Matthew Flanagan fails to demonstrate existence of objective moral requirements

My debate with Matthew has began focusing on his belief that objective moral requirements exist, and cannot be accounted for except by positing God as their point of origin.

Here's Matthew's post and my reply following.  I made my reply short because answering in too comprehensive fashion usually only gives somebody something more to hide behind.

"Matt,
e.
 It’s like answering “which morals am I required to live by in this house?”, by saying “the ones that it would be wrong to omit”. 

Matt replies:

No that again seems to conflate issues, when I ask what morals I am required to live by in this house, I am using the word “morals” in the sociological sense, that is a set of norms a person believes in or accepts.
 But, when I refer to moral requirements I am not referring to moral beliefs. I am talking about what morality in fact requires. Unless you think a person or community is never mistaken in what they believe we ought to do, you have to grant a distinction between what a person or groups thinks and accepts is required and what actually is required.
 The fact you spend so much time and energy arguing that the religious and moral beliefs of ancient Hebrew society or the bible are mistaken and in error, suggests you actually are committed to this distinction.

I had said:

Can you provide a specific example of a moral requirement that you think it is morally wrong to omit? 

Matt replies:

The claim its morally wrong to omit a moral requirement is analytically true, it’s a tautology.

 But here is an example, I think there is a moral requirement to not torture children purely for entertainment. I think this requirement holds even if a person or community thinks it doesn’t so that a community which endorsed and practises child torture would in be mistaken. I also think it’s a categorical requirement so that even if torturing a child for fun met some goal or desire you had, perhaps the sadistic desire to have fun seeing children scream in pain, then the requirement still holds. I think anyone who deliberately does this without some form of mitigation is guilty of not following these requirements worthy of blame and censure, a

 Your free to disagree of course, you can maintain that a community that believes in and practises torturing children for fun doesn’t do anything wrong at all or that such requirements are really hypothetical and don’t apply to people who have sadistic desires, or your free to think people who deliberately and knowingly torture children are worthy of praise and condemnation if you like. If you want to bite that bullet, then you can, but I think ranting about God being a moral monster and how awful it is for ancient cultures to have narratives about killing children ceases to become a terribly plausible past time if you do bite this bullet.

 But all this is irrelevant, because, in the argument, I cited from my response to Carrier, I pointed out the biblical passages you cite, even if your take on them was correct, doesn’t actually provide the slightest reason for rejecting a divine command theory. That attacks the doctrine of inerrancy which is a different and logically distinct position to divine command theories. I note you haven’t responded to it, you have again gone on a long tirade about what you think I argued in a book on a different topic.

-----------------------------------

The short reply I posted there:

Matt,
Again, I've written about 6 pages of point by point reply, but again, I will only reply with what I think is the most critical area we disagree on, since I'm well aware of the risk of the point being lost if too much material is posted.  If you are curious about how I answered every little point, it's at my blog http://turchisrong.blogspot.com

When I asked you for a specific example of what you deem a "moral requirement", you resorted to the classic example of a prohibition on torturing children solely for entertainment.
Several problems: 

Where is the moral yardstick you are using, which you apparently think is violated whenever anybody tortures a child solely for fun? 

Do you say this is immoral because the bible tells you so? 

Do you say this is immoral because the consensus of human opinion on the matter through history says it is immoral, and you think atheists cannot sufficiently account for why that pattern exhibited itself in human values?

--------------------------------
I did not post there my comprehensive point-by-point reply because I felt it was too long and might cause Flannagan to focus on something other than what I thought was the critical shortcoming he overlooked.

But for those who are curious, here is my full reply, available only here as follows: 
--------------------------

Oct 27, 2017 at 6:42 pm
Matt,
e.
“It’s like answering “which morals am I required to live by in this house?”, by saying “the ones that it would be wrong to omit”.
No that again seems to conflate issues, when I ask what morals I am required to live by in this house, I am using the word “morals” in the sociological sense, that is a set of norms a person believes in or accepts.

----------If you were dealing with a person who denied the existence of cars, you wouldn’t be answering the denier’s question (“what is a car?”), by providing a perfectly synonymous word “vehicle”.  He still denies the existence of cars, regardless of whatever different way you choose to describe such things.   So likewise, you think my denial of objective morals is as unjustified as the denial of cars.  If you aren’t beneficially clarifying “cars” by pointing out that they are also called “vehicles”, then you aren’t beneficially clarifying “moral requirements” by pointing out that these are “something that its morally wrong to omit.”  In both cases, you are simply providing a synonymous phrase as substitute.  But thanks to my requests for clarification, you finally answered in a way that infuses more information into your proposition, thus allowing for more focused critique.

“But, when I refer to moral requirements I am not referring to moral beliefs"

----------That’s most unfortunate since you cannot demonstrate that moral requirements have any existence outside of the human mind, that is, if your below-argument about prohibiting child-torture has anything to say about it.

 I am talking about what morality in fact requires.

---------Adding “in fact” to “morality” doesn’t magically broaden morality beyond the human mind that so far appears to be the sole ground of the existence of all morals humans have. 

   "Unless you think a person or community is never mistaken in what they believe we ought to do, you have to grant a distinction between what a person or groups thinks and accepts is required and what actually is required.”

----------My basis for saying Hitler’s moral opinion on treatment of the Jews in WW2 was mistaken, is completely subjective, I do not mean mistaken “in fact”, as if there was some objective moral yardstick to which Hitler’s Holocaust could be compared and found wanting.  It is neither irrational nor unreasonable to be standing solely on a subjective basis when declaring that another person’s moral opinion is mistaken.  Again, when you were a child, if your dad told you to go to bed at 9 p.m. on a school night and you protested, he would be perfectly reasonable and rational to assert “your moral opinion that the proper bedtime for you tonight is something other than 9 p.m., is mistaken”, despite the fact that there is no objective moral yardstick telling anybody what bedtime is proper for such kids.

So my belief that others’ moral opinions are ‘mistaken’, need not imply “what morality in fact” requires.

The fact you spend so much time and energy arguing that the religious and moral beliefs of ancient Hebrew society or the bible are mistaken and in error, suggests you actually are committed to this distinction.

--------------My belief that the OT ethics are mistaken and in error, arises from my entirely subjective beliefs about morals, which I wasn’t born with, but were instilled in my by environmental conditioning.  You appear to under the mistaken notion that if morality is ultimately subjective, we cannot be reasonable or rational to say one moral is “better” or “worse” than another.  Not true.  See above.  Believing yourself to be in possession of an objective moral yardstick helps your moral criticisms sound like they have stronger footing that a completely subjective critique, but alas, whether any such objective moral yardstick actually exists, must be decided first, a thing you should have established, but for whatever reason, chose not to do so far. 

“Can you provide a specific example of a moral requirement that you think it is morally wrong to omit?”  The claim its morally wrong to omit a moral requirement is analytically true, it’s a tautology.

------------Only if we assume that “moral requirement” can be an objective thing that exists outside the human mind.  Had you done what you needed to do (i.e., establish the existence of an objective moral yardstick outside the human mind, then pointed out that “do not torture children solely for entertainment purposes” was written therein) we wouldn’t be having this discussion, as you would have won the debate.  Assuring me that torturing children for fun is objectively immoral doesn’t establish where that moral comes from.

“But here is an example, I think there is a moral requirement to not torture children purely for entertainment. I think this requirement holds even if a person or community thinks it doesn’t so that a community which endorsed and practises child torture would in be mistaken.”

------------What objective standard do you use to determine that those who torture children for fun are mistaken?  The bible?  The consensus view of humanity throughout its history?  What exactly?

