asking where burritos come from.  Just because this world is full of physical things that were caused by prior means, doesn't mean that just anything you can possibly put into words, needs to have a cause.

Logic, being axiomatic by being required for even the absolute starting point of all chains of reasoning, is thus itself immune from the question of its origin.  To properly ask where logic came from, you have to employ logic itself, which means the matter in question is being presumed in the question before the answer is given, otherwise known as the fallacy of begging the question.  To avoid the fallacy, whatever produced logic must not be logic itself, which means the causal mechanism can exist without being bound by logic, just like a woman exists before, and is not bound by, her child.  You would also avoid the fallacy by framing your question in a non-logical way.  But while that would protect you from begging the question, the non-logical question doesn't function as legitimate inquiry.  Nothing is more reasonable than refusing to answer questions that defy logic.

Some apologists point out that even if there were no intelligence in the universe, a square shaped rock would still be logically distinct from the other one that is shaped like a circle, so that logic seems to pervade reality even in the absence of intelligent minds.   But this rebuttal backfires, however, since if the universe had no intelligent life, then "god" wouldn't be there either, in which case one rock maintaining its logical distinction from another, despite the absence of god, would show that logic exists even in the absence of god. 

There Are Good Reasons to Believe God Is Good (In Spite of the Problem of Evil)
Skeptics sometimes point to the problem of evil (in one form or another) to argue against the existence of God (or His good, all-loving nature). But when examined closely, the presence of moral evil, natural evil, Christian evil, “theistic” evil, or pain and suffering fail to negate the existence of God, even as they fail to blemish His righteousness.

God causes pagan men to rape women and beat toddlers to death, Isaiah 13:13-18.  There's no mystery of evil, its what humans do.  If your god exists, then, by his own admission, he is responsible for all the evil.

There Are Good Reasons to Believe Humans Have Souls
In addition to this, there are many good reasons to believe humans are more than simply physical bodies. The arguments from private knowledge, first-person experiences, part-independency, physical measurements, self-existence and free-will make a powerful, cumulative circumstantial case for the existence of our souls.

Maybe for Christians for whom just any damn thing you say will be deemed a powerful argument.  But not for atheists.  Nothing could be more obvious than that mental states are entirely dependent on brain states.  If the bible hadn't alleged the existence of immaterial souls or spirits, you wouldn't be wasting anybody's time with this sophistry.

And indeed, some Christians are dichotomists (they believe the bible teaches man is only two things, body and soul) and other Christians are trichotomists (they believe the bible teaches man has a body, a soul and something different called "spirit").  Then there's the inconvenient fact that you sit around pretending the immaterial nature of the soul is just as obvious as is the existence of trees, when you don't have one single confirmed case that souls even exist.

There are Good Reasons to Believe Souls Are Not Limited to Physical Existence
While our physical bodies are obviously limited to their physical existence and cease to function at the point of material death, there is no reason to believe the immaterial soul is similarly impacted.

If the soul wasn't affected by the body, we'd expect people not to undergo the personality changes and memory lapses they do after severe head-trauma.  The injury is obviously physically affecting the mind, and only Christian apologists, crazed to defend biblical inerrancy at all costs, would trifle that "maybe" the immaterial soul seems affected by the physical, for reasons other than the soul being physical.  If the bible had said the ultimate basis of muscle-power is spiritual, you'd be insisting that just because there is a physical explanation for muscular power, doesn't necessarily prove there's no spiritual causal mechanism at work.

If we are truly “soulish” creatures, our immaterial existence can reasonably be expected to transcend our physical limitations.

And since you haven't the least bit of evidence for such a thing, I sleep well at night in my confidence that immaterial things are about as coherent as flying elephants.  The possibility of an eternal hell doesn't exactly give me insomnia.

There are Good Reasons to Believe a Good God Would Not Make Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Elusive
All of us, as humans, yearn for justice, satisfaction and joy. These are good goals and ambitions.

Such as pedophiles, who think America's current laws on sexual age of consent are unfair and need to be lowered?  That's the stupidity your argument leads to.  Not all senses of injustice justify inferring that justice is some divine thing.

A good God (if He exists) would make these expectations attainable for His beloved children.

Are you drunk?  You just made a good argument that God does NOT love any followers who have suffered for years and died due to breaches of "justice".  Preaching to your trusting audience of Christians that God will someday set justice right, doesn't answer this criticism.

There are Good Reasons to Believe Complete Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Are Elusive in Our Temporal, Material Lives
Our daily experience demonstrates a simple reality, however: justice is not always served here on Earth (bad people often get away with their crimes), and while we continually pursue satisfaction and joy, we find they are fleeting and elusive.

Irrelevant.  And a person's sense of justice changes as they age.  The young Christian get made at god for being unable to find work and the resulting homelessness.  The older Christian is more likely to conclude that being homeless is, spiritually speaking, a good thing because it works spiritual maturity and causes you to make more conscious efforts to depend on God.  So the human sense of justice/injustice is sufficiently ambivalent that there's probably not an objective standard of right and wrong sitting in back of it.

There are Good Reasons to Believe a Good God Would Provide Complete Justice, Satisfaction and Joy in the Eternal Life He Offers Beyond the Grave

Well gee, if you already presuppose that god is "good", then obviously....you could rightfully expect him to correct injustices at some point.

If these worthy desires for justice, satisfaction and joy are unattainable in our material existence, where could they ultimately be experienced?

For some people, never.  Like the Canaanites attacked by Moses and Joshua, such people were fatal victims of crass injustice.

If God has designed us as dualistic, “soulish” creatures, these innate desires could eventually be realized in our eternal lives beyond the grave. If a good God exists (and there are many sufficient reasons to believe this is the case),

And every single of one of them evaporate in light of your own bible teaching that God causes men to rape Hebrew women, Isaiah 13:13-18.   Now what?

the expectation of an afterlife is reasonable.

