The non-reliability of eyewitness testimony, a rebuttal to Paul Price

This is my reply to an article by Paul Price and promoted by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

Countering the Assault on Eyewitnesses

by Paul Price

Published: 10 November 2020 (GMT+10)Wikimedia Commons

In our opinion, the cause of justice is not served by suggesting otherwise.”The majority of the focus for the many articles and papers documenting the alleged unreliability of eyewitness testimony is on cherry-picked examples where the witnesses have been tampered with and/or memories have been contaminated.

What you miss are the study's admissions that justify skepticism toward the resurrection narratives in the gospels, for example:

A good illustration of how contamination can reduce the reliability of information obtained from a police interview comes from an archival police study of 29 people who witnessed the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (Granhag, Ask, Rebelius, Öhman, & Giolla, 2013). In this case, only 58% of the reported attributes were correct, as corroborated by CCTV. According to the authors, the most likely explanation for the poor performance was memory contamination that occurred because the witnesses were gathered together before being interviewed, and they discussed the event. These findings underscore the fact that our claims about the surprisingly high reliability of eyewitness memory pertain to tests of memory that are conducted before memory contamination... (Wixted, Laura, et al, pp. 330-331)

Did the original eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection discuss it with each other before they reported it in the canonical gospels?  Obviously yes.  So your own source-study would require that the resurrection narratives,  including Paul's "eyewitness" testimony,  constitute "contaminated" testimony.

I guess we can see how poorly James Patrick Holding will do in trial

 James Patrick Holding posted this point by point answer to another critic, and I show how fucking absurd Holding's logic is

tektontv1 day ago

All of these whines seem to designed to avoid engaging real arguments rather than answering them. It also hoists itself on its own petard repeatedly.

Empty rhetoric that any fool could use, but I'm sure your followers do what you do, and mistake rhetoric for actual substance. 

>>>"1. The vast majority of Jesus nation didn't accept him, despite the miracles he may have done.

So? the vast majority of the Egyptians, Moabites, Canaanites, etc never accepted Judaism in spite of the miracles of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, etc.

Probably because the Egyptians, Moabites and Canaanites never had any reason to think Moses, Joshua or Elijah could do real miracles. 

>>>So accepting the claims of small cult (of Jesus) is less rational than accepting the decisions of vast majority of the people back then.

You mean like Judaism, the small cult that came out of Egypt to found what, politically speaking, was a puny and insignificant nation?? Do tell.

That wasn't a rebuttal.   

>>>2. The Old Testament doesn’t prove Christianity, because we do see that Jews explain the same verses completely different. When you have more than one way to interpret something, it can't be a proof.

I don't know what he means when he refers to the OT "proving" Christianity. I would never say it does.

Then you never read 2nd Timothy 3:16.  It is talking about the OT when it says the scripture is profitable to the Christian for "doctrine", and apostle Paul curiously grounds doctrine always in the OT, never on the words of Jesus.  Paul's allegedly grounding completely obvious common sense on something Jesus said (1st Timothy 5:18) is less about grounding something and more about telling the world just how little Paul thought of the pre-resurrection Christ.  

>>>3. Christianity is no valid more than Islam or other religions, because that if God changed the religion so drastically (Old Testament commandments does not required anymore, and so on) - why stay there? Let's accept that God came again to Muhammad, or Joseph Smith.

Non sequitur.

No, your non-sequitur is a non-sequitur:  he wasn't arguing that God surely did change religions.  he was only arguing that it would be reasonable for a person to believe that was the case.  The only time "non-sequitur" can validly apply is when the critiqued argument was saying a certain conclusion "necessarily" followed.  You'd be surprised at how often apologists say "non-sequitur" to a skeptical argument, when in fact the argument is not about what is necessarily true, but what is reasonable to believe. 

>>>4. The trinity sounds absurd when you believe in monotheistic God, in comparison to the way Judaism see their God.

Too bad this dumbass never heard of Trinitarian precursors in Judaism like hypostatic Wisdom.

Except that Judaism's hypostatic Wisdom is equally absurd as Trinitarianism, unless you kick the Christians out of the room and stop pushing the personification of wisdom so literally.  But the jury will find it interesting that with the remark "dumbass", the world's smartest Christian apologist cannot stop insulting people.  Download the 534-page Complaint here, then start at page 486.  There's about 35 pages of proofs that Holding lied when he testified under oath that he has "never deliberately intended to insult anyone by his communications", a statement that both he and his lawyer choose to leave unqualified. 

>>>>5. Judaism apologists disprove Christianity proofs easily. As Judaism is non-missionary religion, they have no motive to religion debate everywhere. That’s why most of the "proofs" over internet are one sided and you miss the Jews real point of views in the matter.

