Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? God is the Best Explanation for Objective Moral Laws

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

Cold Case Christianity:

Is God Real? God is the Best Explanation for Objective Moral Laws         

Posted: 20 Feb 2019 01:56 AM PST

We live in a world populated with self-evident, objective, transcendent moral laws.

 Thus indicating you aren't trying to convince atheists or skeptics, only bible-believing Christians.  Should you ever feel up to the challenge, grow a pair of balls and actually have a debate with an informed atheist the way Turek does.  Something tells me you are too afraid to do this.  Why threaten your fan base you've worked so hard to get?

“It’s never OK to torture babies for fun”

But the burden is on YOU to show that this is an objective moral.  You are assuming, without argument, that because most people agree this is morally wrong behavior, then presto, it must be objectively wrong. Not so.  You are assuming without proof that whatever morals are agreed to by "most people" are therefore representative of transcendent objective moral standards.  But it could just as easily be that most people think torturing babies for fun is wrong, for much the same reason that gorillas and other higher mammals don't go around torturing their own babies for fun.  It's mere natural instinct to survive.  The question of why we have that instinct goes beyond the moral question and gets into the muck of "intelligent design".

And regardless, your own bible shows God requiring his followers to torture kids (when the bible says you must hit your child with a "rod" its authors probably wouldn't think that leaving bruises and lacerations on the child's body was too much, see Pro. 20:30, and remember that many proverbs are strung together without concern for theme or context, so you cannot automatically assume v. 30 must be interpreted in a way harmonious with the "immediate context".

How torturous do you suppose it is for the child who watches as strangers over run their village killing everything in sight?  How long can a child fend off the man trying to murder it?  How much torture does that child endure in those horrific moments?  Where else could the Canaanites go after be chased out of the promised land, except to barren places already occupied by slave traders, where survival required criminal acts, or selling kids into slavery, or prostitution?

or (my new favorite from a blog reader) “It’s never OK to torture non-believers just because you don’t like them?” are two examples of such transcendent laws. How do we account for laws such as these?

 The better question would be to avoid begging the question of transcendence and ask instead "why do most people think it immoral to torture babies?" or "why has human history exhibited a pattern of disapproving of baby-torture?" 

Of course, I'd disagree that humans have agreed throughout history that baby torture is immoral.  That Israel found some babies expendable is clear (Numbers 31:17, 1st Sam. 15:2-3), and as already pointed out, if all Israel was doing was "dispossessing" the Canaanites, they were chasing them off the promised land and thus into dangerous barren territory where crime or worse would be the only way a family could stay alive.

We are mammals, and we instinctively avoid doing things that inhibit the survival of our young.  Furthermore, in our mammalian minds, any "benefits" we could get from torturing babies would be outweighed by the cost of inhibiting survival.  The fact is most mammals simply lack a desire to torture babies just like they lack a desire to torture forgotten invisible dust particles. What fool would pretend this cannot be accounted for except by positing space aliens controlling our minds with their beam-weapons?  How's that any different than your invisible god who can read minds?

Their existence points to a reasonable inference: the existence of a Transcendent Moral Law Giver.

Not if you define that TMLG as spaceless, timeless, immaterial, invisible, other-dimensional, and the other mantra that Turek repeats ad nauseum to his mostly Christian audiences.  That's nothing more than an incoherent definition which we are reasonable to dismiss.   The only theory you have, to justify such nonsense talk, (i.e., the big bang) is a theory that is manifestly not what the originally intended addressees of Genesis 1-2 would have thought when reading the creation account.   Try again.

But there are other alternatives typically offered by those who reject the existence of such a Being. Is God real? The insufficiency of the alternative explanations strengthens the argument for the existence of God:    

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Laws A Product of Genetic Evolution?

When you ask a loaded question like that, no.  If a moral was objective and transcendent, then no, mere genetic evolution would not create it.  Evolution cannot create something whose nature extends beyond the physical.

    As one friendly skeptic said recently, “We share 99.999% of our physical traits with our fellow humans . . . so why would our mental traits not be similarly shared?” Are moral truths simply part of our genetic coding?

 Yes, that's why newborn babies don't need to be taught to breastfeed.  Your theory that "god puts his laws into our hearts" is bullshit anyway, as testified to by billions of children, who obviously don't already have such morality, who only acquire it by learning from their mammalian caregivers.

There are good reasons to reject such an explanation. When someone claims self-evident moral truths are simply a matter of our genetic evolution, they are assuming the same evolutionary pathway for every people group. What are we to make of cultures that behave in a manner different than our own?

 It's called cultural conditioning.  We all seek after food, water, shelter and companionship, we just tend to go about it in different ways in different periods of history.

How can we justly adjudicate between the myriad of people groups, all of whom have their own genetic evolutionary pathway? This form of emboldened relativism is powerless to judge any form of behavior, good or bad.

 No, you are assuming that if all morals are relative, that we have no "right" to judge others.  That's total bullshit.  One "relative" moral instinct we have is to criticize others who do things differently than we do.  Our "right" comes from our innate desire to criticize outsiders.  Just like there is no "right" for one junkyard dog to bite another, nevertheless, they still do.  It's purely instinctive, as nuanced by a person's environmental conditioning.

