Demolishing Triablogue: Hume's abject failure, even if real, does not hurt skeptics in the slightest

Triablogue's Steve Hays posts a link to a discussion with a Christian author James N. Anderson, who wrote a book called "David Hume", wherein he argues the standard Christian apologist party line that Hume's famous argument against the credibility of miracle-reports involves fallacious reasoning, therefore, skeptics lose, and there cannot be any reasonableness to one's a pirori dismissal of any particular miracle claim.

John Frame's Amazon.com review of the book boasts:

But James Anderson's book shows that it is the followers of Hume who should be frightened. Anderson presents an account of Hume that is accurate and comprehensive, yet concise. It is easy to follow. And it shows clearly where Hume went wrong, and how his errors illumine the biblical alternative. Hume fell into skepticism because he failed to think God's thoughts after him." --John M. Frame

See here

Before we even start, the whole "hume-bashing" thing is irrational for Christian apologists, because their own bible leaves the distinct impression that the unbelievers go to eternal conscious misery at death.  So since unbelievers cannot know when they will die, and the stakes are ostensibly this high, the bible appears intended to foster the belief that the unbeliever does not have 5 minutes from now or 5 weeks from now to 'get saved'.  If they are always one mere heartbeat away from the gates of hell, such extremely urgent danger means the only possible rational choice is to "get saved" now, right now.

But getting saved as quickly as possible necessarily means getting saved upon the basis of the limited biblical knowledge the sinner has at the point of decision, thus increasing the risk that "getting saved" might end up causing the new Christian to join the wrong denomination or hold the wrong theology, leading to a risk that they will go the rest of their natural lives never appreciating that they just heaped even more divine curse on themselves than they did as unbelievers (Galatians 1:8-9).

If the same bible counsels that unbelievers take the time to study, that is no more significant than the Christian apologist of today who encourages the same:  If the unbeliever really is in such horrifically urgent danger of eternal damnation, then the reasonableness of speeding oneself toward salvation is going to remain, whether or not the bible elsewhere counsels any amount of prepartory "study".  If you really are hanging over the edge of a cliff by a thread, how could "take your time to think about it to make sure you make an informed decision!" coming from the person offering help, possibly "prove" that you can safely delay accepting that help?  So if the bible teaches both the terrible urgent danger that unbelievers are in, but elsewhere teaches that it is reasonable for the unbeliever to take the time to study up on the subject, then the bible is simply contradicting its own message of urgent danger.

The point is that the apologist's own bible would make it "reasonable" for the skeptic to scream in horror at his own spiritual peril and "get saved" in the quickest manner possible...which means the bible is making a person reasonable to engage in an impulsive sort of conduct that is decidedly anti-intellectual, not to mention spiritually dangerous given that the act occurs without any serious prior study, thus increasing the risk the unbeliever will join the wrong church and forever be blinded to their own ensuring perdition.

So because the bible's pretense that the unbeliever is in horrifically urgent danger, is likely to set the unbeliever on the very course of hell the bible allegedly wants the unbeliever to be rescued from, this is such a colossal violation of common sense and self-consistency as to alone justify the skeptic who chooses to use the bible for little more than practicing kicking 80-yard field goals.

Furthermore, I have already extensively examined the pro-resurrection arguments of Licona, Habermas, and William Lane Craig, and have forceful reasons to disagree with their conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead.  Thereore, even assuming some miracles are real and atheism is false, so what?  that's not going to render resurrection-skepticism the least bit unreasonable, and if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the mere basic existence of 'god' will always be insufficient to pretend that this god is angry at those who deny his existence. 

Finally, Triablogue will inevitably default to the OT YHWH in case Jesus didn't rise from the dead, but in light of Deut. 13's requirement that the false prophet who works true miracles be put to death, the OT is clearer about YHWH's anger at those who misrepresent him, than toward those who simply deny his basic existence.  So not even the reality of miracles and god can do what Triablogue wants, and render one's apathy toward Christian claims unreasonable.

So let's get started with the more specific rebuttals:

(I attack mostly the hypercalvinist Steve Hays in this post, since he pipes up so much about the fallaciousness of naturalism and how atheists cannot account for some miracle claims.  So the Christian reader should remember that I have tapered my attack here to Hays' CALVINISM.  That is, I often use Hays' Calvinism against him in the rest of this article.  I'm quite aware that Arminians would not feel threatened by an attack on Calvinism, but it is the plight of every atheist that Christians contradict each other so much, that a rebuttal to one style of Christianity does nothing to affect the others.  Don't take this article to mean I can only demolish miracle claims by bashing Calvinism. That might indicate you don't know how to read English.  The vast majority of my miracle research criticisms herein are reasonable and epistemically warranted regardless of which exact form of Christianity is true).

First, no Christian apologist has ever asserted how long or intensively a person confronted with a miracle claim "should" investigate it before they became reasonable to start drawing ultimate conclusions about its truth or falsity.  Would the reasonable person surely always spend more than one day researching any particular miracle claim?  Might the possible danger in joining the wrong church (Galatians 1:8-9) make it reasonable to avoid drawing conclusions about the miracle of Jesus resurrection until one has studied the matter for at least 25 years?  What's 25 years compared to eternity, right?  So apologists have no moral or intellectual justification to condemn skeptics who don't spend as much time bothering with miracle claims as the apologists subjectively wish.

Second, rejecting miracle claims a pirori can certainly be justified by appeal to past experience, just like the Christian Trinitarian at Triablogue do not automatically go into objective-robot-mode whenever they meet a Jehovah Witness.  They have already determined that the Trinity is a real thing and truely biblical doctrine  hence, when the JW says "the trinity is unbiblical", Triablogue dismisses the criticism a priori.  Deciding that you already know enough to know that another claim is false, is otherwise called "learning".  You'd never learn, if you forbade yourself from automatically dismissing claims.  What good does it do to learn?  After all, if somebody else comes down the pike and argues in favor of something you deny, you wont' be objevtive unless you respond to their contentions on the merits.

The problem here is that the bible does not allow apologists to be that objective.  You are supposed to be beyond any possibility of changing your mind when you become a Christian:

 39 But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. (Heb. 10:39 NAU) 

 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. (1 Jn. 2:19 NAU) 

 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39 NAU) 

 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, (2 Cor. 10:5 NAU) 

 21 and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. (Rom. 4:21 NAU) 

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

Therefore, Christian apologists are hypocrites for characterizing the skeptic's similarly confident certitude as fallacious.

If the girlfriend knows from prior experience that her boyfriend is abusive, you cannot really blame her if she a priori dismisses his latest claim to have changed for the better.  Common sense does not always counsel that you objectively examine the merits of every possibly true claim that comes down the pike.

And a priori does not apply to my own skepticism, since I do not dismiss anything without analysis.   So if other skeptics committ this error, the apologist errs by broadbrushing these amateurs as if they represent what all skeptics do.  Count me out.  If you are honest.  The vast majority of us are willing to review any miracle-claim you pretend is the most convincing, so we can no more be lumped in with the few stupid skeptics than you can be lumped in with Pentecostal snake-handlers.

Third, Hume's allegedly "abject failure" is irrelevant, I myself have been challenging Christian apologists for years to produce the one single biblical or non-biblical miracle claim that they believe is the most impervious to falsification, including direct requests to Craig Keener (i.e., author of the two-volume work "Miracles", which does little more than merely catalog thousands of reported miracle claims).  See here.  I issued the same challenge to Steve Hays of Triablogue, who constantly rants and raves about the alleged fallacies of miracle-skepticism, who also thinks Keener's "Miracles" work is a "game-changer". See here.  As expected, in both cases, I've gotten zero response. 

So skeptics like me lose precisely NOTHING even if we admit Hume's particular argument against the credibility of third-party miracle claims was less than perfect.

Fourth, Anderson falsely charges Hume with arguing that no amount of evidence could possibly be good enough:

Anderson:I think it is, and I think most commentators on Hume’s argument say that it does stack the deck in advance. Hume acts like it doesn’t; he acts like he is just applying general principles of evidence to the particular case of miracles, but when you look closely at it, what it means is that no amount of evidence could possibly weigh in favor of a miracle. This is, in a sense, how absurd it gets: even if you witnessed a miracle with your own eyes, right in front of you, you shouldn’t believe your own eyes, according to Hume’s argument.
Zaspel:It’s just gratuitous.
Anderson:You can’t win. When it’s set up like that, you can’t win.

That's false, because Hume was talking about what basis we have to believe miracle reports from other people.  He was not talking about what one should conclude if one witnesses the miracle with their own eyes.  He in fact made clear that he was prioritizing how much a person should trust their own senses:

Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses.

...To apply these principles to a particular instance; we may observe, that there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. 

Third, Christian apologists have never supplied sufficiently indisputable criteria for evaluating miracle claims.  Mike Licona says the claim must occur in a context charged with religious significance (here), but he only demands this because he knows that the miracle of Jesus' resurrection is charged with religious significance.  What he is doing to trying to give the reader a reason to avoid any paranormal claims made in absence of a religious context, so that the reader will be more likely to narrow their focus to just "religious" miracles.  But if mircales be concluded to occur in non-religious contexts, that opens the possibility that miracles can be real for purely naturalistic reasons.  You run the risk of discovering an explanation for miracles that needs no "god" or "Jesus".  That's contrary to the purposes of Christian apologetics, of course.

Fourth, Christian apologists routinely remind us that Jesus' miracle of resurrection, if true, automatically justifies concluding that the debate is over and Christianity is true.  Starting with Licona:

However, if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true and Islam is false.

If Jesus really did rise from the dead, then he alone must know what is on the other side.

WHAT IF JESUS REALLY DID RISE FROM THE DEAD?This would have profound implications for our understanding of the universe, existence, morality, God, and everything else

If Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true and any worldview or religion that contradicts Christianity is false.

But the bible says some prophets who work genuinely supernatural miracles deserve the death penalty:

 1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God  (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

Paul apparently believed it was a real possibility for an angel from heaven to give somebody a false gospel:

6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;

 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!

 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! (Gal. 1:6-9 NAU)

Indeed, the boys at Triablogue are all about "The catholic miracles at Fatima can be genuinely supernatural but also performed by demonic power", which is the absurd trifle they are forced to make, since otherwise they are proven hypocrites by automatially discounting non-Protestant miracle claims.

When Steve Hays pretends that Catholic miracles don't validate the Catholic faith, what he forgets to do is tell the reader how they can tell which cases of genuinely supernatural miracles are "from god" and which are "from the devil", if that distinction even means anything to such a hyperCalvinist as Steve.  See here.  

He also fails to answer the same concern in his similar article here.  Steve will trifle that he was only dealing with cessationist objections, but if that be the case, then why hasn't Steve Hays ever provided the world with a biblical criteria for knowing when real miracles come from "god" and which come from "the devil"?

Did he write an article somewhere that says "If the person doing the miracle insists that Calvinism is biblical, you can be sure the miracle is being done by holy power"?

Or maybe Steve is open to the possibility that god does miracles for non-Calvinists in contexts that do not motivate people to worry about 'biblical theology' probably because God doesn't find theological accuracy to be as important as Triablogue does?  Gee, dogmatic, asshole know-it-all Christian sinners have never misunderstood god's will or the bible, have they?  Gee, when you learn to mistake your blog for an actual life, all you can do is discover more and more divine truth, amen?

So us skeptics are smart to reject the knee-jerk conclusions of Christian apologists.  If Jesus really did rise from the dead, that does not justify an automatic inference that he correctly represented YHWH.

But if so, then what more must a person do to help decide whether the miracle came from god or satan?

Would it be smart for the unbeliever who recognizes the legitimacy of that question, to put it on a back shelf until some Christian apologist answers it?  After all, Steve Hays thinks unbelievers are incapable of understanding spiritual truth, therefore, he can do nothing but support me as I wait for a spiritual person to figure it out.

What if the miracle doesn't provide any guidance as to what theology is true? Might we justifiably infer the supernatural entity doing the miracle fails to provide such answers because it thinks simple obedience to what one already knows is more important than "orthodoxy"? Oh, of course not.  Isn't it clear that when Jesus preached to Gentiles, he drew up a clear list of 'essential' doctrines and warned that failure to understand the Trinity and salvation by grace was a sign of the anti-Christ?

And in light of orthodox Jews condemning the NT and Jesus for the last 2,000 years, skeptics have more than sufficient justification to first study the Jewish objections to Jesus and the Christian responses, before making a decision on which person has the more robust position.  Unfortunately, that could take months or years...while the unbeliever is also supposed to believe that the longer they delay accepting Jesus, the more they put themselves at risk of eternal damnation.  LOL. 

For me personally, I've already read Justin's Dialogue with Trypho and have evaluated the arguments of Dr. Michael Brown and found them wanting, along with about 20 years of responding to Christian attempts to extract Jesus out of Micah 5:2, Daniel 9, Isaiah 53 and Psalms 16 and 22.  I just haven't set forth my criticisms of such matters in this blog very systematically.  Steve Hays cannot really say whether I need to do "more", so he has no moral basis to condemn me or any other skeptic for thinking the paucity of Brown's arguments justifies concluding that getting Jesus out of the OT requires wild stretches.  I'll take the NT methods of exegesis of the OT as my first case in point.  There's a very good reason Gleason Archer spent significant time trying to warn Christians away from adopting the methods of exegesis used by the NT authors:  you do that, and you wind up in stupidville real quick, and mistaking mere typology for actual substance.

Fifth, Hume's argument was basically sound even if one could trifle that he overstated a few things or otherwise erred.  Nothing in the New Testament qualifies as meeting Hume's common sense test:






The undeniable truth is that 

• It violates common sense to believe every miracle report you hear

• If you are going to avoid being gullible, you have to already have in place criteria to distinguish likely true from likely false miracle claims

• According to Steve Hays, the miracle investigator msut also have criteria for being able to distinguish genuinely supernatural miracles done by god, and genuinely supernatural miracles done by demonic power.  Yet Hays is a presuppositionalist and Calvinist, and thinks the unbeliever cannot possibly understand such spiritual things...yet he pretends as if they are under some type of intellectual obligation to go research something he says they cannot possibly understand.

• Hays is stupid because hsi logic would require that unbelievers first become spiritual (born again) so they can understand spiritual things enough to figure out which mriacles are godly and which are satanic, but if that happens, no miracle investigation will be necessary, DUH

• Hays never say how we can recognize the point where we can be justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about such criteria and move on to evaluating actual claims?  5 minutes?  3 weeks? 

• No Christian apologist can provide usefully specific criteria for how long one must study miracle claims before being justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions.  Will one day of 8 hours of googling be sufficient?  They simply ask you to "check it out", as if you should just cover your eyes, reach into the bag, and begin your research in all the intenteional blindness of the way people win the lottery.  Well gee, with so many dogshit miracle claims in history and in the present world, where shall I start?  Fatima?  Benny Hinn?  Mel Tari and his "Like a Mighty Wind" book?  Or must I hold back and first develop criteria for knowing when a certain alleged miracle worker is too likely unreliable to deserve any serious consideration?  

• Does the fact that god also does miracles through non-believers complicate the process?

• No apologist, including the fools at Triablogue, has any criteria by which a person can tell how much time, money and resources they "should" (DING!  moral claim!) expend in researching miracle claims.  If an internet search shows a potentially viable claim, but no further information is available, how much intellectual obligation does god think is upon the unbeliever to pursue that lead with his own money? 

• If the bible doesn't say, isn't it true there is a substantial risk your own recommendation might disagree with god's own personal opinion?  you are a sinner, correct?  Your recommendations don't carry canonical authority, correct?  And yet what do you tell yourself about drawing conclusions about god that can possibly be true, but which cannot be supported from the bible?

• If the skeptic locates contact information for one alleged miracle witness, how much should he pursue contacting them?  Is shooting off one email to their last known email address sufficient?  or must he followup any silence with a paper letter to their last known mailing address?  If Calvinism is true, wouldn't that mean that whatever degree of laziness the unbeliever exudes in any miracle investigation, this was infallibly predestined by God, so that the unbeliever never had the ability to do more than what he ended up actually doing?  What then, will you fault a person for fulfilling God's secret will exactly as God intended?  "Shame on you: you obeyed me in the exact way I expected!" LOL

• Suppose an internet search yields a website of miracle claims that provides working links to downloads of testimony and medical files, is it enough to read all such material and then start drawing conclusions about likely truth/falsehood?  Or is the skeptic being too skeptical by delaying belief until they can authenticate such downloaded testimonies and medical files?  Gee, are courts of law just stupid for demanding "authentication"?  Of course they are, isn't it obvious that miracle-frauds never happen, so that automatically trusting anything from the internet claiming to be testimony or medical evidence is the more objective way to proceed?

• I kicked Steve Hays' theological ass all over hell and back in a debate years ago on the precise topic of how the skeptic is supposed to know when the evidence they uncovered has become sufficient to justify drawing ultimate conclusions, or even whether there is any intellectual obligation upon them to give one holy fuck about any such claims in the first place.  See here.  The smartest Calvinist in the world wisely refused to engage after posting his one single criticism, for reasons that will be obvious to anybody who reads the debate.

• Christian apologists cannot agree on where to "start" the miracle investigation (i.e., the resurrection of Jesus?  Or the fallacies of empiricism?  Would Steve Hays suggest that the methodological errors in naturalism make it reasonable for the naturalist to focus first on Christain critiques of naturalism?  What about the non-Calvinist Christians who take the parable of the Sower seriously, and conclude that there's more "magic in the air" by hitting the unbeliever with the straight gospel dope, as opposed to reading presuppositionalist rebuttals to certain philosophical beliefs?  

• If both should be pursued, which one should be first, how do you know, and how long should the unbeliever put forth effort to see whether or not your recommendation is sufficiently robust as to likely lead to useful conclusions?  Therefore Christian apologists have no moral or intellectual ground to chide a skeptic who makes their own subjective decision about precisely what subtopic of miracle investigation they should look into first, if any.  If the skeptic thinks seeing rebuttals to naturalism is the logical place to start since it will kick out their naturalistic foundation and motivate them to be more open to a supernaturalist foundation, there won't be any way to "prove" that he "should" have started with the resurrection of Jesus.  

• After Steve Hays makes all of his presuppositionalist Van Tilian-esque recommendations, how long should the skeptic compare this with the recommendations of other Christians who oppose presuppositionalism, before he can be rationally warranted to draw ultimate conclusions about whether Hays's recommendations were a prudent and smart starting point?  How long must i listen to the presuppositionalist Steve Hays and the evidentialist William Lane Craig give me contradictory advice on the "best" place to start, before i become justified to start drawing my own conclusions about the matter?  Must I first become a scholar of John Calvin and memorize all the ways that John Frame and Van Til disagree with each other before I dare make a judgment call?  After all, if I don't do that level of research, there will be enough questionable holes for Hays to come back in a blog article and say "he didn't cover this subject, he avoided that topic, he overlooked that over there..."  But if Hays is not god, then eventually he has to admit that common sense is going to require I reach a point at which I start making my own decisions.

• If you try to research some miracle claim, whether healings at Fatima or Jesus' resurrection, you are just choosing to do something else with your time than actually repent and believe the gospel.  If you are still an unbeliever as you go to the library to check out a book Steve Hays recommended, and you die in a car crash along the way, you go to a hell of eternal misery even if not "flames, according to Hays, because Hays does not believe the bible teaches there is any third option in the afterworld for "sincere" unbelievers who died while in the process of checking out apologetics claims, but before arriving at actual faith.  So, how long "should" the unbeliever "check out" why Lydia McGrew believes there is a special third place for just such people despite the obvious lack of biblical justification?  Should the unbeliever consider that McGrew has a Holy Spirit witness that must be as seriously considered as the bible?  If so, how long should that investigation take place?  Isn't it true that for every second the unbeliever spends investigating some Christian bullshit, the more they delay the day of their repentance, and therefore, the more they risk dying before repentance and ending up in hell?

• Hopefully neither Hays nor any Christian thinks unbelievers need to give up their spouse, kids, job and home and just sit on the internet all day homeless in a coffee shop googling miracle claims like crazy, all worried that the longer they delay repenting, the more they risk going to hell 9while yet knowing that to hurry up and repent requires them to limit their study, and possibly repent in a way that is not sufficient, or believe in a false Jesus which will then blind them the rest of their lives to the fact that they remain unsaved).  Yet Christians are forced to insist that the more you ignore Christ and pay attention to anything else (job, family, life) the more you DO increase the risk you'll die before getting saved (and thus go to hell).  Perhaps Jesus in Matthew 19:29 was being just a bit more consistent with his fanatical message of salvation-urgency, than are his modern-day defenders?

For all these reasons, skeptics need not have the slightest worry whether or not that Christian apologist over there accused Hume of violating common sense.  We have more than sufficient reason and justification to ignore bible and miracle claims until we start seeing biblical-style "miracles".  Especially in the mind of Steve Hays, who is a hyperCalvinist, who says every error unbelievers engage in, was infallibly predestined by God, so that the unbeliever could not possibly have done anything other than commit those errors.  Yet his god still bitches at human puppets for moving in the same direction this god had pulled their strings.  LOL.

Gee, how many miracle-claims did I ignore in the effort to write this blog piece?

How many Arminian YouTube videos did Steve Hays ignore when writing any of his Triablogue bullshit?

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast)

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

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast) 

Posted: 11 Dec 2019 01:40 AM PST

In this episode of the podcast, J. Warner joins Bill Arnold on Faith Radio to respond to listener questions. How do we present the Gospel to people who are dying of a terminal disease?

You tell their relatives to follow Jesus, and use the phrase "let the dead bury the dead" to discourage their attendance at the inevitable funeral:

 21 Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead." (Matt. 8:21-22 NAU) 

 59 And He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 60 But He said to him, "Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God." (Lk. 9:59-60 NAU)

Then you tell them Jesus came for the purpose of breaking up families:

34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
 35 "For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW;
 36 and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (Matt. 10:34-36 NAU)

Jesus being the perfect example of such since his own immediate family saw nothing compelling about his miracles and continued failing to properly honor him:

 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." (Mk. 6:4 NAU)

Then you tell them exactly what actions Jesus thought this information implied, such as Jesus promising that those of his followers who abandon their own children will receive salvation and other rewards:

 29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. (Matt. 19:29 NAU)

That's how you act when you want to be more "Christ-like".   Wallace next asks:

Can we make a decision for Jesus even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can we make a decision for Mormonism even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can skeptics be reasonable to make a decision about the resurrection of Jesus, even if they have big, unanswered questions?

That puts Christian apologists in a pickle, as they are rather hypocritical and arbitrary. as the following represents how most "apologists" feel:  

"you can always be rational to make a decision for Christ no matter how stupid you are, as putting off the day of your salvation is quite dangerous in light of even the non-flame version of hell, and the fact that you could die any second.  But skeptics?  They are not reasonable to deny the resurrection of Jesus even if they delayed that decision while they conducted 20 years of research into the arguments of Habermas, Licona and William Lane Craig.  Such blind dogmatism is the way we fundies continually foster a protective 'us v. them' mentality, keeping them in the faith is more important than whether their reasons for staying are academically rigorous.  But only for Protestant Trinitarians.  All other "Christians" are intellectually obligated to keep saying "I don't know", no matter how much research they do, until they find a reason to join the Protestant Trinitarians."

Except that a skeptic could easily undercut such self-serving idiocy by raising the specter of the unbeliever who is tempted to make a decision for Christ... that is, the Christ of Jehovah Witnesses.  Ahhh, then suddenly, you "must" recognize that Jesus is god or else the Christ you accept will false and thus insufficient to actually save you, and picking the wrong form of Christianity increases how much trouble you are in with God (Galatians 1:8-9).  FUCK YOU.   Wallace continues:

Why does the Bible seem to condone slavery?

There's no "seem" about it:  the kind of slavery Moses wanted his Hebrews to practice was as follows:  Go make war against that nation over there, kill everybody including the male babies, spare only the prepubescent girls so they can become your house slaves, and remember, if any such recently traumatized girl refuses to do the dishes like you ask her to after you get her back to your house, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft":

 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Num. 31:12-18 NAU)

 23 "For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.  (1 Sam. 15:23 NAU)

That is how you say "fuck you" to Paul Copan, Matthew Flannagan, and other allegedly Christian "apologists" who prefer to spend their every waking moment pretending there's nothing more to say about Hebrew slavery except what can be extracted from the more politically correct portions of the "Law".

I could go on on that subjet alone, for example, Moses in Numbers 31 is reasonably construed as thinking that those little girls did not have the stain of the sexual sin at Peor which was being avenged (Numbers 25).  But even assuming the girls' virginity was still intact, did Moses not realize there are other ways to sexually sin beyond vaginal intercourse?  If one of those prepubescent Midianite girls engaged in cunnilingus with a Midianite man, wouldn't this count, in the eyes of Moses, as making her guilty of sexual sin?  What, did Moses think the sin of pedophile cunnilingus was more forgivable than the sin of pedophile intercourse?  How would that help the apologist who wants to eliminate every possible vestige of pedophilia from the Israelites?

How would the Hebrews have determined whether a girls' hymen was still intact?  If it was typical back then for virgin girls to wear clothing distinctive from the clothing worn by non-virgin girls, then all of the Midianites would have known this, and if as Christian apologists allege, rape was an inevitable war atrocity among the pagans, then the non-virgin Midianite women would have recognized the value of dressing in the clothing of virgins as soon as they detected their nation was under attack....in which case we have to wonder how many Midianite woman, non-virgin and stained with the Midianite sexual sin, brought their sinful selves into the homes of the Hebrew army men.

In light of how important virginity was to the Hebrews, they might have felt this justified using their eyesight to confirm the virginity of the spared girls...just like nobody likes to stick something up their ass, but when you doctor says its time for a checkup, you generally subjegate your normative preferences for others, for the sake of higher good.  So it doesn't matter if you can't stand the thought of the Hebrew army men viewing the vaginas of kidnapped prepubescent girls recently traumatized by watching their families be slaughtered by the same Hebrew men, skeptics are more worried about actual reality, than in helping you spin history to make yourself feel better about what must have been horribly brutish culture wars that now stain the pages of your bible.

Notice also, Moses didn't need a specific word of the Lord, his men would obey his atrocious orders even if he didn't specify that he was speaking for God at that particular moment. So the Hebrews would that much more stupid and brutish for being willing to kill kids merely on command of their human leader, in absence of any proof that such command was required by their 'god'.

Christian apologists know perfectly well that if what happened to those poor Midianite girls happened to themselves in very similar circumstances, they would immediately conclude, from the barbarity alone, that their captors are nothing but brutish sociopathic slugs.  They would not trifle about all the possibilities that the bible-god willed this and perhaps their sinful imperfect selves might have read too much evil into the possible "good" of massacreing people and kidnapping some to use as slaves.

But no, when its in the bible and approved by god, you cannot do anything else except automatically call it good. You have all the objectivity of a hysterical Pentecostal during an exorcism during a 1960's tent-revival.  FUCK YOU.

What did early Christians believe about hell?

Irrelevant, the one place where Jesus (the gold standard by which anything else must be judged, at least as far as Christian apologists are concerned) most clearly presented eternal conscious misery as a possible fate for Gentiles is Matthew 25, and after the quote, I follow with some disconcerting concerns:

 31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?
 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'
 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'
 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?'
 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:31-46 NAU)

The following considerations are reasonable, and their reasonableness is not going to disappear merely because a desperate Christian apologist misrepresents some other legitimate possibility as if it was the only "correct" interpretation:

First, my rebuttals to Licona, Turek, Habermas and Craig on the resurrection of Jesus are weighty and substantial (e.g., the 1st Corinthians 15 "creed" has no historical value, there are only 3 eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus, all three of these are easily falsified on the merits, nothing in the NT or extrabiblical historical evidence such as Josephus justifies inferring Jesus' brother James ever actually converted to Christianity, Paul was a deluded maniac who thought he could physically fly up into heaven, the kind of witness any juror would not only disbelieve, but murder as well, the multiple attestation of Jesus' burial is rather weak, Jesus' family not finding his miracles the least bit credible and their committing the unpardonable sin justifies concluding Jesus was more like Benny Hinn than a truly miracle working prophet, Deut. 13 reminds us that even false prophets can work true miracles so that Jesus' miracle of resurrection would not answer the question of whether he was truly the son of God, The earliest gospel did not allege the risen Christ was seen by anybody, there is no rule of common sense or logic that requires any living person to ever give two fucks what is stated in religious documents more than 1,000 years old, etc, etc, etc), so in light of how reasonable it is to view evidence of Jesus' resurrection as incredibly weak and unworthy of credit, what exactly Jesus taught and what exactly he meant or how best to interpret his surviving words, is about as relevant to a person's eternal safety as is which box of cereal they should buy to shut up their screaming tykes.

Second, even assuming Jesus rose from the dead and therefore unbelieving Gentiles endure a real risk of entering an eternity of misery and shame upon death, nothing about "faith" is expressed or implied anywhere in this Matthew 25 "judgment of the nations".

Third, those who according to this teaching make it into heaven likely did not have specifically Christian faith, because they honestly did not realize what anybody with Christian education would know, that to help the poor is to help Jesus (vv. 37-39).  Jesus certainly cannot be talking about the Gentiles who actually heard him teach, since they would then not expres that ignorance on judgment day.  So Jesus was likely mostly talking about Gentiles that never actually heard his teachings.  Inerrantist Craig Blomberg trifles:

25:37–39 Many of the sheep are understandably surprised. No doubt several of these conditions did characterize Christ at various stages of his earthly life, but the vast majority of the “righteous” will not have been present then and there to help him. So how did all this happen? Many interpreters have seen this surprise as indicating that these people were “anonymous Christians”—righteous heathen who did good works but never heard the gospel. But the text never says they were surprised to be saved, merely that they did not understand how they had ministered so directly to Jesus.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 377). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

What Blomberg is missing is that the one kind of people most likely to fail to realize that their helping the poor constituted helping Jesus, would be non-Christians.   And since Jews wuld likely know that Proverbs 19:17 defines helping the poor as helping God, it is highly unlikely that the righteous crowd expressing surprised at Jesus are Jews.  "The least of these my brethren" more than likely means the poor in general, which is consistent with Luke's Christ-Beatitudes, where the author does not qualify "poor" or "hungry", reasonably implying that Jesus thinks just anybody that is poor and/or hungry in any way, deserves to be called "blessed".

Fourth, this teaching on 'how to get saved' is perfectly legalistic: not only is there evidence against the righteous here having any 'faith' whatsoever, that is the context within which Jesus makes clear that it was because they engaged in good works that they are given salvation (vv. 34-36). What theory best explains the tendency of 90% of fundamentalist Christians to immediately quote from Paul but never Jesus on the subject of "how to get saved"?  Easy:  Jesus was a legalist...today's protestant fundamentalist are not.  You tend to avoid quoting authorities you disagree with.

Fifth, I have very good reasons for saying bible inerrancy is a confused hurtful doctrine that cannot even be resolved by those who adopt it, and is likely false anyway, therefore, I am reasonable to regard it a false doctrine, and therefore, obviously disqualified from consideration as a hermeneutic (i.e., there is no intellectual constraint upon me to worry that I need to reconcile my interpretation of a bbile verse with the rest of the bible, before I can be confident my interpretation of the verse is accurate). 

So if I can be reasonable to avoid using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, then there is no intellectual compulsion on me to "harmonize" my interpretation of this "judgment of the nations" Christ-teaching with anything else in the bible.  So I don't give a shit if concluding Jesus was a legalist would require that he taught contrary to apostle Paul.  I have definite reasons to assert, on the merits, that Paul's gospel was in contradiction to the one Jesus taught.  Therefore I remain reasonable to limit my interpretation of Jesus' words to just the teaching itself, and not give a fuck whether that interpretation would make the bible contradict itself.

that Jesus taught leglism sure seems clear if we allow the immediate context to have primary importance when interpreting Matthew 5:17-20:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

Fundies will insist righteousness is imputed to us from the cross, but unfortunately:

a) what Jesus meant must first be gleaned from the "immediate context".  Romans 4:4-5 and Galatians 2:21 are not the "immediate context" for Matthew 5.  Slopping different parts of the bible together the way a little girl makes one big ball of ice-cream out of two scoops might be the manner of a fundamentalist who thinks "proof-texting" is the human body's only hope of processing oxygen,  but I prefer a method that is a bit more exegetically responsible.  The immediate context here would be Matthew 5:21 ff, where Jesus makes it clear that he demands his followers evince actual personal righteousness.  The burden is therefore on the fundie who would trifle that nobody can produce righteous works until they first undergo righteousness by imputation.  once again, with good reason, I'm not an inerrantists, so I'm not the least bit unreasonable in refusing to "harmonize" my interpretation of Jesus in his own context, with anything the apostle Paul taught.

b)  Since the allegedly risen Christ said ALL of his pre-Cross teachings apply to Gentiles after the Cross (Matthew 28:20), and since, obviously, the alleged author Matthew certainly seems to believe the gospel to the Jews is identical in every way to the gospel to the Gentiles, you cannot even escape the legalism with dispensationalism and pretending "the cross changed the covenant".  What Jesus actually meant in his own context is probably more important than the fallible inferences you draw based on your equally fallible and more than likely false belief in biblical inerrancy.   Wallace's next question:

What does it mean to “trust” the Gospel?

Whatever it means, it cannot mean "Lordship salvation", and it doesn't mean "walking daily with Jesus", since Jesus explicitly forbade the Gentile Gerasene demonic, who converted to Jesus and wanted to become his close compansion, from staying near him, and in such a charge Jesus did not express or imply that the man ever needed to get near Jesus in the future:

38 But the man from whom the demons had gone out was begging Him that he might accompany Him; but He sent him away, saying,
 39 "Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. (Lk. 8:38-39 NAU)

Therefore, Jesus thinks one can reasonably be construed as trusting the gospel even if the way they converted did not and does not lead to them "walking daily with Jesus".

Fudies will scream that this is false, but on the contrary, Jesus' interactions with actual gentiles in actual instances consistently show that he felt he needed no more association with them than to grant their particular request.  The real Jesus had nothing to do with the fundamenetalist Jesus that demands a close daily walk with Gentiles, and warns them to constantly study the scriptures, etc, etc:

 22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed."
 23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us."
 24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
 25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, "Lord, help me!"
 26 And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
 27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."
 28 Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once.   (Matt. 15:22-28 NAU)

 5 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him,
 6 and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented."
 7 Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him."
 8 But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
 9 "For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it."
 10 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.
 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;
 12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
 13 And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment.   (Matt. 8:5-13 NAU)

Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman in John 4, but she leaves with intent to tell others (v. 28) and we never hear about her again.

Jesus had an initial ministry to Gentiles (Matthew 4:15) and was often followed by large crowds likely including Gentiles, but according to Mark 1:45, Jesus didn't always want fellowship with those who desired to hear him preach.  That doesn't mean such crowds were only superficially interested in Jesus, as he refused to immediately dismiss such crowds (John 6:26, where John unwittingly testifies against the credibility of Jesus' miracles by alleging that that lots of people were following Jesus not because he did "signs" but because he gave them food).

Once again, the babies will scream that our interpretation cannot be correct unless it can be harmonized with everything else in the NT, but this is false on two fronts:

a) as I already explained, bible inerrancy is not nearly so clear that it deserves to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic, so that failure to do so does not render us "unreasonable" as inerrantists would otherwise scream, and

b) when you seek to harmonize your interpretation of one verse with the "rest of the bible", it is more correct to say you are trying to reconcile your interpretation with your interpretation of the rest of the bible.  Fundies often say "this part of the bible is so clear it doesn't need interpretation', but that's just ignorance.  When it comes to correctly understanding ancient texts, by necessity they cannot ever be as automatically clear in meaning as, say the headline for yesterday's edition of the New York Times.  The very fact that smart Christian scholars and apologists disagree with each other about nearly every biblical matter (except perhaps Jesus' gender) robustly witnesses to the fact that "letting the bible speak for itself" is nothing more than a dangerously stupid colloquialism.  Therefore, using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic really IS a case of insisting there is harmony between your interpretation of a bible verse, and your interpretation of the rest of the bible.

But if this be a more accurate way to describe the "inerrancy-as-hermeneutic" phenomenon, then this boils down to merely you trying to make the whole collection of your interpretations of the bible harmonize...which means you are blindly assuming that your imperfect interpretations are indeed correct beyond question.

c) KJV Onlyists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Disciples of Christ, Oneness Pentecostals Calvinists, dispensationalists and others you accuse of inaccuracy or "heresy" also believe in biblical inerrancy and use it as a hermeneutic.  But since you agree their using bible inerrancy as a final check on any one of their particular interpretations has not helped them to see the true biblical light, you can hardly blame the outsider or skeptic for concluding that bible inerrancy really isn't a legitimate tool of hermeneutics, it only looks like that because of the dogma that naturally comes with preaching inerrancy.   You can hardly blame the skeptic who thinks bible inerrancy is, at the end of the day, a completely useless tool, and perhaps a harmful tool; one that would help insulate them from reason should they pick the wrong church and then start insisting that their particular doctrines are "consistent" with the "rest of the bible". 

Therefore, the skeptic has full rational warrant to reject bible inerrancy and limit their tools of interpretation to simply grammar, immediate context, larger context of the author, genre of the book and perhaps insights from the social sciences.   Any interpretation that results from use of these universally acknowledged tools of interpretation is going to remain reasonable regardless of how much a fundie can trifle otherwise.  Wallace next asks:

Is Christianity “anti-science”?

Some factions are more so than others.  Young Earth creationists are high on crack.  Old Earth creationists have not done worse than chug a few beers.

However, the very fact that the Roman Catholic Church cited scripture against Galileo's heliocentric model and found nothing persuasive in Galileo's trifle that maybe scripture speaks "phenomenologically", conclusively proves that, where one is not already aware of scientific facts supporting heliocentricity or the stationary status of the sun, they will more than likely conclude the bible teaches the geocentric model.

Sure is funny that before heliocentricity was confirmed scientifically, no Christian ever noticed that scriptural statements about the movement of the sun were mere "language of appearance".  They didn't start wondering about that until they learned about scientific findings suggesting a spherical earth or a stationary sun.. except of course Galileo, a person who believed the bible was the word of God and thus felt forced to find some way to harmonize the bible with truths he saw through his telescope.

In other words, the pre-scientific people who were the original addressees would never have thought such bible texts were mere "language of appearance".  And every Christian knows about that hermeneutic that says we need to ask ourselves how the originally intended audience for the biblical books would likely have interpreted them.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to interpret the bible as teaching geocentrism.

How NOT to concisely argue for a Traditional view of Jesus' childhood, a reply to Jason Engwer

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Jason Engwer entitled

How To Concisely Argue For A Traditional View Of Jesus' Childhood

Monday, December 09, 2019

Engwer, true to form, once again choose to pay attention to meaningless trifles.

Engwer is forced to agree with his apostle Paul that to disprove the resurrection of Jesus is to turn Christians into false witnesses who are still in their sins, 1st Corinthians 15:15 (which then means they deserve the death penalty even if they do real miracles in support of their theology, Deut. 13).  Since I have demolished Jesus' resurrection by showing that the naturalistic theory has more explanatory scope and power, I must conclude that arguing about Jesus' childhood can never be sufficient to fix the wormwood infecting Christianity's linchpin doctrine.

I therefore only answer Engwer point by point on Jesus' childhood solely out of my preference to demolish fundamentalist Christianity in all its forms, not because of any stupid worry that justifying the canonical Nativity stories somehow makes Christianity worthy of the slightest credence. 

There are a lot of ways to argue for a traditional view of the childhood of Jesus, and we've been making those arguments for a long time. But it's often helpful to be able to argue concisely for what you believe. That can be hard to do when a subject is as large and complicated as the earliest years of Jesus' life.

Actually, its not complicated at all.  The gospel authors say nearly nothing about Jesus' childhood, likely because they knew that trying to convince the public that some infant crapping his diaper was the creator of the universe just sounded a bit too stupid even for pre-literate religious fanatics, and most people would more readily accept divine-man claims if the person at issue was at least an adult.  By limiting Jesus' miracles to some life-point past his infancy, stupid shit questions about how a baby could be god and yet still not have control of his own bowel movements are conveniently avoided.

For example, to say that Jesus was the creator is to imply that he never sinned.  A child who never disobeys his parents?   How believable is that?  Since people who believe in miracles don't always think the most outlandish things, it appears the gospel authors, despite willingness to tell miracle stories, still recognize that some miracle stories can go too far.  The mark of a good professional liar is that they know where employing circumspection will cause their story to "ring" more true.

We are addressing years of his life, after all, unlike the narrower focus of Easter, for example. But here are a few summary arguments I recommend using:

If you paid more attention to what Jesus actually told you to do, you would have no time to engage in the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).  The very fact that Paul showed zero interest in Jesus' childhood should be enough to prove that Paul doesn't think anything is missing by simply leaving Jesus' childhood completely alone.  So your desire to engage in such debate anyway is reasonably construed to signify your lack of satisfaction with Paul's gospel.  But again, if you spent more time doing what Jesus and Paul demanded of their followers, not only would you have no time to spend on debatable pionts, but your obedience to clear commands would make it more likely your efforts would reap spirtiual reward.  you cannot really say whether God gives a fuck whether you say anything about Jesus' childhood or not.  Clearly, you have a morbid interest in controversial questions, the trait that apostle Paul said renders you a stupid heretic (1st Timothy 6:4).

The NT authors never made Jesus' childhood that big of a deal, so you run a significant risk of trying to do better than your god by attempting to satisfy public curiosity about a subject that your god did not see fit to provide any answers to.

Furthermore, if you believe Matthew was written to non-Christian as well as Christian Jews, you get in more trouble, since that would mean that Matthew, the alleged apostle and author, seriously thought that a mere story about Jesus' childhood should "suffice" to "convince" non-Christain Jews, showing your Matthew to be far more anti-intellectual than you'd ever dare credit to him.

You cannot say Matthew would have been there to explain the story, as the patristic evidence, that you treat as infallible without honestly admitting it, says Matthew wrote the gospel to make up for his absence given his intent to leave Jerusalem and travel abroad:

Eusebius, Hist.Eccl. 3:24
Nevertheless, of all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew and John have left us written memorials, and they, tradition says, were led to write only under the pressure of necessity. For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence. 

 [1] Schaff, Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 1

Of Matthew again it is said, that when those who from amongst the Jews had believed came to him, and besought him to leave to them in writing those same things, which he had spoken to them by word, he also composed his Gospel in the language of the Hebrews. And Mark too, in Egypt, is said to have done this self-same thing at the entreaty of the disciples.

This is quite sufficient to allege that what we find in Matthew's Nativity story is what Matthew preached.  It is also likely that beacuse the gospel followed Matthew's preaching, the written nativity story is likely a polished form of that preaching, so that the written form provides more details than Matthew's oral preaching did.  he was an anti-intellectual.  John was the same way, he expected faith to just magically materialize in the hearts of his readers merely because they read his words (Matthew 20:31).

- Reliable sources on Jesus' childhood were available to the early Christians and their opponents for a long time.

Mary allegedly had visions.  So since Christian apologists never attempt to justify visionary material in the NT, even they agree that when a source is a 'vision', it can be safely discounted.

Close relatives of Jesus lived for more than half a century after his birth.

Which only hurts your cause, as those relatives found nothing in Jesus' public ministry to convince them Jesus was a truly divine person, see Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4 and John 7:5.  You have no interest whatsoever in evaluating the testimony of these alleged eyewitnesses to Jesus' alleged "miracles".  Your other comments that perhaps they were too overcome with jealousy, or they "just didn't understand" are too foolish to deserve comment.  What the fuck would even a stupid person do, if their brother was going around town raising the dead and curing diseases science still deemed incurable?

For a discussion of the credibility of the early reports about Jesus' relatives in general, see here. Regarding how long individuals like Mary and James lived, see here and here.

In the first linked article, you say "He had siblings, and they were initially unbelievers." That's an understatement.  Those siblings committed the unpardonable sin (Mark 3:21, to say somebody was insane was to accuse them of demon possession, see John 8:52, 10:20) and even after a full year into Jesus' public ministry, his brothers were refusing to believe in him and mocking his ability to do miracles (John 7:1-5).  Worse, Jesus himself testified after coming home from his first preaching tour that his own relatives did not properly honor him (Mark 6:4).  In all fairness, though, in the first linked article you admit:

Furthermore, some of the gospel accounts are particularly unlikely to have been fabricated, because of their embarrassing nature. Jesus' mother and brothers refer to Him as insane (Mark 3:20-35), Jesus considers His unbelieving brothers (future church leaders) incompetent to care for His mother (John 19:26-27), etc. John 19:27 tells us that Mary lived past Jesus' death for some unspecified period of time as well, which is corroborated by Acts 1:14 (which, like John 19, has Mary in the region of Jerusalem around the time of Jesus' death).

And I couldn't agree more.  The embarrassing nature of these admissions gives them slightly more historical likelihood than statements that Jesus did real miracles or was the son of god.  Engwer continues:

And those relatives held some prominent positions in the early church, as we see in Acts,

I'm not seeing anything in Acts that definitively puts a relative of Jesus in a prominent place.  Two Jameses were original apostles (Mark 3:17-18), so when two Jameses appear in Acts 1, the more likely truth is that these were the same exact men, and since neither of them can possibly have been the James the brother of the Lord (i.e., he was son of Joseph and thus not a son of 'Zebedee' or son of 'Alphaeus'), and most Christian apologists say the specific brother of Jesus named James was among the relatives in Mark 3:21 who rejected Jesus' message before the crucifixion, therefore, neither James in Acts 1 can be James the brother of Jesus.

Yes, there is an unqualified James in Acts 15, but since there were two different Jameses who were original apostles (supra), saying the James of Acts 15 was one of the original apostles with the same name requires less ad hoc speculation than the hopeful theory that the James of Acts 15 was specifically Jesus' brother.

Galatians 1:19, 2:9-12,

No, inerrantist Christian scholar George, T. admitted that Galatians 1:19 is ambiguous as to whether Paul was saying James the Lord's brother was one of the apostles.  George says:

1:19 Paul claimed that he saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of Jesus. The expression is ambiguous in Greek, so we cannot be sure whether Paul meant to include James among the other apostles.  Did he mean: “The only other apostle I saw was James,” or “I saw no other apostle, although I did see James”? Probably he meant something like this: “During my sojourn with Peter, I saw none of the other apostles, unless you count James, the Lord’s brother.”

(2001, c1994). New American Commentary, Vol. 30: Galatians,  p. 74)

The James of Galatians 2:9 ff is at least 15 verses away from 1:19, so it clearly isn't close enough to justify pretending that Paul was talking about the same exact person, he could just as likely have been referring simply to another apostle James whose headship of the Jerusalem church did not need to be specified.  But I would argue that because Paul refers to Peter (Cephas) James and John (2:9), it is most reasonable to assume these men achieved leadership in the Jerusalem church because they were previously among Jesus' inner circle, the precise type of apostles most likely to attain a high leadership position. See Mark 5:37, 13:3 and Matthew 17:1, 9).  The reasonableness of this interpretation is not going to disappear merely because there are other bare possibilities.  However,

Engwer continues:

1 Corinthians 9:5,

First, the mere fact that early church fathers debated whether Jesus had multiple brothers is itself enough to justify the person who says 1st Cor. 9:5 is too ambiguous to think it can yield conclusions of reasonable certainty.  See here.

Second, Paul distinguishes the "rest of the apostles" from the "brothers of the Lord".  This is naturally expected if Paul felt Jesus' brothers did not qualify as apostles, and merely sometimes accompanied the apostles during missions.

Third, Mark 6:3 lists 4 brothers of Jesus, James being one, so that the plural "brothers" in 1st Corinthians 9:5 would still be accurate even if we asserted one specifc brother, James, never converted to Christian faith.

Fourth, the mere fact that the head apostles gave Paul the 'right hand of fellowship' (Galatians 2:9) need not imply those apostles agreed with Paul's gospel, so that even if 1st Cor. 9:5 proves that James the brother of Christ sometimes accompanied other apostles on missions, his presence in such context doesn't demand that he was a convert to Christianity.  In the mid-40's there was a terrible famine in and around Palestine, and the Jerusalem apostles could very well have viewed Paul as a meal-ticket and that's the only reason they pretended to support his version of the gospel (though it is weird that in Gal. 2:9, they allocate the entire Gentile mission field to Paul and confine themselves solely to Jews,  when in fact the risen Christ allegedly said THEY were to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19).

Fifth, other historical "facts" about James the Lord's brother show that he did not agree with Paul's theology, he was a Judaizer and likely for that reason was held in high esteem among non-Christian law-observant Jews, which would hardly be the case if this exact James preached the same message Jesus did, you know, the one that incurred the wrath of the Jewish people (Matthew 12:14, 27:25).

the letters of James and Jude, etc.

There is nothing about the authorship of James' epistle that suggests he was specifically a brother of Jesus, and there were two original apostles of Christ named James whose authorship could just as easily account for that epistle's echoing some of Christ's alleged sayings.  I would argue their aurthorship is ore likely than by James the brother of Christ since they spent three years with Jesus before he died, whereas the brother of Jesus name James was a late-comer, so that naturally either of the two original apostles of the same name are more likely to have more familiarity with Jesus' sayings.

For both epistle of James and epistle of Jude, it is quite difficult to believe, in light of Jesus granting specific authority to certain apostles (Matthew 16:18), and in light of Paul's admission that the early Christian laity recognized certain apostles as authoritative (Galatians 2:6), and in light of Peter's belief that only TWELEVE men could possibly be legitimate apostles (Acts 1, his seeing a need to replace Judas with Matthias), that the authors, if they are true apostles, would fail, as they do, to specify their authority and position.  1st Peter starts out with the author declaring he is an "apostle", 2nd Peter doesn't matter because it is reasonably construed a forgery despite the trifles of fundamentalists otherwise, and Paul is always identifying himself as an apostle and authority.   Yet James and Jude place themselves at the level of other Christians by declaring themselves "bond-servants" of Christ (James 1:1, Jude 1:1).  The reasonableness of saying the true authors were not the leaders bearing those names, but lesser persons who either had the same names, or wrote what they thought such leaders would have written, is not going to disappear merely because other authorship theories are also within the realm of viable possibility.

Keep in mind that Jesus' relatives were critical of him at times, so his enemies would have had an interest in and ability to get information about his background from those relatives.

Agreed.  Which probably accounts for why we have no surviving records from the 1st century of those hostile to Jesus.  When the enemies can use Jesus' family against him, us Christians must "destroy the memory of Amalek from under heaven..."  Paul wanted to 'stop' the mouths of Jewish Christians who were teachings things he didn't approve of, see Titus 1:11.  That's not calling for democratic debate, and its not asking those listening to the jewish Christians to "check out" Paul's competing claims, that's asking for the Jewish Christian assertions to cease circulation altogether.

Some of Jesus' neighbors, coworkers, and contemporaries in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth also would have lived past the time of his death, even for decades in some cases. The same is true of the religious authorities and others who opposed him and had him executed. Just as the early Christians passed on information from generation to generation, so did their enemies. The early Christians and their opponents produced many documents in the earliest decades of Christianity, not just the ones we possess today, as I argue here.

 Except that it is also reasonable to conclude that the Judaizers wrote letters critical of Paul (their ability to convince Peter and "even Barnabas" (Galatians 2) might suggest the case for the Judaizer gospel is more powerful than what you can tell from mirror-reading Galatians and Acts 15), yet we have no such thing from the 1st century.

And see here for some comments from Larry Hurtado about how the literacy of the early Christians is often underestimated.

Many of Paul's converts were illiterate (1st Corinthians 1:26).  perhaps you will argue that the Greek word for "many" need only mean "two".

- We have a lot of evidence for a traditional view of Jesus' childhood.

The significance of which is completely debunked by Jesus' own complete apathy toward and silence on his own childhood, as if he was of the belief that what happened in his childhood had no significant bearing on his claim to the Messiah.  Add to this the fact that 25 of the 27 NT books show zero concern for events in Jesus' childhood, and you are a fool to insist that skeptics are somehow intellectually obligated to give two shits about these speculations that you just cannot resist wasting your time with.  Then again, Jason Engwer thinks it is proper use of God's money to help digitize and preserve the audiotapes of the Enfield Poltergeist, which according to his bible constitutes using god's money to preserve records of the manifestations of demon activity.  We can safely assume Engwer is so fanatical in his desire to prove bible inerrancy and apologetics, he ends up often contradicting the bible.

I don't think the evidence supporting a traditional view of Jesus' childhood is consistent, for example, Luke 2:52 doesn't say Jesus' human nature increased in wisdom, it says "Jesus" increased in wisdom, and it is eisogesis to read the orthodox resolution to the Arian and Nestorian "heresies" back into the earlier text, when it is more objective to prioritize the author's own context.  If that requires that Luke was saying all parts of Jesus (i.e., both divine and human) grew in wisdom, that will only bother fundamentalist Christians, skeptics will not worry too much that this makes for a bad day in classical theism-land.  Let's just say that the average person of the first century appears to have believed, in rather uncritical unquestioning way, that the gods could take on human form, Acts 14:11.  The point is that these kinds of statements make the historical Jesus so utterly unbelievable that what one might "prove" from his childhood is absurdly irrelevant.

Much of what the early Christians report about the childhood of Jesus meets modern historical standards, like multiple attestation,

First, multiple attestation is a weak criteria, it assumes that if you have at least two witnesses who agree on a fact, the jury has no choice but to consider the fact established.  That's just stupid, especially in the first century where thousands of Christians testified in favor of the "fact" that Paul was hypocritical in his preaching (Acts 21:20) and is therefore an example of how even today's Christian apologists will quickly dismiss multiply-attested "facts".  How many thousands of witnesses testify to Roman Catholic miracles at Fatima and elsewhere?  Engwer will trifle that he doesn't deny their miraculous nature but only the conclusion that God approves of Roman Catholicism, but that misses the point:  God's approval of Roman Catholicism is ALSO what's multiply attested in such modern-day miracles.  That is, Engwer will find it impossibly difficult to continue parading multiple attestation as the final nail in the skeptic's conffin.  If he dares attempt to look objective by pretending he doesn't necessarily always believe miracles merely because they are multiply attested, then he cannot blame skeptics who, like him, cite other evidentiary shortcomings in a claim and its evidence which they feel are greater than its "multiple attestation".

Second, Matthean priority is also meets multiple attestation in the church fathers, but most Christian scholars insist in Markan priority.  Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name is also multiply attested in the patristic literature, but because it appears the latter fathers are basically all merely echoing the Papias-tradition, such multiple attestation is more correctly characterized is mere echoing, not independent corroboration.

Third, multiple attestation barely operates here in the debate about Jesus' childhood:  you only have two accounts.  You are not going to place intellectual compulsion on skeptics by trifling about John 1:13 and Mark 6:3.  The very fact that no other NT author finds Jesus-childhood- stories edifying enough to warrant mention would justify the view that the earliest apostles were not in agreement on whether the virgin birth story was true (they would have to agree that if true, it would certainly do as much to support their claims about Jesus as do their own unique claims about the miracles he did in adulthood).   So the silence of most NT authors on the virgin birth remains significant.  That's not going to disappear merely because you can always posit some other possibility to explain such silence such as "maybe they knew their audience accepted it so it didn't need to be repeated".

the criterion of embarrassment,

Which justifies skepticism in the case of Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  Then again, Matthew and Luke obviously weren't "apologetics" by any stretch, and their fallacy of argument by assertion (i.e., preaching to the choir) might warrant the conclusion they were written only for believers, in which case, the authors would not think their tales of Jesus' nativity were "embarrassing", so that such tales do not "pass" the criteria of embarrassment.

and the criterion of coherence.

Nah, that's just another way for you to say "bible inerrancy".  Plenty of scholars find real discrepancies between the gospels, including Mike Licona, who remains unimpressed with Lydia McGrew's sin of word-wrangling.

For some examples, see here and here.
 - There's a significant lack of support in the ancient sources for skeptical alternatives to a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus.

First, not if common sense is allowed in.  If Jesus' human vocal cords necessarily implicated his divine nature when he spoke a phrase that many conservative Christian scholars don't think he actually spoke (John 8:58), then there is nothing necessarily fallacious in saying Jesus' human acts implicated his divine nature, in which case it follows with equal logic that when the baby Jesus' mouth was spilling slobber, his was also implicating his divine nature (i.e., the creator of the universe slobbered).  The logic of the incarnate logos does not allow desperate Trinintarians to decree which acts of the human Jesus implicated his divine nature and which didn't.  Any such attempt would be necessarily arbitrary.  Jesus' human nature never implicates his divine nature, where doing so would overturn your cherished doctrine of classical theism.

Second, thanks for indicating that you don't think the argument from silence is always fallacious.

Third, you are assuming that the Christian claims in the early period would have so interested skeptics as to not only prompt them to research Jesus' childhood, but to publish the results in a way that would have survived the next few centuries in which Christian leaders insisted on burning "heretical" books which disagreed with orthodox doctrine.  In truth Jesus was at best a local miscreant whom history would have nearly completely forgotten had it not been for the efforts of his fanatics to keep his memory alive.  Jesus was not such a big deal in his own lifetime nor in the lifetime of Paul for anybody outside that religion to give two fucks about documenting facts about Jesus' childhood in a way likely to survive the burn barrels of the next 4 centuries.  25 of the 27 NT books make absolutely zero effort to preserving Jesus' childhood events for posterity.  The fundamentalist is going to spin that silence in a way that foists any intellectual obligation on a skeptic to either agree or admit being unreasonable.

Fourth, our knowledge of the early Christian sects that denied Jesus' divinity and virgin birth are limited to church fathers who always embellished their descriptions of the sects with hateful vitriol, justifying a degree of hesitancy before blindly accepting all negative slurs therein as objective unbiased historical truth.

Justin Martyr describes some such Christians.  Dialogue, Chapter XLVIII

For there are some, my friends,” I said, “of our race,150 who admit that He is Christ, while holding Him to be man of men; with whom I do not agree, nor would I,151 even though most of those who have [now] the same opinions as myself should say so; since we were enjoined by Christ Himself to put no faith in human doctrines,152 but in those proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by Himself.
150 Some read, “of your race,” referring to the Ebionites. Maranus believes the reference is to the Ebionites, and supports in a long note the reading “our,” inasmuch as Justin would be more likely to associate these Ebionites with Christians than with Jews, even though they were heretics.
151 Langus translates: “Nor would, indeed, many who are of the same opinion as myself say so.”
152 [Note this emphatic testimony of primitive faith.]
Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Irenaeus A.H. Book 3, ch. XI:

For the Ebionites, who use Matthew’s Gospel¹⁴¹ only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord.

141 Harvey thinks that this is the Hebrew Gospel of which Irenaeus speaks in the opening of this book; but comp. Dr. Robert’s Discussions on the Gospels, part ii. chap. iv.Roberts, A., Donaldson, J., & Coxe, A. C. (1997). The Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol.I : Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. The apostolic fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.

Obviously Engwer has forgotten that the views of the Ebionites count as "ancient".  Engwer will trifle that the Ebiontes are not as early as the the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but he doesn't actually know that.  All he knows is that references to the Ebionites are later than the gospels, he cannot establish that they originated in the 2nd century.  Furthermore, most Christian scholars date Matthew and Luke to about to 80 a.d. or even later, which means those who denied the virgin birth wouldn't be doing so until late 1st century.  Gene Bridges from Triablogue apparently thinks the Ebionites of the 2nd century were the outgrowth of the Judaizers present at the Council of Jerusalem:

And as matter of fact, we can see that the Judaizers of the First Century are the very ones who turn into Ebionites of the second order later on. That's what the conflict that the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts was meant to address. (link here).

So it remains reasonable, even if not infallible, to infer that the Judaizers of the Council of Jerusalem were not merely demanding Gentile circumcision, but were also denying Jesus' divinity and virgin birth. I defy anyone to dare attempt to show that the specifically Jewish Christians believed Jesus to be god manifest in the flesh.

Dr. James Tabor, Professor of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, thinks the Ebionites were the original followers of Jesus, see here, so the position adopted in responsible scholarship must remain reasonable despite Engwer's ceaseless trifles otherwise.

