Lydia McGrew's violation of New Testament ethics

Jesus taught that slanders come from an evil heart:

 19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
 20 "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man."    (Matt. 15:19-20 NAU)

Apostle Paul required Christians to be patient with those who are in error:

 24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.    (2 Tim. 2:24-26 NAU)

Lydia's god would probably think her violation of these NT ethics outweighs her scholarly credentials or arguments.

In my first communication to Lydia, I used a normal respectful tone:

barry said...

Hello Lydia,

"I'm a homemaker and homeschooling mom living in the Midwest. I also write analytic philosophy articles."

----------then unless I'm uneducated in this, there's about two other people in the world that are like you. I never thought I'd actually meet a homemaking housewife who was into philosophy. I was surprised as the level of thought you put into the Copan/Flannagan thesis on biblical genocide.

"As for real-world atrocities, God permits them but does not command them."

--------How do you answer the slew of bible passages where God is often not just commanding such things, but forcing people to kill and other sins?

Ezekiel 38-39, God will bring future pagan armies against Israel, in 38:4, the metaphor "hook in your jaws" brings to the minds of the originally intended hearers the ancient farming practice of forcing an animal to go in a direction it doesn't want to go, by putting a hook in its jaws (or gaffing a fish to force it into the boat). That is, a biblical prophet has characterized God's sovereignty over the human will in what appears to be a hyperCalvinist way.

Deuteronomy 32:39, God takes responsibility for all murder.

2nd Samuel 12:15-18, the Lord "struck" the child born to David/Bathsheba, it was very sick, then later it died.

Deuteronomy 28:15-63, God will bring unspeakable horrors on his people if they disobey. Worse, in v. 63, he will "delight" as much to do this, as he "delights" to bring prosperity on those who obey him. I can buy that God can be willing to "discipline" his disobedient people and for this to be consistent with his all-goodness, but to take "delight" to cause rape (v. 30), that's a whole 'nother ball of earwax.

Isaiah 45:7...even assuming the better translation is not "evil", but "calamity", God is still claiming to be the cause of "calamity" which is presented in the verse as the opposite of peace, and the opposite of peace would be war, famine, rape, murder, i.e., the very "evil" that modern translators are trying to avoid by rendering it as "calamity".

Jeremiah 15:1-6, God will "appoint" slaying-by-sword/beasts to devour, over Israel for their disobedience (here's a curious thought...if God chose to delay manifesting himself to Israel until the 20th century, would these kinds of bible verse say God appointed GUNS over Israel, to shoot them?

Hosea 13:16, God will cause Samaria to both fall by the sword, and cause her pregnant women to be "ripped up", because Samaria hath sinned.

Can we infer that when early church fathers characterize Marcion as a fool (who said the god of the OT was really just a demon), they were wrong?

"The idea of saying that baby boys deserve to be "executed" because otherwise it is probable that they will grow up to be evil is itself pretty wicked."

-----------It also contradicts a slew of bible passages about not only God's sovereign ability to turn the hearts of the wicked, but about how Hebrews should be confident their kids will remain in the Lord if they raise them in the Lord.

Since bible inerrancy never had any respectable level of probable truth in the first place, and since nowhere does the NT express or imply that one must harbor any certain view of inerrancy, I don't see any harm in a Christian excising from the bible those passages which he or she think do not harmonize with Jesus' ultimate teaching about love. And that would include possible excision of words of Jesus where he supported infliction of horrible fates on people.

 Barry

 2/28/2017 5:20 PM 

In my second communication with Lydia, I asked about the moral contradiction within the Christian who a) thinks a literal hell is an ever-present reality for unbelievers who could die at any moment, and yet b) asks unbelievers to take some time to investigate gospel matters.

barry said...

I was just wondering:

You mention Christian disagreement about the nature of hell. 

If it is at least possible that the literal fire and smoke eternal conscious torment version of hell is the one that is real, and if it is true that the unbeliever researching the nature of hell and Jesus' resurrection could die at any moment, then...

...doesn't this counsel against McGrew and other Christians telling unbelievers to take the time to examine Christian claims? 

The way the bible puts things, you could die in a car wreck somewhere between Lydia's gospel lecture and your attempt to locate the nearest library to follower her advice to study the gospel more.

And yet the bible nowhere expresses or implies how the unbeliever is supposed to balance the obvious need to avoid picking the wrong gospel, with the obvious urgency to get saved and quash the risk of hell as soon as possible. 

Lydia, if you believe the literal fire interpretation of hell could possibly be correct, I'd like to ask you: do you ever tell unbelievers to take the time to examine Christianity? If so, doesn't the threat of hell represent such an unspeakably infinite risk, that actually getting saved ASAP is more important than taking time to investigate? We don't take time to investigate when the police tell us to move away from a bomb that might explode at any moment...do we? 

What would you think of an atheist mother with no parenting issues, who became so worried about the possibility of hell being real, that she considered her job, kids and husband as mere distractions, and so gave up custody of the kid, divorced the husband, quit her job, and just sat in a local library all day long for years, researching the conflicting claims of Christian scholars on the person and nature of Jesus, visiting local church pastors, and not being very successful given that she isn't a bible scholar?

Would you praise her for doing what makes biblical sense (Matthew 19:29)?

Or would you condemn her for violating common sense (i.e., abandoning her family due to religious fanaticism)?    11/07/2017 8:40 PM  

In her first reply, she accused me of a) being a troll and b) having better things to spend my time on:

 Lydia McGrew said...

God is a) outside of time, b) not willing that any should perish, c) all-just, and d) all-powerful. If a person who does not presently know Christ seeks Christ and seeks the truth, he will find the truth. Just exactly how this works out it isn't my business to predict. God might miraculously preserve the person's life as he seeks here on earth. God might give a truly sincere seeker who wishes to know if God is real *and is prepared to submit to him* a second chance after death. God might send someone to the person. And so forth. Of course none of this means that a person should do intrinsically wrong things such as divorcing an innocent spouse (which Jesus himself commanded against), etc., in order to spend more time investigating Christianity. Nor is this necessary. Nor is that what that verse means. Virtually any non-believer has some opportunity in his life to ponder, to think, to pray ("God, if you are real," etc.), and, in our society, to investigate. Such a person might use the time that he's spending trolling Christian bloggers and asking them silly, hyperbolic questions, for example, and use that time instead seriously to investigate the evidence for Christianity. Most people have hobbies. Finding out if Christianity is true isn't more important than loving one's spouse and children, but it is more important than golf, TV, Facebook, etc., etc.

As for urging a person to "get saved ASAP" no matter what his actual state of mind, his heart, and his questions, of course I do not do that because "getting saved" is not some magic formula but a true request, made to a person (God, through his Son Jesus Christ), for a relationship with him and for forgiveness of sins. God would know if the person were faking it. I'm not going to urge someone to say a prayer like nailing a horseshoe over his door even though he doesn't believe in it. That would be pointless superstition and have no theological value or power to save. Which is what any moderately well-informed, intelligent Christian who knows a modicum of Christian theology should say, which makes the question quite pointless.

In short, I won't indefinitely answer such things, as both my time *and yours* could be better used.

11/08/2017 9:07 AM

I made a direct reply to another post of hers:

I don't understand why Lydia thinks Rabshakeh's taunt is some type of undesigned coincidence.

Lydia frames the questions as follows:

-----

This is very strange. Sure, it's a trash-talking Assyrian envoy. He could easily be telling lies. But why would he think the people would be susceptible to the claim that Hezekiah has angered Yahweh by taking away the high places and requiring them to worship in Jerusalem?...One might easily conclude, and not only from this passage, that the high places were only places of pagan worship. The people might not have been happy about Hezekiah's breaking them up, but they would not be likely to believe that Yahweh would be upset about it--Yahweh who had commanded again and again against idolatry. Why would the envoy even try such a claim?

-----------

Yes, they WOULD likely believe that Yahweh would be upset about Hezekiah's monotheism-inspired reform:

Immediately prior to Hezekiah's reign, the Hebrews tolerated worshiping Yahweh alongside other gods, see 2nd Kings 17. If then the Hebrews were tolerant of polytheism at the start of Hezekiah's reform, they would likely have interpreted Assyria's later dominance over Hezekiah as a sign that Yahweh was angered at Hezekiah's destruction of what were believed to be places of legitimately syncretist worship.

