No biblical justification to think God lives "outside" of time

I posted this to another forum I participate in:

I don't understand why Christians put so much effort into distinguishing the eternity of heaven from the earth-based sense of temporal progression, as if there were the slightest biblically justified reason to distinguish the two as qualitatively different.

Each and every biblical description of heaven presents events taking place there as if they are just as bound to temporal chronological progression as earth-bound events are.  Servants present themselves to kings on earth, and the sons of God presented themselves before God (Job 1).

Soldiers stand before their king awaiting orders on earth, and god's demons stand before his throne awaiting orders to go make people tell lies.  1st Kings 22:19 ff

The modern Christian belief that heaven is another dimension, is not biblical.  Nothing in the bible remotely expresses or implies that heaven is some other dimension.  Flying in heaven requires wings, which indicates heaven has air (Isaiah 6:1-7).  Such a reference also logically implies gravity in heaven (i.e., the angel would fall down if he tried to fly without wings).

There's fire in heaven (Isaiah 6:6) so the second law of thermodynamics operates there too.  What was on fire was a "coal", which indicates there are sources of fuel in heaven, such as wood.  The reality of the fire logically necessitates that oxygen is in heaven too. 

That beings in heaven are limited to time-bound temporal progression is clear from the departed souls under God's altar, who complain that God is taking too long to mete out his vengeance. Revelation 6:10.

Then there's that verse that absolutel shows heaven to be bound to time, that verse that proves there's no women in heaven.  Rev. 8:1.

Christians are not saving face or winning the debate by conjuring up clever theories to reconcile biblical statements with modern physics.  The priority is not "how can we reconcile this biblical statement with obvious reality?"

The priority is "how did this biblical author intend the reader to understand this phrase?" 

A major rule of hermeneutics is to ask how the originally intended addressees would have understood the passage in question.

Christians have no hope of pretending that such pre-scientific people would have been suspicious that the above-cited passages were mere "accommodations" to the limited mental capacities of sinful man...or that heaven was a different "dimension".  It is perfectly reasonable to take such passages literally, and the only possible motive a Christian could have to insist they are mere cases of phenomenological language is a desire to promote biblical inerrancy, regardless of intellectual cost.

What Christians will never do, in ten lifetimes, is demonstrate that the above-cited skeptical interpretations of such bible verses is "unreasonable".  But if we can be reasonable to interpret those passages literally, the inerrantist is deprived of the intellectual right to insist we give him a hearing.

Perhaps the cherry on top is the Ascension of Jesus in Acts 1.  Skeptics say Jesus did this because he knew heaven was physically "up there".

Inerrantists will say "no, he knew heaven was just a different dimension not attainable by moving in any spatial direction, but he was merely accommodating himself to the false cosmological viewpoint held by his 1st century apostles".

Have fun demonstrating THAT using normative principles of hermeneutics, such as grammar, immediate context, and genre.

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Wallace on miracles

This is my reply to questions asked by J. Warner Wallace.

Are There Any Good Reasons to Believe in Miracles? (Video)

Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:15 AM PDT

Why are we so resistant to the notion of miracles?

First, given you are talking to Christians, it's funny you should ask that.   Are many Christians infected with the disease of miracle-skepticism?  Or is miracle-skepticism more aligned with reality and common sense than you are willing to admit?

Second, it doesn't matter if God exists and performed miracles through Jesus.   Deuteronomy 13 justifies a skeptic's suspicion toward Jesus even if the skeptic feels comfortable admitting Jesus rose from the dead:

 1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deut. 13:1-3 NAU)

What problem does Deuteronomy 13 create for Christians?  Easy:  God's approval of Jesus cannot be automatically deduced from the mere fact that Jesus performed genuinely supernatural miracles, he could still possibly be a false prophet whom God has empowered in order to "test" Israel.

I don't see how the Christian could convincingly solve that problem, as the question is "How can we know which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are approved of by God, and which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are merely false prophets God is using to test us?"

The natural answer of somebody like Wallace would be "if the wonder-worker teaches in harmony with the bible, then he is approved by God."

But in practical life, "teaching in harmony with the bible" is really "teaching in harmony with my interpretation of the bible" (don't pretend the subjectivity is non-problematic, google "New perspective on Paul" and discover how easily the Protestants can be misled for hundreds of years.  Google Arminianism and Calvinism.  Consider Norman Geisler's criticism of other inerantist evangelical Christian scholars in "Vital Issues in the Inerrancy Debate".  Christians who say the bible's teachings are "clear" are high on crack).

So, naturally, apologists like Wallace would blindly assume that if the wonder-worker taught the Trinity, salvation by grace alone, Jesus' full deity and humanity, Wallace would assume such wonder-worker was approved by God.

But that makes things impossibly complex for the skeptic.  Wallace is not god.  His belief that the bible teaches the Trinity is not infallible, but subject to revision.  Norman Geisler left the inerrantist Evangelical Theological Society for their progressively growing more and more liberal.  Wallace cannot seriously say any of the doctrines he currently views as biblical, he will continue viewing as biblical in the future.  The point is that there is no serious hope if "theology" is the only way we can tell whether a worker of genuine miracles is approved of by God, or merely a false prophet god is using to "test" us.

What presuppositions keep us from inferring the miraculous?

The same presuppositions that keep J. Warner Wallace skeptical of somebody's story that god causes their goldfish to speak audibly and teach them theology whenever nobody else is around.  We already know that fish don't talk, and we already know that god will never cause a fish to talk. Agreed, my fellow David Hume disciple?

If not, then perhaps you'd like to go on record as the most gullible idiot in creation, and insist that you wouldn't make any positive or negative judgments about talking-fish miracle claims until you could examine the evidence?  

