Yes, PristineKat, the bible DOES promote child-abuse and sexism

James Patrick Holding's followers are up to their usual blissful ignorance again.

PristineKat18 hours ago (edited)

@Logician_Bones Not surprising because he said he found Sunday school boring, so he never paid attention. Did I mention he’s biblically illiterate? Saying the Book condones “child beating” and “sexism towards women”.

See here.

Holding tries to protect his babies from my challenges, by deleting my posts, so here's how I responded to "PristineKat"

He isn't biblically illiterate. 

Child-beating is approved in Proverbs 22:15, the author says bruises from beatings cleanse away evil (20:30), Christian scholars admit the rule of "context" doesn't help much in the case of proverbs which are often strung together without relation to what follows or precedes ("each proverb is an independent unit that can stand alone and still have meaning. Textual context is not essential for interpretation", D.A. Garrett, New American Commentary, Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs, p. 38), which would mean you cannot use the judicial context of 20:30 to pretend v. 30 is restricted to judicial beatings of criminals.  Therefore it is reasonable to say the Proverbs author thought inflicting wounds on children when they disobey is good.

Since Josephus states the obvious in specifying the Israelites killed the women and children of the pagan nations, I'm going to find his commentary on the "massacre passages" more likely true than the stupid hair-splitting trifles of Copan and Flannagan....in which case the fact that the people who told you to beat your kids, were the type to also slaughter children over religious differences, makes it reasonable, even if not infallibly so, to say the author of Proverbs was advising what we today would call child abuse.  The fools who think "use a rod on your child" meant merely "tap them on the butt" are obviously ignorant of the social and cultural context Proverbs was written in.

As far as sexism toward women in the bible, it is reasonable for skeptics to conclude from Leviticus 19:20-22 that the reason the author makes an exception here to the death-penalty he required for adultery in the next chapter (20:10) is because the girl in 19:20-22 had lower social status as a slave (i.e., the author thinks adultery with a slave girl is less sinful than adultery with a free woman, i.e., misogyny).  And worse for you, the fact that Leviticus 19:20-22 neither expresses nor implies the girl has to do anything to atone for her sin, is because the author doesn't think the sex-act he is addressing was consensual (i.e., the man raped the slave-girl).  Even inerrantist Christian scholars admit this was likely a case of rape:

"Since she was still a slave, the guilty parties were not given the death penalty. Rather there was to be “due punishment”...It is worth noting that only the man was considered blameworthy, not the female slave. Being a slave, the woman may have felt she had little recourse in resisting a male who was a free man and thus more powerful both in the social and economic spheres. That the free man must bear responsibility is suggested by the fact the female slave was not required to bring the guilt offering sacrifice."  (Rooker, M. F. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3A: Leviticus (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 260). Nashville: Broadman & Holman)

Gee, how easy would it be to get rid of inerrantist Rooker's interpretation by calling him a black and white fundy?  Where did you learn that empty rhetoric gets you closer to biblical truth?  Peter Ruckman?

The rapist of Leviticus 19:20-22 only has to offer an animal sacrifice to the priests to have his sin forgiven...which isn't much different than limiting the punishment for rape to a "fine"...which means god thinks rape is nowhere near the big deal that today's neo-fundamentalist know-nothings think it is.

But if you carefully restrict your happy blissfully ignorant world to just tektonics and tekton tv, you do a fair job of protecting yourself from getting your teeth kicked out the back of your skull by skeptics who know their bibles better than you.  Whenever you feel like the Holy Spirit is in the mood to do what Jesus promised in Matthew 10:20, consider yourself challenged.  Goto

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/09/cold-case-christianity-why-would-god.html

and search for "Leviticus 19:20"

Maybe you could gain more from bible study if you knock off the ignorant zeal and exhibit genuine humility when you are actually ignorant of the biblical matter you speak about?

screenshot proving I posted this challenge to tekton tv

Rebuttal to Brian Chilton's interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Brian Chilton has posted an audio message to his blog trying to refute the "rape" interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:28-29.  See here.

 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.
 30 "A man shall not take his father's wife so that he will not uncover his father's skirt. (Deut. 22:28-30 NAU)

Chilton's motive is clear.  This passage is forcing the maiden to marry her sex partner.  If the passage is talking about "rape", then this makes God sound like a sadistic idiot.  Chilton is a Christian bible believer:  There is nothing bad about his god, end of story, have a nice day.  And that's all the presupposition he needs in order to become automatically suspicious of any bible passage that seems to imply God's morals are different than those held by modern-day Americans.

I'm a skeptic, and for the following reasons I'm "reasonable" to view Deuteronomy 22:28-29 to be addressing the issue of non-consensual sex or "rape".  I also challenge Chilton to a live in person or written debate on whether it is reasonable to classify the OT YHWH as  "good".

The following arguments are from a study I did years ago, and I will respond in a future post to Chilton's specific arguments.

(you need to remember that because reasonableness doesn't always demand correctness, you are not demonstrating this skeptical interpretation to be 'unreasonable' merely because you've proven that a different interpretation remains logically possible.  If you are going to uphold the negative inferences you always draw out of Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:20, you must do more than show your view of Deut. 22:28-29 is possible, as "possible" isn't enough to show that the opposing view is unreasonable.  You must show that the skeptics who are interpreting Deut. 22:28-29 as addressing "rape" are "foolish" and "without excuse" for seeing rape therein).

