Demolishing Triablogue: Answering Steve Hays on the problem of divine hiddenness

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays of Triablogue entitled

God's absence

1. I'm going to revisit the divine hiddenness argument. The basic idea is that many or most people don't experience God in the way they need, want, or expect.

The more advanced form of the argument says the bible-god appears to have become completely apathetic toward humanity since biblical days.

The argument operates on roughly two fronts. A typical presupposition of freewill theism is God's desires that every human being enjoy fellowship with God. Trust him. God wants everyone to be saved.

I would agree with Steve the Calvinist that the god of the bible infallibly predestined many people to end up in hell, so that there was literally no possibility they could avoid such fate.

But many human beings don't believe in God because they haven't had what they take to be a recognizable experience of God.

Many human being also don't believe in the bible-god because they find nothing in the events of today's world that remotely suggest the bible-god is doing anything other than sleeping.

It could be argued that there are many ways to experience God indirectly, which they fail to register, but the point is that from their viewpoint, if God exists, they should be able to experience him in a more personal, targeted fashion. They just don't recognize God at work in their lives.

And this is a problem for freewill theism since, on the face of it, it would be easy for God to give them a recognizable experience of himself. So what's the explanation?

One explanation is that it seems like God isn't there because, as a mater of fact, God isn't there.. Sppearance matches reality. We inhabit a godless universe. It isn't that God absents himself from people's lives, but that there is no God to experience. No one is home. You can keep knocking on the door, but the house is empty.

My sentiments exactly.  When you inspect all parts of a room and see nobody there, that means nobody is there.  It doesn't mean you lack the ability to detect invisible people.

Of course, a basic problem with that explanation is the abundance of evidence for God's existence.

Not a problem at all.  Theistic proofs are usually nothing more than word-games and horrifically ad hoc hypotheses. 

Indeed, that's one of the aggravating dimensions of the problem. Since there is so much evidence, not just for God's existence generally, but his activity in the lives of some people, why are others bereft?

Fallacy of loaded question, I deny that anybody has ever experienced god.  I also deny that anybody has ever experienced being a god in a previous universe.  My failure to check with every person doesn't slow me down in the slightest from drawing such inference. It's going to be reasonable even if not infallible.

Another explanation is to deny the universality of the freewill theist assumption. Maybe God doesn't reach out to every human being. Maybe it's not his desire every human being be in fellowship with himself.

That cannot be reconciled with every verse in the bible, but it is certainly in accord with some parts of the bible.  Calvinism and Arminianism are both equally "biblical", because it's perfectly reasonable to accuse the bible of teaching contradictory doctrines.

A freewill theist can also postulate postmortem evangelism, where God compensates for his absence in this life in the afterlife. Other issues aside, that has an ad hoc quality.

That's what Lydia McGrew thinks, and other groups, including Roman Catholics, deny that hell is the automatic destination of anybody who dies after having rejected the gospel.  I would argue that Jesus' interactions with Gentiles was sufficiently casual and short that he probably wasn't going around screaming at them that they were always one heartbeat away from hell.  He is content to preach and move on, almost as if he doesn't think those people are in any urgent danger of damnation.

2. One complication is that many unbelievers say they aren't seeking God. They hate the very idea of God. They prefer a godless universe. If they though God did exist, that would put them in a state of psychological tension.

Psychological tension exists in the Christian too, since they also complain of divine hiddenness, so that the skeptic has good reason to wonder where the idiot ever got the idea that God wishes to fellowship with people that God obviously takes no interest in.

3. There is, though, another comparatively neglected front to the issue. The problem is not God's unavailability to humans in general, unbelievers included, but God's unavailability to his own people: Christians and Jews. This is a common refrain or common complaint in the Prophets and Psalmists. So often, God is not available to us when we most need him or want his intervention.

Wow, not even being a biblical author and having THAT level of "inspiration" will help you find the answer to divine hiddenness?  If spritually alive people stumble over it, only makes sense for the spiritually dead person to think they'll never do better, and accordingly cease paying attention to the issue if they so wish.

4. That in itself requires some unpacking. In what ways to we need or want God to be available?

I don't ask that question.

i) A cliche example is answer to prayer.

Nothing fails quite like prayer, and those "prayer tests" do not show any statistic indicating greater luck for those who prayed.  The way you prayers get "answered" is more likely due to sheer luck and happenstance.  But people are pattern-seekers, and will, if the need for ultimate significance is sufficiently intense, see patterns where none exist.  Given more than 6 billion people on the planet, that's an awful lot of unemployed Christians who need a car, so sheer chance is going to account for why some of those praying Christians actually do get a car.

ii) Another cliche example is a sign from God. Not so much that we want God to solve a problem but we just want an indication that he's there, that he's still there. A confirmation that he's real. That he's there, he's aware, and he cares. That we're not totally alone. On our own in the world.

Jesus noted that the crowds did not follow him out of interest in his signs, but bevause he was giving them food, sort of arguing that they thought his tricks were purely naturalistic.  John 6:26, thus contradicting v. 2.

Could be very simple. An audible voice. Or a modest but unmistakable sign.

Yup.  Asking for a sign from god is also biblical. Isaiah 7:11.  And expecting today's Christians to perform miracles is justified from a combination of Matthew 10:8 and 28:20.  Yet despite my challenge to all Christians and Craig Keener in particular to direct me to the one modern-day miracle they believe most impervious to falsification, see here, the challenge continues on, unanswered.  See here and here.  You can hardly fault me for drawing the conclusions that there's probably a very good reason nobody wants to put their money where their mouth is.

iii) Apropos (ii), which may be the same thing or something similar, a hunger for God's "presence" or his "loving" presence in particular. What that means isn't entirely clear. It can be different from a sign. A sign is external to us. It may refer to a feeling: to be suffused with a sense of God's love.

Nothing unbiblical in this expectation either, God is capable of causing people to believe whatever he wants whenever he wants, even if the person in question is steeped in gross idolatry.  See Ezra 1:1.  Even if they are actively hostile to Christianity more than today's athetists.  See god literally blinding Saul/Paul with the light, Acts 9, 22, 26.

Again, on this view, is God's felt presence in itself an experience of his love, or is the sense of divine love something over and above his felt presence?

That's too stupidly Gnostic for me to care to comment on beyond this.

5. This, though, goes to the larger question of how we'd like God to be available to us. How often do we feel the need to be in touch with God? Is this mainly in a crisis, or something routine?

No relevance to me, i don't desire divine presence, for the same reason I don't desire self-deception.

Take Adam and Eve in the Garden, before the Fall.

Why?  The story is nothing but fiction, hence, the basis for declaring all people "sinners" and thus in need of salvation is also fictitious.

Did they feel they were missing something unless the Angel of the Lord appeared to them every day or every week?  How long could they go without a divine visitation but be happy and content with each other and the garden?

Then perhaps you never noticed the bible verse which condemns interest in controversial questions.  1st Timothy 6:4.  Sure, you can trifle that it's only condemning "morbid" interest in controversial questions, but you dont' have any criteria for identifying the piont at which Paul would think one's interest in controversial question became "morbid", so it probably makes more sense to not even open the door.  Just like if you don't know the point at which gazing at strippers becomes adultery-by-lust, probably best if you don't even walk in the club. Your love of dancing on the edge could be argued to signify spiritual immaturity, lest you stupidly think that the more about apologetics you know, the more spiritually mature you get?