“I also think it’s a categorical requirement so that even if torturing a child for fun met some goal or desire you had, perhaps the sadistic desire to have fun seeing children scream in pain, then the requirement still holds. I think anyone who deliberately does this without some form of mitigation is guilty of not following these requirements worthy of blame and censure, a”

1.      I don’t understand what you expect to accomplish here.  You are not establishing an objective moral by simply citing what you think is an example of such and reasons why you’d’ think the gainsayers “worthy of blame and censure…”  The way you establish an objective moral is by first demonstrating the existence of an objective moral yardstick.  THEN you prove certain morals to be objective by simply showing that they appear on such yardstick.  You haven’t done that.  If your moral was “objective”, it would have to originate from some source independent of the human mind.  Your above argument makes no attempt to show that prohibiting child torture for fun is an objective thing with grounding somewhere other than the human mind. 

2.      If that moral requirement is objective (i.e., it’s existence doesn’t depend on my own existence), please tell me where to find it so I can examine it more fully. 

3.      You need to clarify what maximum age the person can be and still be a “child” according to this moral requirement you now give, otherwise we run the risk of disagreeing when I start talking about how the sexual excitement of the Hebrew male in the ANE is just “entertainment” by another word since he need not intend to get the girl pregnant, and the pain his 12-year old bride experiences on their wedding night as her hymen is torn constituted the “torture” of a girl that is still properly call a “child” even if her own culture’s relative viewpoint said she became an adult at that age.

4.      You need to clarify what level of discomfort to the child constitutes “torture”.  A 4 year old little brother screams in pain and says “ouch! quit it you meanie!” when his older brother pinches him solely because the older brother is sadistic and is entertained by inflicting short bursts of temporary pain.  This would fulfill all of your above stated criteria , but most parents would not call this rather typical type of sibling interaction “torture of children for purely entertainment reasons”.  You think such older brothers are objectively wrong, but the older brothers themselves don’t think it objectively wrong, so how do we decide which of you is correct?

5.       How essential is “scream in pain” to your definition of “torture” in the example you gave?  Some kids have greater ability than others to suppress their urge to scream when pain is inflicted, thus raising the problem of whether the older brother who sadistically causes pain to his younger sibling solely for sadistic entertainment, can escape your accusation all because the child did not in fact ‘scream in pain’.   Can your moral be violated even where the child, able to scream, successfully resists the urge to scream?

6.      I can think of real world exceptions:  Many parents have concluded that because the little brother was “asking for it” by constantly teasing and poking fun at the older brother, the older brother’s sadistic infliction of pain sufficient to induce the child to scream “ouch” (usually a pinch, nothing permanent or extreme) is morally justified, despite the fact that the brother has other ways to deal with the child, indicating his infliction of pain wasn’t necessitated but merely desired for its own sake, the very definition of sadism.

7.      A very rich man tells a single mother living in squalor and starvation that if she allows him to pinch her 6-year old diseased daughter (“child”) on the arm to the point that the daughter screams in pain (screaming in pain = your definition of torture), this man will deposit a million dollars in her checking account.  She consents, he pinches, the daughter screams, they receive a million dollars, and mom uses that money to purchase a medical cure for her daughter’s disease, and to purchase homes, food and clothes for 500 other families also living in squalor locally.   Then you come along and say “that man had no other motive in torturing your daughter, than his own sadistic entertainment, so you were objectively wrong to accept his bribe and help facilitate her torture.”  She says “the benefits resulting in relief to so much terrible suffering (reduction of the number of starving homeless children by putting them in houses with money to their families) clearly outweighed whatever immorality was involved in the rich man pinching my daughter for less than 2 seconds.”  How would you convince her that despite the relief of much suffering, the price was too high?  Would you also confront her like this if some of those families she helped were Christians who could be heard praising god for this relief as you walk on your way to confront her?

8.      If the ancient pagans were as evil as you allege (i.e., burning children alive, as evangelical apologist Frank Turek routinely alleges about the Canaanites), they likely harmed children in warfare for their entertainment even when not necessary to the battle, just like they raped some of the female prisoners of war despite this not being necessary to winning a battle.  So a biblical rebuttal to your child-torture prohibition would consist of are all those bible verses in which God admits responsibility for motivating the pagans to do things to the Hebrew kids that constitute unnecessary to winning a battle, which means torture inflicted for entertainment, such as beating them to death (it’s torture causing the child to scream in pain even if only for a few seconds before they actually die) and ripping fetuses out of pregnant women. See Isaiah 13:15-16 and Hosea 13:15-16.  As I informed you earlier, one evangelical scholar commenting on the infamous Psalm 137:9 said beating children against the rocks was typical of ANE warfare, so you cannot escape God’s enabling of pagans to torture children solely for entertainment purposes by pretending Isaiah and Hosea were engaging in hyperbole.  Their threats of woe referred to horrific realities of warfare (2^nd Kings 15:16)  that the Hebrews were well aware could be imposed on them should enemy nations decide to attack.

9.      The teaching in Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, that you are not allowed to add or take away from the Mosaic law text, strongly implies that the author thought the law was sufficiently exhaustive that any act of a human being not prohibited/condemned in the Law, could not be punished by the elders (i.e., they would have no legal justification to impose such punishment) .  That being the case, there is a law that indicates slave-owners could not be prosecuted for their beating a slave to death, if the slave takes at least 1 day to die:

20 "If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.

 21 "If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property. (Exod. 21:20-21 NAU)

Evangelical scholars such as J.I, Durham agree that this is immunizing the slave owner here in those cases where there is at least 1 day’s delay between the fatal beating and the slave’s actual death:

The broad stance of our contributors can rightly be called evangelical, and this term is to be understood in its positive, historic sense of a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation, and to the truth and power of the Christian gospel…A slave owner who strikes his slave a fatal blow with a stick or a club (שׁבט) is to be punished unless the slave survives the blow for a day or so. In that case, he is to suffer no punishment beyond his financial loss in the death of his slave.

Durham, J. I. (2002). Vol. 3: Word Biblical Commentary : Exodus. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 323). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Hebrew slave-owners also had kids as slaves (Exodus 21:4).  If we agree with apologists for the sake of argument that Numbers 31:18 is only authorizing Hebrew men to take little girls as house-slaves and not as wives, then because the girls are defined in that verse are virgin, we may assume most of them taken as slaves were between infancy and about 12 years of age.  Now suppose a Hebrew man takes one such girl of 6 years old to his house as house slave, then pinches her on the arm for no other reason than his sadistic entertainment because he likes to hear her say “ouch!” in fluent Midianite.  Her screaming in pain fulfills your above-cited criteria of “torture”, and his doing this for no reason than his sadistic desire to hear her scream, fulfills your above-cited criteria of “entertainment”, and as a 6-year old girl she fulfills your criteria of “child”.  This then would constitute violation of your allegedly objective prohibition against child-torture, but because it doesn’t violate anything in the exhaustive Mosaic law, it cannot be called evil and thus under biblical standards this act wouldn’t be evil.

(the Mosaic law clearly isn’t actually exhaustive, but that truth doesn’t help you, Deut. 4:2 and 12:32 commit you to the premise that the author of the Mosaic law INTENDED for the readers to view it as exhaustive, which is what logically arises from the prohibition on adding to it.  You don’t need to add anything to the laws when they are sufficient to govern whatever civil or criminal case that might possibly arise).

Exodus 22:22-25 forbids afflicting an orphan, but because the death-penalty is imposed where the afflicted cry out to god (v. 23), we either assume the affliction imposed was something more serious than a mere pinch on the arm, or we assume that God would kill a Hebrew slave-owner for nothing more than afflicting an orphan slave girl with a pinch on the arm.  The former seems to accord with Christian common sense the most.

