Greg Welty says nothing that embarrasses bible critics

James Anderson has a post about Greg Welty's book Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It?) (Christian Focus Publications, 2018).  I reply to this review:

Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)?

Posted on 8 June 2018  

Having been closely involved in the editing process, I’m thrilled to see this book finally in print. The title reflects what may be the most common reason people give for rejecting the Christian faith and doubting the existence of God. It is indeed a critical question that demands an answer.

If you know any atheists who cite God's allegedly evil acts as reason to think he doesn't exist, count me out.  Being evil hardly implies non-existence.  There is an exception for the god that is hawked by specifically Christianity, since the god of the bible is defined with logically incompatible properties (i.e., he calls himself good, but does things that qualify as evil under any other definition, and the "his mysterious ways" and the "as, creator he has the right to do whatever he wants" excuses, pretending that God is always the special exception to human reasoning whenever you think it convenient to say so, do not suffice.

The appeal to mysterious ways is not accepted when the Christian hears it from a Christian 'heretic' or "heterodox brother",  so fairness demands they be consistent, and not expect us atheists to find the excuse very compelling either.  The appeal to God's rights as creator is fallacious, as we would not hesitate to call a man evil if he exercised his "right" to throw away all of his 17 year old son's possessions merely because yes, he had the right to do so.  As father he had the "right", but if he didn't explain himself and show that doing so was necessary to preeempt evil or achieve a greater good, and if the possesions were typical things like clothes, radio, bed, etc, the mere fact that he had the "right" to toss them out would not stop us from concluding such father is an asshole (one of modern America's many euphemisms for "you are evil").  You will say God is the special exception to the rules of human reasoning whenever you deem it expedient to carpt that way, but in doing so you a) aren't showing atheists to be fools and b) you foist no intellectual obligation upon the atheist to agree that "god" is indeed an exception to all reasoning that would otherwise make him look evil.

But isn’t it one Christians have been answering for centuries? Yes, of course.

No, they have simply appealed to God's mysterious ways, and Frank Turek pushes the ripple-effect answer, not realizing that in moral analysis, anything at all that helped create a moral good is therefore also "good", or at least logically qualifies as such whether we wish it so or not.  I'm pretty sure America's general stupidity in the moral department means they are still a long way from being willing to be consistent and honestly admit where moral relativism logically leads.   Nobody said typical American morality was the least bit consistent.

There are many fine works already available on this issue, both ancient and modern, and Welty acknowledges his debt to them. But I think this book fills a particular niche at this time. So many contemporary books on the problem of evil fall down in one or more of the following areas:
 They don’t pay close attention to what the Bible actually says about the nature and origin of evil and suffering in the world, and how they fit into God’s purposes for his creation.

The only mystery in the problem of evil is how so many Christians can read their bibles for decades and still miss what's obviously implied by God causing horrific evils in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Moses sure doesn't talk about God's relation to evil the way your local Christian pastor does, amen?

They end up taking positions that aren’t theologically orthodox (e.g., denying God’s omnipotence or omniscience).

I would advise Christians to worry whether a theological proposition is biblically justified, not whether it happens to harmonize with "orthodoxy".  As open-theist Christians have shown, there are biblical texts that contradict the "orthodox" doctrines of God's omnipotence and omniscience.  This notion you carry aaround that you "need" to reject any interpretation of a bible verse that would cause it to contradict something else in the bible, merely arises from your belief that the bible is inerrant.  Since even most Christian scholars deny bible inerrancy, and since needing to harmonize anything a person said with everything else they said is not even considered a justifiable hermeneutic by anybody outside those involved in funamentalist religious, I have intellectual justification to accept Deuteronomy 28:15-63 on its own terms, deny the interpretation that harmonizes it with anything Jesus taught, and conclude that such passage really does contradict other biblical teachings.

And don't even get me started on how Copan and Flannagan's "semitic exaggeration" excuse (to get away from God's commanding his people to kill "everybody"), opens the door to the genuine possibility that the tendency of Semitic exaggeration also infects those bible verses that declare God to be omnipotent.  How do you know, admitting the ancient Semitic mind exaggerated things, whether their statements about God were also somewhat exaggerated from what they truly believed?  Perhaps the laudatory nature of the Psalms on God's wonderfulness was never meant to be taken any more literally than the husband's expression that his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.  Well gee, classical theism requires all such biblical phrases to be taken in a plain literal sense.  Are you quite sure these ancient Semitic biblical authors weren't speaking in an exaggerated sense when extolling god's alleged virtues?  Do you have criteria for knowing when an ancient semitic author is speaking in exaggerated terms about his god and when he isn't?  NO.

They engage in philosophical speculations that aren’t tethered to (and sometimes go against) the teachings of the Bible and the creeds of the Christian church.

That can only be a good thing.  Get out while you can, fool, especially given that christianity's "danger" alarm can be proven to be about as dangerous as kittens playing with bubbles in Candyland.  Why put yourself through the torture of fundamentalism when there is no compelling reason to?

They lack clarity and precision at the very points where clarity and precision are needed. They serve up a big fat waffle-burger instead of a lean filet.

No doubt having something to do with the fact that they are genuinely born-again and sincerely ask God to guide them as they research biblical theology, right?  In other words, not even being born-again and sincerely seeking god's will, is any guarantee that you will avoid drawing heretical conclusions.  You'll excuse me if I don't want to be employed with a game-playing asshole boss like that.

They’re written by authors who lack theological and philosophical training, and who aren’t conversant with the vast scholarly literature on the problem of evil.

No brain-training needed.  See Luke 12:11-12. Just start babbling, and the Holy Spirit will move through thee.

They’re preaching to the choir: helpful for those who already believe, but failing to grapple with real concerns of skeptics.

And whether Christians have any divine obligation to worry about answering "skeptics" is fairly debatable, since because nobody in the NT is debating a "skeptic" or "atheist", it could very well be that Jude 3 carries an implicit qualification, consistent with the rest of the NT, that you are only obligated to defend the faith from other false "believers".  Paul's blind presumption of the divine nature of scripture is all over the NT, and gives the impression he never had anything of a scholarly nature to argue in front of 'skeptics' or "atheists".  I dare you to try and refute me from Acts 17.  Gee, I never knew that running away from a debate challenge after you give your first speech (Acts 17:33) constituted giving "scholarly" argument.   Nothing in Paul's Acts 17 speeches would qualify as scholarly; but they certainly qualifies as preaching to the choir.  You either agree with Paul's presumptions, or he moves on to other people.  Going back and forth would likely create a dispute about the meaning of words, and thus is probably what he would consider "word-wrangling" which he forbade (2nd Timothy 2:14).

They’re either too long-winded to keep the reader’s attention or too cursory to satisfy the reader’s concerns.

Blame it on the Holy Spirit, who can allegedly "cause" any Christian believer to pay attention to anything He thinks they need to pay attention to.  See God exercising similar overriding power in Ezra 1:1. Blame it on God.

And I'm sorry that you appear to believe that the modern Christian's ADHD is something that cannot be solved by anybody except Christian authors employing attention-getting methods of discourse and other known psycholoical tricks intended to keep one's attention.  One wonders how Christians before the age of electricity manged to be edified by those long boring sermons we see in the church fathers.  They couldn't watch it YouTube, so apparently, all hope was lost.

They’re too dry and technical for the layperson.

same answer

Why Is There Evil In The World? avoids all these pitfalls.

You could have simply directed the reader to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, that's the end of the debate about why your kids get kidnapped, or you suffer a mental abnormality, or you become so hungry you start viewing your kids as tasty treats.  This idea you have in your head about how God cries his eyes out because you got lost in the forest and can't find your way home, is total bullshit.  The god who might be planning to let your daughter be raped to death next week, has no plans to tell you in advance, and wants you to continue being happy about him in the present.  What would you do if god gave you an inspired glimpse into his infallible foreknowledge, and you saw that rape happening (i.e., because it is "infallible", what you foresaw is "incapable of failing", see dictionary)?  Would you try to thwart it when that day and time finally arrive, and therefore attempt the logically impossible feat of surprising god, yes or no?  Something tell sme the ONLY reason you love god is because you DON'T know about the evil that he knows you are going to experience in the future.  Keeping you ignorant is apparently the key to keeping you obedient.

Moreover, Greg is ideally qualified to have written this book. He wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so he knows what it’s like to be a skeptical unbeliever. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, an MDiv degree from Westminster Seminary California, and MPhil and DPhil degrees in philosophical theology from the University of Oxford, and he has taught seminary courses in Christian apologetics and philosophy of religion for 15 years. He also serves as one of the pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Wake Forest, so he doesn’t live up in the ivory tower!
 Here’s the table of contents for the book, which should give you a good idea of how Welty tackles the issue:
 1. What is the Problem of Evil?

