Cold Case Christianity: God causes all natural disasters

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

Cold Case Christianity: Where Is God During Natural Disasters?

Posted: 06 Aug 2018 01:08 AM PDT

Hurricanes every hurricane season. Massive earthquakes in Mexico and elsewhere. Volcanoes in several locations around the globe. Record-setting fires across the country. How could an all-loving, all-powerful God allow natural disasters such as these to destroy the lives of His children?

Easy, today's Christians are a bunch of pussies who have completely lost touch with the fact that their biblical god's idea of "love" is a radical departure from the sense they get after proof-texting John 3:16 ten thousand times. The solution is easy:  the god who allows disaster, doesn't "love" disaster victims in the way that the average American person understands "love".  That's precisely why there's such a big uproar in Christianity about why God allows evil.  Once you stop saying God is infinitely loving, the problem of evil disappears.  Consider that John 3:16 might actually be wrong.

John Stonestreet, my colleague at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, recently addressed this important question in a BreakPoint Radio broadcast. While it’s difficult for finite humans to understand the infinite mind and purposes of God, there are a few important truths to consider as we ponder these natural disasters:

Genesis 6:6-7 and other passages objectively justify the open-theist Christian to say that the god of the bible is imperfect, and therefore, all talk about his ways are higher than our ways, only does more to hide the truth than reveal it.  Excuses such as God's infinite purposes cement a person more comfortably in doctrines they already believe, but at the cost of denying the true meaning of other bible passages like Genesis 6:6-7.  It's not an anthropomorphism.  God really is an emotional asshole nearly indistinguishable from the idealistic fantasy created in the minds of pre-scientific tribal mercenaries.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Means

Which indicates you have not the least bit of concern to sound convincing to anybody except those who are already committed to god's allegedly perfect ways.  You think "may be" constitutes "argument"?  No, it constitutes the warm friendly advice you get from a fundamentalist Christian roommate. Let me know when you intend to actually start threatening the arguments of atheists and bible-critics.

God may allow and tolerate some of these events to occur because it is the necessary consequence of a free natural process that allows creatures (such as humans) to make free choices. Scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne suggests that God has created a universe governed by natural laws such that life on earth is possible and humans can experience free will.

 And there you go again, blindly presuming "freewill" is true when a) 5-point Calvinist Christians know their bibles just as well as you, if not better, and they think your idea of freeewill is unbiblical, and b) the only reason "free" appears in "freewill" for most people is because they think the will is free of any and all constraints whatsoever...because they know that if there are any constraints, then to the degree such freewill is constrained, the person is not responsible for their actions.  Since the bible simplemindedly insists everybody is responsible for their actions, most Christians necessarily worship the "free" in "freewill" and, like you, bandy about it as if the matter were a foregone conclusion.

For example, the same weather systems that create deadly tornadoes also create thunderstorms that provide our environment with the water needed for human existence.

Probably because your god thought it too much effort on his part to just use miracles to cause the earth to grow food whenever he wanted it to.  Your excuse is especially attractive to certain internet apologists who lack the Holy Spirit the way people in hell lack water.  Their god consists of nothing beyond their own personal enjoyment of debating biblical matters.

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

You are forgetting one small matter:  God directly kills every person that dies, Deuteronomy 32:39.  You cannot use the naturalistic mechanisms of earth to shield God from responsibility for death.  Otherwise, that would be like saying the gun that protects the family is the same one that murders them.  Well if Dad was the only person in charge of the gun and was the only person using it...then how does observing the gun can be used for both good and evil, do jack shit to get Dad off the hook for murder?

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Consequence

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

That's a good answer, but even then, you'd still have to blame the stupid human choices on God:

"The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps." (Prov. 16:9 NAU)

One could also answer that if you wouldn't allow your child to dig deep holes at the beach despite their unpleasant experience at being involuntarily buried alive the last time they went to the beach, then God has a responsibility to keep watch over his intentionally disobedient kids, the ways parents have over their own kids. And if God's ways are infinitely beyond human abilities to grasp, then comparing God/adults to parents/toddlers really is appropriate. God could do a much better job at convincing adults why their sins and errors are far more significant and evil than they perceive, but he just sits on his ass, pretending "you are without excuse" becomes true after his followers repeat it about 50 million times.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Encouragement

God may allow some natural evil because it challenges people to think about God for the first time. For many people, the first prayers or thoughts of God came as the result of some tragedy. When our present, temporal lives are in jeopardy or in question, we often find ourselves thinking about the possibility of a future, eternal life. If Christianity is true, and we are more than temporal creatures, God may use the temporary suffering of this life to focus our thoughts and desires on eternity, where God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain . . .” because “the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

 God doesn't have to do things  in such a sadistic bloody way.  In the past he has gotten even unbelievers to do what he wanted through his magically coercive telepathic control over their minds (Ezra 1:1, Daniel 4:33). If he wants mother Betty to draw closer to him, he can wave his magic wand over her mind, he doesn't have to allow her three year old Johnny get eaten alive by a bear, just so that she goes crazy from the horror and joins a small pentecostal church where screaming is mistaken for God's inspiration.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Motivation

God may permit some natural evil because it provides humans with the motivation and opportunity to develop godly character. A world such as this requires human beings to cooperate and peacefully co-exist in order to successfully respond to its challenges. The best in humanity often emerges as people respond in love and compassion to natural disasters. It’s in the context of these disasters that moral character has the opportunity to form and develop. Good character (acts of love, compassion and cooperation) must be freely chosen. God has provided us with a world that provokes us to improve our situation, care for those who are in need, and become better human beings in the process.