Sennacherib likely would have known the Hebrews under Hezekiah were other than strict monotheists, therefore, he would have reason to believe they'd automatically assume that if Hezekiah were defeated by Assyrians, then surely Yahweh had given this pagan army such a victory, and only because Hezekiah must have done something to anger Yahweh. Since they viewed polygamy as consistent with Yahweh worship, they'd have felt Yahweh was also satisfied with the syncretist worship occuring on the high-places, so that his wrath would come upon anybody tearing them down...such as Hezekiah.

Further, it appears that the Hebrews also gave in to the standard ANE view that whenever disaster strikes, somebody surely must have made a god mad. Deut. 28:15-63, Isaiah 13:15-16, Hosea 13:15-16. Sennacherib surely would have detected such attitude, and therefore taunted Hezekiah as he did, thinking the average Hebrew would take Hezekiah's losing the battle as a sign that Hezekiah's reforms angered the polytheism-promoting Yahweh.

So while I don't see much reason to accuse the Kings-author of making up a fictional speech from the Assyrian king, I don't think Lydia has shown how her "undesigned coincidence" argument has rendered the fictional-speech theory any less likely than the literal historicity theory. I am an atheist and a skeptic of bible inerrancy, there's nothing here that disturbs my views in the least. I don't join ranks with immature idiot skeptics less intent on scholarship and more intent on bible-bashing mania, but it appears the latter are the only type of skeptics Lydia was refuting.

If Lydia wishes to combat careful skeptics like myself, who stick to the academic matters, she might wish to explain why conservative inerrantist commentators have been turning themselves inside out trying, unsuccessfully, for centuries, to source the "great wrath" that came against Israel (2nd Kings 3:27) in something, anything, other than the wrath of a Moabite idol.

The issue is not whether the idol was a real god. It obviously wasn't.

The issue is whether the biblical author responsible for that story was a henotheist. I say "yes".

 Posted by barry | November 7, 2017 6:21 PM

Lydia's first reply leaped allow my having brought up a related issue from 2nd Kings 3:27, with her characterizing my question about it, as if I had inexcusably understood her article to be an invitation to a rock-throwing match (!?)

Well, first of all, Yahweh was *constantly* telling the people not to worship other gods, and all of your attempts to argue that *they* would have projected *their* desires to engage in idolatry onto Yahweh are pretty thin gruel--highly unconvincing. The mere fact that they worshiped false gods doesn't mean that they thought Yahweh approved of, say, Asherah worship. Asherah worship was always seen as being in competition with the worship of Yahweh.

But more: The envoy specifically says that the high places *were Yahweh's own altars*. Your theory does not explain this at all.

If the high places were pagan places of worship, one would be more likely to think that the god to which they were dedicated (whoever that was) had sent the Assyrians rather than Yahweh, if they weren't even his altars at all.

It's from the other, widely scattered verses that we learn that the altars apparently *were* altars to Yahweh. It's just that after the building of the Temple they were deemed, at least by some, Hezekiah inter alia, to be in the wrong place and no longer pleasing to Yahweh.

As for your other verse, I'm not going to give you my own opinion (though I have one, and it is one that has been given by many-a commentator for many-a year and therefore one that you, presumably, have already considered and disdained), for this reason: Not only are you presumably already immune to all reasonable interpretations of the passage, but I do not wish to give the impression that the force of an undesigned coincidence in one part of Scripture can be somehow held hostage to one's ability to give an answer satisfactory to the skeptic to a completely unrelated alleged Bible difficulty in some completely different part of Scripture. That's just silly. Making an argument from an undesigned coincidence is not an invitation to a verbal rock-throwing match, where I toss out an argument on my side and then you bring in something from a totally different place, toss it over here, and say, "Oh, yeah? Well, what about *that*!"

Oh, by the way, I'm not an inerrantist.

Posted by Lydia | November 7, 2017 6:51 PM

In other post, I asked Lydia what she thought of the atheist explanation taht says the savage god of the OT reflects nothing more than the mindset of the barbarians who authored it:

Blogger barry said...

Mrs. McGrew,

you said "On the other hand, skeptics shouldn't be able to overwhelm the Christian with a much larger list of allegedly problem texts in which God kills people or bamboozle Christians into treating God Himself as just a Big Man In the Sky who cannot morally take life, even by His own hand, without due process."

------------What do you think of the more down-to-earth atheist explanation for the savagery of this OT god, the explanation which says the reason why the Hebrew god ordered such wholesale slaughter of other peoples, is because this god constituted nothing more than the mindset of the ancient tribal people who worshiped him?

If you confess you cannot really explain why the God of Moses/Joshua ordered infanticide, then can you really be "sure" that classifying that god as nothing more than a reflection of the ancient Hebrew mind-set, is wrong?

Church fathers say many bad things about Marcion, but could it be that not all of Marcion's criticisms of the prevailing orthodoxy, were unjustified?

Lydia's first reply misrepresented me as doing little more than misrepresenting her, and accused me again of being a troller, and further asserted that she deleted one of my replies because she mischaracterized it as a long nuisance post:

11/11/2017 3:25 PM Delete

Blogger Lydia McGrew said...

I didn't say that I can't explain why the God of Moses ordered infanticide. In fact, I'm quite open to thinking that he didn't. In short, you do not understand where I am coming from. When I say that I do not know what to do with the passages, this expresses (among other things) the possibility that the attribution of the command to God is false,not that I assume that God did give the command but merely "don't know why" he gave it.

You have misunderstood my position again and again and are trolling in ignorance, despite the fact that I have addressed you directly. Over at W4 I said, "By the way, I'm not an inerrantist," and *after* that you posted a long, nuisance comment at this blog in which you went on and on about the ICBI statement on inerrancy. Are you not able to read, or what? I didn't publish that comment because it showed that you don't read what I write or don't care or something. Fortunately, I have full moderation here and am not obligated to keep wasting my time. So bag it, because it's unlikely I'll publish any more of your comments, since you keep ignoring what I say. I'm sure you have better ways to spend your own time as well, including taking more seriously the possibility that there is a God who has a claim on you.

 11/11/2017 3:49 PM

Some would argue that Lydia's lack of patience, her "fuck you" sounding spiteful replies and her slanders of her critics, mean that she has violated basic NT ethics, something God would probably find a bigger deal than whatever her atheist critic's misunderstandings were.



from https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=7327561391327152165&page=1&token=1510448800274
"I'm astounded (okay, maybe not astounded) at the attitude by which you assume that anyone, including Matt Flannagan, is bound to "keep up with you" rather than ignoring you."
----------I never expressed or implied that Flannagan had any sort of obligation to "keep up" with me.  I merely pointed out that it is unexpected that he avoids a direct criticism of his book and clearly prioritizes his trifles with me about proving god from objective morals.

Yes, there might be an innocent explanation, yes, he has the freedom to ignore whatever he wishes, but since Flannagan wrote a book on the dispossession hypothesis, to make God appear more politically correct to modern western notions of love and fairness, you cannot blame me for drawing conclusions from his disinterest in answering my criticisms of his book's basic thesis.

"One wonders what world you are living in in which people are bound to answer your every accusation, question, comment, or stand accused of being prima facie paralyzed by the brilliance and difficulty of your objections. Good grief. This is what's wrong with the Internet."
--------Matt's fear of my criticism is a reasonable deduction from his carefully avoiding it, despite reminders, while yet he remains willing to continue trifling with me about matters the bible ascribes far less importance to, such as proving god from the alleged existence of objective morals, a type of argument not even found in the bible directly.

Lydia, when you ask what world I live in, you are implying that I am delusional.  Since that's factually false, that's slander, and Jesus said slanders come from an evil heart:

 19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.
 20 "These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man." (Matt. 15:19-20 NAU)

There is a reason why you find it constantly necessary to include implied insults in your replies to me, and you'd appear more scholarly if you stopping using them.

Is that too much to ask?

Read 2nd Timothy 2:24-26.






from https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=7327561391327152165&page=1&token=1510448800274


Blogger Lydia McGrew said...
It's not an issue of a whole lot of importance to me,
--------------Some would argue that your online critique of Copan/Flannagan indicates its a bit more important to you than you let on here.

"but I'm inclined to disagree. Dispossession would result in death only indirectly and not as the intention of the act. Some acts are intrinsically immoral. Others aren't. Killing babies is. Driving people out of an area, arguably, is not *intrinsically* immoral.  11/11/2017 4:51 PM"
----------Not sure I see the significance of your distinction.  God credits himself with all human death (Deut. 32:39) and God  presumably knew the ANE harsh conditions the Canaanite children would endure as their parents reluctantly agreed to relinquish the land.  Spots of vegetation sufficient to permit homesteading and cattle raising would likely already be snatched up by other existing tribes, especially OUTSIDE the "land flowing with milk and honey", so that Canaanites who head in that direction would likely not be welcomed with open armsby those existing tribes, and if they were, the arms would belong to savages who would subjects the Canaanite kids to inhuman slavery or other crimes.  I'm sorry, Lydia, but viewing God as evil, given the dispossession hypothesis, remains reasonable, whether you can trifle that dispossession was less evil than killing them.