There is no objective moral truth governing the carnivores chasing the herbivores on earth, but that hardly means we accuse them of being "inconsistent" for foisting their morals on each other.  It's just what creatures of instinct do when they have different ideas about survival, yet have to live together.

In fact, how can we judge any behavior if it is so connected to our genetic nature?

 The same way one junkyard dog decides to attack another junkyard dog.  If we feel uncomfortable with another person being in what we consider our personal space, we react.  We aren't reacting merely because we first figured out how to prove that our moral view was more "objective" than theirs, we simply "react".

We don’t blame people for being brunettes or having blue eyes; if our genes are the cause of our moral understanding, what right do we have to blame people when they simply express genetic moral wiring different from our own?

Because we all innately resist the attempts of others to harm the ability of ourselves and our favored groups from surviving and thriving.  Instinct. And since I deny freewill, yes, I think society is wrong to pretend that a criminal had a "choice" or ability to resist the temptation to do a crime.  Why some boys in a group shy away from stealing while the others go through with the plan, has to do with the boys having very different genetic predispositions and environmental conditioning.  $50 says in the group of 5 boys playing to steal from a store, the one who will actually not puss out, but go through with it, will be the kid whose genetics make him more aggressive, and/or the kid who is lacking any serious discipline at home.

Perhaps most importantly, even if my skeptical friend is right and commonly accepted moral truths are merely a product of our genetic encoding, we still must account for the source of this encoding. 

No, that gets into the question of intelligent design, which doesn't get you off the hook.  Your attept to prove that some morals can only be accounted for by a transcendent moral lawgiver, has failed.  You cannot correct that problem by simply insisting on intelligent design.  That's called moving the goal-posts.  The "moral argument" for God fails.  The "intelligent design" argument for God is another matter.

DNA is information rich. As Stephen C. Myers observes in Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, there isn’t a single example in the history of the universe in which information has come from anything other than an intelligent source. If our genetic code contains information about moral truth, we still must ask the foundational question, what intelligent source provided this code? All codes require encoders.

 Meyers is debunked here.

But I don't really care if a "god" exists, the NT provides evidence that makes it more likely Jesus stayed dead, so given that Christianity is a failure, whatever 'god' exists, is nothing to worry about. 

And it wouldn't matter if Jesus did rise from the dead, the idea that God will send to hell all those who fail to live up to whatever Christian light they had, is total bullshit and is denied by enough liberal Christian scholars  to justify the non-religious person in turning away from such an exercise in futility as "What does the New Testament teach?"  You people have been asking that for 2,000 years, you couldn't agree with each other in the lifetime of Jesus, the lifetime of Paul, by the second century many sects of Christianity were competing as "the" truth and calling each other "heretic", and the only thing Christianity did for the next 2,000 years was get more splintered and more complex.

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Truths a Matter of Cultural Agreement?

When you ask the question in loaded form like that, the answer is obviously "no".  Cultural Agreement cannot produce some invisible moral law that "transcends" humanity itself.

    If societies are the source of objective moral truths, what are we to do when two cultures disagree about these truths?

You are assuming there is a higher moral law to answer that in an objective way, and there isn't.  When we find other cultures with morals opposed to ours, then whether we attack or leave them alone is largely conditioned on the current generation's genetic predispositions and their environmental conditioning. Once again, there's no higher moral "truth" to govern when two dogs choose to fight, so its pretty stupid to ask what moral law governs when you confront another person whose morals are opposite to our own.  But that fact that human history has exhibited a tendency to war or to just stay away from those of differing persuasion makes a good case that there really are no higher moral truths to it, and what we "should" do goes no deeper than what we feel like we should do at the moment.

How do we adjudicate between two competing views of a particular moral claim?

By using our relative morals. When we all gasp about the criminal who was caught torturing children, this shows nothing more than that a bunch of people have formed a city, state or nation and they all pretty much have the same moral disgust for hurting kids.  While we may often act like putting such people in jail aspires to some higher moral law, this is not true, such act only aspires to the moral law that a bunch of mammals agree on.

If objective moral truths are simply a matter of “shared morality”, the societal majority rules; “might makes right”.

 Which is precisely what we have in our democratic "Christian" nation.  You either obey the majority's morals, or they will send their strongest representatives after you to put you in jail even if you don't wanna go.

In a world like this, anyone (or any group) holding the minority position in a particular moral argument is, by definition, immoral.

Yes.   A minority of men in America approve of homosexuality and/or pedophilia. Not really strange that they are automatically accounted "immoral" by the majority.

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson made this clear in his early career as a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials following World War II. When the German soldiers who committed atrocities in the Jewish prison camps were brought to trial to face criminal charges, the issue of moral relativity was tested directly. The lawyers for the German officers argued that these men should not be judged for actions that were actually morally acceptable in the nation of Germany at the time of the war.

Those lawyers were just asking for consistency. 

