An atheist kills mind-body dualism

This is my reply to an article by Peter Saunders entitled

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

PETER SAUNDERS

CMF FILE NO 18, 2002

Are the mind and the body separate entities, or one and the same thing?

They are one thing.  There is no such thing as "immaterial" or "non-physical" in the sense of real existence that is other than physical.  That's just the result of a toddler smooshing different parts of words together to come up with fun entertaining nonsense.

If they are separate, how do they relate?

See above.

If they are one 'substance', is this substance mental or purely physical in nature?

 False distinction, the mental is nothing BUT physical.  That's why wthen the physical starts eroding away (i.e., Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases), so do those things you think are "mental", like memories and thoughts.  Not a whole lot different than what happens when computer drives get old and start losing memory.  It's all physical, even if you cannot see the electrons involved in the process of decay.

The 'mind-body problem', the difficulty of understanding how mind and body (or brain) relate, has fascinated philosophers for centuries and has profound implications for how we think about and treat other human beings. This File introduces some key aspects of the debate.

Stories of out of body experiences, beliefs in life after death, or diseases affecting the brain all raise questions about whether our minds and our bodies are separate entities that have the ability to exist independently.

Out of body experiences can occur under the influence of drugs, as part of religious experience, or close to death. During an out of body experience the person has the impression that their mind (or soul) is somehow leaving their physical body. Some people believe that these experiences are just 'a trick of the mind', but others see them as evidence that the body and mind really can exist independently.

The latter are delusional.  2,000 years of Christian history and scholasticism, and yet nobody has been able to demonstrate that intelligence can exist apart from a physical body.   Except perhaps the fool fundies who insist that certain reports of demon possession are true.

Belief in life after death is common in many religious and cultural traditions.

Grieving over the death of a loved one creates an extreme state of mind that is more prone than normal to think up ways to ease the pain, such as by conjuring up theories that death isn't the real end of this person.  Notice also that a refusal to believe our existence ends at death forever, can be linked to pride and vanity, not mere comfort.

Some people, particularly in the Western world, believe that death is the end of existence. Others believe that we continue to live after our body has died, either as dismembered spirits, or to be 're-clothed' with a new body, either reincarnated in this world or resurrected into a new world.

And Christians cannot even agree on whether the bible teaches that the person continues to exist in the "spirit" after their body dies.  Compare Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists, with traditional Protestantism and Catholicism.

Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease are two examples of diseases affecting the mind where only the 'shell' of the original person appears to be left. Relatives and carers are left caring for those who appear utterly different from the people they once knew and loved. What actually happens when the mind goes?

Nothing much different than when a computer hard drive goes.  The drive ages, the physical stuff the memories are planted in starts to erode, and presto, you lose data. Sure, the human mind is more complex than a computer hard drive, but the analogy is still useful even if not exhaustively infallible.

Mind and matter

The 'mind-body problem' centres on whether the mind and the body are separate things or one and the same. There are two main competing theories, dualism and monism.

(snip) .

Questioning materialism

Of course these various views of how mind and body relate cannot all be equally correct. In fact, some are mutually exclusive. So which view best explains the diversity of 'physical' and 'mental' phenomena that we experience in the world about us? The answer has eluded some of the greatest minds in history, but we can start by assessing the predominant world view in Western society, before bringing a Christian perspective to bear on the issue.

Materialism has been criticised because it fails to explain everything and it has unfortunate implications for the way we treat human beings.

 Failure to explain "everything" is a defect plaguing any theory any human being ever had, simply because of the imperfection of knowledge.  You cannot condemn the physicalist denial of mind-body dualism on this score unless you condemn every theory anybody ever had about anything.

Second, physicalism doesn't have unfortunate implications for the way we treat human beings...unless you are a bleeding heart liberal.  Think about how the terrible wars and plagues of the centuries past contribute to why your town is currently not horrifically overpopulated, before you pretend that massive human death is always a bad thing.  Looked at from a long-term perspective, apparently this is something that prevents us today from having to stand in line at the store for 6 hours just to buy toothpaste.  Imagine how much more populated our towns would be if nobody in history ever died from anything other than old age.  The more you like the non-overpopulated status of your town, the more you approve of the past centuries of warfare and disease that wiped out hundreds of millions.  Nobody ever said you were consistent in your morality.  You're only human.

Explanatory power

Materialists have difficulty explaining how their theory can account for such psychological phenomena as desires, intentions, sensory experiences, thoughts and beliefs.

Then you must think bugs and reptiles have an immaterial nature, since its obvious that they too have desires, intentions, sensory experiences, thoughts and beliefs, even if on their level such things are not quite as complex as with us.  But since it is clear that the level of complexity increases as you move up the food chain, it makes reasonably good sense to say that humans are going to have the most complex basis for beliefs and intentions, but regardless, there's no reason to insist that our not having figured out every mystery of human consciousness somehow leaves the door open for our real self to originate in another dimension.  The sheer stupidity of the religious explanation (another dimension!?) would help promote the physicalist theory as having more explanatory power and scope.

Most of us believe that we have freedom to make choices, and that the 'I' that chooses somehow stands outside the chain of cause and effect.

 That popular view of freewill is obviously wrong.  Getting drunk means physical alcohol has affected a physical brain.  Since people who are drunk make freewill decisions differently than they do when sober, it is perfectly clear that whatever the "will" is, it is a physical thing that can be affected by physical things no less than a hammer can affect a nail.  Otherwise you wind up with stupid shit like "well maybe the will isn't affected by physical things but only seems to because it has to come into this dimension through a brain soaked in physical alcohol?"

Then I suggest you force a dog to drink one shot of whiskey.  When the dog starts wandering around aimlessly and seems "chill" and  less interested in life than he normally is, tell yourself that maybe it's just his spirit coming into this world from another dimension through the interface of an alcohol-soaked brain.  And if your bible told you that dogs have immaterial spirits, then yes, you'd be quick to pretend that such a theory is "obvious" and in no way refuted by the fact that physical things can cause the will to act differently than it normally does.

If not, our choices are determined as Skinner and Ryle, two influential twentieth century writers, believed. But, if we have no option when faced with a choice, surely it was never a choice in the first place?

Yes, and I'm not going to shove this scientific hypothesis under the rug merely because it would seem unfair to punish people who could not have chosen otherwise...it may very well be, and likely is, that America's ideas about justice and civil government arose from concepts having more to do with blind religion than confirmed scientific fact.  I don't toss science out the window merely because it would force us to say our national sense of justice was founded upon a false theory of the mind.  Maybe we need to change so our theories about justice are in closer alignment with scientific truth.  Either way, it doesn't follow that it is unjust to punish people who cannot help the way they act.  Rabid put bulls cannot help the way they act when mauling children, but you probably don't give a fuck about trifles of justice when using a chainsaw to protect your children from jaws of lesser life-forms.

Most of us naturally believe that there is actually an 'I' that feels and is conscious - an 'I' that knows guilt, pleasure and pain.

 That would seem true of the higher order mammals.  Do you suppose their true "selves" only come into their brain from another dimension?  Or does the bible forbid you from saying the animals were made in God's image?  Just so you know, your feeling constrained to interpret reality so that it conveniently always harmonizes with and never contradicts the bible, causes my atheist self to wake up in the middle of the night all scared.  And when Mormons preach at me, I look for dust, ashes, and an opportunity to repent and talk about how good it would be if another man was grinding my wife doggy style (Job 31:10).

These sensations are of course accompanied by electric signals in the brain that can be measured, and body and facial movements that can be observed.

The same is true for most of the higher-order living things.  Do they have spirits that survive physical death?  Or does the little white lie "all dogs go to heaven" achieve a higher good in your life if you "just" allow your little girl to believe it when Fido is found dead in the backyard?

But while we can measure and observe signals and movements, we can never know another person's private subjective experience.

 You also cannot ever know what a bug is thinking.  That hardly argues that the bug's true "self" is spiritual.

Even if we can deduce what they are feeling we will never experience it ourselves, in the way that they do. Similarly, although we can perceive our own bodies (see, touch and feel them) that is quite different from seeing and touching through them.

In the same way, you may be aware that others exist by reading their thoughts as they appear on paper or on a screen, but having their thoughts is something unique to them.

 You also cannot know for sure what a dog or cat is thinking.  Does this suggest cats and dogs have spirits?  Why not?  The bible says?  FUCK YOU.

I cannot experience your thoughts. Even if I am able with some technical device to know what you are thinking, that is quite different from actually experiencing your thoughts as you do.

We all have an intuitive sense that we are more than just bodies ruled by physical and chemical laws; more than just complex stimulus-response machines.

Sorry, but going off into what humans find "intuitive" is shaky territory, because human intuition obviously isn't presumably accurate enough to settle debates about reality, we have to search and probe and decide when hypotheses are more likely or less likely.

Yes, the concept that we are more than mere biological machines is popular, but then again, must of us were not raised by staunch atheists, nor did we learn in schools that forbid anything but scientifically demonstrable conclusions.  How we think goes back to how we were raised and the degree to which we found truth in our early education.  The fact that many atheists agree there's no ghost in the machine opens the door to the possibility that the contrary human intuition isn't quite the arbiter of truth you think it is.  Believing we are just molecules in motion is also consistent with one's innate sense of self.

There is something about materialism that doesn't quite ring true with our experience.

 If you are talking to people who were mostly raised in a generally religious society, yes.

This intuition could all be an illusion produced by brain biochemistry, but it could equally be true that there is some aspect of human existence which stands outside simple cause and effect, that human beings are in some sense 'supernatural'.

Sorry, but you cannot demonstrate the existence of such a thing as "outside simple cause and effect", therefore any notion of nature that is "super" or "beyond nature" is incoherent (i.e., can be dismissed immediately without further consideration).

We already know that in the natural world things exist beyond our immediate perceptions, but within the perceptions of other species. For example dogs can hear high pitch sounds that are inaudible to humans, and birds can see colours we can't. Could it be that 'mind' is something that human beings will never be able to measure or fully.

