Cold Case Christianity: The astronomical errors of Job and Judges

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

Cold Case Christianity:

Is the Astronomy in the Book of Job Scientifically Consistent?

Posted: 17 Aug 2018 01:09 AM PDT

In the past, I’ve posted a number of scientific consistencies found in the Old Testament.

 And we worry about the bible being consistent with science about as much as we worry about ancient Greeks being consistent with science.

While I think there are good reasons why God might not reveal advanced scientific details in Scripture,

 No dice:  God could have been far more explicit in having bible authors predict today's events.  Like your typical spiritist, god's "predictions" of the future are often conveniently vague enough that it is exceptionally difficult or impossible to decide what they are talking about..while the more explicit predictions are either dated after the fulfilling event, or turned out simply to be wrong.

I do expect God’s Word to be scientifically consistent with the world we experience.

That's because you've chosen a model of bible inerrancy that other Christian scholars have rejected:

In The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority, (IVP Academic, 2013), John H. Walton and D. Brent Sandy argue that the Israelites literally believed in unscientific concepts:

Even though people in Israel believed there were waters above the earth held back by a solid sky, or that cognitive processes took place in the heart or kidneys, the illocution of the texts is not affirming those beliefs as revealed truth...So for example, it is no surprise that ancient Israel believed in a solid sky, and God accommodated his locution to that model in his communication to them. But since the illocution is not to assert the true shape of cosmic geography, we can safely set those details aside as incidental without jeopardizing authority of inerrancy." (p. 45-46)

Wallace continues:

One interesting scientific consistency seems to exist in the ancient book of Job. I am obviously not a scientist or astronomer, so I’ll try to provide links to the references you might use to further investigate these claims. As you may remember, Job was extremely wealthy and had a large family. Tragedy struck and Job lost his wealth, his children and his wife. Job eventually began to accuse God of being unjust and unkind. In response to Job’s complaining, God challenged Job’s authority and power relative to His own. God asked the following series of questions to demonstrate Job’s comparative weakness:

Job 38:31-32

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?

The text refers to three constellations, Pleiades, Orion and Arcturus (the fourth, Mazzaroth, is still unknown to us). In the first part of the verse, God challenged Job’s ability to “bind the sweet influences of Pleiades.” It’s as if He was saying, “Hey Job, you think you can keep Pleiades together? Well, I can!” As it turns out, the Pleiades (also known as the Seven Sisters) is an open star cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It is classified as an open cluster because it is a group of hundreds of stars formed from the same cosmic cloud. They are approximately the same age and have roughly the same chemical composition. Most importantly, they are bound to one another by mutual gravitational attraction. Isabel Lewis of the United States Naval Observatory (quoted by Phillip L. Knox in Wonder Worlds) said, “Astronomers have identified 250 stars as actual members of this group, all sharing in a common motion and drifting through space in the same direction.” Lewis said they are “journeying onward together through the immensity of space.” Dr. Robert J. Trumpler (quoted in the same book) said, “Over 25,000 individual measures of the Pleiades stars are now available, and their study led to the important discovery that the whole cluster is moving in a southeasterly direction. The Pleiades stars may thus be compared to a swarm of birds, flying together to a distant goal. This leaves no doubt that the Pleiades are not a temporary or accidental agglomeration of stars, but a system in which the stars are bound together by a close kinship.” From our perspective on Earth, the Pleiades will not change in appearance; these stars are marching together in formation toward the same destination, bound in unison, just as God described them.

The fact that it says the "sweet" influences ought to indicate it isn't talking about truths of physics.  Unless you think gravitational attraction of stars is something that tastes like sugar?  Furthermore:

 31 "Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, Or loose the cords of Orion?
 32 "Can you lead forth a constellation in its season, And guide the Bear with her satellites?
 33 "Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, Or fix their rule over the earth? (Job 38:31-33 NAU)

Did other cultures also see constellations in the sky? 
Nearly every culture on Earth has seen patterns in the stars.

Job clearly errs by saying Pleiades, Orion, and the Bear "rule over the earth" (33).  No astronomer believes this.

Job has other problems:

 2 "In truth I know that this is so; But how can a man be in the right before God?
 3 "If one wished to dispute with Him, He could not answer Him once in a thousand times.
 4 "Wise in heart and mighty in strength, Who has defied Him without harm?
 5 "It is God who removes the mountains, they know not how, When He overturns them in His anger;
 6 Who shakes the earth out of its place, And its pillars tremble;
 7 Who commands the sun not to shine, And sets a seal upon the stars;
 8 Who alone stretches out the heavens And tramples down the waves of the sea;
 9 Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south;
 10 Who does great things, unfathomable, And wondrous works without number.
 11 "Were He to pass by me, I would not see Him; Were He to move past me, I would not perceive Him.   (Job 9:2-11 NAU)

 Job apparently thinks earthquakes are caused by God (6) when today we know better.
 Job thinks night comes around because God commands the sun to stop shining (7).  If you can get away from Job's scientific errors by screaming "poetry", why would you insist that the part of the poetry you quote is an exception?

And Job apparently thought the stars really were angels or "sons of God":

7 When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:7 NAU)


The Institute for Creation Research wonders at the bible's frequent identification of stars with angels:

The frequent identification of angels with stars in the Bible (note Job 38:7; Revelation 12:4; and many others) is most intriguing, especially in view of the fact that there is no similarity between them whatsoever.

Wallace continues:

The next section of the verse describes the Orion constellation. God once again challenged Job, this time to “loose the bands of Orion.” God was referencing the “belt” of Orion; the three stars forming the linear “band” at Orion’s waist. God appeared to be challenging Job in just the opposite way he had in the first portion of the verse. Rather than bind the Pleiades, God challenged Job to loosen Orion. It’s as if He was saying, “Hey Job, you think you can loosen Orion’s belt? Well, I can!” Orion’s belt is formed by two stars (Alnilam, and Mintaka) and one star cluster (Alnitak). Alnitak is actually a triple star system at the eastern edge of Orion’s belt. These stars (along with all the other stars forming Orion) are not gravitationally bound like those in Pleiades. Instead, the stars of Orion’s belt are heading in different directions. Garrett P. Serviss, a noted astronomer, wrote about the bands of Orion in his book, Curiosities of the Sky: “The great figure of Orion appears to be more lasting, not because its stars are physically connected, but because of their great distance, which renders their movements too deliberate to be exactly ascertained. Two of the greatest of its stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel, possess, as far as has been ascertained, no perceptible motion across the line of sight, but there is a little movement perceptible in the ‘Belt.’ At the present time this consists of an almost perfect straight line, a row of second-magnitude stars about equally spaced and of the most striking beauty. In the course of time, however, the two right-hand stars, Mintaka and Alnilam (how fine are these Arabic star names!) will approach each other and form a naked-eye double, but the third, Alnita, will drift away eastward, so that the ‘Belt’ will no longer exist.” Unlike the Pleaides clusters, the stars in the band of Orion do not share a common trajectory. In the course of time, Orion’s belt will be loosened just as God told Job.

Once again, the ancient Greeks were not inspired by God, but they obviously knew that certain stars cluster together.  And Job 38:31 doesn't say God will ever loose the belt of Orion.

In the last section of the verse, God described Arcturus, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. God challenged Job to “guide Arcturus with his sons.” With this challenge, God appeared to be saying, “Hey Job, you think you can direct Arcturus anywhere you want? Well, I can!” While Arcturus certainly appeared in antiquity to be a single star, in 1971 astronomers discovered there were 52 additional stars connected directionally with Arcturus (known now as the Arcturus stream). Interestingly, God described Arcturus as having “sons” and Charles Burckhalter, of the Chabot Observatory, (again quoted in Wonder Worlds) said “these stars are a law unto themselves.” Serviss added, “Arcturus is one of the greatest suns in the universe, is a runaway whose speed of flight is 257 miles per second. Arcturus, we have every reason to believe, possesses thousands of times the mass of our sun… Our sun is traveling only 12 ½ miles a second, but Arcturus is traveling 257 miles a second…” Burckhalter affirmed this description of Arcturus, saying, “This high velocity places Arcturus in that very small class of stars that apparently are a law unto themselves. He is an outsider, a visitor, a stranger within the gates; to speak plainly, Arcturus is a runaway. Newton gives the velocity of a star under control as not more than 25 miles a second, and Arcturus is going 257 miles a second. Therefore, combined attraction of all the stars we know cannot stop him or even turn him in his path.” Arcturus and “his sons” are on a course all their own. Only God has the power to guide them, just as described in the ancient book of Job.