They argued their supervisors and culture encouraged this behavior; in fact, to do otherwise would defy the culture and ideology in which they lived. In their moral environment, this behavior was part of the “shared morality”. Jackson argued against such a view of moral relativism and said, “There is a law above the law.”

 Jackson was wrong if he meant there was a moral law transcending humanity.  The fact is that before WW2, not everybody in the world agreed that they should go involve themselves in the affairs of other countries.   But then that's why they call it "war".  Us mammals tried but could not achieve peace, so we just fought it out.

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Truths a Consequence of “Human Flourishing”?

Not when you ask the question in that loaded way.  Once again, if the moral truth "transcends" humanity, than humanity's flourishing obviously did not create said law. 

    Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values), argues we can establish the moral value of any particular action by simply evaluating its impact on human well-being (something Harris typically refers to as “human flourishing”).

 And Harris was wrong on the point, as are most moral objectivist atheists, since he fails to provide an objective definition of human well-being.  And indeed he cannot.

Harris likens the establishment of such truths to a game of chess. In any particular game, each player must decide how to move based on the resulting effect. If you are trying to win the game, some moves are “good” and some moves are “bad”; some will lead you to victory and some will lead you to defeat. “Good” and “bad” then, are evaluated based on whether or not they accomplish the goal of winning the game. Harris redefines “good” (in the context of human beings) as whatever supports or encourages the well-being of conscious creatures; if an action increases human well-being (human “flourishing”) it is “good”, if it decreases well-being, it is “bad”. What, however, do we mean when we talk about “flourishing”?

Good question, which is why I say atheist moral objectivists are just being silly.  If humanity is the highest form of life, then it us US, and nobody and nothing else, that decides whether a given act constitute moral goodness or moral badness. 

It’s one thing to evaluate a behavior in terms of its impact on survival, and if we are honest with one another, this is really what drives Natural Selection. But Harris recognizes survival, as a singular goal, can lead to all kinds of morally condemnable misbehavior.

 Condemnable only because of Harris's subjective and relative morals that he brings to the moral investigation table.  Harris might think the way the Nazis chose to 'survive' in WW2 is condemnable, but his basis for such criticism cannot be anything greater than his naturalistic relative morals.

Harris suggests the goal is something more; the goal is “flourishing”. Human flourishing comprises a particular quality of life; one in which we honor the rights of others and seek a certain kind of character in order to become a particular kind of human group that has maximized its potential.

That sounds nice, but doesn't solve the problem:  "Should" we allow the Taliban to "flourish"?  If not, then apparently "flourishing" is not a sufficient criteria for morality.

See the problem here? Harris has already imported moral values into his model, even as he seeks to explain where these values come from in the first place. One can hardly define the “maximization” of human wellbeing without asserting a number of moral values. What, beyond mere survival, achieves our “maximization” as humans?

Good question, I don't think Harris can answer it.  Dan Barker tried to answer it with "pain" by saying we naturally recoil from pain, which is true enough, but he draws back somewhat by acknowledging that some pain is required to achieve good, such as the doctor who sets the broken bone, or cutting off one's hand that is stuck between two huge rocks so that one can survive.

The minute we move from mere survival to a particular kind of “worthy” survival, we have to employ moral principles and ideas.

Correct.

Concepts of sacrifice, nobility and honor must be assumed foundationally, but these are not morally neutral notions. Human “flourishing” assumes a number of virtues and priorities (depending on who is defining it), and these values and characteristics precede the enterprise Harris seeks to describe. Harris cannot articulate the formation of moral truths without first assuming some of these truths to establish his definition of “flourishing”. He’s borrowing pre-existent, objective moral notions about worth, value and purpose, while holding a worldview that argues against any pre-existing moral notions.

Good for you.  You refuted Harris.  But you didn't refute me.  I've based humanity's morality in each human's mammalian instinct for individual and group survival, as flavored by genetic predispositions and environmental conditioning.  These naturalistic explanations account for all known moral issues.

    Try as we might, the alternative explanations for objective, transcendent moral truths are desperately insufficient.

Dream on.

    Try as we might, the alternative explanations for objective, transcendent moral truths are desperately insufficient. The moral law transcends all of us, regardless of location on the planet or time in history.

And there you go again, proving you aren't talking to skeptics but only to Christians just looking for anybody that can professionally articulate what they already believe.  Try having a live debate with an informed atheist, then take a poll of your fan base and see how many think you survived.

Or....continue running away from challenges and just tell yourself that periodically preaching to the choir must be something inspired by God because it happens to boost book sales.

Cold Case Christianity: J. Warner Wallace mistakes repetition for actual argument

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

Cold Case Christianity: Quick Shot: “If God exists, he wouldn’t be so hidden”

Posted: 18 Feb 2019 01:10 AM PST

Our “Quick Shot” series offers brief answers to common objections to the Christian worldview.

And what would you think if a skeptic offered brief answers to common apologetics arguments?  Wouldn't you automatically presume from the brief nature of the remarks that that material was shallow?  After all, don't you start out telling yourself that the opinion of a 3,000 poem writer about atheists is infallible?