I am very well aware that you didn’t bring up bible inerrancy.  I am arguing that your own commitment to biblical inerrancy logically prevents you from saying God always disapproves of the type of child-torture you describe, and thus what you describe cannot be objectively immoral, had you properly taken into consideration what is required by other presuppositions you hold to.  And yet you insist that objective morals cannot exist independently of God. 

“Your free to disagree of course, you can maintain that a community that believes in and practises torturing children for fun doesn’t do anything wrong at all or that such requirements are really hypothetical and don’t apply to people who have sadistic desires, or your free to think people who deliberately and knowingly torture children are worthy of praise and condemnation if you like. If you want to bite that bullet, then you can, but I think ranting about God being a moral monster and how awful it is for ancient cultures to have narratives about killing children ceases to become a terribly plausible past time if you do bite this bullet.”

-----------I won’t be biting that bullet, you haven’t done anything to establish that torturing children for fun IS this objectively immoral act you claim it to be.  The best you can possibly do is point out that atheists cannot adequately explain why most human beings in history have found it immoral to torture children purely for entertainment reasons, after which you could infer that such atheist-failure makes it likely that this pattern in human morality can only be accounted for by positing a god.  But you didn’t even make THAT argument.

“But all this is irrelevant, because, in the argument, I cited from my response to Carrier, I pointed out the biblical passages you cite, even if your take on them was correct, doesn’t actually provide the slightest reason for rejecting a divine command theory.”

------------I cannot give credence to the DCT theory because I am an atheist and find the concept of God to be incoherent.  If you believe the Christian version of DCT is the most powerful case to be made for DCT, then when the atheist refutes the Christian version of DCT, they have refuted what you think is the most powerful case for DCT.  The mere possibility that a non-Christian god might exist and justify DCT is about as frightful to the atheist as the mere possibility that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  Invoking mere possibilities is not the way debates are made beneficial.  So far, the incoherency of the god-concept appears reasonable, and if so, decimates ANY version of the DCT.

 That attacks the doctrine of inerrancy which is a different and logically distinct position to divine command theories.

----------But you don’t give serious credence to any non-Christian form of the DCT, so if an atheist refutes the Christian or bible-inerrancy based form of DCT, you are disqualified from the game regardless.  You cannot allow that God’s truth is ever disqualified from the game, so my advice is that you honor Christ as highly as possible and insist that the only form of the DCT arguent that will suffice is the specifically Christian version.

Like it or not, my friend, you DO rise or fall with biblical inerrancy.

I note you haven’t responded to it, you have again gone on a long tirade about what you think I argued in a book on a different topic.

-----------yeah I know:  when you blog that apples are fruit, we are “changing the subject” if we reply that apples can also be green or red.  After all, the color of apples is on a topic different than their essential nature as fruit. 

I’ve also asked you before how we might discuss online my specific problems with your beliefs, problems that you haven’t brought up in your blogs.  Are you going to answer?

Was dispossessing the Canaanites worse than killing them? Yes: a reply to Matthew Flannagan

Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan co-authored the book Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with theJustice of God. Grand Rapids:Baker Books, 2014.

Therein, they argue that a careful reading of the OT makes clear that God, nowhere in his instructions for taking over the promised land from the Canaanites, told the Israelites to kill pagan children, God only required the Hebrews to displace or "dispossess" the Canaanites from the promised land.

Apparently, Copan/Flannagan thought that the dispossession hypothesis doesn't make the bible-god look quite as bad as the "kill'em all" hypothesis they intended to refute.

I posted the following to Dr. Flannagan's blog, arguing that given the harsh historical realities of the ANE in the days of Joshua, forcing women and children to flee their homes caused them to endure far more suffering than had they simply been put to the sword as the traditional Christian interpretation holds.

Barry Jones
Oct 21, 2017 at 1:01 pm
 Matt,
 There are several fatal problems with your hagiographic exaggeration hypothesis:
 (no, I am not attempting to answer your specific arguments on this page, I am attempting to show how other arguments, not directly related to what you say here, nevertheless crush what you say here and render it moot. Bringing Wolterstorff into the fray is like bringing a tack hammer to a war.
 1 – Joshua 2:14, the Hebrews did not intend the pagans to flee, but sought to keep tight-lipped about their intended invasions, that is, to achieve the obvious military advantage of surprising the city when it would be too late for the pagans to ready the military to repel the attack. Whoever told the Jericho king that the Hebrews were spying, it probably wasn’t the spies, who apparently allowed Rahab to hide them when the king sought them out.
 2 – Keeping in mind Joshua’s desire to take advantage by surprise attack, any pagans that fled, would not have done so until they luckily happened to notice the Hebrews closing in. That is, the pagans would have no time to pack, but flee in a panic with the kids and not much more. That puts the kids out into the ANE specifically lacking in critical supplies, thus subjecting them even more quickly to dying slowly and painfully from starvation, thirst, disease.
 3 – The pagans themselves were not necessarily in agreement with each other, Joshua 10. So no, it is not “likely” that any women and children who fled their cities would find hospitality or charity in the next town. Especially since resources were scarce anyway, so other pagans, if as sinful as you think, would likely turn away non-combatants where there was no advantage to be gained from giving charity to them.
 4 – There is no evidence that the pagans knew the outer limits of the promised-land area. If pagan women and children fled from Joshua’s armies, they would likely stop somewhere inside the promised land at the first city that would extend them the least hospitality, if any. But then that means they’d have to flee again because the Hebrews were advancing through the entire territory. Now the children aren’t just subjected to starvation and thirst at the first fleeing, but multiple times, and yet we have no evidence that the Hebrews ever told these women and children of where the safe areas were. We have instead a rather ridiculously ambiguous divine promise that God will send his terror in advance of Joshua, Exodus 23:27, which means the only way you can overcome purely historical arguments based on actual ANE realities, is to appeal to the supernatural, which seems to indicate the only people who would find your apologetics persuasive are other Christians who adopt bible inerrancy.
 5 – We have an example of what it means for pagans to flee to outside the promised land, and it proves the Hebrews wished to cause slow miserable painful death to children: when God tells Saul to attack the Amalekites, (1st Samuel 15:1-3), Saul chases them as far as “Shur” (15:7, we would expect women and children to take cover at the military outposts on the eve of battle, so that if Saul set Amalekite military members to flight, he was also doing that to kids as well). Shur was a place where the Israelites went three days without finding water, and would have perished but for a divine miracle of water (Exodus 15:22). And it’s no coincidence why Shur isn’t part of the promised land, that place really sucks for everybody, apparently including groups who have direct pipeline access to the creator of the universe.
 If what apologists say about the Amalekites be true, they were horrible savage brutes, so that if some of them end up surviving next to other fringe groups near Shur (27:8), this likely wasn’t a case of the existing pagans voluntarily welcoming the desperate Amalekites with open arms of charity offerings, but something on the order of truce called likely after several battles were fought and Amalekite raids repelled, i.e., for women and children to be shooed out past the promised-land borders is to force them to take more desperate measures to keep fed and hydrated, such as raiding other settlements and otherwise stealing and other violence.
 Apologist Glenn Miller says life in the ANE outside one’s established town or province was unbearably hostile and could not be sustained except by routinely stealing and raiding of others, with threats to the dispossessed of forced slavery and prostitution being ever-present. If he is correct, the Hebrews knew it too as they chased any fleeing pagan woman and children outside the promised land. http://christianthinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
 Finally, given these historical realities of the ANE, doesn’t that provide the Canaanites with rational justification to refuse to flee? Can you blame a pagan city who says “if we flee, we have no idea how far we can go to avoid the Hebrews, there are cities that would do battle against us, and any places with food or water we might find would likely already be claimed by others”. If you lived in the middle of a desert region surrounded only by a few other cities whose attitude toward you was not known and possibly hostile, would you “flee” the only source of dependable food and water as soon as you learned of a coming invasion. Would you flee like this if you thought you stood a fair chance of successfully repelling the invasion?
 Please do not do what you did last time and accuse me of “avoiding” or “evading” just because you might find something in the bible you think overcomes this criticism. This issue is vast, and I have to balance making concise relevant points, with the need to avoid posting 15 pages that would be necessary to make sure you have nowhere to run when you reply . I could refute your hypotheses in numerous ways, but what I’ve written will suffice to give you plenty to respond to.
 I contend that you won’t be able to do what you need to do, and show in your reply that your hypothesis is more plausible than mine.
 barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

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As of October 26, Flannagan has been responding to my other replies at his blog, but he has chosen to leave my above remarks without reply.  Will update regularly.