First, commentators admit there is no agreement among commentators as to whether this passage addresses rape or merely "seduction": 

There is no agreement among commentators as to whether Deuteronomy 22:28–29 treats seduction (and is therefore an expansion of the case in Exod. 22:16–17) or rape. If the New International Version is correct in interpreting the passage as addressing rape, the monetary increase (fixed at fifty shekels) may be seen as a penalty exacted against the offender because he shamed her (v. 29). Whereas the former case (Exod. 22:16–17) would have been subject to conventional divorce procedure (Deut. 24:1–4), an additional provision is made for the woman’s economic security in the latter case: the man can never divorce her, whatever she does (Deut. 22:28–29). The concern for the woman is also reflected in the distinctions between the two rape cases described in Deuteronomy 22:23–27: the betrothed woman raped in the city would have been heard if she had cried for help, but the woman raped in the country is presumed to have cried out, whether she did or not. In the latter case, only the man is put to death.

Elwell, W. A., & Elwell, W. A. (1997, c1996). Evangelical dictionary of biblical theology (electronic ed.). Baker reference library; Logos Library System.

Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

This means there is a stark possibility that the passage is not sufficiently clear as to render the 'rape' interpretation unreasonable.  It might be sufficiently ambiguous as to allow either interpretation to be reasonable. Christian professor Joe Sprinkle highlights commentator uncertainty in his 1997 JETS article on the subject:

Similarly Deut 22:28–29 describes a case of what appears to be rape 8 in which the woman is subsequently given to the offender as wife (after a fifty-shekel marriage gift/fine to the father). In such a case the man “cannot divorce her as long as she lives.” Again, were it not for the original offense it would be assumed that he could divorce her.
---fn.8. The usual interpretation of “seize” (tāpas) is that the text implies that the man seizes the woman by force and rapes her. G. P. Hugenberger (Marriage as Covenant: A Study of Biblical Law and Ethics Governing Marriage Developed from the Perspective of Malachi [VTSup 52; Leiden: Brill, 1994] 255-260), on the other hand, argues that Deut 22:28–29 is a case of seduction rather than rape. One argument in favor of the seduction view is the expression “they are found,” which suggests that both the man and the woman are involved, whereas in the case of rape one would expect it to say “he is found.” Another argument is that it seems unfair to force the woman to marry her rapist, whom she may well hate. Against Hugenberger, however, it seems hard to reconcile this being only a case of seduction with the extremely high bride price of fifty shekels, in contrast with Exod 22:16–17 where no such high price is set and no forfeiture of the right of divorce is mentioned.

Old Testament Perspectives On Divorce  And Remarriage, Joe M. Sprinkle

JETS 40/4 (December 1997) 533 

 * Joe Sprinkle is associate professor of Old Testament at Toccoa Falls College, P.O. Box 800236, Toccoa Falls, GA 30598–0236. 

The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 1998 (electronic edition.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

Second, the fact that I'm reasonable to view Deut. 22:28-29 as talking about non-consensual sex is proven from the fact that even conservative Christian commentators, whose love for god gives them high motivation to avoid any "god is immoral" implication, nonetheless insist this passage is talking about rape.  E. H. Merrill is an inerrantist, and writes as follows for the inerrancy-driven New American Commentary.  IF there was any grammatical justification for him to avoid the "god is immoral" implication and restrict this passage to mere seduction, he likely would have.  He did not, he candidly admitted this was violent coercion:

22:28–29 At first glance the next example, the rape of an unbetrothed girl, might appear to have been a lesser offense than those already described, but this was not the case at all. First, he seized (Heb. tāpaś, “lay hold of”) her and then lay down (šākab) with her, a clear case of violent, coercive behavior.

Merrill, E. H. (2001, c1994). Vol. 4: Deuteronomy (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 305). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The NET bible (“Our passion is to see every person become mature in Christ and competent to teach and train others.”) makes the rape connotation in 22:28 explicit, which this team of Christian scholars would hardly have done had the grammar and context reasonably indicated the virgin was willing: 

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered.

The ESV makes the rape connotation explicit: 

Deu 22:28 Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes51 her and they are discovered.
Deu 22:29 The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives. 

The Brenton’s English translation of the Septuagint makes it clear this was rape: 

And if any one should find a young virgin who has not been betrothed, and should force her and lie with her, and be found, (Deut. 22:28 LXE)

ISBE agrees:

RAPE.
[חָזַק, chazak] = “to seize,” “bind,” “restrain,” “conquer, “force,” “ravish.” The punishment for this crime was greater when the act was committed against a betrothed woman (Deuteronomy 22:25-29).

Orr, J., M.A., D.D. (1999). The International standard Bible encyclopedia : 

1915 edition (J. Orr, Ed.). Albany, OR: Ages Software.

Third, “seize” in v. 28 in the Hebrew is taphas and means “to lay hold of, weild”, it is the same Hebrew word used in Deut. 21:19 to describe the way parents of a rebellious son force him in front of the elders to receive the death penalty; the same Hebrew word used in Deut. 20:19 to signify how the Hebrews will capture a city after warring against it; also used in Deut 9:17 to describe how the angry Moses seized the two tablets of stone and smashed them.  It is also used in 1st Samuel 23:26 (capturing an enemy) and in 1st Kings 18:40 (Elijah commanding seizure of the Baal prophets for purposes of execution).