I doubt it was God’s intention to teach Job astronomy in this passage. Instead, God wanted to challenge Job and remind him who had the power, authority and wisdom to control the fate of the universe.

You obviously aren't writing to convince skeptics.  Of that we can be sure.

In a similar way, God wanted to remind Job who had the power to control Job’s fate and the wisdom to care for him, even when Job felt unloved. While it wasn’t God’s purpose to reveal hidden scientific truths to Job in an effort to demonstrate His Deity, the ancient text accurately describes the nature of these constellations and stars. Like other Old and New Testament passages, it is scientifically consistent, even if not scientifically exhaustive.

Not by a long shot.  Earlier parts of the bible even allege that the "stars" fought for an earthly army:

 19 "The kings came and fought; Then fought the kings of Canaan At Taanach near the waters of Megiddo; They took no plunder in silver.
 20 "The stars fought from heaven, From their courses they fought against Sisera.
 21 "The torrent of Kishon swept them away, The ancient torrent, the torrent Kishon. O my soul, march on with strength.
 22 "Then the horses' hoofs beat From the dashing, the dashing of his valiant steeds. (Jdg. 5:19-22 NAU)

 The phrase 'from their courses' makes it clear that the author is not merely recharacterizing angels as stars.  In normal speech, nobody says angels have "courses", but stars certainly would have been viewed by ancient man as having "courses". 

Inerrantist Christian scholars admit, perhaps reluctantly, that yes, this is talking about the literal stars leaving their normal orbits in order to cause a flood on earth...a concept whose foolishness is apparent to everybody else:

5:20–21 Undoubtedly Sisera expected a swift and easy victory for his vastly superior military forces. There was no way he could have prepared for what actually happened: the intervention of heavenly forces on Israel’s behalf, the sudden flooding of the Kishon, and the crippling of the chariotry.⁴¹⁸ The first phenomenon is described in magnificently enigmatic form: the stars left their courses⁴¹⁹ and fought against Sisera from heaven.

-----footnote 419 Most interpret מִמְּסִלּוֹתָם, “from their courses,” to mean that the stars functioned like an army, each in its place, but it is preferable to see here the heavenly bodies leaving their normal orbits to fight against Israel’s enemy. Weinfeld (“Divine Intervention,” 127) suggests “a comet fell out of its fixed place.” J. F. A. Sawyer (“From Heaven Fought the Stars,” VT 1 [1981]: 87–89) sees here a reference to the total eclipse of the sun in the vicinity of Megiddo and Taanach in 1131 b.c., in which case at least the nucleus of the song is to be dated early, its composer being an eyewitness of the eclipse.

Block, D. I. (2001, c1999). Vol. 6: Judges, Ruth (electronic ed.).
Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 236).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

(There was an ancient belief that the stars were the source of the rain.)

Auld, A. G. (2001, c1984). Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.
The Daily study Bible series. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

 

I think Wallace is getting just a little too happy about his errant conclusions regarding the bible's alleged scientific accuracy.  The model of Gentile evangelism and apologetics in the bible neither expresses nor implies that Christians have a duty to prove the accuracy of the scriptures to any doubters.  To stick with just the biblical model, is to leave oneself no compelling reason to defend the scientific accuracy of the bible.

 

On the other hand, seeking to defend the scientific accuracy of the bible does indeed imply that the apologist doesn't have too much faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to make unbelievers believe whatever he wants them to (Ezra 1:1), especially if the apologist pays more attention to marketing his own bells and whistles than he pays to doing things the way the bible says they should be done.

Cold Case Christianity: The Holy Spirit doesn't exist; its all up to you alone

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

Cold Case Christianity: How to Make the Case Like a Case Maker

Posted: 15 Aug 2018 01:03 AM PDT

Every year at the CrossExamined Instructors Academy (CIA), dozens of students courageously offer their own “apologetics” presentations to those of us who had been assembled as evaluators, coaches and trainers.

Perhaps you should require Christians to pass tests of spirituality before you send 18-year old Jonathon off into the Satanic world of atheist counter-rebuttal.  Perhaps you forgot that when you answer bible skeptics, you are not just providing evidence.  The bible characterizes that situation as your entering the nightmare world of demonic darkness.  Your battle is spiritual, against wickedness in the sky:

 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12 NAU)

 Are you quite sure all those young upstarts, so on fire to do apologetics, are properly spiritually equipped to be immune to the subtle deceptions of the devil, a creature that has far more knowledge about how to deceive young Christians than you have?   Or did I forget that in your quest to keep Christians busy focusing on J. Warner Wallace, you overlooked the grim possibility that you might be handing dangerous powertools to spiritual babies?

Wallace continues:

Prior to these talks, we take the time to help the students understand the proper structure of public presentations of this nature. Greg Koukl provides a brief outline, encouraging the men and women of CIA to “take charge confidently,” lead their audience “on a clear path,” and guide their listeners “to the destination.” Every year as I listen to many of the student speeches, I am reminded of the format we, as criminal case makers, often use in front of a jury. Christian Case Makers can learn something from this simple three step approach:

Like the fact that if you are dramatic enough, you can persuade jurors to agree with your case more because of the style of presentation and less to do with the merits.  That's also an unfortunate reality of jury trials.  Still interested in comparing apologetics presentations to jury trials?

Make an Opening Statement Thoroughly

In criminal trials, attorneys begin by making opening statements to the jury.

They also often exercise their option to forgo the opening statement, where they believe such tactic will further their agenda.  Take the hint.

The crime under consideration will be thoroughly described and jurors will see photographs of the crime scene for the first time. It is a dramatic moment for many of the jurors, particularly if they’ve never been exposed to the level of violence that typically accompanies the kinds of cases I work as a detective.

Yes, prosecutors usually do prefer grisly crime scene photos; these play on emotions and can be the reason a juror less convinced on the merits, chooses to go ahead and just say "guilty".

Prosecutors know they only get one chance at a first impression; this is not the place to stumble through your notes. They must know this portion of the presentation thoroughly and display the kind of confidence, passion and certainty that comes from exhaustively understanding the case at hand.

 Leaving your readers to wonder why you would add the power of the Holy Spirit to anybody's apologetics presentation where they display confidence, passion and certainty.  Wallace, your methods of apologetics are so utterly earth-bound, one would figure you don't regard the Holy Spirit and his convicting power as anything more than a gratuitous afterthought.  Why would you credit apologetics success to god, when the empirical evidence would indicate it had to do with all of the purely naturalistic methods of evidence-presentation you glean from trial procedure?  Under your plan, there is no more reason to ascribe apologetics success to God, than there is to ascribe the prosecutor's success at trial to God.  In both cases, there's no reason to think people need the holy spirit before they can render a reasonable judgment about what really happened in history.

In criminal trials, opening statements are limited to a simple outline of the facts of the case. Attorneys set the scene for the jurors, present the issues at stake and provide an overview of how the trial is expected to proceed. Jurors are told who their witnesses will be, how these witnesses are related to each other and the case, and what each is expected to say. While opening statements should be as persuasive as possible, they should not include “arguments”. Those will come later.

The Take-A-Way for Christian Case Makers:

Like trial attorneys, Christian Case Makers only get one chance to make a first impression.

 And there you go again, taking the unbiblical position that some things, such as a second chance to make a first impression, are not possible with God.  Read your bible:  "all things are possible with God", Mark 10:27

Especially if that God approves of and actually uses his magically coercive telepathic power to get people to do whatever he wants them to do, as he apparently did in Ezra 1:1.

When defending the Christian Worldview to our friends, we need to remember the power of the opening. Is it intriguing and captivating? Is it relevant and accurate? Are we offering something that can be supported by the evidence and are we ready to provide that evidence later in the presentation or conversation?

 Indeed, there is no Holy Spirit.  If you wish to succeed in apologetics, you need to make your speeches intriguing, captivating, etc.  If YOU don't do it, it won't get done.  Amen?