What presuppositions keep us from inferring the miraculous?

The uniformity of nature is not merely what skeptics use to justify miracle-skepticism, its also what lay behind any and ALL skepticism toward ANY claim.  The only way you could justify suspicion toward anybody's testimony is if you thought some of their testimony ran contrary to the uniformity of nature that YOU personally experience.  If you leave little Johnny at home alone and tell him not to eat the cookies, then you come home and find several cookies missing, what is the reason you suspect Johnny's profession of ignorance is a lie?  Easy:  in your uniform experience, the child's disobedience is far more likely than some other theory, like fairies, gremlins or burgers with unexpectedly excellent timing.

Suppose Johnny has cookie crumbs all around his mouth.  Why do you interpret that evidence to mean that Johnny's claim of ignorance is false?  Because in your uniform experience, crumbs are more likely to get on our mouth due to our conscious choice to eat something, not because the God empowered the devil to manufacture fraudulent crumbs to make us suffer unjustly and thus build up our faith.  The trifle that crumbs can possibly get on your mouth by means other than your conscious choice to eat, does precisely nothing to make you back off and take more time to investigate Johnny's excuse.  The crumbs around his mouth are only capable of one reasonable interpretation despite the possibility that the devil made him do it.

If there is a possibility that god views the Catholic church as theologically correct, there is a possibility that God is angry with those who reject the Catholic church, so, shouldn't non-Catholic Christians prioritize investigation of Catholic miracles, the way the skeptic's possible punishment from God should motivate them to prioritize investigation of Jesus' resurrection?  Yet no doubt Wallace and most other Protestants became comfortable to confidently conclude the Catholic church was heretical, and in most cases before they even knew that "apology" meant "defense".  Yet these lovers of limited research will hypocritically condemn skeptics who similarly draw negative conclusions about Jesus after conducting similarly limited investigation.

If you are satisfied based on your own limited investigation that Catholicism is false form of Christianity, then you cannot fault skeptics who similarly do a limited investigation into apostle Paul's religion, and conclude it is a false form of Christianity.  If you don't have to bat out of the ballpark every last trifle a Catholic theologian could conjure up, neither do skeptics have to bat out of the ballpark every last trifle a Christian apologist could conjure up. I've been investigating Jesus' resurrection for 35 years.  How long have you been investigating Catholicism?  I've learned enough to smash any Christian apologist in any debate right now.  How well do you think you'd do, Wallace, if forced to debate a Roman Catholic apologist right now?

What “miraculous” aspects of the universe are commonly accepted even by people who reject the miraculous?

I believe the universe has always existed, it did not "begin".  I have excellent rebuttal to Aquinas' Five Ways, i have scientific reasons to deny the Big Bang theory, and even some inerrantist Christian groups deny the Big Bang, such as AiG and ICR.  Philosophical attempts to show that the universe once didn't exist, are completely absurd. 

There is no mystery of evil, only a mystery of thick-headed obstinate Christians

I respond to a Christian who articulates the problem of "evil".  See here.

In case the post gets deleted, here's what I said:

Barry Jones18 Jun 2020 at 10:59 pm 

The only problem with evil is the Christians who falsely continue to view God as some sort of good-willed grandfather type figure. Wrong. Read Ezekiel 37-38. God views human beings like little boys view toy soldiers. In fact, the bible god is more evil than the Canaanites. I’ve proven Frank Turk was wrong in stating the Canaanites “watched their babies sizzle to death”, as there is no historical evidence, whatsoever, that Canaanites used fire as the means to kill kids. The historical sources say the child’s throat was cut before they were placed on the altar. None of the sources makes an equal specification that the kids were still alive when placed in the fire, and the Hebrew’s own historical example of Abraham trying to kill his son before lighting the fire (Genesis 22:19) would provide a reasonable basis to confirm the throat-cutting practice. 

Cremation of a corpse is not the same thing as immolation. See my scholarly post at https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/frank-tureks-dishonesty-concerning.html 

So because there is no evidence the Canaanites used fire to kill children, while the bible makes clear that God wants the preteen girl to be burned to death merely for a single act of premarital fornication (Leviticus 21:9), Turek must admit the ironic fact that his attempt to make the Canaanites appear to modern Americans as more “deserving” of genocide actually backfires. 

Then again, being a bible-believer makes you immune to certain morals. If God told you stab your child to death and burn his body, well….you DO admit you have the faith of Abraham (Genesis 22:10/Hebrews 11:19), correct.

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

Screenshot: 

God commands genocide, my challenge to Claude Mariottini

There's this book called Show Them No Mercy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003) wherein several Christian scholars debate the thorny issue of the bible-god's apparent ordering the ancient Hebrews to slaughter all Canaanite men, women and children living in certain specified locales, and whether this can be reconciled with God's alleged command in the NT that his people be loving toward everybody else.

In other words, a problem of consistency that only worries those who ascribe to bible "inerrancy".

One of the Christian scholars to contribute an article in that book was C. S. Cowles, who wrote the article “The Case for Radical Discontinuity". He emphasizes NT passages which say the Old Covenant was imperfect and is passing away.

Dr. Mariottini has a blog and responded to Cowles, trying to argue under a presumption of biblical inerrancy that there is no inconsistency between the OT God commanding such genocide and the NT God who commands people to love one another.