Same answer

But there’s an even more important truth to be considered as we ask where God is in such situations (as I recently wrote in a Christian Post article):

All Natural ‘Evil’ Necessitates the Existence of God

The painful consequence of a deadly storm is objectively evil.

Only for those who think human life has inherent worth.  Count me out.  Inherent worth is a contradiction in terms. 

It’s not a matter of personal or cultural opinion, and it’s more than a convenient description. The existence of natural “evil” requires us to consider the existence of an overarching, transcendent standard of “good” by which we judge something to be “bad.”

No, we view a flood as "evil" for sweeping away our house, because we were born and raised to believe that life should be lived in a house in a stable fashion.  That desire is perfectly sufficient to justify why it is that the average person finds the destructive force of natural disasters "evil".

And don't forget that many non-Christian adults don't view natural disasters as evil, even if human death is involved.  It is terrible for a child to be killed by an old tree that falls down solely from age and gravity, but it doesn't make sense to call that "evil".  Trees don't do what they do because of morality.  it is only the complaining human beings who are infusing that disaster with a moral issue.

C. S. Lewis, the British novelist and Christian apologist, described in his book “Mere Christianity” how he posited evil as an argument against God until he realized that true evil required a true, objective standard of good:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

If natural evil is simply a matter of personal or cultural opinion, we could eliminate it from the face of the earth by simply changing our minds. But changing your opinion about Harvey, Irma, or Maria won’t make them any less “evil.”

 You weren't talking about changing minds about people, you were talking about us changing our minds about why natural disasters happen. Stay on track next time.

When Lewis realized the connection between true evil and the necessity of a true standard of good, he began to turn a corner in his thinking:

“Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.”

Contrary to Lewis, we often really only mean a standard of justice that is personal, when we call something unjust.  Or, as with many people, we falsely believe that the standards we were born and raised with, are objective.  They aren't.

Natural disasters like storms, earthquakes and fires, are objectively evil,

Wrong.  Plenty of storms, earthquakes and fires occur without destroying human life.  Fuck you.

but that requires an objective standard of good by which we can make such a judgment in the first place. God offers this objective, transcendent source of righteousness. Without him, all notions of evil are simply. . . notions.

 Your answer is dismissed because there is no such thing as objective evil.  If emotions legitimately counted in arguments about evil and morality, then because Christians can be found emotionally arguing on both sides of a moral fence, both of them must be correct.  So don't dig yourself an early intellectual grave by pretending that emotions have a legitimate place in arguments about "objective" morality and evil. But if you leave emotions aside, then suddenly, you have no more proof that any human act is 'objectively' evil.  Except perhaps the tire old saw of selectively quoting the parts of the bible you think apply to 21st century people, an impossible thing to prove.

So, as we consider the devastation we have faced in the past few weeks and months, let’s remember that none of these events preclude the existence of God.

But if they prove the existence of God, they also prove that God views humanity similarly to the way we view lower life forms in laboratories; we are test-subjects, we are pawns moved about by higher spiritual beings who pass the time playing highly unnecessary war-games with each other.  See Job chapters 1 and 2.  Fuck you.  Tell your god to get a tv and a subscription to NetFlix, maybe he'll find something more constructive to do with his time than causing natural disasters to kill little girls in the alleged hope of causing their mothers to cling to him more tightly, when even Christian common sense says you should run away from anything that is likely to cause such a disaster.

By the way, Wallace:  Why do you drive safely in traffic?  Couldn't it be that God wants your car to hit and kill a pedestrian because God knows his surviving family will turn to Christ in their emotional upheaval?

And if God really does have a part to play in the reasons why accidents that you cause end up hurting other people, do you have enough courage and conviction on this to state God's involvement to be a factual truth and therefore require God's involvement to be litigated when you are sued?

Why not?  Isn't it a "fact" that God had a part to play in negligence on your part that caused injury to others?  If so, then doesn't your Christian commitment to biblical truth outweigh the law of the secular courts that tell you to keep religious explanations out of the court (Acts 5:29)?

Maybe you are consistent in your beliefs, and therefore believe America should change its civil and criminal laws so that the jury is allowed to make a possible finding that "God made me do it" or "the devil made me do it" was the real truth of the matter?

In fact, Jesus understands our suffering better than anyone who ever lived.

More proof that you are preaching the choir, and in no sense trying to convince skeptics.