Present Evidence Specifically

Once the opening statements have been made, it’s time to begin presenting the evidence to the jury. Much of this evidence will simply be the testimony of important expert witnesses. Some cases require DNA experts; others require experts in material evidence, coroners, doctors, or weapons specialists. The attorneys have the burden of deciding which types of experts will be needed. In addition, each attorney has to decide which pieces of physical or circumstantial evidence will be ‘highlighted’. Not every piece of evidence will have the same priority or emphasis; some will be more important than others. Each attorney must try to decide which evidence he or she will highlight and which evidence he or she will seek to minimize, and they have the burden of explaining why some pieces of evidence should be given greater weight than others.

The Take-A-Way for Christian Case Makers:

While you and I, as Christian Case Makers may be very familiar with the scientific or philosophical work that has been done on a particular topic, we have to be careful not to overload the conversation with too many “expert witnesses”.

 No doubt because God is incapable of enabling them to keep all that data straight.  Once again, if the sinful apologist doesn't employ this tactic, that will simply reduce the level of persuasiveness.  There is no Holy Spirit to speak of.  You do the job yourself, or it doesn't get done.

Many of us have not done the “heavy lifting” and examined the original sources for the evidence supporting the Christian Worldview. Instead we carelessly quote something we read once on a website or heard some speaker say. We need to familiarize ourselves with the evidence supporting our case and be responsible and accurate in citing these evidences. We’ve also got to be prepared to argue why some pieces of evidence should be given more weight than others.

 If you are going to use trials as a model, you might tell your students that if they don't wish to get steamrolled, they need to stay abreast of the arguments the latest atheist bible critics are making.

And you don't do that by simply highlighting the known problems in the arguments of the likes of Sam Harris and other very popular atheists. There are lots of smart atheists on the internet that could sing circles around you and your students, that is...if your Cold Case Christianity books accurately represent your level of knowledge.

Make a Closing Argument Convincingly

Once the jury has seen and heard the evidence, the attorneys are allowed to argue the case. In this closing portion of the trial, attorneys attempt to persuade jurors about the conclusions they ought to form. Attorneys remind jurors about the specific evidence presented earlier and try to convince jurors to embrace one interpretation or another. Here, attorneys are free to include hypothetical analogies, assess and argue about the credibility of witnesses, and discuss how various pieces of the puzzle fit together to make a compelling case. While an attorney might be limited in the opening to saying something like, “Witness Smith will testify that the Defendant left the house after the victim screamed,” it’s here in the closing that the attorney will argue the value of this statement by saying something like, “As we know from Witness Smith’s overwhelmingly compelling testimony, the Defendant left the house immediately after the victim screamed, and given the other facts of this case, the only reasonable conclusion is the Defendant was responsible for murdering the victim.”

The Take-A-Way for Christian Case Makers:

It’s not enough to present the evidence without taking the time to show how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. That’s one reason why I wrote Cold Case Christianity; I wanted to help Christian Case Makers understand the rules of evidence so they can utilize these simple principles to form an effective case.

 No doubt because the Holy Spirit's actual responsibilities at this point are so utterly invisible, unknown and unknowable that in the practical world, it makes more sense to simply proceed as if making the case convincing is the sole responsibility of the sinful apologist.   Words that praise the Holy Spirit for any ministry success are about as meaningful as crediting the Holy Spirit with the fact that a gasoline powered engine starts up after gas is put in the tank.  Sure is funny that the Holy Spirit disappears just as soon as the gas does.

When we wrap up our presentations and conversations, it’s important to “connect the dots”. We need to do more than explain what the case looks like; we need to help people understand why the Christian worldview is the most reasonable inference from the evidence.

Because if you don't do that, neither will the Holy Spirit.  Wallace, is there a reason why you distinguish the Holy Spirit from the synapses firing inside your brain?  Sure, church creeds might demand you make such distinction, but you carry on in practical life as if leaving room for the Holy Spirit to discharge his own responsibilities in apologetics is unbiblical and dangerous.  You clearly disdain the idea of quoting a bible verse to a skeptic, then walking away, as insufficient, but why?  If Romans 1 is correct that skeptics are without excuse before god, how could the skeptic's excuses as you walk away, motivate you to return counter-argument?  Do you fear that the bible doesn't do a good enough job of keeping the skeptics worried about being wrong?

If you seriously believed in the power of the Holy Spirit to convict, you would not see any need to do more than simply quote the bible to unbelievers.  So answer the question already:  Do you believe the Holy Spirit can move just as easily and powerfully in an unbelievers heart solely through hearing the bible quoted, as He can when the unbeliever is slammed with a presentation of the likes you argue for herein?

If you answer "yes", how could you possibly dare lie to these good folks, telling them they "need" your materials, or that employing your methods can increase success?  Why should anybody believe God himself is doing JACK SHIT in the unbeliever's heart as they hear apologetics presentations?  According to your advice, success is all about how the sinner organizes things and the level of confidence they exude, no need to involve God in the process at all.

In every presentation or conversation, it is my goal to raise important questions that must be answered. I want to help my unbelieving friends see the logical inconsistencies of their worldview and leave them with a few important last thoughts to challenge and provoke them to dig deeper into the claims we’ve been discussing.

 Ok, I know you inside and out, and I have serious problems with your methodology and the arguments you use to arrive at your conclusions.  Would you be interested in having a formal debate on any biblical topic of your choice, in any internet forum of your choice, on any date or dates of your choice?

Or does there come a point where keeping up sales requires that you start reducing your customer's exposure to the other side?

Juries are ultimately asked to make a decision; the efforts of the attorneys are focused on this singular goal. Christian Case Makers can adopt their approach as we help our friends and family to assess the case and make a decision for Christ.

If you seriously think the jury format is a good analogy to what you are doing, then you cannot possibly  balk at any skeptic who, like a juror, reaches what he believes to be a reasonable verdict after listening to the evidence for the average amount of time that jurors hear evidence in trials.

Contrary to popular belief, your jury-analogy doesn't give you the option to say that the skeptical jurors need to continue investigating, perhaps for years or a lifetime,  until they agree with the defense.  There comes a day when we have to stop saying "anything is possible" and render a judgment based on currently known probabilities.  The fact that we could possibly be wrong is not a good reason to suspend judgment otherwise, because every criminal suspect could possibly be innocent, we should never have criminal trials.

And if your god really doesn't want atheists to attack the bible, he could simply exercise his magically coercive Ezra 1:1 telepathic powers in the minds of all unbelievers and presto, no need for Wallace to sell Jesus, everybody already believes.

You say God exercises such power but we resist his wooing effect with our freewill?

Read Daniel 4:33, God not only can, but HAS violated a sinner's freewill to force them to change their mind:

 30 "The king reflected and said, 'Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?'
 31 "While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, 'King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you,
 32 and you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.'
 33 "Immediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled; and he was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws.
 34 "But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. (Dan. 4:30-34 NAU)

 if his nails grew like bird's claws, that sounds like God caused this man to act insane for at least 6 months.  That's quite a long time to violate somebody's freewill and make them act like farm animals.

You also have the option of denying this argument by saying the book of Daniel contains legend and mythology.  But only at the price of bible inerrancy, a price you aren't willing to pay.  So drown in the biblical evidence that your  bible-god cares a lot less about respecting human freewill than you and Turek constantly say.


The point is that your god has no good excuse for being so hidden and absent, that imperfect sinners like you are required to sell Jesus stuff and make money.  God would be satisfied with forcefully coercing skeptics to believe.  Whether you can reconcile your idea about love and freewill with Daniel 4:33 is your problem.  Take a more liberal view, solve a lot of problems.

And don't even get me started on how unbiblical it is for America to give Christian ministers tax-breaks.  You use the roads and other public facilities just as much as anybody else, therefore, it is more in accord with honesty that you should pay your fair share of taxes.  The only reason this tax-scheme works is because not everybody employs it.  If they did, America would have no tax revenue, and that would be the end of this nation.  Stop freeloading.

Dr. Dennis Ingolfsland, apologist who uses condescension to avoid a challenge

Dennis Ingolfsland is an apologist who operates an extensive online blog.

 I found out about him while surfing google for apologists that I could make debate-offers to.

Despite surfing around on his blog for about 5 minutes, I could not find a "reply" button, leading me to believe that he intentionally set up the blog to avoid allowing comments.  Let the world be silent before the Lord.