 Yes, but that doesn't mean what remains unknown is something incoherent such as the immaterial or non-physical.  The higher pitch only cats can hear is still physical.  The subtle distinctions of colors birds sense better than we can, are still physical.  First come up with a confirmed case of the existence of any non-physical or immaterial thing, then I'll be intellectually obligated to place your ghost-in-the-machine theory upon the table of logical possibilities.   But not before.

 Snip

But there is also a deeper logical problem with materialism. If we believe in a closed universe, where nothing but matter exists, then the human mind, by implication, becomes part of that closed cause and effect system. This leaves us having to believe that all our thoughts, including our belief in materialism, are simply determined by physics and biochemistry. But if we are simply determined to think that materialism is true, then how can we be sure that it really is true?

 I believe the question is illegitimate in that it automatically assumes that truth can only be correctly detected by an agent whose will is free from the laws of physics, itself a rather stupid theory.

Calculators don't have freewill, yet they manage to achieve mathematically correct conclusions to the problems you input.  We obviously discern that bugs are capable of correctly determining reality sufficiently to survive, even if not infallibly so.   Unless you wish to pretend that bugs must have an immaterial aspect to their nature because they can correctly discern reality (you won't because the bible doesn't tell you any such thing), then apparently the bug-analogy destroys your argument.  Being predetermined in our thinking does indeed open the door to our possibly being wrong, and indeed we are wrong plenty of times about reality, but you are incorrect to pretend that such predeterminism casts all hope of correct perception out the window.  There is nothing about being subject to the laws of physics that throws all of our knowledge into a state of perpectual uncertainty.

If we wish to retain any claim to objective knowledge, we must accept that the human mind has some independence from nature. But that would deny materialism!

Nope.  You deny that bacteria consist of anything more than material physicality (i.e., they don't have a spirit that survives physical death), yet they obviously are capable of correctly discerning reality, or else the original bugs would have died off permanently thousands of years ago.  The question could be thrown back in your face with your own bible, which says God will send strong delusion to certain people (2nd Thess. 2:11)....Gee...how do you know you are correctly orthodox in your beliefs and that you aren't being deceived by this higher deluding influence?   Don't the heretics quote the bible to support their beliefs just as often as you do?  Gee, should we despair about your inability to be certain?

Basis for respect

Another problem with materialism is that, it has led to a tendency to judge a person's worth by how clever they are.

 Christians suffer the same imperfection, only the know-it-all apologists have the biggest audience.  The churches with the largest Sunday attendance are always those lead by a charismatic pastor who seems to know it all.  The churches who take a more scholarly approach to the bible have far less attendance.

This results in us having no real basis for treating brain-damaged human beings any differently from animals.

 No, because inherent in the materialist reality of human life is the mammalian reality that we bond with others in our group and thus experience trauma if they stop responding to us through brain injury or death.  Higher mammals mourn their dead in various ways, but you deny they have a spirit that survives physical death.

Bioethicist Peter Singer has put it quite starkly:

'Once the religious mumbojumbo surrounding the term human has been stripped away, we may continue to see 'normal' members of our species as possessing greater qualities of rationality, selfconsciousness, communication and so on than members of any others species, but we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each member of our species, no matter how limited its capacity for intelligent or even conscious life may be'.(3)

When the average person doesn't think they'll be quoted in the press, they usually DO want the pedophile to get beaten to death in main population, they usually don't want mentally retarded people to procreate, they usually don't give a job to the convicted felon on parole, they really don't like the idea of scores of minorities coming to live in their town....Fuck you...we live in a meritocracy where blind compassion is the exception, and harboring complete apathy to the misfits is the norm.

Based on this belief Singer has been an advocate for infanticide, euthanasia and placing animal rights alongside human rights.

Only emotion-based arguments could make an opposing view seem reasonable.

These attitudes may shock us, but they do follow naturally from the belief that human beings are 'less than persons' if they have lost, or never gained, reasonable mental faculties.

 I don't see the problem as anything bigger than modern society with its mistaking its emotional viewpoint with scientific reality.

The hard truth is that we really don't give a fuck about it when we hear on the news that some child in a far away country was killed in a robbery (or you cry a bit less about that than you would about your next-door neighbor's kid dying).  So the extent to which we care appears to be little more than emotion.   We also know that more we are exposed to shocking things, the less shocking they are, which is some of the reason why society today as utterly crazy compared to what existed in the 1930's.  You won't find many bleeding heart liberals working as prison guards.  America wouldn't be America if most of its people were seriously fair toward their fellow human beings in all ways.

Christian perspectives

The mind-body problem is complex. While Christians do not all agree on its solution, many take a dualist rather than a monist position. Christian researchers believe they are students both of the book of Nature (science) and the book of God (the Bible).

Then this is the precise point where your arguments lose whatever force they once had, and you start preaching the choir.  Atheists believe they are students of the book of macro-evolution.   Did that blast of education just knock you for a loop?  Hardly.

A Christian solution will be consistent with the science and also with the teaching of the Bible.

Which doesn't mean much given that the ambiguity of biblical statements has keep the church in doctrinal disarray for 2,000 years.  You may as well say that the true compassionate solution to sociatal problems will take into consideration all viewpoints.  That's true, but does precisely nothing to cause a real workable solution to emerge. You wholly impractical idealism is noted.

What light does the Bible have to shed on the nature of human beings, and hence the mind-body problem?

If the bible wasn't so fatally ambiguous about most of its subject matter, that might be a legitimate question to explore.

It tells us that human beings are godlike, complex, responsible and eternal - but also limited.

Godlike

God has a mind and yet doesn't need a body to act in the world.

 An incoherent concept.  First demonstrate any confirmed existence of intelligence apart from physicality, then the possibility you argue for here will remain upon the table of valid options.  Now what?  Your grandma heard a demon walking around in her kitchen, and she'd never lie about something like that?

Similarly, although human bodies are part of the natural world, human beings also have minds, which to some extent, transcend the natural order, and yet can affect what happens in it.

 Another incoherent idea:  nobody questions that physical object 1 can influence physical object 2, when but you assert that a non-physical something-or-other can also influence physical objects, you are talking about a scenario for which you don't have the least bit of persuasive evidence.  Worse, the concept doesn't even make sense.  By what mechanism does a non-physical thing cause a physical thing to move?  Telekinesis?

Being 'made in the image of God'(4) confers on us godlike qualities of creativity, rationality, personality, free will, selfawareness and consciousness and also gives us a special dignity, which deserves respect.(5)

 First, preaching the choir.  Second, the originally intended addressees of Genesis would likely have understood "image of God" as physical resemblance to god, despite later evolution in Judaism, reflected in the bible. But that involves something I might not wish to waste my time doing...pretending that the specific details of Genesis 2-4 are worthy of my time to trifle about.  Nope.  I decide when to bother with such bullshit, and today isn't that day.

Complex

The Bible describes man as consisting of spirit, soul and body.(6)

 And whether that means three parts or something else, has been dividing the trichotomists from the dichotomists for centuries.  Methinks you won't exactly be "cornering" me with anything.

But these components are not separate parts stuck together as in a 'lego kit'. Whilst Greek culture liked to separate spirit, soul and body, the Bible is strong in presenting human beings as a complex unity.

 A doctrine of unity you destroy as soon as you allege that the mind can continue conscience self-awareness after physical death.

Man was created by God to be a 'living being' composed both of the 'dust of the ground' and the 'breath of life'.(7) This tells us that we have both material and non-material aspects, but that they exist and belong together. Materialism, in contrast, tends to look for the simplest solution to issues.

 You have a bible.  We have Occam's Razor.  Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.

Accountable

The Bible teaches that human beings can make real decisions, and are accountable for them. We are not simply ruled by nature or fate.

 Then you don't know your own bible, which says some people aren't meaningfully distinguishable from brute animals:

 12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, (2 Pet. 2:12 NAU).

And how long should I study the in-house Christian debate on whether neanderthal man was or wasn't a full human being, before I know enough about it to justify drawing conclusions about which side got it right?

What if I die in a car wreck while on my way to the library to check out Christian apologetics books on the subject of the mind-body problem?  What should I be doing?  Considering the arguments of apologists? Or something more anti-intellectual like repenting and believing the gospel regardless of my level of knowledge?

This is why God can justifiably judge us. If we were just automatons and thereby the product of forces beyond our control, it would be unfair for God to hold us accountable for sin(8) (literally 'missing the mark'). This again implies that our minds are in some way outside the natural order.

 Then you don't know your bible.  Apostle Paul insisted that God's right to judge is entirely beyond any commentary or criticism man might make (Romans 9:20).   That is, your apostle Paul would not agree that our being freewilled creatures made in God's image is "why" God is just to judge us.  For Paul, the justness of God is not even open for commentary.  God would not be unjust to judge anybody under any circumstances whatsoever.  So quit pretending that God can have a sufficient "reason" for doing something.  It's incoherent.

Eternal

Our bodies die and yet the Bible teaches us that, despite this, human beings are eternal and live forever.

 All that shows is that you aren't a Jehovah Witness or 7th Day Adventist, two Christian schools of thought who affirm soul-sleep and deny self-awareness can continue apart from the physical body.

The person survives death, implying that we are more than just bodies. But death does not lead to life as a disembodied spirit, or reincarnation. Rather, the Bible teaches that man's destiny is to die once and then face judgement(9) and either heaven or hell depending on our response to Jesus Christ.(10)

 Which means you aren't doing the best evangelism you can if you ask atheists to read books or web articles.  They might die in a state of unbelief while on their way to the library, and according to you, since they weren't faithful upon death, they go to hell.  So if you don't want unbelievers to go to hell, you cannot talk to them as if salvation's importance is equal to the importance of their voting upon a local initiative.  If they are always a heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternal hell, then the best you can do is to insist that they repent now, RIGHT NOW, the way you would if they were hanging over a cliff for dear life.  If the situation is that desperate, desperate measures are called for.