6. To take a human comparison, consider a young couple riding on the crest of passion.

Surely a smart guy like Steve Hays doesn't need to ask Christians to think about other people having sex?

They spend all their free time together. They can't get enough of each other. Yet that's not indefinitely sustainable. It loses its freshness.

Because its completely naturalistic.  See here too.

Even people who are extremely close to each other can get on each other's nerves, or get bored with each other's constant company. Even people who are extremely close may need to have some time to themselves. They get tired of being together every minute of the day. They have to take a break. Have some time and space apart.

7. On a related note, an extended separation can intensify reunion. An extended separation can revitalize love.

Something that divine love should not have to engage in just to keep things fresh.

8. Or you might have two brothers who were inseparable until they got married and had kids. After that, not only do they see less of each other, but the need for their mutual companionship diminishes because they now have compensatory relationships. The wife and kids provide a different kind of emotional sustenance.

To some extent the brothers may even grow apart emotionally, not in the sense that they cease to love each other, but they're now invested in their own family. That develops a potential which was unrealized prior to marriage and kids.

If, say, the wives and kids were all killed in a traffic accident, the brothers might revert. Resume living together as bachelors. Become inseparable again.

9. In what sense has God created us to need him emotionally?

I detect no such need.

Do we naturally need to have God speak to us or appear to us every so often? Of is this mostly driven by the vicissitudes of life in a fallen world?

I would say that since God refuses to seek us, we have no duty to seek him.  He's the one with all the answers, he can no more expect sinners to contradict their nature than he can expect himself to contradict his own nature.

Does God normally supply our emotional needs indirectly through creation? Through other people and natural blessings?

If we get emotional needs met through other people, why think 'god' has anything to do with it?

10. Of course, one problem is that in a fallen world we can't necessarily turn to each other for emotional compensations because sin puts a strain on our relationships. It makes our relationships a source of pain. Rather than filling the void of God's absence, it's another way to be hurt.

11. I was a free range child. I used to go for long walks on my own, sometimes with my dog. It was a forested area with woods, ponds, streams, ravines, and lakes. A lot to explore.

I didn't need my parents to be available for me in the sense of having them around all the time. Rather, I needed to know that I had them to come back to. I had a home. I had security. It was (fairly) safe to explore the woods on my own. And if they weren't home when I got back, there was the confidence in knowing that they would return. Either I was waiting for them or they were waiting for me. There was no anxiety on my part.

Signifying nothing, since that's all empirical, whereas the hiddenness of god is due to his allegedly non-empirical nature.  If God didn't want us to draw confident inference based on our 5 physical senses, maybe he shouldn't have given us those senses.

12. There is something exhilarating about a divine Incarnation. That you're talking face-to-face with God. Looking into the eyes of God. At the same time, it might make you acutely self-conscious to be in God's presence, in such a palpable, immediate way.

Preaching to the choir.  Dismissed.

To take a comparison, boys are very uninhibited around other boys. Would it be inhibiting to be with Jesus?

Jesus' own family apparently didn't think so.  See Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5

13. Because God is rarely available in ways we long for, it forces Christians to seek each other out and try to encourage one other in our joint pilgrimage.

Which then becomes nothing but one mammal trying to help another, thus likely leading to further problems.  If God would just do his fucking job like he's supposed to, there would be no need for sinners to seek solace from other imperfect beings, and the likelihood of increased problems would diminish.

There's a bonding experience that occurs in situations of shared trust, stress, risk, vulnerability, or collaboration. There's a certain paradox when friends or Christians pool their collective helplessness. They cant do for each other what only God can do, but it can still be a maturing and sanctifying experience.

I fail to see how any of this bullshit from your post does anything toward reconciling divine hiddenness with the existence of God.

Jack Wellman is dishonest

Jack Wellman is a pastor who apparently did graduate work at Moody Bible Institute and has a website dedicated to "equipping" Christians for spiritual warfare. See here.

Yesterday, I received an email notification that Wellman had posted to Patheos an article explaining what Jesus meant when conditioning entrance to the kingdom of heaven upon having greater righteousness than the Pharisees had.  Matthew 5:20.  See here.

Yesterday, I posted a reply to that article, pointing out that Wellman ignored the immediate context, and that more respect for immediate context would have led to the conclusion that Jesus was teaching a legalistic form of salvation.  The reply was scholarly and did not break any rules.

I accused Wellman of acting like a Jehovah Witness in how quickly he ignored the immediate context and tried to mix Isaiah and Paul into Matthew 5, all because of his trust in "biblical inerrancy". 

Somebody deleted that reply.

So today I posted another reply, substantially the same.  Again, no breaking of any rules.  And again, somebody deleted it.  And now, the person doing the deleting flagged my reply "spam":





While there's always the possibility that it was somebody other than Jack Wellman who deleted my replies, it is certainly reasonable to suppose it was Wellman himself.  The irony is that one of the replies there, from "Pud", is far more acerbic and insulting than my reply was, yet his posts from 3 years ago are still viewable.

What does it say about a "Christian" who allows insulting replies to his article to remain viewable, but who deletes scholarly rebuttals that directly attack the arguments in the article?

Demolishing Triablogue: No reasons for hell

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays of Triablogue entitled

Reasons for hell

Recently I was listening to philosophical theologians give bad answers on hell.

 You should have recognized their bad answers likely implied they have been previously warned at least twice against their error, and accordingly you should have obeyed that part of the bible that tells you to avoid them, see Titus 3:9-11.

I've probably discussed most of this before at one time or another, but it may be useful to summarize them in one place. By way of preliminary comment, the primary reason Christians believe in hell

Speak for yourself, it should be obvious to a smart guy like you that not all Christians believe in hell, unless you use that doctrine as a test of orthodoxy.  Can a person be genuinely born-again while adopting annihilationism, yes or no?  If yes, then couldn't it be argued that every bit of time you spend arguing peripherals, the more you sin by taking away time better spend defending essentials?

is because they believe what the Bible says about hell.

Well gee, so do the Jehovah's Witnesses and the 7th Day Adventists.

It isn't necessary to provide an independent, philosophical defense of hell.

Especially given that such would be impossible, lest you look a little too consistent in your Calvinism and admit you worship a sadistic lunatic.

It's useful in apologetics and evangelism to be able to do that, but the warrant for believing in hell doesn't rely on that.

There's plenty of good warrant for ascribing error to the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment.

1. Infinite God
i) A typical objection goes like this: how can a just God mete out infinite punishment for finite sin? How can the sins of a lifetime merit infinite punishment? The typical reply is that a sin against an infinite God is infinitely culpable, and merits infinite punishment.

Except that God's justice against sin in the OT is very often FULLY satisfied by decidedly temporal means of atonement, such as animal sacrifice.  Hell, the master who rapes his slave-girl is automatically forgiven simply by donating one of his rams to the priests, no repentance or change beyond this is expressed or implied:

 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)

Sometimes Leviticus is more specific than we might expect an ancient Hebrew author to be, to make sure the reader recognized how completely animal blood expiated God's wrath against sin.  Concerning Yom Kippur, or the once-yearly animal sacrifice:

 29 "This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you;
 30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. (Lev. 16:29-30 NAU)

Gee, really?  Steve Hays would probably trifle "in what sense did they become clean before the Lord?" 

Well gee, in the sense that "The Lord viewed them as clean"?

