Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is a late legend

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

The Truth About Easter: Is the Resurrection A Late Legend?

Posted: 01 Apr 2018 06:33 AM PDT

At the age of thirty-five, I was a skeptical detective at a large municipal police agency in Los Angeles County. I was also a committed atheist. I accepted several historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth – that he lived in the first century, preached sermons, was crucified by the Romans, and was buried in a tomb that was eventually found to be empty – but I didn’t believe that any of these facts meant the Resurrection of Jesus was true. I knew there were several ways to explain these basic facts without having to resort to a supernatural explanation. For that reason, I thought the Resurrection of Jesus as a mythological fairy-tale.

Sorry to see you degenerate into an attention-whore who has a pathological obsession with using Jesus to promote himself and his marketing gimmicks learned not from the bible but from capitalist billionaires interested in learning how to manipulate others into buying crap.  But if it motivates you to help relieve the suffering of others...

I suspected the gospel accounts related to Jesus had simply been corrupted over time;

You should have believed that the gospel originals corrupted what Jesus said and did.

the story of the Resurrection was little more than a late legend. In fact, I surmised the Resurrection passages were absent in early versions of the story; added later by those who wanted to recast Jesus of Nazareth as Christ, the Son of God.

Then that was your problem right there.  The fiction of the resurrection story doesn't necessarily imply it will be absent from the original.  The gospels are not historically valid biographies corrupted over time.  They are historically dishonest fictions that were corrupted over time.

But once I decided to employ my detective skills to examine the claims of the gospel authors, my view of the Resurrection (and the claims of Easter) began to change.

You never examined the credibility of any of the gospel authors, that's for sure, what with most Christian scholars saying the authors of those documents are anonymous, or it being unknown the degree to which the popularly ascribed author actually contributed to them.  Something's got to be wrong with your brain for you to change your entire life on the basis of 4 anonymous fictions from 2,000 years ago.

I found there were several good, evidential reasons to reject the idea that the Resurrection was a late legendary addition to the Jesus story:
The claims were early.

So were Mormonism's founding fictional claims.

How soon does a disciple of Benny Hinn start telling about what he saw Hinn do onstage?  Is this testimony "early", or do such people usually wait several decades before telling?

Paul famously saw the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus,

Acts 9, 22 and 26 are the NT's most explicit stories of Paul experiencing the resurrected Jesus, and none of them justify saying Paul was an "eyewitness", since, as the story goes, the men he traveled with could not see whatever it was Paul was seeing (9:7, or they saw a light, but not Jesus, 22:9).  It is YOUR problem if you wish to characterize as an "eyewitness" a person who claims to have "seen" things that cannot be seen by normal physical eyesight.

then wrote about it in his letter to the believers in Corinth. This letter was penned very early in history (in the mid AD 50’s), barely twenty years after the Resurrection. Paul repeated the earliest known Christian creed – or oral record – which included the Resurrection as a key component (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

And the 'gospel' he received revolved solely around Jesus death, burial and resurrection, contrary to the allegedly risen Christ's own understanding in which the gospel consists of having future Gentile followers obey ALL that Jesus taught during his earthly ministry (Matthew 28:20).  Paul infamously is nearly totally apathetic on and silent toward the things Jesus said and did before the crucifixion.

and told his readers that there were hundreds of Resurrection eyewitnesses (still alive) who could be interviewed (verse 6).

And you don't have the first clue upon what basis Paul claims such a thing, when in fact the biblical possibilities include magical means like telepathy (Acts 16:9), telepathy from God (Galatians 1:1, 11), or trips to heaven that, 14 years after the fact leave Paul still ignorant of whether he was outside his own body during the experience (2nd Cor. 12:1-4).  FUCK YOU AND YOUR CREDIBILITY-LACKING "WITNESSES". 

The claims were taught. The earliest claims about Jesus were passed from the eyewitnesses to their personal students.

So if most Christian scholars are correct in saying Mark wrote nothing after 16:8, then the earliest claims about Jesus said nothing about him appearing to anybody after he died, which Mark surely would have included had he known such stories and believed them true, given that the resurrection is the defining attribute of the entire religion.  Sorry Wallace, there's a good reason why Jesus' resurrection appearances are not part of the earliest gospel's original story.  But since you don't plan on acknowledging reality, continue flying around the world and appearing for 2 minutes on various tv and radio shows. Attention whores rarely give up that which facilitates their being the center of attention.

The apostle John, for example, taught what he observed and knew to be true about Jesus to his students, Ignatius and Polycarp.

You apparently know nothing of the critical problems present in the alleged 'writings' by these authors.

They then became leaders in the Church following the death of John, writing their own letters to local congregations. These letters describe Jesus in precisely the same way he was described by the eyewitnesses: born of a virgin,

Despite how important and useful the virgin birth of Jesus would be to help the apostle substantiate their claims about Jesus being the divine Son of God, the only NT authors that ever mention it are Matthew and Luke.  Let's just say all is not well in fundyville.

able to perform miracles

John 7:5, Mark 3:21, Jesus' own family members saw nothing more significant in Jesus' earthly ministry and miracles, except that he was unworthy of belief and likely had gone insane.  So were the brothers and mother of Jesus just brick stupid for denying obvious reality?  or were they possessed of ordinary intelligence, and there's more evidential problems with your miracle-working Jesus than you care to admit?

and having risen from the grave.

 He didn't appear to disinterested witnesses, despite his alleged ability to conduct all evangelism of all unbelievers by personally appearing to them individually. No, Jesus doesn't employ that miracle power because he has no such thing.  Don't say "God's mysterious ways" unless you are ready to accept that excuse as valid when employed by heretics to get their asses out of a theological jam. 

The claims were repeated.

Something that clearly never happens in clearly false religions like Mormonism.

In the earliest accounts of the disciples’ activity after the Resurrection, they are reported to have repeatedly cited this event as their primary piece of evidence to prove that Jesus was God.

No, the earliest account of the gospel of Mark's, and he likely wouldn't remain silent about Jesus actually appearing to witnesses had he believed any such thing were true.  The earliest gospel therefore doesn't constitute the earliest account of the disciples' activity after the resurrection, because the earliest form of the story did not have any "disciples activity after the resurrection" component to it just yet.  Legends take time to build.

From the earliest days of the Christian movement (as recorded in the Book of Acts), eyewitnesses consistently made the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

The problem being that despite the allegedly 500 others who saw this resurrected Jesus, the NT authors didn't think readers could use the instruction and edification to be found in written accounts of all the other apostles and how they lived and taught.  Indeed Acts says virtually nothing about the Jerusalem apostles and focuses only on Paul's specific form of teaching starting in ch. 9.  It is highly unlikely that if the other apostles had anywhere near the miracle-working power or success that Paul allegedly did, the NT authors would judge such additional accounts irrelevant to Christian encouragement and learning.  Sorry, but they are silent about the majority of the alleged resurrection "witnesses" because most of the original apostles experienced failure and apostasy.  That's the more probable explanation even if you can resort to God's mysterious reasons for excluding such from the bible.  The winners in a historical debate are those whose theories are more plausible, not those who dream up mere possibilities.

In order for the Resurrection of Jesus to be a late legend, the story would have to be both late and a legend.

Mark says nothing useful about it, it IS a late legend.

It is neither. It’s a lot harder to lie about something when people are still alive to expose the deception.

 Tell that to Benny Hinn and Joseph Smith.

The accounts of the Resurrection were written while people who would have known better could still fact-check them.

Even though you are presumably aware of the Christian scholarly consensus that exactly who wrote the gospels and the degree to which "apostles" contributed therein, is a big fat unknown.

Despite this truth, the earliest New Testament documents include the Resurrection story,

The consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest of the gospels, and there is also consensus among them that Mark did not write anything after 16:8.  Sorry, but the earliest NT documents do not include the resurrection.   I think this is the part where you insist that the unbeliever has an obligation to become as educated in biblical matters as these Christian scholars before he can be justified to adopt this majority view.  Well fuck you.

and the record of the early Church fathers demonstrates that the account was not altered over time.

That's bullshit in the eyes of many modern Christian "inerrantist" scholars who agree that Matthew and Luke often "softened" or otherwise changed Mark to get rid of problems created by his specific choice of wording.  It's not a large leap from their comfort in changing the inerrant word of God, to changing historical facts to suit literary needs, such as conservative resurrection scholar Licona and others say with respect to Matthew's zombie resurrection story in Matthew 27:52.

Whatever you may think of the Resurrection of Jesus, it is not a late legend.

Have fun trying to pretend that Mark wrote about it, but the ending was lost before the time of our earliest extant manuscripts. 

In fact, for millions of Christians around the world, the Easter account of Jesus’ Resurrection is still the most reasonable inference from the evidence.

Gee, really?

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the disciples lied about the resurrection of Jesus

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

The Truth About Easter: Did The Disciples Lie About the Resurrection?

Posted: 31 Mar 2018 07:30 AM PDT

Homicide detectives are perhaps the least trusting people in the country.

That's because they know perfectly well that the only correct explanations for data are purely naturalistic.  If a criminal suspect's alibi is that he was in two different places at the same time, you don't ask the jury to consider the possibility of the supernatural, you tell the jury that because miracles don't happen, the suspect is obviously guilty.

My own experience investigating murders has taught me to consider everyone a liar – until, at least, I have good reason to believe otherwise. I know that sounds pessimistic, but I learned a long time ago that mysteries don’t get solved if you believe everything you’re told. Maybe that’s why I rejected the claims of Christianity for so many years. I was an atheist until the age of thirty-five and like many other non-believers, I thought the claims related to the Resurrection of Jesus were most likely lies on the part of the alleged eyewitnesses.

You had the right attitude.  Can you imagine how horrific the downfall of America's justice system would be if the Courts started allowing defense attorneys to argue to the jury that they are allowed to seriously consider miracles as a way of explaining the Defendant's actions? 

Then I examined these claims using the tools of a detective.

In my years working robberies and homicides, I had the opportunity to investigate (and break) several conspiracy efforts. As a result, I now know what it takes to accomplish a conspiracy.

Actually, you don't know shit about what it would take to succeed in a first-century conspiracy to lie about Jesus.  They don't teach genre-identification at Homicide School.

Successful conspiracies typically involve the following five conditions:

A small number of conspirators – The smaller the number of conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy will be a success.

Generously forgetting the serious problems there are with apostolic authorship of two of the gospels, the resurrection accounts in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form are Matthew, John and Paul.  That's all.  Since nobody has a clue on what basis Paul could allege that 500 people saw Jesus alive all at once, that's 500 people who were never on your list in the first place.  A small number of conspirators indeed remain.

Lies are difficult to maintain,

Tell that the Benny Hinn, whose live on-stage healings in front of thousands of people testify how easily religious fervor can suspend a person's critical faculties and cause them to automatically interpret anything they see as supporting the religion they've previously chosen to follow.

and the fewer the number of people who have to continue the lie, the better.

We have abundant evidence to support the contention that false religions can start up and become very popular when in fact the cult-leader's claims are total bullshit.  Look at Mormonism.  It's obviously a false form of Christianity, but it still managed to get millions to agree to the bullshit testimonies of the 3 men and 8 men. We know they never saw any gold plates, yet millions of people swear that such testimony was honest.

Mormonism teaches us that a person's desire for the religion to be true, can make them unspeakably forgiving toward the religion's evidentiary shortcomings.  For some reason, most people care more about how the message can change their lives for the better...than in whether the message is actually true.

A short time span – It’s hard enough to tell a lie once; even more difficult to repeat the lie consistently over a long period of time. For this reason, the shorter the conspiracy, the better. The ideal conspiracy would involve only two conspirators, and one of the conspirators would kill the other right after the crime. That’s a conspiracy that would be awfully hard to break.

Read Acts 21:17-24...Paul visits Jerusalem, but James complains to him that the thousands of Jews who have converted, believe in a rumor that says Paul teaches other Jews outside the mainland to abandon Mosaic customs, and James seems to think the situation is desperate because of this rumor (i.e., the fact that a rumor was false in the first century, did nothing to prevent thousands of people from accepting it as true anyway):

 17 After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
 18 And the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
 19 After he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
 20 And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;
 21 and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
 22 "What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.
 23 "Therefore do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow;
 24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law. (Acts 21:17-24 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Thorough and immediate communication – This is key. One (or more) of the conspirators will eventually be questioned by authorities.

If the authorities give a shit enough about the allegedly false religious claim to bother investigating it.  You only think Christianity bothered unbelievers so much in the first century because you still put stock in that romantic fiction called "Acts".  I only quote it because I know you accept it, not because I myself put any stock in it.  The truth is that if Christianity really was the pacifist crap that Jesus taught, it is not likely that the Romans or synagogue officials would give a fuck about what the apostles were preaching, except in extreme cases.  I'm quite aware of Benny Hinn's alleged history of doing miracles before thousands of eyewitnesses, but I don't lose any sleep at night in my positive certainty that all those witnesses are deluded fools.  Some original Christians may have been arrested due to rumors reaching the ears of the authorities, but it is unlikely that the mere preaching of Christ as risen would create half the fervor that Acts and other NT books pretend it did.

Other co-conspirators had better know everything (and every minute detail) offered in this interaction with questioners. Conspirators need to be able to tell each other what they’ve said to authorities, friends and family members.

Not in the case of the NT, whose 4 gospels were authored by various different persons who obviously didn't have perfect knowledge of the way Jesus-traditions were handed down outside their respective localities...or didn't care.  The tendency of some NT story characters to be open to the incredibly bizarre (2nd Cor. 12:1-4) also throws cold water on your efforts to show how conspiracy cannot explain the rise of the resurrection faith in the first-century church.  When they said they saw Jesus, it was always either 1) only his followers who "saw" him, or 2) they "saw" him in ways that forbid characterizing them as "eye"witnesses.

Conspiracies are greatly helped where the false religion at issue is built upon a garbled conglomeration of vision stories.

Significant Relational Connections – When all the coconspirators are connected in deep and meaningful relationships, it’s much harder to convince one of them to “give up” the other. When all the conspirators are family members, for example, this task is nearly impossible. The greater the relational bond between all the conspirators, the greater the possibility of success.

You seem to forget how meaningful it is that the family of Jesus, including James his brother and their mother, were not impressed by anything Jesus did during his earthly ministry, but either refused to believe him, or drew the conclusion that his claims constituted good evidence that Jesus had become authentically insane, John 7:5, Mark 3:21.  If Jesus' miracles during his earthly ministry were false, kiss your religion goodbye. If the miracles Jesus did during his earthly ministry were real, then the persistent disbelief in them by Jesus' own own family fatally impeaches their credibility for anything else they say, including later changing of the mind and starting to view Jesus as authentically divine.

Little or No Pressure – Few suspects confess to the truth until they recognize the jeopardy of failing to do so. Unless pressured to confess, conspirators will continue lying. Pressure does not have to be physical in nature. When suspects fear incarceration or condemnation from their peers, they often respond in an effort to save face or save their own skin. This is multiplied as the number of coconspirators increases. The greater the pressure on co-conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy is to fail.

I don't see any reason to think the original post-resurrection preaching of the apostles would have created any more "pressure" on them than is felt by Benny Hinn when he goes around preaching his lies and gaining converts despite how easy it is to debunk his miracle claims.  If the book of Acts says the apostolic preaching was resisted actively by secular authorities, I find that to be about as believable as stories about today's secular authorities doing the same to religious fanatics today. As long as they aren't doing anything violent or upsetting the social calm, secular authorities typically don't give a shit.

That’s why I now reject the claim that the disciples of Jesus lied about the Resurrection. The number of conspirators required to successfully accomplish the “Christian conspiracy” would have been staggering.

How many conspirators were involved in substantiated Mormon prophet Joe Smith's claim to have possessed real golden plates?  So many that the number was staggering?

The book of Acts tells us that there were as many as 120 eyewitnesses in the upper room following Jesus’s ascension (Acts 1:15),

It also doesn't name James the brother of the Lord among them nor among the 12 named apostles.  Apparently, this brother of Jesus did NOT just suddenly starting believing Jesus rose from the dead merely because a bunch of followers started saying he did.  Worse, we don't know how it was that James became a leader in the Jerusalem faction of the church, but if we credit certain statements of early church fathers, James was voted into his office, by the others.  Having a brother of Jesus be the leader of the Jerusalem faction has more to do with politics and planning and less to do with what exactly James might have personally believed.

and Paul told the believers in Corinth that hundreds of people claimed to see the risen Christ (1 Corinthians).

And you don't have the first fucking clue whether Paul is speaking from first-hand knowledge or merely repeating hearsay, yet you pretend that this unverifiable bit of mystery is as concrete as the FBI testifying to the existence of cars.

It’s unreasonable to believe the disciples conspired to lie about the Resurrection for the following reasons:

There would have been too many disciples involved in the conspiracy.

False, Acts 21:20 says there were "tens of thousands" of Jews who converted to Christ...and v. 21-24 indicate that they believed as true a rumor that Paul abandoned the customs of Moses when teaching outside Jerusalem.  Apparently, lies could indeed deceive thousands in the first century.

The apostles would have been required to protect their conspiratorial lies for too long (over six decades).

Benny Hinn's miracle claims have been deceiving people for far less than 6 decades, and in modern culture where checking on his claims would be somewhat easier than it would have been in the 1st century.

The apostles had little or no effective way to communicate with one another in a quick or thorough manner, given the limited communication technology of the first century and the geographic distance between the disciples.

Hence explaining the theological inconsistencies and contradictions the NT gave to the world.

While there were pairs of family members in the group of apostolic eyewitnesses, most had no familial relationship to each other at all.

James and Mary are sufficiently close to Jesus, being his immediately biological family members, to justify crediting as truthful their skepticism toward Jesus for the entire 3-4 years that he allegedly worked genuinely supernatural miracles during his earthly ministry.  Don't forget about the famine of 44 a.d. which would have motivated many to join any cause regardless of lack of merit in its claims, like welfare mothers who join the Mormon church today.

The apostles were aggressively pressured and persecuted as they were scattered from Italy to India.

Sure is funny how apostle John allegedly escaped all such travail and lived to a ripe old age.   Sorry, but Acts is mostly fiction, and extra biblical traditions about what the apostles experienced in their preaching is a tangled mixture of legends and truth-stretching.

Don’t get me wrong, successful conspiracies occur every day. But if you think you know of one, it’s because it wasn’t successful.

You are stupid, "success" isn't decided by whether the conspiracy is found out by others, but whether the conspiracy continues to fool millions.  Sure, we both know that Mormonism is a false form of Christianity, but what fool would say Mormonism wasn't "successful"?

If you had salivating delusional followers who continually donated their money to you in spite of how easy it is to prove you to be a fraud, would you really give a shit about a few people in the world who claim to have "exposed" you witih "facts"?  Jerald and Sandra Tanner have been doing an excellent job for nearly 50 years of exposing Mormonism for the lie that it is, yet Mormonism continues to grow and grow and grow.

Apparently, people are not truth-robots.  They will continue hanging onto a religious claim even if they are aware there is heavy and virtually unanswerable opposition to it. Its still reasonable to say that the apostles were successful for much the same reason Benny Hinn and Mormonism were.  People want to join a cause that has something positive to say and more so if the cause feeds them, and if it be religious, they are very uncaring toward outsiders who claim to have evidence against the movement.  So you do not support the resurrection preaching as true by noting that opposition from outsiders didn't slow it down.

Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's completely bullshit case for God

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

Cumulative Evidence and the Case for God’s Existence (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 28 Mar 2018 01:17 AM PDT

My cold cases are typically built on circumstantial evidence.

Probably because you have to admit you have no "direct" evidence for you case.  What you don't tell the reader is that cases that are entirely or mostly "circumstantial" dramatically increase the potential for misunderstanding of convicting of an innocent person.  If your god really cared about rescuing me from my hell-bound ways as much as you insist he does, he would more than likely have made his truths more clear than the stupid fortune-cookie bullshit in the bible that has caused Christianity be the ceaselessly splintered religion its always been for 2,000 years.

Cumulative circumstantial cases are incredibly powerful when considered in their totality;

And a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  Here's the image that comes to my mind when i think of Wallace's chain of cumulative arguments:

the more diverse the forms of evidence (and the more abundant their existence), the more reasonable the conclusion. As jurors consider these large collections of evidence implicating a particular suspect, they must ask themselves a simple question: “Could this guy just be incredibly unlucky, or is he the cause of all this evidence because he is truly guilty?”

And the number of false convictions that has been on the rise in America for the last 50 years testifies that the more circumstantial the case, the more likely it will mislead the independent observer.  Wallace, if you were on trial for murder and you were innocent, and the prosecutor's case was entirely circumstantial, how much faith would you have in the ability of circumstantial cases to reveal truth?  FUCK YOU.

The more the evidence repeatedly points to the defendant, the less likely it is merely a matter of coincidence.

Agreed.

The cumulative case for God’s existence is similarly powerful. There are a number of circumstantial lines of evidence pointing to the existence of God, and the diverse, collective nature of this evidence is most reasonably explained by the existence of a Creator.

And when you allege that this creator is "immaterial" or "non-physical", you are positing things equally as unlikely as "dark matter" and other ridiculous unscientific speculations.  There is no evidence whatsoever that there is even any such thing as a "non-physical" thing that has existence independent of a mind.

This month, we’re featuring a free downloadable Bible insert summarizing a brief cumulative case for God’s existence, built on just five lines of circumstantial evidence:

Do you also plan to issue coupons?  Use sexy women to increase reader response to your god-commercials?  Is there a reason why you promote your god using modern secular marketing techniques that the Holy Spirit apparantly didn't need for hundreds of years?  Or do Christians sometimes get so zealous in their stupidity that they can no longer distinguish convenience from god's will? 

(1) The Temporal Nature of the Cosmos (Cosmological)
(a) The Universe began to exist

No, the standard Big Bang ('BB') model has become so ad hoc that it has evolved  and now takes several alternative forms, all of which do not allow the conclusion that the universe is temporal.  There is plenty of scientific opposition to the big bang, and Wallace's biggest problem is that he cannot explain this opposition as arising from unbelievers who are denying scientific reality merely to avoid having to admit the universe was created.  The Institute for Creation Research, where top academic Christians do all they can to falsify the theory of evolution, also say the Big Bang theory is total bullshit:
 
Maybe Wallace will do as fundamentalists typically do, and also accuse this decidedly conservative Christian think tank of being apostates for denying things Wallace thinks point toward God's existence?

Or will Wallace be objective enough to admit that the BB theory that he thinks is so obvious, actually isn't quite as compelling as he would wish?

Finally, Wallace must worry about how Genesis 1 would have been understood by its originally intended readers/hearers, since this is a basic rule of interpretation or hermeneutics.  it's pretty silly to think the pre-literate Hebrew living in the days of Moses would infer from anything in Genesis that the creation involved an enormous explosion and millions of years of cooling.  They would have understood Genesis to be describing god intelligently creating similar to the way a potter makes pots.  No explosions.  So the more Wallace wants the big bang to be true, the more he supports a theory that is contradicted by the very bible he is trying to justify.

(b) Anything that begins to exist must have a cause

yes, but only in the "re-configuring previously existing atoms" sense. The tree you have in your yard obviously didn't exist 100 years ago, but it didn't come into existence "from nothing", it came from a seed, nourished by other stuff already existing in the nearby dirt.

If THAT is the sense of "begins to exist" that you mean, there is no problem.  Unfortunately, if you meant it that way, then you didn't mean it in the "created from nothing" sense, and in that case, your argument ceases to provide support for the "created from nothing" sense that is meant in Genesis 1:1.

But if you meant "begins to exist" to mean "created from nothing", you hang on to the biblical sense you are apparently arguing for, but then you leave the realm of the scientific:  there is no evidence, whatsoever, that anything has ever popped into existence "from nothing", so the "create from nothing" sense that you meant above, is a sense that cannot be supported by any scientific evidence.  There are at least seven different competing theories of quantum mechanics, and only one of them, the Copenhagen School, alleges that quantum particles can appear from nothing and then go back out of existence again.  So the only possible evidence you could cite, is excessively controversial and cannot be confirmed anyway, and is denied by the majority of physicists.  Such a mater is hardly sufficient to corroborate your claim that things can possibly come into existence from nothing.

And since the first law of thermodynamics says energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, there is no reason to think that "matter" itself ever once didn't exist.  Matter spends an awful lot of time being reconfigured into new shapes, but there is no evidence that matter itself ever came into existence.  For this reason alone, it is rational to believe the universe and its matter have simply always existed.  You never get anything new by means of previously non-existing atoms.  You only get something new by taking the atoms that already exist and configuring them into new shapes.  When you burn a log to ash in the fireplace, no matter has disappeared into non-existence, it has simply taken on a changed form.  Since there is no such thing as the absolute annihilation of matter (that's why nuclear explosions are either fusion or fission, they aren't removing anything from the universe), it makes more sense to deny your premise and assert that the universe didn't come into existence, but has simply always existed into the infinite past.

(c) Therefore, the Universe must have a cause

your premises were demonstrably false, so your conclusion doesn't follow.

(d) This cause must be eternal (uncaused), non-spatial, immaterial, atemporal, and personal (having the ability to willfully cause the beginning of the universe)

This is what gives rise to the atheist argument from the incoherence of religious language.  In light of there being no scientific evidence for a god, your need to describe your god in terms that defy all attempts at confirmation (what the fuck does "non-spatial, immaterial" mean?), makes it more likely you need to do that because your god is not real by rather the result of a complex reality-defying fairy tale.It doesn't matter if non-physical gods exists, that is YOUR burden and you have failed it, so you have failed to intellectually obligate anybody to admit your position is more reasonable than atheism.  Start defining your god as a physical being, and many of these justified criticisms disappear.  Continue insisting your god lives in the 12th dimension, and continue being told that your imperfect inconsistent mind is the reason your idea of god has the same attributes.

(e) The cause fits the description we typically assign to God

(2) The Appearance of Design (Teleological)
(a) Human artifacts (like watches) are products of intelligent design
(b) Many aspects and elements of our universe resemble human artifacts
(c) Like effects typically have like causes
(d) Therefore, it is highly probable the appearance of design in the Universe is simply the reflection of an intelligent designer

 if the appearance of specified complexity implies intelligent design, then because the creator has to possess at least as much complexity as the thing created, "god" must also possess specified complexity, and therefore, God's own complexity argues for his being intelligently designed no less than does the 'amazing complexity' of the red blood cell.  I will give up atheism if you give up biblical monotheism.  Deal?

(d) Given the complexity and expansive nature of the Universe, this designer must be incredibly intelligent and powerful (God)

he also must be incredibly barbaric, since the existence of vegetarian animals and insects makes perfectly clear that God doesn't "need" to bring meat-eating or carnivorous life forms into existence, who by nature make other life forms miserable by hunting them.  And you cannot say some of the vegetarian animals in the Garden of Eden became carnivorous after Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, because sin would thus be a degrading effect on the animal's DNA, while the DNA responsible for the carnivorous attributes of certain animals is something you would normally ascribe to intelligent design.  If lions originally had molars, the introducing of sin into the world would not and could not cause those molars to evolve into meat-tearing fangs.  So you cannot use "sin" to justify distancing your god from the barbarity in the carnivore animals.  You are required by your own logic to say that God wanted by intentional design for those animals to tear each other apart. THAT is one reason we just laugh in your face when you insist your God is "loving".  Your own intelligent design argument cannot account for the existence of carnivorous animals, without binding you to the proposition that your god gets a thrill out of watching creatures suffer horrific pain and misery.  It's nice to know your God is a drunk college frat boy who endures carpel tunnel from clicking too much on liveleak.

(3) The Existence of Objective Moral Truth (Axiological)
(a) There is an objective (transcendent) moral law

You are crazy, that's a conclusion that you are mischaracterizing as a premise.  If you think there is some objective moral law that transcends the human mind, that's YOUR burden to show.  You don't.  You fail.

(b) Every law has a law giver

 Correct.

(c) Therefore, there is an objective (transcendent) moral law giver

That doesn't follow logically.  You have not demonstrated that any action is "good" solely for reasons that transcend the human mind.  Come up with a hypothetical act of a man and then demonstrate why its goodness or badness MUST derive from something deeper than human opinion.  You aren't gonna do it. There are good purely naturalistic reasons to explain why most civilized adults think pedophilia and murder are immoral, so you cannot even pretend that only God can explain why there is human consensus on certain moral acts.   If we can explain an insect's instinct to defend its young without having to say it was made in the image of god, we can also explain a human being's instinct to defend its young without having to say it was made in the image of God.  

(d) The best explanation for this objective (transcendent) law giver is God

The best explanation for as yes unproven "objective" morals is a being that cannot be defined except by special words that defy all attempts at empirical confirmation. Yet you talk about God's existence as if it was equally as obvious as the existence of trees. Nice going.

By the way "objective" means "true for reasons independent of the human mind". So if you declare any human act to be "objectively" immoral (i.e., murder, rape), then you rightfully shoulder the burden to provide the reason, which has no basis in the human mind, for why that act is objectively immoral.  You aren't going to do it.  If you think murder is objectively immoral, you need to show it so without appeal to what any human being thinks, or what any human being has ever said.  That's the consequences to you when you say the immorality of murder is for reasons that transcend human opinion.  Good luck.

(4) The Existence of Absolute Laws of Logic (Transcendent)
(a) The laws of logic exist

i. The laws of logic are conceptual laws

And "conceptual" only makes sense by presupposing the physicality of the mind.  Otherwise you are talking about concepts in an "immaterial mind", and there you are again, back in fairy tale town.

ii. The laws of logic are transcendent

no, the laws of logic operate the way they do solely because of the way we humans choose to define our words.  The only reason "married bachelor" is a logical contradiction is because we have defined "bachelor" as "not married".

Furthermore, you ignore the fact that there are axioms in reasoning.  Axioms are the absolute first steps in reasoning, so that asking why they function the way they do, is irrational.  If it is the VERY FIRST STEP in reasoning itself, then there will not be a "reason" why that first step or axiom operates the way it does.

Moreover, your argument is using logic to prove logic, which constitutes the fallacy of circular reasoning.  When you ask why A can never be non-A, you are attacking reasoning itself.  If you then use reasoning to explain the reasoning, you are again arguing in a circle or begging the question.  So it would appear that reasoning itself is not subject to reason.  There really is that very first absolute beginning to the reasoning process, you cannot just explain it into an infinite regress.  You know that book is on the table because you can see it.  You know your eyes aren't deceiving you because the book can also be confirmed to be there by touch, taste, smell, and hearing it fall onto the table.  The question "yeah, but how do you know that your 5 physical senses aren't deceiving you" must be answered "I don't".

I think this is where the people so desperate to prove god, therefore suddenly start positing the existence of ESP, the sixth sense, to get away from the above-cited conclusions that otherwise flow from common sense. What's next?  Bigfoot can switch dimensions and that's why we can never get a clear photo of him?

iii. The laws of logic pre-existed humans

Impossible, the laws of logic arise from the way humans define their words.  If we defined "bachlor" as married for less than one year", then "married bachelor" would no longer be a necessary contradiction.

(b) All conceptual laws reflect the mind of a law giver

Not if the law-giver is described in unfalsifiable and incoherent ways, such as "non-physical".   A magic fairy can explain why your car keys turned up missing, but the epistemological problems in the whole concept of "magic fairy" make it reasonable to discard that hypothesis and favor something that coheres with other demonstrated realities.

(c) The best and most reasonable explanation for the kind of mind necessary for the existence of the transcendent, objective, conceptual laws of logic is a transcendent, objective, eternal Being (God)

 If God's logic necessarily permeates the universe, sure is funny that his alleged morals don't.  And Christians who are 5-Point Calvinists don't believe your dogshit "god gave us freewill" excuse, so let God's likeminded ones get their act together before they insist that spiritually dead people should find the splintered house of Christianity to be the last bit compelling.

(5) The Unique Nature of Our World and Universe (Anthropic)
(a) Our universe appears uniquely designed so:

i. Life can exist

Life forms that cause horrific misery to others also exist, they are called carnivores.  So if we keep heading in the direction you wish to go, god's responsibility for "life" constitutes god's responsibility for creating carnivrores, i.e., God intended for certain animals to cause horrific misery to others, their carnivore nature wasn't merely from the degrading effect of "sin", as carnivores possess all those attributes of life you say are intentionally designed by an intelligent mind, no less than the vegetarian animals do.

ii. This same life can examine the universe

(b) This unique design cannot be the result of random chance or unguided probabilities

Why?

(c) There is, therefore, a God who designed the universe to support human life and reveal His existence as creator of the Cosmos

You haven't yet defined "god" in a coherent way, so until that day, there's good reason to view 'god' as the least probable of the possible explanations for life.  

Third lawsuit against James Patrick Holding now inevitable

 See UPDATE: November 10, 2018, below:  Holding has now disabled comments to those videos where he defames me, and he has also dissolved his second corporation "Apologetics Afield".
------------------

Here is the email I recently sent to Mr. Holding, having previously experienced his "the-evidence-you-want-is-on-my-computer-which-froze-so-I-threw-it-away" bullshit excuse in the prior lawsuits. I don't post this to boast, but only because there is a possibility that he might have set a filter to send my emails directly to the trash (given that he had one of his techies configure his website so that when accessed from my ISP, the only thing that shows up on my computer screen is unreadable raw html.

We all know that Holding is well aware of this blog, so by cross-posting that email here, I make it even more difficult for him to argue in the future that he never got a message asking him to preserve evidence.  Surely one of his stupid minions will carp about this post to him, and there you go, now he's accountable.

 That's right, homosexual Holding, start a gofundme page, and like last time, don't worry about the possibility of your supporters worrying whether the charges might actually be true (i.e., that you deserve to suffer as guilty).  We know from prior experience that they will come to your rescue even if you really are guilty as charged, amen? 


-------------------begin email

request to preserve evidence, you will be sued
Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com>
2:58 PM (0 minutes ago)
to TektonSlam (jphold@att.net)

Mr. Holding,

This is ----------, the man who sued you twice in the past for libel.

I am going to be suing you in the near future for libelous comments you posted about me to others through the internet between 2017 and the present. ---- v. Apologetics Afield, Inc, Florida Middle District. (i.e., the named Defendant will not be you but your non-profit organization, so under binding case law, you cannot represent yourself pro se, you either hire a lawyer, or you don't participate in the litigation).

And since your libels of me were intentional and false, I'm quite certain your libel-insurance contract has a disclaimer clause that says where your libels were intentional as opposed to being merely mistaken, the insurance carrier will not pay your legal expenses. Those thousands in lawyer fees will come straight out of your own pocket (excuse me, sorry, out of the pockets of people who are not guilty of any wrongdoing beyond being stupid enough to pay unnecessary bills you create with your libelous mouth). But we already know that your salivating customers don't really give a fuck whether the libel charges are true, or whether you are actually guilty, they just come running to your rescue by knee-jerk reflex, thinking rescue is always best, and like the stupid juvenile delinquents they are, never dream for one second that actually letting you suffer the consequences of your own illegal actions is also one of the ways the bible god works.

You are requested to preserve any and all communications you've had with third parties wherein I was a subject of discussion whether in whole or in part, regardless of whether i was designated therein directly, indirectly by my real name, internet name or any pseudonym made up by them, myself, you, or anybody else.

You are also requested to preserve the original form of any file you ever sent to anybody since 2016, or file that you didn't actually send to anybody since 2016, wherein I was the subject of the discussion whether in whole or in part, including but not limited to the files you promised to send others allegedly documenting evidence you think shows that am dishonest, or evidence that others have accused me of any type of dishonest conduct, including but not limited to the "free ebook" you promised to your paying customers at timecode 2:52 in the video you posted to YouTube located at the following address:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaTC2fR2roo

here's a screenshot in case God allows Satan to mess up the address so as to give you a plausible reason to accidentally "lose" that evidence:

You are also requested to preserve any physical drives/computers/devices that you used to communicate about me with others, or which you used to facilitate communications about me with others. Normally I wouldn't make this request, but then you have a history in court of conveniently losing evidence, including entire computers, when you are afraid your illegal bullshit is going to be publicly exposed, so it only makes sense to talk in lawyer-speak to make sure your stupid conniving cocksucking ass doesn't lie his way out of the truth for a third time. FUCK YOU.

By the way, I'm no longer mystified as to why Christian Research Institute ignored my prior emails to them exposing your biblical disqualification to hold any type of teaching office whatsoever. Hank's tendency to favor such hypocritical Christian miscreants became publicly exposed years ago in the scandal involving Paul Young,

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.religion.christian/pdr5Iwdb6A4/1yH0e3VyjAMJ

https://everyman2.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/former-cri-employee-attacks-my-book/

....and many former CRI employees including CRI's former senior researcher Robert Bowman, Jr. continue to presently opine that Hank had a temper and other problems resolving conflicts and was thus disqualified biblically to be any kind of leader for a Christian organization like CRI, and that he was a nasty mean son of a bitch to anybody who disagreed with anything he had to say...exactly like you.

On the contrary, it now makes perfect sense why a nasty mean son of a bitch would get rid of good Christian people and want another nasty mean son of a bitch to write articles for him. Apparently I had given Hank more moral credit than he deserved. When you write articles for CRI, you are right at home.

Nothing could give greater justification for skeptics to construe Christian apologetics as inherently deceitful, than Hanks' having vigorously argued with other apologists for the truth of traditional protestant evangelicalism for more than 20 years...only to find out several months ago that actually, Eastern Orthodoxy is the right form of Christianity.

If you can keep missing the Christian truth despite taking 20 years to study and defend one version of it with the best apologists Christianity has to offer, as Hank thinks he did for the last 20 years and more, sounds to me like the whole business of trying to decide which ancient religion was the right one is riddled with fatal ambiguities and falsities and is thus a ridiculous exercise in futility.

Which thus means any apologetics ministry, including yours, is every bit the dogshit enterprise I've been calling it for years.

You will learn to control your libelous mouth, or your customers can look forward to their hard earned money being allocated over from helping you purchase your triple cheeseburger midnight snacks in the name of Jesus, to paying modern pharisees thousands of dollars to help you come up with ways to avoid having to answer charges on the merits, when actually just being forthrightly honest about the facts is typically cheaper. FUCK YOU.

If you like it when I make huge dents in your credibility and your "ministry", just keep telling yourself that Acts 5:29 trumps modern America's prohibitions on libel. Maybe god has a greater purpose in forcing you to take Christian money and infuse it into lawyerland, where they care about the truth of Jesus about as much as they care about overcharging wealthy clients. FUCK YOU.

Sincerely,
--------------(end of email)

 Question for Holding's paying customers:

Which biblical character is more likely to encourage and support the efforts of lawyers who try to think up ways to enable their clients to avoid having to answer accusations of immorality on the merits?

Jesus, or the devil?

Provide the biblical evidence you believe supports your answer.  

UPDATE: November 10, 2018
 Here's the email I recently sent to James Patrick Holding.  He has disabled the comments to his YouTube videos, including those defamatory videos about me where he greedily promised his viewers a free ebook allegedly documenting negative opinions about me from other people, and he has now formally dissolved his second corporation "Apologetics Afield":

---------beginquote

 On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 12:52 PM Barry Jones <barryjoneswhat@gmail.com> wrote:

     Mr. Holding,    

    This is Christian Doscher.  My third lawsuit against Apologetics Afield ('AA') is going forward, you should be getting it from a federal marshal around X-mas.    

    I've noticed today that you disabled all comments for your videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/tektontv/videos, including the videos where you libeled me or were responding to something I did or said.

    For all videos you've ever posted to YouTube between 2013 and the present,  in which you were directly or indirectly responding to anything I've ever said or done, preserve all comments that anybody ever posted to such videos.  I also sent you an email many months ago asking you to preserve any such evidence, and you've clearly known for the last year about my own blog threatening such third lawsuit, at https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/03/third-lawsuit-against-james-patrick.html    

    I also commented many months ago at one of your videos with a similar request that you preserve all such evidence.    

    If you claim that you "lost" all those comments after you disabled the commentary-option, then your failure to backup those comments first, will be argued in court to be spoiliation of evidence.  You are advised to request from YouTube or Google all such comments if you conveniently "lost" them.    

    If you kept a backup copy of those comments, then good for you, as they will be needed at trial.    

    This email is simply a continuing reminder and request that you continue to preserve ANY and ALL of your verbal and written words wherein you directly or indirectly mention me, any of my online aliases, or anything I've ever done, or anything you suppose I've ever said, written or done.

    This request refers to any and all of your communications to or from any third parties, between July 2014 and July 2019, wherein I was at least one of the subjects of discussion, whether directly or indirectly.  The request to preserve evidence is not limited to just comments on YouTube videos.    

    I also noticed that you've now closed down AA:    

    "As some of you are aware, I formally closed down Tekton as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2016;  I have now also closed down Apologetics Afield the same way."    

    Perhaps this is a misinterpretation on my part, but your disabling comments to your YouTube videos, as well as your having voluntarily dissolved your two corporations, tells me that you are genuinely frightened of being sued again...so I'd like to offer you a chance to avoid this third lawsuit.

    The condition of settlement would be $5,000 to me (a tiny fraction of what I'll be suing you for), along with your posting an article to tektonics.org, theologyweb.com, deeperwatersapologetics.com, and equip.org, specifying that

    a) fear that your "internet predator alert" on me was genuinely libelous was at least one of the motives you had in removing it from your website.

    b) while not all of your false accusations against me were intentional, some of them were.

    c) you apologize for having libeled me, and you agree that some of your negative speech about me in the past constituted the "slander" that is the sin prohibited in Ps. 15:3,     31:13, 50:20, Prov. 10:18, 30:10, Isa. 32:7, Mk. 7:22, Eph. 4:31, Col. 3:8 and 1 Pet. 2:1, 12.

    d) you agree not to libel, defame or slander me ever again in the future.  You further agree to never libel, slander or defame anybody else every again as well.

    e) you agree with me that Christians who engage in the level of slander that you have committed in the past, clearly fail the qualification-criteria for teachers found in 1st Timothy 3 and 2nd Timothy 2:24-26.

    f) you agree with me that honest Christians who are sued in modern America, would not attempt to avoid answering the charges on the merits, but would answer fully and honestly any and all questions relevant to the charges against them.

    g) you got excitement and thrill out of slandering me on the internet, and you now recognize that this was due to your predisposition to act like a juvenile delinquent when facing criticism. 

    ....and other conditions I'll be adding.

    The settlement would not be legally valid until I formally approve of the wording of the above-described article.  If you think $5,000 makes more sense than paying $175,000, I'll be sending you the draft.

    And that article would be required to be permanent.  You agree to maintain tektonics.org as an active website, and to host said article there consistently,  for at least the next 15 years, and further agree to consistently maintain the above-described settlement draft.

    If you don't wish to settle, then start looking for an attorney.  Once again, I'm not suing you personally, I'm suing "Apologetics Afield".

    And once again, because your most recent libels of me (at least the ones I was able to find) were CLEARLY false, CLEARLY intentionally libelous and CLEARLY charging me with infamous crimes (i.e., libel per se), I have good reason to suppose that whatever libel-insurance carrier you have, if any, will be invoking the clause in their contract with you saying that they are not obligated to cover your legal fees if they decide that the libels you are charged with, were intentionally false or were committed with reckless indifference to the truth.  And as you know, your home-state, Florida, allows significant punitive damages even upon a jury finding of actual damages being minimal:

    "The singular protection afforded by Florida law to personal reputation in actions for defamations per se is

    further seen by the fact that punitive damages may be the primary relief in a cause of action for defamation per se."

    Lawnwood Med. Ctr., Inc. v. Sadow, 43 So. 3d 710, 727 (Fla. 4th DCA 2010)

     The better part of wisdom probably tells your insurance company that juries don't like asshole Christian apologists who get a juvenile-delinquent type of thrill out of libeling mentally disabled people.  I'm not mentally disabled, of course,  but the point is, YOU THOUGHT I WAS AT THE TIME YOU COMMITTED THE LIBELS.

    I have been able to obtain funding to actually fly to Florida to conduct a videotaped deposition of you with court reporter present, all at my expense.  I have my own reasons for not wishing to pursue this litigation.

    I also suggest that you have some heart to heart talks with Habermas and Licona; they have more credibility in Christian apologetics than you, they are legitimately credentialed Christian scholars who ceaselessly push the apologetics bit, yet they strongly disagree with your theory that talking shit to your critics is good, moral and biblical.

    So, are you ever going to admit you've ever done anything immoral or unbiblical regarding me since 2007?  Or does your genetic code prevent you from expressing remorse?

    Happy Holidays.

    Sincerely,

    Christian Doscher

-------endquote

 For those of you who are wondering, yes, rebuking Holding for his prior sins IS my idea of making a settlement offer sound more attractive.  I won't exactly be pissing myself with disappointment if Holding feels offended and declines the offer.  I can't really say at this point what I desire more, vindication by settlement or vindication in court.

 For the download link to the lawsuit I previously filed against Holding in a Florida federal court, see here.

 Since Holding likely banned my email address, I made a further effort to notify him of this request to preserve evidence, by posting to https://www.youtube.com/user/tektontv/discussion as follows:
---beginquote

Mr. Holding,

This is Christian Doscher, I sent you an email requesting that you preserve evidence for the third lawsuit, the complaint for which you'll receive around Christmas.

If you didn't get that email, I posted it at my blog:
https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/03/third-lawsuit-against-james-patrick.html

The email in question is at the last part of that article.

I would like to think that your disabling comments on your YouTube videos and your administrative dissolution of Apologetics Afield Corporation implies that you are starting to feel genuine remorse for your mostly libelous behavior toward me in the past.

Please confirm whether my impression is true or false. If false, get ready for legal war. And yes, I'll be flying to Florida to take a full videotaped deposition of you with court reporter present, at my expense, should you decline my settlement offer.

 ------endquote