Easy:  God instructed his people to burn to death the girl who has sex before marriage in her fathers house.  Leviticus 21:9.  Since even spiritually alive people cringe at this thought, there is a very good probability, assuming Christianity is true, that this cringing arises from the Spirit's witness to their heart, not their environmental conditioning, and therefore, it is God himself in the present who is encouraging Christians to hate and despite most of the absurd Mosaic laws.  And if you carp that spiritually alive people can be decieved on this, you are a fool to pretend spiritually dead people can understand this dreck any better, and we have a rational excuse, under your own theology, to dismiss your arguments from consideration.

2. The Greater-Good Theodicy: A Threefold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

Nah, that's merely a Nazi, who, having concluded Hitler can do no wrong, therefore trifles that the holocaust it only bad when seen from a temporal perspective...an argument that would not convince those outside of Nazism.  But probably deemed a clever argument anyway by the Nazis.

3. Licensing the Greater-Good Theodicy: God’s Sovereignty over Evil

Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  he is not merely "sovereign over" evil.  He "CAUSES" evil.

4. Limiting the Greater-Good Theodicy: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

You don't know everything about Hitler, so you cannot really say for sure whether he might have had a greater moral good in mind in slaughtering the Jews.

5. Can Free Will or the Laws of Nature Solve the Problem of Evil?

No, for since there is no evidence the will is "free" from the laws of physics, and efforts to show otherwise are absurd trifles motivated by absolutely nothing but blind commitment to just anything and everything the bible might say.  (i.e., if you have no problem saying the purely physical nature of muscles is why damage to the muscle inhibits the muscle's power, why do you have a problem saying the purely physical nature of the brain is why damage to the brain inhibits the mind?  oh, I forgot...the bible doesn't say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, therefore, you don't really care whether muscular power is purely physical or otherwise.  But if the bible says the mind can be separate from the brain, you will go the rest of your life insisting the mind can be separate from the brain, despite the fact that you violate Occam's Razor with that theory more than the naturalistic theory because you now have to allege further absurdities like other dimensions, and words like "spirit" whose definitions tie to nothing physical and are thus forced to remain in fantasyland.

When you have a thought, where do you perceive it taking place?  In your elbow, or inside your skull?  Gee, only fools would ever say the mind and brain are equal, amen?

Metacrock isnt saying anything very important either

Between 1999 and 2002, I posted regularly at CARM.  I was using the alias "ohwow".  The one Christian that I battled with the most was "Metacrock" and all of his stupid trifling "you-can't-refute-the-studies" bullshit.

This page identifies Metacrock as "Joe Hinman", so unless somebody else is using the name, I strongly suspect it is the same guy.  I've now reviewed some of his arguments and he does indeed appear to be the same person.

I was asked by somebody else to respond to something Metacrock was arguing, and that reminded me of Metacrock's "atheistwatch" blog, so I went ahead and copied and pasted some of his arguments below, and respond respectively.

First, Metacrock constantly focuses on "god" as if this is supposed to be some sort of heart-stoppingly important subject, when in fact at the end of the day, he is a liberal, he doesn't think atheists will endure any afterlife fate worse than Christians, and therefore, he must always fail in showing atheists to be irrational. Metacrock may as well insist that the temperature of Pluto is vitally important, and then chide everybody who, for lack of any danger, don't see the relevance of the subject to their daily lives, and accordingly choose to ignore it wholesale.

Monday, July 1, 2019
(1) Is just plain wrong. The ordering in a snowflake or salt crystal is efficient and dependable, but due entirely to natural processes. 

that  is totally begging the question you have no proof that it;s natural you have no evidence you are asserting it because it deals with nature you assert a prori no God therefore no God

"you have no proof that it's natural"?  Metacrock hasn't changed one single bit in 20 years:  he may as well say that we cannot prove that matter itself is natural. In normal thinking you favor the empirically demonstrable stuff over the stuff that only rides on "you can't prove it false" crap.

you also misunderstand atheism's most powerful argument.  the reason we a priori dismiss "god" is because the dfinition of that word is not based on anything in the empirical world, and is no less fabricated than the "definition" of Bugs Bunny.

(2) "Usually"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

why? minor exclaims would not disprove the perponderemce of evidence

I think he meant "minor exceptions".  But either way, I've graduated far beyond Meta's concern with "god".  I've shown that the resurrection of Jesus has lower probability than any other naturalistic hypothesis, and I did this in the context of reviewing stuff like Michael Licona's "The Resurrection of Jesus: A new historiographical approach".  Even if God existed, the fact that Christianity is false would mean, at best, that Christians are no less likely to be in severe trouble with god too, not just atheists.

(3) and (4) are basically the sad out argument that a law of nature needs a law maker, failing to realise that a law in nature is quite different to a legal law. 

wrong on 2 commits: (1) I don't argue from a lawmaker analogy,I never assumed it;s a legislator and say that.(2) saying indicative of mind does not make it the legislature analogyy .The law-like dependability is that the thing being described (assuming Physical laws are observations of universal behavior ) is unfailing as though obeying.  mind is indicated due to purposiveness but not from analogy but from the behavior of the universe,

From the fact of supernovas and asteroids colliding with planets, I'm not seeing anything about the behavior of the universe that exhibits intelligent "purpose".  For one thing if you can get intelligent purpose out of "the behavior of the universe" you could also get it from why a rock breaks up the way it does upon hitting the ground, in which case because you see intelligent purpose in literally everything, you have left open no possibility of unintelligent purpose, and therefore your position proves too much.  You also soud like a Calvinist, since if there is intelligent purpose to the way the universe works, there's also intelligent purpose behind why the dice rolled the way they did.  The only reason people win or lose at craps is because God is there, causing the dice to fall the way they do.

Regardless, the god of the bible is a sadistic lunatic, so i would no more serve him merely because of his privileged power, than I'd sever equally sadistic space aliens if they came to earth and started flaunting their power.  If God wants me to believe in him, he apparently has the willingness to use his power to make me change my mind (Ezra 1:1) so you could also say my atheism is in part arising from god's being guilty of parental neglect.

(5) "fits the major job description"? You need to do better than that in a proof. 

Ot's spot on and you know  ot/ Again your assumption is a priori no God therefore a prori no god. it is such an obvious fit you can;t have it,  you reonl yspoiuting ieologicalbroimides at it

Sorry, this is incoherent.

Then (6)... Well, it turns out that you do use the word "warrant" when using this argument too! 

  Not in the argument, but as the decisions making paradigm is exactly how Isaid it is sed, you do not understand the issues involved .

 Same answer.

So your claim that you do not use "warrant" in all your arguments is based on two arguments, both of which do exactly what I said! 

It's not in the argument dumb ass it;s over it,
Posted by Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) at 8:14 AM No comments:

Same answer.

once again, Metacrock's belief that atheists are irrational to deny god's existence is a complete waste of time even if true:

a) so many Christians complain of god's hiddenness, it's enough to justify the atheist in saying that if spiritually alive people struggle so much with this, only a fool would "expect" a spiritually dead person to understand such mystical bullshit;

b) being irrational about a belief doesn't really contribute to one's harms in life, therefore, the fact that one's belief is "irrational" doesn't even "require" that they "worry" about the belief possibly being incorrect.  Let's say some dipshit believed the Bermuda Triangle is caused by space aliens.  However, he never says these aliens are going to make your life miserable if you don't believe in them (like Metacrock and his deaf, dumb and mute god).  He never says these aliens desire for you to see them (like metacrock whose god doesn't have anything to say about being "seen").  This Bermuda Triangle apologist simply carps that you are unreasonable to disbelieve his thesis because to accept it is to become more loving (like Metacrock says about atheists).

Well gee, does that mean you forget how to eat, where you work, who your kids are, or perhaps that drinking bleach would help get rid of the flu, all because one of your beliefs is "irrational"?  No.  I've been an atheist for more than 20 years.  I am not plagued with any problem that don't plague a million mature fundamentalist Christians and a million mature liberal Christians.  Ok, why should somebody worry in the slightest that their belief or lack of belief is irrational, when this alone doesn't imply the least bit of a threat to anything they care about?  It isn't like atheism is going to turn somebody into a child molester (atheism doesn't preach a morality, so an atheist's morality derives solely from whatever moral system her genetic predisposition leads her to favor).

Metacrock is merely doing what he's been doing for 20 years: screaming his head off about the serious importance of a type of "experience" that proves itself to be horrifically unreliable and deceptive.