Unlike other theistic, religious systems, Christianity is grounded on the finished work of a suffering Savior who died on a cross and rose from the grave to show us that there is life beyond our pain, joy beyond our calamity, and hope beyond our worst moments. God still reigns, and he is present with us in our storms.

And if they purchase your materials right now, they can save 10% in their effort to help the Holy Spirit do a job he doesn't need any help doing.  Amen?

Frank Turek's Bible Error # 1: God cannot allow sin to go unpunished?

I received this in the mail today:

From: Frank Turek <Frank@crossexamined.org>
Date: Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 7:07 AM
Subject: Q&A: How were people saved before Jesus?
To: ---------

Since God is infinitely Just, He cannot allow sin to go unpunished. That’s why God had to punish Jesus in our place. But what about those who lived before Jesus. How were they saved from punishment? Here is a very short answer to that question:

Turek's video for this is here.  Turek is wrong.  The bible makes many statements indicating that God can leave sin unpunished:

First, you know the story:  King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, and got her pregnant:

 3 So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
 4 David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.
 5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, and said, "I am pregnant." (2 Sam. 11:3-5 NAU)

David tried to cover it up by having Uriah come home from battle and sleep with Bathsheba (v. 6-12).
 
When this plan didn't work, David had Uriah placed at the front of a battle to ensure he would be killed, and he was:

 14 Now in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah.
 15 He had written in the letter, saying, "Place Uriah in the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him, so that he may be struck down and die."
 16 So it was as Joab kept watch on the city, that he put Uriah at the place where he knew there were valiant men.
 17 The men of the city went out and fought against Joab, and some of the people among David's servants fell; and Uriah the Hittite also died. (2 Sam. 11:14-17 NAU)

 God's penalty for adultery and murder was death:

  10 'If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
(Lev. 20:10 NAU)

 17 'If a man takes the life of any human being, he shall surely be put to death.
(Lev. 24:17 NAU)

Sometime after David committed these two sins, the prophet Nathan confronts David as guilty of murder and adultery, and David admits his guilt;  the problem being that Nathan then says God has taken away David's sin, meaning, God has exempted David himself from the otherwise deserved mandatory "punishment" of death for these crimes:

 7 Nathan then said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.
 8 'I also gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!
 9 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:7-15 NAU)

Of course, Turek will pounce on the fact that God struck David's baby and made it sick and eventually killed it (i.e., God caused the child to be sick for 7 days before killing it, otherwise known as unnecessary torture of babies)

 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)

But even assuming torturing the baby should be seen as "punishing" David himself, God has exempted David from an otherwise twice-richly deserved and mandatory death penalty, apparently through no other mechanism than God's choice to decree it so.

Turek's error is in thinking systematic theology is the key to apologetics.  Sorry, Turek, but most of the people in your audience are not inerrantists.  You will get nothing but yawns of disapproval when you start in with that 

the-book-of-Hebrews-says-Jesus'-sacrifice-reached-

back-into-the-OT-sins-and-atoned-for-these-too

  shit.  If you could just admit that you do your apologetics stuff more to sell books to people who already believe everything you believe, and less to convince non-Christians, it would clear up a few questions about your motives.  If you wish to employ arguments that leave bible critics and atheists "without excuse", you need to either stop pretending the bible is the end of the argument when you debate them, or first establish the bible's theological reliability before you flood them with all of your classical theist assumptions that many Christians don't even accept.

Turek's belief that God cannot allow sin to go unpunished also contradicts the teaching in the book of Revelation that after judgment day, God will forever encourage the unredeemed sinners living outside the holy city to continue sinning:

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

And you never knew that God instructed pedophiles to forever continue molesting children until just now, amen?

How can it make sense to refer to God as infinitely righteous (as Turek routinely does), if God sometimes gets to the point of encouraging pedophiles to continue practicing their filthy sins?  Righteousness that is "infinite" would NEVER tell sinners to continue sinning, would it?

If it would, how can infinite righteousness be meaningfully distinguished from finite righteousness?  The mere use of the word "infinite" doesn't resolve the philosophical problem.  Yet Turek is a master at getting people to think clever twists of words constitute some type of eternal vindication of biblical theology.

Finally, that God can allow sin to go unpunished is clear from that drug-induced hallucination recorded for us in Isaiah 6:

 1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
 3 And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory."
 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
 5 Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven."
 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"    (Isa. 6:1-8 NAU)

 Even assuming this is supposed to mean Isaiah's sin was "atoned" for, that is irrelevant.  Turek said God cannot allow sin to go unpunished.

Isaiah admitted his sinfulness (v. 5)...and Isaiah's sins were subsequently taken away by a bizarre flying creature touching Isaiah's lips with a hot coal from heaven's stove.

Ok...so since God allegedly cannot allow sin to go unpunished, then who was punished for Isaiah's sin here?

The stove?


--------------------Update:

Here's a screenshot of my cross-posting my response here to Turek's YouTube video for this:

Cold Case Christianity: Peter's association with Mark creates more problems than it solves

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is Mark’s Gospel an Early Memoir of the Apostle Peter?