I smelled the elephant he hurled but I don't see it.

Then read 2000 years of church history, that's how long the Jews have failed to be impressed by Christian arguments, so apparently, the OT statements that NT authors use to prove something about Christianity, are not quite as rock-solid as the tearful inerrantist on Sunday morning would like to think. 

>>>Most people are not resisting to Christianity or any other religion because they are evil or stupid or stubborn. There are many rabbis, priests, Muftis and others that knows the truth and can win any debate.

Basically this guy has nothing but slogans to offer.

That would hardly matter.  I could kick your fucking head off in a debate about bible inerrancy and Jesus' resurrection, and the most you could do about it is post a defamatory cartoon video to YouTube.  Then YOU accuse other adults of having the mentality of a two-year old (!?) 

By the way, Mr. Holding, if you are so fucking serious that God approves of you calling your enemies "dumbasses", do you plan on calling ME a dumbass when you take the witness stand in front of the jury?  It doesn't matter if the earthly judge prohibits this, the true Christian obeys the higher spiritual moral where it conflicts with an earthly secular rule.  Acts 5:29, "we must obey God rather than men", so you can forget about pretending that Romans 13 requires that you obey secular authorities.  The earthly judge would be violating your idea of higher spiritual ethics in telling you to address me in a courteous manner.

Refuting Matthew Flannagan's defense of Divine Command Theory

Inerrantist Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. Matthew Flannagan continues pressing his pro-Divine-Command-Theory (DCT) arguments and thus wrangling words repeatedly about doctrine as if he never knew that 2nd Timothy 2:14 condemns word-wrangling and thus condemns all Christians who obtained higher education in analytic philosophy.  The one discipline in the world that makes you the most prone to thinking word-wrangling is godly, is analytic philosophy.

Flannagan's latest paper is "Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument" which Sophia accepted: 26 October 2020, Springer Nature B.V. 2021.

I posted the following challenge/rebuttal to him at his blog http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html

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

Your paper apparently silently presumes that God would never command a man to rape a woman (and you'd be out of a job if you ever pretended God might possibly command rape).  

And it is clear in ALL of your apologetics writings that you want the world to know that unbelievers cannot be reasonable in accusing the bible-god of atrocities.

I offer a DCT argument to refute one particular belief of yours, namely, that those who accuse the bible-god of moral atrocities are unreasonable.  On the contrary, we are equally as reasonable as anybody who accuses the KJV of having translation mistakes.

The atheist's alleged inability to properly ground morals wouldn't help you overcome this rebuttal even if that accusation was true.  YOU believe burning a child to death is worse than raping him or her, so if I can show that your own presuppositions require that God caused people to burn children to death, you will be forced to logically conclude that your god has committed atrocities worse than rape.

God said through Isaiah in 700 b.c.  that He caused the Assyrians to commit their war-atrocities:

 5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation,

 6 I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture booty and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets. (Isa. 10:5-6 NAU)

Ashurnasirpal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859, and  admitted "I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.”  You may trifle that this was typical semitic exaggeration, but the fact that we have pictorial reliefs portraying Assyrians "flaying alive" their prisoners certainly makes it reasonable for a person to conclude that Ashurnasirpal's boasts were true to reality.  The production date for such relief is 660BC-650BC, so the specific sort of Assyrians that Isaiah speaks about in 700 b.c aren't likely less barbaric than Ashurnasirpal II.

To say nothing of the fact that every Assyriologist I've come across acts as if the literal truth of the Assyrian war atrocities was a foregone conclusion.  One example is BAR 17:01 (Jan/Feb 1991), "Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death"  by Erika Belibtreu, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Vienna University, where she has worked since 1963.  

You can hardly fault atheists for failing to notice all that "semitic exaggeration" when actual Assyriologists think such descriptions are  telling about actual realities.  Just like you cannot fault the ignorant teenage girl who "accepts Jesus" in an inerrantist Evangelical church on the basis of writings by Norman Geisler, and doesn't notice all the obvious philosophical blunders he committed.

 I can predict you will trifle that God's use of the Assyrians doesn't mean he "caused" them to burn children to death, but Isaiah continues in ch. 10 and uses an analogy that makes the Assyrian the axe, and God is the one who uses it to chop things with:

 12 So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, "I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness."

 13 For he has said, "By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this, For I have understanding; And I removed the boundaries of the peoples And plundered their treasures, And like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants,

 14 And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped."

 15 Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. (Isa. 10:12-15 NAU)

Hence, your theory that unbelievers can never be reasonable to accuse the bible-god of atrocities worse than child-rape, is false.