I replied to Mariottini, see here.  I post the content below in case the good doctor deletes my post:

          Barry Jones says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 17, 2020 at 4:25 pm

Dear Dr. Mariottini, 

Frank Turek and other "apologists" strongly emphasize that objective morality proves god. Turek thus argues that most of humanity recognize rape as immoral, yet atheism cannot account for this pattern of opinion in human history, therefore, god did it. But most people also strongly oppose infanticide (Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:2-3), and they equally oppose using fire to kill a preteen girl merely for having premarital sex in her father's house (Leviticus 21:9, by having sex in her father's house, she likely still lives there, and thus is likely still unmarried and thus likely not older than about 12). 

If the collective human condemnation of rape proves God, why shouldn't we extend Turek's logic and similarly presume that because it is the Holy Spirit who convinces everybody that rape is absolutely immoral, it is also the Holy Spirit who convinces everybody that infanticide and burning children to death are absolutely immoral?

By what criteria do we decide when collective human moral opinion ultimately stems from the Holy Spirit, and when it doesn't?

Sure, that would have the effect of proving those parts of the bible are not inspired by God, but wouldn't logical consistency be a higher priority than bible inerrancy, given the former is beyond question, while the latter is the subject of endless confusion and disagreement within the Evangelical Christian camp?

Or do you think Turk is merely overstating the force of the moral argument for God?

My invitation to James A. Jardin

Mr. Jardin in 2013 wrote a paper called The Slaughter of the Midianites in Numbers 31, a Group Exegetical Paper.  I found it through Academia.edu, here.

Therein, he defends the traditional conservative Christian view that Numbers 31:18 wasn't about authorizing rape.  I sent him the following message:

Hello,
With reference to your "Numbers 31:13-24 Exegetical Paper",
 What would be unreasonable in interpreting Numbers 31:18 as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?   It's therefore not about "adultery" or pre-marital "fornication", so I'm not seeing the problem.
 I see nothing in the bible indicating the minimum age the girl must reach before she can be married, not all sexual relations require penetrative intercourse, the atrocities of the ancient Israelites prove they were nothing close to the modern democratic American, God wanted women to experience vaginal pain on first intercourse anyway, and as I'm sure you know, the Babylonian Talmud, which is reasonably presumed to reveal ancient Jewish traditions, several times indicates approval of sexual intercourse between a man and a prepubescent girl.
 In your paper you claim Deut. 21:10-14 was intended to protect female war captives from rape, but on the contrary, this authorization for a man to marry such a woman gives not the slightest indication that the woman's consent was needed, the Hebrew "anah" in v. 14 always means rape in other bible verses describing men interacting with woman, and the decidedly pro-Christian Good News Translation renders v. 14 as "you forced her to have intercourse with you..." which would hardly be the case if those Christian translators felt there was any reasonable way to spin the literary evidence to get rid of the rape-implication.
 Maybe the question should be whether the non-Christian can be "reasonable" to reject the democratic conservative Christiain interpretation of Numbers 31:18 and continue viewing it as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?
 I've done a massive amount of research on those issues, and I'd like to see how a Christian who has studied them answers my concerns.
 Thank you for your time,
 Barry  (barryjoneswhat@gmail.com)

I hope to recieve Mr. Jarden's reply, as nearly no Christians appear willing to take up this challenge.  Of course, there's always the hyena "apologist" who is frightened of real-time debate, and keeps his tithing customers happy by doing the occasional cartoon video about some argument I present here, but I'm requesting seriously interactive scholarship on the level of Outback Steakhouse.  Not the hide-and-seek bullshit one gets at Chuck E Cheese.  The last time I raised the pedophilia-issue in a Christian-chat room, noody could refute me and several admitted they couldn't say for sure whether God condemns sex within adult-child marriages.  I think it had something to do with my combining Romans 13 with a 19th century Delaware law which set the age of sexual consent at 7.

Cold Case Christianity: we are in control

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

Is God in Control or Are We in Control?

Posted: 13 Apr 2020 05:36 AM PDT 

I’m often asked where I “land” on the issue of God’s sovereignty and human freedom. How much free will do we actually have as humans? If God is all powerful and all knowing, if God knows the end from the beginning, if God has predestined us to come to faith, doesn’t it follow that humans are simply along for the ride? 

Rush has the answer:  Attention all planets of the Solar Federation:  we have assumed control...we have assumed control. (the All the World's a Stage album had the best version...RIP Neil Peart).

But seriously, a simple logically deductive syllogism shows libertarian freewill cannot exist if god's foreknowledge is infallible.

Anything God foreknows, is incapable of failing (dictionary definition of infallible)
God foreknows that Julie's will eat a candy bar tomorrow.
Therefore, Julie's eating a candy bar tomomrrow is incapable of failing.

There are only three ways to refute a deductive syllogism:  prove premise 1 is wrong, prove premise 2 is wrong, or prove the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

Sure, premise one could be wrong, but if so, then the doctrine of God's infallible foreknowledge is false.

As a Christian, it’s clear to me that God is powerful enough to accomplish his goals without limit (see Daniel 4:35, Romans 9:15-16, Ephesians 1:5-6, and Romans 1:9-11). I call this power of God to accomplish whatever He wants the “Make Sure” Will of God.

But then if God has any will beyond the "make sure" crap, then he is sort of like a drunk woman, preferrng to be uncertain.  I'll pass.

But if God is in complete control of every aspect of our lives, how do we answer the following questions?
 When people fail to come to faith, is it God who is preventing them?

If you stand around doing nothing while a child in yoru custody fails to use chemicals correctly and endures injury, is it YOU who is preventing their proper use?  If not, you must think we should get rid of our system of civil law, which charges people all the time with "negligence" (i.e., failure to act when acting was within one's power and acting would have prevented an injury without causing another)

 When evil happens in the world, is it God who is responsible?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then you tell me what is implied by your 2nd Timothy 3:16 trust that such scripture remains profitiable for doctrine, reproof and correction TODAY.