September 13, 2021.

I haven't updated because there is nothing new to add.  Flannagan had no problems replying to other issues I raised elsewhere, such as the matter of objective transcendent morals.  But he chose to completely avoid reply to the above post.  That post is still accessible at his blog.  http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/01/god-and-the-genocide-of-the-canaanites-part-ii-ancient-near-eastern-conquest-accounts.html.

There are other problems too.  The search tool at Flannagan's blog cannot find any "barry" in any posts before 2010, even though I always included "Barry" in my posts and didn't start posting there until 2017.  http://www.mandm.org.nz/?s=barry+jones.

And yet "barry" shows up routinely in my posts at that blog in 2017.

http://www.mandm.org.nz/2017/10/richard-carrier-on-the-moral-scepticism-objection-to-divine-command-theory.html#comment-232113

Frank Turek's dishonesty concerning pagan child sacrifices

 This is my reply to a video by apologist Frank Turek entitled

Slaughter of the Canaanites 

Frank Turek Frank 

2,682 views 

Published on Oct 22, 2017  

Responding to why did God command the extermination of the Canaanites.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Edited Jan. 16, 2020

Frank at 0:55 ff first distracts the discussion by pretending the atheist has no sufficient standard of morality by which to legitimately judge the OT atrocities to be immoral. But most people think slaughtering children is immoral, so we only need to appeal to this general mindset to show that our critique of the bible-god's morality, being contrary to even normative Christian ethics, thus indicates the OT god's morality is more likely a reflection of the morality of the OT authors, as would be the case with any ancient writing from the ANE.  Does the Republican Christian hold off from criticizing the Democratic Christian all because of charges that one of them cannot sustain his ethics from the bible?  No.  So if Christians forge ahead with their convictions despite a fair chance such ethics might be completely subjective, the atheists should be allowed to do so as well.

Second, "that's just your opinion" might be true, but that hardly proves the opinion is disqualified. When your dad sent you to bed on a school night at whatever time he did, he couldn't ground that exact bedtime in any absolute moral source, and yet under Turek's logic, as a child you'd have been morally justified to dismiss this parental mandate because it was your dad's merely subjective opinion.  But most people would say you had an obligation as a child to obey your parent, even if the particularly chosen bedtime for your Christian household was not the same as required by the Christian father living down the street. Hence, obligation can be reasonable and rational despite being based on non-absolute ethics.  Hence, our disgust at infanticide can be rational and reasonable even if only premised on subjective ethics.

Third, Christians who disagree with each other on gun-control and capital punishment do not objectively and non-neutrally sit on the fence until these issues are fully resolved, showing that even the possibility that their ethical views contradict the bible, doesn't slow them down from setting forth their subjective views and demanding compliance.

Fourth, Turek at 1:35 ff responds to the "you Christians provide the standard which God fails, when you say the God of the OT is loving" critique by saying God gives reasons in the bible for his slaughtering of people in the OT. But that doesn't work either; as he is assuming God' is always correct in his ways, when in fact the anthropomorphic interpretation of Genesis 6:6-7 and Exodus 32:9-14 cannot be sustained on objective bases such as grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre, in which case we find the bible-god's imperfection to be just as literal as the other matters testified to in those contexts, and thus whatever "reasons" he gives for killing children, could just as easily be a case of him commanding now, that which he will literally regret later (Genesis 6:6).

Fifth, Turek is incorrect 2:15 ff to say the Canaanites engaged in many abominations and watched their babies sizzle to death. a) his god would have to be morally inconsistent to kill pagans who burn their children to death, since God commands this in the OT, Leviticus 21:9; b) Gwendolyn Leicke asserts that while Hittite law allowed for bestiality, “I do not know of any references to intercourse between humans and animals from Mesopotamian sources.” (“Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature” Routledge; 2003 at 210).  As far as children being “burned to death”, Plutarch (110 AD) notes that the Carthaginians used a knife to slit the throat of the children first, so that only a dead body was placed on the burning statue’s arms. De superstitione, chapter 13.  Carthaginian scholar Shelby Brown assert the literary evidence does not support the notion that the parents of such kids were calloused and hardened (“Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice”, Sheffiled Academic Press, © 1991, p. 174).

Worse, when Turek at 2:30 ff says the music players played loud with intention to drown out the screams of the  babies being “cooked to death”, this is a dishonest representation of the sources.  Plutarch in the only source that mentions this loud playing of music to drown out the crying, but makes clear it is the crying of the parents beingdrowned out so they would not reach the ears of the other people.

“…No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds ; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan ; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, 6 and her child was sacrificed nevertheless ; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people. Yet, if Typhons or Giants were ruling over us after they had expelled the gods, with what sort of sacrifices would they be pleased, or what other holy rites would they require?

Note also that Plutarch there says the child's throat was cut before being placed on the altar, obviously necessitating the conclusion taht the child was killed before being put into the flames.

It is clear that the wailing is being done by somebody other than the children whose throats were previously cut, and even if we trifled the kids were wailing because their throats were cut, that does not constitute parental wailing while kids burn to death, nor does it constitute the wailing of children as they themselves burn in the fire.

Turek's emotional remark that the children were screaming as they sizzled "to death" arises from his desire to make the Canaanites appear to modern minds to be far more vile than they really were, and constitutes dishonesty on his part.  The historical sources neither express nor imply that the children were alive as their bodies burned.  They obviously wouldn't cut the child's throat, if they wished for fire to be the efficient means of death.

Sixth, Frank says God’s ordering the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites was a case of God stopping evil, and yet those who ask why God doesn’t stop the evil in the world, are still complaining about it.  Yes, we do because your bible-god has the telepathic ability to successfully convince even pagans to do whatever he wants them to do, no bloodshed required (Ezra 1:1), so that God could have stopped the alleged Canaanite atrocities with a wave of his magic Dale Carnegie wand, but no, he prefers to solve the problem with more bloodshed than necessary.  Sort of like you solving the problem of lacking rent money by robbing a bank.  In both cases, the problem was likely capable of less violent resolution.

Seventh, Copan, Flannagan and other Christian apologists try to make God look more politically correct to modern sensibilities by saying God’s infanticide orders in the OT were cases of mere war-rhetoric and exaggeration which was common in the ANE of those days. At 4:15 ff Turek says those arguments for hyperbole are compelling, because the bible forbids intermarrying with the group that it just said in a prior verse were to be “wiped out”, so the only way to avoid the contradiction of possibly marrying dead Canaanites is to assume the text was hyperbole.  

First, doesn’t matter if it was; the “hyperbole” defense does not even imply that there was NO infanticide or killing of non-combatants, so the moral outrage will not go away even with the "hyperbole" defense.  