Of course, every act comes at cost...and here the act of urgent evangelism comes at the cost of intellectual suicide (i.e.,. if you do repent right now, then you are making a choice to believe Jesus is all he said he was, whether you actually have a solid understanding of gospel issues or not).  But if, like Lydia McGrew, you invent a non-existent bit of mercy the bible nowhere teaches, and insist that atheists who die while in the act of studying their bibles, will get a second chance in the spiritual world, then I obviously have nothing to worry about, as I study my bible 10 times more than any 100 'Christians' combined.

People who have a relationship with God through Jesus will experience resurrection and live with God forever in a perfect 'new heaven and new earth',(11) with new resurrected bodies like that of Christ's after his resurrection.(12) This is clear from Jesus' pronouncement to the thief on the cross - 'Today you will be with me in paradise'.(13)

 Do you think Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists have never seen that verse?  Unless you claim they are just rock-stupid, maybe you shouldn't classify your interpretation of it as "clear".

Limited

Finally, unlike God, human beings have finite power and knowledge. Despite our abilities we are limited in time and space.

Something that the more fanatical fundies might keep in mind as they continue to mistake their cocky confidence for god's own voice. 

Even with sophisticated technology there are many things about the universe that we will never know.

 Meaning the naturalistic explanation of these will never be decisively disproved.

This does not give us an excuse for failing to ask questions or invoking God to explain the gaps in our knowledge. But we will recognise humbly that some things will always remain mysteries and beyond our understanding. Perhaps the mind-body problem is a mystery that is impossible for human minds to solve.

 Nope.  The difference between the mind of a human and the mind of a reptile is one of degree, not nature.

Sure is funny how the further you move up the food chain, the more these ultimately material physical creatures come closer and closer to the human level of self-awareness.

Cold Case Christianity: Bible contradictions and how not to deal with them

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

Cold Case Christianity: Quick Shot:
“The Bible is full of contradictions”Posted: 28 Jan 2019 01:10 AM PST

Our “Quick Shot” series offers brief answers to common objections to the Christian worldview.

Leaving us to wonder what you'd think of atheist bible criticisms that were equally brief.

Each response is limited to one paragraph. These responses are designed to (1) answer the objection as concisely as possible, (2) challenge the objector to think more deeply about his or her claim, and (3) facilitate a “gospel” conversation. In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, Quick Shot: “The Bible is full of contradictions.”

Response #1:
“I hear that a lot, can you show me what you’re talking about?

 Sure:

King David had several wives and servants and a fireplace to keep him warm while he reigned as king.  So any story about him curing his chills by sleeping next to the scantily clad body of the prettiest virgin in town, you know perfectly well that story contradicts reality and is nothing but a cover-up for a king who couldn't keep his pants zipped.  Now read 1st Kings 1:1-4 and thank the Holy Spirit for moving through an atheist like me to make you see the light.

Does God love the workers of iniquity (John 3:16) or hate them (Psalm 5:5)?
(Psalm 5:5 doesn't say God hates the works of sin, it says he hates the "workers").

Do good works have something to do with the basis of salvation (Matthew 5:17-20 ff, Luke 1:6), or do good works have nothing to do with the basis of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-10, Romans 11:6)?  Dispensationalism would hardly have come into existence if the harmony between Jesus and Paul's doctrines were anywhere near "obvious".

Is God love (1st John 4:16) or does God threaten women with rape (Isaiah 13:15-17)?  Gee, because threatening a women with rape is not the logical opposite of "love" why doesn't YOUR "love" ever threaten women with rape?  Are you ungodly?

I could not get to the rest of Wallace's article if I degraded the discussion into a back-and-forth with every trifling asshole inerrantist in creation who thinks they can "harmonize" these contradictions.  Feel free to reply.

Wallace continues:

How familiar are you with the Bible to begin with?

 Very, I'm writing the book that lays modern Christian apologetics to rest, permanently.  It will probably run about 700 pages.    Therein I accuse the bible-god of approving of rape and pedophilia, I show that the differences between the Synoptics are best accounted for under a theory of progressive fiction, and that there are so many real problems with the biblical testimony to Jesus' resurrection, that we can be reasonable to view the doctrine to be false on the merits, no need to invoke a Humean smart-bomb against miracles.  My book includes my rebuttals to arguments made by Mike Licona, William Lane Craig, Steve Hays, J. Warner Wallace, Frank Turek, and other "apologists".

Have you examined all the alleged ‘contradictions’?

 Yes, and I have detailed scholarly arguments for why the harmonization scenarios given by Archer and other inerrantists are wrong or less likely to be true than the contradiction-theory.

I’m happy to look at something with you, and if I don’t have an answer for you, I’ll do some research and get back to you.

One wonders whether Christians think the "I'll get back to you" attempt at objectivity would be objective if employed by an atheist bible critic. Wouldn't you, the Christian, merely insist the atheist giving such response is merely intent on employing the clever tricks of the devil to get away from the truth?

But, there’s a difference between a contradiction and a variation. Just because two people report something differently, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a true contradiction.

 It doesn't have to "necessarily" be a contradiction.  The alleged contradictions arise from ancient historical testimony.  If it is reasonable to believe two such statement are contradictory, that complies with the standard canons of historiography.  If you think you escape the contradiction merely because harmonization scenarios of some sort or other will always be logically possible harmonization scenarios, then you are prioritizing apologetics over proper historical method.  I've been challenging Christian apologists for years to hit me with the biggest authentic contradictions they can possibly find in Mormon scriptures and Mormon history.  Under Christian standards, such contradictions aren't necessarily real because of how easy it is to conjure up logically possible harmonization scenarios. 

By the way, Wallace, juries in courtrooms are tasked with deciding whether somebody's harmonization scenario to account for an inconsistency, is truthful or just a clever ruse. So since you always apply court room standards to biblical issues, then you are required to admit that the jury deciding your claims, a jury that includes atheists, are not intellectually, legally or morally bound to automatically trash any claimed contradiction merely because you showed the contradiction wasn't absolutely proven.

If the apologist says "so it depends on whose theory on the alleged statements are more likely to be true, not merely whether harmonization is logically possible", that's an apologist who is starting to see the light.

When you and I return home and tell our family members about this conversation, I bet we’ll highlight different aspects of what was said.

 And sometimes people highlight certain parts of their previous discussions because they are dishonestly biased and wish to give the hearer a misleading impression of what actually happened.  Funny how you don't highlight the obvious fact that people can also be dishonest.

Those differences might appear to be contradictory, but they’re actually the kinds of variations we would expect when two people have varying interests and perspectives.

 And since two different eyewitnesses have never contradicted each other in the entire history of earth, it should be obvious that bible inerrancy is safe harbor by logical necessity.

Have you considered the fact that the Bible writers were real people who had personal interests and perspectives that may have shaped how they reported their observations?”

 Have you considered the fact that the Bible writers were real people who had personal interests and perspectives that may have motivated them to spin the historical facts in ways that give the reader a false impression of what happened?

Response #2:
“I’m not sure why you wouldn’t expect the Bible authors (like those who wrote the New Testament gospels), to report things in precisely the same way.

 Then let me clear up your confusion:  If you merely said the bible was written by people, we wouldn't be having this conversation.  But since you claim the bible writers were inspired by God and never contradicted each other despite it's many authors speaking on common subjects of history and theology, you are insisting on a state of affairs for the bible that you admit is not true about any other book in the world, thus putting yourself under the burden to make a prima facie case for the inerrancy of the bible before anybody is placed under any intellectual compulsion to think the biblical authors were any different in objectivity than the Egyptians or the Hittites.

Why wouldn’t there appear to be contradictions?

 If God himself were speaking to you, should you expect to see apparent contradictions?

This is the nature of all reliable eyewitness testimony. Witnesses to a crime (or other significant event) never seem to agree on details. That’s why detectives start by separating eyewitnesses as early as they can. They don’t want the witnesses to line up their stories and report the same thing.

Some biblical authors did try to line up their stories and report the same thing, and they failed miserably with a showing of many inconsistencies best explained under a theory of progressive fiction.  It's called the Synoptic Problem.

Detectives understand that there will appear to be differences in the witness accounts, but they know it’s their job to investigate the claims to understand why these differences exists – even when all the witnesses are accurately reporting the events. Have you ever thought about approaching the Bible authors in a similar way?”

 No.  The biblical authors are not alive, cannot be interviewed to explain why they phrased things in the words they chose, and now we are stuck forever with reading their words through our imperfect eyes and trying to decide which explanatory theory to account for the words is most likely to be true.



Whatever your "quick shot" is, it doesn't appear to be sniper fire, and doesn't appear to be a tiny glass full of hard liquor.  I won't be losing any sleep about perfectly consistent bibles anytime soon.  Cheers.

Cold Case Christianity: How Can You Trust Christianity Is True When There Are So Many Unanswered Questions?

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

How Can You Trust Christianity Is True When There Are So Many Unanswered Questions?

Posted: 25 Jan 2019 01:00 AM PST

As a Christian, I have many unanswered questions. The more I study the Christian worldview, the larger my list seems to grow.

Which should tell you something more than simply that God's ways are mysterious.

While essential truths are easier to identify from scripture, there are many non-essential (and more ambiguous) features of Christianity.

 I reject this modern fundie concept of "essential doctrine", as if some doctrines in the bible are more important than others.  The fools who think eschatology is "non-essential doctrine" apparently didn't notice how important the author of Revelation thought such topic was.  He was inspired by God, allegedly to set forth the end time events with all the fervor and ugency that he did.  Nowadays most Christians consider eschatology something that doesn't become important until they find themselves lonely at Starbucks with a laptop and nothing better to do.  Maybe knock on heaven's door and tell Mr. Stupid-in-the-Sky that because he can simply wave his magic wand to get people to believe whatever he wants them to believe (Ezra 1:1), he has no excuse to go around bitching about sinners disobeying him).

The unfathomable aspects of God’s nature typically leave us in awe and without adequate explanation.

And if what you describe fails coherent explanation, there is no intellectual compulsion on the hearers, whatsoever, to believe that crap.  That's why it reeks of sheer stupidity to be dogmatic about this mystical garbage.

