My reply to Brendon Naicker on Paul's apostleship

 When I downloaded Mr. Naicker's pdf "Apostles" from Academia, I sent him the following message:

Hello,
I have two criticisms of your paper:
You say of Paul in your pdf page 12:

He did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21, but the Damascus Road experience was a resurrection appearance (1 Cor. 15:8), and he could claim to have “seen the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:1); he was thus a witness of the resurrection. 

I don't understand why you would believe Paul's claim to have "seen" the Lord, as Acts 9 and 22 make clear, Paul was blinded by the light, and nothing in those stories ever expresses or implies that Paul physically saw a risen Christ.

The second criticism is:  you admit on the same page that Paul

"...did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21...."

That is correct, but I don't understand why you felt that Paul's alleged experience on the road to Damascus qualified him anyway.  The original apostles in Acts 1:21 made it a criteria of apostolic office that the person in question must have accompanied Jesus "from the beginning".

If you admit Paul didn't fulfill that criteria, then what makes you think his alleged "seeing" the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was a sufficient substitute?

The criterion in Acts 1:21 does not express or imply any exceptions.   You either accompanied Jesus and the apostles "since the beginning", or you don't become an apostle, period.

Worse, if you think Paul's "seeing" the risen Christ was a sufficient substitute, then do you say the 500 who saw the risen Christ at the same time (1st Cor. 15:6), means there were 500 "apostles" while Paul was still alive?  If their seeing the risen Christ didn't suddenly make them apostles, then why do you make an exception for Paul? 

In short, can skeptics be "reasonable" even if not infallible, to insist Paul was a false apostle?

No, Mr. J. Warner Wallace: Hell is NOT "reasonable"

This is my reply to J. Warner Wallace's video on hell:

Is Hell Reasonable?

In the comments section I posed this on August 1, 2022----

Barry Jones0 seconds ago

I'm sorry, but there are numerous conclusive justifications for unbelievers to be skeptical of biblical "hell": 

First, Wallace is assuming that something written in a 2,000 year old books"applies to" people today. No historian has ever said the theology in an ancient book "applies to" today, so if Wallace thinks the bible is an exception, he has the burden of proof. And in my 25 years of counterapologetics, I've never seen any Christian apologist or scholar even get near showing that biblical "hell" applies to anybody today. 

Second, it wouldn't matter if biblical hell was intended as a modern-day warning to unbelievers: too many conservative Christians are abandoning the eternal conscious torment model and adopting the Annihilationism model. Why then should skeptics care? They already believe on naturalism that death constitutes permanent extinction of consciousness. 

Third, spiritually alive Christians disagree on whether hell is or isn't permanent extinction of consciousness. Clark Pinnock was one of the signers of the inerrancy-definition created by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, but he denied the literal interpretation of hell and favored conditionalism. See Pinnock, “The Conditional View,” in Four Views on Hell (Zondervan Academic, 1997). The debate appears to have no end. See Four Views on Hell (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology; Zondervan Academic; Second edition. March 8, 2016). if spiritually alive people cannot even agree on the nature of biblical hell, they are fools to 'expect' spiritually dead skeptics to discern the matter with any greater accuracy. 

Fourth, in the view cases in the gospels were Jesus deals directly with a Gentile, he never preaches hell at them, and if they do show faith, Jesus apparently prefers to keep his fellowship with them as short as possible. See the racist Jesus who seems to grant a miracle to a "dog" merely to shut her up. Matthew 15:22. 

Fifth, the traditional view of hell says God "must" judge sin either in the sinner or their substitute, but he cannot simply "let it go" because he is too holy. This is absurd: in 2nd Samuel 12:13-15, God "takes away" David's sin in the sense of exempting him from the mandatory Mosaic death penalty for murder. If God is holier than the Canaanite gods, the you might wish to think about it before you construe God's killing of David's baby in the following context as God accepting child sacrifice. Then in Acts 17:31, apostle Paul tells the pagan idolaters that God has "winked at" or "overlooked" their idolatry (The Greek word is hupereidon, and it means "overlook"). 

It doesn't matter what the bible thumper has to say about these texts, we skeptics are going to be reasonable to interpret them as proof that god can get rid of sin with a mere wave of his magic wand. That reasonableness will not disappear merely because a fundamentalist comes along and offers criticism. Christianity's inability to preach a consistent doctrine of hell has persisted too long in history, to justify thinking that some quick clever comment by Wallace is going to overturn it. 

The question is not whether the Christian can be reasonable to view hell the way Wallace does. Maybe they can. The question is whether SKEPTICS and UNBELIEVERS can be reasonable to view biblical hell as little more than an ancient abusive fairy tale. We can. 

And why does Wallace make his videos more dramatic than they need to be? Does he deny god's existence, and does he seriously believe the only plausible way to 'reach' today's unbeliever or Christian is through adoption of modern marketing and presentation methods that appear geared toward people afflicted with attention-deficit-disorder? If the Holy Spirit could bless Paul's ministry without all these bells and whistles, why does Wallace think these necessary?

----------------------end quote

I reposted the same comments to Wallace's reply page too, here's a screenshot:

==========================

For obvious reasons, there won't be any Wallace-followers or apologists offering any substantive rebuttal anytime soon.  When I hit back, I hit hard.

Reply to Evan Minton on hyperbole and justifying atheism

 I have replied to Evan Minton on the doctrinal orthodoxy problem created by christians who try to avoid biblical difficulties by pretending "god" had employed hyperbole.

https://cerebralfaith.net/why-i-think-local-flood-interpretation/#comment-7199

 I also responded here:

https://cerebralfaith.net/book-review-god-and-ultimate-origins-by-andrew-loke/#comment-7200

Correcting Jason Engwer of Triablogue on the problems Mark creates for resurrection apologetics

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer at Triablogue entitled 

Did the resurrection accounts develop in a suspicious way?

In the debate I discussed in my last post, Alex O'Connor raised a common objection to the resurrection accounts in the gospels. Supposedly, the earliest gospel, Mark, has the simplest material on Jesus' resurrection, and each gospel after that gets increasingly advanced in the claims it makes on the subject. See Alex's comments here. He especially discusses an increase in the number of resurrection appearances in each gospel - in the order of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John - though he doesn't limit his development argument to that issue.

There are a lot of problems with that sort of objection. As Jonathan McLatchie mentioned in the debate, the material on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 predates all of the gospels, yet is more advanced in some ways.

I don't care how early you date the Corinthian creed, your fundamentalist viewpoint forces you to say Jesus' family's viewing hi as insane was a fact of history years before this "creed" came into existence.  And it is this skepticism of Jesus' family toward him that renders reasonable the conclusion that they did not find his miracles the least bit miraculous.  And it is this skepticism toward Jesus' miracles that passes the historical criterion of embarrassment, which means they deserve more weight than 100 laudatory statements about Jesus rising from the dead.  Mark 3:21 is supplemented by 6:1-4, John 6:26 and 6:66.  And it is this inference of Jesus being the 1st century equal of a Benny Hinn that justifies the conclusion that God would never premise his second covenant upon the works of a deceiver, and thus would not have raised Jesus from the dead.

I want to add some other points.

There are some significant reasons for dating Mark first and John last. But we don't have much evidence to go by to determine whether Matthew predates or postdates Luke. That substantially lessens the confidence anybody can have in an argument like Alex's.

Nice to know you agree with most Christian scholars on Markan priority, but then you need to answer a skeptic's question about which Christian discussion of the Synoptic problem God wants the skeptic to read first.  If you trivialize that question in an effort to justify not answering it directly, you force yourself to take the position that this level of the skeptic's attempted submission to God's will is not appropriate.  Doesn't take a genius to tell how that kind of response will get you in trouble.  Exactly how detailed is Jesus' Lordship?  People need food, water, clothes, jobs, cars, books.  How do you know which of these Jesus is Lord over, and which he isn't?  If you answer that he is Lord over every possible element of the skeptic's life, then the skeptic is not doing anything the least bit unreasonable to demand from you the answer to the question of what God wants the skeptic to do next.  You may reply that answering that the question is irrelevant since the skeptic by definition in rebellion toward God, but that hardly gets you out of the jam:  you cannot even tell another member of Triablogue what God wants them to do next.  The problem of God's will being so hidden is not limited to the unspiritual nature of the skeptic.  Even spiritually alive people don't have the first fucking clue.  They merely suggest a plan of action in the modern world which they believe consistent with biblical ethics.  Sorry, I need to know God's will infallibly because my eternal salvation is more important than driving directions, food served at a restaurant or something else I'd accept upon a lesser standard of proof.  Thus skeptics are reasonable to reject the testimony of all persons who cannot speak infallibly for god. Everybody in the NT who sought after the divine will had access to a person who could speak infallibly for God.  Such people don't exist today.  Engwer loses here.