Fourth, the Greek word in the Lxx here is βιασάμενος, and means “to force, dominate”.  Friberg says it is “always with a component of force”, and all other standard lexicons agree: UBS says

“exercise force (if midd.) or suffer violence (if pass.)” citing Mt 11.12 and “enter by force (Lk 16.16)”.  LNIDA says “to experience a violent attack…”.  LSCOTT says “force, an act of violence…against one's will”.  THAYER says “to force, inflict violence on…”.  TDNT,  “The reference of the term is always to “forced” as distinct from voluntary acts. The middle means “to compel,” “overpower” (sometimes sexually), the passive “to be constrained.” BDAG, “to gain an objective by force” (citing Dt. 22:28).

In the NT, this Greek word appears in of Matt 11:12 where the kingdom of God is controversially said to suffer ‘violence’, and Luke 16:16, where people ‘force’ their way into it.  

Fifth, 22:28 further describes the sex act as “he has violated her”, the Hebrew word for ‘violated’ is anah, and while cognate usage is not dispositive, this word is used in at least 5 other OT passages where forcible rape is clear, making it reasonable to demand very good contrary evidence before we say Deut 22:28 is an exception to the rule: 

And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force (Hebrew: anah). (Gen 34:2 NAS)
It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled (Hebrew: anah)  her. (Deut. 21:14 NAU)
But the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me; instead, they ravished (Hebrew: anah) my concubine so that she died. (Jdg 20:5 NAS)
However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated (Hebrew: anah) her and lay with her. (2Sa 13:14 NAS)
Jonadab, the son of Shimeah, David's brother, responded, "Do not let my lord suppose they have put to death all the young men, the king's sons, for Amnon alone is dead; because by the intent of Absalom this has been determined since the day that he violated (Hebrew: anah) his sister Tamar. (2 Sam. 13:32 NAU)
They ravished (Hebrew: anah )the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. (Lam 5:11 NAS)

Sixth, 3rd century church father Tertullian thought this was about rape: 

The Creator, however, except on account of adultery, does not put asunder what He Himself joined together, the same Moses in another passage enacting that he who had married after violence to a damsel, should thenceforth not have it in his power to put away his wife. Now, if a compulsory marriage contracted after violence shall be permanent, how much rather shall a voluntary one, the result of agreement!

(Five Books against Marcion, Book 4, ch. 34,

Schaff, P. (2000). The Ante-Nicene Fathers (electronic ed.).

Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

Seventh, that 22:28 describes a virgin who was forced or raped, may also be inferred by noting that v. 29 requires the man to pay a specified sum for the bride price that is very high in light of average earnings of the average man in those days, while the price the man had to pay in the similar circumstance described in Exodus 22 was not specified:

Exodus 22:16-17	Deuteronomy 22:28-29
16 "If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife.  17 "If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.	28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,  29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume a presumption attaches that the bride-price was left unexpressed in Exodus because the sexual situation in Exodus was less severe of a crime than the case described in Deut. 22:28-29. But even conservative commentators admit Exodus was talking about "rape", and since I'm a skeptic who doesn't believe in biblical inerrancy, I have no problems with the bible giving inconsistent solutions to the single crime of "rape":

In the event that a man raped a single woman, he was to pay the bride-price and marry her (Exodus 22:16–17).

Vos, H. F. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible manners & customs : How the people of the Bible really lived (Page 104). Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson Publishers.

If a girl was already betrothed and was raped by another man she could not become that other man’s wife, as would normally be the case (Deuteronomy 22:28–29), because she already belonged to her husband–to–be. Such violation involved the death penalty (Deuteronomy 22:23–27).

Gower, R., & Wright, F. (1997, c1987). The new manners and customs of Bible times. Updated and rewritten version of Manners and customs of Bible lands, by Fred Wright.; Includes indexes. Chicago: Moody Press.

   "Reasonableness" doesn't require that we check out the lexical meanings of the Hebrew words in question, otherwise, nobody would be reasonable to interpret the bible they way they do unless they first conducted a scholarly level inquiry into its original languages.  Ok...do you forbid sinners from accepting Christ until they do a scholarly study of 2,000 years of Christian differences on soteriology?  Are you suspicious that the salvation of biblically illiterate people who nevertheless "accepted Jesus as their savior"?  If not, then unless you wish to tell the skeptic they can safely delay the day of their repentance as long as they are studying the original languages of scripture, you are going to have to admit that conducting a scholarly study of the Hebrew words is not necessary, before the skeptic's interpretation can be "reasonable".

Eighth, D.L. Christensen in the Word Biblical Commentary considers this to be seduction, but he calls it "rape" and allocates the "seduction" classification to how the event is viewed "legally":

If a man rapes an unbetrothed woman in the city, it is considered seduction, requiring marriage and paying the girl’s father fifty pieces of silver (vv 28–29), as a dowry.

Christensen, D. L. (2002). Vol. 6B: Word Biblical Commentary : Deuteronomy 21:10-34:12. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 523). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Let's consider some objections:  

God would never force a woman to marry the man who raped her
Let me guess...you were born and raised in a democratic nation where lots of people fight for individual rights, correct?  But apologists argue that this requirement was morally good because, in the ANE, if the woman's virginity was taken, her value was diminished in the eyes of her village, so that forcing her to marry the rapist was a loving way to ensure that she could have restored status in the community through marriage and child-bearing.  Some apologists will speculate the forced marriage forbade sexual relations, but there is no evidence that sexual relations in such marriages were forbidden.