To make matters worse, the ancient claims and historical details described in the New Testament are sometimes too remote to accurately verify. As a result, I’m often left with questions in places where I would rather have clarity and evidential certainty. How can we trust Christianity is true when there are so many unanswered questions?

 Were you directing that question to skeptics, or Christians?  If to Christians, then your brand of "apologetics" is weak. Gee, how much effort would it take to get somebody who already believes your religion, to feel confident that it can be defended?  Likely far less than the effort needed to convince a non-Christian.  you are just as weak as James Patrick Holding, who does apologetics for no other reason than to convince Christians their faith can be intellectually defended.  That job is much easier than the other apologetics task of convincing unbelievers to convert.

After a long career as a cold-case detective, I’ve learned to get comfortable with unanswered questions.

One has to wonder whether you'd respect the same attitude coming from an atheist detective writing critiques of Christianity

By the way, Wallace, how many times did your reliance on rank empiricism help you solve crimes, and how many times did your reliance on sheer power of prayer help you solve crimes?  If God doesn't want to interact with us directly the way other people do, are you quite sure God desires "fellowship" with us? 

How about if your human friend Joe says he desires to personally "fellowship" with you, but for your entire life, he has refused all of your requests for personal communication, and has instead told you that you can discern what he has to say by asking questions toward the ceiling, then go around for the next week making your own interpretation of any "coincidences" you find to be attention-getting?  FUCK YOU.

In fact, I’ve never investigated or presented a case to a jury that wasn’t plagued with a number of mysteries.

But those mysteries probably didn't involve spirits taking on bodies...or gods coming down to us in the likeness of men...or invisible evil persons causing us to commit crimes...or alibis that depend on telepathy or remote viewing...or people rising from the dead...or hundreds of people being cured of incurable diseases.

As much as I wish it wasn’t so, there is no such thing as a perfect case; every case has unanswered questions.

Then Christians need to learn that the presence of unanswered questions doesn't intellectually compel atheist bible critics to assent that "god did it", even if such conveniently quick-fix sounds appealing to the Christian.

In fact, when we seat a jury for a criminal trial, we often ask the prospective jurors if they are going to be comfortable making a decision without complete information. If potential jurors can’t envision themselves making a decision unless they can remove every possible doubt (and answer every possible question), we’ll do our best to make sure they don’t serve on our panel.

 Good idea. You might do a seminar on why absolute proof is neither possible nor necessary.  Might be a shocking wake up call to the vast majority of "Christians" out there trying to do "apologetics" and who consistently mistake their cocky confidence with actual reality.  The existence of trees is "obvious".  Jesus' resurrection from the dead is nothing close to obvious.  Isn't it nice how Sunday churches enable large crowds of likeminded people to get away from reality and create their own happy little bubble?

Every case is imperfect; there are no cases devoid of unanswered questions. Every juror is asked to make a decision, even though the evidential case will be less than complete. As detectives and prosecutors, we do our best to be thorough and present enough evidence so jurors can arrive at the most reasonable inference. But, if you need “beyond a possible doubt,” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” you’re not ready to sit on a jury. The standard of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt” for a good reason; no case is evidentially complete; no case maker can eliminate every possible reservation.

 But Mr. Wallace....what you've never done is demonstrate why the average person walking down the street should impose the same bar on historical evidence that America's courts impose in criminal cases.

For example, the bar in civil lawsuits is "preponderance of the evidence", which is something less than "beyond a reasonable doubt".  How would a person "go wrong" if they evaluated attacks on god and the bible under the "preponderance of evidence" standard? Gee, if we compare the number of miracle-claims that have been confirmed true, against the number of miracle claims that have been successfully debunked, which number do you suppose would be higher?  Or did you suddenly discover that number comparisons are always unfair and from the devil?

You also don't tell the viewers that in civil lawsuits, the Plaintiff wins by default if the Defendant refuses to reply.  Should bible critics apply that standard...and announce their victory against any Christian who responded to their challenge with silence? Hey, you created this "use-court-standards-to-evaluate-truth-claims-in-the-bible" marketing gimmick.  Still interested?

You also don't tell the viewers that in civil lawsuits, the Plaintiff often makes a motion for summary judgment, wherein they argue that one of their factual or legal contentions are so well-founded that no reasonable jury could possibly disagree with them....in which case if the Court agrees, that factual or legal contention will be decided by the Court as a matter of law, the other party loses on that particular point, and the jury will be instructed that the court has already found that matter to be true as a matter of law, and they are not to discuss whether it is true, but only presume that it is in fact, true. Would you recommend that atheist bible critics adopt a similar standard?

You also don't tell the jury that very often in courts a party who had a decent argument, loses the right to give such argument because they did not file their evidence with the court within the time prescribed by the Court.  Would you recommend that atheist bible critics declare victory every time their opponents fail to present counter evidence within the time-window the critic sets up?  Or did you suddenly discover that the ways things get done in courts of law isn't always the best way things should get done in the real world?

Gee, if there are so many realities about America's court system and its rules that would be unfair to apply to the issue of the bible, maybe your marketing gimmick really is just a cheap thrill and nothing serious?

Christians, like jurors, need to get comfortable with unanswered questions. Every worldview has them. As an atheist, I struggled to answer a number of critical questions from my materialistic, naturalistic worldview: How did the universe originate?

 Then you were a stupid atheist, because to ask where the universe came from, is linguistically the same as asking where shoes come from...you are already presupposing the limited nature of the universe in the question by assuming it did indeed have a point of origin, when in fact no cosmologist or astrophysicist will tell you the finite nature of the universe is a settled matter.  Some versions of the big bang set forth a series of bangs and crunches which extend forever into the infinite past.  And the general question of the universe possibly being of infinite size in all directions is left quite open.   Dr. Frank Turek seems to make a lot of Christians happy with his Big Bang argument wherein he pretends the bang was started by a  necessarily spaceless, timeless imamterial being, but the endless bang/crunch model and the theory of the universe being infinite in all directions, continues to loom and hasn't been successfully rebutted...and is consistent with all evidence.

Why does the universe appear fine-tuned?

 Then you must have been a really stupid atheist, because the fine-tuning argument is total bullshit.  You may as well say grandma's attic was "fine-tuned" to generate mold, or that the air in a tire was "fine tuned" to create the hole it did when it escape from the tire during a blowout.  Not at all...stuff happens that way for purely naturalistic reasons.  If it's obvious that applying freezing temperature to water automatically causes it to become more complex at the molecular level, then apparently this feature of reality is just how nature works, and your predictable question "but why does nature work that way" is a non-issue because you don't have any completely chaotic condition-set to compare this universe to, so that you can pretend this universe exhibits traits of intelligent design that are absent from non-intelligently designed sets.   And if your beliefs are true, than absolutely everything is the product of intelligent design, so that you have no genuinely non-designed patterns or realities to compare this universe to and pretend that the differences are significant.  You actually don't know what a "non-designed" universe would look like...do you.

How did life begin in the universe?

If the universe is of infinite age, then every reality it currently exhibits was likely also a reality extending into the infinite past.  No difference in saying the universe has a limitless supply of life, than in saying the universe has an infinite supply of carbon.

Why does biology appear designed?

 Then you were a really stupid atheist, because atheists are not bothered by the design of biological systems.  Design?  Yes.  Intelligent?  No.  Get the book here.

How did our immaterial minds emerge from the material universe?

Then you must have been a really stupid atheist, because the mind is not immaterial, and the arguments for mind-body dualism are total bullshit.  Yes, I've reviewed such arguments, including The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters, J. P. Moreland (Moody 2014).  Feel free to challenge my physicalist understanding of the mind whenever you have the time.  Or tell yourself god doesn't want you to deal with critics personally but only to continue selling Jesus with clever marketing gimmicks.

Wallace, I'll grant that you might be one-step above Josh McDowell.  But that step is very short.  You are not a threat to atheist bible critics because

a) you never debate them, at least as far as i can tell in a google search, and
b) your apologetics never take the form of convincing skeptics, but only of making Christians feel better.

You don't threaten atheist bible critics' beliefs that way, any more than the Mormon teacher who makes Mormons feel better about the historically valid basis for the Book of Mormon, is doing anything to convince non-Mormons that the Book of Mormon is authentic.  It obviously takes far less to convice current believers to stay put, than to convince unbelievers to convert.  Amen?

How can I explain free will and objective moral truth?

Then you must have been a really stupid atheist, because freewill doesn't exist, and there is no such thing as objective moral truth.  There is no reason to think the mind is "free" from the laws of physics, which would mean it is subject to the laws of physics.  And you cannot demonstrate that objective moral truths exist, the morals most humans agree to they agree to solely because they share the same mammalian brain that prioritizes protection, survivial and thriving of individual groups.

And you'll die a quick intellectual death if you try to say your god is the basis for why people think rape is wrong.  Your god admits in Isaiah 13:15-17 to causing men to rape women.  Your god tells Israel in Leviticus 21:9 to burn preteen prostitutes alive.  Sure is funny that humanity's common moral beliefs are only represented in a handful of biblical morals, and we reject the rest out of sheer disgust.

Are you quite sure you are properly prepared to defend your "that wasn't meant to be followed today" theory from my attacks? 

As a philosophical naturalist, my answers to these questions were little more than subjective speculation.

I think I'm starting to see why you became a Christian. 

My worldview was incomplete at the most foundational level. I had many unanswered questions, yet hung on to my atheistic perspective in spite of these mysteries. Every one of us clings to a worldview for which we have less than complete information. Every one of us has a series of unanswered questions.

If we cannot fault Christians for hanging onto their world view despite unanswered questions, you cannot fault atheist bible critics for hanging onto their worldview despite unanswered questions.  Fair is fair. 

All of us have to step out from the end of an evidence trail to a place of decision. That step across our unanswered questions is sometimes called a 'leap of faith'.

As a theist and as a Christian, I am far more comfortable with my unanswered questions than I used to be as an atheist.

 With a big daddy in the sky ready to correct every yucky that comes along, I can understand your sense of comfort.

My questions are fewer and less foundational.