How could God ever hold us responsible for anything?

The same way we capture a wild animal on the loose in the neighborhood.  It's inability to control its dangerous desires doesn't mean we are obligated to turn away.

Is the ‘will of God’ a divine plan for our lives?

As a Christian bible-believer that's YOUR problem. You cannot show from the bible that God has a plan for any particular individual, and you cannot show that the bible has the least bit of relevance to modern humanity beyond the useless trifle of being a historical curiosity.  The question is whether God gives a shit about you at all.  The answer from actual reality is "no".  The answer form the bible only works for the people to who those books were originally intended.  Sucks to be you.

While the Bible affirms the sovereignty and power of God, it also provides examples when God does not seem to be able to accomplish something He desires. In Matthew 23:37-38, Jesus seems to be unable gather Israel because they were unwilling.

Agreed.  But as an atheist, I deny biblical inerrancy, and thereore do not expereince any compulsion to decide whether the bible teaches Arminianism or Calvnism.  It teaches both, which means the bible contradicts itself on doctrine.

In 2 Peter 3:8-10, We are told that God does not wish that anyone of us should perish (but that all of us should come to repentance), yet we know that many people in our world will NEVER accept Jesus, never come to repentance, and simply will not be saved. So what’s up with God’s sovereignty?

A better questoini would be:  Why should be blindly assume an apostle's theological viewpoint is necessarily correct?  Especially an apostle who denied Jesus three times, and who, even after experiencing the gift of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2, was condemned as a moral hypocrite by Paul.  Methinks the inerrantist's trust in biblical infallibility is just shy of foolhardy.  It is anything but realistic.

How can it be that something can be within ‘God’s will’ (God can desire something) yet He seems to be unable to make that something happen?

Easy, the bible contradicts itself.  Will that answer cause J. Warner Wallace to stop using Jesus to attract attention to himself?

I think the Bible actually describes two kinds of “will of God”.

That's a sobering admission, coming from an inerrantist.  No, you won't be "haronizing" freewill with God's sovereignty anytime soon, will you.

The first is what I call the “Make Sure” Will of God, the second is what I have come to call the “Sure Wants” Will of God.

Then god is fucking stupid, since if he "sure wants" something and has the "make sure" power to get the job done, then only he is to blame if he refuses to resolve the problem by exercise of his powers.

God wants all of us to be saved;

You cannot show that anything in the NT was intended to apply to modern-day people.  If we can show the NT authors intended to address 1st century people, YOU acquire the burden of showing they intended to address anybody else.  No sophistry about how God can intend a wider audience than the human author intended.  If the authors didn't intend something, then since the author was your only hope of showing the author's divine inspiration, any god who allegedly inspired them also didn't intend that something.  The reaosnableness of that inference is not going to disappear merely because you can preach about how God can have greater plans for a person than their own plans.

He wants all of us to come to faith in Jesus;

Even the people whom he ordained by his providence to live in times and circumstances preventing them from hearing about Jesus? 

He wants all of us to reflect his moral precepts;

He wants us to use fire to kill little girls for engaging in pre-marital sex (Leviticus 21:9)? Or did some dickhead "apologist" on the internet suddenly discover how easily the "satire" excuse can be exploited to defend biblical "inerrancy"?

He wants all of us to love one another.

Even those whom he instructs us to hate (Deut. 23:6)?

But he also knows that none of this is truly possible unless each and every one of us is allowed to have the ‘freedom’ to love, obey and follow (see Mark 3:34-35, 1 John 2:17, Ephesians 6:5-6, Romans 12:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and 1 Peter 2:15-17). Without ‘free will’, humans are simply robots who respond according to pre-programming rather than from a position of true love and obedience.

you are assuming true love cannot exist without the libertarian notion of freewill existing.  Not true.  obviously dogs and lower mammals love their young, yet you would probably argue that as creatures of instinct they do not have "freewill".

You are also forgetting the deductive syllogism I started this post with.  If God's foreknowledge is infallible, then those human acts (such as love) that he foreknows are "incapable of failing", which logically prevents the person from withdrawing the love at the time God infallibly foreknows they will show that love.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’),

Bullshit, the way he turns humans to carnage in the bible, god is quite capable of simply using his power to rescue you from anything.  Telling yourself maybe God allowed you to do evil because of Frank Turek's "Ripple-Effect" sophistry is mere self-delusion.  The ripple-effect theory does nothing to render the atheist theory of evil "unreasonable".

but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

Then he is fucking stupid and his problems are his own fault.

Yes, it is God’s will that no evil should exist in the world (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that evil is eliminated.

Yes, it is dad's will that his baby son not get raped, (it's protection dad 'sure wants'), but this does not mean that dad will 'make sure' that such rape possibility is eliminated.  Nice going.

Yes, it is God’s will that we should live a certain way and seek to know His heart and character, but this does not mean that he will ‘make sure’ that no one behaves immorally.

I'd say you've ventured further out into the surf than atheism can permit.  This Arminian/Calvinist debate is YOUR problem.

There are two kinds of ‘will of God’ passages in the scripture. Some describe God’s sovereignty and some describe God’s moral character and desire for our lives.

And there is no reason to think the bible is inerrant.  So there's nothing unreaosnable in assuning the bible gave rise to churches with contradictory theology, beause the bible itself teaches contradictory theology.

While it is certainly within God’s power to eliminate all evil, to control our behavior and to allow none of us the possibility of rejecting Him, to do so would eliminate the possibility for something precious to God: the ability to love. (I’ve written more on this in the section on Evil here at ColdCaseChristianity.com

So what's more important to god?  The criminal's ability to love?  Or the child's safety from rape?