It is the hope of the hopeless in their god and his mud-pit profit.

Heaven is the place where God will accomplish everything we would expect from Him and everything we (as living souls) desire.

Preaching to the choir.  Dismissed.

I don’t have to be a Christian in order to take this kind of reasonable approach to the issue.

Yes you do, unless you are convinced by Isaiah 13 that the god of the bible is a piece of shit.

Maybe that’s why many non-Christians have developed similar views on the nature of the next life. Long before Christianity, ancient Egyptians believed the afterlife was a place of final satisfaction and joy for those who were able to obtain a life with the gods in the “Sekhet-Aaru of the Tuat”. The followers of Zoroastrianism believed those who died would eventually be brought back to life and judged so final justice could be served. There are many similar examples of such expectations of an afterlife throughout the history of humanity. Even those who knew nothing of the truth of God’s Word held an intuitive understanding of what the next life might be like. This is still true today.

And since those religions came before Christianity, its pretty clear who is borrowing afterlife concepts from whom.

Our non-believing friends and family have an instinctive sense there is more to this life; a sense there must be a place where justice is finally served and where joy and satisfaction will finally be found.

And that argument gets beaten down from the fact that many convicted pedophiles sincerely believe the current American laws are unjust.  So under your logic, we should seriously consider that in heaven, pedophiles will joyfully experience the righting of the wrongs they suffered under prudish American law?

Or did you suddenly discover that not all human senses of injustice imply a pie-in-the-sky wonderland where everything will be made all better like the end of a fairy tale?

They have an innate expectation of Heaven, and they are simply waiting for God to reveal the truth to them. Maybe they’re waiting to hear about Heaven from us, if only we are willing to begin a reasonable discussion.
And as usual, you have no confidence in the power of the sovereign Holy Spirit at all, since at the end of the day, you equate your apologetics dreams with his activity in your heart, when for all you know, the Holy Spirit's goals are diamentrically opposed to Christians pretending that convincing unbelievers Christianity is true need not involve the Holy Spirit's work any more than does convincing a jury that a criminal suspect is guilty.

Clearly, Wallace, you are horrifically dissatisfied with the idea that God doesn't need your help.  What will be the title of your next article?  Maybe "If you don't learn how to defend your faith forensically by purchasing my books, Jesus might go back into the tomb!"

Demolishing Triablogue: Annoyed Pinoy revs the engine, but still spins the wheels

Mr. Pinoy,

I'm allowing your lengthy comments one last time, to which I respond.  But I would ask that in future, you keep your "replies" limited to one specific sub-topic.  The "reply" function limits me to 4.096 letters, so if I wish to provide a point-by-point response to what you say, I have to create a brand new original post, like I'm doing here.  Try to ask concise questions one at a time, such as why I don't think a bible verse you find to be relevant, is relevant to the debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
Honestly, I haven't read all of your former blogpost, so I may say some things which you've already addressed or anticipated.

Thanks for your honesty.

I don't have the time to give my full attention to the issues brought up in both blogposts. I'm trying to give an answer as quickly as possible. My overall aim is to defend the truth of Christianity.

It would seem defending the truth of Christianity might require you to devote more effort than answering "as quickly as possible".

I wrote the following late at night, so my grammar may be messed up. Though I haven't proofread it, I think you should be able get the gist of my main points even if it might be incoherent at spots. I'm nodding off while I'm typing.
 The burden of proof is on the claimant.
 I agree. You wrote in the earlier blogpost, "No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. " That's a claim on your part. A claim that seems to assume 1. that the only criteria God gave is in that single passage,

Yes, because

a) I cannot find any more biblical criteria God thinks must be fulfilled before the girl is ready for marital sex,

b) while Mosaic law certainly isn't exhaustive in fact, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 indicate the author wished the reader to believe it was exhaustive, in which case, no, you are not allowed to add "thou shall not have sexual relations with thy wife until she [insert whatever age or signs of maturity/puberty here]" to Mosaic Law.  So because Mosaic law doesn't condemn marital pedophilia, you, the Christian, have no biblical basis for saying God's view such act as sinful.  Do not say God thinks some human action is "sin" unless you have biblical authority for saying so; and

c) if Paul couldn't know coveting was a sin without Mosaic law specifically telling him so (Romans 7:7), it would appear that no Christian can know what human acts are sinful without Mosaic law specifically telling them so.

and 2. only explicit criteria count.

But when you try to argue for identifying sin on the basis of non-explicit criteria in the bible, you open the door to others being able to justify disagreement with you.  Indeed, it doesn't matter if Ezekiel 16:7-8 really does tell us what age of marriage for girls the ancient Jews deemed normative, it certainly isn't worded in an absolute way.  People 2000 years from now could legitimately say that Americans used to believe the minimum age of sexual consent was 18, and they would be correct, but that would hardly argue that therefore Americans always held that view even in earlier days.  The age of sexual consent in Delaware in the 19th century was 7.  So learning what the Jews of 600 b.c thought about the minimum age of marriage, doesn't provide reasonably reliable guidance for how Jews of 1200 b.c. thought about the same matter.

However, one can reasonably infer from OT and (especially) NT ethical standards [the latter building on the former]

Not really.  Christians are constantly attacking each others' morals by quoting the bible.

combined with inductive medical experience that it's biologically unwise and and therefore morally illicit to engage in sexual activity that will likely result in pregnancies that will (again likely) permanently injure or kill the mother.

That makes sense to me, but leaves you without ability to explain statements in the Babylonian Talmud that says girls aged three years and one day are "suitable" for sexual relations, such as

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.”  