So I googled his name, found the university he works at and sent him the following rather respectful offer to have a serious debate about any one of a number of biblical problems.

From: Barry Jones [mailto:barryjoneswhat@gmail.com] 

Sent: Monday, August 13, 2018 2:46 PM 

To: Dennis Ingolfsland 

Subject: request to have discussion or debate

    Hello,

    I was intrigued by your blog http://dennis-ingolfsland.blogspot.com/, but noticed that, despite having many controversial things to say, your blog doesn't allow the reader to respond.  Did I miss something?

    I am an atheist, formerly a fundamentalist Christian, who engages in bible study as a personal hobby, and I'd like to know if you would be willing to have some exchanges with me on the following topics, whether by email, through your blog, or whatever medium you prefer, on times and dates most convenient to you, no rush.

    I’m also willing to discuss any topic you raised at your blog, or any controversy between Christians and non-Christians you wish.  The below list of topics is suggestive only.

1. Bible inerrancy is too controversial to justify using it as a hermeneutic.  If you are going to say somebody’s interpretation of a bible verse is false, you need to provide something more than “it contradicts what the bible says elsewhere”.  The unbeliever whose interpretation of a bible verse is otherwise contextually and grammatically justified, is under no intellectual compulsion to toss it aside merely because it would contradict something the bible says elsewhere.  But if it be reasonable to reject bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, many dogmas espoused by conservative apologists are accordingly deflated.

2. It does not matter if the views of a Christian scholar or apologist are “reasonable”, such views are usually never warranted with such blinding evidential force as to render any opposing interpretation “unreasonable”.

3. A careful examination of Paul’s prohibitions on debating unbelievers requires the conclusion that he would characterize ALL of modern Christianity’s attempts at in-depth examination of bible evidence and skeptical views, including most of what you post at your blog, as the precise type of word-wrangling he prohibited Christians from engaging in.  The other biblical texts that require Christians to do apologetics, require the type of apologetics that avoids the scholarly level of back-and-forth seen so often in blogs and theological journals.

4. There is nothing in the grammar, immediate context, larger context or genre of Genesis 6:6-7 to suggest that this statement about God’s regretting his own prior choice to create man, is an “anthropomorphism”.  It appears to be intended equally as literally as the rest of the chapter.  The Christians who ceaselessly invoke God’s alleged “infinite righteousness” in their fantastic philosophically lofty efforts to speculate that God allows evil for the sake of a greater good (William Lane Craig?), are choosing to prioritize good words and fair speeches above the unhappy biblical truth.

5. The resurrection accounts in each of the 4 canonical gospels contradict Acts 1:3

6. For the full duration of Jesus’ public ministry, James the brother of Jesus persisted in unbelief.  This is more than sufficient to defeat the resurrection hypothesis, especially as argued by the front line snipers such as Licona and Habermas.

7. A close examination of all the biblical and historical information on every “James” mentioned in the NT, provides the investigator no compelling reason to think James the brother of Jesus ever became convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.  If he was the exact "James" who later oversaw the original Jerusalem faction of the church, he likely obtained that position due to political appointment and social expedience, not personal faith.

8. Generously granting highly unlikely assumptions of apostolic authorship of the gospels, I count a total of 3 resurrection testimonies in the NT which come down to us today in first-hand form:  Matthew, John and Paul.  For this reason, typical apologetics arguments that say the resurrection of Jesus rests on the testimony of “many” eyewitness reports, is a deceptive exaggeration.

9. A close examination of the most explicit NT accounts of Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus provides the investigator no compelling reason to consider him an eyewitness of the risen Jesus.

10. The unbeliever can be reasonable to adopt the Christian scholarly consensus that Mark is the earliest gospel, and that 16:8 is the place where Mark’s input stops, meaning the unbeliever can be reasonable to conclude that the earliest gospel did not say Jesus actually appeared to any apostles (i.e., the later gospels, with their more richly detailed resurrection appearance narratives, are merely embellishing the more primitive story, hence the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is so beset with falsified evidence that unbelievers are reasonable to wash their hands of the entire business, as opposed to getting their ph.d in historiography).

11. Jesus taught a legalistic salvation totally contrary to Paul’s version of the gospel.

12. Jesus said the gospel to the Gentiles consisted of their obeying his actual words, not merely his “teachings”.  For this reason, Paul’s infamous apathy toward the actual words Jesus used during his public teaching ministry, condemns Paul as a deluded heretic.

13. God clearly isn’t doing his “best” to convince unbelievers that the gospel is true, therefore, they are rationally justified to believe that, even if the Christian god exists, he has far less “love” for them than the bible says.

14. The bible characterizes God as causing men to rape women.  It doesn’t matter if this could somehow be reconciled with the notion that God ‘loves’ those women, causing rape is simply so far departed from any reasonable human conception of love, that the unbeliever is reasonable to reject such biblical theology as nonsense.

15. Contrary to popular belief, “God’s mysterious ways” does not keep the apologist above water when cornered by a skeptic on a biblical issue. The excuse rather functions as an admission of defeat, both for the modern Christians and for the biblical authors who invented it out of a similar desire to get around irresolvable problems and move forward anyway.

16. In the days of Moses, god approved of sexual activity within adult-child marriages.  If Jesus was the Jehovah of the OT, then Jesus was approving of such activity back then, regardless of whether he changed his mind after the incarnation.

17. The bible makes very clear in numerous passages that heaven is physically "up there", the ascension of Christ in Acts 1 merely being the tip of the ice-box.  It is not reasonable for the apologist to pretend that this is just a case of god ‘accommodating’ the viewpoint of pre-scientific people.

18. Christians who preach about how God is able to see forward in time because he is outside of time, are preferring mystical philosophy to biblical doctrine.  Every biblical description of heaven indicates events take place there by means of temporal progression no less than they do on earth.  Biblically there is no option to believe that God exists outside of time.

19. Nothing in the OT predicted anything about Jesus.  I’m prepared to discuss Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 52-53, Micah 5:2, Daniel 9:24-27, Psalm 22, Psalm 16, etc.

20. Contrary to popular belief, the bible indicates God does not “need” to punish sin or be given a sacrifice for sin.  Jesus’ alleged death for sin on the cross boils down to little more than an evolution in Jewish thought which began to stray from earlier biblical truth.

21. If a little girl was raped to death yesterday in California, the book of Daniel would counsel that this is because the angel whom god appointed to protect that area of the world, lost one of his sky-battles with a more powerful demon.

22. Contrary to the claims of apologists like Frank Turek and Matthew Flannagan, there is no objective standard for morality, hence, nothing about human morality implies the existence of God.

23. If Copan and Flannagan were correct to interpret the “kill’em all” commands of the OT god as mere rhetorical exaggeration, and were correct to characterize this as a command to merely “dispossess” the Canaanites without mass-slaughter, this makes God out to be a greater moral monster than the traditional interpretation.

24. The average unbeliever would have full rational justification to completely avoid inquiring into any alleged evidence of modern-day miracles, and they'd still be reasonable to remain confident that all such claims are more than likely arising from hoax, delusion or honest mistake.

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

    I hope I have piqued your interest, and I hope you detect that I am sincere.  I have serious objections to Christianity that I'm willing to have examined by any apologist desiring to take their best shot for as long as they wish.  I look forward to dialoguing with you.

    Barry Jones

 ----------------------------------------endquote

 Dr. Ingolfsland's bio includes the following:

Dr. Ingolfsland has published two books (The Least of the Apostles and I Pledge Allegiance to the King), one evangelistic booklet (Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up) three Kindle e-books, and 40 magazine and journal articles in publications such as the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Trinity Journal, Bibliotheca Sacra, Princeton Theological Review and others. He has also published more than 80 book reviews and has presented numerous papers to biblical scholars at theology conferences.
Ingolfsland’s area of academic expertise is the historical study of Jesus. He has presented papers and participated in several panel discussions about Jesus at theological conferences. In 2014 he moderated the “Synoptic Gospels Study Group” at the annual convention of the Evangelical Theological Society. In in 2013 he moderated both the “Synoptic Gospels Study Group” and the “Sayings of Jesus Study Group” at the annual ETS convention.

 You should keep those credentials in mind. 