Second, and worse, the cities of the promised land often fought amongst themselves, so if all Joshua intended to do was “dispossess” them, that means pagans fleeing to parts unknown, outside the promised land, with the kids and not much to survive on, and likely to be turned away whatever pagans were already there, while not knowing exactly how far they must go to get free of the Hebrew attacks.  One could say merely "dispossessing" the Canaanites subjected their children to a slow death from starvation, thirst, disease, attacks by other pagans, which is worse than simply putting them to the sword immediately.  So that the "dispossession" hypothesis of Copan/Flannagan ironically makes God out to be a greater moral monster than he was in just ordering such kids to be immediately killed.

And some Christians would argue that just because it was PAGAN convention in those days to exaggerate war victories, doesn’t mean the Hebrew authors would have found such literary convention appealing.  When you say you worship a god who cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2), you are necessarily implying that when God inspires you to write in the style of straight narrative history, he is not permitting you to “exaggerate” what really happened in history.  Copan appeals to the bizarre and convoluted theories of Wolterstorff to justify trivializing the yucky parts of the bible while still somehow saying those parts were still “inspired by God”, but this is nothing but semantics run amok.  Sure is funny that nobody in the church in its 2,000 years of history ever suspected the "kill'em all" passages of being mere hyperbole.  Will you still uselessly insist that God was "still somehow" guiding the church as it taught error for 20 centuries?  Then I suppose God can inspire the Mormon uprising too, since stupid error doesn't seem to preclude God playing a part in it.

Pagans also told stories about their gods that were pure fantasy…should we presume OT authors likely did something similar?  Or does your god’s inability to lie sort of argue that he likely wouldn't wish his human subjects to imitate dishonest pagan literary convention?  And if you had to ask where the pagans got their idea that it was permissible to exaggerate what 'really' happened, how must the Christian answer?  John 8:44, the devil is the father of lies.

Eighth, Turek says God is the creator of life and thus can take it whenever he wishes (3:15 ff), but would you continue to think a man was free from mental illness, if he intentionally destroyed all of his possessions and burned his house down once per year, with no criminal intent?  No.  Well why not?  Isn't it true that this father had the "right" to destroy those things as often as he wished?.

Ninth, Turek says if Christianity is true, people don’t die, they just change location, but that’s a pretty big IF.  It is far from clear that the OT supports the notion of an afterlife, and groups like Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses make compelling arguments that the NT doesn’t even support the idea of a literal afterlife.  Once again Turek’s apologetics here appears geared away from convincing atheists of the error of their way, and more geared toward helping Christians feel good about the bible they already infuse with a great amount of trust.  If that is the case, prepare to be decimated in your own debates with atheists if you take Turek’s comments here and try to use them in actual debate.  

Tenth, Turek says the Canaanites, without extermination, would otherwise have corrupted the Israelites coming into the promised land.  While the threat of corruption is stated in the bible, this argument creates more problems than it solves:  Most of today’s atheists don’t feel the least bit of compulsion to get into New Age crap, spiritism, the paranormal or palm reading or any of the things you say are spiritually false.  As atheists, they don’t have the weapons of warfare the NT says Christians have to fight such things, such as the shield of faith...yet they do little more than just laugh at the idiots who promote such things.  So apparently, unless you are willing to say the ancient Israelites were more stupid than today's atheists, or more prone to sin than today's atheists, it is highly unlikely that the Israelites would give in to the mindless idolatry of their near pagan neighbors anymore than the big-city atheist would give in to the spiritualist operating in the store below him. So its seems false to say that the pagan threat was so severe as to justify extermination.  The fact that evolution is taught in schools to Christian kids today greatly increases the odds that your child will believe evolution is truthful science.  So...why doesn't god's perfect plan for keeping the israelites pure from sin and error, continue to be a perfect plan for the rest of his kids today?  Or did you suddenly discover that even god changes his ways through the years?

So it is not likely that the Israelites, had they experienced God in reality exactly as the bible says, should have found pagan practices directly contradicting the most basic level of Hebrew ethics, to be the last bit enticing.  This "need" to kill the pagans was nothing more than a false excuse to justify the desire of Moses and Joshua to steal land from its rightful owners.  Every fucking fool back then believed that his "god" was inspiring him to make whatever wars he wanted to make.

What makes more sense of Israel’s alleged continual fall into idolatry on nearly every page of the OT is that they had no real-life reasons to think their Yahweh was any more “true” than the Molech or Chemosh or idols worshiped by the pagans.  And apparently God’s motive for killing the Canaanites (to prevent them from corrupting the Israelites) didn’t work, since on nearly every page of the OT, the Hebrews are giving in to polytheism.  Yup, there's lots of serious problems with the biblical excuses for the divine atrocities.  God has about as much "need" to kill kids as YOU have to rob a bank.  If the person had ability and opportunity to solve the problem with less bloodshed than they did, we call them sadists and maniacs.  We do not say "their ways are mysterious, we can never know whether they were doing things the more bloody way for the sake of a greater good".  But you DO turn off your brain like that when it comes to this non-existent concept called 'god', which you continue visualizing in your brain.  Welcome to all the reasons why it is so difficult to evangelize the "cults".  They are just as convinced as you that there is just no other way...is it any mystery why the prioritize their own mental comfort above objective consideration of the obvious?  They probably learned to be that narrow-minded from YOU.  So give yourself a pat on the back for teaching the rest of the world how wonderfully you can insulate yourself from reason.

Eleventh, Turek says God allows people to make free choices (3:55 ff), but according to Ezra 1:1, God can successfully motivate even pagans to do his will, and in Ezekiel 38-39, the metaphor of “hook in your jaws” is used to describe the degree to which God causes pagans to sin, then punishes them for doing what he forced them to do.  So again, God’s respect of freewill is about as stupid as the parent “respecting” the freewill of a disobedient daughter to take a gun from the house with intent to shoot others at school.  True love will always force the loved one against their will to protect them from disasters about to be caused by their own choices, and there’s no denying that the parents who engage in “tough love” after the teen leaves home, obviously love their children just a bit less than they did when the kids were just toddlers.  You do NOT “love” the person whom you allow to destroy themselves, when you have ability and opportunity to prevent the evil without creating greater evil, and yet you just stand around watching and doing nothing.  Clearly a mother’s “love” for a toddler and a man’s “love” for his 23 year old gangster son are not the same thing.  In Psalm 5:5, God’s hatred is not toward the works, but the “workers” of iniquity (i.e.,, the people themselves).  So perhaps part of the problem between Christians and atheists is that Christians are arguing from a premise of God’s love that doesn’t even work biblically.  God's "love" for sinners is nowhere the "love" that a man has for his own kids.  A man will not allow his child to be raped if he can help it.  But god will allow somebody to rape your kids despite his ability to prevent it.  If Christians had a more biblically justified idea of divine "love", 90% of the disagreements about god could probably have been avoided.  What we should be debating is whether it is reasonable to label the divine will toward us as "love", when that "love" allows for violations that no type of genuine human "love" would ever allow.  

Twelfth, Turek then gets preachy at 5:20 ff and says we do evil every day, which contradicts Luke 1:6 and other texts that say sinners managed, without becoming perfect, to satisfy God’s commands upon them to the point of being righteous in his sight.  Apostle Paul thought he obeyed the law in "blameless" fashion back when he was a non-Christian Pharisee (and he likely said this while being mindful of the obvious legalism spouted in Psalm 18:23-24, see Philippians 3:6, he was blameless "regarding the Law").  That's pretty difficult to reconcile with Turek's "we break the law every day" crap.  Hey Turek, have you ever met anybody in your life who was "blameless as to the righteousness in the Law"?  Besides Paul?  NO.  Back to the drawing board for you.