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;

If adult men having vaginal intercourse with three year old girls were as obvious a risk to the girl's life as we modern people believe it is, how do you explain these Talmudic rabbis finding girls of such age "suitable" for sexual intercourse?  How could these rabbis bother saying such things if they saw in the bible the same absolute prohibition on adult-child marriage/sex that you do?

Humans are made in God's image and therefore have dignity on that account.

If that dignity prohibits abortion, it would also prohibit infanticide, Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:3.  You are also assuming that dignity is degraded by sex within adult-child marriages, and while we see it that way today, the question is whether the ancient Jews and biblical authors saw it that way.  The Talmud rabbis and sages, well aware of man being made in god's image, didn't.

The quality and quantity of each others' lives are to be considered by fellow human beings [esp. in marriages and families]. This is true both before and after the times of Abraham, and later Moses [and the Mosaic Covenant]. The story of Cain and Abel implicitly teaches that we are our brothers keeper in some sense [especially the closer they are to us relationally, biologically, familially etc.].

If so, then you'd have to condemn Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg for a) knowing that James Patrick Holding defamed and libeled me in extreme ways, but b) never approached Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18 to deal with it, despite my having consulted them first before suing Holding.

Before the distinction of Jew and Gentile, Noah was taught about human dignity (Gen. 9) as well as the brotherhood of mankind despite the different "races" (Gen. 10).

He was also taught capital punishment, Gen. 9:6, which many Christians oppose.

There's also the natural law consideration as well.

Which doesn't help matters, since it invites questions such as why God made females capable of conceiving as early as 10 years old, if their involvement in sexual intercourse at that age was against his intended design.

Presumably God intends women to bear children in such a way and in such a time that the likelihood of permanent injury and/or death is not maximized, but minimized.

But Triablogue Calvinist Steve Hays thinks it is God who causes the pedophile to rape girls, and that it is God who causes men to get barely pubescent girls pregnant.  You should go further with your point until Steve explains to you how it makes sense for God to inflict shame and guilt upon those who He causes to fulfill his "secret" will.  If God secretly wills for a 30 year old man to have full vaginal intercourse with a 4 year old girl, God can hardly condemn the acts that He desires to take place.

By "intends" I mean by God's Will of Delight, and God's Will of Design (see my 6 distinctions of God's will blogpost if one is curious, HERE). Someone might argue that God apparently didn't design pregnancy and birthing very well since infant skulls are so large that they can barely narrow pelvises. But if we really do live in a fallen world, then such an apparent flaw might be due to such a Fall.

True, but the biblical explanation for the "Fall" is that God intentionally "cursed" women to endure that pain and injury during child-birth, Genesis 3:16.  So God is still the cause, you cannot relegate it to the naturalistically degrading effects of Adam and Eve's bad freewill choice to disobey God.  David also disobeyed God by committing adultery with Bathsheba, but God apparently has the option to arbitrarily exempt David from the otherwise applicable death penalty ("the Lord has taken away your sin..." 2nd Samuel 12:13).

Even assuming a historical Fall didn't really happen, a design need not be perfect for it to genuinely be designed.

And the more you attribute to God the abilities of the human eye, the more you attribute to God the ability of 10 year old girls to get pregnant.  YOu cannot attribute precocious puberty to the Fall, since the Fall is a degradation, while puberty constitutes an increase in the young girl's complexity.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
If God intends humans to be fruitful and multiply, then that assumes they do it in such a way that it doesn't leave the wife (or wives given OT polygamy) chronically sick and/or otherwise diminished in her ability to continue bearing healthy children.

No, read Genesis 3:16, God wanted women to endure injury and pain during childbirth.  So the fact that girls endure injury and pain if they give birth at 10 years old, isn't sufficient for you to prove your point.

If the wife dies, then she obviously cannot reproduce any more children, assuming the first one even survived. The common (though not universal) Islamic practice of not waiting for a female to be physically mature to engage in intercourse (IMO) stems from pedophilic desires of their men. With Mohammed being both the Prime Example and Exemplar.

Agreed, but again that leaves you unable to explain the above-cited Talmud passages.  One explanation is that the pedophile rabbis who made such statements believed that instead of delaying sex with girls until they were old enough to safely give birth, God would miraculously protect them from getting pregnant, meaning any girls who got pregnant and died, were those God intended to kill by that method:

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.14”

 Footnote 14 reads:  

Ps. CXVI, 6; sc. those who are unable to protect themselves. From this it follows that a girl under the age of twelve is incapable of normal conception.

So the answer of Talmud Sages is that girls under the age of 11 are not allowed to use a contraceptive, because God would keep them safe from getting pregnant at such a young age. You really need to work on avoiding seeing the ancient Jews through the rose-colored glasses of your modern eyes.  Excuses we today find stupid, were deemed just back then.

I'm not aware of any passage of Scripture where God permits or encourages as morally licit sexual activity for prepubescent females.

Then read 2nd Samuel 12, the account of David's adultery with Bathsheba.  That she was prepubescent or near is legitimately inferred from Nathan's analogizing her to a young ewe lamb who was taken from her rightful owner.  God condemnation of the sex act implies pedophilia was considered acceptable, since God condemns the adulterous aspect, but says nothing about the fact that she was so young, yet you'd figure if God was as against pedophilia as you are, God would have cited her prohibitively young age first, since under your own reasoning, there is more that is sinful and wrong with specifically pedophilia than there is with general adultery.  Once again, the ancient authors did not always see things the way we do today.  The only thing you get from God's condemnation of David is that he sinned by committing adultery with another man's wife.

The fact that in the allegory YHVH WAITS for the female to develop breasts should say something.