This otherwise highly educated Christian apologist did little more in his reply to me, than to assure me of how wrong and idiotic I was, he spouted a few derogatory comments suggesting I oppose the bible god because I have a possible history of drug abuse, crime, addiction to pornography, etc, then told me not to respond, because he would not reply.

 Nothing spells dispassionate scholarly rigor quite like "leeme alone!"

This is offensive because the way I worded my challenges indicated what was true, namely that I had already obtained a reasonable knowledge of how the front-line apologists were making their defenses.  Yet, Dr. Ingolfsland speaks to me as if I'm just a drunk atheist whose reasons for unbelief are laughably superficial and dishonest.

First, the apologists and Christians who think my publicly posting Dr. Ingolfsland's email to me is illegal, are wrong, the law does not recognize emails as private after they have been sent:

This was true in 2002, State v. Townsend, 57 P. 3d 255, 262-3 (Wash: Supreme Court 2002):

There are two types of computer communications at issue in this case. The first is standard e-mail communication in which the sender composes a message and sends it via the internet to the recipient's computer where it is recorded or stored until the recipient decides to "open" it. This process is most analogous to a letter sent through the mail. Although not addressed in Washington cases, other jurisdictions have found that the reasonable expectation of privacy in an e-mail, like a letter sent through the mail, ends when the recipient opens it. Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 333 (6th Cir.2001); Commonwealth v. Proetto, 771 A.2d 823, 831-33 (Pa.Super.2001) (holding that there is no reasonable 263 *263 expectation of privacy in e-mail messages sent by man to 15-year-old girl), appeal granted, 567 Pa. 667, 790 A.2d 988 (2002). Once opened, the recipient has complete freedom to do what he or she wishes with the communication. See United States v. Maxwell, 45 M.J. 406, 417-18 (1996).

 And it remains true as late as 2018, from  US v. Bereznak, Dist. Court, MD Pennsylvania 2018:

...courts appear to be in general agreement that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic content such as emails or pager messages once they are on a recipient's device. See, e.g.,
United States v. Heckenkamp, 482 F.3d 1142, 1146 (9th Cir. 2007)("A person's reasonable expectation of privacy may be diminished in `transmissions over the Internet or e-mail that have already arrived at the recipient.'")(quoting United States v. Lifshitz, 369 F.3d 173, 190 (2d Cir. 2004)(finding no expectation of privacy in e-mail once received));
United States v. Jones, 149 F.App'x 954, 959 (11th Cir. 2005)(finding no reasonable expectation of privacy to prevent recipient from testifying as to contents of pager messages);
Guest v. Leis, 255 F.3d 325, 333 (6th Cir. 2001)("Users would [] lose a legitimate expectation of privacy in an e-mail that had already reached its recipient; at this moment, the e-mailer would be analogous to a letter-writer, whose expectation of privacy ordinarily terminates upon delivery of the letter.").
One reason for this is that once text messages have been received, the recipient could reveal them to anyone, and "[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public [] is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967). The Supreme Court "consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979). In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court found that a defendant "takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government." 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976). In holding that the respondent had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his bank records, the Miller Court noted that the Supreme Court "has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." Id.

With that potential quibble out of the way, here is Dr. Ingolfsland's condescending loquacious email reply to me, with my comments interspersed at the appropriate locations:
----------------------------------------

 On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 6:21 AM, Dennis Ingolfsland <ingolfsland@crown.edu> wrote:

    Barry,   

    Please excuse my bluntness, but contrary to your assertion, I don’t think you are serious. In fact, I think you’re just playing games. You atheists like to play a game with us Christians. It goes something like this: “If you Christians can’t prove to my satisfaction and beyond any shadow of a doubt that every word of the Bible is absolutely true, then I am justified in not believing any of it!”    

Straw man, on the contrary, there is no reason for the Christian, knowing nothing more about me at the time than my list of 24 challenges, supra, to conclude that I'm just a game-playing atheist whose ideas about burdens of proof are conveniently lop-sided in my favor.  Furthermore, I never expressed or implied that you'd have to convince me your answer to any challenge was true "beyond any shadow of a doubt."  I also never expressed or implied I'd believe atheism true until somebody could prove every word of the bible absolutely true. For somebody with a Ph.d, you sure are quick to make false accusations.

In fact, I'm quite aware of, and accepting of, the same burden of proof that Licona and other scholarly apologists admit:  it is the hypothesis or interpretation that has the most explanatory scope and power, that wins. 

    But the game is rigged. There is no certainty in this world! No one can prove Christianity beyond any shadow of a doubt any more than someone could prove atheism beyond any shadow of a doubt!

I never expressed or implied that Christianity had to meet such an intolerably high burden.  Straw man again.

If someone does not WANT to believe something, there is no amount of evidence in the world that will convince them (e.g. moon landing deniers or holocaust deniers).    

 Correct.  That's why you cannot make other Christians, whom you think espouse theological error, see the light. Christians, with all of their alleged extra access to absolute truth, are no less susceptible to allowing their personal desires to cloud their better judgment, than atheists.

    Frankly, some of your objections seem analogous to someone saying I don’t believe in modern medicine because 1) They haven’t cured cancer or the common cold, 2) A room full of doctors may well have several different diagnoses and proposed remedies to the same symptoms. 3) Hundreds of people have died in hospitals due to malpractice, 4) Big pharma is more interested in profits than actual cures. 5) Doctors are in it for the money, 6) Hospitals are just big business, 7) No one is actually trying to cure major diseases like Cancer because the researchers would then be out of business so the who thing is a charade, etc.    

Straw man again.  I would hardly have set forth the specific challenges I did, if I didn't have supreme confidence that I could demonstrate them to be true within the confines of the historiography and hermeneutics accepted by the majority of Christian scholars. 

    Of course this is nonsense, but if someone tried to defend the medical profession, their attackers could just dismiss the defenses as apologetic word wrangling or some such thing.

 Leaving you with no basis upon which to support other apologists in their many debates with atheists.  Apparently you think it is all a big waste of time.  Another division in the body of Christ.  

Not only that, but some of the arguments are unanswerable. It would be impossible to convince someone who didn’t WANT to be convinced, that most doctors really do want to help patients and that in spite of their bottom lines, Big pharma companies and Cancer researchers really do work to provide cures.    

I could just as easily have argued similarly that Christians only deny atheism because they don't WANT to be convinced of the truth.  But I was polite and sincere toward you without condescension.

    I’m sure you are well aware that there is absolutely nothing a good skeptic can’t challenge or doubt.

Not true.  Dishonest lawyers are experts at playing such games in trial in order to defend their client's alleged innocence, but on the whole the juries appear capable of knowing the point at which doubting the prosecutor's evidence of guilt becomes an irrational trifle.  Worse, there are many things you and I would agree exist, or are true, including bible history. If you've never met a skeptic who could really kick your ass all over hell and back in a debate about biblical matters, perhaps you can be forgiven for presuming my idiotic blindness.  Apparently, David Hume isn't the only one who regards personal experience as the ultimate test of truth.

Descartes thought he found something he couldn’t doubt with his saying, “I think, therefore I am” but later philosophers have rightly pointed out that even that can be doubted.

 Those philosophers are also wrong, a non-existing thing could never make a statement.  Existence is an axiom of speech...unless you think a non-existing thing could make a speech?

The fact is that there is no absolute certainty in this life—not even atheism or science is beyond doubt!    

Again, straw man:  I never expressed or implied that Christians either prove their beliefs absolutely, or concede the debate.  I believe your burden of proof is no higher than anybody else's:  beyond a reasonable doubt.  The standard used by everybody in daily life, in courts of law, and by the more scholarly Christian apologists such as Mike Licona.

    I once had an interest in Cell Biology so one of the biologists where I work recommended a book that she said was like the “Bible” of Cell biology at the time. I was amazed how often the text conceded that they just didn’t know how such-and-such worked, or there was simply no known explanation for this or that phenomena. A good philosopher of science who wanted to be obnoxious could have absolutely torn that book to shreds, figuratively speaking! In fact, the more we learn about the unbelievable complexity of even the simplest forms of life, the more random chance and natural selection seem impossible.   