Posted: 25 Jul 2018 01:19 AM PDT

The authorship of the Gospels is a matter of considerable debate amongst skeptics and critics of the New Testament canon.

Mark’s Gospel is an early record of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, but Mark isn’t mentioned as an eyewitness in any of the Gospel accounts. How did Mark get his information about Jesus? There are several historical clues:

 But those clues only create problems for you and the other Christian apologists who deny that Mark was the author of the resurrection appearance narrative or "longer ending" in 16:9-20. Mark would have ended at 16:8 which means whatever Peter told him, did not include stories about Jesus appearing to Peter, so the earliest gospel, lacking a resurrection appearance narrative, strongly suggests that the resurrection appearance narratives that appear in the later gospels are the result of embellishment.

You will say Mark surely said something specific in his original ending about the disciples experiencing the risen Christ, but you have no evidence to suggest that Mark's original ending said anything more than that the disciples saw Jesus in Galilee.  You can't really say why a simplistic generalized assertion like this would be considered sufficient by Mark to end his gospel.

But I have a good reason to suppose Mark's original didn't go beyond 16:8.

First, the basic rule of thumb in textual criticism is that the shorter ending is to be preferred because scribal additions almost always end up being expansions.  So the very fact that Mark ending at 16:8 doesn't seem like a fitting ending to a gospel, becomes a reason to accept v. 8 as the end of Mark's own contributions.

Second, Matthew attributes no more than 15 seconds worth of speech to the risen Christ and doesn't even mention his alleged Ascension, a silence we wouldn't expect if Matthew wrote this and, as Acts 1 says, was with the other apostles as they watched Jesus float into the clouds.  It is highly unlikely that Matthew's copy of Mark contained the "long ending", or if it did, that Matthew would have "chosen to exclude" all of it, indeed, he doesn't even quote the words of Jesus that Mark gives.  The words of the risen Jesus in Matthew are unique to Matthew, in spite of some thematic similarities with things to be found in Mark's long ending.

Papias said Mark scribed Peter’s teachings

Bishop Papias of Hierapolis (60-130AD) repeated the testimony of the old presbyters (disciples of the Apostles) who claimed Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome as he scribed the preaching of Peter (Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 15, Book 3 Chapter 30 and Book 6 Chapter 14). Papias wrote a five volume work entitled, “Interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord”. In this treatise (which no longer exists), he quoted someone he identified as ‘the elder’, (most likely John the elder), a man who held considerable authority in Asia:

“And the elder used to say this, Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.”

 Why aren't you telling the reader about Papias' credibility problems?

Irenaeus said Mark wrote his Gospel from Peter’s teaching

In his book, “Against Heresies” (Book 3 Chapter 1), Irenaeus (130-200AD) also reported Mark penned his Gospel as a scribe for Peter, adding the following detail:

“Matthew composed his gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel in Rome and founded the community. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed on his preaching to us in written form”

Justin identified Mark’s Gospel with Peter

Early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, wrote “Dialogue with Trypho” (approximately 150AD) and included this interesting passage:

“It is said that he [Jesus] changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and it is written in his memoirs that he changed the names of others, two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’….”

Justin, therefore, identified a particular Gospel as the ‘memoir’ of Peter and said this memoir described the sons of Zebedee as the ‘sons of thunder’. Only Mark’s Gospel describes John and James in this way, so it is reasonable to assume that the Gospel of Mark is the memoir of Peter.

 But that does precisely nothing to intellectually obligate skeptics to believe one certain way about Mark's honesty.  

Clement said Mark recorded Peter’s Roman preaching

Clement of Alexandria (150-215AD) wrote a book entitled “Hypotyposeis” (Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 15). In this ancient book, Clement refers to a tradition handed down from the “elders from the beginning”:

“And so great a joy of light shone upon the minds of the hearers of Peter that they were not satisfied with merely a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, who was a follower of Peter and whose gospel is extant, to leave behind with them in writing a record of the teaching passed on to them orally; and they did not cease until they had prevailed upon the man and so became responsible for the Scripture for reading in the churches.”

Eusebius also wrote an additional detail (Ecclesiastical History Book 6 Chapter 14) related to Mark’s work with Peter:

“The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.”

 Peter didn't directly encourage it?  How's that for apostolic approval of Mark's gospel?

This additional piece of information related to Peter’s reaction to Mark’s work is important, because it demonstrates that Clement is not simply repeating the information first established by Papias, but seems to have an additional source that provided him with something more, and something slightly different than Papias.

Or Clement is imperfectly conflating the Papias tradition with other traditions.

Tertullian affirmed Peter’s influence on the Gospel of Mark

Early Christian theologian and apologist, Tertullian (160-225AD), wrote a book that refuted the theology and authority of Marcion. The book was appropriately called, “Against Marcion” and in Book 4 Chapter 5, he described the Gospel of Mark:

“While that [gospel] which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was.”

The Muratorian Fragment confirmed Mark’s relationship to Peter

The Muratorian Fragment is the oldest known list of New Testament books. Commonly dated to approximately 170AD, the first line reads:

“But he was present among them, and so he put [the facts down in his Gospel]”

This appears to be a reference to Mark’s presence at Peter’s talks and sermons in Rome, and the fact that he then recorded these messages then became the Gospel of Mark.

