James Patrick Holding's followers: toddlers who make fun of trigonometry

Apparently, one of Holding's babies has been bitten by the "snark = truth" bug, so I'll take this time to straighen her out on the obvious common sense she has, that she willfully suppresses in blind support of her religious delusions. From the comment section of one of James Patrick Holding's videos, source here:

Christina Pierce1 day ago

tektontv Oh, alright, I am familiar with that one. I am currently debating an Atheist in a YouTube comment section, and to give you a grasp upon what sort I am dealing with, he offered, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” as a response. It is hard to believe that the essential fundamentalist Atheist stereotype could be so perfectly instantiated in one human being. Anyway, do you know how I can email Nick Peters, for his website only lists his address (forgive me if I am missing something profoundly obvious—I am not internet savvy)? I have a couple of questions for him.

Then you are either one of the more idiotic of Holding's followers, or you have been sorely misinformed about your own reality, to say nothing of common sense.  Allow me to enlighten you with facts you'll never get from those who are paid to be Jesus' cheerleaders.

Suppose a stranger on a bus tells you he walked into a store yesterday.  Suppose he shows you a picture of him walking into a store you've been to many times, and therein he looks just like he does on the bus.  How much effort would you put into authenticating this picture and the claims made about it (i.e., see the originals and negatives, inspect the camera, go to the location and compare reality with the picture, interview cameraman, interview witnesses, etc, etc)?  NONE. 

Suppose you find out the stranger is free on bail pending a charge of auto-theft, and plans to use this picture to "prove" that he wasn't 250 miles away stealing a car in another city at the time the car was stolen?  How much effort would you wish the prosecutor to put into authenticating this picture and the claims made about it (i.e., see the originals and negatives, inspect the camera, go to the location and compare reality with the picture, interview cameraman, interview witnesses, etc, etc)?   MORE. 

Suppose another stranger on the bus tells you they can levitate without using any physical means to do so, whenever nobody is looking.  They then try to substantiate this by showing you a picture they took of themselves in mid-air above the floor in their house.  How much effort would you need to put into authenticating this picture and the claims made about it (i.e., see the originals and negatives, inspect the camera, go to the location and compare reality with the picture, interview cameraman, interview witnesses, etc, etc) before you became open to the possibility of accepting the claim as true?  LOTS.

"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence" or "ECREE", is not only common sense, it is the normal way YOU think. The fact that you believe normal claims upon normal evidence that you encounter on a daily basis, doesn't mean you always believe what you see.  The truth is that the more somebody else's claim sounds improbable to you, the more rigid tests of authentication you'll require the evidence to pass before you'll be open to accepting the claim as true.

 If the evidence is being used to support an ordinary claim not involving, miracle, crime or alibi, most of us, including Christians, see no reason to be suspicious.

But the more extraordinary the claim, the more effort most people, including Christians, will will put into authenticating the allegedly supporting "evidence" before they believe the claim to be true. We are perfectly well aware that pictures can be modified, testimony can be falsified, eyewitnesses can be mistaken in their conclusions about what they were looking at, etc.

I wouldn't give two shits about gospel authorship if all these books did was tell about a non-miraculous Jesus.  I'd just refer to "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John" in common parlance without raising an issue, because it wouldn't matter either way.

But because the gospels tell about a Jesus who did things that are "extraordinary", then no, I will not be as uncritically accepting that apostle Matthew really is the author of the gospel now bearing his name.

How would my increase in skepticism be qualitatively different than in the case of you and the stranger who uses a picture to prove he can float?   You have bigger problems with claims the more they assert that which you deem improbable...and so do I.   What?


This more skeptical attitude is perfectly consistent with the common sense way that EVERYBODY reacts.  The more the claim departs from typical experience (Jesus rising from the dead), the more everybody demands a stricter criteria of authentication.

The reason isn't hard to figure out:  there are thousands of false miracle claims in the world, wherein liars have set forth pictures and testimony to support false claims.  So it only makes sense, in the name of ultimate truth, for the degree of authentication rigidity to increase proportionally with the degree to which we think a claim is improbable.

If you were told that ECREE is a mere subterfuge and only means "miraculous claims require miraculous evidence", a concoction by skeptics in the effort to make sure they can always get away from real miracles, you've been duped.  ECREE is obeyed and observed by everybody who is not crazy.

Can you imagine what would happen to America's justice system, if lawyers and judges suddenly denied ECREE and simply believed all claims where presented with possibly valid evidence?

Indeed, have you ever been suspicious somebody was lying while lacking direct proof they were lying?  Yes.  Does that mean you were irrationally skeptical?  No, because many times our hunches about another's dishonesty prove accurate.  It means you are a skeptic.

I suggest you stop getting your knowledge from a Christian "teacher" whose long history of intentional slander forces you to disassociate yourself from him anyway (1st Cor. 5:11-13), give up the dogmatic snarky attitude as if you could actually survive a debate with a philosophically informed atheist, and recognize that it is your own choice to remain hidden safely behind your anonymity, which testifies most strongly that a person with your brain power has no moral right to be dogmatic about this stuff.  you don't know enough about it to even recognize when you are wrong.

You can be dogmatic about sandwiches, puppies, the existence of cars, and clean air.  But you need to grow the fuck up and recognize how ill-equipped you are to handle epistemology...and to accordingly back off the snarky attitude.  Us atheists are anything but wrong when we give the middle finger to the bible and insist our authentication criteria remain reasonable despite your inability to fulfill them.

See my prior defense of ECREE, and my rebuttal to Nick Peters on the subject here.

Cold Case Christianity: there is no Holy Spirit, so employ these psychological tricks for greater effect

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

Cold Case Christianity:

How Do I Share What I Believe? Ten Common Christian Expressions Requiring Translation

Posted: 29 Mar 2019 01:42 AM PDT

Every group has its own distinct language, and Christianity is no different. Back when I was an unbeliever, a Christian friend approached me and said, “Jim, I’ve been convicted lately, and God has put you on my heart. God told me you need to be born again; you need to come to repentance and experience a conversion. It’s time for you to deal with the sin in your life and have a true spiritual rebirth. Why don’t you invite Jesus into your heart and make Him the Lord of your life? If you have faith you can be saved. You can be washed by the Blood of the Lamb, and sanctified so you can enjoy fellowship with your Christian brethren.” OK, he didn’t actually put it quite like that. But he might as well have. I couldn’t understand a thing he said. His “Christianese” was fluent and mine was not. Years later, I found myself using much of the same language with my unbelieving friends, only to find them equally confused and alienated. So, here’s a list of common Christian expressions I’ve decided to translate for all my friends who are still speaking the language of the secular culture:

#1. “God has put you (or something) on my heart. / God told me.”

Really? As an atheist, I was offended by this kind of language. What makes you Christians so sure you know what God is thinking? Are you actually hearing a voice from Heaven? Does it sound like Morgan Freeman? Sounds a bit presumptuous to me.

Amen.

Try this instead: “Jim, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. You come to mind when I am praying and talking to God.”