And as I explained in my last post, Luke and Acts are companion works. What's the significance of looking at something like the number of resurrection appearances in Luke without including Acts if Acts predates John and the two Lukan works reference each other (Luke 1:1 anticipating Acts and Acts 1:1 referring back to Luke, as discussed in my last post)? If Acts is added to Luke, as it should be, then Luke/Acts has more resurrection appearances than John. Even without adding the resurrection appearances of Acts to come up with a total number for Luke/Acts, Acts is relevant in providing some context for Luke. As Acts 1 demonstrates, Luke 24:36-53 is meant to refer to at least two appearances of Jesus, even though they could wrongly be counted as one. And verse 34 refers to an appearance to Peter without narrating it. So, even without counting the number of appearances in Acts, Luke includes more appearances than people often suggest. The gospel of Luke alone has at least as many resurrection appearances as John. (Whether Luke has more depends on how many are in Luke 24:36-53.) Luke/Acts has more than John, even though John probably was written after Luke and Acts were published.

In Luke, some of the women who joined Jesus early in his ministry (8:1-3) were expecting him to still be dead as they went to his grave on Easter morning (24:1-4).  Apparently, despite their being with Jesus at least one year before he died, they didn't think anything he said or did credibly supported his resurrection prediction (which the woman allegedly also heard before he died, 24:8).

The fact that Luke says the disciples regarded the resurrection testimony of the women as "nonsense" (24:11) is massively unexpected for a group of men who had, allegedly, seen Jesus do genuinely supernatural miracles for three prior years and heard him announce his death-and-resurrection predictions throughout.  Sure, that argument goes away if you say 24:11 contains some falsehoods, but you believe in biblical inerrancy, so the reasonableness of my inferences, supra, will exist as long as Luke 24:11's inerrancy does.

Furthermore, we have to look at more than just the number of resurrection appearances. 1 Corinthians 15:6 has the most advanced material in terms of the number of witnesses to an appearance.

The advancement is why the creed is likely late.  If Matthew seriously believe Jesus rose from the dead, he would more than likely not have "chosen to exclude" resurrection appearances that he knew about, such as those that Matthew allegedly participated in from Luke and John.  If Matthew was as high on resurrection appearances the fools at Triablogue are, he would not have "chosen to exclude" resurrection appearances from his own gospel any more than Jason Engwer would "choose to exclude" the Corinthian creed from his resurrection apologetics.

Matthew's gospel has the most advanced evidence for the empty tomb.

That is false, Matthew's risen Christ gives a speech that anybody could state in 15 seconds or less (28:18-20), while Luke's risen Christ speaks over a period of 40 or many days (Acts 1:3).

Luke mentions more women at the tomb than any other source, is the only one to narrate an appearance to a non-Christian (Paul in Acts), is the only one to narrate an appearance in which Jesus' body has the sort of glorious form commonly expected of resurrected individuals in ancient Judaism (the appearance to Paul), etc. Though John probably was the last gospel written, he makes a couple of references to Jesus' not being recognized after his resurrection under ordinary circumstances, even after he had begun speaking (20:14-16, 21:4-7). That's something that can be, and has been, used against Christianity.

I wouldn't use it against Christianity.  The author obviously has a dramatic purpose in saying divine intervention prevented some from recognizing Jesus. 

In that sense, John's material is the least advanced.

Nice try at taking the most obviously embellished part of the resurrection legend and implying it was early or not embellished.  Try again.

Luke has the men on the road to Emmaus not recognizing Jesus, but Luke explains that "their eyes were prevented from recognizing him" (24:16, 24:31). Should we conclude that Luke was correcting John by suggesting that any failure to recognize Jesus was only because of Divine concealment, so that Luke's gospel must have been written after John? I suspect we'd be hearing that line of reasoning a lot if the situation were reversed, with John referring to Divine concealment while Luke had material like John's. Then we have Luke's reference to "many convincing proofs", "forty days" (Acts 1:3), and James' conversion (1:14), all of which go beyond what John reports. These are just several examples among others that could be cited.

John's material is the most advanced in some ways, such as the length of the appearance narrative in John 21. But Luke/Acts is more advanced overall. And, as I've argued elsewhere, Acts probably was completed no later than the mid 60s. I doubt that Luke/Acts predates Mark, but Luke could easily have been written and published second among the canonical gospels, and it's very likely to have been written before John. It probably was written something like two or three decades before John, for reasons I've discussed elsewhere.

That brings up another problem with arguments like Alex's. The amount of time from one gospel to another is highly unlikely to have been significant on every occasion. I've argued that the similarities among the Synoptics make the most sense if those three gospels were written closer in time rather than further apart. I suspect all three were published within less than a decade. But even if you don't hold a view like that, you have to ask what significance the differences in dating have. If Mark was published something like five or eight years before Matthew, for example, so what? How much evolution is likely to have occurred in that sort of timeframe?

The amount of evolution that obviously can be seen by comparing Mark's non-existent resurrection appearance narrative with Matthew's one written about 8 years later.  The hypothesis that Mark originally wrote a resurrection narrative and it got lost, is not the only reasonable one.  It's also reasonable to say authentic Mark stops at 16:8 because Mark wrote nothing more.

If Mark deliberately left out material he could easily have included (e.g., the 1 Corinthians 15 appearances, the appearance anticipated in Mark 14:28 and 16:7), how is it favorable to arguments like Alex's if Matthew includes much less material than Mark was aware of and chose not to include and did so something like five or eight years after Mark was published?

It is not reasonable to expect a gospel author to "chose to exclude" anything they knew about Jesus' resurrection appearances.  It's reasonable to assume that had they known of any such story and thought it true, they would have included it.  There are a number of reasons, harmonious with that, for why John doesn't record the other signs Jesus allegedly did, like lack of paper, or circumstances disallowing further elaboration.

Whatever view a person holds of Mark's ending, we know that more appearances than the ones mentioned in Matthew's gospel were widely known before Mark was published.

And skeptics, being reasonable to assume Mark would never have "chosen to exclude" them had he known them, are also reasonable to assume that he excludes them precisely because he doesn't know about them, i.e., assuming Mark got most of it from Peter, Peter's original resurrection testimony did not include matters beyond what we find in Mark 16.  If Acts 2 says otherwise, we stick with our inference and we call Luke a liar, agreeing therein with most Christian scholars that Acts is at best kernels of historical truth wrapped in embellishment. 

It's highly unlikely that Mark hadn't heard of that material or rejected all of it. You can't judge Christians' or Mark's view of Jesus' resurrection at the time Mark was published, or their view of resurrection appearances in particular, solely by Mark's gospel.

Sure we can, because we are perfectly justified to believe Mark would never have "chosen to exclude" resurrection appearance stories had he known about them.

All writers are selective, have certain unspoken assumptions, write with a particular purpose in mind and not another purpose, have a particular audience in mind, and so on.

Which is why your dogmatism about what we should imply from the biblical resurrection accounts is uncalled for.  You don't have the first fucking clue why any gospel author wrote.  They could have written with a purpose of edifying fiction, and you don't have persuasive historical evidence that any gospel author knowingly risked their lives in any preaching activity. 

Lydia McGrew6/07/2022 9:22 AM☍

Yes, these are all important points showing the poverty of a developmental thesis.

No, showing poverty of a development hypothesis requires showing that an hypothesis of Mark's original resurrection appearance narrative was more likely than a theory that he stopped at 16:8.

Every single such developmental thesis I've ever examined about the gospels falls apart upon examination.

Skeptics could say the same with regard to non-developmental hypotheses.  But if it makes you feel better to pontificate... 