Atheists who become Mormons could testify similarly, but you'd scream they've taken a turn for the worse.  Apparently, choosing which religion is right constitutes playing with your eternal fate.  You cannot blame the atheist who says its probably safer to persist in the error of atheism, than to latch onto and start promoting what could turn out to be theological heresy.

The existence of many competing forms of Christianity, and the existence of fundamentalists who say you'll go to hell for theological heresy, provides rational warrant to atheists to steer clear of the entire spiritual mess.  Whatever trouble they are currently in, the odds are very good they can only make things worse if in their imperfect way they end up siding with the wrong form of Christianity.  Amen?   Well gee, if even genuinely born-again Christians can get theology wrong, how could you dare pretend that us imperfect sinners can become confident, in less than 50 years of graduate-level bible study, which version of Christianity is true? 

What, are you not aware that very smart intellectual Christian scholars have been pointing the heretical finger at each other for centuries?  Isn't the atheist bible critic doing less damage to himself by choosing to think that buying drinks for girls at the bar is "less dangerous" than studying the bible?

How hot will hell be for atheists who buy drinks for women at bars?

How hot will hell be for atheists who convert to the wrong form of Christianity? 

FUCK YOU.

They are related more to non-essential issues than critical, core claims.

How essential is it to confess the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Gee, is there some intellectual obligation I'm under that requires me to fully evaluate the Geisler v. Harris debate and then choose which of them got it right?  That's funny, I never noticed such obligation before.  See here.

How essential is it to recognize the Catholic view of justification as heresy?  Gee, is there some intellectual obligation I'm under requiring me to fully evaluate all arguments back and forth between Catholic and Protestant scholars about how to interpret Paul's doctrine of "justification", and then choose which of them got it right?  See here.

(how long do you suppose the non-Christian must evaluate Catholic and anti-Catholic arguments before such person could be correctly said to have a comprehensive understanding of the issues sufficient to justify their drawing conclusions about the matter?  Now what? does the non-Christian have an "obligation" to attain this level of knowledge about Christianity's in-house disputes?).

How essential is "salvation"? After all, aren't there Christian bible scholars who take the liberal position that everybody is going to be saved?  How long must I evaluate this liberal v. conservative debate, before I've attained sufficiently comprehensive knowledge of both sides so as to rationally justify starting to draw conclusions about it?  Two days?  10 years?  You don't know, correct?

How essential is the Trinity?  How long must I evaluate everything said by Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Unitarians, Jesus-Only Pentecostals, and review the pre-Trintarian crap from the Council of Nicaea, before I will be rationally warranted to make a decision?  Doesn't the fact that representatives of these interests hold their unique viewpoint their entire life, suggest that such a course of investigation is not likely to yield reasonably confident answers?

The evidence I have points me in a given direction, and the gap between what I have and what I would like is much shorter than it used to be.

 If you had been a smarter atheist, you wouldn't have asked uninformed questions and persisted in the kind of ignorance that Christianity pretends to have answers for.

All of us have to step out from the end of an evidence trail to a place of decision. That step across our unanswered questions is sometimes called a “leap of faith”. As a Christian, I don’t have to leap blindly and jump all that far. Yes, I still have questions, but I have more than enough evidence to make a reasonable decision. I’ve come to trust Christianity is true, even with a few unanswered questions.

Sorry, Mr. Wallace, but this is little more than a Christian pep-talk or "preaching to the choir". Once again, as usual, you offer nothing that disturbs atheist bible critics in the least...except for the dumb ones.

Cold Case Christianity: How Can You Trust Christianity Is True If You Haven’t Examined All the Alternatives?

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

Cold Case Christianity:

How Can You Trust Christianity Is True If You Haven’t Examined All the Alternatives?

Posted: 23 Jan 2019 01:59 AM PST

I’ve had the privilege to speak on university campuses across the country, making a case for the reliability of the New Testament Gospels and the truth of the Christian Worldview.

Then your god must be lazy, as he apparently has the ability to get people to do whatever he wants by simply waving his magic wand, see Ezra 1:1.   Why did he involve you?  Nothing good on cable?

One of the most common questions asked in the Q and A is something similar to: “Have you taken the time to apply the same approach with all the other religious worldviews?” Sometimes people ask this question because they are curious about how well other ancient religious claims (or alleged eyewitness accounts) hold up under investigative scrutiny. But many times this question is followed by a more pointed objection: “How can you trust Christianity is true if you haven’t examined all the alternatives?”

Given the large number of spiritual claims circulating across the globe (and throughout history), why should we conclude one (or any) of them is true until we’ve examined all of them? At first blush, this seems like a reasonable approach, and when it’s asked by a skeptic, it’s typically offered in an effort to expose the inadequate or incomplete nature of my investigation (or some underlying bias I may have against opposing claims). Although I investigated several theistic and atheistic worldviews prior to becoming a Christian, I didn’t examine every view. Is my certainty related to Christianity therefore misplaced? Should the limited nature of my investigation disqualify or temper the case I’m presenting to skeptics and believers? I don’t think so.

Then get ready for atheists to remind you that they don't need to investigate every miracle or religious claim to reasonably conclude that theism is false.  In fact, nobody is required to refrain from drawing conclusions until they have examined every last bit of possible evidence.  But since what exactly constitutes a sufficient amount of data-collection and analysis to justify starting to draw conclusions, cannot be precisely delineated, you'll have to live with the fact that reasonable people can disagree on at what point during investigation one becomes reasonable to start drawing conclusions.

I have no trouble saying Christians can be reasonable to believe Jesus rose from the dead.  Reasonableness is not commensurate with correctness.  Atheists can be "reasonable" to deny god's existence too.

Since your bible says atheists are fools (Psalm 14:1), we can prove such bible texts to be error by simply showing that atheism isn't foolish.  Had the bible limited itself to saying atheism is wrong, the stakes wouldn't be so high.

In every criminal trial, the investigators and prosecutors are obligated to present the evidence related to one defendant. While the burden of proof lies with the prosecutorial team, the prosecution is not required to have examined every possible alternative suspect.

Ok, then atheists aren't required to examine every possible alternative religion after they dispense with Christianity. 

If I am investigating a case in which the suspect was initially described as a white male, 25 to 35 years of age with brown hair, the potential suspect pool in Los Angeles County would be quite large; there may be hundreds of thousands fitting this description. As I make the affirmative case related to one of the men in this large group, I’m under no obligation to make the case against the others.

Likewise, atheists are not required to make a case against all other possible forms of theism or dieism.

In fact, when the jury evaluates the case and decides whether the defendant is guilty, they will do so without any consideration of the alternatives. If the evidence is strong enough to reasonably infer the defendant’s involvement, the jury will make a confident decision, even though many, many alternatives were left unexamined.

Which is precisely why so many innocent people are convicted...prosecutors can do a good job of making innocent people look guilty, and it is likely the lack of critical thinking skills plaguing the average person or juror, that is some of the reason the prosecutor's bullshit case sounds strong.

The case for Christianity is made in a similar way. While it may be helpful to examine a particular alternative worldview on occasion to show its inadequacies or errors, these deficiencies fail to establish Christianity as factual. How can you trust Christianity is true if you haven’t examined all the alternatives? The case for the Christian worldview must first be made affirmatively even if no other claim is examined negatively. If there’s enough evidence to reasonably infer Christianity is true, we needn’t look any further.

Then atheists can similarly be reasonable to decide at which point they've falsified sufficient numbers of theistic arguments, that they need not worry about any possible theism arguments they might not have seen yet.  Just like no Christian worries about the possibility that there is very solid archaeological and historical evidence for Mormonism and we just haven't seen it yet.  At some point, trifling possibilities really don't stand in the way of the reasonableness of drawing confident conclusions.

The affirmative case will either stand or fall on its own merit, even if we’re unable to examine any other “suspect”.

yes.

The Christian worldview does not require “blind faith”. In fact, Jesus repeatedly presented evidence to support His claims of Deity.

No, the story of the NT is told by unknown authors, and they allege that Jesus went around doing miracles and making claims that wouldn't be true of anyone except god.  Once again, Wallace, you are preaching to the choir, you are very FAR from sounding convincing to people who haven't already swallowed the Christian bait hook line and sinker.

The Christian worldview does not require “blind faith”.

yes it does, read the following verses.  I've also explained why apologists are dead wrong in their efforts to pretend these verses are talking about evidence-based faith:

 27 Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing."
 28 Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"
 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (Jn. 20:27-29 NAU)

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1 NAU) 

 23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.
 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; (Rom. 8:23-26 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

In fact, Jesus repeatedly presented evidence to support His claims of Deity and when John the Baptist expressed doubt, Jesus responded with yet another evidential display of His power.

The bible says Jesus did miracles.  And you think THIS is supposed to pass for "apologetics"?  Ok, then apparently we don't need your books and seminars and lectures...all we need to do is read the bible, and presto, we know it's true and we just don't wanna believe it...right?

Christians are not asked to believe without evidence (or worse yet, in spite of the evidence), but to instead place their trust in the most reasonable inference from the evidence, even though there may still be several unanswered questions.

 But where exactly the inference becomes sufficiently unwarranted as to call it "blind faith" is not capable of precise adjudication, which means you'll have to allow that reasonable people can reasonably disagree on where to draw that line.  

Christianity is evidentially reasonable, even if we are unable to examine every possible alternative.

We have to wonder how you'd respond to an atheist who said "Atheism is evidentially reasonable, even if we are unable to examine every possible alternative."

Biblical Inerrancy and Papal Infallibility: Twin sisters of uselessness

Protestant Christians often criticize the Catholic doctrine of Papal Infallibility. 

The argument goes like this:  if the Catholics are going to protect this doctrine by pretending that it only takes effect in limited circumstances (such as when the pope speaks to the entire church upon an issue of faith or morals), and if they further insist this authority hasn't been exercised by the pope more than 5 times in the last 2,000 years, then how can Catholics claim God thought giving such authority to men was a useful good?

Can we seriously say that God wanted the church to be sure of Mary's bodily Assumption (declared infallible by Pope Pius XII in 1950, see here), but not about Jesus being fully equal with the Father (neither Pope Sylvester I nor any Pope after him made infallible pronouncement about the majority vote at Nicaea)? 