The fact that Deut. 22:24 requires the woman to be killed and 22:28-29 doesn't, proves these are two different situations

I'm not seeing the argument.  Yes, v. 24 doesn't express or imply rape:

 23 "If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her,
 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he has violated his neighbor's wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

In that in 22:24, the woman is to be killed because she did not cry out, implying she had consented, and yet it still says the man “violated” (anah) his neighbor’s wife.  Apologists will seize on this as if this less forceful sense of anah in v. 24 must be read back into the anah appearing in v. 28.  But there are several problems with this knee-jerk method of exegesis so common among apologists:  

---a) vv. 23-24 are missing the ‘seize’ comment that appears in v. 28, which is significant especially for inerrantists who think only one human being authored the entire book of Deuteronomy (why didn’t Moses assert in 23-24 that the man had “seized” the virgin, if Moses was willing to use that word later in v. 28?).  The implication is that the sex act in 23-24 was consensual, in which case it is for sheer grammatical necessity that the anah of v. 24 would take the nuance of positional disgrace or dishonor (i.e., the woman’s consent doesn’t negate the moral disgrace of the man’s initiating such act on a betrothed virgin, indeed, consenting extra-marital sexual relations are disgraceful);  

---b) context determines the precise nuance a biblical author intended for his chosen word, and since it was already shown that v. 28’s ‘seize’ (taphas/βιασάμενος) means rape, the anah of v. 28 is governed more closely by the other word in the same verse, than it is governed by the sense anah takes 4 verses earlier.  Yes, Moses could very easily be giving anah in v. 24 a nuance not quite as popular as the nuance of “force” that it takes in v. 28 and most other cases.  

---c) anah literally means “bowed down”, and since most agree that vv. 23-24 do not describe rape but consenting sex, the author could have simply been referring to the physical position the woman took in her choice to have extra-marital sex.

---d) I do not believe Moses is the only author of Deuteronomy, nor do I believe the redactors did a perfect job of making that book teach morals and laws consistently.  I accept a hypothesis that is taught in all but the must fundagelical bible colleges and seminaries:  the documentary hypothesis.  Therefore, I have no reasonable basis to worry that the way I interpret 22:28-29 might contradict what the same book says elsewhere about a debateably similar subject.  Bible inerrancy is so controversial even among those who espouse it, that it is reasonable to say it does not deserve to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic (i.e., automatically cite the interpretation's contradicting another part of the bible as the only reason needed to trash it and look for another).   It just might be more reasonable to view two passages in one book as contrary to each other, than to pretend that any harmonization scenario is going to be "better".

Finally, the fact that the slave-owner is the only person required to do anything to atone for "his" sin of sex with a slave betrothed to another man (Leviticus 19:20-22), when in fact it is clear the passage is addressing "rape" (and it is clear that this is adultery that would, absent the girl's slave status, be punishable by death) makes it reasonable for those who accept Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to say the person who wrote out Deut. 22:28-29, also wrote Leviticus 19:20-22, and had a very low view of woman, and such a man wasn't likely to view "forced to marry her rapist" in the shocking horrifically unacceptable way that it is viewed by modern-day democratic American Christians.

Much more could be said, but "reasonableness" doesn't require anybody, whether Christian or skeptic, to knock the opposing interpretation all the way out of the ballpark.  How much scholarly study of Mormonism do you suppose the average Catholic and Protestant fundamentalist did, before deciding that it was a false form of Christianity?  Isn't it likely they did little more than read a book or two written by an anti-Mormon (i.e., the way most creationist Christians read a few blogs written by creationists and become certain that evolution is a lie of the devil?)

If you aren't going to label Christians "unreasonable" for reaching confident conclusions before they've conducted a thorough scholarly review, fairness dictates that you also refrain from labeling skeptics unreasonable should they reach confident conclusions before they've conducted a thorough scholarly review.

But if you are this objective, then you leave yourself no basis to insist that Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:20 correctly broad-brush skeptics and atheists.  When you tangle with me, you soon find out that poets that lived thousands of years ago aren't exactly the best sources of information about today's unbelievers.  But you cannot really be blamed for being impressed with empty rhetoric.  Just look at the pastors of fundamentalist churches.  The pastor's deep bellowing or screechy voiced confidence makes their trusting congregation positively certain that they should babble incoherently...or adopt KJV onlyism...or accept 5-point Calvinism, or jump around the church in voo-doo like stupor, etc, etc.


Since apologists find life is easier for themselves by quietly deleting my rebuttals from their blogs, here's a screenshot showing I posted news of my rebuttal at Chilton's blog, just in case that post disappears.  If he chooses to ignore my rebuttal, it won't be because he "didn't know about it":

Reply to Logician_Bones on the problem of evil

One of James Patrick Holding's followers, some Christian using the name "Logician_Bones", tried to "explain" in a comment why evil is "necessary" and yet humans are still accountable to avoid what's logically necessary....and yet maintain a straight face all at the same time.  See here.  I reply in point by point fashion:

Logician_Bones18 hours ago (edited)
​@PristineKat It's the Problem of Evil argument which I've debunked, so here goes. The bad premise is implied 'underneath' "God made us who we are yes?" that he did so arbitrarily -- in reality, God had to work within logical necessity.

Well first, your attempt to explain evil is making use of an incoherent concept called "god".  This being cannot be empirically detected, but you pretend that inferring his existence indirectly makes his existence as obvious as cars or trees. Try again.

It's been shown (by analyses besides my own, but mine is definitive and fairly simple as a disproof) that allowing evil for a time was logically necessary.

Which means your god, who bitches at people for sinning, thus bitches at them for doing what was logically necessary, i.e., something they could not logically avoid doing....a divine attitude completely contradictory to the common sense notion that it is crazy to "expect" people to avoid that which is logically necessary.