Sort of like, if you barged into Steve's house and said "your mother was just murdered!', he would probably trifle "in what sense, after all, 'murder' can be used by modern American persons in a variety of different ways!".  Obviously, this text was intended to be read aloud to the mostly illiterate Israelites, and such people would not likely have conjured up the stupid semantic trifles in their mind that are conjured up by Steve Hays...and his concern to make sure the NT book of Hebrews continues being held up as inerrant.

That's a popular answer because it's compact and uses the same principle as the critic, only turning that principle against the objection. But as it stands, it's a bad argument:

Thanks for the honesty.

ii) It equivocates over the nature of infinitude. The objection is to a quantitative infinite punishment. A temporal infinite. Everlasting punishment. For finite, discrete sins.

However, to say a sin may be infinitely culpable swaps in a qualitative concept. An infinite degree of badness. I'm not sure if that's even meaningful.

Skeptics like me will use such concessions from Christian apologists to straighten out the idiots that warm the pews every Sunday.  Half of the atheist bible critics' plight is in simply getting the "Christian" to correctly understand their own book.

In addition, what does it mean in this context to say that God is "infinite." In what morally relevant sense is God infinite in this argument? Perhaps what is meant is that God is infinitely good, so that a sin against an infinitely good God is infinitely bad, meriting infinite punishment. "Infinite" in the sense that God is as good as anything can be. Indeed, better than anything else. The uppermost maxima of goodness or exemplar of goodness. Something like that.
When you try to unpack the argument, it gets messy. I don't think this is a good argument as it stands.

Again, thanks for the honesty.

It does, however, contain a grain of truth, so I think it can be rehabilitated in some respect:

iii) There is a moral principle where the same action may be worse depending on who you do it to. It's worse to betray a friend than a stranger. It's worse to mistreat your elderly mother than to mistreat the telemarketer. So there can be degrees of culpability, not due to the action itself, but who it's directed to. Taken to a logical extreme, the argument is that we owe the most to God, we have the greatest obligation to God, so sinning against God is the worst kind of sin.

Except that in Steve Hays' very staunch 5-Point Calvinism, it is this infinite god who intended the sinner to sin the way he did, so that offending god by sinning is sort of like offending the person whom you gave a black eye to, because they took your hand and hit themselves with it.  How the fuck could a Calvinist believe anybody could "offend God"?  Is God offended when we manifest perfect compliance with his secret will?

Hays' displays his disturbing consistency by arguing elsewhere that God secretly wills that people disobey his revealed will, which while logical enough under his Calvinism, is viewed as shockingly heretical by most Christians.  See here.

Steve continues:

iv) There is, though, another complication to this argument. In what sense can we sin against God? We can't harm God.

Good point.  And yet Malachi uses the word "yet" to duck the obvious criticism that it is logically impossible to steal from God, see Malachi 3:8.  That's sort of like saying "Can a sinner make God go out of existence?  Yet you have caused God to stop existing."  Interesting how the little "yet" word can successfully shield an argument from deserved criticism.

It is, however, possible, to wrong someone without harming them. A thankless, malicious son can dishonor his father's memory. Suppose his dad was a conscientious father, but the son spreads scurrilous rumors about his late father that destroy his father's reputation. In one sense it's too late to harm is father. But there's still something terribly wrong about the action.

But according to Steve Hays, we only sin because God has infallibly predestined us to, and has secretly willed that we disobey his revealed will.  One can only wonder whether our "wronging" god even makes sense under such a fatalistic system as Calvinism.  Is it "wrong" to conform to God's secret will, yes or no?  If yes, then God is a stupid sadist for blaming us for such wrong since he rigged the game to make sure we couldn't possibly deviate from "wronging" him.  If "no", then god deprives himself of any basis to bitch, lest you serve a god who condemns people for OBEYING him?  But because Steve is brainwashed, he will just blindly assume that the idiot who wrote Romans 9:20 rendered all objections frivolous.

2. Eternal existence
i) A basic reason hell is forever is because human beings are forever. If human beings have an immortal soul (not to mention the resurrection of the body), then whatever happens to human beings will last forever.

Except that there are plenty of Christians and Christian scholars who teach annihilationism.  Probably because the "wrongness" of these doctrines are somewhat less obvious than the wrongness of 2+2=5... so that you can hardly blame them for adopting such doctrine.

They have an unending destiny because they have an unending existence. So whatever happens to them will go on forever. It continues because they continue. Annihilationists duck that by denying that human beings are naturally immortal.

ii) Now this is more of a necessary rather than sufficient condition for eternal punishment. In principle, it could be a argued that while whatever happens to them is never-ending, it needn't be the same thing forever. It can change. That's the contention of the universalist, as well as exponents of postmortem salvation. That requires a separate response.

It is, however, important to make the initial point that one reason damnation is inescapable is because existence is inescapable. Damnation never ceases because the damned never cease to exist.

Except that this is a philosophical objection, whereas Steve Hays' first commitment must be to the bible, whose OT clearly indicates god's justice against sin can be, and often is, fully satisfied by less than infinite means, such as animal sacrifice.  See above.  The reasonableness of that view is not going to be diminished merely because god's jailhouse lawyer can simply tack "in what sense?" onto everything they ever think of.  Steve Hays doesn't get to dictate how much stupid pretentijous trifling the unbeliever must put up with in his apologetics before they become reasonable to just flip him the middle finger and walk away. 

3. Apropos (2), a supporting argument is that damnation is forever because the damned continue to sin. An objection to this argument is that people have a capacity for change.

That can be true, but what causes them to change? In Christian theology, God's grace is transformative. If, however, God withholds his grace from the damned, then they don't get better. If anything, they get worse. More hardened.

Which denies the view of freewill held by most Christians, to the effect that we are just as capable of accepting Jesus solely by our freewill as we are capable of making a peanut butter sandwich by our own freewill.  Attributing only the good in your life to "god's grace" and the sin only to "self" is just stupid inconsistency, which renders void the many biblical passages on god "rewarding" those who do good.  If it wasn't us doing the good, then giving us a prize at the end anyway cannot rightfully be called "reward".  If the good doesn't come from us, but only from God, then only God can logically be "rewarded" if at all.

4. Apropos (3), why doesn't God enable the damned to change? Why doesn't God grant them the ability to repent?

This goes to another principle in Christian theology: in terms of eschatological judgment, some sinners get what they deserve while others get better than they deserve (no one gets worse than they deserve).

Sort of like when both of your kids disobey you and each eat one cookie before dinner, you beat one of them with a rod (Proverbs 22:15) and ground them for a month, while you give the other one $50 to go blow at the mall however she wishes, with your blessings.  Are you a fuckhead parent, yes or no?  Or did you suddenly discover how wonderful god was for enabling his jailhouse lawyers to invent "ad hoc" excuses whenever expediency dictates?

The reason the damned never leave hell is because they don't deserve to leave hell.

That's right.  If the 12 year old non-Christian girl who has done many good works of charity and gets good grades in school, should happen to reject the gospel invitation, then die in a state of unbelief in a car crash on the way home from church, God's righteousness permits no other fate for her except conscious eternal torment in "hell".

They don't deserve a better life.

You'd have been a bit more honest with your own doctrine had you specified that newborn babies do not deserve to be protected from death by rape.  God was never 'required' to give them anything better, so when he leaves them to suffer, this is nothing short of god's righteousness in action, amen?