Update August 13, 2021:

Matthew Flannagan's blog usually allows the reader to post a response, and the bottom part of his blog posts looks like this:

see, e.g., http://www.mandm.org.nz/2021/03/12473.html#respond

But Flannagan has configured the webpage containing my rebuttal remarks, so that it no longer allows replies:

See, e.g., mandm.org.nz/2021/02/published-in-sophia-why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument.html#comment-260033

No, clicking the the "respond" button doesn't work.  I don't know if Matt will admit that he deliberately disabled the possibility of further commenting on that specific blog post, or if he will do what he did before, and claim ignorance as to why his blog often doesn't allow me to post replies.

Either way, Flannagan's question was insulting and in no wise a reply on the merits.  His Sophia article drew the following conclusion:

Emphasis added by me.

Therefore, it should be clear that my argument that God has commanded people to do things worse than child rape was a very relevant refutation of the the God-is-essentially-good presupposition which Flannagan based his Sophia article on.

It is not false to accuse the bible-god of being essentially evil (i.e., evil according to the standards of Christians, who always presume the evil of any person who would facilitate or command child rape).

My response to Flannagan's blog post was in rebuttal to Flanngan's concluding remarks in the linked SOPHIA article, therefore, my remarks could not have been MORE relevant.  Yet Flannagan has a nasty habit of constantly and falsely accusing his critics of either not reading his argument or misunderstanding him.

Answering R. Scott Smith on murder and rape

 This is my reply to an article by Dr. R. Scott Smith entitled:

Making Sense of Morality: Bentham, Mill, and Utilitarianism 

January 11, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

There definitely is a place for appeals to utility in moral reasoning. E.g., when crafting public policy, we should consider the likely consequences of a proposed action, even when a deontological principle clearly applies.

So when Christian women consider the consequences of their decision to have an abortion (i.e., the child goes immediately to heaven and all chance they might end up in hell is infallibly preempted), then it is clear that the abortion has greater moral good, while allowing the child to grow up, gain freewill, and thus open up the possibility of being tortured in flames forever, is clearly immoral. Especially given that the aborted baby's entry to heaven is necessarily approved by God (how else would he let them in)?  

You couldn't be immoral to murder anybody, because according to Job 14:5, God has set an unchangeable number of days for a person to live.  If you murder somebody, you are necessarily carrying out god's will on what happens to them when their number of days are expired.  Gee, I never knew that obeying the will of God was immoral!

After all, people have to live with such decisions. Moreover, utilitarianism appeals to people, especially in secular societies, as apparently being morally neutral. There is no appeal to God or some other set of values to determine what is moral.

Fair enough. 

However, what gets to count as a “good” or “bad” consequence in the first place? Who gets to decide that?

In America, the "who" are the people who decide whether to vote on proposed legislation.  In certain parts of Africa, it is a witch-doctor.

According to whom is something (or someone) more valuable than another?

See above. 

Biases easily could enter the calculation here.

It would be impossible if they didn't, since morality is ultimately subjective.  There is no such thing as moral neutrality in that group of people who desire to cast a vote about proposed legislation.

To make such judgments seems to presuppose some outside standard, beyond utility.

No, making such judgments presupposes the basic morality of the individual that they have by reason of genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.  Many people mistake such morals as objective, but they do, in fact, spring from those two sources, no need to posit any moral source that is "above humanity".

Another issue is that utilitarianism seems inadequate in terms of how it treats motives.

Indeed, because morality is relative, there is not going to be any system that will be satisfactory to everybody.  Some people simply prioritize the long-term and others the short-term, and history tells us nothing if it doesn't tell us that we are incapable of creating moral utopia.  There's enough commonality to explain creation of different moral groups (nations, states, towns, clubs, churches) but not enough commonality to justify efforts to unite the whole world in morality.  Exactly what we'd expect on naturalism.

Yet, surely they are morally important. If someone kills another, it makes a major difference if it was done intentionally or accidentally. We rightly recognize that difference in the law.

But only for people who care about the long-term stability of society, not for those of more independent persuasion.  That's a lot of people.  Most people do in fact go faster than the speed limit, cheat on their taxes, and many refrain from calling the police if they have seen a crime, judging the judicial system inadequate to meet their needs.

Relatedly, utilitarianism undermines acts of moral supererogation, ones that are heroic and praiseworthy, yet not required. Suppose someone is jogging but notices another person in danger of being attacked by a third person with a knife. While we should expect that jogger to at least call for help (call the police or cry out, to scare off the attacker), it would be above and beyond the call of duty for that jogger to fight off the attacker and save the would-be victim. Yet, on utilitarianism, that act would be obligatory if it would result overall in net good consequences.