If I wanted to believe that soda pop only comes from the planet Mercury, why should I give a fuck that the belief is irrational?  There are no hurtful consequences to such belief, so why should I give a shit whether it is "rational" or "irrational"?  I can hear Metacrock now grabbing the mic and doing the karaoke version of "Aquarius", and "expecting" the people at the bar to start acting like members of the Mormon Tabernacle choir.

Metacrock also forgets that because people are human psychological creatures, the mere fact that they gain a sense of daily fulfillment believing the way they do is precisely why "argument" alone is often very ineffective in changing people's minds.  That is, Metacrock is not going to change an atheist's mind by insisting that mystical Christian experience is found by empirical testing to enhance one's sense of love.

I'm also suspicious that Metacrock favors the liberal "love" view of God in the bible, when in fact the bible is replete with proofs that its god is a sadistic lunatic who delights to inflict harm and misery on children who disobey.  Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63...and don't forget that liberals like Metacrock automatically and arbitrarily dismiss anything in their bible that they don't like.

Metacrock also forgets that one's choice to deny religion might be the way their brain fights back against prior past abuses.  While the previously raped woman is unreasonable to thereafter think that every man is a potential rapist, you also cannot really blame her, given the hell she was put through.  It is similar to Christianity: while it might not be reasonable for the person who came out of an abusive form of Christianity to say that entire religion is a 100% bullshit, you also cannot really blame such a person for reaching such a broad-brushing conclusion.  While I find Christianity to be false, I refuse to say that anybody who joins the cause is therefore unreasonable.  Mormonism is false, but if the single girl chooses to join and just wrap her life around it because Mormon ideas of family are closest to her own, I'm not going to call her unreasonable.  People tend to go where they are loved, and they do so for reasons that often do not include "compelling argument" beyond the fact that everybody yearns to be loved by others.  And given that "theology" is about as important as the Cheshire Cat, the person who joins a church more for the empirically demonstrable social benefits and less because of its "theology" is not being unreasonable.  Mammals need food and social roots far more than they need "theology".

Are you starting to notice that Metacrock is irrational for pretending that irrationality of a belief is some show-stopping important danger?  If your belief that your peanut butter sandwich talks to Elvis, doesn't cause you to become an unsafe driver, or to set your house on fire, or let your kids starve to death, etc etc, then why should anybody care any more about that belief, than they care about what your favorite Disney character is?

Metacrock also forgets to note that his own dogshit bible encouraged people to do things that encourage their minds to become irrational, such as the biblical command that you give suffering people free alcohol for the purpose of helping them forget their troubles temporarily:

 4 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, It is not for kings to drink wine, Or for rulers to desire strong drink,
 5 For they will drink and forget what is decreed, And pervert the rights of all the afflicted.
 6 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, And wine to him whose life is bitter.
 7 Let him drink and forget his poverty And remember his trouble no more.
 (Prov. 31:4-7 NAU)

Sure, Metacrock doesn't like bible verses that encourage alcoholism, but given that bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, I don't really give a fuck if the alcoholism interpretation of this passage contradicts anything else in the bible, that interpretation is certainty justified by the grammar and context, and the single solitary reason Christian commentators hem and haw about this is because they know a straightforward obedience to this verse would contradict NT ethics. I have already steamrolled the fuckhead who tried his best to pretend that "give" doesn't mean "give" in this passage.  See here.

So far, I haven't seen Metacrock answer the argument from religious language, to wit: "god" constitutes an incoherent concept, because the only basis for the dictionary definition is even further ad hoc postulates that also cannot be shown to be true.  It is like pretending "Casper the Friendly Ghost" is "coherent" because somebody somewhere defines him as a "non-physical life form that likes to tell jokes".  When the definition of a word is not tethered to anything empirically demonstrable, you are ill-advised to pretend this crap you believe in is as true as the existence of trees.  That is, you are ill-advised to act like a Christian.

I'll do a few more, than I'm done with this.

from http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/, Metacrock pitches his book as follows:

Arguments for God from religious experience have always been considered a secondary level of argument.

That's because the diverse nature of the alleged experiences makes their purely naturalistic basis far more probable than the trifle that they experience the same god in different ways, and since all people tested are human mammals, the traits all such experiences shared can also be explained in purely naturalistic terms.  Show me a mystical experience that gives the experiencer new knowledge they more than likely couldn't have gotten in a naturalistic way, and I'll start giving a shit about somebody else's hallucinations. Deal?

And as a reminder, once again, all Metacrock is doing is "arguing for God's existence", when in fact Jesus' remaining dead for 20 centuries makes god's existence irrelevant even if true.  IF jesus didn't rise from the dead, the fact that so many billions in history thought he DID, testifies to the horrifically deceitful nature of religion...as if Catholicism and modern Christianity didn't already.

It's always been assumed that their subjective nature makes them weak arguments.

Then you cannot fault a person for becoming a Mormon, and thus denying what you think is the "true" gospel, because they had a private religious experience they interpret to mean the Holy Spirit was telling them the Book of Mormon is true.  As soon as you say other empirical evidence shows that experience to be false, you render the experience completely unnecessary to consider.  You can know from empirical evidence alone whether a religious experience is true or false.

One also wonders what Metacrock would have to say to Aborigines and others who for centuries were happy to smoke drugs so that they could, in their subjective religious experience, talk to the spirits.  Does empirical evidence falsify their drug-induced fantasies, yes or no?

The atheist scared to death of subjectivity.

Because being led around by subjective religious "experiences" provides not the slightest protection against false belief, especially given that the bible has not motivated even thousands of "cultists" who believe in "Christ", to fear that their subjective experiences are deceptions from the devil.  Once a person chooses the subjective over the objective, there's no telling what degree of stupidity they will fall into, while with empiricism, your concern to interpret the real world correctly is a somewhat more laudable goal.

This work, compiling empirical scientific studies that show that religious experience is not the result of emotional instability but are actually good for psychologically, constitutes a ground breaking work that places religious experiences on a higher level.

Nice to know that you approve of the Mormon religious experience.  I can understand why you are a liberal.

The Trace of God is an exposition (445 pages) employing both philosophical investigation and social science research. The book analyzes and discusses a huge body of empirical research that has up to this point been primarily known only in circles of psychology of religion, and has been over looked by theology, apologetics, Philosophy of religion and more general discipline of psychology.

In other words, the religious experience of Christian "apologists" did not open their eyes to these studies that would help promote their cause...almost as if the god who is guiding them is actually dead....or doesn't care...or finds it funny to prevent his followers from knowing the best arguments...

This body of work needs to be known in each of these interested groups because it demonstrates through hundreds of studies over a 50 year period, the positive and vital nature of the kind of religious experience known as “mystical.”

Except that Jesus stayed dead, which means any "god" that is actually out there, is so utterly amorphous as to be undeserving of serious concern.

Even though most of the studies deal with “mystical” experience, linking studies also apply it to the “born again experience” as well as “the material end of Christian experience.”

What's funny about the Christian religious "experience" is that not even a combination of this and a copy of the same bible used by everybody else, is sufficient to prevent these people from disagreeing with each other, even to the point of insisting that each other's religious experiences are false.  You'll excuse me if I conclude that private religious 'experiences' heighten a person's tendency to espouse false doctrine.

Read Jeremiah 17:9.

The book opens with a discussion as to why arguments for the existence of God need not “prove” God exists, but merely offer a “warrant for belief.”

But since "warrant for belief" does not render the opposing position "foolish", your warrant for belief does not form any degree of intellectual compulsion upon the atheist, which means YOU are the fool for pretending that your case is so overwhelming.  Hell, Mormon apologists can show "warrant for" Mormon belief, but does that put you under the least amount of intellectual compulsion to adopt their beliefs?  NO.

It discusses why there can’t be direct empirical evidence for God and why that is not necessary.

In other words, the world needs to know that the literal interpredtation of the OT which most of the Christian church adopted for 2,000 years, was false, despite whatever smarts they obtained from their religious 'experience'. That is, their religious experience deluded them.

It also lays out criteria for rational warrant. In Chapter two it presents two arguments that are based upon religious experience and then shows how the various studies back them up. This is not an attempt to present directly empirical evidence for God but to show that religious experiences of a certain kind can be taken as “the co-determinate” or God correlate. It’s not a direct empirical view of God that is presented but the “God correlate” that indicates God, just as a fingerprint or tacks in the snow indicate the presence of some person or animal.

Then you misunderstand science.  Fingerprints would be direct evidence of some person, and that directness doesn't fade merely because the print can possibly be forged.  Anything can be forged or misunderstood...does that mean there's no such thing as direct evidence?