The evidence is cherry-picked, stated in a tendentious way, and so forth. The points you make here show that to be the case here. Of course, the issue of the ending of Mark *all by itself* casts a huge question mark over the assertion that Mark is somehow more primitive *because* it doesn't include appearances.

But I've made my arguments that Mark's shorter ending was the original.  You cannot just cry "we don't know!" whenever a reasonable skeptical hypothesis is argued, otherwise, you'd have to allow a skeptic to cry "we don't know!' every time YOU set forth a reasonable reliability-hypothesis. 

The "count the appearances" thing is obvious nonsense, especially since they are *different* appearances. E.g. Matthew has an appearance in Galilee but John has a different appearance in Galilee. Luke has the Emmaus appearance and not the Doubting Thomas appearance, John has Doubting Thomas but not Emmaus. And so forth.

Once again, we skeptics are reasonable to insist that if any gospel author both knew about, and thought true, any resurrection appearance story, it would be highly unlikely for them to have "chosen to exclude" it.  Jesus' resurrection was supposed to be the crowning purpose of Jesus' mission.  Mark's dedicating less attention to it than Luke, Matthew and John remains reasonably suspicious.

my reply to BellatorChristi on the evil and atheism

This is my reply to a BellatorChristi article by Brian Chilton entitled

Christianity Offers the Best Solution to the Problem of Evil

By: Brian G. Chilton | May 29, 2022

------First, I posted a short reply at his website, but Chilton responded to my initial reply there while I was composing this blog piece.  In his response, Brian did two things demonstrating his genuine fright of getting steamrolled in debate:

• He declined my debate challenge by hiding behind the dishonest excuse that he thinks I'm not paying attention to his points, when in fact he has a posting rule that rejects replies if they are more than a few lines, and 

• He removed the reply-function from the article that I replied to, i.e., Chilton has engineered things to make sure that his criticisms cannot be exposed on his own website. When Chilton has responded, God has spoken, and that shall be the end of the debate.

For reasons that will become clearer herein, Chilton is being dishonest.  He does not fear that I won't be "paying attention".  He fears that a counter-apologist like me would most likely corner him and expose the fallacies of his "apologetics".  

I now reply to the article.  Chilton says:

Another week, another tragedy. This time, we heard of the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Like most of you, I am troubled by the incessant and increasing reports of violence across our nation and world.

You shouldn't be.  You assume everything god does is morally good, and in Deuteronomy 32:39 "god" claims personal responsibility for all murders and death:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

If Job is correct that God has assigned each person a specific number of days to live, the only way that makes sense is if he was intimately involved in decreeing the time and manner of their death:

 5 "Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. (Job 14:5 NAU)

Chilton continues: 

For many folks, these senseless acts of violence leave them with a tinge of doubt. Why is it that a benevolent God would permit such acts to occur?

Perhaps they ask that question because they are using modern western democracy, instead of the bible, to define exactly what it means for god to be "benevolent".  I think it pointless and deceptive to call god "benevolent", because the only way we can conceptualize of it is by human analogy, and in the human world, "benevolence" cannot exist if the human in question also decrees the murder of children.  Back to your "mysterious ways of god" refuge.

This question enters the philosophical and theological sphere known as theodicy. Theodicy ponders the goodness of God’s providence in light of acts of evil.

Bellator Christi Ministries has addressed the problem of theodicy in considerable detail on both the website (https://bellatorchristi.com) and the Bellator Christi Podcast.

Just like Christian apologists have been doing for centuries.  And yet why god allows evil continues to bother Christians today no less than it did in the first century.  Congratulations on your demonstrable problem-solving progress. 

While we could go back through those issues, I think a more pressing issue is at hand. By their statements online, I have observed that some people have contemplated the thought of hitching their wagon to another theology in light of such senseless acts of evil. This is not a good idea, for reasons I hope to show.

You won't be showing any such thing.   

For the remainder of this article, I would like to pose four different theological and philosophical options that cover the problem of theodicy, and I will show that Christianity holds the best answer for why a benevolent God permits evil acts.

Then you are contradicting your own bible.  Your god allegedly thought there were times when pre-teen girls should be burned to death (Leviticus 21:9).  "benevolence" is not an option, it is a pipe dream that tries to use John 3:16 as the lens through which to interpret divine atrocities. 

The article examines the following parameters: 1) either God exists, or he doesn’t; 2) humans have free will, or they don’t; 3) God is benevolent, vengeful, or both; 4) there is ultimate justice, or there isn’t.

Option A: Atheism—No God, Questionable Freedom, No Justice

When acts of violence occur, it is strange that many begin to gravitate toward the position of atheism.

Not any stranger than the raped daughter who gravitates away from her father, who had both ability and opportunity to prevent the rape, but knowingly chose rather to just stand there watching and doing nothing. 

Because many believe that a loving, benevolent God would never allow evil acts to occur, it is naturally assumed that such a God does not exist. Most problematically for the atheist is that ultimate justice cannot be found. If there is no God, then there is no day of reckoning, no scales that are measured, and no ultimate meaning to anything.

That's a fallacious appeal to emotion.  Longing for justice is an emotion. 

One may very well assume that good and evil are just figments of our imagination.

No, good and evil are real, but they do not transcend the human level.  They are merely words we use to describe events that we feel promote or inhibit survival/thriving.  You don't have a corner on the language market:  the atheist is not doing anything illogical or inconsistent in saying the boy who killed the kids at the recent Texas school massacre was "evil"...because the atheist doesn't define "evil" in the broad ultimate sense you do.  The boy inhibited the survival and thriving of many children and adults in those shootings, and he did not do so for reasons current American law will recognize.  That is PLENTY to justify the atheist in characterizing the shootings as "evil".  There is no logical requirement that evil always be attached to the devil, or to "god's" opinion of things.

Even though atheism is a popular go-to theory,

So is "Christianity".  Did you have a point? 

the worldview only exacerbates the problem when it is taken to its logical end. If you follow the route of atheism, you will find that not only do you not find an answer to why evil things occur,

Strawman fallacy:  "atheism" does not express or imply answers to why evil things happen.  Your argument is going to basically be that by denying god's existence, nothing matters. Sorry friend, but atheism doesn't logically necessitate nihilism.  But yes, you might sound convincing to crowds of Jesus-followers who have no training in philosophy, who are thus incapable of discerning where and how your inferences go wrong. 

but you will also find that you have no standard by which to gauge anything evil in the first place

Wrong again:  you don't have a corner on the language-market: "evil' is not required by definition to linked to god or the devil.  The dictionary will confirm this:

https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › evil

1 : something that brings sorrow, trouble, or destruction

There is nothing illogical about the atheist who characterizes the recent Texas school shooting as "evil" because it brought "sorrow, trouble or destruction".  

as well as no final standard of justice.

According to Genesis 6:6, God sometimes berates himself for his prior bad decisions, so your bible doesn't even justify the assumption that god's decisions about matters are "final".  The originally intended pre-scientific illiterate goat-herder audience would never have understood this to be an "anthropomorphism".  Modern Christians only do that out of a prior commitment to bible unity or inerrancy.  God being stupid would probably not harmonize with other bible statements about god's great wisdom.  But the more objective hermeneutic is the concern about how the originally intended audiences would likely have understood the passage.

In a world that God does not exist, then morality does not exist.

That is false, you have not even gotten near making even a prima facie case that "god" is necessary to explain "morality".  I suspect that is the case because of how stupid the proposition is.  Morality is simply the word we use to characterize situations where we opine that somebody "should" or "shouldn't" do something.  Does Chilton seriously believe that if the atheist puts a bandage on his child's scratched knee, the atheist cannot justify this level of concern and is merely borrowing Christian capital? 

If you have no God, then you also have no ultimate justice.

So?  The only "justice' that is the least bit demonstrable is the human legal system.   

Life then becomes nothing more than pitiless indifference.

First, so?  I find most people to be pitilessly indifferent toward most evil that takes place outside their daily lives.  Even you.  Could you be doing more charity than you currently do?  What's unreasonable about saying that the reason you don't do as much good as you could with your resources and time, is because there are limits to how caring you are about other people?  

Second, you are now fallaciously appealing to just those readers who feel sorry for all people who have ever suffered, which means you are fallaciously pretending that it is only the people who feel such sorrow, who "count" in this argument.  You are wrong.  Throughout human history, plenty of human beings have been pitilessly indifferent toward other human beings.  Are YOU doing all the charity that you could possibly do?  If no, why shouldn't we chalk this up to your own pitiless indifference?