Of course this violates common sense, since if everything is covered by the sovereignty of god, then the fact that most babies are not raped to death makes it reasonable for any Christian to suppose that God feels a moral obligation to give such protection.

That's their just desert, and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, there's something right with God.

Sort of like if you came home to find your mom being raped by a whole gang, the fact that she is a sinner and the fact that God himself obviously wasn't doing anything to protect her, makes it at best ambiguous whether or not you "should" do anything to prevent this crime.  But I'm sure that if you found out this happened to some mother down the street, and her son just stood around solely by choice and not fear while his mother was raped. you'd feel better knowing that God secretly wanted the rape and this neglect to happen exactly the way it did. 

Revealed will of God = "thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not murder", etc.
Secret will of God = "you shall kill that child, you shall obey that traffic signal", etc.

Is it morally good to act in conformity to the revealed will of God, yes or no?

Is it morally good to act in conformity to the secret will of God, yes or no?

Steve's Calvinism forces him to admit that Hitler's massacer of the Jews in WW2 was in perfect conformity to the "secret" will of God.  So...was it morally good for Hitler to act in conformity to God's secret will, yes or no?

Or did Steve suddenly discover there's room in Calvinism for moral relativity?

Hopefully you have a better understanding of why biblical theology causes me, an atheist, to stay awake at night, all worried "what if I'm wrong and the creator really is a sadistic lunatic?"

In Christian theology, God doesn't treat all equally-undeserving sinners alike.

Which is precisely why it is reasonable to call him a sadistic lunatic.  Just like if you didn't treat to the same discipline all of your kids who disobeyed you in the same exact way.  When the punished ones cry out "why didn't you punish her too?", you'd be 'godly' to reply "my ways are mysterious, I don't have to explain myself to you, and since you are getting what you deserve, you have no right to complain if I let other persons, equally deserving of this punishment, off the hook."  I'm sorry, but Steve is a fool to derive theology from Matthew 20:11-15...and so was Jesus for teaching such obviously unfair stupidity.  How would the world be if all employers were that arbitrary?

He draws a distinction. You shouldn't expect to get better than you deserve.

So because none of us "deserve" to have food, clothing and shelter, it can only be sinful and thus unreasonable motive why we seek these things.  Steve, why do you seek for that which you don't deserve?  isn't that sort of like the new inexperienced crew member at McDonald's wanting his starting wage to equal that of the crew members who have been there for 3 years?

Steve is also wrong biblially to condemn our wanting more than we deserve.  If God sends his rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), then our aquiring things we don't deserve is a routine that God is responsible for, and therefore god is responsible for this routine creating a habit and expectation in our mind that we should have some things we don't deserve.

Throwing dice to decide god's will is biblical (Acts 1:26), so you should expect to get more than you deserve through the inevitability of chance + time.  Throw the dice often enough and they are bound to roll winner, and when they do, Calvinists will insist god wanted it that way.

In fact, Calvinists would say God is ultimately responsible for whatever defects in biblical and logical reasoning that you might engage in.  Could anything have more powerful justification than "god wanted it that way"?  No.  If the most reasonable thing possible is conformity to god's will, then under Calvinism, beating children to death is equally as reasonable as saving a little girl from drowning.  BOTH acts are exactly what God wanted, and by definition, God's will cannot possibly ever be "unreasonable".

To get just what you deserve is the essence of justice.

And for a justice system to decide for itself which among the two equally guilty criminals to let off the hook, and which to prosecute, is the antithesis of justice, lest you stupidly insist that the justice meted out in American Courts every day for the last 200 years is a bad idea? (Conforming to God's secret will, as America's history absolutely must, is a bad idea?).  Only in Calvinism could you get in trouble with God for doing exactly what he wanted when, where and how he wanted.  Everybody else would call this sadistic lunacy, and Calvinists reply with "that's just human logic!"

Let's just say God infallibly predestined me to avoid joining the Calvinist cause, ok?

They don't get out of hell because they deserve nothing better. They are in their natural element.

If we deserve nothing better than hell, why did God allow us to exist for the present on this better-than-hell earth?  Does God sometimes give people what they don't deserve?  If so, then why couldn't there be a strictly philosophical argument that this way of God remains true in the afterworld (i.e., sinners deserve to be in hell longer, but God limits the amount of time they spend there anyway, for the same reason he often makes life easier for undeserving criminals)?  Something is greatly amiss in your trifling attempt to make your sadistic god's ways sound plausible to modern western ears.  But since you view yourself as a puppet on a string, I'm sure you couldn't care less whether your reasoning does or doesn't square up with common sense.  Cultists are experts are justifying their departure from common sense and convincing themselves God wanted them to act contrary to "worldly wisdom".  The brainwashing is the same whether you push Christianity or ISIS.

There's something nihilistic, something morally subversive–even diabolical–about the idea that no matter what anyone ever does, it makes no ultimate different to what happens to them. To treat good and evil alike.

Then blame your god, who often treats criminals and law-abiding people alike.  And blame yourself for promoting Calvinism, a doctrine that says our sense of making a genuine difference is completely illusory and false, we can do nothing whatever except react to an infallibly predetermined plan.  And your god often treats evil and good alike.

5. Suppose (ex hypothesi) that human agents start out as a clean slate. By that I mean, suppose that initially they have no rap sheep. Their moral record is spotless.

There's no ex hypothesi about it, the bible forthrightly calls little kids "innocent", see Psalm 106:37-38, Matthew 18:3, 2nd Kings 22:16, 24:4, and under James 4:17,  which predicates sinfulness upon knowledge, for which babies, then who know nothing (i.e., they don't know the difference between good and evil, Isaiah 7:15) are correctly deemed "innocent".  If that contradicts Paul's doctrine of original sin in Romans 5, lets get excited about preaching the good news to those lost inerrantists.

I'm not an inerrantist, and for academically rigorous reasons, therefore, I really don't care if another part of the bible tells Steve that babies are infected with original sin, this doesn't impose the slightest intellectual obligation upon me to give up my reliance on grammar, context and genre, and add "reconcile this with what the bible says elsewhere" to the list of hermeneutical principles that scholars agree apply here.  Most Christian scholars are not inerrantists, those who are inerrantist cannot even agree amongst themselves about its scope, Steve Hays himself allegedly thinks the Chicago Statement on Bible Inerrancy was less than perfect, etc, etc.  So bible inerrancy is not sufficiently settled as to deserve being exalted in my mind to the status of governing hermeneutic.  I will NOT give up an otherwise contextually and grammatically justified interpretation of a bible verse merely because the interpretation contradicts my interpretation or somebody else's interpretation of some other bible verse.

Hays will trifle that biblical passages calling people "innocent" are only meant with reference to the human standard, but alas, it is "god" who is doing the talking in all the above-cited passages (at least as far as Steve is concerned) so it is Steve's burden to show that the "human standards only" interpretation arises from the grammar, context or genre of such passages.

Steve continues:

The first time I do something evil, that puts me behind.

Except that in Steve's world, whether raping children is "evil" depends on your frame of reference, and is therefore only a moral relativity.  Even if we granted that baby-rape violates God "revealed" will, Steve has already argue that any and all acts of man, including sin, necessarily conform to God's "secret" will, so that a completed act of baby-rape is biblically in harmony with God's secret will.