Response #1:

“Have you considered the notion that God might appear hidden for a reason?

 Yes, and I reject it because by reason of more involved arguments and evidence, the silence is more reasonably ascribed to god's not actually existing.  Remember how unmoved you felt when you read the Book of Mormon?  Same here.  The Mormon god does not exist, THAT is why you don't give a shit about the book of Mormon.  Not because the Mormon god has decreed that you shall be blind to the truth for a while so he can create a higher good with his mysterious ways.

Furthermore, skeptics are wise to avoid getting drawn into the stupid discussion of what the bible god "would" do.  There is good evidence that the silence of god is best explained on a theory that he doesn't exist, not that he has higher mysterious reasons.  Christians cannot even figure out what God "would" do, nor can they even agree on what God did do in the past.  It's thus reasonable for skeptics to say "fuck you" to an offer to waste their time getting involved in the perpectually speculative and irresolvable question of what a highly intelligent ogre "would" do.

Let me give you an example. Even as mere humans, we understand that true love cannot be coerced.

 But since you think there will come a day when you authentically love god without the ability to sin (i.e., after you get to heaven), your god has no excuse for creating creatures who can sin.  if you can authentically love God in heaven without ability to sin, you can authentically love god on earth without ability to sin.

We love our children and want them to love us, but if we forced them to love us (if that were somehow possible), it wouldn’t be true love; it would just be a disingenuous, coerced response.

 Some would say Mom jerking her son out of the middle of the street as the drunk barrels toward him is a greater love than if she merely stood there issuing offers, opportunities, and commands to the kid.  True love often does force the loved person to act.

In a similar way, when we give our kids direction and ask them to accept this guidance as a reflection of their love for us, we must step away and give them the freedom to respond (or rebel).

So you'd never use force on a person you loved?  Your idea of love is rather childish.

If we are ‘ever-present’, they may simply respond – not because they love us – but because they know we are present (and they fear our negative reaction).

I don't see your problem: did you ever read Deut. 28?  What else is that dogshit except "obey me or I'll fuck you up"?

Have you considered the fact that God may remain hidden (to some degree) to allow us the freedom to respond from a position of love, rather than fear?”

No, not any more than I've considered that the Mormon god doesn't make me feel good when reading the Book of Mormon because he has some higher purpose.  Those feelings never come around because the god allegedly behind them doesn't exist.

Response #2:

“Have you been looking for evidence of God’s existence?

 No, I stopped looking after I correctly determined that "god" in the traditional religious sense constitutes an incoherent idea.  I'd no more search for god than I'd search for square circles or other dimensions.

If so, where have you been looking?

Fuck him:  when he decides to quit playing hide-and-seek, he knows where to find me if he's that concerned about having a relationship with me.  Your fantasy that I wouldn't believe god no matter what he did, is contradicted by all human experience, wherein people often change their mind when confronted with infallible evidence.  Sure, some people have mental conditions that prevent them from being this realistic, but I'm not one of them.  So quit making yourself feel better with some excuse that makes it seem wiser for God to keep himself hidden from me. If I cannot benefit from detecting tangible evidence, your god shouldn't have given me my 5 physical senses.

The evidence abounds if we are sensitive to it.

And it doesn't abound if you are objective and neutral toward it, which is why you don't post for skeptics, you only post for Christians.  That's why your apologetics constitute nothing but clever marketing games you can advertise to those who are already Christians.  Atheists who know their bible very well just laugh at you. 

For example, the best explanation for the information we find in our DNA is an intelligent mind.

 Then it was an intelligent mind that created certain animals to be carnivorous...thus your god intended. without relation to "sin",  for animals to suffer horrific misery, when in fact the existence of cattle and other herbivores shows God could have simply made all animals as plant-eaters, preempting much misery.  And if sin degraded life, it would not transform molars into fangs as there's no such thing as a beneficial mutation, remember?  So your god's perverse desire that this world be filled with intelligent beings that inflict horrific misery on each other is clear from your own bible.

If you are childish and insist that the teeth of lions didn't transform from molars into fangs until after "sin" entered the world, you are most certainly a waste of time to argue with.

The best explanation for the beginning of the universe is an all-powerful, non-spatial, non-temporal, non-material Being.

Already kicked Frank Turek's Big bang bullshit to the wind.  For starters, Genesis 1-2 neither expresses nor implies any gigantic explosion, and it certainly wouldn't have been seen that way its originally intended and pre-scientific addressees.  Nobody in the ANE believed in a big bang.  You should not ask whether the big bang can be "reconciled with" Genesis.  Professional liars get paid every single day to reconcile their dishonest theories with the known evidence, they're called lawyers.  The more objective inquiry asks "how did the author intend his words to be understood" and "how did the originally intended addressees likely understand his words?".  Once you ask that, no more biblical big bang for you.

The best explanation for transcendent, objective, moral laws and obligations is the existence of a transcendent, objective and personal moral law giver.