In which case, if God really did cause you to be motivated to talk to Jim like that, you are refusing to glorify god when you refuse to proclaim who is responsible for the motive in your heart.  Sounds like you think there's more power in language than in the Holy Spirit.

#2. “Be ‘born again.’ / Have a spiritual rebirth.”

Is “Born Again” a political party or something you want me to join? Aren’t all Christians “born again?” If so, why are you using the additional adjective? Are “Born Agains” the true, hardcore Christians? Are they political activists like the modern day “Birthers”? Sorry, I’m too busy to become a fanatic or join a movement.

Good answer.  I would have said Jesus is a disgusting pig for using a metaphor like that since whatever he wished to teach, probably didn't "require" that he lead an orthodox Jew into thoughts of incest.

Try this instead: “Reconsider your beliefs and begin a new life as a Christian.”

But the answer would be:  "why?  according to your bible, annihilationism is true, a fate I've already expected and accepted as an atheist.  No thanks, I'll do what I want".

#3. “You need to come to repentance. / Experience a conversion.”

My mother used to take me to Catholic Mass occasionally when I was a small boy. I hated it. I never understood what those priests were saying, but I’m sure it had something to do with “penance,” “penitence,” or “repentance.” Didn’t King James die a long time ago? Why are we still trying to talk like him?

Try this instead: “You and I might be ‘good’ at times but we’re not ‘perfect.’ If God is all-powerful, He has the ability to be perfect.

Well your god is not all-powerful.  See Christian apologist Greg Boyd here. 

The only way imperfect creatures like you and I can be united to a perfect God is to accept the pardon He’s offering for our imperfection.”

So basically what you are saying is Luke 1:6 is a lie, because God would never consider sinners to be righteous by their obedience?

#4. “Deal with your sin.”

You go ahead and deal with your sin if you want to. I’m too busy dealing with everyone else’s sin. I’m a police officer, for crying out loud; we’re the “good guys.” We put the “bad guys” in jail, and most of the folks I arrest tell me they’re Christians. Please Mr. “Holier Than Thou,” don’t start talking to me about my “sin.” It’s offensive.

Try this instead: “The Bible says Jesus is God

It also said he had motives in contradiction to the Father's purposes, see Matthew 26:39.  He cannot have a rational motive to say "not my will...", if his will was always in perfect accord with the Father's.   And again, the bible doesn't specify this is only the human half of Jesus, and non-Christian readers are fully reasonable to insist that this is talking about ALL of Jesus (i.e., it was both his human and divine sides that manifested a will contrary to the Father's).

and the only perfect man who ever lived.

"perfect" means precisely nothing beyond our individual relativistic definitions.  if perfect means "all-wise", then Jesus was not perfect in his childhood years, see Luke 2:40, he could hardly grow in wisdom if he were already "perfect" in wisdom.  And that verse doesn't say it was merely the "human nature" of Jesus that grew in wisdom, you are only reading that caveat into the text because you insist in bible inerrancy and you insist other parts of the bible declare that Jesus is god in his nature, two presuppositions sufficiently controversial as to rationally warrant the atheist, if they so choose, to wash their hands entirely of this word-game called "bible".

Yet He died like a common criminal to pay the price for our daily ‘crimes’ of imperfection.

Nope, he died because he was a criminal, nothing more, and it is only a martydom complex cult that told itself his defeat was actually a victory ( coming from the same stupid fortune cookie crap that says "my strength is made perfect in weakness". Funny how we never think our defeat of an enemy was a "victory" for them).  Not much different from the bereaved parents who insist their rececntly deceased child is in a better place.  It might feel good to say it, that doesn't mean it is true.

If we are willing to accept what Jesus did for us on the cross, He’s willing to apply His perfection to us.”

Thus begging the question of how it can be meaningful to say "Jesus died for your sins", and yet this benefit can be held back by unbelief.  What exactly happened to YOUR sins, Wallace, at the moment Jesus died for them?  And should I bring a Calvinist into the debate to remind your readers of how faulty your understanding of the bible is?

#5. “Invite Jesus into your heart.”

You mean like a boyfriend? What exactly does that mean to have “Jesus in my heart?” I’m not an emotional kind of guy, so please don’t ask me to sing songs or hold hands with Jesus, especially in public. Do I have to emasculate myself to become a Christian? If so, thanks for reminding me why I’m not a Christian.

Excellent answer.

Try this instead: “When we admit our imperfections, believe Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our mistakes, and accept His sacrifice, we can start a new relationship with God.”

My response:  if your god really wanted my sins to disappear, he could make them disappear with a wave of his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), and if by monster miracle he can convert somebody far more antagonistic to Christianity than I ever was (Saul/Paul), God can achieve the entire salvation of my soul without lying and saying it all depends on my freewill.

#6. “Make Jesus the Lord of your life.”

Isn’t this the twenty-first century? Are there still serfs and lords? Was J.R. Tolkien the author of your Scripture? It kind of sounds that way. What is a “Lord” anyway? Is it like a “slave master”? Between bosses and supervisors, most of us have enough people trying to be our “Lord.” Thanks anyway.

Try this instead: “As you begin to appreciate the magnitude of God’s forgiveness and sacrifice, you’ll find yourself wanting to be more like Him.”

 LOL.  I would never want to be more like the god who required burning pre-teen prostitutes to death (Leviticus 21:9).  Feel free to say God has learned with the passing of time to be nicer, but only at grave theological cost.

#7. “Have faith.”

If by “faith” you mean believing in something in spite of the evidence, no thanks. Blind faith is dangerous. I’m a cop; evidence matters to me. You can keep your “faith;” I’d rather have my “reason.” The world would be a better place if fewer people flew planes into buildings because they believed something blindly.

Try this instead: “Jesus gave us more than enough evidence to believe what He said about Himself.

Fuck you!  Jesus didn't give us SHIT. We get precisely nothing about first century Christianity "from Jesus", unless you think Jesus authored the New Testament?

He never asked people to take an irrational, blind leap. He asked instead for a reasonable step of trust.”

He also healed vast crowds of their illnesses and is not recorded to have nagged any Gentiles about their deficient view of the Hebrew scriptures or whether they need to actually follow him around and hang on his every word.  Quite a departure from the Christ represented by modern funda-gelical Christianity, who is never anything more than a literary concept, to be bandied about as an intellectual plaything.

#8. “Be saved.”

Saved from what and saved by who? Last time I checked, I’m the guy who usually does the saving. And doesn’t your holy book say “God helps those who help themselves?” I’ve been helping myself for thirty-five years now without a problem. No need to change that. I’m okay, but thanks for the offer.

Try this instead: “God doesn’t want anyone to be separated from Him. He’s given us a way home. All we have to do is accept His offer of forgiveness through Jesus.”

 No thanks, god can get rid of even death-deserving sins of adultery and murder by simply waving his magic wand, no need to "accept" anything.  2nd Samuel 12:13.

#9. “Be washed by the blood of the Lamb.”