Under God's stupid reasoning, America's love would be more god-like if jails removed their locks and incarcerated only those who chose to endure their punishment.  if God is going to let rapists and murders run free, how could we have less love than god if we also allowed such criminals the same freedom?  If God isn't going to stop evil, then it must be good to let evil exist.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

You are only saying that because of the bible's contradictory statements, not because it is at all clear that this is in fact the case.  What a fool to pretend that so many ancient authors, seperated from each other by centuries, nevertheless wrote in perfect harmony about subjects philosphers have disagreed on for millenia.  Not even most Christian scholars accept biblical inerrancy!

How exactly do your musings do ANYTHING to disturb atheism?

Cold Case Christianity: Did Jesus think he was God?

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Did Jesus Think He Was God?

Posted: 07 Apr 2020 12:00 PM PDT

In this video, J. Warner discusses the language Jesus used when describing Himself. Did His words demonstrate what He believed about Himself?

But as I've already demonstrated ad nauseum, many conservative Christian scholars think the Christ-sayings in John's gospel reflect more John's theological views and less what Jesus "actually" said.  So trying to establish high Christology by using John's gospel is foolish.

Mike Licona might argue that you can get Jesus beng God out of Mark, the earliest gospel, but I don't see the point.  Yes, people before the 1st century believed the gods could come down to the them in the likeness of man (Acts 14:11), so the skeptic who tries to argue that the NT's Christology is only high beacuse it is late, is not doing her homework.

At the same time, low Christology can be gleaned from Paul (Jesus was declared the son of God with power by resurrectoin from the dead, Romans 1:5).  Fundies will carp that this doesn't imply Paul thought Jesus lacked divine attributes until the resurrection, but Paul doesn't show much interest in Jesus' earthly life, so fundies have no basis to think Paul thought Jesus was always Lord from birth.  Fundies will cite the kenosis in Phil. 2:5-8, but the "mind" that is spoken of is the one which was in "Christ Jesus", the name given to him at his birth, but not before.  Paul is likely referring to the attitude Jesus had as a man on earth, not as the prexistent logos.

Mark 6:5 said Jesus "could" not do a miracle, but the parallel in Matthew 13:58 changes this to "did" not do a miracle, that is, Matthew the later author is changing Mark's earlier negation of Jesus' abilities, with a phrase that no longer implicates Jesus' abilities.  That is, the earlier version of Christianity had a lower Christology.  We can only wonder how many other changes scribes made to the text of Mark during the first 250 years for which we have no manuscripts, to "assimilate" it back to Matthew.  I think this is the part where desperate inerrantists suddenly discover that the Synoptic Problem doesn't exist, and the similarities of Matthew and Mark imply nothing more than their drawing upon a common core of oral tradition. 

Except that wiggling out of the problem like that doesn't render the skeptical hypothesis unreasonable, it just show you have the same face-saving capabilities that the Mormons have.

Furthermore, the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount are often unrelated despite following each other in chronological fashion.  Most scholars explain this by saying the author has simply made a pastiche of various sayings Jesus spoke in various different circumstances, and grouped such aphorisms into one bunch.

That is, most scholars think the gospel authors replaced the original context of the Christ-sayings with the author's own created literary context, so that we can never really be confident that the "context" we read today is accurately reflecting the oral "context" Jesus originally spoke those words in. 

That creates a further problem:  the gospel authors did not care about "original" context as much as today's inerrantists do, and this justifies the atheist to infer the sources are not sufficiently reliable to attempt getting confident conclusions from.  There was a textually dark period between Jesus' life and the earliest manuscripts, and nobody has any idea how many times scribes in that critical period did what Metzger and Aland contantly accuse them of ('assimilating' one gospel statement with another) so that for all we know, the degree to which the gospels currently agree on facts has more to do with post-authorship emendation, and less to do with what the original authors actually said. 

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is possibly a late legend

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Is the Resurrection Account a Late Legend?

J. Warner April 3, 2020

Two answers from an atheist:

No, and the rumor about Paul, held by "thousands" of Jewish Christians, that he flouted Mosaic law, also wasn't a late legend.  Acts 21:18-24.  As long as you say that rumor was false, you agree that falsity can exist in the early church, without being "legend" or "late".

Yes...it is reasonable to say the resurrection appearance stories in the gospels are late legends for two reasons:  a) it is reasonable to agree with most Christian scholars that Mark is the earliest published gospel, and b) it is reaosnable to agree with most Christian scholars that the long ending of Mark was a later interpolation.  If both premises are reasonable, then it is reasonable to draw the inference that the earliest form of the resurrectin story was limited to the women hearing about Jesus' resurrection solely from some unidentified man at the suspiciously opened tomb.

Certain dickhead apologists will scream that Mark's resurrection appearance ending would have been necessarily implied due to the oral preaching behind that gospel, is foolish:  the other three gospel authors give plenty of resurrection appearance detail, so it is far from obvious that the reason a gospel author leaves out a detail is because he is expecting the originally intended reader to rely on the oral preaching to fill in the blanks left by the written account.

And now a point by point reply to Wallace:

How can we be sure that the story of Jesus wasn’t changed over time?

You can't:  reconstructing history from ancient sources only supplies probabilities, especially in cases where the ancient assertions are by no means "obvious" and not corroborated by other verifiable details. No, you aren't proving John's resurrection testimony reliable by nothing that archaeologists have found the Pool of Siloam.  What are you?  6?  What are you gonna say next?  Mommy loves you because she took you to McDonalds? Grow the fuck up and quit committing the fallacy of hasty generalization.