In other words, Steve wants us to believe that you can be "evil" because you conformed to the will of God.  Sort of like the parent who punishes their child for doing an act exactly when, where, and how the parent intended the act to be done (!?).  There's an excellent reason why Paul's smoke and mirrors evaporates at Romans 9:20.  There is no moral method anywhere near any accepted convention of reason or common sense, that will justify punishing a person for perfect obedience.  Except of course in the bible, where the stupider the act, the more "spiritual" it is (where you defeat death by getting yourself killed, and where strength is made perfect by lack of strength).  I call victory when Christians feel forced to decry the superiority of 'human reason'.  That's what one should expect from stupid cultists whose doctrines completely defy anything remotely approaching sensibility.  Whether it's about Jesus or Vishnu hardly matters.

Because I can't change my past, if I do something evil, I can't get back to where I was before I did evil.

Which would justify a lifetime of depression after you jaywalk.  Isn't it obvious how evil sin really is?

I can't get out from under that. If I did something evil, then it will always be the case that I did something evil. That's indelible. It doesn't fade with the passage of time. I don't become less guilty. Once I do something evil, there's no way to put that behind me. It's permanent. Evil has a timeless moral quality. There's no decay rate. The past is irrevocable.

Then the same must be true about your good deeds.  They too are permanent, right?

And the more evil things I do, the further behind I fall. A lifetime of cumulative wrongdoing.

Now you are just preaching the choir.

This is why vicarious atonement and penal substitution are fixtures of Christian redemption.

Maybe that's also why god offers to "forget your sins", because they are permanent? (Isa. 43:25-26).  No, Mr. God's Jailhouse lawyer, that doesn't mean he is only claiming to exempt people from the penalty for sin.  Read both verses, the human sense of literal memory failure is meant, even if the consequence is that this god would have to be insane.  The dumber it makes god look, the more likely the interpretation is correct, amen?

Without a Redeemer who atones for your sin, on your behalf and in your stead, your culpability because increasingly hopeless.

No, all we need is charcoal briquettes, a pair of tongs, and obviously non-existent creatures who seem to think heaven has air:

 1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple.
 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
 3 And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory."
 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
 5 Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven." (Isa. 6:1-7 NAU)

(and Steve says "mere anthropomorphism! the get-out-of-jail-free card that is by definition necessarily always a correct interpretation with no obligation to actually justify it from the grammar or context or genre.)

Actually, we can be exempted from the penalties of even the most egregious sins (i.e, adultery and murder) by nothing more than god waiving his magic wand:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 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. 12:11-13 NAU)

Feel free to dig your own theological grave by pretending the subsequent divinely caused death of David's baby was the "atonement".  You can't cover it with Yom Kippur, that didn't cover intentional sins.  Now what?  Maybe David committed adultery without intention?

Steve continues:

6. Counterfactual guilt
Another factor I've discussed, although it has yet to catch on, is that it's very nearsighted to limit culpability to the sins of a lifetime.

That's right.  If your teenage son jaywalks, you should save up to finance the desecration of his grave marker after he dies.  Culpability doesn't cease with physical death.  Only in stupid fanatical religion.

The sins we commit are related to our circumstances. Change the circumstances and we'd commit a different set of sins.

or not sinned at all, such as changing "we went to the titty-bar" to "we went to church".

It's not so much about committing a particular sin, but the character of the sinner. Put him in a different situation and he will commit different sins.

Put sinners in different situations and they might not sin.  Hence, the reason Christian parents counsel their kids against running around with the wrong crowd.

It's arbitrary to exclude from consideration all the wrongdoing he'd commit if the opportunity presented itself, and he could get away with it, as if guilt and innocence in God's eyes is a matter of lucking or unlucky timing or setting. Wrong place. Wrong time. Just missed it. Had you been there an hour sooner or later.

In other words, sin is inevitable...and yet God still bitches at humans over that which they are incapable of avoiding, sort of like bitching about the fact that humans need water.

But more directly to the point:  there are gullible or 'weaker' Christian brothers that will sin simply because of the peer pressure from other Christians, whereas had those Christians not come to visit, the weaker brother would probably not have sinned as he did.  So you are wrong, Steve:  how you act really IS dependent on the timing of your arrival to any situation and other circumstances.   The Christian man who has an anger problem shows up at his ex-wife's house and she's the only person there, and he does not sin.  But if he had showed up 5 minutes earlier when her boyfriend was there, he probably would have started a fight.  Steve, you are stupid if you think circumstance doesn't contribute to what motivates a person to sin or refrain from sin.

You also pretend that any act we might engage in would be sinful, when in fact chance and circumstance do not merely dictate what evil we'll do, but what ACT we will engage in.  Tarnishing the future possibility as an inevitable "sin" doesn't make sense, otherwise, why bother trying to stay away from Christians who live in sin?  If you are running around drinking on Saturday night, or staying at home reading your bible, you are still bound to sin, regardless, so how the fuck could it "matter" which way to spend that evening? 

What are you gonna say next?  Maybe that reading the bible is sinful for a Christian because their sin nature requires that their motive in doing so was to become puffed up with knowledge?

Yes, there are fuckhead Christians who demand that Christians repent of their repentance.  Read Valley of Vision by the Puritans, which is apparently approved of D.A. Carson and other prominent conservative Protestants.  I've heard the same in plenty of Protestant and Calvinist churches years ago.  I call them fuckheads because if you are too sinful to properly repent in the first place, then you are just sinning every subsequent time you repent of your prior repentance...in which case this Puritan soliloquy is little more than a dirge about the inevitability of sin.  Gee, maybe it was sinful also for any Puritan to compose or read Valley of Vision?

Steve continues:

7. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, critics of hell approach this issue from the wrong end.

So since many critics of hell are Christians, skeptics observe that even spiritually alive people have no guarantees of noticing important theological truth, making it even more reasonable for the spiritually dead person to stay completely away, if they so choose, from biblical "theology".   So for many non-Christians, it's much safer and more reasonable to just laugh off Christianity.

In Christian theology, the default assumption is that sinners are already lost.

I much prefer what Jesus said, and have fun getting original sin out of anything he said.  It would be like squeezing blood from a turnip.  See here and here.  Plenty of churches today are Pelagian, but its hard to remember that because the Protestants and Catholics usually squeal the loudest through the media.

They didn't start out in the right direction, then take a wrong turn. Rather, sinners are in a lost condition from the outset. They don't have to do anything extra to go to hell.

If you believe infection with original sin makes one worthy of hell, then you have no basis for making aborted babies any exception, as they too are worthy of hell, and apparently only an emotional worldly mammalian dislike of infant torture is the basis for any exception.  And Steve will triumphantly proclaim that if you don't like the idea of god subjecting babies to eternal conscious torment in hell forever, it's only because you aren't sufficiently "spiritual", the excuse cult leaders use to desensitize their followers to the obvious violations of common sense the cult requires them to engage in.  Yet Steve wants non-Calvinist Christians to view him as something other than brainwashed.

They didn't lose their way at some point along the journey. There was no fork in the road where they made a fatal moral choice. To be saved requires divine intervention.

But since the divine doesn't exist, we need not worry.  I only refute idiots on the internet for the benefit of the innocently ignorant people that might otherwise get sucked into all this stupid crap because of their lack of critical thinking skills.  Struggling to pay the rent and raise kids doesn't leave much opportunity to figure out why scholars disagree with each other about hermeneutics and historiography.

It's like a movie villain. He's already a villain when the movie begins.