Tell me you didn’t just say that. I know what a “blood bath” is, and it’s not usually a good thing. I’m not sure what a lamb has to do with it, but lamb’s not my favorite food anyway. Are you trying to get me excited about Christianity or chase me away?

Try this instead: “It turns out that the death of one man (Jesus) provides forgiveness for the rest of us.”

It also turns out that you couldn't prove this to save your life.  I've already batted down the arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, so all you have is a crucified criminal.  I'll pass.

#10. “Be Sanctified.”

Is that kind of like “sanctimonious?” I sure know a lot of Christians who are smug and self-righteous. Is that what happens over time if I become a Christian? It certainly seems that way. “Sanctified” sounds a bit arrogant. I bet sanctified people think their pretty “special.” You can keep your pretentious “sanctification.”

Try this instead: “Grateful people are selfless people. Christians who understand how much they’ve been forgiven are changed over time.”

 or maybe, like lots of non-Christians, they are capable of "fronting" for extended periods.

Bonus Expression #11. “Enjoy fellowship.”

What, another Lord of the Rings reference? Really? Do you people ever use language from this century? Christianity sounds a lot like an exclusive country club. If I join, it sounds like I’ll get to become a “fellow” of some sort. Do I have to give up having a beer with the fellas in order to hang out with the Christian fellows? Hmm, that kind of makes the decision easy for me.

Try this instead: “It’s encouraging to find grateful Christians who are struggling to become people of God. We’re out there and eager to have you join our community, regardless of what you may believe today.”

What if I never tithe?  How happy would your pastor be if I "joined the community", then convinced everybody that tithing is not for the modern church?  "grateful" probably isn't the word...

I understand the importance of our theologically rich Christian language, and as a Christian I often use similar words when talking with Christians. But when I’m talking with unbelievers, I try to think about how I used to hear and interpret these words before I became a Christian.

Why?  Can't you just tell yourself that because  your language was biblically accurate, the job of having those words sink in and convert somebody is not yours, but only the Holy Spirit's?

How much effort must you put into apologetics, before us atheists begin to be justified in our suspicion that the "Holy Spirit" constitutes nothing but gratuitous afterthought?

Evan Minton's utterly useless trifles about Molinism

This is my reply to an article by Evan Minton entitled

Cerebral Faith

Q&A: Objections To The Free Will Defense Against The Problem Of Evil

Posted: 29 Mar 2019 05:43 PM PDT

The most successful free will defense argues that in order to do good a person must be able to do evil.

 Then that's a pretty sad defense:  you say your God cannot do evil, so how does he manage to do good?

Evan Minton is doing little more than showing he has a 3rd grader's knowledge of biblical theology, he simply "quotes the bible" as if this automatically leveled the playing field in favor of classical theism.  Since I don't wish to give a point by point reply to absurd speculations about non-existent fairies in the sky and what they might or might not want to do, I've severely restricted the portions of this nonsense I'm willing to provide response to.

What Minton is arguing is a subject that doesn't do jack shit toward making my own atheist criticisms of bible theology any less plausible.

snip

\\\"God could make us disposed more to good than evil in all cases while still allowing us to have the free will to do wrong. Why did God make it so that if Adam and Eve sinned both they and their descendants would have a nature that makes it impossible to avoid sinning?"\\\ -- Who said God made it impossible to avoid sinning?

Well don't you find it kind of funny that according to the bible, nobody in the entire history of humanity was able to avoid sinning?  See Paul abusing the OT in Romans 3:10 ff.

1 Corinthians 10:13 seems to say just the opposite "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man, and God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape so that you will be able to endure it".

That was written by somebody who blindly denies the bible-god's responsibility for sin.  Dismissed.  God would have done better to simply wave his Ezra 1:1 magic wand, and people would not put themselves in sinful situations in the first place, preempting any need to "escape" from them.

It is true that we have a predisposition to sin. It's also true that it's inevitable we all will sin to a certain degree in this life, but each individual sin which comprises the number of sins we commit in this life could have been avoided. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says so.

Sorry, Minton, but "inevitable" and "could have been avoided" are logically contradictory.

By the way, 1 Corinthians 10:13 is one of the strongest biblical pieces of evidence that we do indeed have the ability to choose between good (A) and evil (non-A).

Utterly irrelevant to the reasonable person who denies biblical inerrancy and thus has no rational motive to force everything in the bible to harmonize.

This verse is unintelligible on deterministic views.

All the better, a proof that the bible contradicts itself.  You might wish to contact Steve Hays, a Calvinist over at Triablogue, who says God in his secret will often causes people to violate His revealed will.  See here. Since you cannot seriously say Hays is a dummy, you are forced to admit the reasonableness of the atheist who sees the Arminian and Calvinist scholars fighting it out for hundreds of years, with no resolution in sight, and who then concludes the biblical wording is surely contradictory or else fatally ambiguous, and thus undeserving of any serious consideration.

On determinism, there was no real way of escape. The way of escape was only an illusion. If determinism is true, then anyone who sins had no choice but to sin either because God or some other force or forces outside of their control made them.

Good point.

But what if there were no sin nature? How much evil would this, in fact, prevent?

 God lacks a sin nature.  How much evil does God create?

We cannot say. We don't know what this hypothetical world would be like.

A worthless thought experiment prompted by ancient fairy tales.

For all we know, perhaps there'd be just as much sin as this one. The demons would still be at work trying to lead souls to ruin (1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:12-19), and the devil is how Adam and Eve were enticed even while in a state of innocence (Genesis 2).

 And who do you blame for the devil's ability to penetrate Paradise?  

The demons might have to work than they do in the actual world if we didn't have an inherent inclination towards wrongdoing, but it is entirely possible that the amount of sin wouldn't be affected by much. We just simply have no idea.

Moreover, I think the argument from love cannot be dismissed in The Free Will Defense against the problem of evil. As I pointed out in my blog post "I Haven't Met My Wife, But I Already Love Her", love is not an emotion but a choice.

 False distinction, love is also an emotion even if also a choice.  Women who hear about their kids dying in an attack are full of emotion because of their love for their children.  Sorry, you aren't living in an honor/shame collectivist culture in 1300 b.c.  Under your stupid reasoning, a person could stop loving another as easily as they put down one candy bar and pick up another:  nothing but choice.

The same is true for its antithesis; hatred. The freedom to love is also the freedom to hate, and certain actions flow from both.

Does God have the freedom to feel toward sinners opposite to what's asserted in John 3:16?

Love is patient, kind, never boasts, does not rejoice in evil but the truth, it always strives for the well-being of the one loved "it always protects" (1 Corinthians 13).

 Which is precisely why your god is not loving.  God not only doesn't strive for the well-being of the loved one, he causes them to be raped, Isaiah 13:15-17.  No, that wasn't an empty threat, it give all appearance of being just as literally intended as any other prediction of doom.  And if the prediction was that god would stir the Medes to give gifts of food to the Babylonians, then suddenly, you'd see no problem crediting this fully to god.