Not according to your prior post, where you said "Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose..."   apparently indicating that we shouldn't be drawing conclusions about what the ancient Jews believed about the minimum age of girls for marriage, from Ezekiel 16

He didn't marry her when she was prepubescent.

But Calvinist Steve Hays thinks adult men are still fulfilling god's "secret" will when they vaginally rape 4 year old girls.  Again, Pinoy, it appears you are asking me to decide that Hays' views about what God wants are incorrect, but if spiritually alive people cannot even agree on whether or how god "wills" such things, you should conclude that spiritually dead people, which is the way you see me, will only fare worse, hence counseling that you shouldn't be telling me about what God "wills" until you resolve your disagreements with other Christians

Likely because He cared for her and wanted to bless her, not harm her. What's missing in your interpretation is how lovingly and tenderly YHVH took care of the child during her prepubescent years.

Ok, so apparently you've changed your mind, again, and now consider the allegory to be suitable for drawing conclusions about ancient Jewish morality?

Again, this is Ezekiel in 600 b.c, whose authority for representing the morals of Moses from 1200 b.c. is anything but clear, and about as prone to fallacy as using the morals of Americans in 2017 to tell us what the morals of Americans were like in 1417.  600 years more than likely introduces some changes.

Read the passage again:

 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.
5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
6 "And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
 YHVH waited all this time and can't wait a few more months or a year(s) till it's relatively safe for her to have children, as opposed to when it's relatively and statistically risky?

The ancient Jews apparently thought the risk was negated by biblical promises that God would protect the simple.  See above.

You apparently are so hostile to Christianity and want to attack it so much that you have to take THE MOST Uncharitable interpretation as the natural and ONLY interpretation, contrary to the tenderness and patience YHVH is described as having exercised in the previous verses. [*cough* eisegesis *cough*] Your interpretation goes against the whole tenor of the passage.
CONT.

You first used the passage to draw conclusions about what God or the Jews believed about pedophile marriage, THEN you changed your mind and told me it was allegory and not to be pressed for details, NOW you changed your mind again and have decided the allegory does indeed reflect on what Jews thought about the proper age for marriage.  Some would argue that your own inability to keep to one interpretation suggests that the passage is too ambiguous to be useful in our debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:10 AM
In the ESV (v. 7) she is likened to a plant in a field "...and arrived AT FULL ADORNMENT. Your BREASTS were formed..." [ESV]. Other versions translate the verse differently. For example, in the ASV she is told, "...thou didst increase and wax great". The sense I get in some translations is that she is like a plant (or a field of plants) that's ready to be reaped because nearly fully ripe. That's contrary to your interpretation that reduces YHVH to a buck in heat that's ready to mate as soon as the gate is opened.

It's also contrary to the Talmud rabbis who felt three year old girls were "suitable" for sexual relations, see above, a view they'd hardly hold if there was something else in their religion that absolutely forbade girls of such age from having marital sex.

Notice too that verse 8 indicates even more time passed, when it says, "When I PASSED BY YOU AGAIN and saw you, behold, you were at the AGE FOR LOVE". Apparently the "age for love" is some time AFTER the mere and first appearance of (to use your words) "boobs and pubic hair".

I don't deny that the Jews of Ezekiel's day felt sex within adult-child marriages was taboo.  What I deny is your ability to establish from the bible that breaking such taboo would have been considered "sin".   God's original model for marriage was monogramy, yet evangelical scholar Richard Davidson (Flame of Yaweh) and others say God "tolerated" polygamy.  So even if you are correct that Ezekiel 16:7-8 provides the divine blueprint for minimum age of marriage for ancient Jewish girls, you aren't showing that the model is absolute.

It should be noted that not everything OT people (or ANE Semites in general) did was necessarily moral.

But what they did is material toward modern people drawing conclusions about what was acceptable and unacceptable to them.

The same is true for post-Tanakhian Jews (e.g. Talmudists). And even if some things were permissible or a concession on God's part, that doesn't mean it's the ideal.

Philsophically, it is unlikely that an infinitely perfect God, allegedly as angry at pedophilia-marriage as you are, would ever "tolerate" deviations from his original model of marriage.  So if Richard Davidson and other Christian scholars on marriage are correct that the bible god "tolerated" polygamy, then this god's perfection is not "infinite".

Moreover, there's God intended moral development within the OT as well as between the Testaments. For example, the ideal in the NT is monogamy, though polygamy in the OT was permitted/tolerated.

An infinitely perfect God who hated polygamy as much as you think he does, would not "tolerate" it, but would, like you, specify it to be sin.  Nowhere does the Mosaic law specify polygamy to be sin.  Deuteronomy 17:17 no more means a King cannot have two wives than it means he cannot have two horses.  He is not allowed to "multiply" wives to himself.  The infinitely perfect God is regulating, not condemning, polygamy

Jesus Himself taught that the OT Jews often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT laws. Or didn't interpret them in a truly consistent way.

And I teach that Jesus and Paul often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT Laws.

Had they, they would have had a more Christonomic interpretation of the Torah.

I'm an atheist, I don't find non-Christonomic Torah-interpretation to necessarily be faulty.

Finally, it's the Christian claim that its morality is higher than that of Judaism.

No, it was the claim of Jesus that his followers be careful to obey the spirit and letter of Mosaic law, see Matthew 5:17-20.  Paul's view of the Law was often at odds with the legalistic view held by Jesus.

The Messiah would magnify the law and make it glorious (Isa. 42:21).

Which seems to indicate that Christian parents need to burn their teen prostitute daughters to death.  Leviticus 21:9.

That's why Jesus could say, "BUT I say unto you" without contradicting the the OT (Matt. 5:17). And why Jesus said of the Jews that they added to the Word of God by teaching as doctrine the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).