So babies are already deserving of hell upon conception.  Another reason most spiritually alive Christians find Calvinism about as persuasive as atheism.

There's no backstory about how or when he became a villain. Does it have something to do with his childhood? Did he gradually turn to evil? Was there a crossroads where he made a decisive choice for evil?

Once again, Jesus did not teach the doctrine of original sin, and you are a hypocrite anyway for thinking the word of any follower of Christ could possibly have the same significance as his own words, as there is allegedly an infinite difference between advice from God himself, and advice from people claiming to represent him.  You are more safe depending on God's word, but you open the floodgates of ceaseless questions and uncertainty when you start telling yourself the words of other sinners are "inspired by God too".

That's not where the story begins. As far as the plot goes, there was never a time when he wasn't on the wrong path.

I end this post where I began it:  all attempts by hellers to "reconcile" or "harmonize" the OT texts on God's justice with the NT texts teaching eternal conscious torment, are clearly little more than the word-games you'd expect from a jailhouse lawyer (my scholarly view is that 2nd Temple Judaism became more and more influenced by pagan religion, hence, "hell" in the OT become more and more defined as the centuries go by). God's alleged "need" for justice against sin is itself contradictory to at least one biblical passage.  If God can exempt people from the consequences of sin as easily as waiving his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13), you'll find only deaf ears when you try to "explain" that God's holy nature "requires" that he judge sin. 

And expect theological disaster if you trifle that God's killing David's baby was an atoning sacrifice for David's sins of murder and adultery.  But without that type of atonment, you have no atonement, and hence, God can permanently exempt you from the penalty of sin without atonement and apparently nothing more than waiving his magic wand.  Or making you eat burning wood (Isaiah 6:6-7).

Did you notice that when Triablogue comes to town, atheists just scream in terror, run the other way plugging their ears and saying "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne"?

Neither did I.

Cold Case Christianity: Can Science Explain Everything? (Video)

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Can Science Explain Everything? (Video) 

Posted: 16 Jan 2020 06:30 AM PST

J. Warner Wallace is interviewed by Impact 360 and describes the limits of science in explaining the universe in which we live. Can physics and chemistry explain everything we see in the universe? If it can’t, are we reasonable in looking to God as an explanation? 

In 800 a.d, the following dialogue took place, somewhere near Sweden:

-----Viking theist:  Can physics and chemistry explain thunder? 

Viking atheist:  No. A purely naturalistic explanation for thunder has not been found yet.

-----Viking theist:  If it can’t, are we reasonable in looking to Thor as an explanation? 

Viking atheist:  Yes.  As soon as you mention something science hasn't yet found a purely naturalistic explanation for, you should automatically conclude that no purely naturalistic explanation is even possible.  I'm now a disciple of Thor.  Thor's ways sure are mysterious!

My reply to Hippolytus falsely ascribed as Josephus

In earlier versions of Josephus in English, a treatise "On Hades" is credited to Josephus (non-Christian Jew, onest century).

But scholars have recognized for the last few decades that this treatise is more likely from Hippolytus (Church Father, tuned century).

As a skeptic, I used this proof of false ascription to justify a skeptical view toward the authorship of other ancient workds, such as the gospels, in a comment posted to Doxological Life forum, see here.  The comment is awaiting moderation, so because it might be deleted, it is preserved here:

Cold Case Christianity: Why is formal bible study so depressing?

This is my reply to a video from J. Warner Wallace entitled

A Common Seminary Complaint: 

How Academic Research Can Sometimes Steal Your Joy 

(Video)Posted: 14 Jan 2020 06:15 AM PST

Haden Clark from Help Me Believe interviews J. Warner Wallace for the Help Me Believe YouTube Channel. Haden comments that one common observation of seminary students is that rigorous theological study, especially when it aims at the creation of term papers and studies, can sometime make bible study feel like labor. How can we address this reality? 

Easy:  God doesn't honor his word, that's why for many Christians formal study of the bible is about as scintillating as a calculus mid-term.  

My Canaanite child sacrifice challenge to Ryan Leasure, of "jesusisnontfakenews.com"

Ryan Leasure is pastor at Grace Bible Church and writes apologetics articles online.

I'm suspicious that, in his effort to make the divinely ordered genocide of the Canaanites appear more morally good in the eyes of today's Christians, he has repeated Frank Turek's error of falsely accusing the Canaanites of using fire to kill their children.

This is the challenge I sent to his "contact" page:

Hello,
In your article on Molech, at https://jesusisnotfakenews.com/tag/child-sacrifice/
you say

"During the sacrificial process, the Canaanites would light a fire inside or around the statue to heat up the statue as hot as they could. Then they would place their newborns into the red-hot arms of Molech and watch the children sizzle to death."

I would like to know what ancient historical evidence or testimony you think justifies your claim that these children were "sizzling to death" during such sacrificial rites.  Reply to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com  Thank you, Barry

I've already written a piece showing that Frank Turk made the exact same claim, and he has no historical evidence to support it.  See here.

So it seems to me, Christian "apologists" only assert something so heinous because they are responding to Christians who are bothered by the divine atrocities of the OT.  Apologists wish to make it sound as if the Canaanites "deserved" such extreme measures, that is, nothing less than full-scale genocide was required to take care of this social scourge, hence, they accuse the Canaanites of acts we today consider egregiously disgusting, such as using fire to kill children.

Getting Christians to be more confident in the goodness of God's judgments is apparently more important than basic honesty.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve is always prattling about, but never actually proving, modern day miracles

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays of Triablogue entitled

Wednesday, January 08, 2020Miraculous healing and faith-healershttps://billdembski.com/theology-and-religion/faces-of-miracles-chapter-5/#more-54769
This is useful up to a point. Mind you, his experience was limited to an 18-month period. And the sample of faith-healers was very small. Not to mention that the psychic healers are prima facie charlatans from the get-go.
He didn't debunk miraculous healing. He only debunked some faith-healers.
This raises the question of whether there are healers in the sense of gifted individuals with the supernatural ability to heal the sick on a regular basis. That doesn't mean God can't heal through individuals, but it may be on rare occasion. Peter Bide comes to mind.

I've had a challenge to all "miracle happen today" Christians for at least a year now, the main one was directed to Craig Keener (see here and here) , since Hays views Keener's "Miracles" book as a "game-changer".

Us atheists tire from the "how do you know that miracles don't happen today" and the "too many miracle claims for all them to be false" bullshit.  Produce the documentation for the one modern-day miracle you believe is the most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.   

Demolishing Triablogue: Why do people believe in hell?

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Why do people believe in hell?

Posted by steve at 8:31 PM

I'm going to comment on an article by David Bentley Hart:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/christianity-religion-hell-bible.htmlHe's an essayist and Eastern Orthodox theologian. One of those chic fashionable theologians like Miroslav Volf or Eugene Peterson with a following among those who view themselves as progressive Christian cognoscenti. This is their idea of intellectually respectable Christianity. The Protestant counterpart to Catholic Thomists.

It raises a troubling question of social psychology. It's comforting to imagine that Christians generally accept the notion of a hell of eternal misery not because they're emotionally attached to it but because they see it as a small, inevitable zone of darkness peripheral to the larger spiritual landscape that–viewed in its totality–they find ravishingly lovely. And this is true of many.

i) I don't have a precise idea regarding the scale of damnation, but I hardly think it's small.