If America's court judges and juries believed like your god, they'd have no moral basis for holding guilty criminals accountable.  If not even God can get around the logical necessity of evil, what fool would argue that less powerful human beings are "required" to do any different? 

Short answer is if we did not experience a fallen world like this for a time, we would not truly appreciate how bad evil, left to itself, is

We wouldn't need to know how bad evil itself is, if god kept us from doing it.   Our need to "appreciate" the evil of sin is simply a non-starter under the theory that God was capable of creating a sinless world.  And under your logic, your god is a deceptive asshole, because he sure does give the appearance in Genesis 3 that he never willed for Adam and Eve to disobey.  At least that's the appearance the illiterate farm hands living under Moses (the originally intended audience) would have gotten.  They did not have biblical inerrancy of systematic theology on the brain anymore than they had alegebra on the brain.  They would have understood Genesis 3 in the same simpleminded way that small children today get from "The Little Red Hen".

-- and we would always think it must not be that bad and would want to try it,

Then God could have created a sinless universe, and the risk we might find evil tempting, would never arise in the first place.  One conservative hermeneutic is to ask how the originally intended audience would have understood the story.  It's obviously stupid to assume Moses' mostly illiterate farm-hands would have had theological consistency, systematic theology or bible inerrancy on the brain as they sat listening to the story teller reciting from Genesis 3.  Those dolts would most certainly not have seen any ulterior divine motive, but would have believed God honestly wanted Adam and Eve to obey him, and that their doing so was just as unexpected to their god as a teen's involvement in murder was unexpected by their parents.

You cannot understand Genesis 3 correctly today because you read it through the rose colored bible-inerrancy glasses you've chosen to superglue to your nose with the help of a bulldozer.  But the understanding that makes Genesis 3 contradict the rest of the bible's fairy tales about its constantly evolving 'god' is more objective.

and, if God gave us freewill mentally at all, would always be angry at him for refusing to let us act as we wish.

Same answer:  if God created a sinless universe, there's be no "don't do this" command that would alert us to evil and possibly morph into our being mad at god in forbidding us to try knew things.

If yoru god was perfect before creation, he'd have been perfectly "content" without creatures to worship him...leaving him about as much rational motive to create anything,  as a person who just drank half a gallon of water has motive to take another swig.

So appeals to empathy with rape victims, murder victims, etc. are actually proving our point, and unwittingly evidencing that God had to allow this (temporarily).

Only in an evil world.  If God did what any good parent does, and prevented us stupid kids from succeeding with our stupid dangerous ideas (i.e., keeping bleach locked up), there would be no occasion for us to feel sorry for victims of evil in the first place, as such victims would never exist.

The skeptics fail to consider that their empathy (when not fake, and often it's somewhat faked just to give an excuse to be obnoxious with this argument, though many well-meaning people do honestly wonder about the argument) is not automatic. They're taking it for granted and forgetting that they got it in the first place precisely because God set things up this way.

No, empathy is part of the nature of a mammal, even if to varying degrees.  Frank Turek does a rather shitty job of trying to prove "god" is the "best explanation" for human morality.  On the contrary, an empirically undetectable something or other than people have been disagreeing on for 2,000 years, is a horrifically complex solution clearly sliced away by Occam's Razor long before any empirically based naturalistic theory would be.

If we rightly condemn a parent who constantly bitches about their kids being bad, but never does anything to physically prevent them from doing evil (i.e., negligent parenting), then we rightly condemn god, who, like the neglectful parent, constantly bitches about his kids being bad, when he is apparently even more capable of interfering with their evil plans than human parents are (coercive telepathy, Ezra 1:1).

And they are undermining it by refusing to side with the single perfect, infinite being, who actually WILL remove evil forever in heaven.

Sorry, your classical theism might be biblical, but open-theism is also biblical.  See God's regretting his own prior choice to create man in Genesis 6:6-7, then ask yourself why the literal interpretation has support from the immediate and larger context, and the "anthropomorphism" interpretation has zero contextual justification.

And you are dreaming if you think evil will be forever removed in heaven.  God approves of and commissions liars while he is in heaven (1st Kings 22:19-23), so if he is unchanging, then his approval of liars is never going to change....meaning his approval of sinners will continue existing even up in heaven.

They're actually siding WITH the very evils they pretend to oppose!

Gee, if it weren't for you, we'd never have seen this truth.

And trying to use this argument to justify arguably the greatest evil ever -- luring others into hell.

That's your god's fault, as apparently his trivializing the seriousness of sin is as easy as a wave of his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), or, if he's in the mood, getting rid of a person's sin is as easy as burning their face a little bit  (Isaiah 6:6-7).  Your classical theist notion that god "must" judge sin either through Christ's cross, or by eternal shame in hell, is bullshit even by the standards of your own bible.

Notwithstanding that we do not believe hell is literal torture, it's still endless, and we think shame matters a lot.

I'm worried.  Whenever I hear Romans 1:20, I start crying in fear and horror.  I thought you said your lesbian friends would be doing that strip tease at my house?  Beer-pong!

And actually, think about how callous the skeptics must be who actually DO think the Bible teaches literal torture!

Then you must think Hank Hanegraaff, part time employer of your James Patrick Holding savior, is callous, since all through the 1990s he was saying on the Bible Answerman show that eternal conscious torment is actually an expression of god's infinite love.  But because James Patrick Holding has no more spiritual spine than a dead-alligator, I don't suppose he'll be calling Hank a "moron" anytime soon.  We tend to think more highly of just anybody who makes our life easier to live, and play down any disagreements we have with such people.  Especially if we bask in their  reflected glory.