I see no reason to distinguish Jesus' view of the law from Moses' view, for purposes of this discussion.

BTW, I'm not a "Theonomist" as it's commonly understood. I agree with much of what they say, but I have enough disagreements to not use that term. I prefer, "Christonomist".
 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.
 Ready in what sense? Ready to marry, or start considering marriage?

Well according to Ezekiel 16:7-8, ready to actually marry, not merely consider it.

Since there was often a betrothal period that was also considered (in some sense) marriage even before consummation, that delayed period allows for even more time for the female to sexually mature even more.

But the betrothal itself was created by the act of vaginal intercourse with the three year old girl:

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69aR. 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... 

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:11 AM
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.
 Now you seem to be reducing your claim to only Ezek. 16, when your original claim seems (?) to include ALL of Scripture (or at least the Tanakh).

No, I'm only pointing out that you have no textual justification for asserting that Ezekiel 16:7-8 expresses or implies that any criteria beyond boobs and public hair need be fulfilled to declare the girl ready for marriage.

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. 

IF Christianity is true, then the OT can not only be interpreted in isolation, but also in light of the later fuller revelation.

But since Christianity is not true, I am free to limit my understanding of an OT text to just what the author intended by examination of his grammar, immediate context, chapter, and genre.  Discerning meaning that way is objective, while trying to read the OT through Christian-colored lenses is absurdly controversial.

Also, it touches on the issue of the consistency of the Testaments. I would seek to defend it. While you'd be fine with there being irreconcilable contradictions between the two. You wouldn't take the NT to be authoritative, but the consistency between the Testaments has some abductive argumentative force.

I don't see the point, not only is there nothing in the NT against sex within adult-child marriages, there is the theological principle that you cannot know a human act is a sin unless there is a prohibition against it specified in Mosaic Law.  See Romans 7:7.  Either Paul was wrong for speaking in such absolute terms about how sin cannot be identified apart from Mosaic law, or he, and by extension Christians, cannot know what acts are sin without Mosaic law telling them so.  If Paul wouldn't have known coveting was a sin without Mosaic law, YOU don't know that sex within adult-child marriages is a sin without Mosaic law telling you so.  Are you smarter than apostle Paul?

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... 

Apparently you claim we do have enough records from those very sources to tell us that adult-child marriages were accepted.

No, I think they were accepted on the basis of the biblical and Talmudic statements.

I'm dubious of the claim, but even if true, that doesn't make it morally licit according to the Mosaic Covenant or the teaching of the rest of the Tanakh. If it does, I'm not aware where.

See Romans 7:7, supra.  If you don't have a Mosaic Law specifying a human act as sin, you have no warrant for calling it sin in the first place.  So either find a Mosaic law that prohibits sex within adult-child marriages to the same degree that it prohibits coveting, and you'll dodge the Romans 7:7 bullet.  If you cannot provide such a text, then you never had any theological justification for labeling sex within adult-child marriages to be sinful in the first place.

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, 

Not necessary attempts, but that they always had that potential.

Well then the man could easily limit himself to sex acts that cannot make the girl pregnant, in which case  your rebuttal based on the dangerousness of potential pregnancy, is deprived of force.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

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: 

Hebrews 13:4 says nothing about oral sex.

It also doesn't say anything about vaginal intercourse, but you certainly feel free to infer that the author's words "marriage bed undefiled" are saying vaginal intercourse between monogamous Christian couples is undefiled.

While Canticles MIGHT refer to oral sex in one or more passages, it's not certain.

Most conservative Christian scholars take it in its obvious sexual sense.  From the inerrantist-driven New American Commentary:

4:16 This, with 5:1, is the high point of the Song of Songs. She calls on the winds to make her fragrance drift to her beloved, thus drawing him to herself. Maintaining the metaphor of the garden, she invites him to come and enjoy her love. This is the consummation of their marriage.

...5:1 a,b The man responds. The poetry is discreet and restrained; it conveys the joy of sexual love without vulgarity; at the same time, the meaning is quite clear. The catalog of luxuries here (garden, myrrh, honey, wine, etc.) imply that he has partaken of her pleasures to the full.
Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 407). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The important point is that in marriage coitus is the norm and would be expected to begin the marriage.

I don't see how that trifle helps you.  That's also the norm for marriage today, yet I've known many Christian couples who said they abstained from sex on their wedding night.  So again, while coitus was probably normative among ancient Jews for consummating the marriage, that doesn't argue that deviations were disallowed.

Without consummation via coitus the marriage wouldn't be fully legal. A bleeding hymen was meant to signify the cutting/enacting of the covenant of marriage.

By that logic, the marriage wouldn't be fully legal if the man had erectile dysfunction.  You need to stop interpreting what Mosaic law presents are normative, as if it was absolute and exclusive.

You refer to adult-child marriage, but I don't know what you mean by, and how you define "child".

In this discussion, by "adult-child marriage" I mean men who are in their 20's or older, getting married to girls who, by reason of lack of puberty, can still be called "child".

Or in what way you (presumably) frown upon adult-child marriages.

I frown on them for the same reason the Legislators and Congress do:  such unions are more productive of lasting physical and emotional harm to the girl.

I don't deny that a some females consummated marriage at an early age. Maybe even at 12. But some girls enter puberty earlier and progress faster than other girls.

That's right. the reality of precocious puberty means it is possible that in Ezekiel 16:7-8, God was thinking about a 9 year old girl whose breasts and public hair had grown, as the template for his allegorical language.

This is also true of the girls of some ethnic groups as compared to others. So, randomly citing the age of 12 is meaningless unless one also addresses and acknowledges the issue of the fact that different female would be sexually mature sooner than others.