Third, naturalism provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for altruism without god.  As mammals, we naturally care about those closest to us.  As a civilized society, we naturally feel sorry for people further away who are criminally deprived of life, liberty or property.  For a start, see Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (AuthorHouse, 2005) by Richard Carrier.

Fourth, you are only hurting your own case by trying to prove that some type of belief results in pitiless indifference.  Your own god allegedly commanded his people to have no compassion on others (Deuteronomy 19:21), God has no pity on orphans despite it not being their fault that their parents were heretics (Isaiah 9:17); God has no pity on children suffering the ravages of war (Ezekiel  5:11 ff, 8:18, 9:5-6), and he tortured a baby for seven days with a horrible disease despite the obvious fact that such infant was not guilty of the sins in question (2nd Samuel 12:15-18).

Option B: Universalism—Benevolent God, No Justice

Universalists hold that everyone, no matter their theological moorings or ethical behavior, will go to heaven in the end. Admittedly, while this is one heresy that I wish were true

But if morality comes from God, then maybe the reason you wish universalism to be true is beacuse the Holy Spirit is telling your heart that the parts of the bible about an angry god injuring people are just fictions?

, the aspect of justice is highly questionable in this worldview. True, it could be that the ethically immoral go through a time of purgatory before going to heaven. However, what if the person does not desire to go to heaven? Sounds strange, but it is not beyond the scope of possibility.

In Luke 23:34, Jesus actually forgives some humans who neither express nor imply any remorse or intention to repent.

Consider the lyrics of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.

Do you want your readers to investigate your sources?  Does a true Christian encourage others to consider anything Satan has to say? 

The authors of the song appear to want nothing to do with heaven.

Because even humans on this earth eventually found Jesus too disinteresting to keep communicating with (John 6:66).  No reason to think it will be any different in heaven...where God often authorizes evil spirits to make people tell lies (1st Kings 22:19-23). 

Furthermore, is there a reckoning for evil acts in universalism?

No, because universalism preaches an absolutely unconditional divine forgiveness.  And God is quite capable of getting rid of human sin without needing it to be "reckoned".  See 2nd Samuel 12:13.  David's sin was taken away, he was spared from the mandatory Mosaic death penalty for adultery and murder, and yet nothing in the context expresses or implies David would have to endure any priestly sacerdotal rite.  God no more "needs" to punish sin than you "need" to wear blue socks. 

Though universalism is better than atheism, it does not seem to have the power necessary to deal with evil acts.

The god of univeresalism deals with a rapist by forgiving him immdiately, fully, and unconditionally.  No need to "deal with" evil acts.

Additionally, it does not emphasize the great disdain that God has for sin. Quoting Deuteronomy 32:35–36, the writer of Hebrews notes, “For we know the one who has said, ‘Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:30).

Ah, so you are NOT arguing to skeptics, but only to those who hold your fundamentalist assumptions about god and the bible.  No wonder your article was about as shallow as a Pentecostal sermon.

Option C: Fatalism—Vengeful God, No Choice

Fatalism is the belief that human beings hold no free will and, thereby, no responsibility.

It's also the belief of those Trinitarian bible believers known as 5-Point Calvinists, at least according to those who criticize Calvinism.

Fatalism may come in the form of naturalistic atheism, deism, or some forms of Christianity. However, fatalism does not answer the problem of evil.

If a man steals a car, the answer to this "evil" is the human legal system. The notion that we yearn for a higher form of justice against this thief, is just stupid. 

For the atheistic varieties of fatalism, the worldview does not resolve the problem of evil actions for the reasons mentioned in Option A.

There is nothing unreasonable in the atheist viewing the human legal system as the highest possible form of justice.

For deistic and theistic versions of fatalism, everything comes about by the pre-planned will of God with no human responsibility. This is not to be compared with divine foreknowledge of the willing acts of free agents.

On the contrary, God's infallible foreknowledge of future human choices makes those choices inevitable.  The only possible ways to refute a deductive syllogism are a) refute the first premise, b) refute the second premise, c) show that the conclusion didn't logically follow, or d) show that the syllogism is entirely hypothetical and inapplicable to the real world.  Keeping those in mind, a deductive syllogism proves that infallible divine foreknowledge leaves no logically possible room for freewill:

Premise 1:  Anything God infallibly foreknows will happen, is incapable of failing.

Premise 2:  God infallibly foreknow that Salvador Ramos would choose to kill children.

Conclusion:  Therefore Salvador Ramos' choice to kill children was incapable of failing.

You cannot refute Premise 1, it is simply assuming God's foreknowledge is infallible, which is a major Christian doctrine.  And "incapable of failing" is merely the dictionary definition of "infallible"

You cannot refute Premise 2, since as a doctrinally conservative Christian, you think that premise is true.

You cannot show the conclusion didn't logically follow, as it is constructed of information in both premises and doesn't add to or subtract from that information.

Hence, those Christians who subscribe to God's infallible divine foreknowledge, but who still insist we are "free" to "do otherwise", are illogical, and likely because their bible is that illogical. 

Rather, this view holds that God pre-planned everything to come about as it has. The problem with this mentality is self-evident. God is presumed to be the source of evil in this worldview as human beings do not have the capacity to choose other than their pre-designed nature and choices are dictated. Therefore, the ethical and moral standard of God becomes suspect. Of the three positions given thus far, this position holds a slightly higher rank than atheism but less than universalism.

I don't see your point, you own bible makes god the author of evil.  Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Don't miss v. 63, which says God will take just as much "delight" to inflict rape, parental cannibalism and other atrocities, as he takes in granting prosperity.

Option D: Christianity—Benevolent, Just God Overseeing a World of Free Agents
Thankfully, a fourth option exists. The classic Christian worldview holds the best answer to the problem of evil. The position is as follows: A benevolent, just God created and oversees a world of human free agents and will hold each person accountable for their deeds in the afterlife. For this position to be true, let’s examine four truths the Scripture teaches.

Thanks again for clarifying that you are NOT trying to convince anybody except church folk.

Truth #1: God is loving and just.
While space does not permit us to afford a full examination of God’s goodness and just nature, let us consider a few passages as a case study.

It doesn't make any sense to say God is loving and just.  In the real world, the only reason we say somebody is good is because we find they have conformed to a standard of morality outside of themselves.  We never say somebody is good merely because they themselves declare themselves to be good.  But in the case of "God", there is no standard outside of god to which god is subject.  Therefore, when you talk about god being 'good', you need to make clear that you don't determine this in the same way you determine whether a human being is good.  But if you provide that much clarity, than you will have a very suspect doctrine:  god's goodness derives from nothing but his own statements about his own nature.  LOL.

First, God’s benevolence is shown in his great love for humanity.

Yeah, like when he directly  tortured an infant for 7 days (2nd Samuel 12:15-18).

Like when God specifies that King Saul must masscre "infants and children" (1st Samuel 15:2-3), the reason being nothing more than their descendants warring against Saul's descendants back during the Exodus about 400 years prior. In other words, kill your neighbor if his great-great-great-great grandfather had murdered your great-great-great-great grandfather. 

The apostle John states, “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10).

The atonement of Jesus is an absurd doctrine that no amount of repeating 1st Cor. 1:18 is going to fix.  If the entire person of Christ became sin (2nd Cor. 5:21), and the whole person of Christ necessarily includes his divine nature, then necessarily his divine nature also became sin.  Be sure to run extra fast to "god's mysterious ways".  It's your get-out-of-jail-free card.

Furthermore, Paul writes, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly … But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6, 8).

I just want you to know that when you quote the bible, the Holy Spirit testifies to my spirit that I need Jesus.  

Second, God is also holy and just. Job reflected on the holy nature of God as he said, “Indeed, it is true that God does not act wickedly and the Almighty does not pervert justice” (Job 34:12).

If God was holy and just when he created mankind, why did he later regret that particular decision (Genesis 6:6)?  

Because of God’s holy nature, he expects his people to act holy, as well.