The only problem being that you are thrusting these talking points out into your soliloquy in a speech that ends by telling me to avoid replying.  If you are so sure intelligent design is an obvious truth of reality, you should have no fears about your ability to steamroll an atheist in a debate about intelligent design.  Unfortunately, your soliloquy ends with your telling me to avoid responding, because by choice you refuse to communicate further.  If you can be reasonable to set your own subjective limits on how much obedience to Jude 3 you will permit, you cannot reasonably fault skeptics for similarly setting their own subjective limits on how often they will answer Christian challenges. 

    But to play your game just for a moment, take for example your first objection on inerrancy. It seems to me that several of the objections on your list have to do with efforts to reconcile the Bible with inerrancy, for example #5 (you’re still stuck in your fundamentalist background!).

 First, Objection # 1 stands on its own.  I was willing to attack the notion that bible inerrancy should be used as a hermeneutic.  That debate would not involve the question of whether any specific bible statement was true or false.

Second, it hardly matters whether you affirm or deny inerrancy.  inerrancy is a false doctrine that hangs around the neck of many Christians.  I am doing a lot of good to beat it bloody, even if you happens to be one of those Christians who don't believe it or don't prioritize it.

Third, I am not stuck in a fundamentalist background. I have chosen to attack several forms of Christianity, one of them being the fundamentalist type that you apparently don't aspire to.  The fact that you don't espouse that form of Christianity, doesn't mean it is completely irrelevant and can be dismissed without commentary.  Fundamentalists are wrong, but they also ensnare a lot of innocently ignorant people with their half-cocked arguments.  the more I attack false doctrines, the more hope of helping Christians out of the doctrinal hell-hole that they fell into.

Contrary to many fundamentalists, Christianity simply does not rise or fall on inerrancy (as evidenced by the huge number of biblical scholars who do not believe in inerrancy and yet are dedicated Christians).

 I agree.  I would  never foolishly pretend that if I can prove one genuine error in the originals of the bible, then the collapse of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy suddenly means the collapse of Christianity.

Unfortunately for you, there are well-informed scholarly Christians who insist that yes, Christianity does rise or fall with inerrancy.  A prime example would be Steve Hays.

Tyson

I'm not sure we're using "foundational" in the same sense. By "foundational" I mean that there are things in Scripture that, were they wrong or missing, would not destroy Christianity. For instance, Christianity does not rise or fall on Shamgar's killing of 600 Philistines with an oxgoad (Judges 3:31). Imagine we find out that Shamgar killed 30 men with a spear. Would you abandon Christianity because of the discrepancy? I should hope not.

Hays 

1. That's a hopelessly atomistic view of the issue. It's like saying, because I can survive frostbitten toes, because I can survive an amputated toe, I can survive Antarctica in my tighty-whities. The question isn't whether the body can survive the loss of a toe, but what sustains the entire body, toes included. 

If you jettison inerrancy, then you implicitly jettison the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture since it doesn't make a heap of sense to say a verbally plenarily inspired text is fallible.

Hays is obviously wrong as he thinks God inspired certain sinners to write out inerrant scripture, but did not take away their sinful natures at any time in the process.  Therefore, the idea that God can effectively guide his church using imperfect human books is not near the wild irrational thing Hays thinks it is.

Something can have all kinds of errors and still be essentially reliable—take CNN or the New York Times for example.   

Agreed.  Leaving me to question why you bring up such a thing, as I never expressed or implied that atheism wins unless you can prove the bible perfect in every way in absolute fashion. Christianity does not rise or fall with inerrancy, agreed. 

    Your 2nd and 24th arguments are basically regurgitating David Hume’s outdated arguments against miracles.

It's a pity that you are so confident I'm wrong in these propositions, when I've offered to support them with scholarly argument, and all you do is scoff, assure me I got it wrong, walk away and make clear you won't accept the offer to discuss the matter.

Some would say such a reply has more in common with fundamentalism than with scholarly acumen.

As for my point # 2, I was merely offering to argue that Christians do not win a debate by showing that their notion is "reasonable". The bible and the world are chock full of examples where reasonable people disagree about the facts.  It might very well be that the reasonable Christian interpretation of a matter isn't the only interpretation that can be shown to be "reasonable".

As for my objection # 24, this had nothing to do with Hume.  Had you been willing to discuss it, I would have pointed out that since Christians and unbelievers routinely draw inductive inferences about larger issues without knowing about every single piece of relevant evidence, then unbelievers cannot be charged with unreasonableness for doing, during miracle-investigation, what everybody else does in every other area of life:  deciding that the pool of data they sampled is sufficiently large to justify drawing conclusions from.

I would also have pointed out that because apologists would concede that there comes a time in the life of the unbeliever when helping his child with homework is reasonable, that is one potential justification for avoiding miracle claims.  Gee, how many other facets of the average unbeliever's life, would the apologist say are more important than miracle investigation?  Can we be reasonable to leave the internet long enough to use the toilet?  Or would reasonable people take the computer into the bathroom, because to miss that one provable and true miracle claim is to risk wrongfully deciding miracles are false, and ending up in hell?

If the unbeliever has a job which pays the bills, then how can you justify saying he should put the bible down, turn off the internet, and concentrate on his worldly job to any degree?  Isn't it true that such unbeliever is always merely one heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternity of torment?  Isn't his spiritual condition more important than his worldly concerns?

 Must you not, consistent with your intense support of Christian apologetics, tell him that it would be more rational to get rid of everything in his life that gives him an excuse to cease the miracle investigations?

But if the unbeliever need not give up the normative daily things in his life that limit the amount of time he can spend investigating miracles (taking kids to school, having a job, sleeping, eating, etc), then you cannot really say at what point he is irrationally avoiding miracles and bible investigation.

Would you advise juries to never make a finding of "guilty", all because it's always going to be possible that the criminal suspect is innocent?  No.  The fact that there might be one piece of evidence out there they haven't seen yet, that would prove his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, does not make the jury unreasonable to find the prosecutor's case convincing.

Therefore, it doesn't matter if there is one miracle-claim out there that proves god's existence beyond a reasonable doubt, the skeptic who takes no longer to hear miracle evidence than a jury takes to hear evidence in a criminal case, is going to be reasonable to draw a negative conclusion if his reasons for it cohere with normative investigative protocol.

I don't know what your views on "hell" are, but if they are anything like those of the typical Southern Baptist, then my above-arguments show that there is too much urgent danger to justify sitting down and doing 20 book reports on the latest scholarly apologetics offerings.

Even non-Christian philosophers have pointed out the fallacies in his logic, but atheists generally don’t care as long as Hume serves their purpose.

 And you foster our allegedly apathetic attitude by mouthing off in what amounts to a hit-and-run reply.

But to answer on the merits, I'm quite aware of the problems in Hume's formulations, but his basic argument was reasonable.  His error in calling a miracle a "violation" of natural law does nothing to sublimate his general argument.  The more a claim's assertions depart from the hearer's confirmed experience of reality, the more the hearer is justified to demand a level of evidence that is greater in quantity and quality than what we normally expect to support claims that conform to normative experience.  A picture might be enough to show that you walked into a store.  But it wouldn't be enough to show that you levitated by supernatural power.

By the way, if you were genuinely sincere, I would suggest that you read Craig Keeners’ two volumes on Miracles in which he provides a devastating critique of Hume.   

Ok, then I must be genuinely sincere under your own criteria, because I previously sent Keener the ultimate challenge to his miracle claims, and, shock, surprise, neither he nor any of his supporters has ever dared to accept the challenge or answer my questions.

    Some of your other argument are just plain silly—I almost laughed out loud at #21!    

 You should direct your laughter to the book of Daniel which makes the claim that angels guard certain parts of the earth, and that earthly chaos arises when and if that angel loses a battle with a demon.  Here's what two Christian scholars have to say:

10:13 One of the strangest accounts in the Bible is now unfolded. The angel related that he was coming to bring Daniel the answer to his prayer but was delayed because “the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.” Finally, Michael (whose name means “who is like God?”), one of the most powerful and important angels (“one of the chief princes”), came to the interpreting angel’s aid. Evidently the reason that Michael became involved and not another powerful angel was that Daniel was interceding for Israel, a nation especially entrusted to Michael’s care (v. 21).

The NIV’s “detained there with the king of Persia”827 could mean that the angel was prevented from leaving the area ruled by the human king of the Persian Empire. Yet the Hebrew word translated “king” is plural, and the concept of the angel’s being “detained with” the earthly kings of Persia seems

untenable. In the context of angelic warfare, these “kings” likely were spiritual rulers who attempted to control Persia.