Origen attributed Mark’s Gospel to Peter

Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History Book 6 Chapter 25) quoted a Gospel Commentary written by Origen (an early church father and theologian who lived 185-254AD) that explains the origin of the Gospels. This commentary also attributes the Gospel of Mark to Peter:

“In his first book on Matthew’s Gospel, maintaining the Canon of the Church, he testifies that he knows only four Gospels, writing as follows: Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language. The second is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, ‘The church that is at Babylon elected together with you, salutes you, and so does Marcus, my son.’ 1 Peter 5:13 And the third by Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, and composed for Gentile converts. Last of all that by John.”

An Anti-Marcionite Prologue affirmed Peter’s connection to Mark

There are three Gospel ‘prologues’ that appear in many Latin Bibles from antiquity. Known as the “Anti-Marcionite Prologues”, they date to the 4th century or earlier. The prologue for the Gospel of Mark is particularly interesting:

“Mark declared, who is called ‘stump-fingered,’ because he had rather small fingers in comparison with the stature of the rest of his body. He was the interpreter of Peter. After the death of Peter himself he wrote down this same gospel in the regions of Italy.”

Now, it can be argued that Papias’ description of Mark’s collaboration with Peter in Rome is the earliest description available to us. In fact, skeptics have tried to argue that later Church sources are simply parroting Papias when they connect Mark to Peter. But there is no evidence to suggest that Papias is the sole source of information related to Peter and Mark, particularly when considering the slight variations in the subsequent attributions (such as Clement’s version). The subtle differences suggest that the claims came from different original sources.

 It also suggests they were relating the Papias tradition by imperfect memory which imperfectly conflated Papias with other rumors about the same subject matter.

In addition, Justin Martyr’s tangential reference to the ‘sons of thunder’ strengthens the support for Peter’s involvement coming from a source other than Papias (who never makes this connection). In essence, a claim of dependency on Papias lacks specific evidence, and even if this were the case, there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Papias’ original claim in the first place. The consistent record of history identifies Mark’s Gospel as a memoir of Peter’s life with Jesus.

 Congratulations.  Mark was authored by a person who had a known history for abandoning the mission field to such an extent that the inerrant apostle Paul found him counterproductive for future ministry work:

 36 After some days Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are."
 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, called Mark, along with them also.
 38 But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.
 39 And there occurred such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another, and Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.
 40 But Paul chose Silas and left, being committed by the brethren to the grace of the Lord.
 (Acts 15:36-40 NAU)

You don't know what motivated Paul and Peter to employ Mark's services later, and the motive could be that Mark needed money, or had connections to other players, just as easily as the motive could be that Mark proved himself worthy of being a ministry partner.  

But we can know with relative certainty that, under the fundamentalist assumptions about Paul's inerrancy,  if Paul really did draw such extremely negative conclusions from Mark's prior abandonment of the ministry, as Acts 15 says, supra, Paul must have had good reasons for thinking Mark's problems were far more serious than just a passing case of inexcusable laziness.  So if Paul employed Mark's services after that point, it is by no means established that Paul must have felt Mark re-qualified as an authentically born again Christian with good potential as a ministry partner.  Mark lived in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12) so Paul would have found a guy like Mark sporadically useful to ministry even if Mark wasn't himself fully qualified for the job.

And even according to Eusebius, Mark was not inclined to write a gospel, he only did this by being repeatedly requested to do so by a church.  This suggests that whatever Mark believed at the time, he didn't see how a written gospel could benefit the early church...or he simply didn't give a shit about church needs until he gave in to relentless pestering by the church. These two hypotheses are reasonable, and do equal violence to the fantasy Sunday School ideas your readers have about Mark happily going about authoring a gospel.  These hypotheses make it unreasonable to think Mark was inspired by God to write a gospel.

The problems raised by Mark's association with a gospel and with Peter are sufficiently severe as to justify the average unbeliever, who doesn't have much bible-knonwledge, to deem work, school, kids, meals, and cleaning out the garage far higher of a priority than googling the reasons why scholars disagree with fundamentalists on Mark's authorship.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's shockingly unpersuasive case for objective morals

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

God Didn’t Create Moral Law, It’s Simply a Reflection of His Character

Posted: 18 Jul 2018 01:52 AM PDT

Moral truths are malleable and subjective if they aren’t grounded in a transcendent source (such as God).