You spiritually alive fundamentalists disagree with each other all day every day on "basic" bible doctrine, yet you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to "recognize" biblical truth?  FUCK YOU.

Think about how risky it is for them to behave like little brats on this subject in light of the danger, from their perspective, that the Bible might be true.

About as risky as getting struck by lighting while shopping for groceries.  Let's just say I you are dreaming if you think you've said anything remotely disconcerting to an atheist bible critic. You don't have the balls to debate real skeptics, that's why you gave up your ill-advised challenge to me from some months ago.  Even stupid bullies retain their survival instincts after discovering they picked on the wrong victim.

Especially the ones who will insist 'atheism doesn't absolutely deny it, it just means we haven't see the evidence yet.'

Then count me out.  Both positions are viable, but I adopt "strong" atheism.  I'm about as confident in the non-existence of Christian hell as you are confident in the non-existence of Muslim hell.  Now what you are gonna do, fundie?  Quote the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus?  LOL.

Perhaps if they had logical disproof of God, but even informed skeptics admit that is not possible.

You cannot logically disprove lots of crazy ideas, including those found in other religions.  That hardly makes you worry they might be right.  Quit demanding from others more than you demand of yourself, and you'll successfully duck the "hypocrite" label that's currently welded to your forehead.

(And I know that's definitely impossible since I've proven God.

Your god is logically contradictory, he is "unchanging" (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8) and yet he loves sinners (John 3:16) but also hates them (Psalm 5:5).  Since the thesaurus lists "hate" as an antonym for "love", we are reasonable to see a contradiction.  You cannot argue there's no contradiction, with the trifle that "hate isn't the opposite of love, only apathy is".  You also cannot logically disprove that the Christian god is really just an advanced space alien who visits the earth every few thousand years and lies to us because he gets a thrill out of watching us fight over what he meant.  But since you don't spend too much time worrying about this logical possibility, you have more in common with atheist bible skeptics than you admit.

By the way, my main route of sound support, the causality proof, also proves he HAS to be 100% good in order to be infinite, and MUST exist, ergo MUST be 100% good. So no "immoral God" argument will ever work.

Lots of dogshit to shovel away here:

a) you are just parroting Thomas Aquinas
b) most Christians think burning pre-teen prostitutes to death is objectively evil, so since it is God's command (Leviticus 21:9), under Frank Turek's logic that morals come from God, it must be the Holy Spirit who is telling most Christians that actions like those commanded in Leviticus 21:9 are objectively evil.
c) You are merely arguing divine command theory (i.e., the goodness of an act derives from nothing deeper than the mere fact that god commanded something), but even the bible says God gave evil commands (Ezekiel 20:25).
d) is is precisely this cultic obstinacy about an idol's unquestionable goodness that motivates fanatics to hurt others in the name of their god solely for subjective religious reasons, when in fact if they acted more consistent with their mammalian nature, they would be less dangerous for society.
e) you are also assuming classical theism, but classical theism bites the dust in Genesis 6:6-7.   Google Gregory Boyd, then trifle about how even Christians far more knowledgeable than you in the bible, can still go astray...then pretend that while god knows spiritually alive Christians can get biblical things wrong, he nonetheless "expects" spiritually dead people to "know better".  FUCK YOU.

And my argument against your god's goodness is airtight.  Under your stupid logic, you cannot really say that rape, kidnapping and parental cannibalism are evil, because your god not only causes such things to happen, he gets just as much thrill hurting disobedient people that way, as he gets out of granting prosperity to those who obey him (Deuteronomy 28:30, 41, 51-53, 63).

Yes, Matthew Flannagan tries to escape that biblical noise by pretending that the "context" indicates that these words are mere rhetorical hyperbole merely because not every description in that chapter is literally true.  But what Mr. Know it All fails to get is a) the rhetorical hyperbole excuse can also "explain" those passages that say god is infinitely good, and b) the presence of hyperbole doesn't imply that literal intent is entirely lacking.  If I told you I "kicked his ass", that would be rhetorical hyperbole, but it would not be merely hot air, it would only mean I described a literal reality with hyperbolic language.  If Flannagan had first thought for two seconds how the originally intended and mostly illiterate farm hands, who were the originally intended audience, would have taken Moses words when they heard Deut. 28:15-63, he might have noticed the probability that these words were meant to be taken as serious threats.  Finally, most of the threatened horrors were, in the days of Moses, realities not only in Israel's past but for most others living in the ANE.  Flannagan is a fool to think the literal interpretation is "obviously wrong".  And plenty of Christian scholars, like Bill Craig, disagree with Flannagan's "mere exaggeration" excuse to take the sting out of the divine commands to slaughter the Canaanites.  Consider shutting the fuck up before you bounce back with "anybody who disagrees with Copan and Flannagan are just morons."  Otherwise, if even the spiritually alive Bill Craig cannot detect the actual truth about the divine atrocities in the bible, how the fuck could you "expect" spiritually dead atheists to recognize it?

I show that when something is logically necessary, it cannot be the fault of the omniscient God who knew it was and allowed it.

Then you apparently haven't read those parts of the bible where God CAUSES and doesn't just "allow" evil.  Deuteronomy 28:15-63, supra.  See also 2nd Samuel 12:12.

It would be the "fault" of logical necessity itself, except that it is incoherent to speak of necessity being a "fault."

But if the evil was "logically necessary", then the humans who committed it were no more capable of avoiding it, than they are capable of creating a 4-sided triangle.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, if judges and juries believed the way you do about the logically necessary nature of evil, they would not see much difference between absolving god and absolving humans.  It isn't like humans have more ability than god to avoid logical necessities.