I don't see your point, most scholars of the ANE agree that these people usually delayed marriage until puberty.  You appear to be concerned to make your trifles look like serious objections.  No dice.

I don't know what you're entire claim is, but my claim is that given OT ethics (and especially NT ethics), it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications.

That's not good enough.  Your claim is that your god views sex within adult-child marriages as "sin", so it is perfectly legitimate to ask why you call it a sin when you cannot provide any biblical evidence that it is.  Sin is trangression of God's law (Romans 7:7, 1st John 3:4), it is not "deviation from what's normative".

Regarding pedophilia of prepubescents in the Talmud, even if your interpretation were correct, that doesn't tell anything certain about the beliefs and practices of Jews during Biblical times.

It does it we accept the conservative Christian assumption that oral traditions among the ancient Jews were carefully handed down from generation to generation.  If you start screwing with the reliability of those oral traditions just to get out of this jam, then you increase the likelihood that the oral traditions laying behind the OT text were corrupted before being written.

Even then, the beliefs and practices of Biblical Jews is not sure indicator of what the OT law itself requires or allows.

I don't need to have a "sure" indicator.  I will be rationally warranted in my arguments if I have a "reasonable" indicator.

Since many things recorded are explicitly or implicitly taught to be wrong. Think for example of how the book of Judges records the general degradation and moral decline in Israel.

But from a historical perspective, it is how the ancient Jews were, not whether their acts squared up with their religious claims, that helps one form an opinion on which among the historical possibilities is most probable.  If the ancient Jews allowed pedophile-marriages, then it is unjustified for modern-day apologists to be shocked at my argument, as if the ancient Jews' morals were a mirror image of those held by modern conservative Christians.  What's "obvious" to us today doesn't tell us what would have been allowed by ancient Jews.

Much of the OT is a record of how the majority often disobeyed God, from generation to generation.

And the most substantial portion is the Mosaic Law.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

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... 

That is or close to an argument from silence.

So?  Arguments from silence are not automatically fallacious, which is the sense you appear to be intending with your short unqualified sentence.  It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if the bible god exists and really does regard sex within adult-child marriages as abominable as you do, he would have specified a prohibition against it.

Laws and Case Laws are meant to be studied and applied to cover situations not mentioned.

And I see no biblical warrant to suppose that, where the 3 year old bride's father agreed to give her in marriage to an adult man who paid the dowry, the sexual relations between this couple after the wedding would constitute a legal case requiring application of law.

In America, one state's criminal law code is limited to less than 100 pages, so if Moses was inspired by God, he has no excuse for failing to specify as sin any and every human act god thought was a sin.  We specify the minimum age, why couldn't god?

Your duty as a Christian to obey Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 is more important than your desire to come up with a clever way to read things into the law.

In fact, if the Mosaic Law included every possible situation the Pentateuch would be larger than the U.S. Library of Congress.

How much extra room in Moses' books would "you shall not marry a girl until she is at least 16 years old" have taken up?

Also, Natural Law gives us some indication.

You mean like the natural fact that most girls become capable of getting pregnant around 11 or 12 years old?  Does this natural law tell us anything about what God intended?

Especially when it's coupled with the OT Revelation. For example, the very passage you cite (Ezek. 16). If females should wait till sometime after puberty begins to get married and be sexually active, then it makes sense that that's the case for boys too. Nocturnal emissions happend after the onset of puberty, not before. Prior to that a boy is not fertile. The libido of both sexes kicks in at high gear at puberty. Since one of main the reasons for marriage is to propogate the species (Gen. 1:28), AND since the OT prohibits extra-marital sexual relations, AND since fertility only occurs after the onset of puberty, it therefore makes sense that the consummation of marriage was meant to also be after the onset of puberty in both the male and female.

I don't see the point, you are only specifying what makes sense and what's normal, you are not making a case that God believed sex within adult-child marriages was "sin".   "Sin" is not merely "deviation from the norm".

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'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin.

!?

At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex.

You haven't made a very convincing case that your god thinks marital pedophilia is sinful.  If my blog educated you, a thanks would be in order.

Another issue that one would expect some atheists to look down upon is arranged marriages (AM). AMs could potentially motivate adult-child marriages. Or what of the hypothetical where two groups of parents arrange the marriage of prepubescent children and foregoing the betrothal period. Would it necessarily be sin if a 7 year old "husband" and a 7 year old "wife" engaged in sexual intercourse? I'm not sure.

Well, if your God hasn't made clear to you that prepubescent kids having vaginal intercourse is "sin"...

What's clear to me is that if such a situation continued the girl would likely get pregnant long before her body could handle giving birth.

And since puberty is an increase in the girl's complexity, you cannot relegate the problem of girls becoming capable of conception while it is still dangerous to give birth, to the Fall. The "Fall" didn't cause human beings to increase in complexity, the Fall was a degradation.  So it would seem that nature's equipping girls to get pregnant at such dangerously young ages can be blamed squarely on your god, not the Fall and not "evolution".

Leading to the likely death of both her and the child. Also, I think an adult male with fully developed sexual organs engaging in coitus with a prepubescent girls can do serious damage.

That was probably also obvious to the Talmud Rabbis who said three year old girls are "suitable" for sexual relations:

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.”  

There are modern cases where death or infertility ensued. Whatever nearly ensures injury or death would likely be considered sin.

How much did the odds of injury/death increase when Moses roused the Hebrews to dispossess the Canaanites and make war?

Apostles boldly confronting their captors with the gospel would likely ensure their deaths, so perhaps there are times when preaching the gospel would be a sin?

The difficulty women have in childbirth is not due to "sin", but God's voluntary choice to curse the woman, Genesis 3:16.  From 2nd Samuel 12:13, God's nature does not "require" him to punish sin in any certain way, he can exempt a sinner from punishment by simply waving his magic wand.  So under your logic, God was sinning since his curse on the birthing process increased the odds of a women suffering injury or death.