That's highly misleading.  Read Isaiah 13:16-17 and you'll find out that God sometimes causes men to rape women, forcing you to conclude either that God's own morals are malleable, or that rape can be good in certain circumstances.  In the below-quoted section from Isaiah 13, God is the alleged speaker:

 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children. (Isa. 13:16-18 NAU)

Go ahead:  read the whole chapter, then come back here and tell me who the speaker was in v. 16-17.  Wallace continues:

I’m not the only person to realize this; even honest atheists recognize the inconsistency of embracing objective moral truths while simultaneously rejecting the one reasonable source for such truths. In a recent exchange with an atheist who is frustrated with his peers, I received the following email:

“It’s the rare atheist who will honestly admit what their world view would wreak, taken to its logical conclusion. To know that you are simply an accidental conglomeration of chemicals at the same time that such a thing as morals even exist is oxymoronic statement and yet I hear it all the time from fellow atheists.  …Be consistent. Acknowledge that the Universe is an uncaused accident, ethics is an illusion, and act accordingly. Or acknowledge the possibility of another possibility.  Stop trying to have it both ways.  Can you be an ethical atheist?  Yes.  But you won’t be a logical one.”

 Fuck you, Wallace.  That "atheist" was either Frank Turek, or one of his dishonest followers pretending to be an atheist.  Or it was just you, dishonestly crediting your faulty viewpint to a non-existent atheist.

Only a stupid Christian apologist would say that morals cannot exist in a godless universe.  For life forms to survive, they need to act upon value judgments, whether to fight or flee, whether to attack or back off, etc, etc. You don't think insects are created in God's image, yet you are quite aware that they are capable of distinguishing, imperfectly, situations of danger from situations of benefit, and to make decisions as to whether to act or not act in given situations.

The truth is that "morals" are simply the value judgments that most creatures make in their environment. 

And since "morals" include value judgments most people would think are immoral, such as rape, it is clear that morals, being a normative part of mammalian life, obviously exist, since living human beings who survive from day to day, obviously exist. 

Whether atheists can reasonably view their own subjective morals as "better" than other atheist morals, is a different question.  But yes, it's possible, and it happens every day.  The wrongness of rape is felt by most people (most of the world is civilized) and has nothing to do with "god", but has everything to do with our subjective value judgments about respecting boundaries, allowing women to have free choice, and our collective decision to govern ourselves by the laws set down by our representatives and legislators.  Wallace, you cannot really say you'd think adult men marrying pre-adolescent girls is "immoral" if you had been born and raised in a 16th century Yemeni family.

Your bible is full of morals set down by your 'god' that most Christians today would cringe at, such as the need to burn to death the girl who, while still living in her fathers house, acts as a prostitute, Leviticus 21:9.  Gee, why didn't god put that law into our hearts?  Did he just decide by flipping a coin? Casting lots?

That’s an amazingly honest statement from an atheistic perspective.

 No, it is unsurprisingly dishonest...or else it comes from a rather stupid atheist. There is no requirement that ethics be absolute or objective in order to be "ethics".  It is a moral decision whether a Christian man wishes to give in to his Christian wife's request to have sex.  But what fool would pretend that this is governed by an objective or absolute standard?  It doesn't matter if they have a biblical duty toward each other regarding sex, sometimes, one of them just isn't in the mood, and nothing but the passing of time can change this. 

Will you say their sexual obligation toward one another under 1st Corinthians 7:3-4 requires that the man attempt sexual intercourse at the request of his wife, even if he cannot get an erection?  Well then, unless you stupidly answer that question "yes", then you admit that this sexual situation is a) implicating ethical and moral concerns, yet b) is not governed by any absolute or objective standard.  So even in that pretend fantasy world of bible inerrancy and Christian marriage, the fact that some ultimately subjective morals exist, is clear.

The writer seems to be struggling with the same realizations I recognized as I journeyed from atheism to theism:

Objective moral truths are self-evident

 You mean like how shockingly stupid it is to burn a girl to death for prostitution (Leviticus 21:9)?  Why do modern people cringe at this, Wallace?  Because God put his laws into their hearts?  or because they were born and raised in cultures far more liberal than the one Moses lived in?

Moral truths are not encoded in our DNA

But the need to survive IS encoded in the DNA, that's why a person cannot avoid feeling hungry, thirsty, and wanted by the other members of their social group, with variations for those afflicted with more herd-metality, and for those more afflicted with a sociopathic disorder.  So the instinctive need to survive, and being born into this modern civilized world, results in the obvious: that person growing up to exhibit certain moral patterns and preferences.  This fully explains why people have "morals", no need to invoke a moral law-giver.  When I say Hitler was immoral, I only mean according to my subjective judgment.  Neither Turek nor you can say for sure whether or not you'd have become a Nazi had you been born in 1910 in Germany.  The culture really does have a very powerful impact on the morals one has.

Moral truths are not simply a matter of cultural agreement

Then our horror at the thought of burning a girl to death for prostitution (i.e., our horror at Leviticus 21:9) doesn't stem from the culture we were born and raised in.  Where then, did our disdain for this biblical moral ultimately come from?  The same god who ordered this grisly form of death?

Moral truths are not simply driven by “human flourishing”

Then blame your stupid god for making the human sex drive so strong, something he obviously didn't need to do to keep their freewill intact.  God could just magically afflict all post-adolescent boys with low sex drive and erectile dysfunction, to the same degree that many men over the age of 60 are afflicted with, whom you think have just as much freewill as teen boys, and the world be one hell of a lot less sinful that it currently is.  