As far as Turek’s trifle about how God’s love is manifested: God also killed the baby born to David and Bathsheba (2^nd Sam. 12:15-18), and Turek would be foolish to ask the atheist to first take sides with him in Christianity’s in-house debate about original sin, so Turek could persuasively argue that the baby, infected with original sin “deserved” to die.  If Christians had the law of God in their heart, they’d never cry about the death of a loved one, because the deceased had always “deserved” to die no less than the pedophile convicted of raping a little girl to death.  So the fact that even spiritually alive people violently disagree with god’s ways, justifies spiritually dead atheists to think they will never make sense of this religious confusion, and to thus avoid entering the fray.  If the math teachers cannot even agree on how to do algebra, exactly why should the students give two shits about the subject?

Finally, Turek argues that an atheist cannot justify atheism on the basis that the god of the OT is evil, which is technically true (i.e., atheism no more suggests any moral code than sharks suggest shaving) but the more developed atheist argument is that the evil and ways of the OT god are so close to the evil of the pagans in the ANE (except of course for the monotheism which doesn’t go back to the people as much as it goes back solely to a handful of idealistic OT authors), that it is more likely the OT authors didn’t speak about their god with any more truth than the Moabites did when speaking about Chemosh.

For all these reasons, Turek is not saying ANYTHING that makes biblically informed atheists, like me, feel the least bit threatened.  His efforts at making the Canaanites appear horrifically vile were based on his intentionally false understanding of the ancient sources.  And since Turek is a "smart guy", he doesn't have the option of pretending he got this wrong "by accident".  So atheists are reasonable to charge this error of his as intentional.  He knew there was no historical evidence saying Canaanites used fire as the means to kill their kids.  Hell, none of the bible's "pass your son through the fire to Molech" references indicate fire was to be the means of death:

 10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, (Deut. 18:10 NAU) 

 3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had driven out from before the sons of Israel. (2 Ki. 16:3 NAU) 

NAU 2 Ki. 16:3  But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had driven out from before the sons of Israel. 

NAU 2 Ki. 17:17  Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him.
NAU 2 Ki. 21:6  He made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD provoking Him to anger. 

 10 He also defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire for Molech. (2 Ki. 23:10 NAU) 

NAU 2 Chr. 33:6  He made his sons pass through the fire in the valley of Ben-hinnom; and he practiced witchcraft, used divination, practiced sorcery and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger. 

 35 "They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jer. 32:35 NAU)
NAU Ezek. 16:21  "You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire. 

NAU Ezek. 20:26  and I pronounced them unclean because of their gifts, in that they caused all their firstborn to pass through the fire so that I might make them desolate, in order that they might know that I am the LORD."' 

NAU Ezek. 20:31  "When you offer your gifts, when you cause your sons to pass through the fire, you are defiling yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live," declares the Lord GOD, "I will not be inquired of by you. 

NAU Ezek. 23:37  "For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. Thus they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them as food.

-----------------------------------

There's also biblical evidence that "pass through the fire" did not mean "use fire to kill the child":

In 2nd Kings 16, King Ahaz is said to have caused his "son" (singular) to "pass through the fire" (v. 3).  

Nothing in the rest of the chapter expresses or implies that Ahaz ever had anymore than one son.  Yet v. 20 casually claims that after Ahaz died, his "son" (singular) Hezekiah took the throne:

NAU  2 Kings 16:1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, became king.

 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as his father David had done.

 3 But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had driven out from before the sons of Israel.

 4 He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

 5 Then Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war; and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.

 6 At that time Rezin king of Aram recovered Elath for Aram, and cleared the Judeans out of Elath entirely; and the Arameans came to Elath and have lived there to this day.

 7 So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, "I am your servant and your son; come up and deliver me from the hand of the king of Aram and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are rising up against me."

 8 Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the king's house, and sent a present to the king of Assyria.

 9 So the king of Assyria listened to him; and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and captured it, and carried the people of it away into exile to Kir, and put Rezin to death.

 10 Now King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and saw the altar which was at Damascus; and King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest the pattern of the altar and its model, according to all its workmanship.

 11 So Urijah the priest built an altar; according to all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, thus Urijah the priest made it, before the coming of King Ahaz from Damascus.

 12 When the king came from Damascus, the king saw the altar; then the king approached the altar and went up to it,

 13 and burned his burnt offering and his meal offering, and poured his drink offering and sprinkled the blood of his peace offerings on the altar.

 14 The bronze altar, which was before the LORD, he brought from the front of the house, from between his altar and the house of the LORD, and he put it on the north side of his altar.

 15 Then King Ahaz commanded Urijah the priest, saying, "Upon the great altar burn the morning burnt offering and the evening meal offering and the king's burnt offering and his meal offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land and their meal offering and their drink offerings; and sprinkle on it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice. But the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by."

 16 So Urijah the priest did according to all that King Ahaz commanded.

 17 Then King Ahaz cut off the borders of the stands, and removed the laver from them; he also took down the sea from the bronze oxen which were under it and put it on a pavement of stone.

 18 The covered way for the sabbath which they had built in the house, and the outer entry of the king, he removed from the house of the LORD because of the king of Assyria.

 19 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaz which he did, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

 20 So Ahaz slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David; and his son Hezekiah reigned in his place. (2 Ki. 16:1-20 NAU)

Now before you jump out of your skin to defend a biblical inerrancy doctrine that you couldn't defend to save your life, take a breather and think for a second:

Why are you so powerfully in favor of the Canaanites using fire to kill their kids?  Is it because if the Canaanites weren't this evil, then your bible-god's "reason" for slaughtering them would accordingly be less convincing?  That is, you need to make sure they were as horrifically evil as possible so that God's ordering their slaughter will seem to have greater moral justification in the eyes of modern western individualist Christians?

Don't you think you need to first make sure the ancient sources on Canaanite child sacrifice really did state that the children were cast alive into the fire, before you so blindly assume your god is the neatest thing since sliced bread?

Or did I miss that bible verse that says the more your zeal departs from common sense, the more "spiritual" you'll be?

Matthew Flannagan's exaggeration hypothesis fails to account for Deuteronomy 28:15-63

My debate with Flannagan is hard to find over at his own blog unless you happen to have the direct link, (see also here) so just in case he decides to ban me, I've decided to make a copy of that debate over here.

Dr. Flannagan is a Christian philosopher/apologist who just loves to spend time defending propositions like:

Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II

He also co-authored the most recent book that is conservative Christanity's most comprehensive attempt to make the bible god appear more politically correct to modern ears, than as most Christian scholars in the last 20 centuries have believed, "

Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God

Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan, Baker Books (November 18, 2014)

My first challenge to Flannagan:

barry Jones
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com
Sep 23, 2017 at 10:49 am
 I have to wonder whether the reason Christian philosophers bother with such involved reasoning is because it is harder to defend Christianity if they simply stick to what’s alleged in their ultimate authority, the bible.
 Deuteronomy 28:15 is the bible’s most depressing list of atrocities and horrors God threatens to inflict on anybody who disobeys him, and these often cross the line into threats to cause rape (v. 30), and parental cannibalism (v. 53).
 The kick in the pants is that this section concludes with a description of God that justifies calling him a sadistic lunatic. He doesn’t just cause rapes and cannibalism, he “delights” to cause them no less than he “delights” to give prosperity to those who obey him:
 15 “But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
30 “You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
53 “Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
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. 28:15-63 NAU)
 All conservative commentaries agree when speaking about passages like Psalm 137:9 that the pagans did the same brutal acts to the Hebrews and others, for example:
 The barbarous practice referred to in v 9 was a feature of ancient Near Eastern warfare.
Allen, L. C. (2002). Vol. 21: Word Biblical Commentary : Psalms 101-150 (Revised). Word Biblical Commentary (Page 309). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
 So when we assume correctly that the originally intended hearers of Deuteronomy 28 believed the threatened curses were often a reality for themselves and other people, it is rather difficult to believe the predictable thesis of Copan/Flannagan that Deut. 28:63 is mere exaggeration.
 Therefore, if God really did inspire Moses to assert these things as all inerrantists believe God did, then the threats were real, and therefore, God’s “delight” to cause rape to disobedient Israelites justifies the conclusion that the god of Moses was every bit a sadistic lunatic. The only people who would resist this conclusion are liberals who simply deny whatever biblical teaching they don’t personally like, or inerrantists, who think God’s goodness is an untouchable foregone conclusion of absolute truth, when in fact their inability to sustain an anthropomorphic interpretation of Genesis 6:6 makes it clear that the bible-god sometimes regrets his own decisions, and is thus far from the perfect being Christians ceaselessly assume he is…and therefore easily amenable to bouts of unjustified anger or other examples of imperfection.