The case of Adam and Eve is our exemplar. They were man and woman, not boy and girl when God presented them to each other for marriage.

But because God made concession for one deviation from this model (polygamy), you have to be open to the prospect that he'd make similar concessions for other deviations from the model.

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 have no knowledge about the dispute between the two of you. I'll leave that between the relevant parties and the law. When it comes to Matt. 18, I think that's in the context of internal matters within the church.

No, Christians, especially Christians who take up the office of teacher, are required to have a good reputation with unbelievers, 1st Timothy 3:7, so when they fail Paul's standard, they fail their own self-imposed standard and have engaged in the biblical equal of sin.

Disputes between Christian brothers. If so, then it doesn't apply to you since you're not in the church.

So under your logic, if you murder me, none of your Christian brothers have a biblical duty to confront you about this sin since I'm not in the church.

You mention Rom. 13. That's the very chapter that acknowledges the state's role in the punishment of crimes. If there's a place for ministers to address Holding's sins, it would be his immediate elders and not random spiritual mentors who don't know or have the time or resources to investigate the issues.

Which is precisely the problem since Holding is the type of apostate who believes himself spiritually above any immediate elders.  Blomberg and Habermas would have known this, so because they chose to discuss the matter with him a little bit, they committed themselves to rebuking him for his sin.

When it comes to CRI, I suspect that folks like Perry Robinson who have complained about Hanegraaff's behavior for decades seem legitimate (from my limited knowledge). Also, I think the role of teacher and apologist are two distinct things. One can be one, or the other, or both. The role of a teacher implies authority and reliability in doctrine. Whereas neither need be the case with an apologist.

Yes, they do, at least for the apologist who thinks god works through him to promote the gospel.

Finally, what lies of Walter Martin are you specifically referring to?

He claimed to have been a descendant of Brigham Young

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:51 AM
What's the NAU translation?

New American Standard, 1995 Update.  You can't be serious.

Re-reading my comments I see I may have been slightly inconsistent. For example, in one place I wrote, "it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications." Yet, in another place I wrote, "I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin. At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex. "
 But those two statements need not be contradictory. In the former quotation I wasn't speaking absolutely, but generally and usually. While in the latter I was speaking in terms of absolute and unchanging designation and moral evaluation.

I think the fact that you can't make out a biblical case for saying God views marital pedophilia as "sin" speaks clearly enough.

Demolishing Triablogue: No, Steve Hays, ticking time-bombs aren't relevant to child-rape

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Causing evil

A stock objection to Calvinism goes something like this: it is evil to cause evil.

That's because the only exception anybody perceives to the rule, is when Calvinists need to get their ass out of a theological jam.

But the God of Calvinism causes evil (or determines evil, which amounts to the same thing). Indeed, the God of Calvinism causes human agents to commit evil. Yet making someone else do evil is at least as bad if not worse than doing it yourself.

And only religion would motivate a person to consider that causing evil might be good.

Let's examine that objection. Take the ticking timebomb scenario. Many people think torturing a terrorist to find out where the bomb is hidden, to save innocent lives, is immoral.

Not if the good of torturing him is likely to outweigh the bad of hundreds of people dying in an explosion. Your argument here might refute ridiculous liberals who think Constitutional rights are the inerrant word of God, but that's a far cry from arguing that your Calvinist god is "good" for causing men to rape children to death.

Why is that immoral? Presumably, they think torture is wrong because they think excruciating pain is evil. If so, then it's evil to cause excruciating pain.

You won't find anything in the NT to support the idea of Christians inflicting pain for the sake of a greater good, except in the irrelevant sense of excommunication or shunning.

If they don't think excruciating pain is evil, then it's unclear why they think torture is wrong. They might not think that's the only reason torture is wrong. They might think torture is wrong in part because coercion is wrong. But presumably they think the evil of excruciating pain is a necessary condition of what makes torture wrong, in cases where torture utilizes pain. Indeed, pain is coercive. The two are inseparable in that scenario.

You'd do a better job had you addressed the real problem:  Your god thinks it is "good" to cause men to rape little kids to death.  Deal with that.  What, your all-powerful God just couldn't achieve his purposes in any other way than to predestine a man to rape a child to death?  Either your god is a scumbag, or he isn't all-powerful.  Since you are a Calvinist, you likely won't be invoking W.L. Craig's "what if" scenarios whereby his evaporating illusions take the place of serious argumentation.

The justification for torturing the terrorist is to save innocent lives. But since they regard torture as intrinsically wrong, the goal, however noble, can't justify that expedient. So goes the argument.
 But let's vary the illustration. Take a field medic during the Civil War who operates without anesthetic, because none is available. If excruciating pain is evil, then it's evil for the medic to inflict excruciating pain on his patients. Yet most of us think his action is justified. He must amputate the arms and legs of gunshot victims to prevent the greater evil of death by gangrene. Yet in that event, there are situations in which causing evil isn't evil.
 In addition, suppose there's a patient he's loathe to save. It may be the enemy. But the field commander orders him to operate on that patient because the field commander wants to pump the enemy soldier for information. He may force the unwilling medic to operate at gunpoint if need be.
 That would mean he's causing an agent to commit evil, assuming that pain is evil. If, on the other hand, we grant that it's not inherently evil to cause the evil of inflicting pain, then it's not evil to cause an agent to cause evil, in that respect. At least, that seems to break the chain of inference.
 Although that's a hypothetical comparison, it has a real-world counterpart. We experience physical pain because God designed the human body to have that sensitivity. But if excruciating pain is evil, then that means God causes evil by designing and making bodies with sensitivity.
 Let's consider some objections to my argument:
 i) Pain isn't good or bad in itself. Rather, it's context-dependent. For instance, pain can be a warning sign to avert or avoid greater harm. The painful sensation of burning deters us from taking chances with fire. Temporary pain protects us from greater harm.
 One potential problem with that reply is that it makes it harder to oppose torture in the ticking timebomb scenario.