Then have fun refuting utilitarian advocates who think their system covers all possible moral situations.  Count me out.

Perhaps most significantly, utilitarianism makes net utility the basis for what is moral.

That's why it cannot be the answer to all moral situations, as most people do not agree that whatever is best in the long term for the majority of people is best.  People will flout the law for their own personal moral reasons often without caring whether this would help or hurt the larger concerns. 

Consider again our core morals: murder and rape are wrong, and justice and love are good.

Murder is not always wrong, its a question of whether the law which criminalize certain types of killing might end up operating to create a greater injustice, which discussion is not pointless merely because morals are relative.  We live with each other hear on earth, we don't need to claim we speak for God in order to legitimately seek what we believe is moral justice.

If you think rape is always immoral, then you are saying God is morally wrong.  See the Good News Translation of Deuteronomy 21:14.  Christian translators would hardly render the Hebrew as "forced her to have intercourse with you" if they could have grammatically justified any less rape-sounding translation. 

If the good consequences of a murder outweigh the bad, then that act would be justified and even obligatory.

But whether the good consequences DO outweigh the bad, is a moral judgment call that not even Christians can agree on.

The same goes for rape, whether under act or rule utilitarianism.

No, you only establish this "core" value by arbitrarily preempting the opinion held by remorseless rapists.  That's not very objective or clinical, that's nothing more than "those people are yucky so their opinion doesn't count."  And there are plenty of women who have a "rape fetish", and there is counseling available for rape victims who orgasmed during the rape.  But the victim having an orgasm during the rape probably isn't something you hear about in the mass media.  But an atheist could pounce on that as a proof that either your god doesn't exist, or the god who exists is a barbarian.  But that's not difficult anyway:  girls become capable of bearing children when they reach 12 years of age.  The male's sex drive is strongest during their teen years.  Why?  Might it be that your god seriously thought that having a family and working the farm was far more important than literacy, college and capitalism?

But these results clearly are deeply mistaken, to say the least. If this justification held, it could be moral to rape another person,

You don't have an argument indicating that rape is objectively immoral.  You just blindly presuppose that is the case because you know most people will agree with it.  But popularity doesn't equal truth.  You have to ask WHY most people think rape is wrong.  That's easy, the way they were raised:  most of us were not raised to take advantage of other people., and we were raised to believe that we shouldn't be subjecting somebody else to misery unless only a greater evil would occur without it, so since the satisfaction of the rapists sexual drive is not viewed by most people as a high priority, while their being born and raised in a democratic nation tells them the girl doesn't deserve to be raped, most people naturally eschew rape.

or murder a racial minority person who is protesting peacefully for civil rights.

There is no doubt that such a statement as this will garner an awful lot of support for you because America as a whole is steaming over the white cops killing black men.  But again, you have nothing but popularity on your side.  Once again, you cannot prove the objective immorality of a racist cop killing a black man in a way contrary to the applicable state and federal laws.   

But, we deeply know such acts are wrong; otherwise, why would there be such uproars against these acts?

But WHY do we "deeply know" such acts are wrong?  Gee, is it sheer coincidence that our viewpoint on such things is in harmony with the way most of us were raised, and in harmony with the kind of mammalian genetic predisposition most of us are born with (i.e., don't do something which threatens the survival of the group)?

Furthermore, your implied belief that murder is objectively immoral is disproven from the bible, in which God takes personal responsibility for all murders (Deuteronomy 32:39, Job 14:5, see Deut. 28:15-63).  You don't have to be a hyper-Calvinist to argue as a Christian that god is responsible for evil and works it to his own good.  That logically requires that when some white cop guns down a black man, God was more responsible for why the atoms in the cops brain did what they did, than the cop himself.  Biblical statements about God's omnipresence contradict biblical statements supporting libertarian freewill.  There is no place God is absent from, and that includes brain synapses.  Unless you wish to argue that ancient Semitic peoples tended to include exaggeration in their religious texts?  Gee, that wouldn't create a serious problem for inerrancy, would it? A Bible whose statements about God often exaggerate him?  How about a Court of law declaring the Affidavit of some witness "inerrant" despite its containing exaggerations?

Likewise, justice would be reduced to whatever is the result of the calculation. A rape or murder would be just in a society that is predominately one race if that act would maximize the overall benefits for the majority. Yet, if these acts can be just on this moral system, we have lost justice.