Religious experiences of this kind are the “trace of God.” These studies demonstrate that the result of such experiences is life transforming.

So far, Jesus wants you to become a Mormon, because look at how transformed the lives of Mormons are.  Nice going.  But as a liberal, you actually embrace Christian diversity despite the fact that the NT in large part condemns the idea that Christians should be divided on doctrine.

This term is understood and used to indicate long term positive and dramatic changes in the life of the one who experiences them. People are released form bondage to alcohol and drugs, they tend to have less propensity toward depression or mental illness, they are self actualized, self assured, have greater sense of meaning and purpose, generally tend to be better educated and more successful than those who don’t have such experiences.

Are you fucking kidding me?  Its as if this dumbass never heard of "lies, damned lies, and statistics".

I have to wonder whether Metacrock's book deals with the fact that the vast majority of Christians do not claim a supernatural ability to deal with life's problems, or the fact that non-Christians notice that Christians appear to be just as limited to physical means as anybody else in trying to cope with life's issues.  Apparently, becoming a Christian involves nothing more mystical than adding biblical theology to the stuff one studies on Sunday.

These studies prove that religious experience is not the result of mental illness or emotional instability.

Studies also prove that dreaming during sleep isn't caused by mental illness or emotional instability. But its fantasy-land nonetheless.

The methodology of the studies (which includes every major kind of study methodology in the social sciences) is discussed at length. One of the major aspects of the book is the discussion of the “Mysticism scale” (aka “M scale”) developed by Dr. Ralph Hood Jr. at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The importance of this “M scale” (that is a test made up of 32 questions) is that it serves as a control on the valid religious experience.

But since "god" cannot even be coherently defined, testing for valid religious experience is sort of on the order of testing for valid alien invisibility.

One can know through the score on the test if one’s experience is truly “Mystical” or just “wool gathering.”

Except that since nobody can show increase in knowledge solely by "mystical" experience, it ultimately draws from the person themselves, not from anywhere else.

Without a control we can’t know if one has had a true experience and thus we can’t measure their effects.

Contrary to your own bible that says there IS a way to determine whether somebody's mystical experience is valid.

Being able to establish that one has had true “mystical experience” one can determine that the effects of that experience are positive and long term.

God wants people to be Mormons.

Thus that sets up the rationally warranted arguments for God.

Which are irrelevant because Jesus stayed dead, at which point you really couldn't say whether the "god" who allegedly exists finds atheism or Christianity to be more worthy of his wrath.

... It also implies that God is working in all faiths.

I think I just found out why Metacrock has never gained any traction with any serious Christian ministry.  he thinks the Mormon's "experience" is more important than the doctrinal truth that Paul said was important enough to divide fellowship over (Titus 3:9-11).  I suppose Metacrock gets rid of bible-based rebuttals by simply disagreeing with whatever part of the bible he doesn't like.

The Author, Joseph Hinman, is a Christian and he does believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ but he also recognizes God’s prevenient grace to all people.

Metacrock must think apostle Paul was a fool...the "danger" of rejecting the gospel is nowhere near the urgent level that motivated Paul to go buzzing around as if he were trying to save screaming children from burning buildings...and getting himself martyred in the process because of his intolerably high level of fanaticism thereto.

I guess the most powerful rebuttal to Metacrock's obsession with irrelevancy is the same one I hurled at him 20 years ago:  You have not demonstrated the significance of "god", nor have you demonstrated that atheism poses the least bit of a "threat" or "danger" to anybody.  You have not demosntrated that a person who would rather live life as they like instead of signing up for some mystical self-help course are "irrational" or "unreasonable".  You are instead simply screaming out that something you choose to waste your time researching is of paramount importance...only to find out later that all we are missing out on is "sunshine and candy lambs".

I'll pass.  The historical evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection is pitifully weak, and nothing about your message indicates the danger or loss of ignoring mystical experience is any worse than the danger and loss that looms when one stares at one's zits in the mirror.  Finally, too many Christians have decried the alleged "loving" benefits of being religious, for me to believe your song and dance that only good things will happen if I start telling myself the key to happiness is religious mysticism.

my challenge to Anthony Garland

Anthony Garland wrote a 2003 paper in The Conservative Theological Journal entitled "Does Dispensationalism Teach Two Ways of Salvation?"  Since Academia.edu recently recommended I read it, I issued him this challenge after downloading the paper:

Since I see no justification from the immediate context of Matthew 5:17-21 to presume the 'fulfillment' of the law meant anything other than the sinner's own fulfillment of it, it appears that Jesus really did teach legalism, which doubles as a reasonable hypothesis for why the Judaizers existed in the first place.

Since I see no justification from the immediate or larger context of Matthew 28:20 to justify delimiting the "all" in "all that I taught you", I am reasonable to believe that, at least for Matthew and his school, Gentiles don't become true disciples unless they obey all that Jesus taught according to that particular gospel.  And yet you'd have to search long and hard for any American Christian today who seriously obeyed "all" that Jesus taught the disciples in that gospel.   

Since biblical inerrancy is denied by most Christian scholars, and since those who espouse it disagree with each other about its nature and scope, this is an objective justification for refusing to view that doctrine as a governing hermeneutic.  it is far more controversial than other heremenutical rules like grammar, context, genre, etc.   In short, reading Matthew's legalistic Jesus through the rose-colored glasses of Ephesians 2:8-10 is an absurdly subjective preference and does precisely ntohing to intellectually compel the non-Christian reader to think that the only correct interpretation of Jesus is the one that harmonizes with apostle Paul's opinions. 

If you want to find a lot of dispensationalists who insist that Jesus' pre-cross teachings no longer apply to the modern church, take a look at evangelical Protestantism of the last 100 years.  Jesus is the ultimate authority on how to get saved, and he said plenty about it...but today's Protestants most often leave Jesus in the dust and run immediately to Acts 16:31 and Romans 10:9 to tell others how to get saved. 

I suppose it is because they know Jesus was a legalist, and they realize that if they quoted him to others in the simplistic fashion that they quote Paul to others, the others will get the 'false' impression that salvation must be earned by good works (!?)
Would love to dialogue further with you about this.
Barry Jones
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

Will J. Warner Wallace ever stop pushing his elementary school level apologetics?

This is my reply to yet another "pushing ignorance as knowledge" article by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

“There is no evidence for God’s existence!”

8:05 AM (2 hours ago)

How Would YOU Respond?

I respond to the version I recieved in email.

How would you respond to the objection that there "isn't any 'hard' evidence for the existence of God"?

I'd respond "I agree.  You refuse to take the Mormon view that God is physical, therefore, there couldn't logically be any "hard" evidence for God unless you arbitrarily defined "spirit" as "physical".

This complaint is commonly presented to young Christians

It's also commonly presented to Christians of any age, because it forces Christians to recognize that what they believe in, cannot be "proved" but only "inferred", and as such, is subject to numerous powerful objections.

and we, as their parents, educators and leaders, have a duty to help them respond.

If the Holy Spirit actually did anything more than exist as a biblical concept, i guess he would have a 'duty' to educate you as well.  But unfortunately, like the child who rationalizes Santa's inability to fit into a chimney, you don't care that nothing at all can be rationally credited to the Holy Spirit's direct intervention, you will simply tell yourself over and over that the Holy Spirit never does anything on his own, but only works "through" Christians...that way, you can always pretend that the Holy Spirit's work is real despite the fact that your own efforts are much better interpreted as  purely naturalistic phenomena.  Nothing was ever a more gratuitous afterthought, than "the Holy Spirit".  What are you gonna say next?  Angels are the only reason you weren't killed by a meteor today?

Here is one reasonable response we can give to skeptics, excerpted from a recent "Quick Shot" article:
“What do you mean by evidence? There are two forms of evidence: direct evidence (eyewitness testimony) and indirect evidence (everything else).

You started by addressing the question of "hard" evidence.  Since "hard" obviously means "direct" in this context, we have good reason to deny that "hard" evidence can also be "indirect".

Both forms of evidence are used to make cases in a court of law.

And hearsay is typically rendered inadmissible in a court of law, which would thus dispose of 99% of the biblical 'witness' to Jesus rising from the dead.  And that's just hearsay, when in fact the gospels have already been rendered inadmissible under the ancient documents rule...a rule used in courts that, with good reason, J. Warner Wallace doesn't think can help him in his desire to do what car salesman do...create a problem...sell the solution. That's right, kiddies...you cannot possibly live out your full potential in Christ unless you purchase materials authored by J. Warner Wallace. 