Moral truths are not dictated by a common concern for our species

On the contrary "moral truths" are ultimately relative.  Whether the single guy living alone should or shouldn't invite his girlfriend over for a fling is up to nobody but himself and his girlfriend and whoever they choose to involve in the matter.

There is a difference between moral utility and moral creation

So what?

Theism provides, at the very least, sufficient “grounding” for the objective moral laws we willingly affirm with our words (or unwillingly reveal with our lives). I’ve encountered a number of skeptics who object to such a claim, however. One objection is named after one of Plato’s dialogues (the Euthyphro). Skeptics who hold this objection make the following claim: If God is the source of morality and decides what is “right” or “wrong,” the relationship between God and moral truth can be described in one of only two ways, and both of these possibilities are problematic:

An act is wrong because God condemns the act

If this is the case, morality is largely an arbitrary decision in the mind of God. In such a world, torturing babies for fun is not objectively wrong, but merely a decision God makes (when He could easily have decided otherwise). Would we be willing to accept baby torturing as morally virtuous if God had proclaimed it differently? Is morality “elastic” and merely an arbitrary decision? If your theology allows for a view of God in which He changes His mind (and revelation) given current conditions (like the God of Mormonism who altered His view of polygamy), how do we know if something is truly wrong or simply currently wrong?

God condemns an act because the act is wrong

One way to avoid such a capricious view of moral law is to argue moral truth is simply recognized and affirmed by God. This also problematic, however, because it suggests moral truth precedes (and even supersedes) God. In this view, God is not the necessary, objective source of moral truth, but is instead incidental to this truth (much like you and I). Why should we consider what God says at all if this is the case? If moral truth is the one true eternal reality, doesn’t it trump God?

If these are the only two ways to explain the relationship between God and morality, theists seem no better able to account for the objective nature of moral truth than atheists. There is however, a third alternative:

Moral truth is a reflection of God’s nature

 The only problem being that Christians themselves disagree about morals, everything from whether pregnancy by rape is a justification for abortion, to death with dignity, to whether Christians should involve themselves in worldly politics, to the death penalty, etc, etc.  Your belief that moral truths reflect God's nature does no practical real-world good for anybody, due to the pool of moral contradiction Christianity sinks itself deeper into with each passing decade. 

For example, it hardly matters whether God thinks abortion is absolutely prohibited for all situations.  That "truth" is not going to prevent the Christians who disagree with it, from exercising their common sense and deciding that a greater good can be done by allowing abortion for cases of rape, threat to the mother's life, and incest.

Philosophizing about how objective moral truths spring from God's nature, doesn't do jack shit toward getting those authentically born again Christians to become any less divided on morals than they are.  You may as well try to mend church splits by flying kites, you'd have better chances of success.

From a Christian worldview, God doesn’t simply tell us what is righteous, He is righteous.

 All you are doing now is bellowing.  Your God caused men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16-17.  To continue insisting God is righteous, while reading what God says about himself in Isaiah 13, is to blindly adhere to a pie-in-the-sky doctrine more than to anchor oneself to reality. 

And you cannot screw this up by pretending it is legitimate at this point to ask me, an atheist, why I am morally objecting to the rapes caused by the bible god.  YOU believe that God always condemns rape and YOU believe God is the reason that rape is objectively or absolutely immoral, so God's causing rape in Isaiah 13:16-17, constitutes a logical contradiction in God's morality (i.e., rape is absolutely wrong at all times for all people....but but but...wait...when God causes rape, then suddenly, its morally good), a problem of logical inconsistency that exists independent of my own moral opinions.  If your god is as against rape as you think he is, his nature would never allow him to cause it.

Goodness and righteousness are attributes of his innate character.

 Then because God cannot do anything evil, and all his actions are infinitely good by necessity, his action of causing men to rape women in Isaiah 13, supra, was good.

This is the part where you display to the world your overpowering mental abilities by trifling that God is morally good to "cause" rape, but the men whom he causes to commit rape, are still immoral for fulfilling his will.  Read Ezekiel 38:4 ff before you pop off about how God respects human freewill.  God would hardly illustrate his soverignty over man's freewill with the metaphor of "hooks in your jaws", as he does in Ezekiel 38:4 ff, if god respected freewill to the extreme degree that you and Turek think he does.  Under your theology, Ezekiel's choice of metaphor constitutes heresy, because it makes it appear that God "forces" people to sin, then blames them after they do what he wants them to do.

While it’s tempting to think there isn’t anything God couldn’t do, this is not the case. God cannot act or command outside of his character.

Which is a totally useless philosophical nothing, since God allows every kind of evil to happen to his alleged "loved" ones, so that god's alleged inability to act contrary to his character provides no actual real-world sense of security for anybody ever.  Your god might distract the arsonist from setting fire to your home.  But then again, he also might not tell you the babysitter is raping your daughter, and will allow it to continue until you discover it when you get home an hour later.  God's alleged inability to contradict his nature constitutes nothing but sophistry and illusion.

He is innately logical and moral; it is impossible for Him to create square circles or married bachelors, just as it is impossible for Him to sin.