If love can be defined at a minimum as "Seeking the well-being of others", hatred can be defined at a minimum as "Seeking the harm of others". If God is to allow genuine freedom to love my neighbor as myself, he must allow me the freedom to hate my neighbor, and to flip 1 Corinthians 13 on its head; i.e to be impatient, cruel, envious, boastful, proud, easily angered, keeping a record of wrongs, rejoicing in deception. If he does not allow me the freedom to hate my neighbor, then I have no choice but to love my neighbor, and if I have no choice but to love my neighbor, then I am locked into the single action of caring for his wellbeing. Thus, the problem of "robot love" (as I like to call it) surfaces again.

Ezra 1:1 is YOUR problem.  God apparently not only can, but does, approve of causing people to do whatever he wants.  Whether that's a violation of freewill or not is irrelevant:  your god knows of a way to get things done the way He wants them to get done, and yet he rarely ever employs this ability.  So apparently your god is like a demented child who prefers to watch the carnage merely because it's carnage.

snip

3: \\\"By the logic that free will is more important than horrible suffering we ought not to lock up people who commit crimes or otherwise stop them from committing a crime in fear of infringing on their free will."\\\ --- What applies to God doesn't always apply to us.

But you don't know that god never violates the freewill of human beings.  He does.  Keep "hook in your jaws" in mind as you read about God boasting in Ezekiel 38-39 of forcing future armies to attack Israel, then ask yourself how that metaphor could be appropriate if the mental image that comes to mind when we read "hook in your jaws" is too extreme to be realistic.

We are obligated to stop people from sinning if we know they're going to, but that doesn't mean God is.

 So have you told James Patrick Holding to cease his constant sins of slander and reviling, yes or no?  Regardless, Frank Turek would say it is the law god put in your heart, and the Holy Spirit, that constrain you to stop others from sinning.  So now what?  God moves through you to stop others from sinning, but doesn't himself do anything to stop people from sinning?

As I point out in my chapter on the problem of evil in The Case For The One True God: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Case For The God Of Christianity, The reason this distinction exists is that, unlike God, we are finite in knowledge. God is omniscient, seeing the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10, cf. Psalm 139:1-4).

 No, you are just a classical theist who disagrees with other Christian scholars who designate themselves as open-theists.  They don't interpret those passages the way you do. See here.

God knows what would occur in any given circumstance

How?  Magic?  Crystal Ball?

and what will occur. Therefore, God may allow evil A, knowing that if He allowed A, then greater good D would occur.

 which means we run the risk of ruining that good plan if we interfere with an evil act.  If 5 people in Seattle are going to accepted Jesus because a bank was successfully robbed 25 year earlier in Texas,  guess what result you get if, back there during the robbery, you kill the robbers before they rob the bank?

Another problem is that if god wishes to start with an evil to create a chain reaction that results in ultimate good, why does he bitch when some of the chain links perform their intended function?  Under your logic, God's bitching isn't sincere. he likes the fact that we do evil things, it's all part of a grander plan, but he dishonestly pretends he's all mad about it.

If God doesn't allow A to occur, then B wouldn't occur.

No, you are just lost in Molia-mist.  Your classical theist god can cause an act without being helpless against the possible side-effects.   All this bullshit about how maybe god allows evil because he foresees a greater good is total bullshit, and there are enough Calvinists in disagreement with you to justify the atheist in saying this whole business is total bullshit.

If B doesn't occur, then C wouldn't occur, and if C doesn't occur, then D wouldn't occur.

 The bible never presents god viewing some act as setting off some chain of freewill decisions.  The simple fact is, you cannot merely quote the bible to demonstrate what you believe, because what you believe is far more complex and involved than what the bible teaches, hence, the need for properly qualified Christian scholars and theologians to do little more in life than disagree with each other about everything in the bible.

Evil A may be "a child drowning in the river" or "a teenager being gunned down in the streets". As any time travel enthusiast will tell you, every event that occurs sends ripples through history.

You use "time-travel" to enhance your argument?  Let's just say i can tell pretty easily the level you are functioning at.

God's reason for permitting some evil might not emerge until centuries later and even in another country!

 Once again, the bible doesn't present God as viewing some act as resulting in a chain of freewill causes and effects. You've simply mistaken Molina and Bill Craig for "bible", that's all.

Only an all-knowing God can grasp what would occur in the future on the basis of whether or not he permits A to occur in the present.

Dismissed.

God is omniscient.

Fuck you, read Greg Boyd and quit mistaking your youthful tendency to jump to conclusions, for serious knowledge.

We are not. God runs the universe. We do not. Therefore, we are to err on the side of caution and prevent any evil we can.

But if you don't, you can always argue that this omission was part of God's greater plan too.

The Free Will Defense is only one facet of a robust response to the problem of evil.

No, your bible makes it clear that God has no problems just MAKING people do whatever he wants, Ezra 1:1.  You are merely throwing up theological garbage merely because you cannot reconcile the evil of the world with your allegedly all-loving god. 

Greater Good Theodicy shouldn't be divorced from the discussion. This would apply to animal pain and natural evil. God knows the ripple effect while we do not.

You have predicated the allegation of ripple-effect upon nothing but time-travel.  Suffice it to say you won't be taken seriously until you get serious.

So, this reductio ad absurdum doesn't succeed.

4: \\\"God doesn't need to give us the free will to do extreme evil to achieve the ends free will is said to require: raping children, rape in general, the murder of children, murder in general, etc are all unnecessary. And by giving people the opportunity to do them, God, unnecessarily increases their risk of earning additional suffering in Hell."\\\ --

Part of my answer to this will overlap to a certain extent with my answer to the first. Unlike those who say "Hate isn't the opposite of love, apathy is". I do take hate to be the opposite of love.

Then the god who loves sinners in John 3:16 contradicts himself and hates them in Psalm 5:5.  That Psalm isn't saying God hates their "works".  It says he hates the "workers", i.e., the people themselves.

Apathy is only the opposite of love in the sense that apathy is impassionate while love is a passion. Apathy is a lack of choice while love is a positive choice.

No, plenty of people make a choice to walk away from something and "not give a fuck what happens".  This is choice. It's also apathy.

But love and hate are two passions and choices that tug in opposite directions. It seems to me that if one is to be truly free to love to the maximal extent, one ought to be free to hate to the maximal extent.

You are assuming a divine desire for people to be "free".  Does Steve Hays think this is biblical?

You can't have the freedom to love your neighbor without also having the freedom to hate your neighbor.

Then how does your god manages to love sinners without being free to hate them?  or did I ask a stupid question sort of akin to why some fairies have blue eyes?

And as I explained in  "I Haven't Met My Wife, But I Already Love Her", love is not an emotion but a choice.

Previously dismissed that nonsense.

The same is true for its antithesis; hatred. While love and hate can certainly spark emotions, or the emotions can spark the choices, love and hate are not emotions in and of themselves. They can either be caused by emotions in some circumstances, or doing loving actions or hateful actions can eventually bring you to feel emotional about the actions, but love and hate are not emotions. They're choices.