How do we know that the virgin conception, the miracles and the Resurrection weren’t added to the story late?

First, your question is irrelevant.  Jesus made clear that christian discipleship depended on generations of Christian leaders passing on for posterity all the things which he had taught the original apostles (see the part of the Great Commission nost people miss, Matthew 28:20).  Not only did Jesus never say one damn thing about his virgin birth, he castigated another person who's comment to him had created the perfect justification for him to mention it (Luke 11:27-28).

Second, given that most Christian scholars agree Mark's gospel is the earliest and lacks the virgin birth narrative despite how its content would have strongly supported Mark's "Son of God" theme, it's reasonable to infer either a) Mark never heard of the VB (justifying the inference it was late) or b) Mark knew of it but considered it fiction (justifying the inference that it is fiction).  The third option screamed about by apologists, c) Mark knew the VB story was true but "chose to exclude" it for his own reasons, cannot be demonstrated with any degree of probability.  Since the inference that Mark never heard of the VB or had rejected it as fiction does rest upon a probability argument, the skeptic has a probability and the apologist has only possibility.  So skeptics are reasonable to draw the negative inference even if there's always that trifling "possibility" that the VB was true.

Similar arguments could be made on the basis of John the latest gospel.  He too doesn't mention the virgin birth, despite how it would have strongly supported his high Christology.  That makes the skeptical hypothesis reasonable, and our reasonableness therein doesn't require that we bat out of the ballpark every stupid trifle any apologist could possibly conjure up. 

Beasley-Murray refuses to decide the matter:

The external evidence for the pl. is overwhelming, and most adopt it without hesitation…The decision is more difficult than is generally acknowledged, and we leave it open.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (2002). Vol. 36: Word Biblical Commentary : John.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 2). Dallas: Word, Incorporated

Inerrantist Christian scholar Borchert does not understand why some scholars, despite knowing the plural is the correct reading, still insist the passage is about the virgin birth:

Some scholars have argued that the verse is describing the virginal conception of Jesus, and they have chosen to read the singular form instead of the plural (haimatōn) “bloods.” But the textual evidence for such a reading is virtually nonexistent, and the logic of the text definitely argues against such a view. 

No Greek MSS support the singular reading, yet M. Ē. Boismard, in St. John’s Prologue (Westminster: Newman, 1957), s.v., and others have argued for such a view. Cf. D. M. Crossan, “Mary’s Virginity in St. John—An Exegetical Study,” Marianum 19.1 (1957): 115–26, and “Mary and the Church in John 1:13, ” Bible Today 1.20 (1965): 1318–24. Beasley-Murray (John, 13) relying on E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey (The Fourth Gospel [London: Faber & Faber, 1947], 164–65), thinks that even though the plural is clearly the correct reading and even though the virgin birth may not be in mind, the incarnation could have been in view here. I find this argument difficult to accept.

Borchert, G. L. (2001, c1996). Vol. 25A: John 1-11 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 118). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Bruce Metzger, otherwise considered by conservative Christian apologists to be the last word on NT textual variation, dashes cold water on the hopes of those fools who insist John 1:13 is talking about Jesus' virgin birth:

Although a number of modern scholars (including Zahn, Resch, Blass, Loisy, R. Seeburg, Burney, Büchsel, Boismard, Dupont, and F. M. Braun)³ have argued for the originality of the singular number, it appeared to the Committee that, on the basis of the overwhelming consensus of all Greek manuscripts, the plural must be adopted, a reading, moreover, that is in accord with the characteristic teaching of John. The singular number may have arisen either from a desire to make the Fourth Gospel allude explicitly to the virgin birth or from the influence of the singular number of the immediately preceding auvtou/.
--------Metzger, Textual Commentary, Page 169

Furthermore, most English translations don't use the singular, they use the plural, so that 1:13 is referring to Christians, not Jesus:

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NAU) 

 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NRS) 

 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NIV) 

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NKJ)

But no, I'm sure that because fundie Chrstianity is dogmatic by nature, fundies who are frightened at the prospect of not being able to harmonize all NT statements with all NT statements, will insist skeptics are "dumb" or "morons" for adopting the plural in harmony with many conservative evangelical Christian scholars.

I wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, shivering with fear, wondering whether my above-cited arguments are sound.  I'm also a millionaire.

Furthermore, given that out of 27 NT books, only two even mention the virgin birth, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the earliest Christians did not think that part of Jesus' life was too important. 

Why would Paul think the resurrection proved Jesus to be the Son of God, but the VB wasn't worth discussing?  If we are to presume Paul was a modern-day inerrantist who trusted Joseph's and Mary's stories about portents during her pregnancy as necessarily true, wouldn't it follow that Paul would find the VB story equally as supportive of his view of Christ as the resurrection?  And given that Christianity had major obstacles to getting started, wouldn't shameless promoter like Paul insist on using ALL of his guns?

And don't forget, Paul asserted that Jesus' flesh came from David's "seed" (Romans 1:3, neither genealogy of Jesus makes Mary a descendant of David, but they specify Joseph was a descendant of David, Luke 2:4), and further, that Jesus' divine sonship was declared due to his rising from the dead (v. 4).  Had Paul approved of the VB stories, he would likely would have cited the VB and not just Jesus' resurrection as the basis for Jesus' divine sonship.  That naturalistic problem looms large also in Acts 13:33, Jesus was divinely begotten at his resurrection...how many times was he begotten? Another sign that the speaker (Paul) did not think Jesus recieved such divine titles any earlier.