But since furniture movers are constantly making boxes too big for them to lift, and since nothing in the bible says overfilling a box is sinful, then doing this is neither sinful nor logically impossible.  Therefore there is nothing illogical or immoral in challenging God to make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it.   Maybe someday you'll discover that the purpose of the question is to show the illogical nature of omnipotence.    as

And the idea that God cannot sin, is equally useless babble:  God's inability to contradict his own nature is nothing more special than a man's inability to contradict his own nature.  So stop pretending that God's inability to sin is some overawing thing, it's about as wonderful as a man being unable to give birth.

Objective moral truths are simply a reflection of God’s eternal being.

 But you haven't demonstrated that any moral act is objectively bad.  How about you do something no other Christian philosopher has ever done, and quit beating around the bush and identify the moral yardstick you are using when you say it is objectively immoral to torture babies to death solely for entertainment?

Or is your argument for this so weak that it cannot convince anybody except those who already accept it as true?

They are not rules or laws God has created (and could therefore alter recklessly), but are instead immutable, dependable qualities of his nature reflected in our universe.

So name one already.  Do you say adultery is objectively immoral?  If so, why?  Because the bible tells you so?  Some other reason?  If you are going to do what Frank Turek does, and wiggle away from the yucky parts of the Mosaic law by pretending it was intended only for ancient Israel, how do you know that some parts of it continue to apply outside that cultural context?  You seriously think you'll sound convincing to an atheist by quoting the apostle Paul? 

Or maybe I have an objective moral duty to get my Ph.d in Christian reconstructionism and dispensationalism before I could be morally justified to render a decision about these matters?

They exist because God exists (not because God created them or recognized them later).

 But part of God's nature also tells the filthy people in the last days to continue being filthy, which amounts to telling child molesters to keep on molesting:

 11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy." (Rev. 22:11 NAU)

Gee, Wallace....are we living in the "last days", or did you suddenly discover that you were "left behind"? Infinite moral goodness doesn't sound like it leaves any logically possible room to encourage sinners in any context to continue in their moral filth.

The Bible describes God as omnipotent and capable of doing anything he sets out to do.

Only by trial and error, after he makes a few decisions that he later regrets. Genesis 6:6-7.  Since you must justify your interpretation by the grammar, context and genre, there's plenty here to indicate this passage is literal, and there is nothing here to suggest the passage is merely "anthropomorphic".  And since the bible isn't the inerrant word of God anyway, your knee-jerk insistence that passages like these are mere anthropomorphisms, is not justified.  You never insist that we cannot know what any other author meant with his words until we compare them to everything else he ever said, so when you pretend that we cannot be sure we understand Genesis 6:6 correctly until we harmonize it with everything else in the bible, that's a case of special pleading, which proceeds from a belief in biblical inerrancy, a doctrine most Christian scholars reject, a doctrine that those Christian scholars who accept it cannot even agree on.  So when I toss your "anthropomorphism" interpretation of that passage out the window, I have objective grounds for doing so.  The passage continues to loom against your childish belief that God is "perfect".  Just ask any open-theist.  Those Christians have been challenging classical theism for decades.

God’s choices, however, are always consistent with His moral and logical nature; He never sets out to do something contrary to who He is as God.

 Which is useless sophistry again, since again, in Isaiah 13, God causes men to rape women and beat children to death.  You would hardly take comfort in any 'friend' whom you knew might one day help you change a flat tire, and the next day set your house on fire.  No blind presumption that this friend is always good, could possibly give you any real-world sense of security in fellowshipping with him.  Nothing could be a greater waste of time than Theistic Philosophy.  You may as well go around pushing the idea that the Bermuda Triangle is a gateway to another dimension, it would have about as much real-world relevance to a person's sense of fulfillment and security in life, as any discussion about God's mysterious ways.

Theism is still the most reasonable explanation for the objective moral truths all of us either affirm or reflect with our lives.

 Not in light of all those conservative Christians who disagree on matters of abortion, death pentalty, minimum age for sex/marriage, whether Christians should become involved in non-Christian politics, etc, etc. 

But under your logic, at least one side in those contradictory moral disputes must be wrong, yet we'd both cordially assume both parties in each disagreement are sincerely believing that God is working through them. How can your pushing the moral argument against atheism have any real-world significance?

When skeptics argue against a transcendent God, yet acknowledge transcendent moral truths, they are acting inconsistently, given their worldview.

 That's true.  Consistent atheism doesn't say morals don't exist, they obviously do exist.  Consistent atheism says all morals are ultimately relative to culture and situation.

They are borrowing from theism as they make a case against it.

 And this sounds so much like Frank Turek's book title "Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case" that it virtually confirms that the "atheist" you "quoted" at the beginning of this article was just Turek himself or one of his cronies pretending to be an atheist. 

I think this is the part where you trifle that God will say dishonesty is good in the limited context of the internet and the need to sell Jesus for tax-free profit.  And you'd have ample biblical support for the proposition that God authorizies dishonesty the way a mob boss authorizes murder:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)