 The only "fault" would lie in the sinners themselves/ourselves.

how could you "fault" a sinner for doing something they couldn't avoid doing?  Oh, I forgot.  Your blind acceptance of the bible.  Like apostle Paul, you are worried less about logical consistency and more about blindly supporting biblical conclusions, regardless of the consequences.  Never mind.

So the Bible's portrayal of the relationship of God to sin is logically correct, it turns out.

Then because God can get rid of even the worst sins by simply waving his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), the parts or the bible that show him constantly bitching about his kids sinning, can be safely dismissed as nothing more than rhetorical hyperbole.  Copan and Flannagan are currently sorry about opening doors they wish to god they'd never opened with their ridiculous sins of word-wrangling.

By the way, I noticed that you don't couch your logical conclusions in syllogistic form.  I'm wondering if the reason you refuse to do that is because it will make it easier for the reader to pinpoint where exactly your reasoning fails.  If your logic is so impeccable, cast it in the form of syllogistic deductions....where the proof you are wrong is narrowed to two options:  either one of your premises is wrong, or the conclusion you drew from them doesn't logically follow.

(Unsurprisingly to me since before investigating that I had already found that the Bible had unfakeable prophecies,

"unfakable" is a strong claim, you'd have to show fulfillment of the following criteria.

(1) Your interpretation of the prophecy is settled beyond reasonable doubt (i.e., the predictive words are not sufficiently vague as to reasonably accommodate a non-fulfillment interpretation).
(2) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the the alleged prophecy's wording existed before the allegedly fulfilling event happened.  With all of the Christian scholarly disagreement about the dates of the biblical books and when the canonical form of the text was first completed, good luck.
(3) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged prophecy predated the alleged fulfillment so much as to reasonably eliminate the possibility of the prophet's prediction merely being educated guesswork.  Predicting in May 2019 that President Trump will be impeached, would mean nothing if he was later actually impeached, as any fool can currently make an educated guess that impeachment is on the table of possibilities, whose probability grows with each passing day.
(4) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the people involved in the fulfillment did not intentionally contrive the "fulfillment".  If you claim Mary's hymen was still intact during her pregnancy with Jesus, something more than "she claimed throughout her pregnancy that she was still a virgin!" must be shown.
(5) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that the allegedly fulfilling event was a real event in space-time, not something restricted to "heaven".
(6) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that you used the grammatical-historical method of interpretation to reach your interpretation.  We have about as much patience for "midrash" and "pesher" as Moo had for Gundry.
(7) You must show beyond reasonable doubt that you arrived at your interpretation by employing the normative principles of historiography that are commonly agreed to by Christian and non-Christian historians.  You start complaining that Mike Licona's historical method makes it too easy for skeptics to attack something?  I start asking why James Patrick Holding doesn't publicly accuse Licona of being a "dumb ass" and "moron". Fair?
(my restatements and additions to Farrell Till's prophecy-fulfillment criteria, TSR, January/February 1996, p. 3).

Those criteria are fair because they reasonably guard against false interpretation.  Take your best shot.  I'm waiting.  What, Daniel 9 predicted Jesus? LOL.

that the Christ resurrection was historically verified,

Nope.  The identity and general credibility of each NT "witness", and their specific resurrection testimony, is severally impeached on the merits, using the same methods of historiography and hermeneutics that most conservative Christian scholars employ, to say nothing of how such ancient "witnesses" miserably fail the modern American court legal tests that John Warwick Montgomery unwisely aspires to.  Pick whatever witness or group of witnesses whose resurrection-testimony you think is most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.   Or come up with a face-saving excuse to decline the challenge, and just don't tell anybody that one of the other benefits you get by declining is avoiding getting shot out of the sky.

and that much in science clearly confirmed it in ways no primitive myth-maker could have guessed.)

Dream on.  Pick your best example and let's get started.

It is then usually asked, why, if it was logically necessary that we sin, we are still punished. But that question contains the necessary premise that if there are good reasons why something is not suitable to a task, then you should still use it for the task. If we test this premise we see it fails. My usual analogy is to the task of needing to dig a hole to plant a small tree, and the possible tools you have to select from are a shovel and an oven. In the analogy to keep it simple, assume the human who needs to perform the task is also the maker of the shovel and the oven. This person had good reasons to design the oven the way he did, but it doesn't mean the oven is good to use to dig a hole with when a shovel is available! (Or ever!)

But if god is infinitely holy and sovereign, he would not "need" to "dig a hole" for the tree, he could simply cause the tree to magically appear out of thin air, similar to how he magically willed the earth into existence from nothing.  Or did you never read Genesis 1:1?

Also, the mere fact that there are five-point Calvinists in the world who think your theory of human accountability is total bullshit (i.e., Steve Hays, who says everything we do conforms perfectly to god's secret will 100% o the time), makes it reasonable for the skeptic, if they so choose, to kick you and Steve to the curb and consider the whole "why does god allow evil" and "how can we be condemned if we couldn't avoid doing evil" discussions to be nothing but sophistry and illusion based on broken mirrors looking at each other from across an infinite chasm of debatable darkness.  Or maybe you are expressing your Calvinist sentiments incorrectly?

NOW what you need to argue is that the Calvinist theories of human accountability for sin are so wrong, spiritually dead atheists should be able to see why, and are thus still "accountable" to "know the truth" even more than the spiritually alive Calvinists who are apparently blind to biblical reality.  DREAM ON.