Eusebius significantly says that while Ebionites could not get some Christians to agree with all they believed, they were successful in getting such Christians to adopt other forms of "heresy", so that the Ebionites position, could be sustained against rebuttal to some degree, that is, the "heresy" had some teeth to it and wasn't just the casual unthinking uncritical happenstance conjuring up of doctrine that Engwer seems to think characterizes everything christian alternative he doesn't agree with:

Eusebius, church history, Book 3, ch. 27

The Heresy of the Ebionites 

The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes. The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ. For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with Mary. In their opinion the observance of the ceremonial law was altogether necessary, on the ground that they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone and by a corresponding life. There were others, however, besides them, that were of the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But nevertheless, inasmuch as they also refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed, being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside into the impiety of the former, especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily worship of the law. These men, moreover, thought that it was necessary to reject all the epistles of the apostle, whom they called an apostate from the law; and they used only the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews and made small account of the rest. The Sabbath and the rest of the discipline of the Jews they observed just like them, but at the same time, like us, they celebrated the Lord's days as a memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour. Wherefore, in consequence of such a course they received the name of Ebionites, which signified the poverty of their understanding. For this is the name by which a poor man is called among the Hebrews.  

Engwer continues:

For example, the early opponents of Christianity not only don't seem to have opposed the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus, but even corroborated it.

The evidence that Jesus stayed dead is overwhelming, whether he was "really" born in Bethlehem is something I couldn't give a shit about.

Not only does Celsus not agree with the popular modern notion that the virgin birth claim didn't arise until decades after Jesus' death, but he even attributes the claim of a virgin birth to Jesus himself (in Origen, Against Celsus, 1:28). See here for a further discussion of how inconsistent many modern skeptical views of the virgin birth are with ancient non-Christian sources.

Well gee, apostle Paul was "inconsistent" with the Judaizer gospel.  How ancient is the Judaizer gospel, and do you personally give a fuck? No.  Then quit being a hypocrite and pretending the ancient Christian sources YOU favor are somehow more deserving of credence.

Secondly, if Justin attributes the virgin birth claim to Jesus himself, sounds like your star church father had a nasty habit of drawing inferences from the canonical NT that it could not logically support.  Sure is funny that you don't really care how "heretical" your own church fathers were when they say something that supports your particular view.

For more examples of what ancient non-Christian sources said about Jesus' childhood, see here.

I believe there is basic historicity to the nativity stories (when Jesus was born, the family had to move around), I simply assert that they do indeed justify the charge of tension or contradiction, and of course I always use Mark 3:21, Mark 6:4, John 7:5 and other arguments to justify the conclusion that the miraculous portions of the nativity stories are total bullshit.  For example:  most Christian scholars understand Mary to be among the family members who in Mark 3:21 conclude Jesus is "insane" and try to publicly arrest him.    Minority scholars who trifle that Mark 3:21 isn't talking about Jesus family might exist, but do not render unreasonable the skeptics who side with the majority of Christian scholars and apologists on the matter.  And even if we forget Mark 3:21, the hatred Jesus' family had toward him during his alleged "miracle ministry' is still clear from Mark 6:4 and John 7:5, texts that apologists cannot get rid of with trifles about errant translation.

Engwer himself sees James being skeptical of Jesus in Mark 3:21, see here, so I'm not seeing what explosion of exegetical dishonesty anybody would allege is involved in my seeing Jesus' mother in the same verse, a conclusion held by most Christian scholars, including conservatives.

It doesn't matter if excuses can be made to "explain" how Mark 3:21 can be harmonized with the Nativity stories (i.e., maybe Mary experienced amnesia after the visions, etc), it is reasonable to conclude that any woman who experienced the divine confirmations alleged in the Nativity stories would not likely ever conclude that her son was "insane" unless she saw later proof that he prior visions were mere delusion.  Such is not probable, and probability is the key to historicity.  Unless apologists can show that Mary's later becoming forgetful, dismissive or apathetic toward her prior alleged visionary experience is MORE LIKELY than her continuing to trust that it was real, the skeptical position derived from Mark 3:21 will continue being reasonable.

And since they lived in an honor/shame society, the fact that Jesus' immediate family intended to publicly "arrest" him (Mark 3:21) reasonably implies that they had inquired diligently into his claims to make sure they were not basing their shaming behavior on a mistaken notion.  So if they intended to actually arrest him, they more than likely didn't reach that conclusion willy-nilly but only after robust discussion they decided that lesser means would be insufficient.  That is, apologists cannot reasonably charge Jesus' family with impulsiveness or stupidity, as that would then have consequences when such apologists later assert that some of Jesus' stupid impulsive family became leaders in the early church.  Once again, Mary's desire to arrest a son she concluded was "insane" is reasonably viewed as irreconcilable with her having experienced real divine visions while pregnant with Jesus that allegedly confirmed he was the son of God.  "Maybe she just forgot about those when she wanted to arrest Jesus" does not foist an intellectual compulsion on a skeptic, whatsoever, and of course, the paucity of NT evidence on Mary makes it impossible to "argue" that Mary's skepticism of Jesus in Mark 3:21 resulted from some type of mental or psychological imperfection.

The family's desire to arrest Jesus also reasonably justifies the assumption that they didn't experience anything about Jesus in his childhood that would have tipped them off that he is a divine being.  Yet if we are to believe Jesus was god, that necessarily implies that Jesus never, between birth and age 30, sinned.  How many Jews in the first century believed that a regular human being could avoid committing sin for the first 30 years of their life?  So if the Nativity stories were true, the mother of Jesus in Mark 3:21 wasn't just desiring to dishonor her son, but desiring to dishonor that son despite her having noticed that Jesus never sinned in his 30 years.  Now what, Engwer?  Was Mary just high on crack when she concluded Jesus was insane and tried to have him arrested? 

The brothers continuing to persist in unbelief toward Jesus as late as the completion of the first third of his public ministry (John 7:5) is also reasonably interpreted to mean that those brothers did not see anything in Jesus' alleged "miracles" that justified drawing the conclusion that he was the true son of god.  And since John 7:5 passes the criteria of embarrassment, it has greater likelihood of being true, than the laudatory statements in the gospel that Jesus performed miracles.

On the modern skeptical assertion that Luke's census account is radically inaccurate, see this post.

Nothing about my skepticism is affected in the least by admitting that Luke got this right.  Only fools who see so much non-existence relevance to biblical inerrancy would waste their time trifling about this bullshit.

On modern skeptical claims about the authorship of the gospels, see here.

That link goes to a defense of Matthew's authorship of a gospel.  Your arguments are largely irrelevant to my skepticism of his authorship:  you cannot accuse a skeptic of being unreasonable to adopt the position that most Christian scholars adopt:  markan priority (Mark was the first gospel written, and Matthew extensively copies off of Mark).  Yet, I'm sure that as Christian apologists, you will blindly insist that any Christian scholarly theory that happens to also help the skeptical case, is "unreasonable".

Mark was not an eyewitness, Matthew allegedly was, so that's the first problem:  Matthew's use of mark is so extensive that it implies Matthew's author was far more ignorant about the details of Jesus life than Mark was, making it reasonable to conclude Matthew's author was not an eyewitness.  The reasonableness of that theory is not going to disappear merely because you can conjure up another reason, such as Matthew experiencing amnesia (unlikely given your completely gratuitous and unprovable theory that Matthew was inspired by God).  There are no other examples from the 1st century of an eyewitness relying this extensively on a non-eyewitness version of events.  Mike Licona also says apostolic authorship is the "fuzziest" in the case of Matthew and John, which thus prevents you from saying denial of Matthean authorship is "unreasonable".  Your ability to trifle about the patristic details does not suddenly convert Licona's position over to "unreasonable".  You are the one calling the Matthean authorship denial "unreasonable" so YOU have the burden to demonstrate that the denier's interpretation of the internal and external evidence is "unreasonable", and you are never going to do that, and you know it.  The more you condemn such Christian scholarly majority view, the more rational justification I have to conclude, as a skeptic, that serious study of the gospels does precisely nothing to increase the chances that my views of such matters will be reasonable, justifying the further conclusion that atheists who choose to disregard the gospels completely, are not doing anything except protecting themselves from plaguing their lives with ultimately pointless complexities and uncertainties.

Most Christian scholars think authentic Mark ends at 16:8, which makes it reasonable to conclude the earliest form of the gospel did not say a risen Christ actually appeared to anybody, making Matthew's resurrection appearance narrative less likely an "addition" and more likely an "embellishment", as most scholars agree Matthew was published after Mark, and embellishment is more normally found in the later accounts, not the earlier accounts.  Engwer will trifle like N.T. Wright that the various resurrection predictions in Mark scream out for the reader to insist on a resurrection appearance narrative ending that simply got lost.  Unfortunately, apologists never explain where they get this idea that if a gospel story character predicted something,  we are obligated to believe the gospel author added a fulfillment story about it to the gospel, even if the present canonical form of the gospel lacks such addendum.

Acts 1:3 says the risen Jesus spoke to the disciples things concerning the kingdom of God over a period of 40 days, which is reasonably construed to signify speech slightly more extensive than a 15-seconds worth of talking, even if it doesn't mean Jesus spoke like an auctioneer from 9 to 5 for each of those 40 days.  Yet in Matthew, the risen Christ's total words to the apostles take less than 15 seconds to speak.  

You will automatically say "compression!", but because the author of Matthew has such an extensive interest in both sayings of Christ in general, and "kingdom of God" Christ-sayings in particular, it is highly unlikely that such author would have knowingly "chosen to exclude" most of the kingdom-of-God statements which Acts 1:3 alleges the risen Christ uttered, and to instead compress it all down into a 15 second summary that does precisely nothing to guide the nascent church through the Judaizer controversy, despite the fact that even conservative dates for Matthew (50 a.d.) still place it after the Council of Jerusalem (49 a.d.).

There are many examples where Matthew expands on Mark in circumstances that increase the probability that Matthew is simply fabricating Christ sayings.  According to Mark, Peter's confession of Christ consisted of "thou art the Christ" and nothing more from Jesus on that occasion...but in the undeniably parallel account in Matthew, which is obviously talking about the same exact occasion, Peter's confession is longer and more theologically sophisticated, and is followed by what must have been a very important teaching from Christ about Peter's authority, Christ sayings that Mark's account also lacks.  See here.  Since inerrantists and fundies insist that Matthew is reporting what really happened, they are thrown into a dilemma because of Mark's shorter version:  If we must assume Mark's source was Peter, how likely is it that Peter would have said the fuller form of the confession now confined to Matthew, but only gave the shorter form to Mark?  How likely is it that Peter didn't tell Mark about Jesus' important authority-establishing statement, or that Mark knew about it but "chose to exclude" it?  What exact rule of hermeneutics or historiography is the skeptic violating by saying a person like Mark would not likely have "chosen to abbreviate" this kind of information?