There is a large body of direct evidence for God’s existence, like the testimony of those who observed the Resurrection of Jesus

The trouble being that at best the only first-hand testimony to it is Matthew, John and Paul, everything else in the NT that testifies Jesus rose from the dead is second-hand, or other disqualified phenomena like dreams/visions, or testimonies that have been changed by textual variation.  I'd say 3 first-hand testimonies, whose first-hand nature is even disputed by Christian scholars (in the case of Matthew and John), is a pretty sad case for the resurrection of Jesus.  To say nothing of the other arguments that show them to be liars or deluded, such as arguments against miracles and against the alleged eyewitnesses' identities and authorship.

and the testimony of those who have experienced the miraculous intervention of God.

Sorry, for a couple of years I've been issuing a challenge to Christian scholar Craig Keener to provide checkable documentation for any "miracle" he claims has happened within the last 100 years, that he believes is the best attested. So far, no takers.  See here.  Likewise with every other claim propounded by those in Christianity who happen to disagree with their cessationist Christian brothers. (Isn't that a hoot?  Cessationist Christians believe miracles no longer happen, non-cessationists believe they still do.  Jesus, is there anything beyond Jesus' gender and God's existence that "Christians" agree on?).

There is also a large body of indirect evidence for God’s existence, like a universe that came into existence from nothing,

So god is like the parent who realizes the child is too ignorant to realize how dangerously they are to the camp fire, but who only uses "indirect" discussion and evidence to alert the child to this great danger.   You'll excuse me if I draw the conclusion that your camera-shy god's love for me is limited.

But for a more direct response: Since even Christian creationist organizations like AiG and ICR claim the big bang contradicts the bible and contradicts science too, you can hardly fault atheists who agree that the big bang contradicts the bible.  For example, Dr. Jason Lisle is a Christian astrophysicist who researches issues pertaining to science and the Christian Faith.  He says:

In fact, there are many contradictions between the big bang and the Bible.

...Therefore, for those who believe the Bible, the big bang is not an option. 

See here.  I'm an atheist, I'm not arguing that the big bang is false because it contradicts the bible.  That would be stupid.  I'm arguing that if even other Christians who are more educated on the big bang than J. Warner Wallace, insist that the Big Bang contradicts the bible, then atheists obviously cannot be considered 'unreasonable' to regard the big bang as unbiblical, and to accordingly laugh at J. Warner Wallace as somebody interested in pushing populist crap.  Let Wallace first engage the Christians who have formal education in astrophysics, who find the big bang unbiblical.  Let him host a debate between Christian apologists who accept it and Christian apologists who don't...then maybe his pointing to the big bang will appear to have somewhat more plausibility than the case of a child pointing to a dollar under their pillow as proof of the tooth fairy.

the naturalistically implausible appearance of fine-tuning in the universe,

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't say systems always tend toward disorder.  It says CLOSED systems tend toward disorder.

Evolution and the Second Law
Some critics claim that evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because organization and complexity increases in evolution. However, this law is referring to isolated systems only, and the earth is not an isolated system or closed system. This is evident for constant energy increases on earth due to the heat coming from the sun. So, order may be becoming more organized, the universe as a whole becomes more disorganized for the sun releases energy and becomes disordered. This connects to how the second law and cosmology are related, which is explained well in the video below.

See here. Of course I would disagree with the view that it makes sense to talk about something to be true for "all" of the universe, since I view the universe as infinitely large and old, while the word "all" necessarily implies a limitation (all the bread, all the cars, etc).

The universe is full of stars which are sources of energy for the planets around them, so that entropy or disorganization can be stalled or decreased through energy input.  But for proof that complexity can increase without intelligent intervention, when water freezes, its atomic structure becomes more complex.  I guess this is the part where you insist that it never gets cold unless an intelligent god blows cold air?

the miraculous origin of life from inorganic matter,

God of the gaps fallacy.  Every time science admits it doesn't have the answer, you fill that hole with "god did it".  But it was only science alone that weaned you away from mistaking epilepsy fits for demonic possession...unless you wish to say that Jesus has imparted some of his power to epilepsy medication, and that's why this chemcical is capable of holding back the demonic manifestations?

and the improbable existence of information in DNA.

The way you idiots talk about the information in DNA, you would think that we could look at human tissue through a microscope and see various combinations of actual English letters.

All this indirect evidence is most reasonably explained by a Divine Creator.

Not when you remember that you cannot define "divine creator" or "God" in a coherent way without running back to your question-begging security blanket of "god's ways are mysterious".

Maybe I'm just stupid, but sounds to me like nobody is under the slightest intellectual obligation to worry about, or pay any attention to, concepts that cannot be coherently defined.  Pasting definitional labels on God is about as useful in the real world toward the goal of coherence, as would be insisting that Santa is a "special" human being who uses "magic" to deliver presents to the kids of the world.  That's also pasting definitional labels on Santa, yet does precisely nothing worthwhile in the real world.  Since the definition is based upon nothing in the real world, the attempt at coherence is abortive.  What else are you gonna say?  The big bag wolf takes medication for depression?

Do you think you might be interested in examining all the direct and indirect evidence related to God’s existence?”

Do you think you might be able to fulfill your Christian duties acceptably to God without purchasing anything produced by J. Warner Wallace?

As it turns out, there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God.

But given that the way you define "god", this thing is infinitely more complex than anything else, thus the concept of "god" would rank as the lowest probable explanation for any phenomena under Occam's Razor...which says the simplest explanation that accounts for the data is more likely to be the correct one. Gee, how "simple" is "infinitely complex"?

Wallace then uses this pic, and I comment respectively:




First, calling the Comos a "room" logically implies there's an "outside the room", but the notion that there is any such place as "outside the cosmos" is foolish....I don't care how often you think about other dimensions, or how often you think your dead grandmother calls out to you from the clouds.

Second, the Big Bang is considered both unscientific and unbiblical even by Christian creationists and apologists.  See above.  Apparently, what exactly the bible teaches or doesn't teach on the subject is far from "clear" and only a stupid person would insist that somebody has an intellectual "obligation" to "correctly" understand unclear Iron Age texts on theology.

The universe does not appear fine tuned.  The creation of stars and planets is understandable in completely naturalistic terms once you know what you are talking about.  There is no such thing as full destruction of matter or energy.  The carbon and iron which result from a dying star flying through space, degrade and eventually get used again in the formation of other stars and planets.  See the First law of thermodynamics: neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.  There is no such thing as brand new creation, anything that exists outside the mind is never more than just the reconfiguration of previously existing atoms.

Abiogenesis has not been proven yet, but the surprising results from the Miller Urey experiments showed that the building blocks of life did not need any intelligent designer to put them together.   See here for a primer, see here for more scholarly stuff.

Personally, given the fact that life is purely naturalistic, while "supernatural" is plagued by incoherence at the definitional level), I don't find panspermia (life originated elsewhere and arrived on earth via aliens or comets) to be more improbable than "god did it".  The truth is that the universe is infinitely large and old, which gives it plenty of time to eventually chance upon the right combination of materials that result in self-replication.

I cover the "limited universe" bullshit in my rebuttal to Frank Turek's objective morality arguments here.

See here for more of my answers to Wallace on similar issues.

If biological organisms display attributes of intelligent design, then apparently the reason carnivores inflict misery on other creatures is because god wanted them to be this sadistic before sin came into existence (see here).  Genesis 1:31 says God's creation, before the Fall, was "very" good, and this has created a storm of controversy among Christian apologists and creationists, because if the old-earth creationist model be correct, then the pre-Fall world, which God was calling "very good" was at that time filled with carnivores inflicting misery on other animals merely out of need to eat (i.e., God thought a world full of carnivores that inflict misery on other animals was "very" good)...which conclusion the young-earth creationists insist makes God into an evil sadist, since they say carnivorous attributes didn't start forming in animals until after the Fall. See  Kent Hovind clobber Dr. Hugh Ross on this point here at time code 1:28:00 ff.  Hovind says he doesn't think it "very good" that a lion should rip the guts out of a zebra...to which Ross had nothing much to say except how that the new creation, still in the future, would be "better"  (despite the obvious objection that if God is perfect, then whatever he created in a pre-fall world would have been not only perfect, but morally perfect, so that since nothing can be better than perfection, nothing in the future could ever possibly be "better" than the pre-fall state of life).

Wallace says 'evil and injustice persist' but this is only because he has a child's view of god's love...in the bible, the "loving" god sometimes takes "joy" in inflicting death, disease and torture on his followers when they stray (Deuteronomy 28:63).  the Christians who blindly assume abortion is sin apparently never read that part of the bible where god credits himself with all death (and since god is perfect, anything that god does, is morally perfect, such as doing what he does behind the scenes to facilitate killing).  See Deuteronomy 32:39.  I do not ask whether God can be morally good to kill.  I ask whether God can be morally good to cause one human to kill another.  But if you say the mob boss was morally good to plan and authorize a killing, you just said the punk who actually pulled the trigger was doing something morally good.  So that if you seriously believe that bible verse, then you are morally justifying all human murder, even if you don't realize it.