Miller, S. R. (2001, c1994). Vol. 18: Daniel. Includes indexes. (electronic ed.).

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 284).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 

10:5–9 …A few passages, however, suggest that there are heavenly armies that oppose Yahweh, so that earthly battles reflect battles in heaven; whichever side wins in heaven, its equivalent wins on earth.

Goldingay, J. E. (2002). Vol. 30: Word Biblical Commentary : Daniel.

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 291). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

You apologists are always screaming about how grossly immoral the pagan nations were.  If they really did engage in unrestrained bestiality and burning children to death, they likely also approved of pedophilia.  Unless you think the above-cited Christian commentators got it wrong (the first is an inerrantist, the second is an evangelical), then my challenge, about the bible explaining child rape in California on the basis of California's angel losing a sky-battle with a demon, is perfectly consistently with what the book of Daniel teaches.

    On #8, many (if not most) Christian scholars are even more skeptical than you.

 Which is another reason you should have cordially assumed that I'm not a wild-eyed skeptic guilty of the hair-brained half-assed stupidity that you apply to me.

They would say that Matthew and John were not eyewitnesses! In fact, I doubt that Wright would say Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.

 That's correct, and when such an authority as Wright says such things, you cannot really say whether the investigating skeptic "needs" to do more investigation before his own negative conclusion can be reasonable.

But this was simply irrelevant to his arguments on the Resurrection (come to think of it, have you actually ever read N.T. Wright’s Resurrection of the Son of God or Mike Licona’s “Resurrection of Jesus”—or did you just skim them, or worse yet, just read the Amazon reviews?    

 Yes, I've read both of them.  Wright's attempt to avoid Mark's lost ending is unconvincing to say the least, and if he is correct, Mark's ending need not have said anything more than that the disciples saw Jesus in Galilee.  Nothing more is required from the earlier Markan material where Jesus promises to see them in Galilee.  That still leaves Wright with the earliest gospel having the least to say about Jesus' resurrection, rationally justifying the hypothesis that the later gospels have more detailed resurrection appearance narratives only because of emebellishment, not because Mark "chose to exclude" all that fantastic important stuff.

Licona fatally agrees with the majority of scholars that Jesus' family rejected him and his ministry at least as late as the crucifixion, and I capitalize on that admission by asking whether it makes sense to say that Jesus' own family, in that collectivist society where they could not avoid hearing about Jesus' miracles, should witness these allegedly genuine miracles for three years and still somehow persuade themselves, in this honor/shame society, that they were fakes or being done by Satan's power.

I've also reviewed and found wanting the arguments of Lunn and Snapp in their attempt to falsify the Christian scholarly majority view and assert Mark's long ending was authentically written by Mark.  No dice.

If your question about my scholarly research was sincere, would you have loaded it up with all that condescending context?

    Many of your arguments amount to “I’m right and all scholars who disagree with me are wrong”

They were presented as honest challenges and offers to deal with the best you could possibly offer in rebuttal, they were not presented as the juvenile rhetoric you claim. Can you think of anything more routine than for somebody to think that a scholar had gotten something wrong?  How does my disagreement with a scholar besmirch my sincerity or credibility?

and some other arguments are things that some Christians would agree with—but they are not sufficient to destroy their faith.

 My challenges to you were not intended to destroy anybody's faith.  They were intended to force you to admit that the skeptical view on those matters can be reasonable.  There's a big difference. Contrary to popular belief, your being reasonable to be a Christian doesn't automatically operate to make atheists unreasonable .  Sometimes data is sufficiently ambiguous that it allows two opposing hypotheses to be equally reasonable.  It's why juries deadlock and why dedicated fundamentalists often change their mind about bible doctrine several times in a lifetime.

    Christianity does not rest on inerrancy or the interpretation of this or that verse (One need only read James’ Dunn’s Jesus Remembered or Dale Allison’s “Constructing Jesus” to know that (and neither of them are even conservative, much less fundamentalist).  

 I agree, and I never expressed or implied that proving inerrancy wrong would collapse Christianity.  But that doesn't mean blasting inerrancy is pointless.  There ARE fundamentalist loudmouths in the world who push inerrancy to a degree that causes psychological harm for the less informed Christians.  I am doing something good in refuting these sorry bastards. 

So if you are really serious, I would suggest starting with the book, “There is a god” by the once world-renowned atheist philosopher, Anthony Flew (the atheist grand-father to atheists like Dawkins or Hitchings). He did not become a Christian but he finally concluded—after years of defending atheism—that atheism is simply not scientifically possible.   

Sorry, I disagree with your narrow minded idea that I cannot be serious unless I read books you recommend.  And I'm well aware of Anthony Flew and I've already publicly stated that I find that man to be a very poor excuse of an atheist.  I seriously wonder whether he was suffering from a brain disorder when he was debating Habermas on the John Ankerberg show.  Flew could have steamrolled Habermas, but instead appears to be throwing nothing but softball responses.  Here is how I responded to a YouTube video of the entire Flew/Habermas debate hosted by John Ankerberg:

Sorry, but as an atheist myself, I do not think Flew does very well in public debates, despite how much he is lauded by other atheists as a smart guy. Habermas does most of the talking, Ankerberg usually ends a segment after Habermas has had his last say, and the Christians in the audience were no doubt wrongly thinking that because Flew is a smart guy, his performance here shows them how weak the non-believer responses are. I would have argued that under Christian scholar consensus that Mark is the earliest gospel and ended at 16:8, it is reasonable (at least for the unbeliever who has a life and cannot just google Christian scholarship minority positions 18 hours a day) to believe that the earliest form of the gospel did not say a resurrected Jesus appeared to anybody, thus further implying, if patristic testimony can be trusted, that Peter also didn't tell the Roman unbelievers that Jesus made any resurrection appearances, thus further implying that fictional embellishment is the likely reason the later 3 gospels have resurrection appearance narratives, ultimately ridding Christian apologists of the very eyewitness evidence they admit is so crucial to their case...

Ingolfsland continues:

    Then read the Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder which is the book that changed Flew’s mind. Schroeder is a brilliant scientist (from MIT as I recall, and not a Christian).   

    Then read Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer (And Signature of Controversy which is Meyer’s response to his critics). Meyer is a scientist and philosopher of science from Cambridge University who studied every significant theory of the origin of life ever proposed—and shows that all of them fail scientifically. (Some would say that the problem with atheists is not just that they are too critical, but that they are too selectively critical. If you would be as skeptical and critical about the origin of life as you are about the Bible, you would abandon your atheism and at least become agnostic)!   

    Then read James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered and Dale Allison’s Constructing Jesus. As I said, neither of them are conservative but they show how honest historians approach the Life of Jesus apart from any assumptions about the Bible being inspired, much less inerrant.    

    Finally, read the two volume set on Miracles by Craig Keener, The Resurrection of Jesus by Michael Licona and the Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright.   

I feel insulted that you could seriously think the person who submitted those 24 challenges to you, probably hasn't already heard of those books already.  Once again, you are letting your religious zeal get in the way of your better judgment. And your teaching position in a private Christian school can induce you to keep the Christian emotions running strong even if you feel you shouldn't.  We all want to impress our peers and our bosses.

    As I said, there is no absolute certainty in this world.

And I never expressed or implied that lack of absolute certainty in the Christian position thus lets atheists off the hook.

All we have is possibilities, probabilities, evidence, etc.

 Agreed.  I passed Philosophy 101 and Historiography Preschool about 15 years ago.

Two people can look at exactly the same evidence—whether in law, or science, or medicine—and come to radically different conclusions. If someone does not WANT to believe something, there is no amount of evidence that will convince them.    

 That's true for Christians no less than atheists.  So unless you say all debate between the two groups is a waste of time, you don't really have a point.  And the fact that I'm less skeptical than some Christian scholars, by your own admission, should tell you that I'm a bit more objective than you give credit for.

    The world-famous atheist philosopher, Aldous Huxley, once wrote,   

    “No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community…The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world [i.e. an atheist like himself] is not concerned exclusively with a problem of pure meta physics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…” (Huxley; Ends and Means, London : Chatto & Windus, 1940. 272)    

Thanks for the reference, and I agree with him and you that complete objectivity is impossible.  I also appreciate Licona for holding the same view. 