I'm quite aware of the stupid trifles of internet apologists concerning Mark 6:3 and have answered them here.  Since Christians themselves cannot even agree on whether the VB story is true, or if so, whether it qualifies as essential or non-essential doctrine, the skeptic is certainly reasonable to consider it nothing more than trifling about the details of fairy tales.  You don't know the credibililty of Matthew or Luke, you have no fucking clue how they gained thier material.  Your hypothesis that they asked eyewitnesses is no less conjectural than the skeptic's theory that many gospel stories are just made up

Brandon failed to establish objective morals

I responded to him here, but in case the comments get deleted, here's what I argued:

This is why I believe in God.

Submitted by Brandon Neifert on April 10, 2020 - 3:47pm

"This is why I believe in God."
----that's a non-starter.  "god" might have a dictionary definition, but it refers to nothing empirically detectable, and therefore takes its place among fairy tales, worm holes, time travel, and fairies.  You are never going to show that an atheist is "unreasonable" to reject anything they cannot empirically detect.

" It is objectively moral to not harm someone."
-----that's the fallacy of argument by assertion.  What you stated shoudl be the conclusion to your argument, not the argument itself.

"Just as it's objectively moral to feed and help other people."
-----But unless you'd admit to feed and help terrorists, then there's an exception to the popular moral belief that we should feed and help other people.  Answer wrong, and expect the NSA to take a second look at you.  Expect everybody else to wonder whether hanging out with you is actually worth the trouble.

"The fact that it's psychologically built in us proves volumes on the evidence for God's existence."
------It is psychologically built into a male cat's brain to rape a female cat.  What are you gonna do now, argue that whether rape is morally good or bad depends on the context?  If so, that would constitute "situational ethics", the very relativism you are trying to avoid.

"There are naturalists---the Nazis for example---who would disagree with this psychological definition, but we often know them to be objectively bad."
-------"we know" is quite a relative standard, as you are simply excluding the Nazi opinioin as if it was inherently and obviously defective.  You haven't shown the Nazi opinion to be contrary to any objective moral, probably because you haven't shown us where this objective standard is.  Once again, all you are doing is appealing to popular moral sentiment.  But that critiera can be used to sandbag you if you aren't careful.

"Though, if given the framework for Darwinian Evolution, the Nazis would be correct in their assumption that improving the human race would be our only moral goal."
-----No, if darwinian evolution is true, there is no objective moral, hence nobody's moral opinion can
be 'correct', it is just a world full of animals competing for resources, period.  "Should" questions are necessarily unresolvable and do nothing more than enable some animals to form groups and otherwise attack each other.  That's all.

"But, the psychological foundation of human virtues is something written within us. It's why every culture, just about, had laws and systems of Crime and Punishment."
------Gorillas and apes also abide by certain virtues.  Were apes made in the image of god?  try that one on a bible-belileving Christian, and discover how belief in God does little more than give other theists a reason to hate you.

"I can find no better proof for the existence of God than morality."
---------A pedophile could say the same thing, while believing it is good to molest kids.

"Freedom is good."
--------But completely unrestrained freedom (i.e., no laws beyond what any person decides for himself to follow) leads to anarchy and social breakdown, which you would probably classify as objectively bad.  So what you really meant was that the right balance of freedom and law is "good".  But that's hardly useful to argument, your own best friend would probably argue with you for hours, or for life, about how these two concerns should be balanced.  Welcome to the world of moral relativity.

"It's because there is a God."
---------A word that has a dictionary definition, but by referring to nothing empirically detectable, thus refers to nothing important, and is on the level of the Big Bang, dark energy, fairies and the Bermuda Triangle.  you are never going to show that the atheist is "unreasonable" for doing what everybody does every second of every day, and prioritizing what their 5 senses detect, over things their 5 senses cannot detect.  That's how you undo all the philosophical resistance to "empiricism" in less than a paragraph.  Those who deny empiricism's truth are complete hypocrites, as they had to depend on their senses of sight and sound in order to formulate their stupid theory that the 5 senses are not as reliable as we'd wish. Sure is funny how reliable they are when one wishes to refute empiricism!

"Sometimes war is necessary."
------Then you just contradicted your first premise that it is moral not to harm someone.  If war is an exception, then whether harming someone is morally good or bad is not subject to absolute determination, but depends on context.  Once again, welcome to the world of relativity.

"It's because there is a God."
--------A word with a dictionary definition, but referring to nothing empirically demonstrable.  When something is not empirically demonstrable, it is reasonable to kick it to the curb.  Just ask any girl what she does when her boyfriend always says he loves her, but she notices that he never actually proves it.  These days, she kicks his ass to the curb...unless she has a pyschologial problem and finds "comfort" in submitting to morally inconsistent men?

"If men get to defining the moral absolutes---we find in this article it's impossible. Because there will always be conflicting opinions. But, if given the context that morals are being discovered, and are discovered by multiple religions and sages, we understand that in fact morality is present, and it is very substantive proof of there being a truth that is beyond our observation."
--------If it was beyond your observation, you wouldn't know enough about it to say "morals are being discovered."  But either way, all you are doing is crediting God with the fact that most human beings think rape and murder are wrong.  But there is a perfectly good naturalistic explanation for the fact that this opinion-pattern exhibits itself in humanity:  enhancing survival and thriving requires we observe such morals.  But then we could ask whether survival and thriving is objectively good, and the first answer is "no, because there is no such thing as objective morals".
The second answer is "you have never demonstrated that any moral code exists outside the brain".