 The trouble being that you cannot name any act that you can show to be objectively immoral, since you cannot demonstrate any objective moral standard.  The most you can do is scream "don't torture babies to death solely for entertainment", then blindly insist that anybody who disagrees with you is too mentally abnormal to justify responding to...which therefore does nothing more than derive an objective moral out of a dogma. Sorry but "most people think its wrong!" might be good for enacting social policy, but doesn't rise to the level of demonstrating the existence of a transcendent objective standard for morality.  Try again.

The evidence of God’s existence is available, even though God can’t be physically seen.

 And given how people's skepticism of anything is assuaged when they finally see evidence of it, your god has no excuse for pretending that it is better to remain hidden.  You never talk about the good that could be done of your god made himself known to everybody, in the same manner that anybody else makes themselves known to others, because you know that far more unbelievers would convert, thus implying that your god's choice to remain hidden is a defect in his intelligence...or that he simply doesn't exist.

Have you been looking in these areas, or have you attributed these aspects of reality to something other than God?”

The latter.

Response #3:

“Sometimes we miss the activity of God because we aren’t open to seeing it.

 There you go again, YOUR APOLOGETICS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH SKEPTICAL OBJECTIONS, THEY ARE CONCERNED SOLELY TO IMPRESS THOSE WHO ALREADY HAVE A CHRISTIAN FAITH.

How many times has something incredibly unlikely occurred and we simply attributed it to chance?

 Are you addressing Christians who should be filled with the Holy Spirit and thus never attribute anything to chance?  Only idiot rank Arminians would pretend that God is ever surprised.

How many miraculous cures were attributed to a mis-diagnosis?

How many mis-diagnoses were attributed to miracles?

How many unimaginable ‘close-calls’ were chalked up as luck?

Ok, then to Whom do you ascribe the "luck" of the pedophile who happens to convince a little girl to enter his home unsupervised?  What is your god doing at that point in time? 

God often shows Himself to us in supernatural ways, but we simply fail (or refuse) to see it.

Let the scared pussy known as your god part the Red Sea in front of us, the way he allegedly did for Pharaoh.  Let Jesus come back to earth and do his miracles in public, so that Christianity's theologians can then debate whether the ensuing mass hysteria and mob activity that ends up causing people to be trampled to death, was "god's mysterious will",

Then lie to yourself and say unbelievers are incapable of changing their mind when presented with contrary evidence.  Yeah right, like every unbeliever in the world NEVER changes their mind on ANY subject even when confronted with convincing contrary evidence.  No, that NEVER happens, we just all plod along sticking our fingers in our ears, jumping up and down, singing to ourselves to drown out the contrary evidence, because we are trying to avoid acknowledging reality.  FUCK YOU.  Unbelievers are sued all the time, and in thousands of cases, one party will make drastic concessions after the "discovery phase" has completed.  you are a liar...the average unbeliever is NOT horrifically narrow-minded about examining theistic evidence.  That's merely a slur you tell yourself so you can feel better about the fact that your god doesn't exist.

Are you willing to set aside your bias against supernatural explanations long enough to recognize the hand of God in the events you used to attribute to chance, luck or good fortune?”

First demonstrate that "supernatural" has a coherent meaning, then we can talk.  Deal?  No, you don't demonstrate coherency with a mere dictionary definition.  The dictionary also has a definition for "hydra", do you suppose that makes the concept of a multiple headed sea monster that grows two new heads each time one is cut off, is the least bit coherent?

Sometimes we miss the activity of God because we aren’t open to seeing it.

An answer that would surely impress the Christians who already agree with you, but laughably dismissed by informed atheists.  There ought to be a law:  you are not allowed to sell Jesus unless your arguments thereto rise above the level of preskool.

But nice job in coddling the preferences of today's largely attention-deficit culture.

What's next, Wallace?  5-minute Sunday services?  After all, couldn't we argue that we have fellowshipping in the Spirit while nose-glued-to-computer-screen no less than we do when at church?  Gee, wouldn't that make church more attractive to the unbeliever?

Yup, Holding is "pathologically" obsessed to avoid admitting he fucked up

James Patrick Holding discovered several days ago that I had filed a third libel lawsuit against his "Apologetics Afield" corporation.  I'm not going to give you the link because, as usual, the way he shows this is by libelous and defamatory means.

Since I sued his corporation thus forcing him to hire a lawyer, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that any lawyer would tell him that he needs to stop doing, in the future, what he is accused of in the past...reporting on my prior litigation in a way that voids the "fair-report" privilege, and subjects him to liability for libel.

ALL lawyers tell their clients to shut the fuck up when litigation is pending. That's because stupid retarded people have a nasty habit of saying things they will be forced to account for in front of a jury...yeah, jury trial, a time in the Defendant's life when his retarded tweb friends are not available to create the happy snark-bubble world that Holding lives for every second of the day.

But today, February 8, 2019, Holding, as usual, proved that he really is a pathologically obsessed asshole who would rather die than do the smart thing and shut the fuck up...he has to continue reporting about my prior judicial proceedings.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qkV76_4XAk

I don't think that particular video is libelous, but that conclusion of mine only gets Holding in more trouble with the jury, since this video shows that Holding does indeed realize that the inaccurate, unfair and biased way he had reported in the past on my judicial proceedings, the ways that are described in the 2019 lawsuit, were indeed at variance with Florida law.   Sure is funny that, after he got schooled the hard way by the legal arguments in my Complaint, suddenly, Holding's next bit of pathological obsession doesn't contain the same degree of manipulation and photoshopping that his other libelous judicial proceeding reports did.