If a smart spiritually alive Christian guy like Steve the Staunch Five Point Calvinist doesn't have any precise idea regarding the "scale", he can hardly balk at spiritually dead skeptics who laugh at the bible's apparently intentional ambiguity about the scale.

ii) And I regard eternal retributive justice as a necessary background for a moral universe. That's not peripheral.

Then you apparently don't understand your own god's sense of justice.  God commanded the death penalty for crimes considered the most heinous, such as adultery and murder, yet in 2nd Samuel 12:13, after David has committed those two sins, the prophet Nathan says God has "taken away" David's sins therefore the otherwise mandatory penalty of death will not be required.  Gee, god can just "take away" sin in such unqualified manner?  Yet if you try to save this by saying David's baby was killed by God (v. 15, 18), then we are looking at God approving of child sacrifice for sin.  If the baby wasn't killed to "atone" for David's sin, then there is nothing left in the context to provide that atonement.  If you assume Yom Kippur would fix that, you are wrong, intentional sins could not be atoned for by the yearly sacrifice, see Numbers 15:28-31.  Exactly what sense does it make to say David's sins of adultery and premeditated murder were "accidental" or "unintentional"?  None.  So there you go, nothing in the religious context or literary context indicates that David's capital offenses were "atoned" for in any way, yet God was somehow still able to wave his magic wand and get rid of those sins regardless.  

And since getting rid of those sins did not require eternal suffering, it is not true that "god requires eternal suffering" for sin.  That's just NT horseshit, or, the inevitable evolution of Judaic theology.  Hart::

      But not of all. For a good number of Christians, hell isn't just a tragic shadow cast across one of an otherwise ravishing vista's remoter corners; rather, it's one of the the landscape's most conspicuous and delectable details.

Steve: "Delectable"?  After all, the idea comes to us in such a ghastly gallery of images: late Augustinianism's unbaptized babes descending in their thrashing billions to perpetual and condign combustion; Dante's exquisitely psychotic dream of twisted, mutilated, broiling souls. St. Francis Xavier morosely informing his weeping Japanese converts that their deceased parents must suffer an eternity of agony.

All of which worries today's mature adult skeptic who knows that for centuries religious authorities have been exploiting the ignorance of the masses to scare them into conformity.

Hart's tactic is to discredit hell by amalgamating an image of hell based on disparate literary and ecclesiastical traditions. But that's an exercise in misdirection. We can strip away the traditional accretions. The core doctrine goes back to the witness of Scripture.

The God of the OT is always FULLY forgiving sin with decidedly temporal measures like animal blood (in Leviticus 19:22, the raptist is atoned for and forgiven by simply giving up one of his rams to be sacrificed, the raptist's repentance is nowhere expressed or implied).   So I'm pretty sure the eternal conscious torment taught by Jesus (Matthew 25:46) contradicts the sense of God's justice in the OT, and you can hardly blame a skeptic for using the earliest revelation as the gold standard by which to judge the later revelation.  Hart:

Surely it would be welcome news if it turned out that, on the matter of hell, something got garbled in transmission. And there really is room for doubt.

Steve:  Welcome for whom? Welcome for the wicked? No doubt it would be welcome to the wicked to elude justice in the afterlife as well as this life.

And since "afterlife" makes about as much sense as do the lyrics to "Smells like Teen Spirit"....Hart:

No truly accomplished NT scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity's opulent mythology of God's eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts.

Steve: The principle of hell isn't "torture" but retributive justice.

yeah, rolling around roasting in flames can't be torture because it can also be something else.  Like water cannot be water if it is also being used as a 'weight'.

In some cases that may involve torture. It would be poetic justice for someone who tortured (or ordered the torture of) the innocent in this life to be on the receiving end of the process. But that's not the essence of eschatological punishment.

Of course torture isn't part of the biblical portrayal of eschatological punishing.  That's why Luke 16:25 characterizes hell as "agony" and Revelation 14:11 says this agony is ongoing 24 hours per day.

Hart:  It's entirely absent from St. Paul's writings. The only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Cor 3:15). 

Steve:  How did Hart miss this passage?
4 Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. 5 All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. 6 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. 8 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might 10 on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed (2 Thes 1:5-10).

Hart missed nothing:  that's a fire that causes destruction, not endless agony to a body incapable of destruction.  Your translation isn't accurate; the Greek word underlying "destruction" is  ἐκδίκησις ekdikesis and means retribution or vindication.  But either way, since your god is allegedly omnipresent, the only logically possible way the people in hell can be shut out from the presence of the lord is for this retribution to cause them to go out of existence, otherwise known as Annihilationism.

He goes on to say:
There are a few terrible, surreal, allegorical images of judgment in the Book of Revelation, but nothing that, properly read, yields a clear doctrine of eternal torment.

So he asserts. But that brushes aside exegetical arguments to the contrary

No, it's a statement of his beliefs about those passages in Revelation.  he would only be 'brushing aside' if somebody presented exegetical arguments to the contrary and he simply turned away from them.  Hart is a real biblical scholar, so it's not likely he's unaware of how the fundies respond.  But it's not up to Steve Hays of Triablogue to decide exactly when and where some liberal scholar decides to turn his OP ED into a scholarly rebuttal.

Hart:  Even the frightening language used by Jesus in the Gospels, when read in the original Greek, fails to deliver the infernal dogmas we casually assume to be there.

He acts like he's the only person who can read the Gospels in the original Greek.

On the other hand, many NT passages seem–and not metaphorically–to promise the eventual salvation of everyone.

i) Arminians and universalists help themselves to the same prooftexts. As a Calvinist, the universalist prooftexts present no new or special challenge for me because I interpret them the same way I interpret Arminian prooftexts. 

And the Arminians/Universalists don't find the fundie prooftexts as any new or special challenge because they interpret those the same way they interpret the Calvinist prooftexts.

I don't have to make any adjustments. I already have a counter-interpretation.

Then there is no reason to characterize the Arminian or Universalist interpretation of biblical "hell" or "lake of fire" as constituting any type of "adjustment".

ii) But over above that, there's also the problem of arranging passages into a particular chronological sequence. Consider two eschatological sequences:

a) The dead pass into the intermediate state. On the day of judgment there's the general resurrection. They saints experience everlasting bliss while the wicked experience everlasting misery.

b) Some of the dead experience postmortem remedial punishment, after which they go to heaven. They pass through a purgatorial hell on the way to heaven.

Biblical eschatology as a consistent (a) sequence. But the universalist sequence is nowhere found in Scripture. Indeed, it requires splicing and rearranging the standard sequence.

Not a problem for atheists like me who stand solid on the obvious fact that the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment diametrically contradicts god's sense of justice in the OT.  See above.

Hart:  Still, none of that accounts for the deep emotional need many modern Christians seem to have for an eternal hell. And I don't mean those who ruefully accept the idea out of religious allegiance, or whose sense of justice demands that Hitler and Pol Pot get their proper comeuppance, or who think they need the prospect of hell to keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Those aren't the ones who scream and foam in rage at the thought that hell might be only a stage along the way to a final universal reconciliation.

Steve: 
i) Being the demagogue that he is, Hart has engineered a rhetorical dilemma. He imputes an untoward motive to many Christians who uphold hell. In one sense it's hard to defend yourself against the charge. If you really do harbor untoward motives, you'd deny it. So it's a maliciously circular allegation.