Well gee, what's more important?  Jesus' equality with the Father, or Mary flying into the sky?   Most Protestants think your eternal fate is affected by whether you say Jesus was creature or creator,  but no Christian seriously thinks your eternal fate is decided based on what you have to say about Mary flying into the sky.

That is a strong attack on the feasibility of Papal Infallibility.  The more a person needs the ability they actually possess, and yet the more they avoid employing it to solve problems, the more stupid they appear to be.  If this ability wasn't exercised more than 5 times in 2,000 years, doesn't there exist a substantial likelihood that the ability actually never existed?

I don't see how such attack is diminished when the subject becomes biblical infallibility or "inerrancy".

First, inerrancy has a worse track record than papal infallibility.  The latter has at least assured us Mary went bodily into heaven, bible "inerracy" has done precisely nothing to guarantee that any Christian doctrine is true, except inerrancy itself, which merely fallaciously begs the question.  That is, nobody can really demonstrate how it is that the doctrine of inerrancy actually does anything in the practical world to move people from error into truth or preserve them from falling into error.  Another way of putting it would be to say that inerrancy presents itself as a tool to be employed to achieve some type of goal, but what that goal is, cannot be reasonably determined.  There is nothing about "bible inerrancy" that provides infallible assurance that your interpretation of the bible is correct...or that you are correct in your decision to say certain biblical ethics apply to modern day Christians, etc.

Second, suppose for a moment that the U.S. Constitution was the inerrant word of God.  Do you suppose this new truth would suddenly cause America's legal system to finally come to agreement on what the Constitution does and doesn't allow?  Hardly.  It's inerrancy would do precisely nothing to put an end to the aggressively polarized legal wars between the ACLU and everybody else, as they verbally masscare each other on whether the Constitution supports gay marriage, death penalty, etc. 

So we'd then be reasonable to question that assumption:  Why are you saying the U.S. Constitution is the inerrant word of God, when such a doctrine appears to be little more than a useless academic question whose answer provides no real-world benefits and appears to do little more than convince people to become obstinately bigoted about how correct they are?

Third, it is reasonable to ask inerrantists what purpose there is in going around arguing in favor of bible inerrancy and fending off skeptical attacks:  doing this isn't going to settle any doctrinal controversy (attacks on inerrancy continually convince people that this doctrine is false).  And when we do hear of the occassional unbeliever or Christian who changes their mind and concluded the bible is "inerrant", in nearly every case this is not the result of years of scholarly study, but the result of other influences.  There's no shortage of fundies on the internet who swear they were professional atheist bible critics for decades before the truth finally brought them kicking and screaming over the line, but we have to decide on a case by case basis which of these mostly anonymous loudmouths are telling the truth and which are just trying to save face.

Fourth, inerrancy's uselessness and danger is legitimately inferred from the fact that it emboldens heretics to think their faulty opinions are beyond criticism, a thing that dims one's prospects for enabling them to see the error of their way.  Do you find it difficult to persuade Jehovah's Witnesses of how wrong they are?  Might their view of the bible as inerrant be some of what's causing them to think their interpretations of it are beyond reasonable criticism?  How short of a walk is it, really, from "the bible is inerrant" to "my interpretations of the bible are inerrant"?

Fifth, inerrancy has done much to hurt the cause of likemindedness demanded by the biblical authors (1st Cor. 1:10, Philippians 2:2, 4:2).  Geisler's criticism of Mike Licona is just the tip of the ice-box.

Finally, the obvious fact that God is quite capable of accomplishing any purpose he has for humanity without requiring that they first become perfect, makes clear that God can also guide you by use of imperfect teaching resources, such as sinful family, friends or Christian teachers.  If you don't tell everybody in the world to fuck off merely because their sin nature leaves you no infallible assurances they won't mislead you, then apparently it really is stupid to pretend that one little authentic error in the originals of the bible opens the floodgates to perpetual satanic indecisiveness.

The "assurance" and "comfort" that "inerrancy" brings is completely hollow, given the rat's nest of finger-pointing heretics who all adopt the doctrine,  and would only sound edifying superficial ungrounded persons whose idea of security is still at the level of an infant.

For all these reasons, I insist that the practical uselessness and controversial nature of papal infallibility constitute the same problem for bible inerrancy.  In both cases, the doctrines give you something to yap about, maybe even feel confident about, but at the end of the day, the most practical real-world good that is accomplished by "knowing" that the bible is "inerrant" consists of its tempting people to do what they usually do anyway, and falsely move from "inerrant source" to "inerrant interpretation".

I'm open to any Christian scholar or apologist correcting this blog piece by pointing out how the demonstrable theological good of inerrancy outweighs the demonstrable sins of pride, slander and closed-mindedness everybody knows this doctrine motivates people to commit.  While in academia there is distinction between the bible's inherent inerrancy and one's interpretation of the bible, this distinction evaporates in the real world.  "You can know that pre-millenialism is true because that's what god's inerrant word teaches."  If people are not truth-robots, a doctrine like inerrancy will likely cause more harm than good.

But if the inerrancy of the bible doesn't provide you with a way to infallibly interpret the bible, then the doctrine appears to do what Papal Infallibility does...solve precisely nothing, create unnecessary controversy and give the church yet another doctrine to divide over.

For all these reasons, I would argue that if the bible teaches inerrancy, the problems outlined herein would justify rejecting the doctrine.

Frank Turek's Big Bang is evaporating

Frank Turek appears to have done more than any other Christian apologist to convince others that his particular creationist version of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe not only implies god's existence, but is the only form of the theory that deserves any comment.

The trouble with Turek's theory is as follows:

First, I think the theory is total bullshit, it is a poster-child for ad hoc excuse making, as the theory .  Reminds one of a Christian apologist who is losing a debate, and who thus automatically assume any logically possible alternative they can conjure up to get away from a beating, is the only reasonable hypothesis.

Second, many creationists who decry evolution also say the Big Bang theory is false scientifically AND biblically. AiG and ICR deny it outright, see here and here.  I agree with them, especially on the bible:  one standard rule of hermeneutics is that how the originally intended readers would likely have understood the bible author's words, must weigh heavily on any interpretation purporting to be "objective".  There is simply no fucking way that pre-scientific goat-herders would have either read Genesis 1-2 or any Psalms, and left room in their minds for the possibility that all this happy horseshit was the result of a cosmological explosion.  It is more consistent with patterns of ANE thinking to assume they would have understood such biblical wording to be saying God created the universe the way a carpenter builds a house.

Discoveries in the ways ANE people thought are forcing inerrantist Christian scholars to make damning admissions and otherwise set forth ridiculous trifles in the effort to protect the biblical wording from the charge of error.  See discussion of John Walton's "Lost World of Scripture" here, where Walton reluctantly admits he must disagree with Whitcomb and Morris's attempts to show the scientific "inerrancy" of Genesis 1-2.  He also says:

The point is, when believing in inerrancy is a requirement to be a Christian (which some Christians infer—if not outright claim), that can be a pill too big to swallow, especially when there is data in the Bible that doesn’t seem to fit what most people understand by inerrancy.

Apparently, conceptions of the universe aren't the only theories undergoing inevitable evolution.  God's biblical truths are about as infallible as geocentrism.

Third, in the August 2014 issue of Sky and Telescope, we were told that there was no "before the Big Bang".  See here.

Fourth, In the February 2019 issue of Sky and Telescope, bets are hedging:  now we are being told

The Big Bang theory doesn't rule out the possibility that there was some pre-existing universe from which ours sprang...there are almost as many theories as there are theorists..."  (p. 18).

Fifth, Turek's argument that the BB was the beginning of the universe, is a misunderstanding:

Was the Big Bang the origin of the universe?
It is a common misconception that the Big Bang was the origin of the universe. In reality, the Big Bang scenario is completely silent about how the universe came into existence in the first place. In fact, the closer we look to time "zero," the less certain we are about what actually happened, because our current description of physical laws do not yet apply to such extremes of nature.  (see here)

Sixth, there are BB models that assume the universe has always existed, one is called the Endless Cycle model, which allows for a universe trillions of years old, which moves us much further in the direction of "infinite universe" than the standard model which says the age of the universe is merely in the billions of years:

The Cyclic Theory agrees that there was some violent event 14 billion years ago – we still call it a "big bang" – but this was not the beginning of space and time. The key events causing the creation of matter, radiation, galaxies and stars occurred billions of years before the bang. Furthermore, there was not just one bang. The evolution of the universe is cyclic with big bangs occurring once every trillion or so, each one accompanied by the creation of new matter and radiation that forms new galaxies, stars, planets, and presumably life. Ours is only the most recent cycle.(see here)

 Finally, new discoveries allege that there are not just trillions of stars, but trillions of galaxies:

 Up to now, astronomers usually said we know of about 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe (meaning out to our event horizon, a look-back time of 13.8 billion years). Now the number can be said to be about 2 trillion, with the caveat that this estimate doesn't go back a full 13.8 billion years, it's 600 million years short. (here).

One of the most fundamental questions in astronomy is that of just how many galaxies the universe contains. The landmark Hubble Deep Field, taken in the mid-1990s, gave the first real insight into the universe's galaxy population. Subsequent sensitive observations such as Hubble's Ultra Deep Field revealed a myriad of faint galaxies. This led to an estimate that the observable universe contained about 200 billion galaxies.
The new research shows that this estimate is at least 10 times too low. (here)

And don't even get me started on the linguistic absurdities of the standard BB model, whereby we are supposed to believe incoherent concepts like the "beginning" of "time", which logically implies a time before time.

I do not propose the new developments to make an infinite universe the only reasonable interpretation.  I'm more conservatively only setting forth such official science statements to show that Frank Turek's Christian dogmatism about how the BB implies a limited universe, is entirely unwarranted and smacks more of preaching to the choir, than of dispassionate scholasticism.