Regardless, I'm sure Holding's lawyer will have something to say about his client continuing his obsession even after getting kicked in the head.

Anybody wanna make a bet?  I'll bet $50 that after Mr. Holding's lawyer files his first document with the Court, Mr. Holding will not be posting to the internet anymore comments about my prior lawsuits.  Perhaps I'm stupid, since I just made a case that Holding likely wouldn't even listen to his own lawyer.

Cold Case Christianity: Is the Bible True? The Value (and Limits) of the Early Church Fathers

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

Cold Case Christianity: Is the Bible True?

The Value (and Limits) of the Early Church Fathers

Posted: 06 Feb 2019 01:35 AM PST

I had the great pleasure and privilege several years ago to speak to students (and visitors) at Rutgers University. Ratio Christi hosted the three hour event. Julie Miller (RC’s Chapter Director at Rutgers) and her husband Buzz did an amazing job organizing and hosting the event. I was asked to defend the reliability of the New Testament Gospels, and afterward we opened the floor for a one hour question and answer session. As part of my case for the reliable transmission of the key claims of the Gospel authors, I retraced the New Testament Chain of Custody for the audience. This sequence of early believers links the eyewitness authors with their immediate students in an effort to examine the content of the original claims of the Gospels. Early Church Fathers like Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement play an important role in this chain of Gospel stewards; the writings of these students of John and Paul help us verify the content of the 1st Century teaching related to Jesus.

 If you disagree with conservative Christian scholar Craig Evans' theory that John often puts words in Jesus' mouth that Jesus never actually spoke, then yes.

The ancient letters of these three Church Fathers have great value for this reason. Is the Bible true?

 Fallacy of Generalized question:  Is the Koran true?

These letters are an important piece of evidence.

During the Q and A session, a young man asked an important question, echoing concerns I’ve addressed on other campuses around the country. Here’s the paraphrase: “The Church Fathers wrote about more than what John or Paul taught them about the historical activities and claims of Jesus; they also wrote about theological issues, and many of their theological positions are rejected by non-Catholics. If we reject the theology of some of these men, how can we trust anything else they said? How do we know where to draw the line, and are we just ‘cherry-picking’ as we use what happens to serve our cause (while rejecting the stuff we don’t like)?”

Once again, the best analogy here is a courtroom analogy. There are many times when a witness is asked to describe what he (or she) saw or heard, but there are important limits. I might ask a witness, “What did the suspect say to you?” This kind of question is appropriate and the witness’ response will be allowed in the trial.

 Nope, that's inadmissible hearsay.  You'd have to therefore respond to the objection by citing to a court rule allowing hearsay in certain specific circumstances.

But if I step beyond this and ask, “Why do you think the suspect said that?” the defense attorneys will likely object to my question before the witness even gets a chance to respond: “Your honor, that’s an inappropriate question, the witness is being asked to offer an opinion, and it’s irrelevant what the witness thinks in this regard. This witness can’t read the mind of the suspect.” It’s one thing to ask a witness to strictly recall what he or she heard, another to offer an opinion about what this means or what may have motivated the statement in the first place.

That would fall under the "present-sense impression" exception to the hearsay exclusion rule.

When there are multiple eyewitnesses used in a criminal trial, there’s a good chance these witnesses will come from a variety of worldviews and lifestyles. They will probably hold a divergent set of beliefs, attitudes and opinions.

 But the case usually doesn't center on how different people interpret something somebody wrote.

In fact, they may even have varying opinions about the guilt of the defendant in the case. None of these varying views will be apparent to the jury, however, because our questions on the stand will be limited to the actions or statements of the defendant. In a similar way, the Early Church Fathers provide us with key information related to the statements of the gospel authors.

 Yes, like Irenaeus insisting that Jesus lived into his 50's and had a 10 year ministry.

That’s the limit of their testimony and the evidential boundary for which they have value. They may disagree with each other (or later theologians) about what they think we ought to interpret from the life and teaching of Jesus, but that’s outside the scope of their testimony.

Just one problem:  the NT says Christians have the seal of the Holy Spirit and are otherwise the temple of God, so you run a very serious risk of denying what the Holy Spirit says, when you reject the theological opinions of the church fathers.  I would argue that because apologists like you evince not the slightest interest in viewing somebody as speaking inerrantly by the Spirit, you are effectively nullifying that NT doctrine.  Probably because you live in a modern culture that scoffs at the idea that somebody should be viewed God's mouth-piece.

We simply want to know what John and Paul said about Jesus so we can make sure the Gospels and New Testament letters we have today contain the same information as the originals. I’m not interested in the political, social or theological inclinations of these men;

 Then you should be, because there is a possibility that what they said was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and if so, there's no guarantee that standard rules of hermeneutics will help you figure out who spoke for god and who didn't.  If the NT authors often gave OT texts new twists, then standard rules of hermeneutics will not be sufficiently reliable to justify confidence that your interpretation of a NT statement is the correct one.  They were all over the map.