No, we'd have lost our current sense of justice.  Once again, your arguments blindly and wrongly presuppose that you DO have unchallengable "core" moral elements.  You don't.  You just have a lot of mammals in the world whose genetic predispositions are similar enough to explain their grouping together, but not similar enough to create moral utopia...exactly what we'd expect in a godless mammalian world where trying to stay alive and thrive is the ultimate purpose.

Indeed, murder’s and rape’s wrongness, and justice’s and love’s goodness, seem to be intrinsically so.

And there you go again appealing to the emotions of the reader, but surely an apologist can do better to prove objective morality, than by remarking that certain morals "seem" intrinsic.

But "intrinsic" doesn't have to imply transcendance.  Morals become lodged in our minds as we are raised by our caregivers.  I'm not seeing why that naturalistic explanation is leaving anything unexplained. 

Answering R. Scott Smith on subjective morality

 This is my reply to an article by R. Scott Smith entitled

Making Sense of Morality: An Introduction to Naturalism 

January 25, 2021/ R. Scott Smith

What should we make of these noncognitivist views? First, by reducing away any cognitive content from moral sentences, they end up being merely descriptive. But, morality deeply seems to be about what is normative, or prescriptive.

"Seems"?  Surely you have something to ground objective morality more than this?  

It also "seems" that Leviticus 21:9 is mere barbarism from an Iron Age culture.  Is "seems" sufficient for argument, yes or no? 

If people protest against a miscarriage of justice (e.g., an unarmed African-American man who was walking down a street, but was murdered by white men), they are not merely emoting. Instead, they deeply believe there was an injustice done, which is why they are upset.

But "deeply believe" doesn't an objective moral make.  The Nazi's "deeply believed" that the Jews deserved to be exterminated.  Christian Reconstructionists "deeply believe" that replacing all American law with the moral commands of the Pentateuch would be morally good.  But surely Christian moral scholars could not possibly agree on whether it was good.   Thus leaving skeptics no reason to think that God's absolute viewpoint is in there somewhere.

Second, moral judgments are not identical with feelings or commands, for the former can occur without the latter.

The show me a moral judgment that isn't identical with a feeling or a command.  Good luck.

We do not need to have any feelings when we state, “Murder is wrong.”

False, feelings reduce to 'thoughts', so you are saying we don't need to have thoughts when we state "murrder is wrong".

But even assuming your logic is correct, then we also don't need to have any feelings when we say "some moral situations would justify disobeying the law and committing vigilante justice."

But again, the wrongness of murder is inherently tied to the moral goodness of the law that is making such killing illegal.  If state law criminalized use of deadly force in self-defense, the fact that it thus became "murder" would not convince most Christians to conform, most would still use lethal force if they thought doing so was necessary to save them from an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm.

So then you can know that murder is sometimes morally good if you can spot moral flaws in the law which criminalizes certain types of killing.  What constitutes a moral 'flaw' is, of course, relative.  But that hardly means it is pointless.  Your liking the taste of some food that others hate is equally subjective, yet that doesn't require that it is flawed.

That's a big problem with you moral objectivists: you always act like the subjectivity of a moral opinion means that opinion is somehow defective.  Not at all. One parent in the neighborhood has her own dogmatic belief that the kids shouldn't be playing outside after 7 p.m., the parent down the street has the same attitude but her limit is 8 p.m.  These moral stances are subjective, but that hardly means that either of them are "flawed".

So stop telling yourself that "subjective" equals "flaw/defective".  It doesn't.  Even if it would make things difficult for inerrantists.

And, we can have feelings without moral judgments.

Sure, but not when it comes to morality.  If the store owner feels like he should call the police about the teen who stole a soda, I'm not seeing how that could possibly be distinguished from his moral judgment that such theft be prosecuted. 

Third, there is no room for any moral education or training on these views, since there is no cognitive content to learn and therefore no real moral disagreement.

No, moral disagreements don't require that at least one party hold to a moral that is objectively real or transcendent.  see above example about parents disagreeing about the latest time in the day to allow their kids to play outside.  Each parent can profitably teach their subjective moral to their kids, even if there is no god who has an absolute time for kids to stop playing outside.

But, this result undermines any training in moral virtue, such as in why we should address examples of injustices in society.

No, there is nothing about subjective morality that "undermines" requiring kids to obey their parents' subjective morals.  The only question is where we draw the line, and this, again, is subjective.  You continually presume that if the moral in question is not objective, then it is either wrong or pointless to deal with it.  This is absurd.

It also wouldn't matter if you were correct.  I too hear about racism in America's police department, and guess what:  I don't "address" those "examples of injustice in society", in the serious way that you obviously intended the word "address".  I might mention some such examples here or there, but I don't "address" them seriously. My life has enough of its own issues without needing to "address" such issues.  What are you going to say now?  All atheists who don't participate in political protest rallies aren't living consistently with atheist morality?