I would think it borders on dishonest for Turek to pretend that his particular version of the BB theory is so sufficiently supported that he can just pretend that the other models, which admit the universe has an infinite history and size, are unworthy of serious consideration.  Even if a big bang happened, no, Dr. Turek, that does not automatically imply a "spaceless, timeless, immaterial intelligence".

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, Christian hypocrisy falsifies some New Testament promises

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

Quick Shot: “Christian hypocrisy proves Christianity is false”

Posted: 14 Jan 2019 01:10 AM PST

Our “Quick Shot” series offers brief answers to common objections to the Christian worldview.

Thus increasing the chances that the Christian reader will be misled by a superficial treatment of the issues.

Each response is limited to one paragraph.

Somehow, I'm not feeling threatened by your apologetics.

These responses are designed to (1) answer the objection as concisely as possible, (2) challenge the objector to think more deeply about his or her claim, and (3) facilitate a “gospel” conversation.

So if an atheist did something similar and offered the reader a response that (1) answers the Christian objection as concisely as possible, (2) challenges the Christian objector to think more deeply about his or her claim, and (3) facilitate an "unbeliever" conversation, you would agree that this shows objectivity on the part of the atheist.

In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, Quick Shot: “Christian hypocrisy proves Christianity is false.”

Response #1:

“Does atheist hypocrisy prove atheism is false?

No.  But if we claimed atheism was guided by a higher intelligence that wasn't 'god', and that as long as you are sincere in seeking out and living by that intelligence, your life will be morally transformed, then the better the evidence that a person was a "real" atheist, and the better the evidence that no serious moral transformation has taken place despite their years of being a committed atheist, then the more likely it would be that atheism was false.  The problem would not be limited to the individual person failing to live up to their professed standard.  The standard itself would appear to be false.  In the case of other atheists who did undergo a moral transformation, this would not show that the intelligence causing the moral transformation existed, because such a change would be explainable in purely naturalistic terms not requiring the positing of any higher intelligence.

By the way, Jesus apparently wanted unbelievers to conclude Christianity was true from the fact that his disciples consistently followed his morals:

 16 "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:16 NAU)

That means Jesus wasn't really smart, otherwise, under the same principle, non-atheists should glorify atheism if they find atheists walking according to "atheist morals".

If Christianity did not assure its followers that they are transformed, you wouldn't be having a problem.

If a scientist lies about his findings, does this undermine all scientific endeavors, or just expose a single hypocrite?

 If the scientist claims to be guided by an omniscient invisible and 100% honest space alien, how long would you trifle about the fact that his dishonesty doesn't necessarily disprove the existence of the honest space alien?  Not long.

All of us are hypocritical in some way; it’s part of our human condition. We are consistently inconsistent, some more than others. This says less about our respective belief systems than it does about our human condition.

Unless the belief system you pretend to follow insists that you'll stop sinning if you are truly born again.  It does:

 No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. (1 Jn. 3:6 NAU)

Wallace continues:

I won’t hold the inconsistent behavior of some atheists against atheism as a whole, if you don’t hold the inconsistent behavior of some Christians against Christianity as a whole. Does that sound fair?

No, atheism has never made claims that it causes its followers to become more morally conservative.  If you delete the parts of the bible that assure Christians of a new morally conservative nature in Christ, then bunches of Christians sinning wouldn't operate to falsify Christianity.

So technically, Christians sinning obviously doesn't operate to deny the historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead (which is very weak on historical grounds anyway),  but their sinning DOES falsify portions of Christianity that promise the believer that they won't sin.  Yes, 1st John makes room for the possibility of Christians sinning, but that does not automatically require that we become obligated to harmonize the "you won't sin" stuff with the "you might sin" stuff and accept any logically possibly harmonization scenario.

I see nothing wrong with assuming the author of 1st John was like most of today's Christians...he held to an inconsistent theology.

Isn’t it more important to examine the evidence for our claims than to critique each other’s misbehavior?”

Yes, I think so, but not according to Jesus, who takes the possibility of others critiquing his follower's behavior, as a motive for them to act righteously so they don't give the critics an excuse: 

  46 "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
 47 "If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
 48 "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:46-48 NAU)

  28 "For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?
 29 "Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,
 30 saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' (Lk. 14:28-30 NAU)

 Apostle Paul also felt possible critique from unbelievers was a reason to avoid certain behavior:

 23 Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad? (1 Cor. 14:23 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Response #2:

“Why would you be surprised when a Christian behaves hypocritically? There are two reasons why Christians will always be considered more hypocritical than non-Christians. First, our worldview is public and objective rather than private and subjective. Non-Christians understand the standard Christians are trying to personify. It is publicly available (just read a Bible) and hasn’t changed in two thousand years.

One has to wonder about the allegedly changeless text of the bible over the centuries. It certainly hasn't proven itself to be of any benefit to the churches using it, which disagree with each other on nearly every bit of theology taught therein, except perhaps God's existence and Jesus' gender.  God is like the stupid father who tries to assure his daughter she can get to college reliably, with a new car...but never gives her the keys.

We ask the same question of Catholics and their papal infallibility doctrine:  How exactly has papal infallibility or the changeless nature of the biblical text resulted in any theological benefit to Christians?  Doesn't their ceaseless division over interpretation and bible doctrine thwart any good the changeless nature of the text might otherwise have bequeathed?

Christians, however, have no idea if an unbeliever is violating his or her moral standard because the unbeliever holds it privately as a matter of personal opinion.

 That's not true of most unbelievers.  They all have friends and family who recognize that person's unique morality.  Unbelievers are often involved in personal relationships where a moral act by one of them causes more intimacy or even division.  Saying unbelievers keep their morality hidden is total bullshit.

But Christians have a more difficult problem because it doesn't matter if the NT ethics are publicly known, Christians disagree with them.  Smart Christians realize not all stealing is sin, not all lying is sin,  not all intimate contact before marriage is sin, and dumb Christians seriously argue that the NT doesn't condemn homosexuality.  No, it is far from clear that a Christian's committment to the NT thus arms his critics with potential to critique him.  He can do away with anything in the bible he doesn't like, through the artifice of interpretation.  And after that point, he isn't acting contrary to NT ethics, because you either misunderstand the NT, or you don't realize that those 1st standards no longer apply 21st century Christians.

Secondly, the Christian standard is grounded in the perfect moral nature of God.

All you are doing now is preaching to your classical theist choir.  You wouldn't be able to get away with this if you were talking to a bunch of Christians who denied god's perfection, such as open-theists.

While atheists can meet their own personal standards, Christians never achieve the moral perfection of God’s standard.

Which makes them stupid for trying.  How long will you try to jump 200 feet in the air utilizing no other propulsion mechanism than your own unaided biological muscular strength...before you decide that the impossibility of ever achieving the goal constitutes good reason to give up?  4 days?

And lets not forget the many Christians who have tried the conservative approach and failed because their genetics cause them to find normative human behavior too enticing to resist.

We know – in advance- that we will always fall short of the mark.

Probably because you don't know your NT very well.  Several passages express or imply that human beings can actually achieve all that God requires of them.  See Luke 1:6:

 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.
 6 They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. (Lk. 1:5-6 NAU)

 Really?  God thought they were righteous because they walked blamelessly in all his commands?  Wouldn't that contradict Romans 3:10-23?   No, of course not.  If the asshole defense attorney can think of a logically possible way to reconcile evidence of his client's guilt, with his own theory that his client is innocent, well then gee, the jury has no choice but to see things his way or admit their own stupidity...right?

Given the objectively high, public standard posited by Christianity,

 Correction, posited by your particular fundamentalist form of Christianity.  Many other Christians, with good reason, are far more relaxed about sin.  Like James Patrick Holding, whose 20 years of internet apologetics still has him engaging in the sin of slandering even more than he did when he first started.  I'm waiting for the day when Holding writes an article entitled "Why Jesus might want you to tell lies about other people".

why would you ever be surprised to witness Christian hypocrisy,

because the NT makes very plain that those who sin are hypocrites who never knew Jesus:

 6 No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. (1 Jn. 3:6 NAU)

 But actually we aren't surprised when Christians sin, we just note that it often conflicts with what the particular hypocrite professes to believe about his own moral obligations under Christ.

and why would you hold this against Christianity, rather than applaud Christianity for its high standard?”

Remove the "be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" bullshit from the NT, then sinful Christians won't falsify Christianity's promise to morally transform people.

While atheists can meet their own personal standards, Christians never achieve the moral perfection of God’s standard.

 Wrong, Luke 1:6.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's question-begging attempt to salvage the argument from logic

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real?

Examining Atheistic Explanations for the Laws of Logic as “Brute Realities”        

Posted: 11 Jan 2019 01:38 AM PST

All rational discussions (even those related to the existence or non-existence of God) require the prior foundation of logical absolutes.

Which is precisely why you are never going to "show" that such a foundation has a foundation.

And by the way, Wallace, your answers here are logically consistent...meaning your attempt to account for the laws of logic are already presupposing the validity of the very logic you pretend to be giving an independent accounting of. 

That's called begging the question.  You can coherently talk about the time before Billy tied his shoe, but you cannot coherently talk about the time before time.  Likewise, you can coherently talk about where babies come from, because the answer wouldn't require you to beg the question of the baby's existence, but you cannot coherently talk about where logic comes from, because your answer would have to be in conformity to logic first, before anybody would be intellectually obligated to pay attention to it. 

You can possibly do that, of course, by giving a non-logical explanation for the laws of logic.  That will safeguard you from begging the question, but then the fact that the answer is "non-logical" is more than sufficient to reasonably justify the atheist to toss it aside immediately without even bothering with it.  

Face it buddy, you cannot coherently talk about where logic comes from, unless you wish to get stupid and pretend that some non-logical explanations are superior to the pro-logical explanations?

Only theism, however, can adequately account for the existence of the transcendent Laws of Logic. If God exists, He is the absolute, objective, transcendent standard of truth; the Laws of Logic are simply a reflection of His nature.