You are also disagreeing with scholarly Christian apologist Glenn Miller, who says the immediate killing of the Canaanite parents and kids would have been more loving and merciful, given the harsh realities of the ANE, than allowing them to walk away after military defeat.   That is, it probably isn't my spiritually dead nature, that causes me to say dispossession would have resulted in greater misery to the children.


https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=8448328738616150409&page=0&token=1510450341743

"Moo criticizes Gundry for making assertions without arguing, for arguing circularly, for not taking seriously the possibility that Matthew was writing about events slightly differently because he was an eyewitness..."
---------one reason i don't take seriously the possibility that Matthew's author was an eyewitness (that is, not after I did my own extensive analysis of the sources, though I still answer apologetics arguments on the merits)) is because of the majority Christian scholarly opinion, confirmed true by my own investigations, that the author borrowed extensively from Mark.

Assuming as true that Mark is the earliest gospel, and that it is used extensively by Matthew's author (two theories most Christian scholars hold to)...

...then it doesn't matter if you can come up with a hypothetical scenario in which a eyewitness chose to use a non-eyewitness source to tell the world about events that the eyewitness saw and heard first-hand....eyewitnesses don't <i>normally</i> do that, so unless a Christian can show Matthew was an exception to the normal way of doing things, then the normal way (i.e., people who have first-hand knowledge do not rely as extensively on second-hand reports of same as Matthew did) will have greater plausibility (i.e., an eyewitness did not author Matthew).

Matthew's authorship is unlikely for several reasons Christians cannot easily dismiss, not the least being that

all church fathers agree he wrote in Hebrew letters,

NONE of them express or imply he ever wrote in Greek despite their interest in telling the reader which language he wrote in,

Jerome bluntly asserted that a) an unknown person was responsible for Greek edition of Matthew, and b) that person created that edition by translating Hebrew Matthew into Greek (Lives of Illustrious Men),

All church fathers are agreed Matthew intended to address "Jews", so that's another reason to believe he'd have found Aramaic or Hebrew sufficient to facilitate his intent.

and finally, most Christian scholars deny that canonical Greek Matthew reads like "translation Greek".

Those who declare anonymous authorship have far more historical support, than conservative who argue from silence that because Matthew could have, he likely did, create a second original in Greek.  The early fathers, intent to tell the reader the language Matthew wrote in, would more than likely have mentioned this Matthean Greek had they believed Matthew ever created such a thing.







https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20704380&postID=1850990138266929579&page=1&token=1510451506551
Mrs. McGrew,

Could it be reasonably argued by a Christian that because the world is so utterly awash in sexual temptations far more than ever before, that there is a duty on Christian women to be a bit more conservative in their public presentation than they ever needed to be in the past, and thus to don full burka when in public?

Seems to me that the woman who says "I cannot control another man's choice to lust after me" sounds more like her attempt to avoid the place that spiritual maturity leads, than she sounds like somebody intent on being as godly as she can be.

Indeed, if Christians are not supposed to desire to dance near the edges of acceptable/non-acceptable conduct, then it would appear that donning full burkas is the only choice consistent with women professing godliness, even IF Tertullian didn't go to that extreme in his "On the Apparel of Women"




On November 13, 2017 I also posted the following reply to Lydia, it hasn't been made available for public viewing yet:
http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/08/no-magic-bullet-copans-insufficient.html?showComment=1510521307340#c3546813680585453207

Several problems:

1 – Do you deny the salvation of all scholars who disagree with you, who profess a Christian faith?  If not, then there are obvious problems with the fact that you are just as eager to dismiss views from another part of the body of Christ, as atheists are eager to dismiss another atheist’s views on politics.  If God works in mysterious ways, then you cannot be so sure that another conservative Christian scholar’s assessment of the biblical evidence and moral situation is faulty, that is, you cannot be so sure as to justify this apparent eagerness you have to just write off anybody and everybody who happen to disagree with you. 

I don’t think you can respond that you gave Glenn Miller a fair hearing.  For while I supplied you the link to his article, you merely quip that Miller is certainly wrong “IF he implies that it's morally better to hack a baby's head off with a sword than to dispossess the baby's family of their land…”  That sounds like you didn’t even read his article, thus sounding like you were willing to draw a conclusion for reasons other than scholarly analysis.  I don’t know…maybe you are a strong charismatic, and like apostle Paul, you cannot imagine that any Christian who disagrees with you, might actually be correct to do so.

2 – The bible has proven insufficient to enable conservative Christians to agree with each other about theology and morals (I assume you won’t take the sinfully prideful position that the bible IS this clear and all conservative scholars who disagree with you are just wrong), so you are forced to accept the possibility that God might be communicating his exact views through some of those Christian scholars who disagree with you.  In other words, it makes far more sense, given your Christian presuppositions, to be a bit slower to dismiss Christian scholarly beliefs opposite to yours, than you are with your “Honestly, I'll disagree with anybody”  Attitude.  Disagreeing with <b><i>other members of the body of Christ</b></i> about what God is like, carries serious risks, according to your conservative view of NT Christianity, does it not?

3 – I don’t understand how you can say killing children by sword is intrinsically evil, unless you think your God’s acts are intrinsically evil? 

Have you never read about God causing pagans to kill Hebrew children, rape Hebrew woman and forcing them to endure abortion by sword (Isaiah 13:13-18)?

Have you never read the nearly exact parallel in Hosea 13:15-16?

Have you never read that one curse God will inflict on Hebrews who disobey him, is parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:15, 53-57)?

Have you never read that one curse God will inflict on Hebrews who disobey him, is causing pagan men to rape Hebrew women (28:15, 30)?

Have you never read that God will take just as much “delight” to cause these atrocities, as he takes in blessing those who obey him (28:63)?

Didn't you know that God thinks "hook in your jaws" is the appropriate metaphor to keep in mind when thinking about the degree to which God overrides human freewill and forces people to sin (Ezekiel 38:4, 16 - 39:6)?

4 - Do you believe that children who die before the age of accountability go directly to heaven?  If so,  how can you call their death by sword at such early age "intrinsically" evil?  Must we not do here, as we normally do when teaching kids morality, and discuss why the consequences that follow an act, dictate to what degree it is moral or immoral?  So if the murder of a young child results in the obvious good of their eternal salvation, then you aren’t being very thorough or scholarly to focus solely on the temporal earthly consequences of beheading children.  And do I need to argue that as a Christian, you are obligated to prioritize the spiritual eternal consequences of an action far above the earthly temporal consequences?   

Matthew Flannagan fails to show child torture is objectively immoral

At another blog, Christian philosopher and apologist Matthew Flannagan and I are having an argument about whether any actions of humans are objectively moral or immoral.

I am an atheist, and deny that any moral can be "objective" (i.e., good or bad for reasons transcending the human mind).

As predicted, Flannagan has cited to the popular example of "don't torture children purely for entertainment", in his effort to convince me that some actions of humans are objectively immoral.

For unknown reasons, Flannagan has asked me whether I think societies that approve of child torture solely for entertainment, have made a morally mistaken judgment.  He seems to think that he is going to prove something significant whether I say "yes" or "no", despite the fact that the moral opinion held by an atheist is clearly insufficient to demonstrate that the hypothetical wrong is objectively wrong.

My shorter answer (as posted to Matt's blog) is given below, followed by my more point-by-point answer

barry jones

Nov 9, 2017 at 2:22 pm

Matt,

My point by point response to you will be at my blog tomorrow, but for now, answering your most critical point is perhaps best.

You ask “so you think that a society which endorses the torture of children is making a mistaken moral judgment?”

Yes, I believe a society which endorses the torture of children is making a mistaken moral judgment.

First, unlike other atheists, I admit that my personal basis for finding such torture of children immoral, is entirely subjective. If my genetics had predisposed me toward a sociopath mentality, and had I been raised by sociopaths, I could easily have come to believe that where I am entertained by it, torturing children is morally good. I really don’t see how you think my agreement with the consensus of humanity (i.e., that torturing children solely for entertainment is unacceptable) does anything toward your goal of demonstrating the existence of objective morals.