If you insist that the analogy to the mob-boss and his punk is not sufficient, maybe you should ask yourself why you bother attempting to use "human reasoning" in the first place, since in fact you'll quickly toss it out the window merely because it rebuts your theology. You are like a cashier who decides, based on her  mood, whether or not she will employ correct math when handing change to the customer.

Wallace then says ""Outside" the natural realm"", apparently aware that the concept of "outside the natural realm" is incoherent and would only be found plausible by those who already believe such "place" exists, despite the sheer lack of evidence for any such thing.

Wallace then says transcendent objective moral truths exist, but I've already destroyed Christianity's most vocal champions on that point.  Matthew Flannagan could not answer my criticisms of his objective-morality model and quietly stopped responding when I turned up the heat and asked him why he assumes child-torture is absolutely immoral.  He simply thought his position necessarily true and those who disagree with it necessarily wrong, no need to actually prove anything  See here.  I also clobber Frank Turek's best efforts to show objective morality.  See here.

Wallace then says "humans possess free agency", thus playing into a very popular concept held by people for reasons having nothing to do with actual study of philosophy.  But the term "freewill" begs the question "free from what?".  Free from the laws of the physics?  Free from the brain?

The trouble for the libertarian and others who believe in genuine free agency is that such absolute freedom logically results in irrationality...that is...when you wish to eat fast food and on the way you eventually decide against Burger King and for Taco Bell, genuinely free agency means there was, ultimately, no reason that compelled you to choose the way you did.   Your agency was just a coin standing on its edge, it happened to fall over toward the Taco Bell side of things, and there is no "reason" why it fell that way...just "just" decided at the moment to choose that choice.  Thus to say our agency is truly "free" is to say it is also free from the laws of causation, which automatically puts the libertarians in the same fantasyland as Eden and "other dimensions", and therefore imposing not the slightest scintilla of intellectual obligation on the materialist atheist to bother with such stupidity.

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that individuals have consistent personality characteristics.  Did you ever wonder why it is that kids, even twins, raised in the same house by the same parents, often display very different personalities even in infancy?  Since you cannot blame their environment, you have no other option except to blame the only other possible culprit...genetic predisposition.  This is why some kids survive abuse just fine, while others are turned into criminals because of it.  While I understand crime victims who say 'I was abused as a child too, but I didn't turn into a criminal because of it", the scientific truth is that a person's ability to counter the influences of their environment cannot be anything other than their genetic predispositions..

Freewill is also refuted by the fact that ingestion of physical chemicals can cause us to make much different choices than we normally would.  The child who climbs the walls all day long is doing so for chemical-brain reasons which we now call ADHD, which can be controlled by Ritlan.  What...does Ritlan have a spiritual effect on a child's freewill?  Did God invent Ritlan, or toss it down from heaven? Of course not, our decision- making mechanisms in the brain are nothing but pure electrochemical reactions.  That's precisely why physical substances are capable of causing us to decide things in ways we normally wouldn't.  Depressed people stop being depressed when they smoke drugs.  The good girl can be convinced to act immorally at the party if she drinks enough alcohol.  Calm people can be short-tempered if they drink too much coffee.  Etc, Etc.

Wallace will say that the brain's being affected by physical substances doesn't completely cancel the possibility that perhaps the mind merely comes into the body using the brain as an interface, and when the interface is chemically damaged, the resulting choices and personality are too.  But the stupidity of this response is found in the question "comes into the body from where?"  You guessed it...from another dimension.  Christians literally believe the mind originates in the twilight zone. They also believe in other stupid things...like the idea that atheists are under some sort of intellectual obligation to "answer" bits of ignorance like this.

Also, only stupid people think babies have freewill, so since everybody agrees babies don't have freewill, and most people think adults do, the question naturally arises:  why don't human beings exhibit freewill from birth...if in fact freewill is "free" from physical limitations, coming as it allegedly does from the spiritual dimension?  The honest answer is that our ability to make rational choices is an attribute we gain over time and growth, which therefore means the ultimate basis of our will is firmly rooted in the physical world, leaving Christians and their 'spiritual dimension' crap out in left field.

Finally, that the bible is of no help whatsoever in answering this question is clear from the fact that the bible did nothing to resolve the Augustine/Pelagius debates, and did nothing to resolve the Calvinist/Arminian debates, and did nothing to resolve the disagreement between Luther and Erasmus on the nature of the will, and has done nothing to reconcile the current church splits over this doctrine that these prior debates spawned.

Did those debates do anything to help today's apologists come to resolution on the issue?  No.  James Patrick Holding wants the world to view him as a "smart guy", yet adopts Molinism (the abused child produced by the Calvinist/Arminian stalemate), a stance that Calvinist "smart guys" Steve Hays and Dr. James White consider ridiculous and unbiblical.

And for the Christians who foolishly equate the mind with the spirit, they will find their dreams dashed under 1st Corinthians 14:15, where Paul necessarily distinguishes the mind from the spirit, which thus leaves open a biblical door to the possibility that the bible will allow for the "mind" to be purely and wholly physical.

And don't even get me started on the fact that Christians also disagree on whether the bible says man is a dichotomy (body + soul or body + spirit), or trichotomy (body + soul + spirit). Google "trichotomist debate".

So you are a rather stupid fuck if you think opening your bible will do anything toward guiding you toward "truth" about the matter of human freewill.  What...maybe you think the Holy Spirit is more interested in guiding YOU into the truth of such matters than he was in guiding past Christian giants like Augustine, Calvin or Luther?

Finally, Wallace says "consciousness exists in the universe", but even pretending for the moment the naturalistic explanations for this are weak, "god" remains an incoherent concept, so that because the naturalistic explanations are less incoherent, the rational person should favor them above the "god did it" excuse.   Learn how the advocates of various views respond to each other in Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer, eds., In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005; 2^nd ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010).  See Christians disagreeing with each other about trichotomy here.

And I do not concede the weakness of naturalistic arguments for consciousness.  The discussion about freewill, supra, also shows the purely naturalistic and physical nature of the mind.  If a person can undergo a major personality change due to brain injury or disease affecting the brain (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, including old folks forgetting names of family and forgetting who they are or where they live), then we do not immediately leap to "but couldn't there be another dimension that the mind comes into the body from, and when the interface is damaged, it falsely makes the will appear to be physical only?"

Instead, we draw a conclusion similar to the one we draw when we notice that a person's bicep is responsible for their during curls in the gym, and when that muscle is severed or severely damaged, they can no longer do those curls:  We conclude the basis for muscular power is purely physical...we do not conclude that maybe the muscle power comes into the bodily tissue from another dimension, and the physical injury giving rise to weakness merely inhibits the spiritual aspect from manifesting itself fully.

However, you can bet your life savings that if the bible had said the power of our physical muscles comes from the spiritual world, every Christian apologist in creation would be insisting my above-logic is merely "worldly" and "incorrect" and "not according to Christ".

Getting ChessMaster 9000 to work on Windows 10

Since Windows 10 came out, many have bemoaned the fact that Chessmaster 9000 will not install on it.  I was one such person, and I personally think 9000 is far better than the "10".  9000 had lots of nice colors and graphics and options.   the "10 Grandmaster" was little more than washed out black and white pastels. Reminded me of how Microsoft 'upgraded' from XP to Vista.  Yeah right.

I figured out very easy way to make it install and work properly...including with that 'no cd patch' that UBI put on the internet years ago, so you don't have to have the cd spinning in the drive during play.

Install Advanced System Repair.    File ASR_Blue_Installer_7GA-G-F2.
https://advancedsystemrepair.com/

You don't need to make any actual repairs...just install.

Now insert Chessmaster cd 1 and do 'complete' install.

After install, it will ask you to insert Disc 2.  Do so.

After it looks like its done, you have to go through a few more quick additional installs with the second disc still in the drive.  Including installing Acrobat 5, which can be safely declined.  Now remove the disc.

Take your chessmaster "no cd patch", making sure it is named exactly Chessmaster, and copy into
C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubi Soft\Chessmaster 9000.
If you don't have the patch, I'll give you a copy, as i think UBI no longer support 9000 in any way.

You are replacing the original .exe with this patch.  Confirm.  Now right-click and drag a shortcut from the patch.exe to your desktop, or wherever you'd like the icon to be.