It also does not do justice to the fact that many of us do disagree morally. This is plain to see when we look at the many social and moral issues we deliberate and debate.

Once again, the moral disagreement between two persons doesn't have to implicate objective morals before their disagreements on it can be profitable.  Such as the child who doesn't want to wear the particular shoes the parent wants them to wear.  I can't see any divine oversight about such a trifle, and yet even most Christians would say the parent should discuss this with the child, since maybe one of them will discover some truth (i.e., the shoes give the child blisters, or the child is lying about the blisters, etc).

My question to Christian philosopher R. Scott Smith

 At the Christian apologetics site  https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/msm13

  R. Scott Smith's article is linked.  So I went to his contact page and sent him the following questions:

Hello, 

I am an atheist, and I was wondering what you think of the following argument:  When most people really think about it, they do not seriously believe that unreasonableness is an essential component of faulty argument.  For example, jurors are "wrong" to convict an innocent person, but if trial consisted of the right combination of clever prosecutor and incompetent defense attorney, you could hardly blame the jury for thinking it reasonable to view the suspect as guilty.

If then it be true that unreasonableness doesn't necessarily inhere in all faulty arguments/beliefs, aren't you admitting there is at least a possibility, even if not a probability, that one's denial of God might remain "reasonable" despite being "false"?

I ask because it is my experience that Christians are constantly equating a skeptical belief or skeptical denial with "unreasonableness", as if they thought "inaccurate" and "unreasonable" were necessarily synonymous, which not even a thesaurus will confirm.

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

I now answer the relevant portion of his argument at 

moralapologetics.com/wordpress/msm13

Now, we will see when we explore ethical relativism that while there is a fact of moral diversity amongst people and cultures, nonetheless those differences may not be as wide or deep as we have been taught.

So I guess apologists are wrong when they get from the bible the notion that hundreds of thousands of Canaanites lived a morality that was diametrically opposed to the morality of the Hebrews.

Instead, we can identify common morals that may be applied differently (e.g., how people in one culture show respect for their elders, versus how people in another culture do so).

I'm not seeing the point, the fact that we are all mammals and desire to live together means were are going to discover that the best way to facilitate this is to agree on some common morality.  Frank Turek's statement that atheists cannot sufficiently or reasonably account for why most humans in history have eschewed rape, is absurd.  If you desire to live in groups, outlawing rape is one definite way to enhance group survival.  On the other hand, God's requirement to burn pre-adolescent girls to death (if she is having illicit sex in her father's house, she is likely not married and still living there, thus she is likely 12 years old or younger since marriage took place at early age back then) is so despised by Christians that we could use Turek's logic "we all know that rape is wrong" and say "we all know that burning teen and preteen prostitutes to death is wrong", and we'd have set a basis for beliving that God wanted us to believe that Leviticus 21:9 wasn't from Him.

Further, just because there is a descriptive fact of diversity, that alone does not give us ethical relativism, which is a normative thesis.

Correction, doesn't "necessarily" give us ethical relativism.  But I myself do not argue that my conclusions abuot such matters follow "necessarily", especially in the area of which morals are "right".  

Which means I don't need to argue necessity to win the debate, all I have to show is that my position on the matter is reasonable.  Reasonableness can exist even if the opinion in question doesn't follow "necessarily".  Just like we can be reasonable to call the police only to find out later that we misinterpreted the scene.

Granted, too, irreducibly moral properties would be rather “queer” given naturalism. But, perhaps there are independent reasons why we should question that assumption. In later essays, I will suggest a few such reasons.

I've been analyzing Christian moral apologetics for several years now.  Matthew Flannagan did little more than run away when I debated him at his blog and asked what moral yardstick he uses to decide whether some human act is morally good or bad.  I documented many such failures on his part.  Here's two:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/matthew-flannagan-fails-to-show-child.html

 https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-latest-challenge-to-matthew-flannagan.html

Moreover, it is true that we may speak in ways that do not necessarily commit us to the reality of things we are talking about.

That's right.  The atheist who views his own morality as "absolute" is a fucking fool.

Generally, mere word uses do not have power to cause things to come into existence (except, for instance, stories). A scientific example was talk of phlogiston to explain combustion. Later, however, scientists discovered it was not real; instead, oxygen was what was involved.

Further, error theory does not explain why we find morality to be such a ubiquitous aspect of life.