Second, I notice that while you had asked me whether I think America’s former endorsement of race-based chattel slavery or that Europe’s death penalty for atheism were morally mistaken notions, you DIDN’T ask me whether I thought burning a woman to death for practicing prostitution in her fathers house, was morally mistaken.

Leviticus 21:9 is God’s command to burn such a female to death.

If you believed my agreement with most people that slavery and killing atheists is morally wrong, somehow did something to support your belief in objective morality, then, to be consistent, shouldn’t you think my agreement with most people that it is wrong to burn a prostitute to death for working out of her father’s house, can also somehow do something to support your belief in objective morality?

Or does your trust in the objective goodness of the god of Leviticus 21:9 forbid you from asking why the vast majority of humans in history eschewed burning people to death?

If under your logic, the world’s majority view eschewing of child-torture spells “because God himself doesn’t like it either”,

…then the world’s majority view eschewing burning prostitutes to death would necessarily also scream just as loudly “because God himself doesn’t like it either”.

Which would then mean your logic could be used to “argue” that Leviticus 21:9 was not something God commanded.

I don’t see where you have left to run: You can avoid the above criticism by saying you infer god from something other than human majority moral opinion, but if so, what was your point in asking me to give my moral opinion in child-torture?

------------------- 

Here is my more in-depth answer.  I usually avoid this because the sheer quantity of material gives apologists more opportunity to transfer focus off of real problem areas and give the false impression from their focus on less essential areas that they've adequately answered:

Nov 8, 2017 at 9:55 am
Barry you write:
 I can truthfully say that I constantly hear Christian apologists raising “don’t torture children purely for entertainment” as if the proof that it was objectively true was the fact that they happened to make the statement.
And I can just as truthfully say that I’ve never seen a Christian apologist explain exactly why they believe torturing children purely for entertainment is objectively immoral, except of course in the question-begging manner of “the bible tells me so”, which hardly conduces to beneficial dialogue with atheists who do not espouse the divine inspiration of the bible.
The example of torturing children for fun actually comes from an atheist, writers not “Christian Apologists” it is standardly used in the Euthyphro objection to divine command ethics.

But I wasn't wrong to assert that it is standard fare among apologists too.  When I challenged you to establish the existence of any absolute or objective moral, you too appealed to "do not torture children solely for entertainment".

As an example of an action which cant be made right or wrong by someones willing it to be so.

I'd say such debates are convoluted, since logically there is no such thing as an objective good or bad.  My advice is that atheists simply point out that because the evidence that God exists is unspeakably weak, that debate needs to be resolved, before you plunge into the abyss of conveniently unfalsifiable trifles, such as whether an act can be morally good merely because god requires that the act be done.

Second, Despite your prefacing those comments with the word “truthful” I am skeptical what you say is correct. I am reasonably familiar with the literature on God and Morality, and I don’t know of any defender of objectivism who defends it simply by asserting it, nor do I know any who argue that “the bible tells them so.”

Well I said that about "Christian apologists", I didn't say every defender of objectivism believe their merely asserting their theories proved them true.

On the contrary, many of the standard texts on God and Morality explicitly spell out why they think moral obligations are objective
For example, Robert Adams cites several reasons why it’s plausible to think that our concept of a moral obligation involves a presupposition such things are objective. for example such this as that “‘wrong’ has the syntax of an ordinary predicate, and we worry we may be mistaken in our moral judgments”,

Most people would agree that the disobedient child who doesn't go to bed when ordered to do so by their parent, is making a mistake in moral judgment.  But what time children must go to bed is hardly subject to objective verfiication.  The employee can later believe that he was morally mistaken to insult his boss.  But his sense of moral mistakenness is clearly limited to the circumstance.  So our sense of making moral "mistakes" does precisely nothing to justify the inference that there are morals which are objective.

that neither we, nor society, can “eliminate all moral requirements just by not making any demands”

That presupposes that moral requirements exist.  I deny the assumption.  Civilized society obviously couldn't be what it is without some people making moral demands and other people obeying those demands.  Again, the fact that such a thing would conduce toward civilized society doesn't argue, at all, that any moral requirements involved in the matter were objective.  I don't obey my employer out of any sense that such a thing is objectively good.  I obey solely to earn a paycheck so I can keep a roof over my head.  Nothing more is required, and this motive of mine is not capable of being shown objectively immoral.  And it would be foolish to assert that some objective moral requires one to obey one's employer.  There would have to be qualifications that become so numerous that the relativity of the entire business would be assured.

and that “what the Nazi’s did to the Jews was horribly wrong whether or not the Nazi’s thought so

But all they are doing is asserting the wrongness and dogmatizing that it be so whether the Nazis thought so or not.  This hardly establishes that Nazi treatment of the Jews was objectively immoral.

and it would have been more horribly wrong if they had managed to persuade the Jews that it was not wrong” [I cite all this in my original article which Carrier responded to]

Same answer:  assuring the reader that the Nazis were wrong, not matter what, hardly suffices to establish that their treatment of the Jews violated some objective moral.

Stephen Evan’s similarly stresses that we assume or presuppose that moral judgments are the “kind of thing we can be mistaken about”

Already answered:  we clearly also feel mistaken often when disobeying requirements or mandates that aren't objective, such as parentally imposed bedtimes, or jaywalking.  Our sense of our own mistakenness is absolutely fused to the culture.  And room need to be made to significantly deal with those in society who feel no sense of mistakenness when they engage in acts others find immoral, such as vigilante justice, or stealing from the corrupted rich to help the unfairly treated poor.

and we criticise societies and other people for making mistaken moral judgments, all of which presupposes objectivity.

No, we might believe our criticism of Hitler's treatment of the Jews goes back to some type of objective moral, but it doesn't.  If we had been born in Germany in 1910, we could just as easily have believed our country got it right in mistreating the Jews. But no, we act as if the American way is god's way, we just cannot imagine that America is also a mere culture.

Nor is this unique to Christian writers the idea that objectivity is presupposed by our concept of moral obligations is actually common in secular ethics and there are textbooks such as James Rachels, Loius Pojman, or Shafer Landau which note things like the fact societies have made moral mistakes or the existence of moral reformers,

that proves nothing.  Protestants and Catholics disagree on whether Luther's reforms were morally good or bad.

or the fact we think some cultural mores or moral systems are worse than others and so on, all of which presuppose objectivity.

They do not presuppose objectivity, they presuppose that we THINK they presuppose objectivity.  The truth is most people feel their own peculiar set of morals are objective, and they are in fact mistaken.

Or the fact we engage in debate with other people over what is the right thing to do.

The fact that Christians disagree with each other about moral issues makes plausible the inference that there are no objective standards, or if there are, they are mooted by our apparent inability to recognize them.  

In fact, in the quote, you cite from an earlier post I went on offer an argument for my conclusion. In other words, I put forward a hypothetical situation where a community endorsed the torture of children and asked whether you think a society which judged it was ok to do this was mistaken in doing so, or whether you thought there judgment it was permissible to torture children was correct.

No, you didn't present that as a question, you simply declared, in several different ways, why you think a) the moral holds true in all situations, and b) how I'd be "biting the bullet" if I tried to differ with you on it.

In fact, I put the challenge to you in the post? Most people judge that such a society does make a mistake, which shows that they presuppose that moral judgements are objective.

Already answered.

So seeing you missed this argument

I didn't miss it, you failed to specify what your moral yardstick was, for saying that torture of children purely for entertainment, was objectively immoral.  Assuring me that you think such act is always immoral, isn't that yardstick.

I’ll put it to you again, do you think that a society which endorses the torture of children is making a mistaken moral judgment?.

Yes.  But only because of my genetic predispositions and my environmental conditioning.  Had I been raised by sociopaths, I could very well take the position that i don't really care what other people do to their kids.

You don’t need a hypothetical example there are lots of concrete historical ones, for example in the US not long ago it was accepted culturally that race-based chattel slavery was permissible?

Why are you asking me whether I agree with the current US law that race based chattel slavery is immoral?  Yes, I reflect the beliefs and customs of the culture I was born and raised in.  This does precisely nothing to help you establish that this moral belief of mine derives from an objective moral.

It was accepted that atheism was a capital crime that warranted death in 18th century England?

Same answer:  My belief that the death penalty for atheism is immoral, is entirely subjective and relative.  Had I been born in 18th century England, I could well have been one of the legislators that enacted such law.  Depends on culture.

In your view were these judgements mistaken or were they entirely correct?

In your view, was the judgment of Moses mistaken or entirely correct when he required the burning to death of any prostitutes who work out of their priest father's house (Lev. 21:9)?

If you believed my agreement with most people (that slavery and killing atheists is morally wrong), somehow did something to support your belief in objective morality, then, to be consistent, shouldn’t you think my agreement with most people that it is wrong to burn a prostitute to death for working out of her father’s house, can also somehow do something to support your belief in objective morality?

Or does your trust in the objective goodness of the god of Leviticus 21:9 forbid you from asking why the vast majority of humans in history eschewed burning people to death?

If under your logic, the world’s majority view eschewing of child-torture spells “because God himself doesn’t like it either”,

…then the world’s majority view eschewing burning prostitutes to death would necessarily also scream just as loudly “because God himself doesn’t like it either”.

Which would then mean your logic could be used to “argue” that Leviticus 21:9 was not something God commanded.

Now if you say burning prostitutes to death used to be morally good but is no longer morally good, then you just said one of God's own morals was relative (i.e., burning prostitutes to death for working out of their father's houses isn't always good or always bad, but depends on the culture).

If you say no, it only depends on whether God tells us to do it, then you are still making one of God's morals subjective, since you'd then have to say that burning prostitutes to death for working out of their father's houses is good when God tells us to do it, and bad when god tells us not to do it.

That is, the objectivity of God's own morals can be turned on and off like a light switch.

No, Dr. Flannagan, I am NOT changing the subject by showing that the Christian position runs into significant problems in the area of objective morals, anymore than YOU were changing the subject by pointing out what secular writers on morality had to say.  

And so what?  Are you willing to defend the idea that your god's morality is objective, yes or no?

If yes, then where can we debate that?

Matt Slick fails to show that torturing babies is objectively immoral

Matt Slick of Carm seems to think the baby torture example just rips Jesus out of the sky and slams him into the face of all atheists:

Matt Slick: The proof that moral absolutes exist is in the statement I gave you: "It is always wrong for people to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure." 

No, he who asserts, must prove.  YOU are asserting it is always wrong for people to torture babies to death merely for their personal pleasure, so YOU have the burden.  Provide the reasons why you think such act is always wrong.

If you can falsify that statement, you have proven me wrong.

There is nothing to falsify if you set forth a proposition and offer nothing to support it.

Let's throw your logic back in your face:  "It's always wrong to count nickels on Tuesdays solely for personal pleasure".  I give this moral maxim, like you gave yours, without supporting argument.  Do you have anything to refute?   Of course not.  So if I were to say "If you want to tell me that it is not a moral absolute, then all you need to do is falsify it. Go ahead", that would actually be dishonest, in that it gives the false impression that I have fulfilled my burden of proof and now the monkey is on your back.

Therefore YOU, Matt Slick, are being dishonest when you talk so confidently about how the atheist is free to falsify.  YOU are the one asserting your moral maxim.  YOU therefore cannot view your opponent as morally or intellectually obligated to "refute" it unless and until you provide supporting argument as to why you think such baby torture is always wrong.

Or is this the part where you confess that you don't really know what the fuck to do if your opponent doesn't automatically agree that you've fulfilled your own burden?

You have not falsified the statement. I have not found any atheist that has falsified the statement yet.

You just did.  Hello, my name is Barry Jones.

  If you want to tell me that it is not a moral absolute, then all you need to do is falsify it. Go ahead.

Correction, if I want to tell you its not a moral absolute, I can achieve that goal by pointing out that you never supported your premise.  Your bare statement that the maxim constitutes a moral absolute, certainly doesn't make it so, you are not god, remember?  If so, then you aren't obligating anybody to answer anything until you have supported your maxim with argument.

Again, there is nothing to falsify, you've simply set forth an unsupported moral maxim, as if its truth were so obvious that it did not need to be supported.   I say that stems from your other irrational beliefs, such as Calvinism (i.e., presuppositionalism, questioning the truth of Christian claims is absolutely forbidden, and the futility of non-Christian thought is an untouchable icon of absolute truth).

Once you start revealing the secret you are guarding so closely (the reasons you think such baby torture is always immoral, you are the claiming so that's YOUR burden) the more you will cease looking like a frightened barking child and the more you will sound like a professional philosopher who is willing to put all his cards on the table.

Apologist Clay Jones fails to morally justify Joshua's massacre of Canaanite children

This is my reply to a lecture by Christian apologist Clay Jones, Phd., uploaded to YouTube by Biola University, entitled:

Killing the Canaanites Was Justified Capital Punishment

1. Before we get started, I recently made a debate offer to Dr. Jones concerning his online articles about how sinful the Canaanites allegedly were (i.e., his attempt to convince modern western readers that the Canaanite kids being killed by Hebrews was actually consistent with modern western notions of deserved justice).  He first replied asking where my blog was.  When I told him, he sent a final email saying he is just too busy to debate the issues raised in his articles.  Now, I'm not saying he is lying.  I'm just saying if he really was too busy, he likely would have said this before asking where my blog was.  I think what happened was that he believed he could make the time to debate me if he liked my blog site, but after reading it, then “discovered” that he didn’t have enough time to do such a debate.  

2. Dr. Jones starts out with the NT and its out-of-context OT quotes for original sin.  So apparently he seeks to restrict his persuasion power not just to "Christians", but to specifically only those Christians who regard bible inerrancy + doctrine of original sin as a foregone conclusions.

That's a problem:  Does Jones recommend that his Christian audience take any of his pro-bible inerrancy apologetics arguments and try them out on atheists?  Or he is just giving the lecture to help those already committed to his version of Christianity, to feel better about serving a Christian god that used to ask his followers to kill children? 

3. Be that as it may, Jones cites Romans 3 to “prove” that everybody “deserves” to die because of “original sin”.  Unfortunately, Paul here was taking Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 out of context.  Psalm 14:5 says God is with the righteous generation, thus meaning the universal condemnation words immediately preceding weren’t intended in absolute fashion..  In Psalm 53, the Psalmist obviously excludes himself from the others he accuses of having gone astray.  Apparently, Paul was misinterpreting Psalmic hyperbole as if it was literal, and in a way that ignored the context of those passages.  The same is true for the case of Psalm 10:7.  Romans 3:18 quotes Psalm 38:1, but in v. 10 the Psalmist admits the existence of those who are righteous.  Evangelical Inerrantist scholars agree that Paul thought he could help god by "adapting" God’s originally inerrant wording in the OT, to a context the OT author did not have in mind:

"Also a New Testament author would quite often, under the inspiration of God and to accentuate a specific point, adapt an Old Testament verse to serve his immediate purpose. Furthermore, the practice of precise citation and scholarly acknowledgment is a modern phenomenon. It was not at all a customary practice in antiquity."-----------Romans 3:9-12, Mounce, R. H. (2001, c1995). Vol. 27: Romans (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 108). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers. 

4. Clay is apparently only talking to evangelical inerrantists, since his blind presumption of the doctrine of original sin would not be taken well by nearly half of the evangelical world “only fifty-two percent of evangelicals held to the doctrine of original sin.” See also Danielle, MDiv Princeton Theological Seminary, author of Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place,

Even conservative Christians deny original sin, such as the “Churches of Christ".  The bible and especially the book of Jeremiah are full of references to the wrongness of a person in shedding "innocent" blood, which would doesn't make sense if in truth a) nobody is sufficiently innocent to deserve protection from murderers, and b) God numbered our days and thus logically also decreed the act that would take our lives, which often would be murder (Job 14:5).

5. Clay also overlooks that if he wishes to credit God with the modern Christian moral disdain for murder, he opens the door to the possibility that it is also something from God in the heart that causes many Christians to disdain the doctrine of orginal sin.  Doesn't do much good to talk about how our sense of morality comes from God placing his laws on our hearts, if in truth human intuition really isn't a criteria for deciding what morals come from god.

6. Clay overlooks that Jeremiah and Ezekiel set forth new dogmas of individual guilt, intended to replace the older dogma of corporate guilt, and the new dogma appears to conflict with original sin, since the new dogma promises protection from the guilty conduct of others: 

29 "In those days they will not say again, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children's teeth are set on edge.'

 30 "But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.

 31 "Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. (Jer. 31:29-32 NAU)

20 "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. (Ezek. 18:20 NAU)

7. Clay then cites to atrocities committed by other nations on their own people, but this is rather disingenuous, since to be consistent, Clay would have to draw similar inferences from the fact that people and leaders also do much good to their people too.  Why doesn’t America’s creation of the U.S. Constitution show good in people just as much as tyrants of other countries show the bad?  Could it be that we are simple minded idiots and feel more comfortable labeling somebody fully good or bad, and would rather not admit the complex truth that most people are an inconsistent mixture of both?

8. Clay overlooks the fact that the vast majority of people on earth have not been egregious tyrants or criminals outside of their country requiring them to participate in war or battles.  The vast majority of people in history do not exhibit the atrocities Clay documents from a handful of tyrants like Stalin and Hitler.  The point is that Clay's unwillingness to credit people properly with being good for their good works, makes him inconsistent to say the only works they can be properly credited with are their bad works.

9. Clay says Jesus never implies that those who die might be undeserving of death, but he overlooks Exodus 32:9-14, where God backs off of his original intent to kill the Exodusing Hebrews, because Moses slapped some sense into the divine head.

  

9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.

 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."

 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.

 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"

 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.

 (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

10. Clay presumes that all of God’s judgments are good and right, but in this overlooks the plain fact that given his presuppositions about the nature of sin and man, God either knew or should have known that flooding the world in the days of Noah would not accomplish his goal.  God appears to admit he should have known that the flood was a bad idea.  Genesis 8:21 makes no sense unless it means that God discovered at some point after flooding the world that this response to man’s sin was inappropriate or inadequate:

21 The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. (Gen. 8:21 NAU)

11. at timecode 26:20 ff, Clay says Canaanites fully indulged their sins, thus trading on the western individualist ethics of his modern Christian hearers to make Canaanites seem “deserving” of being massacred, but in this he overlooks that the Hebrew god command things just as atrocious.  We are most offended at the idea of Canaanites throwing their live children into burning furnaces, but God commanded death by burning for teen girls who lost their virginity and/or engaged in prostitution during pre-marital sex while living in their fathers house:

9 'Also the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. (Lev. 21:9 NAU)

12. refers to reader to “we don’t hate sin” article, and at time code 27:17 says bestiality and other sins were ‘rampant’, but as I show in my own blog post, one author Clay relies on for his bestiality comments frankly admits she cannot find any Mesopotamian sources asserting anybody ever had sex with animals. 

13. Mr. Jones than cites to a Baal poem of the Canaanites saying baal committed rape incest bestiality a lot, and he says we may thus infer the people worshipping said god did the same.   But that is ludicrous.  Christians believe their God is responsible for all murders (Deut. 32:39), should we assume that Christians imitate this divine practice?  Christians believe their God causes ceaseless conscious torment in mind-numbing pain for those who die in unbelief (hell), should we assume Christians do something similar?  Christians believe God credits himself with why pagan nations brutalize the Hebrews by beating children to death and forcing women to endure abortion by sword (Isaiah 13:15-16, Hosea 13:15-16), should we assume Christians engage in whatever acts they believe their god does?

14. 28:15 ff says our modern liberal culture is against death penalty because sin has corrupted us, but one wonders how strongly Jones would fight to save his daughter, should she be falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to capital execution.  Would he tell her that her deserving death from original sin, and suffering for righteousness sake for Christ, was more important than the fact that she was actually innocent of the charges?

15. Clay at timecode 21:45 ff deflects question on whether some Canaanites might have been moral among the many depraved, like Lot, by assuming that because God destroyed Sodom despite promising to spare it should he find 10 righteous people (Genesis 18:32), the slaughter of the Canaanites can only have taken place by reason that not even one of them were righteous.  But the possibility that some of the Canaanites weren’t deserving of death is found in the story of Rahab the innkeeper or “harlot”, wherein she is the only person spared in the sacking of Jericho because she assisted the Hebrew spies.  But nothing in the story from Joshua 2 expresses or implies that Rahab was doing anything more than pretending to align herself with the views held by spies whom she believed were part of an army easily capable of massacring her city, when in fact she didn’t really give up her pagan faith, she was only pretending so as to save her own skin.  There’s no evidence that she actually repented, and the Christian view is even more unlikely if she was actually a prostitute and not mere innkeeper.  What she did is what anybody in her position would have done had they felt the coming destroyers of her city would be successful. And if she was a Canaanite prostitute, she probably had much practice in pretending to believe things she didn’t really believe.

  

16. Matthew Flannagan who co-authored the “Genocide” book with Paul Copan, believes no children were present in Sodom when it was destroyed, because Genesis 18-19 indicate God would spare it if 10 righteous people could be found there, but then he didn’t spare it.  Flannagan thinks children are righteous by default because of their innocence.  But despite Flannagan’s belief being unlikely given that Sodom and the cities of the plan were a rich metropolis, the point is that Jones and Flannagan still disagree about the moral status of kids.  Can they blame the atheist bible critic for saying such disagreement is not likely if their god is true and they both seek god’s truth sincerely as equally authentically born again Christian scholars?  How many times must you pray for God to lead you into a correct understanding of the bible, before it becomes God’s fault that you continue to misunderstand it?  If God can make even pagans willing to do whatever he wants or believe whatever he wants them to believe (Ezra 1:1), then why does God prefer to “toy” with you and make you plead for truth over and over before he implants the truth and right motive in your heart? 

17. Jones then adds to the word of the Lord by saying God’s choice to kill Canaanites is based on his foreknowing who would respond to the truth and who wouldn’t.  But that is unfalsifiable nonsense.  Had the story of Rahab the harlot ended with her being accidently killed in the sacking of Jericho, Clay would have just as blindly assumed that God “knew” Rahab’s “faith” was fake.  Jones treats his view of God’s goodness as some untouchable icon of presuppositional glory, when in fact it is the bible itself that testifies that God often learns and regrets his own actions no less than imperfect humans often learn and regret their own prior acts.

18. Jones’s assumptions would require that he view Lot as righteous and godly, no matter what, all because the NT characterizes Lot as righteous and godly (2^nd Peter 2:7-9), when in fact, if today’s apologist doesn’t already have his defense mechanisms on red alert, he would automatically conclude that any “Christian” who sought to protect his house-guests from homosexual rape, by appeasing the mob with invitation to rape his own virgin daughters, was not righteous nor godly in any sense of the word, yet Lot committed such atrocity:

8 "Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof." (Gen. 19:8 NAU)

If today’s atheists do not stoop this low into immorality, would it be fair to say that they are more righteous than Lot?

19. Jones at time code 32:20 ff uses his foster parenting history to argue that kids who are corrupted at early age simply do not learn better regardless of whatever new parents they are placed with,  but he overlooks that child-rearing was much stricter and violent by OT policies than he would have been as a modern Christian foster parent.  The OT advocates beatings with a rod that leave welts, believed to be the body removing evil (Proverbs 20:30), and that specifically the rod must be used on children to cure them of their foolishness:

 15 Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him. (Prov. 22:15 NAU)

13 Do not hold back discipline from the child, Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.

 14 You shall strike him with the rod And rescue his soul from Sheol. (Prov. 23:13-14 NAU)

How can Jones know that the child abuse policies approved by God in proverbs likely wouldn’t have changed the disposition of disobedient Canaanites kids orphaned by Joshua?  Did Jones use a rod to beat his foster kids, only to find there was no positive change?  If so, was that true even in those cases where he beat the child to the point of leaving the bruises and welts the bible says perform the good of cleansing away evil (Pr. 20:30)?  Or can he not answer because he never actually did use a rod to beat his foster kids?  Doesn’t matter if the Proverbs are guarantees.  If Christians are still supposed to apply the proverbs in faith and not discard them merely because they don’t promise guaranteed success, then Jones cannot argue that the risk of discipline failing to correct the child was sufficient to justify Joshua in putting Canaanite kids to the sword.

20.   Again, when Jones assures us the Canaanites would not have repented, he is ignoring the important bible teaching from Ezekiel 38:4 – 39:7 that God can and does force people to do whatever he wants them to do, and that God can cause even pagans to become motivated to do God’s will (Ezra 1:1)

21. Jones at time code 32:55 ff, says such kids will bring their bad behaviors with them, as if this justified killing them, and at 33:20 ff Jones asks if we have any logical reason to believe Canaanite kids would not have retained the sinful ways of their parents.  Yes, Jones overlooks how his “these kids were incorrigible” excuse gets him in trouble with bible texts where Hebrews, presumably knowing this truth Jones gives us, nevertheless chose to assimilate pagan kids into their lives anyway by God’s authority. In Numbers 31:17-18, Moses requires his people to kill the male babies and boys of the pagan POW’s, but allows his men to take alive the little virgin girls for themselves (v. 18).  If Jones denies the interpretation that says this was permission for the men to marry and have sex with prepubescent girls, then he is committed to the premise that these girls would become house-servants…in which case Jones must say Moses intended for Canaanite kids to be assimilated into Hebrew homes and family life.  So… did Moses require this because he disagreed with jones and believed proper training could purge a pagan child of her prior rebellious conditioning?  Or did Moses require this because he knew about, but didn’t care about, the ability of pagan kids to corrupt the Hebrew culture? 

22. Will Jones foolishly trifle that because it was only Midianite virgins who were spared here, they were spared solely because they did not participate in the sexual sin at Peor (Numbers 25:1) that was being avenged here in Numbers 31 (i.e., these kids exhibited potential for not corrupting the Hebrews)?  Last I checked, virgin girls can do plenty of sinful sexual acts without losing their virginity, so that the unbroken hymen tells you NOTHING about whether she became involved with and helped facilitate the sin in question.

23. If virginity of pagan girls overshadows the question of their specific propensity to sin, in Numbers 31:18, we have to wonder how Jones explains that the virginity of young Canaanite girls in the promised land doesn’t overshadow their propensity to sin in the case of Joshua massacring the Canaanites in the promised land.  Will Jones trifle that the pagan corruptions of the Midianites at Peor (Numbers 25) were somehow less grostesque than the sinfulness of the Canaanites in Jericho?

24. Jones is confronted the same problem of God’s people appearing arbitrary in whether to spare pagans, from Deut. 21:10-14, which allows the Hebrew man to marry a female pagan war captive.  Tellingly, the text nowhere expresses or implies that the captive first repent of her paganism, nor that she make clear her adoption of the YHWH cult beliefs, as a pre-condition to the marriage.  And if the GNT is correct in saying the sexual consummation was rape, then it is even more clear from the context that here God was authorizing his Hebrew men to marry pagan women unwilling to be with them, which justifies the inference that such pagan women still clung to their pagan religious beliefs the whole time.  God’s basis for massacring some and sparing others is truly arbitrary and likely the result of commingling disparate Hebrew religious traditions by the OT editors, than that God really does things like this for sovereign mysterious reasons.

  

25. Jones at 33:38, says God doesn’t do wrong in taking the life of children because God foreknows they wouldn’t repent, but if so, he opens the door to the possibility of those kids going straight to hell for the same reason (i.e., they wouldn’t have repented).  Jones is also deceptive since he gives the impression God could be proven immoral if we should show God kills kids despite believing they would repent later in life.  Not true.  If we found such biblical text, Jones would simply insist that God’s ways are mysterious, he always does good, and that we are nobody to question God’s reasons or his morals.  Jones is thus deceptive for pretending God’s goodness can be substantiated on the merits, when in fact he removes the issue from the merits whenever expediency dictates.  Jones would NEVER accept ANY evidence that God ever did anything immoral.

26. At 33:50 ff, Jones agrees with Paul Copan there is possibility god by killing pagan kids thus saved them from further harm since their death placed them into heaven, but if removal from sinful earth is good, then neglecting children and leaving them to grow up in the sinful earth is bad, and God certainly allows children to strive on the earth and slowly die of starvation and abuse.  Once again, Jones gives the appearance that God’s goodness can be demonstrated by reasoned argument on the merits of God’s acts, but in fact is quite willing to say God’s ways are good even if they don’t prove to be good by human examination on the merits.  Hence, the effort to show goodness on the merits in god is deceptive, since they don’t believe the merits actually matter anyway.  They will pick and choose that which looks like it can be argued, and insist the yucky stuff be resolved into the mystery of God. 

27. Jones at 34:00 ff says Joshua’s conquest of the promised land was not genocide but capital punishment, but a) the dictionary definition of genocide does not take the motives of the killers into account, only that they systematically remove some religious or political group; and b) it wouldn’t matter if Joshua’s conquest wasn’t genocide, the brutal war-atrocities God causes the pagans to inflict on the Hebrews as revealed by Isaiah 13:15-16 and Hosea 13:15-16 and 2^nd Samuel 12:15-18, show God willing to do worse than genocide, and cause children to suffer horrific miseries before experiencing the release of death.  Will he say God also “knew” the fetuses of the pregnant Hebrew women God caused to endure abortion by sword (Hosea/Isaiah, supra)  would otherwise have grown up to imitate their sinful parents?  Then how does Jones explain God allowing to live those kids that never repent and die of old age as unbelievers?  God must have known they wouldn’t repent either, yet the fact that he allowed them to live means God did not feel “compelled” simply by reason of foreknowing a person’s consistent stay in unbelief throughout their life, to just kill them in their infancy.  If God can allow some incorrigibles to live despite his foreknowledge, then his killing off only some is nothing he was morally compelled to do.  Once again, Jones’s god is utterly arbitrary in a way that reference to god’s mysterious ways will not fix.

28. Clay’s pessimistic outlook on disobedient children overlooks the other reality that many kids enduring a horrible childhood turn out better than their parents?  Are we quite sure that the Israelites, so infected with original sin, surely had no selfish patriotic genocidal motive in killing non-Hebrew kids?  Can we really say it was at all “likely” that allowing the orphaned Canaanites to live would have led to infecting Israel with idolatry/corruption?

29. Jones says the best proof that the Canaanite massacre was capital punishment and not genocide was that God exacted the same punishment when Israel did the same type of sins.  But that the Hebrews imposed on themselves the same ethics they imposed on others only shows they weren’t as inconsistent as they could have been.  This argument doesn’t take away from the fact that the Hebrews and other ANE nations were far more brutish than evangelicals are today. Clay further blindly presupposes the people who authored these stories were just passing down intact traditions, when critical scholars have made it pretty clear that it is later editors that are taking Israel’s military histories of various origins, stitching it together and infusing it with explanatory glosses about how losses were the result of sin and wins were the result of obeying God, etc.  Not much different than a reporter who takes raw footage of what happened, and turns it into a documentary where her after-the-fact commentary “explains” the footage.  For all we know, Moses and Joshua were genocidal maniacs who thought they were their own gods, and it is only dishonest priests and scribes of hundreds of years later who infuse these earlier raw stories with theological commentary to make it seem like Moses and Joshua only did what they did after being given moral and theological justification by God.  The conservative view that all we read in the current canonical form of the Pentateuch was written by Moses before he died, is precarious.  Even such an evangelical commentary as the Word Biblical Commentary finds that stories like those in Numbers 31 have “little realism”:

  

In an idealized way this section tells of a battle against the Midianites, and of its consequences…The story has little “realism,” and is best understood as a midrashic construction,

Budd, P. J. (2002). Vol. 5: Word Biblical Commentary : Numbers. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 332). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

  

30. Jones at 34:30 ff says God promised capital punishment to them if they mingled with Canaanites, but a) we don’t see this happening in Numbers 31:18 where virgin pagan girls were spared despite the fact that virgin girls can do plenty of sexual sins without losing their virginity and b) we don’t see God imposing the death penalty on anybody in any consistent way in the Monarchy, particularly the time of Solomon and other kings who allowed intermarriage and mixed Yahweh and pagan worship.  So we have to entertain the prospect that, like many other matters, exactly to what degree to enforce Mosaic legislation was often unclear, justifying the belief that the law of Moses was an ambiguous thing that developed throughout an inconsistent history between Moses and the exile.

31. Clay’s blind trust in Deuteronomy 20:18 and in God’s alleged belief that the pagans would surely corrupt Israel if allowed to live next to each other, overlooks that Saul believed the Kenites worthy to be spared despite living so close to the doomed Amalekites (1^st Samuel 15:6…did the Amalekites corrupt the Kenites by close living proximity?  If so, then apparently, Saul believed a prior act of kindness from the Kenites overshadowed the fact that they were equally as deserving of death as the Amalekites.  If the Kenites kept free of Amalekite corruption despite such close proximity to each other, then Deut. 20:18 and other passages speaking in absolute terms about how Hebrews sparing the pagans will surely cause the Hebrews to imitiate the pagan sins, are the passages that must be viewed as hyperbole…in which case the urgency to rid the land of the pagans was nowhere as extreme as the biblical narrative makes it seem.).

32. Jones at 35:25 ff. cites to Jeremiah 5 where God says he will forgive the sinful city if even one person who deals honestly can be found therein.  Jones overlooks that this supports the doctrine of corporate responsibility (i.e., that doctrine that says a group will be found equally as guilty as the actually guilty member even if the rest of them didn’t partake of his sin, the doctrine that most modern western Christian cannot stand).  Jones also overlooks that this passage from Jeremiah contradicts the statements in Numbers 14:18 saying God will “by no means” clear the guilty.  In this, Jeremiah has a friend in 2^nd Samuel 12:13, where God, with nothing more than a wave of his magic wand, clears David from guilt deserving of capital punishment, or at least chooses to exempt David from the capital punishment requirement otherwise mandated by his acts of adultery and murder of Uriah.  Dr. Jones isn’t being biblically consistent in pretending that God feels some type of moral compulsion to hold people guilty for sin.  God could have waived his magic wand and exempted Canaanites from their death-deserving sins of bestiality and child-sacrifice no less than he did when exempting David from his death-deserving acts of adultery and murder.  Biblically, Jones gets nowhere pointing out that somebody “deserved” the fate god imposed on them.  God does not impose punishment and sparing in a uniform way, strongly suggesting that the real reason is that there is no god behind this stuff, it is just a canonical bible of today that is the result of a long process of stitching together ancient stories and adding theologically appropriate commentary where expediency dictated.

33.  Jones at 36:15, cites to Ezekiel 14:12 ff, but Ezekiel’s statements that the three most righteous men in bible history could only save themselves when god’s wrath hits the sinful city, contradicts the deal god made with Abraham to spare Sodom if even 10 righteous people could be found in it.  How can God be willing to spare Sodom on the basis of 10 righteous men, but be unwilling to spare the Jews if a few righteous men were found living among them?  It’s called theological evolution, not bible inerrancy:

 12 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,

 13 "Son of man, if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it and cut off from it both man and beast,

 14 even though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves," declares the Lord GOD.

 15 "If I were to cause wild beasts to pass through the land and they depopulated it, and it became desolate so that no one would pass through it because of the beasts,

 16 though these three men were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their sons or their daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the country would be desolate.

 17 "Or if I should bring a sword on that country and say, 'Let the sword pass through the country and cut off man and beast from it,'

 18 even though these three men were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their sons or their daughters, but they alone would be delivered.

 19 "Or if I should send a plague against that country and pour out My wrath in blood on it to cut off man and beast from it,

 20 even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in its midst, as I live," declares the Lord GOD, "they could not deliver either their son or their daughter. They would deliver only themselves by their righteousness."

 21 For thus says the Lord GOD, "How much more when I send My four severe judgments against Jerusalem: sword, famine, wild beasts and plague to cut off man and beast from it! (Ezek. 14:12-21 NAU)

34. Jones at 37:52 ff, says we have no basis to intuit that Canaanites would have repented had they been allowed to live, but Jesus made clear the exact opposite concerning other cities and how they would have repented had they been allowed to see more of God:

20 Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles were done, because they did not repent.

 21 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

 22 "Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

 23 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.

 24 "Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you."

 (Matt. 11:20-24 NAU)

12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city.

 13 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

 14 "But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you.

 15 "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades!   (Lk. 10:12-15 NAU)

Will Jones trifle that Chorazin and Bethsaida were significantly different from the Canaanites Joshua killed throughout the promised land?

35.  Jones at 38:05 ff, says Lord is indifferent to whether we die of old age or by tooth and claw, and that seems to be a pretty good case for God’s sadism, confirmed in Deut. 28:63, where God says he gets the same “delight” in inflicting atrocities that he gets in prospering the faithful.  Some atrocities God would delight in (v. 63) include rape (v. 30) and parental cannibalism (v. 53-57).

36. Jones at 38:30 ff specifies the biblical descriptions of atrocities are not metaphor or hyperbole, therefore making perfectly clear that he is not impressed with the thesis of evangelicals Copan/Flannagan, that most such descriptions are hyperbole.

37. Jones again at 39:15, argues that since god foreknew who would repent, we can be sure he did no wrong in killing children.  This is deceptive, because he implies he would accept that god’s judgment is immoral if god killed kids despite knowing they would have repented, when in fact even if confronted with such a nuanced bit of theology from the bible, Jones would simply run to sophistry fortress #521 (God’s acts can never be immoral or evil regardless of how they might appear to us).  But Exodus 32:9-14 forbids trust in the goodness of god as if it was some untouchable icon or foregone conclusion.

38. Jones quotes Genesis 6:5 about man’s heart being always evil, but the next verse shows god regretting his own prior choice to make man, and because a) context favors literal interpretation while b) anthropomorphic interpretation is premised on nothing more objective than the need to maintain biblical inerrancy, the open theist interpretation here, asserting God’s regret signifies his imperfection, is more objective.

39. At 40:20 ff Jones says there is a cosmic lesson for “free beings”, but a) the sinner’s ability to repent is hotly disputed within conservative Christian scholarship, and b) if God knew the kids he killed would not have repented, and if God’s foreknowledge is infallible, then those kids were not “free” to deviate from their foreknown fate (i.e., not free to make freewill choice to repent).  If God’s foreknowledge is infallible, then whatever it contains in incapable of failing.  If God infallibly foreknows what will actually happen, and thus infallibly foreknows you will actually drop a pan on your foot tomorrow at noon, then dropping a pan on your foot tomorrow at noon is not capable of failing.  How you reconcile that with “freewill” is immaterial and will not change the definition of “infallible”.

40. Jones at 40:45 ff ends with preaching, but the entire experience of “getting saved” and “new nature” and “adopted into god’s family” is 100% theoretical and has no empirical justification beyond a few bible verses which talk the same way.  It is deception to say the least to speak about the born-again experience with the same type of language one uses to describe how one became a member of a local organization.

41. Jones at 41:20 ff, answers question as to why other peoples on earth, allegedly as deserving of death as the Canaanites, aren’t killed off by God too.  Answers the Canaanites had given themselves over more thoroughly to evil.  But as I show in my blog post cited above, the specific accusations that Canaanites burned children to death and engaged in bestiality cannot be verified by actual literary or epigraphic evidence.  Jones may point to the bible, but we accuse the bible of misrepresenting the Canaanites, so it would be the fallacy of begging the question to quote the bible as proof when the reliability of the biblical record is precisely the issue. Furthermore the bible has two stories indicating “pass through the fire” was a symbolic rite not intended to cause pain or death to a child.  2^nd Kings 16:3, Ahaz made his “son” (singular) pass through the fire, but then his “son” (singular) Hezekiah took over the throne (v. 3) (!?).  Well gee, because God can do miracles, maybe Hezekiah took over the throne as a zombie rising from the ashes?   Manassah also made his “son” (singular) pass through the fire (2^nd Kings 21:6), but then his “son” (singular) Amon took over the throne (v. 18).  Since the context provides no reason to think the kings had more than one son a piece, it appears the Kings author did not believe the “pass through the fire” was a ritual intended to cause the child to die.

  

42. Jones at 42:20 ff,. resorts to Genesis 15:16 and the story bit about how God refused to clear out the Canaanites since the time of Abraham because their sin was not yet complete.  But there are serious problems with this verse;  a) all scholars admit the Pentateuch was edited to include information moses didn’t write, so it remains a possibility that this blurb is a bit of theological explanation that was added to the text of Genesis between authorship by Moses and its current canonical form; b) the very idea that god would spare people so they could fill up the measure of their sins, contradicts the Christian interpretation of this verse saying God waited those 400 years for them to repent.  No, he was waiting them to become exceedingly sinful, he wasn’t waiting for them to repent.  And if God’s foreknowledge was infallible, then i) infallible means incapable of failing, which would mean the Canaanites could not deviate from becoming more and more sinful, since god cannot be surprised,  and ii) God therefore wasn’t “hoping” the Canaanites would prove his foreknowledge wrong, anymore than you wait two years “hoping” your two year old will prove wrong your predictions about their behavior two years into the future, and pass college tests in advanced statistics.  The standard Christian view that God waits around “hoping” for an outcome that by his infallible foreknowledge he is perfectly certain has no chance of actually materializing, is a serious blight on Christian doctrine.

43. Basically, Jones’s traditionalist stance makes it ironic that he seeks to appeal to our human reasoning to make his 44 minute argument justifying God’s acts as good, since he has already committed to the premise that human reason is corrupt.  Jones would be more consistent to bypass human reasoning altogether and simply quote the bible without his imperfect commentary.  How can it be meaningful for Jones to satisfy our sense of justice by saying Canaanites deserved to die for acts like bestiality and child-sacrifice, if in truth he will merely run and hide behind the mysterious ways of God when confronted with biblical instances where God killed others in ways that don’t satisfy modern western reasoning?