Matt replied once:

Oct 5, 2017 at 2:31 pm
 Barry Jones, note what you did there: You essentially ignored the entire post and changed the subject and then suggested the post was to avoid the subject you raised.
 Sorry, thats pretty paper thin example of evasion.

and again:

Matt
Oct 6, 2017 at 9:57 am
 So when we assume correctly that the originally intended hearers of Deuteronomy 28 believed the threatened curses were often a reality for themselves and other people, it is rather difficult to believe the predictable thesis of Copan/Flannagan that Deut. 28:63 is mere exaggeration.
 Interesting, Barry, I note however that when you argued that original hearers would take this language literally this you only mention three curse laid down in Deuteronomy 28 and didn’t look at the whole text Why is that?
Lets look: in v 21, for example, it has the picture of pestilence clinging to them till they are completely destroyed.
 But then in v22 it states they won’t die of pestilence they’ll die of consumption and fever, but they will also die of the sword and also of mildew.
 But then in v 25says they will be defeated in battle and flee in retreat, so they survive
 However, v 26 has them not fleeing in battle but there carcasses lying dead on the battlefield. So apparently the didn’t flee on mass but were all killed on the battlefield.
 But then v 27 says they will be alive, but suffering from “madness and with blindness and with the bewilderment of heart” its clear they are alive because it describes them as groping unable to see and so being subject to robbers and exploitation for the rest of their days. So they aren’t all dead from pestilence, or mildew or killed in battle or escaped by fleeing they continue to live with no eyesight.
 But then in v 31 they aren’t blind or dead because they “see their sons and daughters being deported and there animals are slaughtered before they eyes. Moreover, they are said to yearn continually for them, which suggests they remain alive living in the land after it happens to see this.
 Then v 33-36 suggests they stay alive in the land and see other people occupy it, these other people enjoy and eat the crops they have planted they aren’t blind because they see this and they aren’t dead because it talks of them being continually oppressed. Due to the fact they will have boils from head to foot. Boils are obviously awful but its not mildew or pestilence killing you is it?
 But then in v 38, apparently other people don’t eat the crops because the crops belong to them, the problem is locusts have eaten them and stripped them, it says they cultivate them, so it is their crops and vineyard but its locusts that are the problem.
 Then in v 43, they are alive in the land but in debt to foreigners.
 In v 41 it says they shall “have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity.
But as you pointed out v 55, it says their children are all dead and they will eat the last of their surviving children, so presumably, they don’t go into captivity.
But then v 59 states they will have descendants, it’s just that the 10 plaques of Egypt will fall on them. So their descendant’s aren’t eaten but live on in the land under the 10 plaques.
 Of course, v 64 has them and their descendants alive and not in the land but spread all over the world, and they have failing eyesight, they don’t appear to be blind covered in boils. Dead carcasses.
 V 68 doesn’t have them in the land or all over the world but all travelling back to Egypt where they sell themselves back into slavery to the Egyptians.
 Of course that’s not all in v 23, they are told they won’t survive, nor will they be carcasses in battle or killed by pestilence or disease, or eaten alive or exiled, rather what will kill all them is that the sky will turn to bronze and the land will be turned into iron and dust will fall from the sky and kill them all.
 So, your welcome to state that, in context, these passages are intended to be literally if you like. But some of us who have read the context, and haven’t omitted all the passages you have in your citation, suspect the rhetorical situation is obviously a little bit different to what you suggest. It seems pretty clear to me that the reader and writer don’t intend a lot of that rhetoric to be taken literally.

Here is my response

barry Jones
Oct 21, 2017 at 11:22 am Dr. Flannagan,
 I’ve reviewed the way you answer other critics, so the reason I answer you in a comprehensive fashion here is because I want the reader to know that the most predictable escape routes inerrantists scholars are known for attempting to take, do not help them. I cannot know when or whether you will ban me, so I cannot assume I’ll get another chance to justify my presuppositions after you attack them.
 First, for the record, you argue like a jailhouse lawyer, that is, you seem to think that if I didn’t mention something, I’m “ignoring” and “evading” and that if I bring up something not directly related to the post, then I’m “changing the subject”.
 I could just as easily charge you with evasion for not applying your exaggeration-hypothesis to the blessings in Deut. 28:1-14, but I’ll more courteously assume you didn’t because you felt doing so was not called for. I will not characterize things you might have done, but didn’t, in language that implies fright on your part. Can you extend me the same courtesy?
 Let’s get more specific on single individual threats from God in Deut. 28, because I think that’s precisely where your “exaggeration-hypothesis” breaks down.
 One of God’s threatened curses upon a disobedient Israel is the rape of Hebrew woman (Deut. 28:30) and the parental cannibalism of children (v. 53-57).
 Please explain HOW and TO WHAT DEGREE these particular threats were exaggeration, and how and to what extent they were serious promises of literal atrocities (because the more you characterize the threats as “exaggeration”, the closer you make them to what we call “empty” threats, and if those being threatened already know the threats are empty, the threats cannot successfully motivate them to obey). While on the other hand, the notion that the threats were promises of real atrocities really being literally inflicted for disobedience, would accomplish the most that mere language could accomplish toward coercing compliance with the Law, and compliance with the Law appears to be Moses’ motive in enunciating such curses.
 If you are a bible inerrantist, then you are forced to ensure your interpretation of this harmonizes with other truths about God expressed elsewhere in the bible, such as God taking credit as the one responsible for causing pagans to commit rape in Isaiah 13:16. See context, God is the one who will cause the pagans to do this, v. 13 and v. 17. If the mob boss who paid the punk to murder a man cannot escape guilt by pointing out that secondary causes separate him from the act (i.e., that he wasn’t the person who actually pulled the trigger), then I fail to see how any argument about God working through secondary causes would insulate God from moral culpability here. Would we have listened to Hitler had he lived and asserted at the Nuremburg trials that he cannot be guilty because he only worked through the secondary causes of his Nazi army?
 And since God can successfully motivate even pagans to do his good will (Ezra 1:1), then when you ask whether God can have morally sufficient reasons for facilitating atrocities on children, the answer is “no”, especially given that your god accepts correction from sinners, a thing that demonstrates he is far from the infinitely wise god you presuppose him to be, see Exodus 32:9-14. I would insist there is no basis in the grammar, immediate context, larger context, or genre of Exodus for you to label god’s reaction in v. 14 as “anthropomorphism”, as you must if you are to avoid the conclusion that your god accepts correction from sinners. I cannot find any inerrantist evangelical scholars who say Exodus 32:1-8 is other than literal history, nor any who say 15-19 are other than literal history, so God’s changing of his mind upon discussion with Moses (v. 14) is sitting in a context of “literal” events. And if God never intended to kill the Israelites as that story says he did (v. 10), but only pretended to merely to give Moses a lesson, then God didn’t “really” change his mind, as asserted in v. 14. What do suppose would happen to Christanity if Christians began believing that God doesn’t always mean what he says?
 As far as your own exegesis of Deut. 28, the literal interpretation which accords evil to God (i.e., causing women to be raped v. 30, causing kids to be eaten by their parents, v. 53, etc) is not limited to the interpretation which asserts that God threatens to kill everybody with one type of atrocity, then in the next threat promises to kill those same now-dead people again with another atrocity (!?).
 The literal interpretation only requires that Moses is giving an overview of the various ways God will respond to Israel’s future possible disobedience at various times. Therefore, you are incorrect that the literal interpretation is so stupid that only your “exaggeration” hypothesis, which you think absolves god of the charge of evil, can make sense of this portion of the bible.
 Other evangelical inerrantist scholars do not say that the presence of hyperbole in the chapter thus rids the threatened actions of their horrific and serious reality:

“28:53–57 Though the prediction was no doubt laced with hyperbole, the desperation of those under siege for years could not have fallen very much short of the measures taken here.”
Merrill, E. H. (2001, c1994). Vol. 4: Deuteronomy (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 367). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers. 

God had commanded two Hebrew kings to commit agricultural devastation of King Mesha’s Moabite lands, 2nd Kings 3:19, which obviously was intended to cause Moabites and thus their children, to starve slowly to death, which apparently did actually cause such desperation that Mesha sacrificed his son, otherwise heir to the Moabite throne, to his idol, 3:27 Other Evangelical inerrantist commentators assert that this type of literal attempt to starve a people, as commanded by Elish’s divinely inspired commands, is a mirror image of the horrific realities the Assyrians inflicted on their enemies: 

“Elisha receives his word from the Lord while listening to a harpist play music…Their war against Moab will be successful to the point that they will devastate the land. This victory will be due to God’s grace…”
House, P. R. (2001, c1995). Vol. 8: 1, 2 Kings (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 263). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
 “Agricultural devastation and deforestation were typical tactics of invading armies seeking to punish those they conquered and as an attempt to hasten their surrender. The Assyrian records and reliefs especially detail punitive measures that include felling trees, devastating meadowlands and destroying canal systems used for irrigation.”
Matthews, V. H., Chavalas, M. W., & Walton, J. H. (2000). The IVP Bible background commentary : Old Testament (electronic ed.) (2 Ki 3:25). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 

And 2nd Kings is one of the “historical” books of the bible :) So that will stand in your way if you try to assert that the story of 2nd Kings 3 is mostly hyperbole, or midrash, or whatever.
 So when God in Deut. 28:53-57 threatens Israel with causing such starvation that Hebrew parents will eat their own kids, it is perfectly consistent with bible inerrancy to say Israel knew such things were actual realities for themselves and others, and therefore, would more than likely have believed, while Moses was speaking the threats to them, that the threats were real despite a bit of hyperbole.
 I’d like to have a formal written debate with you on what I perceive to be the Achilles Heel of the Genocide book you co-authored with Copan. Namely, that your “dispossession” hypothesis makes God look like a greater moral monster than the traditional “kill’em all” hypothesis you were trying to refute.
 barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

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Cold Case Christianity: Why Is It So Important for Young Christians to Be Able to Defend Christianity?

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Why Is It So Important for Young Christians to Be Able to Defend Christianity? (Video) Posted: 17 Oct 2017 01:47 AM PDT

Wendy Griffith interviews J. Warner Wallace on the 700 Club and asks why it’s so important for the current generation of Christian believers to be prepared to give the reason for the hope they have in Jesus. More young people are walking away from the Church than ever before.

Gee, that couldn't have any relation to the fact that Christian apologetics arguments are unpersuasive, could it?  If Wallace is so sure his apologetics arguments are solid and convincing, why is he so deathly afraid of engaging in a real-time debate with informed atheist bible critics?  Is he aware, as an expert in marketing, that the less you subject your sales pitch to the criticisms of the other side, the more chance you have of the typical average person purchasing your product?

Gee, that couldn't possibly be it, could it?

What can we do, as older believers, to address the problem?

Maybe quit acting like God is just a higher Corporate executive who orders you to solve problems but never himself gets involved?  Maybe act in a way that shows you often step out of the way and let God do God's part?  Because from the looks of it, your claim that God does his part appears to be utterly gratuitous, the ONLY basis upon which a kid in the church grows up, makes less immature decisions, and memorizes more bible and apologetics arguments, is straight purely naturalistic learning.  What you call "spiritual growth" appears to be nothing more than the naturalistic learning and aging, with the attendant effects of such, of the person alleged to be growing spiritually.

Would you say the 50 year old atheist, who naturally doesn't wish to commit fornicatio as much as he did back in his 20's, has "grown spiritually"?  Then how can you be so sure that when young people grow up in the church, their similar pattern of growth is rooted in the invisible world?

If you think the Christian solution to the problem need involve anything more than quoting the bible and limiting your spiritual studies to just the bible, I'm afraid you'll just look like you are using Christianity to sell your absurdly unconvincing apologetics materials.  Gee, how did God sufficiently guide the church in matters of apologetics for 20 centuries when nobody could purchase your forensic faith crap?

All believers must recognize their duty and train themselves to develop a more reasonable, evidential faith, as described in the book, Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith.

That's what I thought, you dishonest greedy salesman.  Christianity just couldn't survive unless people purchased your products, amen?

Take some advice from a spiritually dead atheist whom you believe willfully rebels against the truth:

The bible is sufficient for faith and practice.  Now go google the dictionary definition of "sufficient".

Under your reasoning, saying the bible is sufficient for faith and practice is like saying water is "sufficient" nutrition for a baby.  Perhaps you should be honest, and just come right on out and bluntly admit that if people never purchase your forensic faith materials and instead rely on the bible alone as their source of Christian instruction, they won't be growing spiritually as efficiently as they might.

Why can't you just admit what logically follows from your marketing gimmicks?

Warner at video time code 0:40 ff says the resurrection of Jesus in the first century "stands up against all evidential scrutiny".  It doesn't matter if that is his sincere opinion, he would have been more aligned with "truth" and more objective to say that he disagrees with the Christian scholars who view the resurrection of Jesus differently from him (i.e., they deny the bodily nature of the resurrection, or they think it is something that cannot be proven, etc),  Clearly, Wallace is more interested in one-sided marketing here than he is in telling the view about the reality of the situation.

Wallace absolutely refuses to have any serious scholarly online or live debates with informed skeptics.  So do Benny Hinn, James Patrick Holding and many other "Christians" who do a lot of yammering and not a lot of actual interaction with skeptics themselves.

Gee, what are the odds that Wallace runs away from those atheist debate challenges because he is afraid he'll win?

I don't think so.

Wallace at time code 0:50 ff says "young people are leaving the church in record numbers".

Maybe he should consider a) that's not a problem because those who leave the Church aren't true Christians in the first place, or b) true Christians leave because i) eternal security is not true and ii) modern Christian apologetics arguments simply aren't convincing to those who give every appearance of being authentically born again, or maybe even iii) eternal security is true, and the reason so many true Christians leave the church is because the "church" of America is cursed with consumerism and materialism.

J. Warner Wallace would be a good example of a church leader who cares more about marketing his products, than much else.  In his opinion, God could not think of any way to sufficiently induce the spiritual growth of Christians for 20 centuries, then breathed a hurricane sigh of relief when Wallace started up this "God's Crime Scene" marketing gimmickry.