Double clicking the shortcut icon should then cause Chessmaster to work exactly the way it did on XP, starting as it normally does with that video.  One small hangup:  if you let the video play all the way through, the game might freeze. Simply left-click your mouse when the video starts, and the video will stop and you'll be given the functioning game window.

Restart.  confirm that Chessmaster still works.  You can then uninstall "Advanced System Repair", and Chessmaster will still work.

Don't ask me what ASR actually does, I don't know...it just works.  It would appear, therefore, that patching Chessmaster to make it compatible with Windows 10 would have been a relatively easy and inexpensive affair for UBI, but for whatever reason, they chose to just abandon the idea.  Hope this helps.

Answering Apologetics Press and Dave Miller, Ph.D., on god killing children

This is my reply to an Apologetics Press article by Dr. Dave Miller, entitled

Did God Order the Killing of Babies?

by  Dave Miller,Ph.D.

 Skeptics and atheists have been critical of the Bible’s portrayal of God ordering the death of entire populations—including women and children.

Because the more infinite god is, the more options he has to solve sin problems without needing to inflict misery.  If limited sinners, can solve sin problems without mass slaughter, so can "god". 

Appeals to ripple-effect and chaos theory might help you save face, but foists not the least bit of intellectual obligation upon the person criticizing the bible's divine atrocities.  Hence appeal to such wishful speculations do not perform the function of making your fundamentalist position more reasonable than the position of a person who appeals to other dimensions to explain Bigfoot's uncanny ability to evade most attempts at detection.

For example, God instructed Saul through the prophet Samuel to “go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Samuel 15:3-4, emp. added). Other examples include the period of the Israelite conquest of Canaan in which God instructed the people to exterminate the Canaanite populations that occupied Palestine at the time. However, if one cares to examine the circumstances and assess the rationale, the Bible consistently exonerates itself by offering legitimate clarification and explanation to satisfy the honest searcher of truth.

Ok, where does the bible teach that a person of infinite power "didn't have any other way" to resolve a sin problem except to inflict horrific misery on children and infants?   When we bomb cities in war and cannot avoid killing a few innocent people, it's precisely because we are limited in our power and knowledge.  If we have infallible ability to pinpoint where the innocent civilians were and where the guilty enemy combatants were, we would be able to solve the war problem without killing innocent people.

You know, the excuse of imperfection that your infinite god cannot use.

The Hebrew term herem found, for instance, in Joshua 6:17, refers to the total dedication or giving over of the enemy to God as a sacrifice involving the extermination of the populace. It is alleged that the God of the Bible is as barbaric and cruel as any of the pagan gods. But this assessment is simply not true.
 If the critic would take the time to study the Bible and make an honest evaluation of the principles of God’s justice, wrath, and love,

Which the bible says he cannot do unless he first converts to your religion (1st Cor. 2:14), so you are asking of the critic that which your own theology says is impossible.  Sort of like me asking you to lift 5 tons above your head with no other means beyond your personal unaided biological muscular strength.

he would see the perfect and harmonious interplay between them.

That's funny...most Christian scholars don't believe in biblical inerrancy, which means not even most Christian scholars find your fundamentalist "reconciliation scenarios" too convincing.  That is, even if I became a Christian, god still might be telling me that the divine atrocities of the OT truly contradict the divine love preached by Jesus.

God’s vengeance is not like the impulsive, irrational, emotional outbursts of pagan deities or human beings.

Of course not.  For example, when he determined to murder Moses for no specific reason, the wife felt so constrained by the urgent death threat that she used something more dull than a knife, which happened to be nearby, to circumcise her son, the only apparent way God would back the fuck off:

 24 Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the LORD met him and sought to put him to death.
 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses' feet, and she said, "You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me."
 26 So He let him alone. At that time she said, "You are a bridegroom of blood "-- because of the circumcision. (Exod. 4:24-26 NAU)

You will insist surely there was a reason God wanted to kill, even if the text doesn't express it, but on the contrary, God specifies that he can be incited to harm people "without cause":

 3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause. (Job 2:3 NAU)

Miller continues:

He is infinite in all His attributes and thus perfect in justice, love, and anger.

Ok, you are a classical theist.  But Greg Boyd and other conservative Christian scholars reject classical theism and use the bible to substantiate the opposite doctrine of open-theism (i.e., God is limited and makes mistakes).  In other words, the only way I could allow your classical theist presuppositions is if I convert to Christianity and decide that the Christians who advocate for open-theism are wrong. 

Not likely.  In the text of Genesis 6:6-7, God's regret is not toward the sinfulness of man, even if that was historically true.  His regret is toward his own prior choice to have created man.  That is, god is sorry he created man and this means pretty much the same thing the parent means when saying they are sorry they ever chose to have kids.  In both cases, one's confession of personal imperfection is clear.  Hence I deny any bible verses that extol God's power and wisdom, and refuse to read such classical theist concepts into the biblical wording to make the bible agree with classical theism.  The bible's teaching about God's limitations and imperfections cannot be changed merely beaccuse other parts of the bible give a contrary picture.

Therefore I am reasonable to take god at his word, and accept his personal confession of imperfection as the truth about him...and therefore recognize the bible to be full of theological error.  As if 2,000 years of Christian theologians attacking each other didn't already do the job.

Just as God’s ultimate and final condemnation of sinners to eternal punishment will be just and appropriate,

Ok, you aren't challenging skeptics here, you are preaching to the choir.  Rock on.

so the temporal judgment of wicked people in the Old Testament was ethical and fair.

Gee, how easy is it to blindly accept God's perfection in one part of the bible, to justify the conclusion that "surely the judge of the earth will do right" to quell any problems with any other part of the bible?  Like I said, preaching to the choir.  What you say puts no intellectual compulsion on skeptics, nor highlights any logical fallacies in their criticism of the bible-god.

We human beings do not have an accurate handle on the gravity of sin and the deplorable nature of evil and wickedness.

Yes we do.  Those who trivialize the moral wrongness of sin aren't expressing any greater cavalier liberalism than God did when he got rid of David's two death-deserving sins of adultery and murder...by simply waiving his magic wand:

 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. (2 Sam. 12:13 NAU)

How high is God's standard of justice?  Put your diapers on!....He requires a whole entire RAM to be sacrificed when a master rapes a slave girl, and by that sacrifice, he forgives the rapist completely:

 20 'Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment; they shall not, however, be put to death, because she was not free.
 21 'He shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering.
 22 'The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him. (Lev. 19:20-22 NAU)

I therefore soil myself at the thought of the bible-god's infinitely high standard of justice.  Clearly, he thinks the person who steals a pack of bubble gum from the corner store has made themselves worthy of eternally irreversible conscious torture by fire.

Human sentimentality is hardly a qualified measuring stick for divine truth and spiritual reality.

Said the Muslim terrorist to the American mother of three kids.  When idiots get it in their head that their god wants them to commit some horrible act, they necessarily become immune to common sense.

How incredibly ironic that the atheist, the agnostic, the skeptic, and the liberal all attempt to stand in judgment upon the ethical behavior of God when, if one embraces their position, there is no such thing as an absolute, objective, authoritative standard by which to pronounce anything right or wrong.

We don't need any moral to be "absolute" or "objective" in order to remain "reasonable" to foist our subjective morals on others.  I am reasonable to conform to my culture's apathy toward racism, even if no absolute morals exist.  By conforming to my culture, I make my own life far more pleasant...while contradicting my culture's morals could easily lead to me landing in jail or otherwise making my life miserable.
Acting lawfully in effort to make life enjoyable, by definition, is reasonable. 

That logic will not disappear merely because you can carp "who was right, Mother Theresa or Hitler?"  The question blindly presumes there is a way to objectively determine who was right, which means the question is begging the question of the existence of objective morals, when whether they exist is precisely the debate.

As the French existentialist philosopher, Sartre, admitted: “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.... Nor...are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior” (1961, p. 485).

He was correct.  And due to the power of cultural and environmental conditioning, intelligent mammals are going to make changes in their lives that cause those who mostly agree on morals to band together in villages, cities, states, and nations. A whole bunch of people think raping a child is immoral, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out why such people choose to group together.  Yes, very often people are uneducated on moral philosophy and do indeed mistake their ultimately subjective morality for absolute morality, but thankfully, I'm not among them.

The atheist and agnostic have absolutely no platform on which to stand to make moral or ethical distinctions—except as the result of purely personal taste.

We don't need to ground our personal moral tastes in objective morality before our employment of those tastes to reach our desired goals can be reasonable and rational.

The mere fact that they concede the existence of objective evil is an unwitting concession there is a God Who has established an absolute framework of moral judgments.