Maybe so, but other atheist theories DO explain it.  Morality is found everywhere in human life because we are mammals and hard wired to be societal, and thus to prioritize that which contributes to group survival above that which inhibits it.  Little wonder then why most people eschew rape, child molestation, murder and theft, and have only good things to say about getting a job, raising kids, going to college, disinfecting the bathroom, etc, etc. 

After all, why talk morally if there are no morals?

Straw man, morals obviously exist, the problem is that they appear to be nothing more than opinions.  Atheists have just as much justification to talk about adultery as they have to talk about politics.  Nothing about those conversations express or imply that we are speaking about things that originate in something transcendent to humanity.

While error theory explains why we can talk morally, given naturalism, it still does not give us an adequate explanation of what morals are.

Easy:  when you say "you shouldn't steal" and "you shouldn't use the tv remote", these ultimately reduce to thoughts.   

If they are just the way we use words, then we can change morals by changing how we talk. In that case, murder could become right, and justice could become bad. But surely that is false.

What do you mean "surely"?  So at the end of the day, your argument for objective transcendent morals is nothing more than the fallacy or argument from outrage?

Murder is not intrinsically wrong merely because it is the "unlawful" killing of another human being, because this begs the question of whether such prohibitive law is itself always a good thing.  If the state law criminalized use of deadly force in self-defense, then killing in self-defense would be "murder", but that would hardly justify pretending that the law making it so was completely beyond criticism.

Probably wouldn't take me long to find many normal typical every day mature adult fathers who would make effort to murder the babysitter for molesting their child, even if the molestation did not put the child's life in danger (i.e., inappropriate touching, a crime that wouldn't justify use of lethal force).  Again, most of us are shocked by the news that a dead body with a bullet hole in its head was found in some ditch outside of town...but most of us stop crying if the news continues and says it is the body of a convicted pedophile who was recently paroled.  Our inability to cry equally giant tears when we hear of the death of a pedophile as when he hear about the death of a pedophile commits us to the premise that while the state law against murder is generally good for society, we are not foolish enough to think that it is an absolutely exceptionless standard.

Once again, most of us don't like gang warefare.  But if we heard on the news that two rival gangs met in a parking lot outside town and killed each other in a gun battle, most of us would be happy that additional human scum are not longer a threat.  It was murder, but the moral goodness of the result is no less apparent than the moral goodness of eating nutritious food.  And like it or not, yes, most people do believe the ends justify the means, even if they are willing to take the personal risks that would materialize if they lived in total consistency to that viewpoint.

As far as relative morality committing itself to the premise that in some situations, it would be morally good for justice to become bad, this seems to be a bit convoluted.  But even so, it isn't hard to imagine scenarios where a person believes that the way the law operates results in "bad justice", but where that person decides to just conform to it anyway.  The innocent suspect might be looking at only 2 years on a plea deal, but risks 20 years if he goes to trial.  He views his guilty plea as resulting in "bad justice", and yet it was morally good to him because he was forced to choose this evil over the greater evil of losing trial and getting 20 years.  Can it possibly be good for justice to be bad?  Yes.  In the civilized world we live in, any justice system is eventually going to put an individual in the situation of being required to either choose a lesser evil or a greater evil, so that their choosing the lesser evil ends up proving to be the "good" choice.

My challenge to moralapologetics.com

 I recently found a website where Copan, Flannagan, Habermas and others defend moral arguments for god and answer skeptical objections thereto:   https://www.moralapologetics.com

This was my first posted challenge to them, see https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/2021/2/17/why-the-horrendous-deeds-objection-is-still-a-bad-argument

barry • 3 minutes agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by https://www.moralapologetics.com/.

Can a skeptic possibly be reasonable in harboring a false argument against Christianity? Or do you insist that the falsity of their argument automatically necessitates unreasonableness?

my recent posts to YouTube about Lydia McGrew

 Since I cannot be certain those threads won't be deleted, here's what I posted to the comment-sections of several YouTube videos about Lydia McGrew:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTAja4qvn3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvlPWMiiQvY

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

When Lydia was asked why spiritually dead people should be expected to understand biblical matters when spiritually alive people cannot even agree on how to interpret most of it, she replied in a way that pretty much conclusively demonstrates that her commitment to Jesus is 100% naturalistic. She said

--------"Being spiritually alive has zilch to do with it." -------------

Apparently she has never read Romans 8:5-8, 1st Corinthians 2:14, 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, nor the scores of other NT verses that clearly teach that being spiritually dead either makes it exceptionally difficult, or outright impossible, for the unbeliever to understand spiritual/biblical matters. What an irony that the answer she gave would be contested by a large majority of conservative bible believing Trinitarian Christian scholars!

see http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2017/10/on_some_examples_in_plutarch.html

-

See my further answers to her:

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/lydia-mcgrews-suspicious-excuses-for.html

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2019/02/dr-lydia-mcgrews-errors-in-defending.html

-

I also show that Lydia's ceaseless "he said/she said" gossipy yappy form of "apologetics" constitutes the very "word-wrangling" that Paul explicitly prohibited in 2nd Timothy 2:14, see

https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2018/06/open-letter-to-lydia-mcgrew-your-online.html

-

What I should have added were the many biblical condemnations of being wordy and talkative:

https://www.openbible.info/topics/talking_too_much

Gee, Lydia couldn't possibly be guilty of the sin of too many words, could she?