I don't see the point of this trifle.  Under your logic, a mother who just gave birth can "choose" to refrain from loving her baby just as easily as she can choose between new and used tires.  Women aren't perfect, and some women can do this, but most cannot, their love for their offspring is automatic and instinctive, there is no "choice" about it.

If I choose to love my neighbor, I will choose to be patient with him when he does things that get on my nerves.

Then under your logic, when you aren't patient, you lack love.

"But patience and impatience are emotions you can't control!" You might object. Of course, I have no control over whether I feel patient or impatient towards my neighbor,

And whose fault is that?

but I can choose to be patient.

Not in the libertarian sense.  Some people are thugs and are always in and out of jail because their genetics will not permit them to change their ways.   Some people are mentally retarded and will flip out impatiently at the least provocation.  Yet your god seems to think giving them less freewill than you was a good thing.

I can conceal my irritation at his lollygagging and not scold him for taking too long.

That would be dishonest.  "thou shalt not lie".

I can overlook his character flaws and not express my anger at his pride or whatever quirks he has that annoy me. Love is not only patient but kind.

Which means god isn't being loving when acting unkind, such as torturing a baby to death over a period of 7 days.  2nd Samuel 12:15-18. 

When someone is in need, I am to meet their needs.

Do you know how many crack-babies need foster care?  or did you suddenly discover how much easier life would be if you insisted that you don't feel "called" to engage in activities your natural self already hates?

If they need food, I love them by feeding them.

And if you don't feed them and they starve, God wants you to know it was He who killed them (Deut. 32:39).

If they are thirsty, I love them by giving them drink. If they need a place to stay while in town but can't afford a hotel, I let them crash at my place.

So..how many homeless bums do you let live in your house, and could you be doing more, and what should we conclude about a person who tries to do good, but doesn't do their best?

maybe something similar to what i conclude about the fact that god doesn't do his best to save people?

David Parrish showed me kindness by paying for my plane ticket and letting me stay at his hotel room so that I could attend The ETS Conference In Colorado last year. Love doesn't boast. If I love my neighbor, I won't rub my achievements in their face.

 What a fucking waste of money.  You don't need to attend such conferences in order to carry out your need to do apologetics.

Most of the things 1 Corinthians 13 describes as love have to do with choices, and the very few that have to do with feelings can be interpreted as controlling or concealing your feelings for the sake of your neighbor, which is, of course, an action.

Now, if I am free to make these love choices, then I am free to make the opposite of these; hate choices. I'm free to be impatient with my neighbor; to be cruel to him (whether this takes the form of insults, depriving him of things he needs, shunning him, or even torturing him for the fun of it). I am free to be boastful; to rub my neighbor's face in my accomplishments. "Look at how many copies my book has sold. How many have yours sold? Do people even know it exists?" "Look at how many views a day my blog gets? Yours gets, what? 20 views a day?" "Why should we take your broken down jalopy. Let's take my Ferrari instead". <-- I don't actually have a Ferarri unfortunately, this is just for the sake of illustration.

So...it took a while for me to get here, but here's my overarching point: If God restricts me from hating my neighbor as much as I would were He not to restrict me, then he would be pushing me towards being more loving towards my neighbor than I otherwise would be.

if God can restrict you from hating your neighbor without violating your freewill, he can also "restrict" the pedophile without violating their freewill.  So when he doesn't, there is no intellectual compulsion on us to insist God surely only allowed evil to happen for the sake of a greater good.  We are within our epistemic rights to say your god doesn't exist, and is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of ancient barbarians and their imperfect tortured path toward civility, and that's why this "god" operates in ways that defy all expectations of love and common sense.  NOT because he is "mysterious". 

snip

As a Maximally Great Being,

Sorry, maximal 'greatness' means precisely nothing, thus explaining why you make little sense in your sophistry.  Your theological house stands on an incoherent foundation.  What would maximal greatness be?  How about the ability to successfully convince all freewilled creatures to obey, sort of like the way most schoolteachers successfully accomplish with the vast majority of schoolkids every day?

God certainly loves all persons, whether they be human persons, angels, or demons. Therefore, he desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:23). Whatever the reason for demons not escaping judgment, we can conclude that it isn't that God doesn't love his former angels and doesn't desire them to repent.

Sorry, Calvinsts are perfectly well-aware of those passages, and they see nothing in them indicating that God has the same level of love toward every sinner. YOU might feel constrained by your interpretation of such passages to think certain theological options are off the table, but this is hardly "apologetics".

snip

6: \\\"The fact that God foreordains (see Psalm 139:16, Job 14:5 and Deuteronomy 32:39) people to die young, permits brainwashing, allows certain types of (mental) illness, etc proves that God has no problem infringing upon our free will or with allowing it to be infringed upon. "\\\ --

I fail to see how the foreordaining of our deaths is an infringement of our free will?

We are perfectly reasonable to say god foreordains by his own involvement.  If Deut. 32:39 is true, the mugger who stabs you to death is being actuated by god.  God foreordained Jesus' death on the cross, but it was also god's "hand" that put Jesus to death (Acts 4:28).  

Do you think God ought to allow us to choose the dates of our deaths or something?

No, your god is a fiction because if he were truly perfect, he'd have been perfectly "content" with the way things were before he created the universe, and as such, there would be no mortals to encounter death and create the problem in the first place. Feel free to get around that problem by saying God wasn't perfectly content before Genesis 1:1.

Or perhaps you're thinking of instances in which a human agent is the cause of someone's death. In the latter, Molinism perfectly solves the problem. Interested readers are directed to my paper "The Case For Mere Molinism" which I also read aloud in episode 10 of The Cerebral Faith Podcast for a full explanation and defense of Molinism. But, Molinism basically means that can sovereignty ordain the death of someone via a human agent without violating the murderer's libertarian free will. He does this by acting on His knowledge of what any free creature would freely choose to do in any given set of circumstances.

 James Patrick Holding is a molinist too, now I know why you immediately flock to him as if any answer he gives is beyond criticism.  But again, plenty of serious conservative Christian scholars say "fuck you" to Molinism, so its not like this foists some intellectual obligation on skeptics, who already have excellent reasons to label all god-talk and many-worlds-foreknowledge talk as total bullshit.

snip

Of course, then the question must be asked "Why then, would God create a world of free creatures? Why does God care so much about whether human beings have libertarian free will?"

First of all, love requires at a minimum, the ability to resist one's advances.

Oh, so if you grab your 16 year old daughter to prevent her from slicing her arm in an act of suicide, you aren't loving because you aren't allowing the possibility for her to successful resist such force?

Otherwise, what you have is something akin to Stockholm Syndrome. You certainly don't have this on determinism. Not even on compatibilism. Indeed. Compatibilism is more like Stockholm Syndrome in that the person "willingly" obeys. But they've been conditioned out of having the ability to even want to resist, much less having the capacity to resist. For our actions to be valued as genuinely good or evil, we must have the ability to choose.