All of this makes it reasonable to conclude that the reason the risen Christ in Matthew only gives 15 seconds worth of speech is because that's all the author thought this risen Christ had to say, not because the author is knowingly excluding such words through the artifice of "compression,  thus contradicting the 40-day period of risen Christ speeches alleged in Acts 1:3...a book that comes along LATER and is therefore the logical choice to blame for embellishment.

You will say Mark was based on Peter's preaching so Matthew was actually borrowing text from another apostle, but since it was already shown that Mark's version of Peter's confession is shorter than Matthew's, Matthew's dependence is more upon Mark than on Peter...who surely would have given to Mark all those extra details now confined to Matthew's account.

Finally, patristic accounts allege that Mark was writing for a Roman audience, so that if all else be true, Matthew was not merely relying on "Mark" or "Peter", he was relying on a version of Christ's sayings that Peter had adapted to his Roman audience...which is highly unlikely for the Matthew-author, whose gospel all scholars agree is the most intensely "Jewish" of the 4 canonical gospels.  What, did eyewitness Matthew RE-adapt the secondary Roman form of the the Christ-sayings for his Jewish audience?  Does that sound like somebody who was in a good position to have first-hand knowledge of Jesus' teachings?  Of course not, so then authorship of Matthew by the apostle of the same name, highly unlikely and profoundly irrelevant regardless.

And so on. As with the other two points above, you'd have to be selective in choosing one or more examples to illustrate the point, but we've provided many to choose from.
 To summarize these three points even further:
 1. the presence of reliable sources
2. the presence of evidence for a traditional Christian view
3. the absence of support for skeptical alternatives among the ancient sources
 And you could make it even easier to remember as: presence, presence, absence.
 The importance of these three points can be seen by thinking about how easily the relevant circumstances could have been different than they are and what implications would follow if they were different. What if individuals like Mary and James hadn't lived as long as they did, the earliest Christians hadn't shown so much interest in writing, etc.? What if there wasn't so much information about Jesus' childhood that meets the evidential standards for historically reliable material?

In light of the admissions of Christian scholars like Licona that Matthew wasn't as concerned about historical accuracy as inerrantists are, and in light of the fact that you don't have the first fucking clue how Matthew came up with the Nativity story material (if "how-it-could-have-been" scenarios work for you, you must accord that luxury to skepics also, to avoid charges of hypocrisy).

I'm not aware of any rule of historiography that says a person is intellectually compelled to give the benefit of the doubt to just whatever ancient document he looks at, until somebody comes along to prove it false.  That crap only started with Josh McDowell's dishonest reference to "Aristotle's dictum", but even if such initial trust is legitimate rule of historigraphy, so what?  How many historians say this benefit of the doubt must be given?  Mike Licona's admissions about how historians cannot even agree on methodology, reasonably justifies the conclusion that unless ancient words can be demonstrated to have relevance to the skeptic today, the skeptic cannot be unreasonable if they choose to completely ignore all things from ancient history...which is what the vast majority of people do their whole lives, except for religious fanatics and historians.

Refusing to give the benefit of the doubt to the document isn't like denying a law of physics, as historiography is an art, not a science.  Refusing to waste time learning what ancient authors had to say, can never be shown to result in the same level of disaster that looms over the person who chooses to disagree with the laws of logic, physics or math.  You'd have to show that a skeptic's disagreement with what most historians care about, makes the skeptic unreasonable, but then again, you don't think the skeptic unreasonable to dismiss from consideration the vast majority of ancient religious material.  It's only when we tell YOU to fuck off, that suddenly the only rational people in the world are those who give a fuck about ancient religious sources.

So if skeptics simply laugh at the NT and dismiss it, they aren't committing any academic "error", they are merely making life very hard for a few dipshits at Triablogue who themselves cannot even agree on what the bible teaches (Hays is a Calvinist, Engwer is not, etc).

Nevermind that there is no evidence, whatsoever, that anything stated in ancient history has any significance to modern-day people beyond one's personal preferences and intellectual curiosity.  If we were as objective about ancient history as christian apologists require, we'd never have time to investigate Christianity, because there are so many other possibly true religious claims from the ancient world, whose veracity we'd have to kindly presume true until they were proved false, an enterprise that would take a lifetime.

Gee, what rule of common sense, historiography or literary analysis dictates how long the skeptic should study a religious rooted in ancient claims, before the skeptic can be justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about it?  Christian apologists will necessarily have to insist that it should take less than a lifetime, so that the skeptic can free up some time to bother with Christianity, but since there is no such rule, the amount of time the skeptic deems sufficient is a highly subjective affair and hence cannot be dicated by worried apologists at Triablogue who are guilty of the sin of ceaseless word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14).

What if the early opponents of Christianity had made significantly different claims about Jesus' childhood, such as by corroborating the Christian claims much less than they did?

What if they did, and those records were destroyed just like thousands of other ancient christian writings?

What if most of the Arian bishops had shown up at the Council of Nicaea?  What if Constantine hadn't bribed anybody but bade them attend at their own expense?

What if the gospel alleged that Jesus sinned a few times during childhood?

 This approach I've outlined doesn't cover every issue, and you still have to address whatever objections are raised. It's a good way to start a discussion and summarize your view, even if it doesn't end the discussion.

And my rebuttal to you is a good way to show that skeptics are not being "unreasonable" in alleging that Jesus was an imperfect child whose history was embellished more than 50 years later, in a way that most NT authors did not seem sufficiently edifying to justify repeating, despite their willingness to repeat most of their issues.

my defense against Christians who criticize the "new atheism"

I posted the following over at a patheos blog, see here:

Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Cranach.Not seeing the purpose of this piece. The evidence for Jesus resurrection is horrifically weak, and I say this after critically examining the works of Licona, Habermas and W.C. Craig. Paul said if Jesus did not rise from the dead, he is still in his sins, and is a false witness. 

The fact that you can find a certain crazy subgroup among your opponents, does precisely nothing to hurt the argument of your opponents, otherwise, an atheist could conclude Christianity is false, because the idiots who play with snakes in their churches are clearly stupid. 

I'm an atheist. I agree with most Christians that the "new atheists" are more concerned about flaming and rhetoric than argument. But I'm not seeing how the errors of "new atheism" somehow beat down normative atheism, anymore than the errors of KJV Onlyism somehow beat down normative Christianity. 

You are not surviving skeptical attacks on the resurrection of Jesus (Christianity's essential doctrine) by pointing to the errors of "new" atheists. You need to worry about the atheists who trounce your faith, and can do it without resorting to brouhaha and political rhetoric.
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my challenge to the flat earthers

The average person, not having a college education in astronomy or geology, would likely find some flat-earth arguments "interesting". 

Exactly how much could you say about the coriolis-effect before researching it more than you already have? 

Exactly how much could you say, right now, without doing any further research that you ever did previously, about the inverse-square law?

See what I mean?

You would figure that the multitude of NASA space photos that show

a) earth where Brazil is seen in the center, and
b) earth where the north or south pole is seen in the center

.would convince flat earthers to change their mind, since the only way both such photos can be surrounded by a circular shaped earth is is for the earth to be circular all over (i.e., it is a sphere).  But no, they insist NASA photoshops all such images before daring to release them to the public.

You might wonder how some flat-earthers explain why it is that we can continuously fly from north to south and from east to west without ever encountering an ice-wall or going into outer space. 

What's east of New York?  Iraq.  What's east of Iraq?  China.  What's east of China?  Japan.  What's east of Japan?  Pacific Ocean, then Hawaii, California, and eventually New York again.  That is, you can travel in an easterly direction continuously and never once hit an "ice-wall" or perimeter you simply keep going until you arrive at the next place on the map, exactly as you would if the earth were a globe.

Nesbit says it's because when you travel too far into the ice-perimeter of the flat-earth, there is a time-warp that causes you to suddenly reappear at the opposite end of the earth.  See here.

Gee, you prop up your theory with a time-warp...then you chide everybody else for explaining the earth in ways that involve less mystery?  What's more absurd, space warps, or global shaped earth?

I haven't had the time to google every possible phrase that might provide a search hit showing somebody already thought of this, so here's my challenge to the flat earthers:

First, civilians are capable of launching a rocket high enough to see the shape of earth.  See here.
See lesser attempt of less financially funded persons such as a flat earther rocket launch here.

I see no reason why the Flat Earth Societies cannot pool their resources in the effort to conduct such a launch that would therefore be the "acid test". The rocket need not be very expensive, it is designed to do absolutely nothing but go up only as high as necessary for the entire circumference of earth to be seen..

Second, everybody except flat earthers agree that Brazil is at the "equator" of a spherical earth.

Third, get two such rockets.  Mount downward facing cameras on them, have them live-stream capable.

Fourth, set up the first rocket at the place us conspiracy theorists call the North Pole.  Set up the second rocket in some coastal city in Brazil, like Rio de Janeiro, so that when the rocket falls back to earth it will land safely in the sea instead of on land.

Fifth, stream the video to youtube, to make sure the raw unedited video is recorded by millions of people at the same time it is being streamed, as opposed to simply uploading the videos after they have been recorded and possibly subject to editing, which you know goddamn well will be what everybody says if you don't supply the video until later.  Think of how distrusting YOU are of NASA's space photos.

Sixth, launch the rockets at the same time, on a reasonably clear day.  The constant overcast skies of the north pole are irrelevant, if the rocket gets high enough, it's camera will show the entire earth, whether the portion directly below it is cloudy or not. 

Such a camera recording could also be obtained via high-altitude weather balloon, which .  See here and here.  Such weather ballooning has been the craze for some time and can be done for less than $1000.  See here.

If flat earth theory is true, only the Brazil-camera (i.e., the one furthest away from the ice-perimeter which flat earthers say the edge of the earth is composed of) will show earth to be a full circle.  The camera facing down on the North Pole rocket would, if flat-earth theory be true, not show a full circle.

Otherwise, if both videos show a  fully circular shape of earth, it would be perfectly reasonable to deduce that earth is shaped like a globe.  How would flat earthers explain a fully circular earth shape on the video recorded from the North Pole or what they believe is the "edge" of earth?  Is the edge of the earth fully circular when seen from above?  LOL.

With all the effort various flat earth societies put into debunking the spherical earth, this challenge would probably cost less than $25,000 in total costs to run, and is not asking too much.