But it kills you in the context of a man raping a child to death, since the resulting pain there cannot be rationally said to be "required" to achieve any greater good (otherwise, you'd have to commit to the premise that the child who survives a rape is better off than had they been spared the experience).  The bible doesn't present God as causing men to do such things for the sake of a greater good, but that he causes men to do such things to punish nations in a corporate manner.  Isaiah 13, Hosea 13, Deut. 28.  Christians who feel a sense of unfairness when bad luck comes their way, simply don't know their bibles...god will cause a man to rape a woman solely because she belongs to a sinful nation.  The corporate guilt doctrine in the bible is utterly lost on mainstream Christianity.

In both cases, you have an ends-means justification. If the deterrent value of pain to avoid death or serious injury by fire justifies pain, then why not torturing a terrorist to save innocent lives? Both utilize temporary pain. Both justify harm for a greater good.
 ii) We absolve the field medic because he lacked access to anesthetics. But the analogy breaks down in application to God, who doesn't suffer from analogous limitations.
 Up to a point that's true, but I'm testing the principle. The objection makes blanket statement: it is evil to cause evil. Or it is evil to cause another agent to cause evil.
 If, however, there are exceptions, then that isn't wrong in principle. It depends on the situation. If something is intrinsically wrong, that precludes exceptions.

So do you think child-rape is intrinsically wrong, Steve?  Or do you call child-rape good because the doctrine of divine command theory requires to you automatically label as good anything God causes to happen?  Let's do this by syllogism;

Premise One - consistent Calvinism says God is always responsible for causing men to rape children
Premise Two - All of God's acts are righteous.
Conclusion - God is righteous in causing men to rape children

We have to wonder:  Does Steve think God ever punishes people for doing what God wanted them to to?

Notice how the Calvinist God must think:

"I'm going to make babysitter Bill rape that 4 year old girl to death.  Then I'm going to cause him to have a strong feeling of personal guilt over it, and to conclude in his mind that he is inexcusably culpable and guilty, and I will further cause him to think, contrary to the biblical truth of my infallible predestining decree for all human choices, that his refraining from doing that crime was always just as legitimate and real of a possibility as was his ultimate choice to commit it."

We have to wonder:  What would God do to a Calvinist who got just as happy at the news that his 7 year old daughter was raped, as he was upon discovering that his daughter graduated from second to third grade?

If God wanted the girl raped, why does God put in the hearts of most humans a feeling of revulsion and hatred toward those who carry out certain aspects of God's will?

What sense does it make to say we should only be happy when certain limited aspects of God's will are actualized on earth?  If God's righteousness is vindicated in his causing men to rape children no less than it is when he causes Calvinists to donate to charity, then logically there cannot be any moral difference between getting happy about God's will being done on earth, and getting happy about God's will being done on earth.

Did God, during the earthly ministry of Jesus, want the Jews to obey his revealed will?

Yes (Luke 13:34)
No (Calvinist doctrine of God's sovereignty; God infallibly ordains whatsoever comes to pass).

So under Calvinism, God both wants and doesn't want the Jews to obey his revealed will.  If God appears to you and says "I want you to give $10 to this person", you'd be presumptuous to conclude that God is being honest.  Just because God says he wants you to do something, doesn't necessarily mean that he actually wants you to do it (!?).

Now you know why Calvinists take more pleasure in sin than other Christians.  Not only is it God who is causing you to screw the neighbor's spouse, thus falsifying any notion that you could have chosen otherwise, but your adultery glorifies God no less than does your donating food to a local charity.

And only a fool says God doesn't wish to be glorified.

Calvinism is a good illustration of how bible inerrancy can sicken the human mind, as apparently the religion becomes more important than logical consistency.  And since most Christian scholars think Calvinism is bullshit, Steve Hays cannot relegate my critique of his Calvinism to my alleged spiritual deadness/blindness...lest he step even deeper into his cultic mindset and accuse all anti-Calvinist Christians of spiritual deadness/blindness.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays helps unbelievers stop worrying about hell

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Scandinavian hell
I'd like to make a brief observation about hell. There are Christians, apostates, and atheists who get carried away with the poetic imagery.

And the more even spiritually alive people get hell wrong, the more justification spiritually dead people have to toss the entire business out the window, knowing they can only do worse if they try.

If, however, the Bible was originally revealed in, say, Iceland, the Yukon, or Scandinavia, rather than a hot dry climate like Palestine, the hellish imagery might instead draw on snow and ice, arctic temperatures, a polar vortex, and a continuous polar night.

So if the bible was originally revealed in, say, Sacramento California, 1986, the hellish imagery might instead draw on constant traffic, ceaseless urban growth and non-stop crime.  

The "geography" of hell is based on the Middle East. The "geography" of hell would vary if originally revealed in regions with different landscape and climate. The metaphors are to some degree culturebound. A tropical depiction of hell might be characterized by an abundance of nasty reptiles and stinging insects.

The problem being that your alleged God refuses to specify exactly what hell is.  Yet under Calvinism, despite God predestining me to fault him for such ambiguity, I'm still "without excuse" for doing what God forced me to do.

Calvinism makes me feel better about rejecting the gospel...there was no way I could have contradicted God's reprobative decree.  It's out of my hands, so any sense of personal responsibility on my part can only be a misleading illusion.