You also overlook that the church fathers wrote for churches to guide them as spiritual leaders.  You might glibbly dismiss any such person today, but back then it was a bit more serious.  And given the general lack of literacy, you really have to wonder:  why did god allow those congregations to be led by these men who allegedly held incorrect theological opinions?  Could it possibly be that there appears no infallible check on their theology because there actually isn't one? Gee, you can't accept that, cuz the bible is inerrant, right?

I simply want to know, “What did John and Paul say about Jesus?”

The content confirmation of the Early Church Fathers is yet another way to verify the trustworthy nature of the New Testament.

 It also opens doors of possibility to gospel authorship denial that you cannot easily close.

I've notified Christian Research Institute of James Patrick Holding's sins

Just now I sent a warning message to Christian Research Institute.

They sometimes allow James Patrick Holding to author articles in their CRI Journal.

I find in 2019, what I found in 2015, that CRI needs to be notified that Mr. Holding's libels of me constitute an on-going sin of Mr. Holding that has defined him for 20 years and which he has absolutely zero intention of ever repenting of.  Back when Walter Martin was heading CRI, Holding would have been tossed overboard like chum.  Here's the message:

https://www.equip.org/contact/

February 6, 2019,  1:00 p.m.

One of your occasional CRI Journal authors, James Patrick Holding, is now being sued a third time for libel.

  You can get a copy of the 97-page Complaint at the following blog:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/01/james-patrick-holding-unconscionable.html

Mr. Holding has been persistently insulting, slandering and libeling everybody he disagrees with for the better part of the last 20 years, in diametric opposition to CRI's own rules prohibiting Christians from insulting others.  See

https://www.equip.org/article/reclaiming-civility-as-a-christian-virtue/

Here is the email I sent to Gary Habermas, Craig Blomberg NAMB and other people that are either Holding's spiritual mentors, or have in some way told the world that Mr. Holding is qualified under biblical criteria to hold the office of Christian "teacher":

------begin quote:

Dr. Habermas and all others,

This notification is sent to you in the hope that you will start the Matthew 18 process of formally disassociating yourselves from a so-called Christian "brother" whose sins of slander and reviling have reached pathological heights and appear to know no bounds.

     15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.

     16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED.

     17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.    (Matt. 18:15-17 NAU)

If you think James Patrick Holding has the least bit of credibility or honesty, I'll have you know that he has a Patreon account wherein he asks others for money to create YouTube videos

    from   www.tektonics.org/support.php

    "If you're a fan of our TektonTV YouTube videos, you can sign up to support them via Patreon."

    At some point in the past, Mr. Holding obtained a video showing me falling during a bus accident, he photoshopped the video in various ways, he "looped" the part showing me falling, then he replaced the original audio track with a commercial soundtrack so that I get up and fall down about 500 times in the space of this 1-minute loop of video-tape, and I do so while reacting in sync to a childish sound bit of fast-paced music, and Holding deleted everything else in the video that happened about two seconds after I started falling, for no other reason than to cause me emotional distress.

   (link deleted)

    By the way, Holding agreed, when receiving this video via public records request, NOT to put the video to any commercial use.  So since Holding has a Patreon account and begs for money to produce his Tekton TV videos, and since at the time of uploading this video he did not have tax-exempt status, he clearly wanted his viewers to give him money, for profit, to produce or upload such video, even if he never formally asked them for any such thing. Circumstantial evidence is allowed in Court.  So Holding was also violating the law when photoshopping this public record to the delight of his typically retarded followers, in his effort to profit from my tragedy.

    Before that video was posted, I previously complained at another one of Holding's videos mocking that bus accident, that "Holding is gleefully mocking the fact that I was seriously injured on a local bus a while back"

    Holding intentionally overlaid those comments of mine onto the portion of the video that shows me getting up and falling 500 times during the tape "loop" he created.  That is, Holding is horrifically belligerent in his efforts to make fun of my painful accident.

What fool would say Jesus wants his modern-day apologists to engage in conduct like THAT?  Posting videos to YouTube that have been photoshopped and looped so as to make belligerent mockery of another's person's tremendously painful traffic accident? 

What he doesn't show you on the video is that I fell all the way forward to the front of the bus while it was screeching to a halt, I was in severe sciatica pain laying on the floor, I could not move, I had to be lifted by paramedics to an ambulance, Lawyers for the defense refused to answer the question of why the bus didn't stop moving until after it illegally went past the cross-walk, etc, etc.)

Must the ways of modern Christian apologists always be defended regardless of how plainly vicious and unbiblical they are?

Go ahead, ask Holding why it is that he didn't post that video until after I filed my third lawsuit against him.  It's perfectly obvious that he posted that video for no other reason than sheer spite, hatred, hostility, ill-will, and intent to harm me.  Not even the average atheist or unbeliever goes to such lengths to mock another person's tragedy.  A jury would be more than likely to believe Holding's primary motive in posting this video was to harm me in one way or another.  He even ends the video by showing a screenshot of the legal calendar showing I had filed this third lawsuit against him.

And lest you ask, let me answer:  No, Holding has not made the least bit of effort to respond to my settlement offers or otherwise communicate directly with me in the way the courts suggest to try and settle.

FYI:     Attached is my third lawsuit against Mr. Holding, for libel (it was filed before Holding posted aforesaid video) and one can only wonder how long you people will sit in the shadows hoping this Holding-scandal will just blow over, before you finally do what Christians are required to do, and publicly disassociate yourself from this unconscionable scoundrel:

     9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;

     10 I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.

     11 But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater,

    OR A REVILER, or a drunkard, or a swindler-- not even to eat with such a one.

     12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

     13 But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.       (1 Cor. 5:9-13 NAU)

     3 But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints;

     4 and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

     5 For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

     6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. (Eph. 5:3-6 NAU)

     6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,

     7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

     8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.

     9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,       (Col. 3:6-9 NAU)

Do you think that if Holding continues to violate basic NT ethics until the year 2024, you might start thinking there's a sin problem that requires apologists to do something more than boast that skeptics cannot explain the empty tomb?

The third libel lawsuit is Doscher v. Apologetics Afield, Inc, 6:19-cv-76-Orl-37GJK, Florida Middle District Court.

you can keep track of the case here.   https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/26884971/Doscher_v_Apologetics_Afield,_Inc

The "Complaint" is attached to this email, so that you discover why it is that Holding's choice to libel me through the use of dishonestly edited Court records, does not automatically shield him from defamation-liability.  The law imposes conditions on the "fair-report" privilege, and Holding violates every one of them with this video and with the vast majority of the photoshopped court records about me which he has posted elsewhere.

In my book, which I hope to have published before 2021, I'll be arguing that skeptics are reasonable to point to an alleged Christian person's complete apathy toward the NT ethics that require them to make difficult decisions (i.e, Matthew 18, 1st Cor. 5, disassociation from sinful remorseless "brothers") and conclude that such Christians are not genuinely born-again.  There's a reason why most apologists care for little more in Christianity than just making arguments and selling Jesus:  they are just naturally drawn to intellectual challenges.  If they were truly growing in the spirit, then they'd have far less tolerance for spiteful intentional sinners like James Patrick Holding.

At some point, you are reasonable to say that the lack of the fruit of the spirit in a Christian's life (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness,  meekness, kindness, temperance, indifference) reasonably justifies concluding they aren't really saved to begin with.  You cannot just continue forever making excuses about how sanctification in the Christian is a lifetime process.  

Yes, Christians are sinners.

No, Paul and Jesus didn't forget that fact when they admonished the church to expel the remorseless immoral brother.

Sincerely,

Christian Doscher

-------endquote

I'm sorry, CRI, but Mr. Holding's sins of slander and libel have gone completely out of control BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO BUSY MARKETING YOUR APOLOGETICS BELLS AND WHISTLES TO THE WORLD AND OTHERWISE SELLING JESUS, TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE IN THE TOUGH DECISION MAKING THAT JESUS AND PAUL REQUIRED WHEN FACED WITH AN OBSTINATELY SINFUL "CHRISTIAN".

Yes, I will be discussing in my book how suspicious it is that the most popular apologetics organizations that allow Holding to be a "teacher", pretend to love Jesus, but do not obey Jesus.  I will be arguing that any naturalistic explanation for your alleged love for Christ is probably a better explanation for your sense of "salvation", than any excuse you can conjure up about how you aren't responsible to discipline Mr. Holding.       

You cannot deny that Holding's sin of slander is great and thus you need to stop allowing this unrepentant sinner, so blind he thinks sin is holy conduct, to continue using your organization to convince the world he is qualified for Christian ministry.  If you don't mind naming names, let's see you get objective and turn the guns on your own CRI journal authors. 

...unless of course CRI has gone liberal?

https://www.equip.org/contact/?__cf_waf_tk__=00002776530080000008838MgHiz5KeSYCp6RMw4YS9lqxINUk

========================

 I obtained lots of information from CRI back in the early 1990's, and I've respected them even after I became an atheist, but they appear to be no less afflicted with the sin of apathy toward sinful remorseless brothers, than most other "apologetics" ministries.  Perhaps they will blame Holding's latest sins upon themselves (i.e., if they would have paid attention to the alarm bells I was sounding in 2015 and chastised or disfellowshipped Holding, he probably wouldn't have committed the latest sins of slander and libel that are now the subject of the present and third libel lawsuit against him).

Once again, Holding is apparently literate, but when advised that he has chosen the wrong victim to fuck with, he suddenly forgets how to communicate in English, and goes his merry way, utterly oblivious to the serious problems his slanders create for himself.    Holding is a stupid bastard; I like the idea of having friends follow me on the internet, but I would never seek so much approval from retards that I would descend to the immoral and unlawful depths that he has, just to make sure they keep sending money.