Not true. God's existence doesn't tell you to what degree he controls reality, anymore than saying "space alien" necessarily implies an eternal intelligence that can create other worlds with a snap of their fingers. All you are doing is blindly insisting on the conservative Christian definition of God (i.e., classical theism), and pretending such definition is the only one that is plausible.  All you are doing is appealing to presuppositions your mostly conservative Christian audience already hold.   You are like the open-theist who tells his followers: "If God exists, he is changeable, imperfect, and learns."

God did not create these laws. They exist as an extension of His rational thinking, and for this reason, they are as eternal as God Himself.

You provide no biblical basis for this, you are just preaching to the choir.  Furthermore, there are sufficient problems with the general concept of theism, that you are foolish to pretend that a theory of an intelligent invisible immaterial spaceless timeless thing is supposed to be "better" than any theory atheists might have, which would necessarily be somewhat more plausible by being grounded in empirical realities that can be checked and verified, at least somewhat more so than your invisible undetectable "god".

Is God real?

No.  But like the prosperity gospel and voodoo, as long as you think god is real, you can help yourself feel better about the cold cruel world.  The same is true with respect to Hinduism and Mormonism.  These aren't true religions either, but that does precisely nothing to ebb their popularity.  Mormons are often confronted with hard times just like any Christian, and just like Christians, Mormons find great comfort and solace in prayer and in fellowship with others who share their specific theological presuppositions.  But since you don't believe God is really giving them any comfort, we discover then the ability of human beings to be so deceived, they can feel comforted by mere thoughts about something that doesn't exist, in this case, the Mormon god.

Without God as a source for the transcendent Laws of Logic, this question (and any logical journey toward the answer) would be impossible to examine.

 Logic is axiomatic.  You don't "examine" it, because the framework you'd have to use for analysis would be the assumption that the laws of logic are indeed valid, otherwise known as begging the question.

As an atheist, I rejected the existence of God and offered a number of objections and alternative explanations in an effort to account for the Laws of Logic.

No doubt because you were an ignorant atheist and didn't realize what axioms were, and why they are exempt from explanatory theories.

In yesterday’s post we outlined the theistic explanation for these laws. Today and tomorrow we’ll examine several naturalistic objections to see if any of them might offer a viable alternative. We’ll begin with efforts to describe the Laws of Logic as “brute realities” of the universe:

Objection:

Aren’t the Laws of Logic simply the “brute” characteristics of reality? Both material and immaterial things must abide by boundaries of existence in order to exist in the first place. The “Laws of Logic” are simply a part of these boundaries. They are not transcendent laws from a Transcendent Mind; they are simply among the natural boundaries of existence.

Both theists and atheists agree the Laws of Logic are brute somethings.

Correct.

Atheists might claim Logic is a brute, innate fact of existence, while theists might argue Logic is a brute, innate reflection of the nature and thinking of God. In either case, these laws would have to be eternal, uncaused and necessary.

 Correct.

Nothing can exist without the simultaneous existence of these laws.

Which means arguments about why logic exists, cannot exist without the simultaneous existence of these laws.

But let’s now look at how both sides account for their existence:

On Atheism

The brute Laws of Logic simply exist. They are eternal and uncaused. Nothing can exist without them. That’s just the way it is.

On Theism

God is eternal, uncaused, omniscient and omnipotent.

Your explanation is far more complex, controversial and contradictory than anything the atheist has to offer.  The whole idea of a spaceless timeless immaterial intelligence is just stupid, and there is no compelling evidence that any such thing has ever existed, I don't give a shit how many times you refer to the mysterious deaths that occurred on the set of the Exorcist, or how the Lutz's seemed to be telling the truth about things that go bump in the night.  You simply recite "eternal, uncaused, omniscient and omnipotent", and your devoted Christian followers come running to you like hungry cowboys come running at the sound of the dinner bell.  You are preaching the choir, you are not refuting the atheist position.  You are not a scholar providing rebuttal to another theory.  You are a pastor banging his fist in church.

He is the all-knowing and all-powerful Creator; the necessary, uncaused first cause of all matter, space and time.

 Is this the part where your audience is supposed to shout "amen!" ?

There is no such thing as the universe being caused, the universe is eternal and infinite.  Otherwise, you'd have to admit it can be coherent t talk about the time before God created time, which is, of course, not coherent.  Feel free to google William Lane Craig for the next 50 years, his foolish distinctions between logical and temporal causality do not make it possible to talk coherently about the beginning of time.  The beginning of "time" is necessarily stupid and question-begging.  Not to mention that "time" is completely man-made, and the bible does not express or imply God lives in some type of eternal "now" that is different than the temporal progression of events we experience on earth.  That's just modern Christianity finding it irresistable to go beyond biblical revelation in their spiritually immature zeal to provide more specific rebuttal to the world than what God saw fit to authorize.

Unless you are a Pentecostal and you think every time you set forth theology not specifically backed up in the bible, this is supposed to be new revelation?

By the way, the bible never teaches that god created time, in fact, every biblical description of heavenly events portrays them as being limited to temporal progression no less than biblical authors describe earth-based events to be.  Before you impress the babies with talk about God creating time, be sure you are on biblical footing.  You aren't. 

He has thoughts and possesses a particular character, essence and nature.

Which only make sense if he is physical, since your alleged "evidence" that intelligence can exist without physicality, is absurd, I don't care how many books by J.P. Moreland are on your library shelf.

Because He is all-powerful and all-knowing, these attributes are perfected (an all-powerful and all-knowing God has the power to eliminate imperfection).

I'm an atheist, yet you are asking me to now suddenly discover that the Christians who are open-theist are wrong.  Gee, how long would it take for us to get over that hurdle before you could legitimately continue to blindly presume the truth of your classical theism?  5 minutes?  50 years?

And if god has the power to eliminate imperfection, then he is no less responsible for continued imperfection on this earth, than the parent is responsible for the house burning down if they knew their kids were playing with matches, and chose to do nothing but sit there and watch...like god does.  We call it "neglect".

The Laws of Logic are simply an attribute and reflection of God’s perfect existence; God does not create these laws, they are an innate and immutable aspect of His nature.

 Then the bible cannot be the word of god, because it contradicts itself.   Compare John 3:16 with Psalm 5:5, and check a thesaurus before you assure me that the opposite of love isn't hate but apathy.   And be sure to specifically note: Psalm 5:5 doesn't say God merely hates the sin.  In that verse God's hatred in upon the sinner or "worker" of iniquity, i.e., the person themself, not merely their sin.  But there is no law against using your faulty concept of the NT to blind yourself to unChristian OT realities.  There's also no law preventing toddlers from dumping a full bowl of cereal on their face and thinking this is the proper way to relieve hunger.

As God is necessary for all else to exist, so are the Laws of Logic. They are merely a reflection of His Being, and they permeate all of His creation.

No, that's the fallacy of begging the question.  Your answer is already presupposing the validity of logic, when in fact you are supposed to be independently accounting for logic itself.  Either break the circle by giving a non-logical answer, or admit that you cannot answer the question of why logic exists, without committing the fallacy of begging the question.

Both the atheist and the theist agree something is eternal, uncaused and necessary.

yup, the universe.

But when the atheist says the Laws of Logic “simply exist”, he’s begging the question; he’s not providing an explanation for the eternal, uncaused and necessary existence of the laws (saying they exist does not provide us with an explanation for their existence).

 That's your fault for asking us to give a logical answer to the question of where logic comes from.  Your asking of such question is the problem, since what you ask cannot be answered without begging the question, which means the problem is with the person formulating the question.  Any question that requires your answer to take the form of a logical fallacy, is therefore a fallacious question. 

When you blame God for logic, you say so with words that conform to the laws of logic...hence, begging the validity of the very logic that you are pretending to provide an independent accounting for.

Theists, on the other hand, can make a case for God’s existence from a number of evidential lines, providing a reasonable foundation from which logical absolutes can then be elucidated.

 Your case for theism sucks, as I've shown repeatedly at this blog.  While god might be one explanation for what you perceive to be intelligent design, he isn't the only explanation, and by god being so complex himself, Ocaam's Razor would counsel that the god-explanation is less likely than any other.

In addition, atheism fails to explain how the Laws of Logic can be eternal and uncaused and what role they play in causing all other contingent realities.

That's your fault.  If you correctly realized that logic is axiomatic, you'd understand why it is stupid and illogical to even ask why logic exists. Axioms are not subject to analysis.  If they were, they wouldn't be "axioms".

Theism, on the other hand, accounts for the existence of the Laws of Logic by pointing to the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent uncaused, first cause possessing perfect rationality (by virtue of His limitless power) who also acts as the first cause of all other dependent (contingent) creations.

Sorry, Wallace, but you are preaching to a narrow choir, there are plenty of Christian scholars who deny the bible-gods omniscience and omnipotence.  You need to stop talking all bigoted like that if you wish to take on atheists. They are not going to shove aside every other viable Christian interpretation of the bible and "just" allow your blind assumption of classical theism to slide by without criticism. God's imperfection is clear from Genesis 6:6-7.  The entire chapter is believed by classical theist Christians to be describing literal history, so there's no contextual justification to pretend that this particular passage therein is an "anthropomorphism" or something other than literal language.  And the original recipients of that story certainly wouldn't have had systematic theology or bible inerrancy on the brain, so they more than likely took the claim at face value, without trifling about semantics the way an inerrantist or jailhouse lawyer would.  So the passage is reasonably understood to be literal, and thus, God's regretting his own prior decision to create man is a strong indication of his imperfection.  Did he know from all eternity that he would regret creating man?  If God does things he knows he will regret, he has more in common with the impulsive teenager than he has with intelligence.

Objection:

Aren’t the “Laws of Logic” simply the result of observations we make of the world in which we live? We discovered the Laws of Physics from our observations of the natural world; can’t we discover the Laws of Logic in a similar way?

I've deleted your answer here because I'm one of those atheists who doesn't account for logic that way.


Your argument to God from logic does precisely nothing to intellectually obligate the atheist to admit God's existence.  You would have glorified your god more had you simply quoted the bible.  Going beyond what is written is dangerous, and the devil can make you think your intellect is sufficient to fill up the theological gaps left by your bible.  Don't be stupid.