Then you just encountered a rather extreme roadblock: I'm an atheist, I do not concede the existence of objective evil.  I am horrified at news that somebody slaughtered a schoolyard full of kids...but only because I was raised to adopt and reflect my culture's general morality...by parents who did the same.

Had I been born in 1915 in Germany, I might just as easily have taken the view that jewish kids "deserve" to be killed.  Now what are you going to do?  Find fault with a person for growing up to adopt their own culture's morals?  Ok, how about if I find "fault" with a man who grew up as a fundamentalist Christian and now thinks adultery is immoral?  Informed discussion about morality makes it clear that it is wrong to fault those who reflect the culture they were born and raised into.  We can disagree with them all day long, but we err in pretending the "American way" is "better".  We can't prove its' better except to shake our fist on Sunday and hear the claps of other people who already agree with us.  That doesn't prove the American way is objectively good.

The facts of the matter are that the Canaanites, whom God’s people were to destroy, were destroyed for their wickedness (Deuteronomy 9:4; 18:9-12; Leviticus 18:24-25,27-28).

John H. Walton (PhD, Hebrew Union College) is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School.  He is author of The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: Covenant, Retribution, and the Fate of the Canaanites" (IVP Academic, 2017).  Therein he insists

Proposition # 12: The depiction of the Canaanites In Leviticus and Deuteronomy is a sophisticated appropriation of a common ANE literary device.  Not an Indictment.

In other words, on the basis of the case made by Walton and Sandy, my becoming a genuinely born again Christian AND graduating from a Christian college AND conducting extensive review of fundamentalist Christian treatments of the Canaanite problem could easily still leave me thinking the fundamentalist view is incorrect. 

Now if becoming spiritually alive doesn't do anything to help me correctly understand God's justice, I'm not going to think becoming spiritually alive is anything deeper or more significant than a description of a purely  naturalistic process.

Miller continues:

Canaanite culture and religion in the second millennium B.C. were polluted, corrupt, and perverted.

Sorry, you don't have any archaeological evidence that any of them ever practiced bestiality with anywhere near the consistency that fundamentalist apologist typically accuse them of.  Instead, you read the ancient and politically biased accounts by the Israelites, and automatically assume these are just as easily understood and reliable as yesterday's headline in the San Francisco Chronicle.

No doubt the people were physically diseased from their illicit behavior.

The fact that the Israelites were so easily swayed into such idolatry on nearly ever page of the Pentateuch tells me your argument about who 'deserved' to be slaughtered is superficial.  If God was correct to slaughter the Canaanites, then since the Israelites were no better, they "deserved" to be slaughtered likewise.

If God could live with the Israelites who were just as bad (James 2:10-11), he could have lived with the Canaanites.

There simply was no viable solution to their condition except destruction.

Then I apparently know your bible better than you.  God could have just waved his magic wand and convinced all Canaanites to do whatever he wanted them to do.  See Ezra 1:1.

Their moral depravity was “full” (Genesis 15:16).

Yup, you aren't addressing skeptics, you are only concerned with the readers who automatically conclude "historically reliable!" every time they read something in the bible.  Perhaps that explains why your arguments here give skeptics little reason to worry about anything except their next beer.

They had slumped to such an immoral, depraved state, with no hope of recovery, that their existence on this Earth had to be terminated—just like in Noah’s day when God waited while Noah preached for years, but was unable to turn the world’s population from its wickedness (Genesis 6:3,5-7; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 3:5-9).

Nope, Ezra 1:1, God has a non-barbaric way of turning people from the error of their way...therefore his choice to solve the problem in an unnecessarily barbaric way means nothing less than what's implied when a parent puts a bullet in their child's brain to make them stop disobeying.  The fact that the parent had other options, is all we need to be reasonable to conclude that parent is evil and guilty.  Telling us that God is always a special exception and his ways are mysterious, etc, cannot be viewed as plausible unless and until some hardcore undisputed evidence of his actual existence is brought forward, lest we  find ourselves doing nothing more than making excuses for story characters.  I'm an atheist.  You aren't going to be bringing in any evidence of god's actual existence.

Including the children in the destruction of such populations actually spared them from a worse condition—that of being reared to be as wicked as their parents and thus face eternal punishment.

Which is the precise argument I use to prove that abortion is morally good.  How could it be morally bad to send a child to heaven in a way that protects them from the possibility of ending up in hell?  Isn't the spiritual perspective (going to heaven) more important than the earthly perspective (unlawful to kill)?  When we remember the bible god takes credit for all murders anyway (Deuteronomy 32:29), then we can know it is God who is causing a woman to get an abortion.

So if God cannot do anything morally bad, then is it morally good when God employs his Deut. 32:39 power, yes or no?

When you say God can orchestrate our sinful acts for his own good purposes without himself thereby becoming guilty of sin, you are clearly desperate to grasp at any stupid trifle nobody in their right mind would ever grasp at, to avoid admitting the god of the OT is nothing but an accurate reflection of the barbaric culture that created him. There is no possible reasoning that can justify the argument that you encouraged a person to commit a criminal act, but you yourself bear no moral responsibility for the criminal act.  If older brother James encourages younger brother Dennis to steal a candy bar from a store, does James bear any moral responsibility for this crime, yes or no?

All persons who die in childhood, according to the Bible, are ushered to Paradise and will ultimately reside in Heaven.

Well in any moral analysis, where the result of the act is morally good, the act itself was morally good (i.e, healthy kids because you made them eat healthy food).

If the result of the moral act is morally good, you are a fool to say the act itself could nevertheless be immoral, since the good result is precisely the reason to say the act producing the good, was itself good.  How do you know feeding kids healthy food is morally good?  The result.  That's sufficiently objective to make it reasonable for moral relativists to feel their actions morally justified, even if absolute morals don't exist. You will say "this is merely 'the ends justify the means' !", but that doesn't bother me, as ends-justify-the-means is a rather popular moral justification.  If I'm starving, I won't just look at somebody else's food and perish away, I'll probably try to get some of it even if I know this is stealing.

Children who have parents who are evil must naturally suffer innocently while on Earth (e.g., Numbers 14:33).

But only because your god chose to refrain from waving his magic Ezra 1:1 wand and causing those evil parents to do whatever he wants.

Those who disagree with God’s annihilation of the wicked in the Old Testament have the same liberal attitude that has come to prevail in America just in the last half century. That attitude has typically opposed capital punishment, as well as the corporal punishment of children.

Then count me out.  I'm not  fundamentalist Christian, but I'm not a card carrying ACLU radical.

Such people simply cannot see the rightness of evildoers being punished by execution or physical pain.

Said the Muslim terrorist leader to his followers when talking about the moral goodness of killing Americans.

Nevertheless, their view is skewed—and the rest of us are being forced to live with the results of their warped thinking: undisciplined, out-of-control children are wreaking havoc on our society by perpetrating crime to historically, all-time high levels.

And like the parent who has the ability to control the kids without killing or brutalizing them, God just sits around refusing to exercise his Ezra 1:1 magic.  So God is like the wealthy parent watching their own kids starve, because dad refuses, solely by choice, to withdraw money from the bank to buy food.  When you have ability and opportunity to prevent your own created situation from spinning out of moral control, and you don't, the evil that occurs is YOUR fault whether others can be implicated too. 

God is no different than the mother with three toddlers who constantly chooses to never guide them, and just lets them run all over hell and back, then bitches about the fact that they exhibit the natural characteristics of unguided children.  Or like the mother who never guides her kids by anything more than words.  Sorry god, "words" are not enough, thus "the bible says..." is not enough to solve actual real world problems, even if it's enough to dazzle the delights of believers every Sunday.

Those who reject the ethics of God’s destructive activity in the Old Testament, to be consistent, must reject Jesus and the New Testament.

Nah, plenty of genuinely born again Christians have had severe probelms with the moral contradiction between the OT and NT.  I therefore reasonably deduce it is a real problem and not merely a case of somebody lacking spiritual insight.

Over and over again, Jesus and the New Testament writers endorsed and defended such activity (e.g., Luke 13:1-9; 12:5; 17:29-32; 10:12; Hebrews 10:26-31).

Yup, you aren't arguing to convince skeptics, but only to convince "bible-believers".  Dismissed.

The Bible provides the only logical, sensible, meaningful, consistent explanation regarding the principles of retribution, punishment, and the conditions under which physical life may be extinguished.

Yup.  We'd all cry if America's ghettos were nuked clean, but I'm sure you'd probably find a bible verses that says nuking the ghettos is the "only way" an infinite god of infinite powers could  possibly solve the problem.