 I wonder how which female war-captives mentioned in Deut. 21:10-14 were suffering something like Stockholm Syndrome as they allegedly said "yes" to an offer of marriage by one of the army men who recently massacred her family and kidnapped her.

I don't get outraged a man who knocks me down because he inadvertently tripped over his shoelace. I do get outraged at the man who freely chooses to shove me. In the latter case, he had the ability to choose not to shove me, unlike in the former case.

No, Calvinists say God has predestined all human actions infallibly.  If anybody shoves you down on purpose, it's because they had no ability to deviate from infallible decree. 

7: \\\"God could have cut Adam and Eve's offspring off and restarted life on another planet thus preventing their descendants from being affected by original sin. And animals could be put in paradise or on another planet without suffering and death with humans being fed manna from heaven, or if you can demonstrate that the fall was justified then humans could be fed with something else that is corrupted not requiring animal pain. And finally, animal pain is unnecessary-even in this world because God could make sure that animals avoid dangerous things by giving them a strong sense of joy in trying to escape dangerous things with no need for any suffering involved."\\\ --

God could have eliminated Adam and Eve (and the other humans which were probably around at the time, since I affirm Evolutionary Creationism) and just started all over, but how do you know these people wouldn't also fall?

 That's your problem.  the point is that the biblical way god got things done wasn't the only possibility, there are others that are less brutal...tending to show that your god appears to favor, without good reason, the more brutal solution. 

For all we know, anyone in Adam and Eve's circumstances would have done the same thing.

Then God should know better than they create any such situation in the first place.  it's not like the maximally perfect state he enjoyed before creation could be "increased".

snip

 Some Christians do think that God cursed the universe with carnivorous activity and natural disasters post-fall (primarily Young Earth Creationists), but I see no reason to accept this explanation.

Yet another rational warrant for the atheist, if they wish, to keep themselves ignorant of biblical bullshit. it's nothing but a pile of contradictory horseshit that experts in theology and philosophy have been killing each other over for centuries.

Romans 5 doesn't say Adam's sin brought animal death into the world, it's speaking specifically of humans. Indeed, as I pointed out in my article "Why Pre-Fall Animal Death Isn't A Problem For Old Earth Creationism", including animals in the passage renders an absurd meaning. And Genesis 3? God never says he would bring hurricanes and carnivorism into existence in the list of curses He pronounces. That's read into the text.

 Correct, but Jesus said it is god who "feeds" the birds:

 26 "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. (Matt. 6:26 NAU)

Really?  It is god who gives the hawk the ability to sadistically eat another bird alive?  See here.

So why does God allow non-human animals to suffer? Since my view of origins is Evolutionary Creationism a.k.a Theistic Evolution, I need to wrestle with the question of why God allowed this to happen millions of years before the fall especially. We don't know with certainty.

 Thus leaving open the door to the possibility that carnivores do what they do, because there is no loving god in charge of this earth.

The Bible doesn't give us the answer. We can only speculate.

perhaps the bible doesn't give you the answer because the carnivorous nature of some animals really is a forceful argument against any notion that 'god' is 'loving'.

One very plausible explanation for why, specifically, pre-fall animal death was allowed was given by Hugh Ross which I quoted in my blog post "Why Pre-Fall Animal Death Isn't A Problem For Old Earth Creationism". Check out that blog post for the longer answer. The short answer is that God's purpose for using evolution was to train the animal kingdom to adapt step-by-step to increasingly advanced and intelligent hominid creatures so that when human beings evolved and fell into sin, the negative impact we would have on the environment would be restrained.

 Which means your god is a fuckhead, because he can just create humans like tin soldiers, than use telepathy to con them into doing whatever he wants them to do, no "need" to "allow suffering" for millions of years. Ezra 1:1.

Now, Ross doesn't accept evolution (he thinks each hominid was created ex nihilo), but his reasoning still applies either way.

yet another reason to say you have no more right to think God is guiding your bible study any more than Calvinists or Young Earth creationists.  Being in agreement on doctrine is required, see Phil. 2:2.  You will never be "of the same spirit" if Ross thinks one way about the bible, and you think the opposite way.

We also mustn't forget the ripple effect that each event has on history.

Oh yeah, that part where you pretend that time-travel is sufficiently reasonable and coherent as to deserve being used as a support for another argument.  No thanks.

Cold Case Christianity: J. Warner Wallace wants 3rd graders to draw conclusions about calculus problems

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? 

The Bacterial Flagellum and the Divine Design Inference

Posted: 27 Mar 2019 01:27 AM PDT

Of all the arguments related to the existence of God, the argument from the appearance of design is perhaps the most intuitive and visual. As we examine and observe the complexity (and inter-connectivity) of biological systems, we can’t help but come away with the impression these organisms and cellular micro-machines have been carefully crafted by a master artist. One such complex micro-machine has been heralded above all others in teleological arguments for the existence of God. Bacterial flagella remain a mystery to scientists who recognize them as a marvel of machine-like precision. Harvard biophysicist, Howard Berg, has publicly described the bacterial flagellum as “the most efficient machine in the universe.”  Is God real? The bacterial flagellum is best explained by God’s existence as the Intelligent Designer of biological systems.

 A point by point reply to such cheerleading is hardly necessary.  A few points will suffice:

• The vast majority of people do not have a college-level understanding of biology, so Wallace's integrity takes a hit as he tries to wow his predominantly and mostly scientifically apathetic audience with biological issues that require a college-level education to really appreciate.  One look at his book "Cold Case Christanity" and you can only guess what level of education his expected readership has.  Let's just say you don't attempt to teach algebra to those who are still struggling with bone-head math.
  
• Enhancing the anti-science sentiment of Wallace's article, is his failure to give any meaningful consideration to the counter-arguments offered by biologists equally if not more competent in the required fields than Behe.  Perhaps Wallace was aware that because he is writing to a non-scholarly audience, one-sided cheerleading will be preferable to scholarly interchange?
  
• Because the historical argument against the resurrection of Jesus is powerful, the rational person, convinced by irreducible complexity that some god exists, would likely exclude Christianity in their search for this god.  So ID ironically has a tendency to direct the unbeliever away from the "Christian" god, when its most vocal proponents are using it to direct people toward the Christian god.
  
• Under ID reasoning emerges a conclusion that most old-earth creationists reluctantly agree with:  The traits of certain animals that make them 'carnivores' (i.e., enough intelligence to kill other life forms, teeth intended to rip flesh, highly developed ability to see prey) are the result of ID, they are not what happens to some herbivores after sin came into the world.  In other words, baboons, hawks and lions often eat prey alive (or in the case of cats and whales, terrifying their prey in sadistic fashion before killing it) NOT because of sin degrading some herbivores into carnivores, but because god intended them to do this from eternity no less than than he intended for Adam and Eve to enjoy peace in the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, God says in Genesis 1:31, after creating the world and all its creatures, that this is "very good".  We really have to wonder why many Christians have a problem seeing such sadistic misery as "very good"...is this because the god (who allegedly put his law into their hearts) is trying to tell them that the biblical portrait of God is inaccurate?  If not, then they are forced to be open to the possibility that their strong moral feelings might be entirely determined by genetics and environmental conditioning, and in that case, down the toilet goes Frank Turek's argument that our strong moral feelings usually come from God.
  