That makes no sense:  Did God infallibly foreknow that Hitler would massacre the Jews?  if so, how could it be sensible to say God "expected" Hitler to refrain?  Does God "expect" us to surprise him by acting in a way contrary to his infallible foreknowledge?  

Do you infallibly foreknow that a 2 year old child cannot jump over the moon?  If so, could you still somehow seriously "expect" her to engage in that act anyway?  Of course not.

In Leviticus, God said, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Jesus furthers this thought, saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

I deny that the bible teaches theology consistently.  And you will never show that anything Jesus told anybody in the 1st century "applies to" modern day people.  That would require to venture outside the bible itself and comment about how the bible survived the ravages of history, but that evidence is not inspired by God.  So any argument that tries to apply biblical anything to modern day people, is necessarily far less authoritative than you think bible-based arguments are.

Truth #2: Human agents are free.
This topic can easily dive into some deep wells of philosophical and theological thought.

Translation:  equally authentically born-again Trinitarian Christians disagree on how to interpret biblical statements about the freewill of mankind.  And yet they want skeptics to believe God is tellilng them all the same theology, and they don't know why some of them are hearing god incorrectly.  LOL. 

Suffice to say, for now, the Bible suggests that human beings hold some degree of free agency. That is, human beings choose to act to at least some degree. God’s call on people to repent is sufficient to show the ability of people to freely act to at least some degree. Jesus called on people to repent, saying, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well” (Lk. 13:3). Peter picked up this theme and said, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

A 5-Point Calvinist will call that "heresy".  And yet you think a spiritually dead skeptic should figure out which of you got the bible "right". LOL

Truth #3: God desires to save humanity.
God desires to save humanity from their sin and themselves.

Not everybody.  Romans 9:18-23.  And Calvinists assure me that the first agent to do the heart-hardening is god.  We reject the gospel because God wanted us to reject the gospel.  And yet you think a spiritually dead skeptic should figure out which of you got the bible "right". LOL 

Jesus lamented Jerusalem’s refusal to repent in Matthew 23:37.

Because the bible is inconsistent in its portrayal of how god is.

God expressed his desire to save people rather than to bring judgment in Ezekiel 18.

He also expressed "delight" to cause rape and parental cannibalism in Deuteronomy 28:63. 

The chapter ends with God lamenting, “For I take no pleasure in anyone’s death … so repent and live” (Ezek. 18:32). It is when a person and society turn from God that evil increases.

It's also when God sends an evil spirit from heaven that evil increases:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.

 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.

 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'

 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'

 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Throughout the book of Judges, one finds an example of what happens as a nation further slips into depravity as they continue to reject the loving will of God.

Which is curious since you assume they had much better evidence for their god's existence than we have today.  They were descendants of the Exodus generation....and you think ancient Hebrew oral tradition "reliably" reported true history, right?

Truth #4: God holds each person accountable for their actions.

No, God can free somebody from responsibility for sin by simply waiving his magic wand.  God's law reqired David to be killed for adultery and murder, but God was capable of exempting David from this mandatory death penalty in 2nd Samuel 12:13.

Lastly, the Scripture teaches that God holds each person accountable for their actions. This is not only true for unbelievers, but it is also true for believers. Paul speaks on the Judgment Seat of Christ in 1 Corinthians 9:4–27; 2 Corinthians 5:10–11; and Romans 14:10. The writer of Hebrews adds, “And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment—so also Christ, having been offered only once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Heb. 9:27–28). Thus, each person will have to give an account for their deeds.

Have fun trying to "prove" that any of that crap "applies to" any modern-day person.  That would require you to venture outside the bible itself, and make use of evidence that is not divinely inspired.  

Conclusion
Christianity holds the best answer for why a loving God allows evil deeds to occur.

Maybe that explains why so many Christians apostatize? 

Could he stop every evil act? Well, he could and sometimes has. But if God were to intervene in every act of evil, he would remove the free agency of humanity.

Then you necessarily admit that when cops chase down and capture a suspect, they are removing the free agency of the suspect.  Is it god's desire that today's police force criminal against their wills into jail?  If so, then your god does not respect human freewill as much as you pretend.

Remember that God allowed himself to become victimized by the depraved nature of humanity.

LOL. 

He allowed himself to be crucified on a cross at the hands of evil men to provide the ultimate good—a way for humanity to be reconciled to himself. This opened a pathway into an eternity with him.

He was stupid, since he could easily forgive those who do not seek it (Luke 23:34), he can exempt anybody from the otherwise mandatory penalty of the law without needing to "sacrifice" anything (2nd Samuel 12:13, if you claim god's torture and killing of David's baby was the sacrifice, then you believe YHWH is just as bad as the Canaanites, whom you credit with "child sacrifice").  God could force himself upon anti-Christian bigots and provide forceful evidence guaranteed to produce a change of mind (Acts 9, 22, 26, Paul's conversion).

Granted, the solution that Christianity offers does not always bring immediate gratification. We often want justice now for atrocious acts committed. If you find yourself in that situation, then rest assured that you are in good company. The prophet Habakkuk contemplated the same. Yet God answered the prophet much as he does us.

No, you think Habakkuk was "inspired by God" to write inerrantly.  You deny that any person today has that level of access to the divine intent. 

Justice is coming. God will weigh the actions of each person and will judge accordingly. But know this, only a covenant relationship with God through Christ will grant you access into his kingdom. Make sure that your heart is right with him. To allow anyone into heaven, God must extend grace rather than judgment. Personally, I am thankful for God’s loving grace. Nonetheless, evil will not win in the end. Instead, the love of God wins for eternity.

Then apparently you never read the last chapter of Revelation.  Evil is going to continue even after this alleged "day of "judgment":

 15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. (Rev. 22:15 NAU)

 

Here is my initial reply to that article:

I don’t understand why you think subjective morality is somehow defective or insufficient to explain morality. Your god is the most complex imaginable thing, assuring you that under Occam’s Razor he stays as the most unlikely candidate, since all non-god explanations are necessarily less complex than “god”.

I have blasted to bits many times in the past Frank Turek’s argument to god from morality, an argument you now imitate here when you pretend that atheism logically leads to pitiless indifference.

I don’t understand why you think getting pitiless indifference out of “atheism” is supposed to be some sort of rebuttal to atheism. Are you not aware of just exactly how pitilessly indifferent most educated adults are toward the plight of the less fortunate? One minute after the radio host speaks in hushed tone about the recent Texas school massacre, she is speaking all excitedly in congratulating some caller for solving a puzzle-game.

Furthermore, most people are hardwired by evolution against pitiless indifference, we are mammals, we by nature do have some care and concern for others like us, even if we are indifferent to unfairness we see happening elsewhere.

I sure wish you’d allow substantive reply, because allowing only minimal reply gives the reader the false impression that nobody is able to “refute” you comprehensively. I request a formal written debate with you at any location of your choosing.

Here is Chilton's response to my reply...which was a problem because with such response Chilton disabled the 'reply' function to make sure that his comments could not be rebutted in the place that rebuttal would be most effective (his own website):  I reply to those comments respectively:

Author
Brian Chilton
23 minutes ago

Reply to barry
Barry, evolution cannot account for anything unless it is guided by intelligence.

And then he disables the reply-function, as if his opinion were the end of the matter! 

If you logically follow the atheist line of thought, then it only stands to reason that nothing matters in a world where God does not exist.

No, purely naturalistic processes sufficiently account for altruism and the lack of nihilism among most atheists. 

No justice will be ultimately found.

And if people were not so mired in fallacious theology, they would not desire for a justice that transcends space and time...whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. 

You may say, “That’s where we need to step in and provide justice.” Well and good. However, there are many crimes that go unpunished.

So?  Our hatred of the notion of guilty criminals not being caught doesn't imply there is a level of justice beyond the human level. 

Additionally, many innocent parties have been imprisoned for crimes they never committed. What of all the supremacists who unjustly lynched young black men in the streets in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Where is justice found for those poor souls?

They were denied justice.  How does that begin to express or imply they will endure some higher-than-human justice?  You are clearing employing the fallacy of appeal to emotion. 

Atheism offers nothing to account for morality and justice.

And fingernails offer nothing to account for stale taco shells.