And atheism is not a philosophy of meaninglessness.  You are assuming that God's existence is what gives rise to meaningfulness.  You are wrong.  Atheism only says there is no god.  What moral conclusions a person should draw from atheism, is another question.  And yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with Frank Turek and his "Stealing from God" stuff.  His blind assumption that any moral is necessarily objective, is laughable.  I've also steamrolled Matthew Flannagan, who similarly goes around pretending that moral relativism is fallacious.  Over the course of about a year, when I debated him and asked him what moral yardstick he was using to claim that babies shouldn't' be tortured, or that parents have a duty to avoid harming their kids, Flannagan went silent, and this last time, his website conveniently banned me, though in private email he denied banning me.  This convinced me that squeezing god out of morals is a very weak argument; it only works with those who already agree that the badness of some human actions is beyond dispute.  Flannagan's bible tells him that god put his laws into our heart, but Flannagan never goes there, he simply bans me when I ask the hard questions.

  For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness [atheism] was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired for simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom…There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people [in context, he is talking about Christians] and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever” (Huxley, Ends and Means, 273.    

    I admire Huxley’s honesty. He is saying that for him, and the other atheist philosophers he knew, they chose atheism because without God, they were free to live as they want. 

That's one of the benefits of atheism, but it no more follows that this is every atheist's reason to disbelieve, than the fact that some people use religion as a crutch because they have a weak mind, should mean this is the case for every person who becomes a Christian.

    At its heart, atheism is rarely, if ever, about problems in the biblical text.Atheism is a heart issue.

 Now you are just preaching the choir. I could just as easily say that Christianity is a heart issue, not an intellectual issue.  You are only a Christian because you WANT it to be true, etc, etc. 

Jesus and Paul teach that people are in sinful rebellion against God and that unless they repent of their rebellion and turn to Jesus they will face the wrath of God.

 Then they were liars, Saul must have heard the best quality Christian testimony available when he was imprisoning and torturing the Christians, yet after conversion, he says he obtained mercy because his violence toward the church was done in ignorance and unbelief:

 12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service,
 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief;
 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.
 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. (1 Tim. 1:12-15 NAU)

I've never mistreated Christians anywhere nearly as violently as Paul did, so if anything, I am less culpable than Paul for "rejecting the truth".  If Paul can be considered to have acted ignorantly despite his likely having heard the best quality Christian testimony numerous times, I have supreme confidence, that, if Christianity is true, God will deem modern unbelievers even less culpable, given that we are now limited to 2,000 year old documents whose authorship and provenance are doubted by even many Christian scholars.

Atheists don’t want to be told they are sinners (although in your heart you know it’s true).

Yeah right.  And in your heart you know Jesus didn't rise form the dead, you just pretend he did because that's what currently keeps your bills paid.  Must you insult the intelligence of bible skeptics who are smarter than you give them credit for?  What did I do?  Steal joy?

The way to avoid that annoying guilt is to deny that there is a God and then to desperately look for ways to justify your belief (faith).    

Again, preaching to the choir.  I must be more objective than you.  I was willing to justify my position with scholarly argument and discussion with you.  You've chosen the lower road of insulting my intelligence, expecting me to think your sermon constitutes the very presence of God, and then walking away warning me that you won't reply further.

    So what’s your issue, Barry? Pornography? Self-indulgence? Dishonesty? Greed? Envy? Arrogance? Alcoholism? Drugs?

The innuendo suggests your fear of corresponding with me in a scholarly polite way on the merits.

You can continue to try to ease your conscience by denying God’s existence (is that working for you?),

Does believing in god take away that terribly empty feeling you get when you think about life without god?

or you can confront your sin by confessing your rebellion to God, asking his forgiveness, and committing your life to Jesus. He can give you the clear conscience and life of peace you are looking for.  

What you don't mention is that "committing your life to Jesus" is also found by many to do little more than cause them depression.  You wrongfully and blindly assume that any such problems are the sole fault of the imperfect sinner not being sincere enough, or not having the right theological views.

You also fallaciously and blindly presume that what you offer is available to me, when you bible makes it abundantly clear that God could be judging a certain person and refusing to give them the peace of mind even though they seek with a sincerity that produces tears of remorse (Hebrews 12:17).  Perhaps you should become a charismatic or a Pentecostal, so you can have enough discernment to tell whether or not the unbeliever you are dealing with really does have the option you think they do.  I wonder whether the children of Babylon had the option to avoid the rapes and murders that God foisted on them and their families in Isaiah 13:16.  Don't forget your bible teaches a corporate solidarity that punishes children for the sins of the fathers.  God didn't have to make David's baby sick for 7 days before killing it, but he wanted to torture that baby this much anyway because of David's sin:

 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.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

Ingolfsland continues:

    But if you come from a fundamentalist background you know all that. The problem is that you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater! Fundamentalists generally define faith as some kind of intellectual belief in certain doctrines. Since you can no longer believe in all those doctrines, you reject Christianity.

 There you go again, blindly assuming things you couldn't possibly know.  What kind of university do you teach at?  KJV Only?

You also give no heed to my reasons for rejecting those doctrines.  

But as John Calvin wrote, faith “is more of the heart than of the brain, and more of the disposition that of the understanding” (Institutes 3.2.8; and no, I’m not a Calvinist).

 That's another problem:  I also reject Christianity because the bible supports Calvinism and thus supports a a stupid doctrine that says God openly forbids us from doing what he secretly causes us to do.  Yes, there are bible verses that oppose Calvinism, but that hardly means there can be none that support it.  There are.  

Saving faith is not just about believing certain doctrines like inerrancy. It is about sincerely repenting from our sin and turning our lives over to Jesus Christ in loving devotion as savior and king. Read my little booklet, “Will the real Jesus Please Stand Up.”    

What makes you think my stay in fundamentalism was all doctrine and no sincere repentance? A 2,000 year old book of questionable authorship that says unbelievers are without excuse and true believers never apostatize?  LOL.

    I’ve read all of the books I mentioned above as well as over a hundred other scholarly books on Jesus—including many critics who attack Jesus and the New Testament.

 So have I.

I find there is enough evidence for me to take an educated step of faith and follow Jesus.

 It doesn't matter if that is true.  It can also be reasonable to reject Christianity as a false religion. That which is "reasonable" cannot be nailed down with rigid certainty, and it is very often the case that reasonable people come to different but equally reasonable interpretations of evidence and history.  But clearly, your need to be dogmatic leaves no room for such realities.

If you don’t, we live in a free country and that’s your right.

I challenged your beliefs on the merits.  We've moved beyond what my rights are, and have entered the arena of whether my viewpoints are reasonable.

    I’ve lived a good life. I’ve been a good husband, father and grandfather. I’ve given thousands and thousands of dollars to good causes. Have helped feed starving children and taught thousands of people to love others and be compassionate to people. I didn’t do all this to earn anything from God. I did it because I am convinced of the love, grace and mercy God showed me on the cross of Jesus Christ.

 So?  Lots of non-Christians do all the things you just mentioned.  Must their non-Christian metaphysics be true?

So if you are right and I am wrong about all this, I will go to my death in peace, never knowing that I was wrong—but having lived a good, worthwhile life.    

    On the other hand, if I am right and you are wrong… We’ll let’s just say there is a lot at stake so it is worth the time to read all these books I recommend with a genuinely open mind—unless, of course, your atheism is driven by something other than serious intellectual doubts. (If you don’t read anything else, please, at least read my little booklet in the link).    

Do you believe that I am always just one heartbeat away from the gates of hell?  If so, how can you ask me to do things that logically imply I can safely delay the day of my repentance? Is there a reason that I should be confident I won't die in an accident in the two weeks it takes me to read the material you suggested I read?

If you think I could die at any moment, and if you believe there is no limbo or purgatory, we just go to heaven or hell at death, then isn't your asking me to read some books, really in effect asking me to be confident that I can safely delay my repentance?

    Well, I think I’ve said all I’m going to say on this topic. Please don’t bother to respond. I won’t answer. I’ve taken all the time I can afford to take on this. Whatever you decide, I wish you a good life.

    Dennis