• Behe was soundly refuted in a court of law in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 - Dist. Court, MD Pennsylvania 2005.  The court's entire ruling against ID is here, and the part that kicks Behe's ass all over hell and back begins with the phrase "ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments".  Use ctrl + f to find that phrase.
  
• Behe was defeated again in a later court case:

Plaintiffs offer little admissible evidence to the contrary. Plaintiffs' Biology expert, Dr. Michael Behe, submitted a declaration concluding that the BJU text mentions standard scientific content. (Watters Decl. Ex. U.) However, Professor Behe "did not consider how much detail or depth" the texts gave to this standard content. (Watters Decl. Ex. U ¶ 4.) Therefore, Professor Behe fails to refute one of Professor Kennedy's primary concerns that the nature of science, the theory of evolution, and critical thinking are not taught adequately.

See here.  That ruling was upheld on appeal.  A webpage at USC contains more information and documents.  The page went defunct but can still be found through Wayback.  See here.

• The Christan "apologists" who have been attacking me through my prior court cases (so far, only one, James Patrick Holding and his increasingly vanishing brood of Corinthian juvenile delinquents who mistake their love of strife with spiritual maturity) are hypocrites:  They are positively certain that when a Court ruled against me in a previous case, it was completely obvious that my lawsuit was frivolous or that I was "abusing" the court system.  But when they read another Court decision indicating that Christianity was the loser, then suddenly, we need to recognize that judges aren't perfect and often get things wrong.   In other words, whether the Court's ruling is correct or incorrect depends on whether the ruling speaks favorably or unfavorably about Christians and Christianity.  How convenient.  The more apologists decry the Kitzmiller ruling, the more they assent to the obvious:  Court judges are not paragons of objectivity, despite how the people in steerage gasp for breath and bow down whenever somebody wearing a black robe enters the courtroom.  Anybody familiar with the social controversy of whom the President will appoint as a Supreme Court Justice, is quite aware that judges are human too, and they are not much better at overcoming their biases than the average person is.
  
• Plenty of scientists have criticized Behe's model.  See here and here.
  
• Behe was challenged in live debate by competent scientists.  See here.  You can find him doing more such debates by simply googling "Behe debates"

Anybody clever enough to Google "Behe" and "irreducible complexity" and are willing to acknowledge that creationist websites are not the only sites mentioning his name, can find more proof that biologists and chemists with legitimate scientific degrees are nowhere near as impressed by "irreducible complexity", as is the usually Christian and non-college graduate reader of J. Warner Wallace's populist cheerleading.

If Wallace would honestly acknowledge his article here would not be intended to impress an atheist who has a master's degree in biochemistry, then he is keeping the door open to the possibility that he is only trying to convince laypersons about complex matters because he knows their ignorance will predispose them to overlook his errors and be more quick to just draw the pro-Christian conclusion he was hoping for.

The better reasons to doubt the Joseph of Arimathea story

The fact that we are atheists can tempt us to try and find more holes in the bible than are really there.

For example, Michael Alter wrote a lengthy work against the resurrection of Jesus, and therein tried to justify skepticism against the historicity of the gospel assertion that Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.

V. J. Torley summarized that case in an online article.

Christian apologist Dr. Timothy McGrew criticized said skepticism, concluding it was illusory. See here.

I would encourage my fellow skeptics to put less effort into proving each and every statement in the bible to be a lie, and put more effort into strengthening the more weighty skeptical arguments.  Whenever you can argue "Even if the bible were telling the truth about this detail, that doesn't place unbelievers under any intellectual obligation to allow that Jesus rose from the dead", that's probably going to achieve the goals of counter-apologetics more efficiently.

Why is this important?  Because the more you trifle about biblical details being fiction, the more you run the risk that some Christian scholar or apologist will successfully rebut such attacks.  While such responses never actually do anything for the cause of truth, such a successful rebuttal does indeed cause the Christian reader to hastily conclude "the bible has been vindicated, once again".  They lack critical thinking skills.  That's why they think that unless the skeptic can demonstrate that belief in Jesus is equal to belief in the tooth-fairy, they will be forever immune to the efforts of others to steal their joy in the Lord. 

So are the Mormons.

If you don't want to allow Christians any relief from the pressure of good skeptical arguments, then stop giving them weak arguments.  I myself, of course, am guilty of trying to justify skepticism toward many biblical matters, but that doesn't require that I just barge ahead anyway and never consider different ways of doing things that might achieve my goals in a more efficient way.

The matter of Jesus' burial is a good case in point.

Because skepticism of Jesus' resurrection can strongly justified even without doubting the Joseph of Arimathea story (because Jesus' being buried counts as exactly nothing in terms of evidence that he rose from the dead) skeptics have to ask themselves whether the skeptical value of attacking the Arimathea story's historicity outweighs the risk of some apologist making a plausible defense of it.

It might.  If you wish to dissuade Christians from their faith, you need to remember that they will seize upon anything that looks like it might remotely vindicate what they believe.  They love nothing more than to point out how skeptical attacks go wrong.  Every time they are able to plausibly claim such a thing, in their mind they automatically equate the failure of a skeptical argument with a vindication of biblical inerrancy/reliability.  My advice is that pressure on the Christian can be made more relentless and unforgiving if you skip the trifles and stick with the heavy artillery.

In this case, I know of several ways to attack the historicity of the Joseph of Arimathea story that are more convincing than the attempts of Ehrman and other skeptics to charge the story as wholesale fabrication.  Justifying skepticism toward the story does not require positive demonstration of the actual truth.  You can be reasonably skeptical of the testimony of an eyewitness already known for lying, even if you cannot positively disprove her specific testimony.

Dismissing Matthew's version as useless 
The excuse Matthew records the guards as ready to use (i.e., "the disciples stole the body while we were asleep", 28:13) is so unbelievable (they'd be risking death) that we are reasonable to question the entire burial story on that ground alone (not that it is a complete fabrication, but that, consistent with Matthew elsewhere, we cannot reasonably discern where history ends and fiction begins, so that trying to extract historical fact from him in this case is futile).

And don't even get me started on why I think Matthew's frightening angel, so part and parcel of the guard-bribery yarn (28:2), is equally the fictional apocalyptic imagery that Licona says the zombie-resurrection is (27:52). 

Dismissing the lateness of the Jewish 'concern' that the disciples would steal the body
Matthew 27:63, the Sanhedrin are testifying after the trial that "we remember" how Jesus went around saying he'd rise from the dead.  That means the Sanhedrin also knew this Christ-claim before the trial started.  It doesn't make sense to say that the Sanhedrin would delay being being concerned about the disciples stealing the body.  It makes more sense to say they'd be worried about such a deception before or at least during the trial.  Therefore, it does not make sense to say their concerns would be assauged merely by achieving the death of Jesus.  A dead man doesn't solve the potential problem of his disciples stealing the body and later falsely claiming he rose from the dead.  So it was likely at some point before or during trial, that this concern would present itself to the minds of the Sanhedrin. 