None of which affects the atheist argument against biblical "hell".

ii) Then there's the false dichotomy of insinuating that if you believe something because you're supposed to believe it, you can only do so ruefully or grudgingly. If, however, something is true, it may also be morally, emotionally, and/or intellectually satisfying. We can believe something out of duty but also believe it to be good or admirable. In that event we don't even have to reach for duty.

Same for atheists.

iii) I suspect that like many Christians, I have mixed feelings about hell. On the one hand I hope all my loved ones are saved. And natural human compassion extends that impulse to many (but not all) strangers.

But if God has predestined one of your loved ones as "reprobate", then your desire that they be saved constitutes sin on your part, because you desire something that God forbids.  But again, your mixed feelings about hell just make atheists more reasonable to say that biblical "hell" is little more than an ancient convoluted scare-tactic, and accordingly dismissed with prejudice.

On the other hand, injustice is galling. A world without ultimate justice mocks the good.

That doesn't mean the world's morality arises from transcendent causes.  Mockery exists.

Erases the difference between virtue and vice, good and evil.

The basis for such differences is entirely subjective.  The "wrongness" of torturing babies to death solely for the sake of entertainment disappears as soon as the people who give a shit about that crime stop thinking about it.

Ironically, universalism is casting the same shadow as atheism in that regard. Nothing you do ultimately makes any difference.

Which only bothers immature people who never really recognized how temporal their own significance was.

Universalism has a nihilistic underbelly in that respect. Like Hinduism and Buddhism, where enlightened reality is beyond good and evil. Nihilism and fatalism go together.

iv) While universalism has an undoubted element of appeal, there's a coercive quality to the universalist bargain. The offer is that God will save your murdered daughter for a price: only if God also saves the man who murdered her. Save both or damn both. Sophie's Choice transposed to the key of universalism.

Which is about as complex as "you can't have bad without good".

v) Compassion is the ability to care about the plight of those whose misfortunate you haven't personally experienced.

Then we cannot properly calculate whether you are compassionate about all those children who have suffereed horribly in human history, since you apparently are capable of mopping up the floods from your tears sufficiently to turn on your computer and post defenses of Calvinism.

Despite that, you imaginatively project yourself into their situation. What if that was me? Paradoxically, while it may be wrong to harbor vengeful feelings toward your personal enemies, if you have any, it can be commendable to wish the worst for someone else's enemies. That's a disinterested kind of vengeance. A longing that justice be done on behalf of others.

Now you are contradicting Proverbs and other passages which forbid one to desire harm to come to one's enemies:

 17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
 18 Or the LORD will see it and be displeased, And turn His anger away from him. (Prov. 24:17-18 NAU)

Oba 1:12 "Do not gloat over your brother's day, The day of his misfortune. And do not rejoice over the sons of Judah In the day of their destruction; Yes, do not boast In the day of their distress.
Job 31:29 "Have I rejoiced at the extinction of my enemy, Or exulted when evil befell him?

Hart:  Theological history can boast few ideas more chilling than the claim (of, among others, Thomas Aquinas) that the beatitude of the saved in heaven will be increased by their direct vision of the torments of the damned.

Steve:  That's another trope that opponents of hell constantly trot out. Again, it's just an ecclesiastical tradition.

So is the apostolic authorship of the gospels.

But as long as he brings it up: while it would be wrong for the saints to derive glee from watching the damned suffer forever, there's nothing intrinsically wrong–indeed, there's something intrinsically right–about victims seeing assailants punished.

But what else could be going on in the victim's mind when watching the assailant get punished, except rejoicing that the assailing is now suffering?   Merely characterizing this as "joy that justice was done" is nothing but a politically correct label to whitewash the absolute reality of the victim's natural desire for vengeance.  Nothing is more ignorant and uninformed than the Christian victim who insists on forgiving their attacker.  Jesus was a pussy, you need to grow the fuck up.

That's not the same thing as hell mounted with cameras so that saints can voyeuristically tune into the miseries of the damned. But when victims see their assailants punished, that's a way to put the ordeal behind them and move on to better things.

Because their sense of vengeance is fulfilled, contrary to the above-cited bible verses.

Hart:  But as awful as that sounds, it may be more honest in its sheer cold impersonality than is the secret pleasure that many of us, at one time or another, hope to derive not from seeing but from being seen by those we leave behind.

Steve: Well that depends. Suppose a Muslim woman converts to Christianity. As punishment she is gang-raped and beheaded. On the day of judgment, is there something wrong with her waving goodbye to her assailants?

If she isn't pouring out her heart and desiring their salvation, then yes, Romans 10:1.

They watch her turn around and enter the everlasting light of paradise while they are left behind. It sinks in that they were blindly following a false prophet.

Something God could have given them an infallible foretaste of with a vision sprinkled liberally with his magic Ezra 1:1 fairy dust.  Then they surely would have recognized the error of their way no less clearly than Christians do the day they "get saved".

They never once paused to ask whether there was any decent evidence for Muhammad's prophet pretensions?

God could have put such questions into their heart, had he gave a fuck about them, Revelation 17:17

They used Islam as a pretext for sadism.  They were the winners in this life but the losers in the next life. Their victim was the loser in this life but the winner in the next life.

Only because your god infallibly predestined them to be that sadistic.  So it's still God's fault, not theirs, lest you stupidly argue that there can be a way in which a puppet can become culpable?

Hart:  How can we be winners, after all, if there are no losers? Where's the joy in getting into the gated community and the private academy if it turns out the gates are merely decorative and the academic has an inexhaustible scholarship program for the underprivileged? What success can there be that isn't validated by another's failure? What heaven can there be for us without an eternity in which to relish the impotent envy of those outside its walls. 

Steve:  i) To begin with, the Bible does have a doctrine regarding the reversal of fortunes.

The hope of the hopeless.

ii) That said, Hart's imputed motive is twisted. Christian missionaries are like escapees who got out of the war zone but keep going back to rescue others. They don't say, "I made it! To hell with the rest of you!" No, having found the way out, they go back into the hellhole to lead as many of the lost as they can into the light.

Which is stupid for them if they are Calvinists, since by becoming Calvinist, they can then become as relaxed as Steve Hays is about evangelism, so that if they decide to use grace as a license to sin or engage in neglect, well, God must have predestined such apathy on their part too.  There is no greater possible justification for any action, than that God has infallibly predestined it and the human agent never had any genuine possibility of deviating from it.  Now what?  Does your god get angry with people for doing exactly what he wanted them to do in the precise way he wanted them to do it? 

Sort of the like the fuckhead father who punishes his son for doing his chores exactly the way dad wanted?  Oh, I forgot, "god's ways are mysterious", and excuse Steve doesn't find very convicning when Christians use to to help justify Arminian soteriology.

iii) Speaking for myself, when I look forward to the afterlife, it has nothing to do with keeping a tally of the losers. It has nothing to do with thinking about the damned at all.

Then read your bible, desiring for God to kick ass on the unbelievers is precisely what the disembodied souls in heaven do:

 9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:9-10 NAU)

RIP Neil Peart

Heard on the radio this morning about the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart.  Since nobody can imagine a Rush concert with another drummer, I'm thinking this is the end of Rush as a band.  See here for more.

Very sad, as I was a drummer back in the 80's and wore out my "Exit Stage Left" tape for 4 years every day after school, trying to be a Peart-clone.  Peart had a full life and made a positive impact on others, and an existentialist farewell is exactly what he would have wanted.  "we're only immortal, for a limited time".