Atheism is merely denial of, or lack of belief in, a god.  "Atheism" is not a word connoting any specific philosophy beyond the non-existence of gods.   Your not understanding how atheists could possibly care about anything is not a testament to the problems of atheism, but a testament to your own ignorance of how sufficiently naturalistic realities account for mammalian altruism.

It offers no sense of justice for shooters who cowardly take their own lives or who were executed in an exchange of fire with the authorities.

Neither does any philosophy that says God caused the shooter to commit the murders, like Deuteronomy 32:39. 

If evolution is your go-to response, then how can we trust anything we think as we are nothing more than molecules set in motion by chemical responses?

Well first, Christianity doesn't have a solution to that problem, because Christians disagree on how to interpret the bible, so that not even a very confident belief that "god is guiding me" constitutes the least bit of dependable justification to believe you have the "truth".  Too many fundamentalists have become liberals or atheists later in life, to pretend that the way you currently feel in your fundamentalist dogmatism is "truth".  How often do Christians find out that doctrines they held for decades, were false?

Second, you are fallaciously assuming without evidence that  "molecules set in motion by chemical responses" are insufficient to enable us to detect truth.  You would agree that bacteria and bugs lack soul and spirit, and are therefore purely physical creatures, and yet their purely chemical brains somehow enable them to detect truth sufficiently to prevent them from going extinct.  They can tell, even if only imperfectly, that danger is near.

Atheism has nothing to offer, except for deluding ourselves to think that we are our own gods and will never give an account to anyone but ourselves.

You are just preaching to the choir, this is not "argument". 

That, my friend, is what makes atheism so dangerous–not so much dangerous for society, but dangerous to those who delude themselves with such a notion.

You have not shown any "danger".  You have simply brandished your ignorance of the sufficiency of the naturalistic explanations.

Pertaining to the Occam’s Razor argument, I would argue the opposite. It is far simpler to envision a universe stemming from an uncaused Cause (being God) than a series of physical events occurring in the past.

But that doesn't explain anything, because "uncaused cause" and "God" are plagued by ceaseless hosts of philosophical defects.  In short, in the adult world, you cannot explain how the book got on the table by positing the existence of fairies. 

For a good scientific argument for the case for God, see Stephen C. Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis.

I'm not seeing the relevance of atheism being false:  you have not, and never will, make a convincing case that there is any "danger" in atheism, nor will you make the case that anything in the bible "applies to" modern day people.  

I would happily debate you if you were willing to listen to the points that were being made. But as it stands right now, you have not shown that you are willing to listen to the other side. As such, an exercise of this nature would be futile, as both of us would simply be talking over the other.

You are obviously stupid and bigoted: this post shows that I have a habit of responding point by point.

Second, the only reason you think I wasn't willing to listen to the other side, is because of your dogshit posting rule that disallows criticial replies unless they are limited to just a few lines.

Your excuse for declining my debate challenge was transparently dishonest, and the real reason you won't debate me is because I've hit you in the past with arguments you haven't dealt with and cannot deal with in any sustained fashion. You are afraid that when your critic is allowed more than a few lines to criticize you, you won't be able to keep up.  Yes, most Christians in apologetics are infested by the sin of pride.  They wouldn't truthfully admit their ignorance and fright of debating if their lives depended on it.  You are no exception. 

my reply to BellatorChristi.com on bible "hell"

This is my reply to an article by Dr. Daniel Merritt, Ph.D., Th.D,  at BellatorChristi entitled

Understanding Why There is a Hell

May 9, 2022

When is the last time you heard a sermon on hell? 

It's been about 25 years. 

Hell is a doctrine that in the majority of Christendom is dismissed today as being an archaic belief that is ripped right out of the pages of mythology.

If it is the "majority of Christendom" that dismisses "hell", then you have a choice: The majority of Christians who dismiss hell are spiritually alive or dead.  If they are spiritually alive, then you are a fool to expect spiritually dead skeptics to have a more accurate understanding of a biblical doctrine than a spiritually alive Christian has.  In that case, spiritual death gives the skeptic all the reasonableness they need to reject the doctrine.  If you don't expect a blind person to see what is in front of them, why would you expect a spiritually dead person to discern biblical "truth"?

If most Christians who reject hell are spiritually dead, then they would obviously disagree with you. If two Christians within the Trinitarian group question each other's salvation, you are a fool to expect a spiritually dead skeptic to figure out who is right and to thus to avoid the Christian who is "wrong" about hell.

But either way, your comment is problematically generalized.  The vast majority of Christians do not dismiss "hell", they dismiss the eternal conscious torment-interpretation of biblical "hell".

So you have set up a false dilemma:  the issue is not whether Christians should believe a biblical doctrine of hell, but whether they can be reasonable to interpret biblical hell as annihilation.  As you are well aware, annihilationism is convincing more and more Christians within the Trinitarian group, it isn't just the 7th day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses.  Clark Pinnock was a signatory to the ICBI statement on bible inerrancy (see here), yet he held:

How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards, and by the Gospel itself"
“The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent”, Criswell Theological Review, Spring, 1990: p. 246-247

Merritt continues: 

To speak of hell today is considered to be an unnecessary figment of over religious minds that seek to scare someone into submitting to an ogre-like God who takes delight in throwing someone who “steps out of line” into an eternal lake of fire.

Deuteronomy 28:63 sums up a list of horrors that only a lunatic would inflict on children, then sums up the list saying that just as god would "delight" to give abundance to those who obey, he will also "delight" the same way to inflict those horrors on children.

 54 "The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain,
 55 so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns.
 56 "The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not enture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement, shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter,
 57 and toward her afterbirth which issues from between her legs and toward her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in your towns. (Deut. 28:54-57 NAU)

 63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:63 NAU)

Merritt continues: 

After all, it is said, a loving God would never banish anyone to suffer the fate of eternal flames.

Sort of like "a loving father would never rape his adult daughter".

Interestingly, Jesus spoke more on hell than He did heaven.

That is a lie.

http://www.rightreason.org/2010/did-jesus-preach-hell-more-than-heaven/

That being true, teaching about hell must not be dismissed as being antiquated, but is of the utmost importance to understand why there is a hell…and even more so how to avoid such a place.

Naw, Jesus was just another dime-store fanatic.  I've written thousands of pages refuting the resurrection arguments of Habermas, Licona and other apologists.

While discussing hell is a topic one would like to avoid and dismiss, if it is a real place to neglect attention to its existence is at one’s own peril.

Sure, if you can "show" that Jesus' warnings about hell apply to modern-day people.  Good luck attempting mission impossible. 

The bottom line is this, when one understands the holiness of God one understands why there is a hell.

It is beyond dispute that ancient semitic people exaggerated matters in their daily conversations and especially their religious writings.  You would probably resort to that excuse to get rid of the horrors in Deuteronomy 28, supra, thus motivating skeptics to wonder whether Jesus' warnings about hell were also just another case of Semitic exaggeration.

Indeed, you probably don't have the first clue as to how to tell when ancient Semitic theology is employing exaggeration and when it isn't.

And whatever teaching-resource you recommend, how can I stay safe from the threat of hell while I go about procuring and studying that hermeneutical aid? 

What would be the point of such study if I'm supposed to believe/obey first, and only study second?  Doesn't rationality require that I first learn about the issues and form an hypothesis before I just dive in?   But then again, does the urgency of needing to avoid hell make it 'dangerous' for me to delay the day of my salvation?

I mean, if I died in a car accident on the way to the library to check out "1001 Ways to distinguish Semitic reality from Semitic exaggeration", would I be saved because I was searching?  Would I go to hell because I wasn't a Christian at the time I died?  Or would you pull the same desperate excuse Lydia McGrew did, and speculate that there a second chance in the afterlife for those who die while in the effort to check out Christian claims?

And how long does God want me to study Calvinism, before he will expect me to draw conclusions about whether my choices in life contribute anything to my life, or if they are rendered nothing more than reactions to the allegedly infallible divine will?  If you don't know how long God wants me to study Calvinism, don't you forfeit the right to balk if I answer that question for myself in a way you don't like?

And when one understands the holiness of God and sees their own sinfulness in the light of His pure and perfect holiness, one understands that hell is what we all actually deserve.