Since they'd not be fully satisfied with the death of Jesus, they would be most unlikely to allow the corpse to be removed from official custody.   They'd be worried about the disciple-deception immediately upon Jesus' death, they wouldn't delay worrying about it until after somebody removed the body from official custody.

If we are to take the Sanhedrin's disciple-deception concern to be historically accurate, then their insisting that Jesus either remain on the cross for at least 4 full days, or that his body remain under observation while it was thrown into a common pit as carrion, or that the body otherwise remain under the exclusive custodial watch of the Sanhedrin, represent historical options more consistent with their alleged fear of false resurrection claims, than does the gospel report that they allowed the corpse to go all the way out of their official custody for nearly a full day (27:62) merely to accommodate the wishes of a single Sanhedrin member who was secretly a follow of Jesus.  Another option is that since the OT required not mere removal from the hanging, but "burial" too, that as many members of the Sanhedrin as possible would have participated in any "burial". 

It is also curious that despite the biblical and historical warrant for saying "the Jews" loathed allowing bodies to remain hung after dark, all 4 gospels credit this concern in Jesus' case solely to Joseph of Arimathea.  So I am just a little suspicious that in actual history the only Jew that was intent in removing the body from official custody was a Christian.  The non-Christian Jews are never presented as having the least concern to remove the body from the cross.

Any of these scenarios more plausibly harmonize the known facts better that the gospel statements.

The Arimathea burial story's alleged multiple attestation is strongly suspect
Christians have a nasty habit of hastily concluding "inerrant!" merely upon a finding of "multiple attestation", as if this rule of historiography was to be applied mechanically, and where ancient author B tells roughly the same story as ancient author A, then presto, only mentally ill people would doubt the sources.

That is, the average fundamenalist Christian you get on the internet is perfectly certain that the Battle of Troy was a real event, and their ignorance of historiographical method makes them smarter than the legitimately credentialed historians who admit this multiply attested story's sources often exaggerate what happened.  So it doesn't matter if Joseph of Arimathea is "multiply attested", this does precisely nothing to refute the skeptical arguments that the sources are inventing details.

The 'Synoptic Problem' is another illustration of how multiple attestation is useless for overcoming skeptical charges of embellishment and fiction. Most Christian scholars answer the Synoptic problem by positing some type of literarary interdependence on the Synoptic authors.  The majority consensus is the Matthew and Luke borrowed extensively from Mark, the earliest gospel.  How would the multiple attestation of Joseph of Arimathea be impacted if we found out Matthew's and Luke's versions of it were nothing more than their sprucing up the Markan story with their own fictional modifications?  If we can allow an apostle like Matthew to borrow much text from non-apostle Mark (when in fact we wouldn't normally expect an eyewitness to exhibit such heavy dependency upon a hearsay account), what is the problem in saying Matthew derived Joseph of Arimathea from Mark's traditions?

 Fundies will say the differences between the gospels on Joseph of Arimathea are precisely the reason to view them as independently corroborative. But the devil is in the details.  Differences of emphasis do NOT always require that the differences speak to historically real matters.  It is not difficult to show that those differences are also more likely a case of fictional embellishment, so that the differences can support the skeptical position equally as powerfully as apologists think they support independence.

Fundies will say Matthew's account is longer than Mark's therefore Matthew's is not dependent upon Mark.  But what is the problem in accounting for Matthew describing Joseph slightly differently than Mark, as a case of Matthew borrowing the basic template from Mark, then inventing extra details?  After all, Matthew is the only author to mention the absurdly unlikely "bribed the guards to lie" story (28:13).  And if even conservatives like Licona and Blomberg refuse to insist on the historicity of Matthew's zombie-resurrection story in 27:52, and if we can already know that Matthew doesn't tip off the reader as to where the history ends and fable begins in that part of his gospel, then is the skeptic's crediting Matthew with a tendency to borrow and invent, in the area of Jesus' death and resurrection, seriously "unreasonable"?

So Matthew's unique version of the Joseph of Arimathea story does not count as an independent attestation.  And since Luke admits he was only reporting what other unidentified people told him (Luke 1:2), Luke's report about Joseph of Arimathea, coming as it does from Mark and otherwise unidentifiable sources, does not make skeptics unreasonable to label Luke's version as dependent, so that Matthew's and Luke's "multiple attestation" of the story becomes a hindrance rather than a help toward historicity.

Gee, how hard would it be to reasonably question the historical reliability of John's gospel, you know, that gospel that since ancient times was known to exhibit more concern for theology than history?  John obviously invents Christ-sayings.  It's not likely the Synoptic authors would knowingly exclude "Before Abraham was, I am" type statements from their gospels (John 8:58), since Jesus' deity, being essential doctrine and also the most unbelievable aspect of his teaching, would naturally motivate any cheerleader for Jesus to set forth his deity in clear unmistakable fashion, so it's reasonable to conclude the Synoptic authors don't quote the Christ-sayings now confined to John because Christ didn't really talk like that, most such statements in John are merely invented by him.  This is not too different from Jesus' parables, where on the surface, Jesus was referring to real people, but upon closer study, it becomes clear that he is only couching the story in what sounds like historical truth not because it is historical truth, but because he wants to teach a theological lesson.  Even Licona agrees with Craig Evans that if we could go back in time and follow Jesus around, we wouldn't find him speaking exactly as recorded in John.  There is an intense debate within Christian scholarly circles whether the gospels are giving us straight up verbatim reports of Jesus' actual words (ipsissima verba, what the vast majority of "inerrantist" fundamentalists believe), or whether they are giving us merely the "gist" of what was said (ipsissima vox, what most Christian scholars believe).  See one fundamentalist scholar's complaint here.  See Licona's different opinion here.

John's tendency to favor theology over historical accuracy is clear from what he says immediately prior to his story about Joseph of Arimathea.  He quotes Psalm 34:20 and Zech. 12:10 as predictions in the OT that were fulfilled at Jesus' crucifixion (no bones broken, people looking upon a pierced messiah).  Yet, as I document extensively in my up-coming book, Christian scholars are quite aware that the way the NT uses the OT is no simple matter (and is fertile breeding ground for accusations of error in the NT), and they often feel forced to concede that such passages were not true "predictions", therefore, what John presents as "fulfillment" is more accurately labeled a mere similarity or "typology", see here.

So the Joseph of Arimathea story can be deemed sufficiently problematic and lacking in multiple attestation that skepticism of this obvious apologetic material can be reasonably, even if not infallibly, warranted.

I think this manner of justifying skepticism of the Joseph of Arimathea story, a manner that does not necessarily insist it is a complete fiction, has greater persuasiveness than the manner of Alter and Torely.