The objection then is to act all miffed that people are being compared with objects. But the Bible does this frequently, in Jesus' parables such as the one about the weeds, and in Romans 9 about "ignoble vessels" made from clay for practical use versus "noble vessels."

Then the biblical authors were just as stupid as you.  Paul actually pushed the analogy to the breaking point.  If he likes the fact that the pot never does talk back to the creator (Romans 9:20), he should also like the fact that the pots never talk, act, or have thoughts.  So under his logic, because it is foolish to think the pot would object to the creator, it's equally as foolish to expect the pot to make decisions...meaning under Paul's logic, it would be better if humans, like the pots they are, never made decisions.

Paul's predictable reply, i.e.,  that this is pushing his logic too far, would only prove what's already clear about Paul, that he made arbitrary argument, did not wish to go where his own logic led, and automatically consigned any disagreement with him to the "heretic" bin (1st Tim. 6:4)...making him nothing short of a delusional cult leader.

(The latter teaches my view explicitly.) And there is no sound reason to object this way -- only an arrogance-based one.

It's not arrogance to challenge corrupt authority that rests on fairy tales drawn from a continuously evolving theology rooted in primitive culture.

We are the creations; we should be humble enough to admit to it, even hypothetically for an honestly truth-seeking nonbeliever.

That's irrational to expect of atheists, who recognize they are not created by any god.

So what it boils down to after this is (the point tekton usually makes) that it isn't God who's leaving orphans unadopted, it's people.

Sorry, but since your god empowers pagans to kidnap children (Deut. 28:32) and then says he gets a thrill out of inflicting these ad other horrors on people (v. 63), I'm sticking with specific declarations from the bible in my attacks.

And Tekton would also be disagreeing with Calvinist Steve Hays' view that we leave orphans unadopted because God secretly wanted us to (i.e., every time somebody turns away from an orphan, it was god's will).  Now what?  Maybe unbelievers have some sort of moral obligation from God to go study the Calvinist controversy, while knowing that even if we study it for 30 years, Tekton will still call us stupid if we dare conclude Calvinism is biblical?  FUCK YOU.

  Ironically it's often (though not always) the skeptic himself. (Not that I've adopted anyone, but I didn't go around being obnoxious about it.)
 I've also read Miller's analysis of this, which might interest you too; he doesn't cover the disproof that I do, but he goes into very much detail about the logical impossibility of certain goods without certain evils and so forth that might interest you (I think it wasn't direct to the problem of evil but came up as a foundational discussion in his reasons for the atonement piece).

What a waste of time.  Of course good cannot be known without having background knowledge of evil, and evil cannot be known without having a background knowledge of good.  That's a major rebuttal to the standard Christian view of Genesis 3:  How can god 'expect' Adam and Eve, who were so innocent they didn't even know they were naked, to appreciate the seriousness of his prohibitions, anymore than a parent can 'expect' a toddler, who has never been burned before, to appreciate the seriousness of the prohibition "don't touch the stove"? We are reasonable to say the story is bullshit, and there's not enough evidence in favor of your trifles to render our reasonable dismissal unreasonable.  It's not like disagreement with Genesis 3 is equal to disagreement that cars exist. But because dogmatism necessarily invades the bible study of clueless fundamentalists, I'm sure you'll pretend the one error is equally as great as the other.

And no, the Bible can't be "rewritten" in any functionally distinct way, unless we assume atheism as a premise, which would be circular reasoning, because its moral teachings (this is including the sound deductions from everything it teaches) are the result of God's omniscience.

Have fun trying to convince anybody outside of blind fundyville that there was a time when it was "good" to burn pre-teen prostitutes to death (Leviticus 21:9). Have even more fun pretending it's "obvious" that "we shouldn't do this anymore".  Whenever the ancient Jews were able, they tried to re-institute the Mosaic theocracy (Ezra/Nehemiah).  Only naturalistic evolution would explain why the later post-exillic Jews started pretending that "god" was going to start a "new" covenant (Jeremiah 31).

That doesn't change, and cannot change. Situational responses based on heirarchical moral absolutes may change, but subjective situational ethics are NOT an option for God.

Of course they are.  If God knew what the fuck he was doing, he'd no more have to start a new covenant, than a construction contractor, who got it right the first time,  needs to tear down the house he just built and start over.  Unless the contractor knew, before starting, that he'd have to demolish the completed building and start over.  He's free to spend $100k in materials and labor just to create what he knows will need to be destroyed upon completion, but he's also crazier than a shit-house rat.

Your belief that god always knew the second covenant would be needed, is also bullshit.  The second covenant's roots are no deeper than "Jews of later times became more civilized, hated the Mosaic covenant more and more, but, not willing to say god got something wrong, pretended that god surely must have always known the Mosaic covenant was temporary."  The same Hebrew word in Exodus 12:7 that meant observation of Passover was permanently permanent (olam), is used to describe the permanency of Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16:31, with absolutely nothing in the context to even remotely suggest the latter was only meant in the sense of "temporarily permanent".  You have no trouble engaging in the sin of eisogesis, where doing so will help reconcile the OT with the NT.  Sorry, you lose.

We are not unreasonable to say the person who authored the Mosaic Theocracy intended it to be permanently permanent, and probably would have stoned Jeremiah to death, had he lived in the days of Moses, for daring to teach god wanted the Mosaic economy to end.

If you'd just specify in your apologetics writings that you are like James Patrick Holding, and you don't write to convince skeptics, but only to reassure Christians, you could save me a lot of time.

I've notified Logician Bones that this reply to him exists: