Cold Case Christianity: Wallace's shockingly unpersuasive case for objective morals

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

Cold Case Christianity: 

God Didn’t Create Moral Law, It’s Simply a Reflection of His Character

Posted: 18 Jul 2018 01:52 AM PDT

Moral truths are malleable and subjective if they aren’t grounded in a transcendent source (such as God).

That's highly misleading.  Read Isaiah 13:16-17 and you'll find out that God sometimes causes men to rape women, forcing you to conclude either that God's own morals are malleable, or that rape can be good in certain circumstances.  In the below-quoted section from Isaiah 13, God is the alleged speaker:

 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children. (Isa. 13:16-18 NAU)

Go ahead:  read the whole chapter, then come back here and tell me who the speaker was in v. 16-17.  Wallace continues:

I’m not the only person to realize this; even honest atheists recognize the inconsistency of embracing objective moral truths while simultaneously rejecting the one reasonable source for such truths. In a recent exchange with an atheist who is frustrated with his peers, I received the following email:

“It’s the rare atheist who will honestly admit what their world view would wreak, taken to its logical conclusion. To know that you are simply an accidental conglomeration of chemicals at the same time that such a thing as morals even exist is oxymoronic statement and yet I hear it all the time from fellow atheists.  …Be consistent. Acknowledge that the Universe is an uncaused accident, ethics is an illusion, and act accordingly. Or acknowledge the possibility of another possibility.  Stop trying to have it both ways.  Can you be an ethical atheist?  Yes.  But you won’t be a logical one.”

 Fuck you, Wallace.  That "atheist" was either Frank Turek, or one of his dishonest followers pretending to be an atheist.  Or it was just you, dishonestly crediting your faulty viewpint to a non-existent atheist.

Only a stupid Christian apologist would say that morals cannot exist in a godless universe.  For life forms to survive, they need to act upon value judgments, whether to fight or flee, whether to attack or back off, etc, etc. You don't think insects are created in God's image, yet you are quite aware that they are capable of distinguishing, imperfectly, situations of danger from situations of benefit, and to make decisions as to whether to act or not act in given situations.

The truth is that "morals" are simply the value judgments that most creatures make in their environment. 

And since "morals" include value judgments most people would think are immoral, such as rape, it is clear that morals, being a normative part of mammalian life, obviously exist, since living human beings who survive from day to day, obviously exist. 

Whether atheists can reasonably view their own subjective morals as "better" than other atheist morals, is a different question.  But yes, it's possible, and it happens every day.  The wrongness of rape is felt by most people (most of the world is civilized) and has nothing to do with "god", but has everything to do with our subjective value judgments about respecting boundaries, allowing women to have free choice, and our collective decision to govern ourselves by the laws set down by our representatives and legislators.  Wallace, you cannot really say you'd think adult men marrying pre-adolescent girls is "immoral" if you had been born and raised in a 16th century Yemeni family.

Your bible is full of morals set down by your 'god' that most Christians today would cringe at, such as the need to burn to death the girl who, while still living in her fathers house, acts as a prostitute, Leviticus 21:9.  Gee, why didn't god put that law into our hearts?  Did he just decide by flipping a coin? Casting lots?

That’s an amazingly honest statement from an atheistic perspective.

 No, it is unsurprisingly dishonest...or else it comes from a rather stupid atheist. There is no requirement that ethics be absolute or objective in order to be "ethics".  It is a moral decision whether a Christian man wishes to give in to his Christian wife's request to have sex.  But what fool would pretend that this is governed by an objective or absolute standard?  It doesn't matter if they have a biblical duty toward each other regarding sex, sometimes, one of them just isn't in the mood, and nothing but the passing of time can change this. 

Will you say their sexual obligation toward one another under 1st Corinthians 7:3-4 requires that the man attempt sexual intercourse at the request of his wife, even if he cannot get an erection?  Well then, unless you stupidly answer that question "yes", then you admit that this sexual situation is a) implicating ethical and moral concerns, yet b) is not governed by any absolute or objective standard.  So even in that pretend fantasy world of bible inerrancy and Christian marriage, the fact that some ultimately subjective morals exist, is clear.

The writer seems to be struggling with the same realizations I recognized as I journeyed from atheism to theism:

Objective moral truths are self-evident

 You mean like how shockingly stupid it is to burn a girl to death for prostitution (Leviticus 21:9)?  Why do modern people cringe at this, Wallace?  Because God put his laws into their hearts?  or because they were born and raised in cultures far more liberal than the one Moses lived in?

Moral truths are not encoded in our DNA

But the need to survive IS encoded in the DNA, that's why a person cannot avoid feeling hungry, thirsty, and wanted by the other members of their social group, with variations for those afflicted with more herd-metality, and for those more afflicted with a sociopathic disorder.  So the instinctive need to survive, and being born into this modern civilized world, results in the obvious: that person growing up to exhibit certain moral patterns and preferences.  This fully explains why people have "morals", no need to invoke a moral law-giver.  When I say Hitler was immoral, I only mean according to my subjective judgment.  Neither Turek nor you can say for sure whether or not you'd have become a Nazi had you been born in 1910 in Germany.  The culture really does have a very powerful impact on the morals one has.

Moral truths are not simply a matter of cultural agreement

Then our horror at the thought of burning a girl to death for prostitution (i.e., our horror at Leviticus 21:9) doesn't stem from the culture we were born and raised in.  Where then, did our disdain for this biblical moral ultimately come from?  The same god who ordered this grisly form of death?

Moral truths are not simply driven by “human flourishing”

Then blame your stupid god for making the human sex drive so strong, something he obviously didn't need to do to keep their freewill intact.  God could just magically afflict all post-adolescent boys with low sex drive and erectile dysfunction, to the same degree that many men over the age of 60 are afflicted with, whom you think have just as much freewill as teen boys, and the world be one hell of a lot less sinful that it currently is.  

Moral truths are not dictated by a common concern for our species

On the contrary "moral truths" are ultimately relative.  Whether the single guy living alone should or shouldn't invite his girlfriend over for a fling is up to nobody but himself and his girlfriend and whoever they choose to involve in the matter.

There is a difference between moral utility and moral creation

So what?

Theism provides, at the very least, sufficient “grounding” for the objective moral laws we willingly affirm with our words (or unwillingly reveal with our lives). I’ve encountered a number of skeptics who object to such a claim, however. One objection is named after one of Plato’s dialogues (the Euthyphro). Skeptics who hold this objection make the following claim: If God is the source of morality and decides what is “right” or “wrong,” the relationship between God and moral truth can be described in one of only two ways, and both of these possibilities are problematic:

An act is wrong because God condemns the act

If this is the case, morality is largely an arbitrary decision in the mind of God. In such a world, torturing babies for fun is not objectively wrong, but merely a decision God makes (when He could easily have decided otherwise). Would we be willing to accept baby torturing as morally virtuous if God had proclaimed it differently? Is morality “elastic” and merely an arbitrary decision? If your theology allows for a view of God in which He changes His mind (and revelation) given current conditions (like the God of Mormonism who altered His view of polygamy), how do we know if something is truly wrong or simply currently wrong?

God condemns an act because the act is wrong

One way to avoid such a capricious view of moral law is to argue moral truth is simply recognized and affirmed by God. This also problematic, however, because it suggests moral truth precedes (and even supersedes) God. In this view, God is not the necessary, objective source of moral truth, but is instead incidental to this truth (much like you and I). Why should we consider what God says at all if this is the case? If moral truth is the one true eternal reality, doesn’t it trump God?

If these are the only two ways to explain the relationship between God and morality, theists seem no better able to account for the objective nature of moral truth than atheists. There is however, a third alternative:

Moral truth is a reflection of God’s nature

 The only problem being that Christians themselves disagree about morals, everything from whether pregnancy by rape is a justification for abortion, to death with dignity, to whether Christians should involve themselves in worldly politics, to the death penalty, etc, etc.  Your belief that moral truths reflect God's nature does no practical real-world good for anybody, due to the pool of moral contradiction Christianity sinks itself deeper into with each passing decade. 

For example, it hardly matters whether God thinks abortion is absolutely prohibited for all situations.  That "truth" is not going to prevent the Christians who disagree with it, from exercising their common sense and deciding that a greater good can be done by allowing abortion for cases of rape, threat to the mother's life, and incest.

Philosophizing about how objective moral truths spring from God's nature, doesn't do jack shit toward getting those authentically born again Christians to become any less divided on morals than they are.  You may as well try to mend church splits by flying kites, you'd have better chances of success.

From a Christian worldview, God doesn’t simply tell us what is righteous, He is righteous.

 All you are doing now is bellowing.  Your God caused men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16-17.  To continue insisting God is righteous, while reading what God says about himself in Isaiah 13, is to blindly adhere to a pie-in-the-sky doctrine more than to anchor oneself to reality. 

And you cannot screw this up by pretending it is legitimate at this point to ask me, an atheist, why I am morally objecting to the rapes caused by the bible god.  YOU believe that God always condemns rape and YOU believe God is the reason that rape is objectively or absolutely immoral, so God's causing rape in Isaiah 13:16-17, constitutes a logical contradiction in God's morality (i.e., rape is absolutely wrong at all times for all people....but but but...wait...when God causes rape, then suddenly, its morally good), a problem of logical inconsistency that exists independent of my own moral opinions.  If your god is as against rape as you think he is, his nature would never allow him to cause it.

Goodness and righteousness are attributes of his innate character.

 Then because God cannot do anything evil, and all his actions are infinitely good by necessity, his action of causing men to rape women in Isaiah 13, supra, was good.

This is the part where you display to the world your overpowering mental abilities by trifling that God is morally good to "cause" rape, but the men whom he causes to commit rape, are still immoral for fulfilling his will.  Read Ezekiel 38:4 ff before you pop off about how God respects human freewill.  God would hardly illustrate his soverignty over man's freewill with the metaphor of "hooks in your jaws", as he does in Ezekiel 38:4 ff, if god respected freewill to the extreme degree that you and Turek think he does.  Under your theology, Ezekiel's choice of metaphor constitutes heresy, because it makes it appear that God "forces" people to sin, then blames them after they do what he wants them to do.

While it’s tempting to think there isn’t anything God couldn’t do, this is not the case. God cannot act or command outside of his character.

Which is a totally useless philosophical nothing, since God allows every kind of evil to happen to his alleged "loved" ones, so that god's alleged inability to act contrary to his character provides no actual real-world sense of security for anybody ever.  Your god might distract the arsonist from setting fire to your home.  But then again, he also might not tell you the babysitter is raping your daughter, and will allow it to continue until you discover it when you get home an hour later.  God's alleged inability to contradict his nature constitutes nothing but sophistry and illusion.

He is innately logical and moral; it is impossible for Him to create square circles or married bachelors, just as it is impossible for Him to sin.

But since furniture movers are constantly making boxes too big for them to lift, and since nothing in the bible says overfilling a box is sinful, then doing this is neither sinful nor logically impossible.  Therefore there is nothing illogical or immoral in challenging God to make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it.   Maybe someday you'll discover that the purpose of the question is to show the illogical nature of omnipotence.    as

And the idea that God cannot sin, is equally useless babble:  God's inability to contradict his own nature is nothing more special than a man's inability to contradict his own nature.  So stop pretending that God's inability to sin is some overawing thing, it's about as wonderful as a man being unable to give birth.

Objective moral truths are simply a reflection of God’s eternal being.

 But you haven't demonstrated that any moral act is objectively bad.  How about you do something no other Christian philosopher has ever done, and quit beating around the bush and identify the moral yardstick you are using when you say it is objectively immoral to torture babies to death solely for entertainment?

Or is your argument for this so weak that it cannot convince anybody except those who already accept it as true?

They are not rules or laws God has created (and could therefore alter recklessly), but are instead immutable, dependable qualities of his nature reflected in our universe.

So name one already.  Do you say adultery is objectively immoral?  If so, why?  Because the bible tells you so?  Some other reason?  If you are going to do what Frank Turek does, and wiggle away from the yucky parts of the Mosaic law by pretending it was intended only for ancient Israel, how do you know that some parts of it continue to apply outside that cultural context?  You seriously think you'll sound convincing to an atheist by quoting the apostle Paul? 

Or maybe I have an objective moral duty to get my Ph.d in Christian reconstructionism and dispensationalism before I could be morally justified to render a decision about these matters?

They exist because God exists (not because God created them or recognized them later).

 But part of God's nature also tells the filthy people in the last days to continue being filthy, which amounts to telling child molesters to keep on molesting:

 11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy." (Rev. 22:11 NAU)

Gee, Wallace....are we living in the "last days", or did you suddenly discover that you were "left behind"? Infinite moral goodness doesn't sound like it leaves any logically possible room to encourage sinners in any context to continue in their moral filth.

The Bible describes God as omnipotent and capable of doing anything he sets out to do.

Only by trial and error, after he makes a few decisions that he later regrets. Genesis 6:6-7.  Since you must justify your interpretation by the grammar, context and genre, there's plenty here to indicate this passage is literal, and there is nothing here to suggest the passage is merely "anthropomorphic".  And since the bible isn't the inerrant word of God anyway, your knee-jerk insistence that passages like these are mere anthropomorphisms, is not justified.  You never insist that we cannot know what any other author meant with his words until we compare them to everything else he ever said, so when you pretend that we cannot be sure we understand Genesis 6:6 correctly until we harmonize it with everything else in the bible, that's a case of special pleading, which proceeds from a belief in biblical inerrancy, a doctrine most Christian scholars reject, a doctrine that those Christian scholars who accept it cannot even agree on.  So when I toss your "anthropomorphism" interpretation of that passage out the window, I have objective grounds for doing so.  The passage continues to loom against your childish belief that God is "perfect".  Just ask any open-theist.  Those Christians have been challenging classical theism for decades.

God’s choices, however, are always consistent with His moral and logical nature; He never sets out to do something contrary to who He is as God.

 Which is useless sophistry again, since again, in Isaiah 13, God causes men to rape women and beat children to death.  You would hardly take comfort in any 'friend' whom you knew might one day help you change a flat tire, and the next day set your house on fire.  No blind presumption that this friend is always good, could possibly give you any real-world sense of security in fellowshipping with him.  Nothing could be a greater waste of time than Theistic Philosophy.  You may as well go around pushing the idea that the Bermuda Triangle is a gateway to another dimension, it would have about as much real-world relevance to a person's sense of fulfillment and security in life, as any discussion about God's mysterious ways.

Theism is still the most reasonable explanation for the objective moral truths all of us either affirm or reflect with our lives.

 Not in light of all those conservative Christians who disagree on matters of abortion, death pentalty, minimum age for sex/marriage, whether Christians should become involved in non-Christian politics, etc, etc. 

But under your logic, at least one side in those contradictory moral disputes must be wrong, yet we'd both cordially assume both parties in each disagreement are sincerely believing that God is working through them. How can your pushing the moral argument against atheism have any real-world significance?

When skeptics argue against a transcendent God, yet acknowledge transcendent moral truths, they are acting inconsistently, given their worldview.

 That's true.  Consistent atheism doesn't say morals don't exist, they obviously do exist.  Consistent atheism says all morals are ultimately relative to culture and situation.

They are borrowing from theism as they make a case against it.

 And this sounds so much like Frank Turek's book title "Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case" that it virtually confirms that the "atheist" you "quoted" at the beginning of this article was just Turek himself or one of his cronies pretending to be an atheist. 

I think this is the part where you trifle that God will say dishonesty is good in the limited context of the internet and the need to sell Jesus for tax-free profit.  And you'd have ample biblical support for the proposition that God authorizies dishonesty the way a mob boss authorizes murder:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Matthew Flannagan says he isn't banning me, but his website still is, so I reply to him here

 See update below, I'm trying to make sure Matthew either fixes the spam problem and allows me access again for this allegedly unintentional banning, or else I need to show that Matt suspiciously shows no intention of fixing a ban that just happens to allow him to duck and dodge the one question he has proven before that he cannot or will not answer.


After trying several times to post a reply to Matt's blog where I'm attacking his critique of moral relativism, suddenly, the website blocked me, alleging that I had "spammed" it too much.

Since I also couldn't even post the reply using Tor and inputting a different email address, I suspect Flannagan is telling the truth and his website's spam-blocker has some type of bug that is causing this.

I emailed dr. Flannagan, and he denied banning me, but he also didn't say he'd be looking into why I was banned.

I emailed Flannagan a second time, just today, with the link to my blog, so that he could post here until his own website problems are fixed, or until he tells me what different thing I need to do to resume my successful posting at his own blog.

So for those who were watching us debate, here's the latest, and my reply follows:

=================== 

Matt,

 You said:

 “It seems to me there are objective facts which determine whether a given bedtime is correct or incorrect. To see this, imagine the parent demanded that the 7-year-old was not to go to bed till 5 am on a school night and get up for school at 7am. This would obviously not be a correct judgement about when the child should go to bed. This is because such a bedtime would harm the child and parents have a duty to not harm the child.”

What moral standard are you appealing to, to justify saying parents have a duty not to harm their child?

Matt

Jul 16, 2018 at 11:29 am

Barry, so to be clear, are you contesting the claim that parents have a duty to not inflict the kind of neurological and psychological harms that come about from children having a only a couple of hours sleep every night? If that’s what you have to deny to defend your skepiticism then it seems to me that really shows how implausible it is.

Also, I am willing to bet that if a religious community told parents it was ok to cause serious physical or mental harm to their children, you and other sceptics would be all over it and condemning this. Which shows that these sceptics do think its wrong to harm children and its wrong even if your community teaches otherwise. Can you clarify here if you would claim that a religious community that taught this was a duty were incorrect?

 I reply:
Suppose for the sake of argument that my personal moral belief is that depriving children of sleep, in the manner you describe, is a good thing.

If the basis for objective morals is outside my own mind and existence, as you allege to be the case,  then my personal moral opinions could not possibly handicap you from demonstrating that the immorality of said sleep-deprivation is true for objective reasons.  What I believe about morality would be totally irrelevant to the positive case for objective morality.

My suspicion is that, for all of your talk, the only people you could possibly "convince" with your arguments about objective morality, are those who already agree with you that certain human actions are always immoral.  When you come up to people who don't necessarily agree with your moral opinions, then suddenly, you run out of steam...and all you have left, is to assure that person that their views are "implausible" as you do above...or assert that they have a position mildly close to sociopathy, as you did previously when you said:

...If you have to say that there is nothing wrong with actions I spelt out in 1 and 2 to justify the kind of religious scepticism you want to justify then your position is implausible and to put it mildly close to sociopathic.
----(from Matt Jun 26, 2018 at 9:50 pm)

 ...and a finer example of a pitifully weak argument could not be imagined, than the one that is incapable of convincing anybody outside of those who already agree with it. 

You are so busy telling the world about the fallacies of moral relativism, you never get down to establishing the positive evidence in favor of objective morality.  So go ahead...establish that any human act you wish to use as an example, is objectively immoral, and do so without bringing up the subject of how wrong the moral relativist position is.

Just like you don't need to focus on the fallacies of the car-deniers, in order to fulfill y our own burden to show that cars exist.  You are a philosopher, you know perfectly well that the prima facie case is different than a rebuttal-case.  

 You don't prove the Trinity is a true biblical doctrine by restricting your comments to the fallacies and out-of-context quotations about that doctrine which can be found in Jehovah Witness literature. The prima facie case you need to make, does not require you to focus exclusively on the errors of those who disagree with you.  So stop exclusively focusing on the alleged errors of moral relativism, and make your prima facie case that some actions of human beings are immoral for objective reasons.

By the way...are you going to answer my question?  It was:

***What moral standard are you appealing to, to justify saying parents have a duty not to harm their child?***

You'll excuse me if I've noted before how reticent you are to identify this allegedly objective standard you believe in.  Now would be the best time to stop dodging the bullet.  If that objective standard exists and doesn't depend on what any particular person feels about morality, then demonstrate that objective standard without appealing to what any particular person feels about it.  Feel free to cite the "persons" of the Trinity if you think it is their opinions that are the basis for objective morality.



 UPDATE:  July 27, 2018
I found a video of Flannagan on YouTube, so I replied there, reminding Flannagan and his viewers of this problem:



UPDATE:  September 7, 2018
Apparently the ban problem was fixed and I've since posted a reply to Flannagan.  I draw the conclusion that Flannagan actually didn't ban me and never tried or intended to.

UPDATE: November 5, 2018:
As of this date, a screenshot shows only obvious spammers have responded to my criticism, Flannagan has chosen to respond to me on other topics at Youtube, but has chosen to avoid responding to my September 15, 2018 posting at his blog:

God and Genocide: An atheist answers Matthew Flannagan's trifles about Numbers 31

Atheist bible critics like myself constantly confront Christian "apologists" with disturbing stories in the bible in which God or his followers committed some type of moral atrocity that we are pretty sure the apologist would never try to morally justify, such as child massacre.  We do this in the effort to use the apologists common sense as a tool to get him or her to give up the bible or take a liberal position on it.

In Numbers 25, the Israelites fall into sexual sin with the Midianite, in a place called Peor.

6 chapters later, God tells Moses to take "full" vengeance on the Midianites because they had tempted Israel into sexual sin.  The following quote is long, but the part about killing children for the sake of convenience is found in v. 15-18:

 1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
 2 "Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people."
 3 Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD'S vengeance on Midian.
 4 "A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war."
 5 So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.
 6 Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.
 7 So they made war against Midian, just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed every male.
 8 They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword.
 9 The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered.
 10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
 11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.
 19 "And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh (Num. 31:1-19 NAU)

Most Christians are justifiably scared of this biblical bullshit, and quickly change the subject by talking about how the new covenant in Christ is one of Grace and we are not commanded to kill each other any more, etc.  Many Christians personally hate the OT.  We grant the concession of defeat.

But some Christians are die-hard apologists and would rather be slowly burned alive, than admit their bible-god was an unconscionably barbaric petulant asshole.  They will split hairs all day long like a jailhouse lawyer, just to get away from the obvious meaning of a biblical text.  Jesus is not found in scripture, he is found in playing word-games, and telling yourself that splitting hairs about what should be inferred or not inferred from what God didn't say, is what the seriously Holy Spirit filled Christians spend most of their daily lives doing.

Two such apologists would be Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan, evangelical Christian philosophers and co-authors of Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (2014, Baker Books).

In that book, Flannagan wastes the readers time with some trifling sophistry in the effort to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of Moses in Numbers 31 were more more barbaric than God had intended.  I reply to these absurd trifles in point-by-point fashion:

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses.

 Then maybe you missed the word "full" in Numbers 31:2?  Was that a superfluous word?

Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

I can give a better reason: first, the "full" in 31:2, as already argued.  Second, the fact that the Midianites successfully enticed the Israelites into sexual sin, just proves the Midianites were not one of the far away nations for whom Mose' rules of warfare allowed to be spared/enslaved, rather the Midianites were one of those "nearby" nations that must, under Moses' rules of war, be "totally" destroyed, since they proved to achieve the sin-enticement result that the mass-annihilation commanded was intended to preempt:

 10 "When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.
 11 "If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.
 12 "However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
 13 "When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.
 14 "Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.
 15 "Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.
 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
 17 "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:10-18 NAU)

Since the Midianites certainly did teach the Israelites to commit idolatry and other sexual sins, only a fool would trifle that because "Midian" isn't specified in the war-book's list of condemned nations, Moses "should have known" that 99% extinction of the Midianites was more than what God wanted.

Flannagan continues:

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question.

The fact that a woman is the mother of a 3 year old girl doesn't necessarily mean she loves the girl, but we are reasonable to presume this would usually be the case and require viewing of good evidence before we are obligated to think that any specific mother/daughter case is an exception.

Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval.

 But the lack of approval also doesn't entail disapproval.  If you wish to claim God disapproved of the higher level of slaughter Moses called for, that is your burden to prove.  Your view of the text is hardly a priori.

31:2 has God saying Moses should take "full" vengeance on the Midianites.  If the result of the war comports nicely with "full" vengeance, then the burden of proof is on the apologist to argue that the the way Moses carried out the attack order was "too full". 

Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There is no reason, other than fear of one's god looking stupid and sadistic, for pretending the "full" of 31:2 meant something less than the full-scale destruction Moses actually carried out.

It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval.

But the burden of showing the way Moses carried out this command of God was more extensive and sinful than God wanted, is on YOU.

In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Not likely; the originally intended recipients were mostly illiterate, they weren't "readers".  Hence, they likely would accept the story at face value, like every Christian commentator on it did between the 1st and the 18th centuries,  and not trifle about what can be implied by God's failure to condemn something.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

Consider Jesus too.  Do Flannagan's trifles here justify a person's refusal to believe Jesus was always in conformity to the will of God?  After all, just because he was the son of God doesn't necessarily...and so you see the desperation in Flannagan's atomistic analysis.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

 Then what's your problem with Moses' refusal to spare any except the virgin girls?  

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Sounds pretty serious.  But your trifles are still pointless:  If you are claiming Moses required more destruction than what God intended in 31:2, then say so and explain why, quit pussy-footing around with trifles about how God can condemn something without explicitly saying so.  What textual evidence is there to suggest God disagreed with the degree of death and destruction Moses called for? 

And Flannagan's skepticism seems more extreme than is warranted for a Christian bible believer.  n Numbers 31:14, Moses is "angry" with his military leaders for sparing the women.

Shouldn't a Christian believer in bible inerrancy like Flannagan first assume that Moses had expected his men to inflict total destruction?

Once again, if 31:2 has God decreeing "full" vengeance on the Midianites, what textual evidence makes Flannagan so positively certain that the full manner Moses carried out God's orders, effected more death than God wished?

Didn't this Moses and his Hebrews believe in corporate solidarity, the doctrine that holds you responsible for sins of your leader even if you were not personally guilty?  

Didn't this god hold entire cities responsible for murders that went unsolved or idolotry committed by a few (Deut 13:12-18; 21:1-9)?

Didn't the Israelites manifest the same observation of corporate solidarity when willing to spare anybody that might come under Rahab's roof (Josh 2:12-14; 6:22-25)?

Didn't this god refrain from revealing Achan as guilty of stealing the wedge of gold, until after God decided this sin, unknown to Joshua, should cause Joshua to suffer more than the expected number of battle casualties (Joshua 7, i.e., only Achan sinned this way, but God spreads the guilt to the entire nation saying "Israel has sinned...they have taken some forbidden things..." v. 11-12)?

Didn't this god kill off seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba, all because David had chosen to take a census of Israel (2 Sam. 24:15 NAU)?

Doesn't this god condition his grace on the children confessing both their own and their fathers' sins (Leviticus 26:40)?

 

Didn't the god Moses served kill a bunch of toddlers and babies with a flood in the days of Noah?  Or maybe Flannagan will trifle that the flood waters  inflicted no harm on anybody below the age of accountability?

Didn't the god Moses served decree that the sin of Adam and Eve should inflict all of their descendants?

 Didn't this god visit the iniquity of the fathers up to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5,6)?

Why should anybody think the killing of the babies in 31:17 was against the will of a god who routinely killed babies for other people's sins?

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:13-15 NAU)

There are solid reasons for saying Moses' actions in Numbers 31 didn't inflict more death than God intended in 31:2:

• Christians automatically presume the sinful human leader correctly conveys God's sentiments, always placing the burden on those who would cry for an exception (i.e., Flannagan blindly presumes just whatever the biblical prophets credited to God, really was from God, and requires liberals or skeptics to overcome that presumption).  So Flannagan cannot coherently pretend that an assumption of Moses' consistency with God is too speculative.
• Moses' god routinely killed children for the sins of their parents, so the call to take "full" vengeance, without further qualification, would naturally be taken to mean the children shall share in the guilt of the parents.
• Moses himself adhered to corporate solidarity.   God should have specified this case was exceptional and limited, if He didn't want somebody who believed in corporate solidarity to get the wrong impression about how extensive the vengeance should be.
• God obviously wanted the Midianite men to die, since he called for battle despite knowing the Midianite men would rise to the defense of their nation. 
• it would be stupid and foolish to suggest maybe God only wanted the guilty adult Midianites killed, and the Hebrews should just walk away from their war victory leaving the orphaned Midianite kids to fend for themselves
• God obviously wanted the death of the adult women who were personally guilty of the sexual sin at issue.  If he didn't what sense would it make to say God wanted Moses to make war with the Midianite men, but not the women who were instrumental in causing the idolatry to take place?
• God or Moses was the author of a war-book that included instructions on how to justify impregnating the female war captives (Deut. 21:10-14).  Moses' sparing of the virgin girls was in harmony with what Moses or God allowed elsewhere.
• God obviously wanted the male Midianite children to be killed, since a) raising them as foster children would likely give rise to possible blood-feud after they grew up (an excuse many Christian apologists hide under), and b) God never makes good on his promises, therefore, God's promises that kids will not depart from proper Jewish teaching if they are raised in it (Proverbs 22:6) could not possibly be taken seriously by anybody faced with such a foster care situation.

Flannagan has no basis whatsoever for his trifling suggestion that the massacre in Numbers 31 was somehow more extensive than God intended.

Therefore, the inerrantist who compares Moses' actions in Numbers 31 to everything else that can be known about him, his god, and his ideas about just war, has no other option but to admit the massacre of innocent children and babies in this dreadful story was the will of God.