"That truth existing beyond our observation implies intrinsically that there is a God."
-------That's a violation of Occam's Razor, since yoru solution (god) is infinitely complex, when in fact a much less complex and much more likely explanation for morality is available:  Certain actions must be done to enhance survival and thriving.  If you want to have a nice life in the USA, you must avoid disobeying the popular morality in that country, which has been codified into criminal and civil laws.
Once again, you haven't demonstrated that any human moral code exists independently of human brains. 

You also need to be careful.  It's also true that most men desire to have sex with multiple females.  Are you going to be consistent, and say that beacuse this is a popular moral, it must be from God?

"Because once you prove that there is truths beyond our observation"
----------Which is logically impossible....If you can't observe it, you are never going to prove it.


"you move into the realm of Metaphysics, and once you enter into that realm, the existence of God becomes manifest."
----------Atheist explanations for popular moral sentiment down through human history are sufficient. God?  I have no need of that hypothesis.

"The question is, which God is the true God?"
--------nope, you havn't established god's existence yet.  Try again.  And tell Frank Turek he ain't doing so great trying to prove god from morality.

"And only one in history has ever shown Himself. That is Jesus Christ. Only one had ever taught a perfect moral law."
--------If you believe Jesus was God, then you believe Jesus created that perfect moral law.  But even the bible says God's law was imperfect and needed replacing, See Hebrews 8:13.  if the first covenant had been morally perfect, no place would have been sought for the Second.

God also admits he gives laws that are 'not good', Ezekiel 20:25.

And if Jesus is God, then it was Jesus who authored the moral law that says a preteen girl shoud be burned to death if she has pre-marital sex in her father's house.  Leviticus 21:9. 

Moses was far closer to God than you'll ever be, and yet assumed sex within adult-child marriages
was morally acceptable.  Numbers 31:18.  I've extensively researched that verse, and the conservative christians who carp that this is just saying the girls can be used as house-servants, are high on crack.

God also gave the law that allows the soldier who recently killed the female war-captive's parents, to marry her...a law that nowhere expresses or implies he needed her consent.

"That's Christ. It's why I believe. And when people ask me, "How do you know it's perfect?" I tell them to just read Matthew Chapters 5 - 8. Those chapters, if you can disagree with them, it proves you're not right morally speaking."

Try obeying Matthew 5:19, which praises those who obey even the least of the OT commands.
Try obeying Matthew 5:23-24, since the temple was destroyed in 70 a.d. and never rebuilt.
And read Luke 1:6 before you insist we cannot get right with God through the merit of our obedience to Law.

"The chapters demonstrate moral perfection, as the article would say, the 1 + 1 = 2 of morality. Of course, Morality is much more complicated than that. It's, as I've often said, like Quantum physics."
---------Right, several schools of thought which compete with and contradict each other.  Once again, welcom to moral relativism.

"But Jesus' Sermon tells us the basic form of it that we can all agree on."
No, you don't agree that Matthew 5:23-24 applies today, and you certainly don't think the animal sacrifices that were part and parcel of the Temple, have any spiritual significance.

"That's why the rest of the Bible has to be taken on faith."
--------Which means you disagree with Normn Geisler, Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, Josh McDowell, Frank Turek and most other conservative Christian 'apologists' who think the divine inspiration of the bible can be "proved".

"If God on Earth could come to so perfect a moral law,"
-------You think burning preteen girls to death (Leviticus 21:9) is a perfect moral law?  You think kidnapping little girls, killing their parents, then making the girls slave in your house for the rest of their lives (Numbers 31:18, your interpretation) is a perfect moral law?  Most Christians would disagree with you.

"it proves to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the rest of the Bible must be true."
-------What bible?  The Catholic one with the Apocrypha?  The Ethiopian coptic?

Or were you just talking about the plain ol' American bible we've come to know and love, which can be found in motel rooms and placed there by the Gideons?

"Even when I'm questioning why that is, I have faith that the groundwork Jesus laid in those chapters is sufficient evidence enough for me to believe. Even when everything else might seem difficult or questionable."
-----------What you DON'T do is show that the atheist is "unreasonable". 

Rebuttal to Frank Turek on Morality

Frank Turek "explains" why God allows natural disasters. See here. I responded first with Deuteronomy 28:15-63 to remind Christians that their "biblical" god is a far cry from the concerned empathizing Jesus they've invented in their heads.

I then responded with my own argument as follows (this was deleted by unknown person about 5 minutes after I posted it, hence, you no longer wonder why I cross post to my blog here).



Barry Jones1 second ago
Turek's "ripple-effect" argument is not convincing to anybody except the predominantly Christian audiences that are already desperately searching for anything that will help them feel better about their own faith.

Furthermore, the ripple-effect could be used to justify immorality. How do you know that God didn't want my stealing a car yesterday to play an integral role in the reason why African Bush tribes will hear the Christian gospel next year? 

You can tell yourself that the evil act remains evil even if God can use it for a greater good, but since many allegedly "evil" acts also produce morally good effects (the morally bad murder of a family member caused the good of the surviving family becoming Christian in faith), then how the hell do you know which effect determines the moral status of the act and which effect doesn't? 

Is rape evil because it hurts the woman, or good because by ripple-effect it causes Eskimos 5,000 miles away to hear the gospel for the first time 5 years later? 

Is rape bad because it hurts the woman, or good because it taught her to be more careful about walking home late at night? 

Is pedophilia bad because it hurt the child, or good because it came to the attention of a vigilante who later gunned down that pervert before he could molest more kids?

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

You will say "the ends don't justify the means", but I really have to wonder how many tears you'd cry if you found out the local pedophile who was recently released on parole was gunned down by unknown person.  Gee, that murder wasn't in conformity to American legal ideals, so you just won't be able to come in to work for a few days while you "get over" it, eh?  NOT.