Your god is not that holy.  The bible attests that he is often corrected by smarter humans.  See Exodus 32:9-14.  The efforts of classical theists to distinguish this from the analogous case of a friend changing their mind after receiving better advice from another human being, are laughable and are guided more by concerns about inerrancy and less by concerns to interpret the story correctly.  But bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, so I can be reasonable to remain open to the possibility that the bible makes contradictory statements about god. 

When one grasps the majestic, perfect holiness of God, like Isaiah (Is. 6), one will realize they are sinfully-unworthy to EVER encounter the presence of One so holy-other.

Didn't the sinful Balaam encounter God in Numbers 22:33, you know, that bible verse that equates God with Satan?

Come, let us reason together.

Then God is a fucking idiot because he in Romans 3:9-18 condemns man's ability to reason correctly. 

Understanding Why There is a Hell and God’s Nature as Holy-Love

Are you even AWARE that many Trinitarian Evangelical Christian scholars have abandoned the eternal conscious torment version of hell for annihilationism?  And yet you talk as if you can wave aside all that Trinitarian scholarship because of god's holiness...as if you think many such scholars, despite having legitimate claims to being both authentically born again and walking in the light of Christ for decades, somehow "missed" that the holiness of god somehow demands that he torture unrepentant sinners forever.  LOL.

The Bible is clear that God is holy and that God is love

The Apocrypha is also clear that the Maccabees were zealous Jews.  Did you have a point? 

…He is holy-love.

He is also stupid, by his own admission.  See Genesis 6:6.  The immediate context indicates the statement about God's dissatisfaction with his prior decision to create man is no less literal than the prior story of the sons of God taking the daughters of men.  It is how the originally intended audience would have interpreted the account, which matters most in interpretation, and such audience, being pre-scientific and mostly illiterate, would not have had the theological sophistication to pretend that they would have trifled that such language is "anthropomorphism".

While Christendom puts great emphasis on God’s love, His love cannot be properly appreciated if one doesn’t understand His holiness.

That is stupid:  you can see the love of a man in assisting a victim of a traffic accident when he calls 911, even if you don't know anything more about him.  Assuming he called 911 out of a general love for humanity is going to be reasonable until specific evidence is given indicating he called 911 for other more selfish reasons. 

Holiness denotes the absolute majesty and splendor of God, that He is distinctly transcendent from any other being or thing He has created. He is holy-other. Holiness describes the essence of God. He is holy; divine holiness of character being who He is in all of His perfect ethical and moral authenticity and truthfulness. Holiness is His self-affirming purity; He cannot be other than holy.

Was Jesus still holy at the time he "became sin" (2nd Cor. 5:21)?

Or did I forget that Jesus has two natures and that it was only his human nature that became sin?

Gee, that's funny, the bible doesn't  put forth much effort to say Jesus had two natures, and the gospels most certainly don't get that specific.  Aren't you as a Christian supposed to be concerned that this sharp distinction between Jesus' human and divine natures was condemned at The Council of Chalcedon?

...One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He was parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers hath handed down to us.

If Jesus is a single person, and that person has two natures, then its going to be reasonable to conclude that when "Jesus" became sin (2nd Cor. 5:21), ALL of him became sin, not merely his "human nature". I don't personally care if the apostle Paul would trifle otherwise, just like I wouldn't care if Paul trifled that demon serpents bite the spirits of unbelievers in some after-life. Paul doesn't have the minimal credentials I require in order to justify me in trusting his judgment about horrifically debatable things that not even Trinitarian Christians can agree on.

Merritt continues:

Holiness is God’s perfect righteousness. Habakkuk says, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Hab. 1:13). Holiness is God’s infinite value and worth as the One who is absolutely unique and morally pure and perfect. God’s holiness pervades His entire being and shapes all His attributes and His actions with humanity. That God is holy means that His very being is completely devoid of even a trace of sin, unrighteousness, or moral deviation.

Semitic exaggeration. 

Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Creation Story
In the Creation Story, it was God’s desire that holiness be the atmosphere which would pervade the Garden of Eden, and man through fellowship with his Creator was to cooperatively conform to the order of His holiness. All of creation was to reflect the nature of a holy God, reflect the holiness of the Creator. God created the world where His holiness was woven into the very fabric of creation. When man willfully sinned, he defied God’s holiness.

But man in sinning conformed perfectly to the hidden will of God, or so the consistent 5 Point Calvinists say.  How long do you recommend an unbeliever research the biblical claims of Calvinists about God's sovereignty?  If you don't have biblical justification for that length of recommended time, isn't your recommendation something less than absolute?  Doesn't that mean that it will be reasonable for the unbeliever to disagree and suggest another length of time to study such a subject? 

The doctrine of Original Sin means that each of us have inherited a sinful nature from disobedient Adam.

A doctrine denied by the Orthodox church and several other denominations such as Church of Christ.  How long do you recommend an unbeliever study their arguments aginst original sin before God will expect them to start drawing conclusions about that doctrine?  

And how can the unbeliever stay safe from the threat of hell while they engage in that research?

Our inherited sinful nature means we are more than children who have gone astray, but we possess a nature that is consciously and actively rebellious against God’s holiness and our rebellion is directed against the holy God who created us and who is the true Source of all spiritual and ethical morality and reality. We are sinners by nature and by choice.

Correction, we only choose to sin because our nature is sinful.  If we didn't have a sin nature, we wouldn't sin any more than Jesus sinned. 

Sin is that which seeks to undermine God’s rightful place in our lives and in mutiny disregards the very holiness of God. Sin in its very nature, is an assault on God’s holiness. When His holiness is violated, nature and man convulse with consequences which repulses holiness and invites holy justice.

But if God is everything you think he is, he knew sin was inevitable, and therefore, God no more "expected" Adam and Eve to consistently obey him than you would expect a cow to jump over the moon.  With good reason the bible warns you against peering into theology too much:  you might discover its fallacies.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Guilt of Sin
For our holy God there can be no compromise with sin.

Then what word would you use to characterize God's "allowing" polygamy in the OT?  Isn't "compromise" the best word?  If the Adam and Eve marriage model is valid, polygamy would have been sin in the OT. 

Sin must be dealt with.

No, Jesus forgave sins plenty including forgiving those who manifested neither repentance nor desire for forgiveness.  Luke 23:34.  God no more needs to "punish" sin than you need to "rob a bank".

You will, of course, trifle that Jesus' granting forgiveness during his earthly ministry was with a view toward his need to die for those sins.  That is also bullshit, even in the OT, God can get rid of sin with nothing more than a wave of his magic wand:

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. (2 Sam. 12:13 NAU)

See how easy it is for God to lift the death penalty against adultery and murder?

But then your "holy" God decides to torture David's infant son for 7 days for sins the baby obviously wasn't guilty of:

 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:14-18 NAU)

Merritt continues:

Judgement is holiness’ reaction to sin.

Unfortunately for you, forgiveness is also Holiness' reaction to sin.  Luke 23:34.  And it's spelled "judgment", not "judgement". 

Hell is where all sin that is not adequately dealt with will be banished; banished to a place of eternal alienation from God because holiness’ reaction to sin is just judgment.

Why can't god simply forgive unrepentant unbelievers the way Jesus did in Luke 23:34?

Why can't God cause a fetus to be filled with the Holy Spirit, at a time in its life when it is incapable of choosing between good and evil (Luke 1:15)?

If God knows of a non-hell non-judgment way to reduce the amount of sin in the world, and he doesn't employ that solution, doesn't that make it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that God likes to take problems and falsely insist they are bigger than they really are?  In other words, your god is a drama-queen?

Since I am guilty before a holy God, since my sinful and rebellious nature has willfully rebelled against His pure and perfect holiness, unless my sin is dealt with, then holiness will justly deal with sin in judgement.

God could have spared you all that sin-problem by simply filling you with the Holy Spirit before you were born, Luke 1:15.  So if God chose to employ a solution that didn't preempt you from sinning, then God obviously wanted you to sin.  God knew of a way to achieve his will with you without allowing sin, but he chose to forego that solution and employ a solution that involved you becoming a sinner.  The notion that God "doesn't want" you to sin, is utterly stupid, and only dictated by the requirements of your theology, not common sense.  And Exodus 32:9-14 indicates God sometimes lacks common sense.  And Genesis 6:6 indicates God sometimes regrets not mankind's becoming sinful, but regrets his own decision to create mankind in the first place. 

When one sees their sin in the light of God’s perfect and pure holiness, they realize that they are undeserving to ever come into the presence of His majestic holiness and justly deserve judgment.

Then how do you explain other equally authentically born again Trinitarians, whose salvation status you would charitably refuse to question, who say this article of yours teaches a heretical view of hell and god's justice?

Should skeptics be warned that even if they become authentically born again, there is STILL a very good chance they will end up espousing "heresy"?  Then maybe my standards are higher than god's, but I don't see the point of going through the motions to convince myself I am "born again", if this still leaves the doors wide open to the possibility that I'll get a nasty surprise on judgment day (Matthew 7:22-23, Hebrews 6:4-8). 

A holy God owes sin nothing but well-deserved judgment.

According to Luke 23:34, a holy god also believes himself obligated to forgive the type of sinners that not only engage in sin against him, but who manifest not the slightest bit of intent to repent or seek forgiveness. 

God would deny His own holy nature if His holiness did not react to sin in judgement.

Then God must have been denying his own holy nature in 2nd Samuel 12:13, supra, where he exempts David from the death penalty for both murder and adultery.  Apparently, god is capable of relaxing his standards when he really wants to.  He is also capable of punishing David's baby for sins the baby did not commit (v. 15-18), which opens the door wide to the possibility that god sees nothing wrong in torturing babies in hell.  If he doesn't see anything wrong in torturing babies in this current life, what makes you think god would regard it as "unjust" to do the same to a baby in the afterworld? 

Understanding Why There is a Hell and the Offense of Sin
Now remember, God is holy-love. Though God’s love desires to extend forgiveness, the offensiveness of sin and sin’s assault on holiness must first be satisfied and dealt with.

No, see Luke 23:34 

While holiness cannot overlook sin, it must judge it,

False, God got rid of David's sins by merely waving his magic wand.  2nd Samuel 12:13. 

His love provided the means were by His holiness was satisfied and our sins could be forgiven!!

But his love apparently knew of a way to "forgive" people of sin before Jesus was crucified.  Jesus was forgiving unrepentant sinners in Luke 23:34, and the OT is clear that under the animal sacrifice system, the blood of bulls and goats made a person "clean of their sins before the Lord". Leviticus 16:30.

God also apparently sees nothing wrong in causing sinners to be filled with the Holy Spirit before they are born.  Luke 1:15.  One wonders how much sin would be avoided, and how much excuse for divine wrath God would be deprived of, had he done for all humans what he did for John the Baptist in Luke 1:15.

Our holy God in love took upon Himself our flesh, and becoming the representative man, becoming our substitute, He lived that perfect holy life which holiness demands but to which we cannot comply, therefore deserving judgement.

Wrong again, the OT is clear that obeying all of God's commands is NOT too difficult:

10 if you obey the LORD your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.
 11 "For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach.
 12 "It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
 13 "Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?'
 14 "But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it. (Deut. 30:10-14 NAU)

Merritt continues: 

Christ, as your and my representative perfectly complied with God’s holy demands which we could never do, thus satisfying the demands of holiness.

Jesus could not possibly have "perfectly" complied, because Luke 2:52 says Jesus grew in "favor with God".  IF that is true, then his conformity to god's will in his earlier years cannot have been as perfect as his conformity to God's will in his later years.  Yes, Luke 2:52 is an affront to Jesus' alleged divine "nature", but we are reasonable to assume Luke did not possess the sophistication of Nicaea and later councils.  When he said "Jesus" grew in favor with God, we are reasonable to assume he meant everything that made up Jesus, he did not mean "only his human nature".  Since the question is whether skeptics can be reasonable to view things that way, your predictable recital to God's mysterious ways does not function to impose the least bit of intellectual obligation on the skeptic, nor does not function as "rebuttal", it merely helps you save face. 

Then on the cross, the perfect Son of God took the sin of humanity upon Himself and confessed holiness’ just judgment on sin, which judgement you and I deserved, thus demonstrating love that goes beyond our comprehension.

If "love" goes beyond our comprehension, then so does the manner in which god withholds love, in which case there is a probability that the reason we shy away from saying God sends some babies to hell arises from our inability to understand god's ways.  Torturing babies in hell certainly defies common sense, but in Christian apologetics, "common sense" is routinely tossed out the window when expediency dictates.

Christ lived a life I could not live, then paid a debt I could never pay (Romans 5:8; 2 Cor. 5:21). Now that is LOVE….

And the child molester gave the child food and water during the two months that he held her in his basement after kidnapping her.  Now that is LOVE...but obviously humans are quite capable of manifesting "love" while also manifesting desire to harm.  So it doesn't matter that God shows "love", real-world experience teaches us that the person who does a loving thing, can just as easily harbor desire to harm the entire time. 

and when you and I understand the holiness of God and the just judgment upon sin for violating God’s holiness, then one bows in awe and wonder at such love demonstrated in the Christ event that makes it possible for sinful man to escape our sins deserved fate.

No, God can simply cause people to be filled with the Holy Spirit before they are born (Luke 1:15) and can get rid of our sins by simply waving his magic wand the same way he exempted David from the death penalties for adultery and murder (2nd Samuel 12:13).  God's preferred method is apparently to avoid the solution that suppresses sin as much as possible. 

When one grasps what Christ willingly did for us in His life and death, then the word “grace” takes on a depth of meaning that results in praise forever flowing from our lips.
Conclusion
Yes, there is a hell.

This was a horrifically weak argument.  You avoided all biblical referenes to hell and simply tried to prove something with human sophistry, when Paul,  your faith hero, was telling you for 2,000 years that persuasive words are not the true Christian's priority (1st Cor. 2:4-5).

Hell is a reserved place for divine justice in the face of willful defiance to divine holiness.

But most non-Christians are not "willfully" defying God anymore than authentically born again Trinitarians who are Preterist are "willfully" defying Acts 1:11.  So was it your intention to teach that the vast majority of non-Christians don't go to hell in the afterworld? 

Holiness’ judgement is justified reactional justice on sin’s violation of God’s pure and perfect holy nature.

But human wisdom can successfully persuade god that his intent to judge humans is stupid and should be avoided.   Exodus 32:9-14. 

Yet His divine love, as seen in the Christ of the cross, is offered and available to all who see their sinfulness in the light of his divine holiness and embrace the indescribable provision that is found in Jesus Christ.

No thank you.  The true gospel was preached by Jesus before he died, and for obvious reasons did not require anybody to believe he died for their sins.  You will say the rules changed, or something was "added" somehow when Jesus died on the cross, so, how long does God want unbelievers to study the differences of bible interpretation between dispensationsalists themselves, and between dispensationalists and covenant theologians, before he will expect the unbeliever to start drawing conclusions about who is right and wrong?  If you don't know, you forfeit the right to balk if I answer that question for myself in a way you don't like.

Therefore, if I have studied the matter for several years, I cannot be faulted if my conclusions are "wrong".

What I find stupid about the doctrine of hell and God is that we are supposed to believe that there is terrible danger to unbelievers, and yet it is not god, but a mass of conflicting Christian theologians and apologists, who are the only ones doing the talking.  If the creator of hell doesn't wish to make himself sufficiently clear for even authentically born again Trinitarians, he is a fucking fool to "expect" spiritually dead skeptics to "correctly" interpret biblical "hell".

the leaked SCOTUS opinion

 I just want to go on record saying that I think most of the SCOTUS justices likely knew of and implicitly if not explicitly approved of somebody leaking the opinion this early.  SCOTUS is always worried about how "evolving society" reinterprets the Constitution, and it only make sense, from the perspective of the Justices, to want to see how the nation would react before they make their position into law.

However, they would be creating legal hell for themselves if they admitted they wanted that opinion leaked early.

Therefore, what probably happened was what happened when one gangster communicates to another an implicit request for murder.  Of course they aren't going to state the terms very clearly, and the ambiguity is always in the name of future plausible deniability.   So I plan to laugh at any such Justice who in the future tries to pretend that the leak was unwanted or unfortunate.  BULLSHIT.

But the Justices are fools if they want us to think they'd never find anything useful toward the goal of keeping the peace and avoiding civil war by leaking a draft of an opinion that carries enormous potential to divide America even more than ever.