-

I also directly and politely challenged Lydia to debate the resurrection of Jesus, as I have plenty of arguments that are unique and do not repeat the fanfare of HumeShe declined, saying

------------"Nobody who speaks in defense of the gospel, not even an apologist, is setting himself up to spend indefinite amounts of time answering anybody with a keyboard who comes along, thumps his chest, and says, "I hereby challenge you." Go away."-----------

-

So I wonder: if a skeptic does little more at his blog beyond critiquing Lydia's apologetics, but then declines her debate challenge by saying "Nobody who speaks in opposition to the gospel, not even a counter-apologist, is setting himself up to spend indefinite amounts of time answering anybody with a keyboard who comes along, thumps his chest, and says, "I hereby challenge you." Go away."

-

(I responded to her entire bullshit excuse for refusal to debate me, here: https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/11/lydia-mcgrews-suspicious-excuses-for.html)

-

Would Lydia suspect or not suspect a professional counter-apologist of being afraid of losing the debate, should he decline a debate challenge using the same pretexts that Lydia did? Or does she think it is written in the stars that only gossipy Christian apologists are allowed to use obviously dishonest excuses to duck challenges?

-

Lest anybody think it is only stupid skeptics who think Lydia is unnecessarily hostile in her comments, then maybe you think conservative Trinitarian inerrantist evangelical Ph.d experts on Jesus' resurrection are "stupid skeptics". Lydia's unnecessarily negative tone is also why Licona didn't wish to debate her:

https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2018/04/mike-licona-answers-regarding-lydia-mcgrew/

Maybe its just my "stupidity", but if anybody had an internet-world of constantly "refuting" their opponents, but then was also known to consistently duck challenges from capable opponents, it would be reasonable to infer that in at least some of those debate rejections, she is lying: her real reason for refusal to debate is the same reason a criminal Defendant would rather not take the witness stand: his bullshit story wouldn't last long under cross-examination.

Let's just say that because Lydia is so loud-mouthed about the errors of Habermas' "minimal facts" approach and Licona's refusal to use the canonical gospel resurrection narratives, this is going to justify skeptics to say that because even spiritually alive people cannot figure out what type of apologetics god wants the church to use, it is going to be reasonable for the skeptic to classify the subject matter as too convoluted to risk becoming involved with and then likely adding to their sins another sin of thinking Lydia is wrong and somebody else is right.

Cold Case Christianity - yes, Mr. Wallace: Denominational disagreements DO falsify Christianity

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

Cold Case Christianity: Do Denominational Disagreements Falsify Christianity?

Posted: 11 Feb 2021 08:00 AM PST

A common objection to Christianity focuses on the denominational differences existing between the numerous Christian sects we see across the globe. If there is one Christian God, why are there so many different denominations of Christians?

The bible clearly requires Christians to be in doctrinal agreement (1st Cor. 1:10, Phil. 2:2), and Paul made clear how sinful it was to disagree with his version of the gospel (Galatians 1:6-9), so the fact that so many Christian denominations today disagree on "Lordship Salvation" and the doctrines of grace (i.e., Calvinism v. Arminianism), means skeptics are reasonable to first demand that God give clear answers on these questions before they do what the fundies demand, and become completely devoted to never questioning but always agreeing with whatever the NT "teaches".

You can hardly foist an intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to resolve in 2 weeks of research the doctrinal differences that the Christian scholars of these respective denominations have been disagreeing on for decades.  And yet if you tell the skeptic that it is good for him to research such things, that is also committing yourself to the premise that the sketpic can safely delay the day of his repentance for perhaps years.  Can he? 

Don't you believe that the atheist is always one heart-beat away from hell?  If so, then why do you think the skeptic can "safely" delay the day of their repentance?  

Finally, there is no law of hermeneutics, historiography or common sense that says the skeptic is required to justify this basis for skepticism in an absolute way.

Does the existence of numerous (and contradictory) versions of Christianity prove Christianity is false?

No, their existence justifies the skeptic to put off the possibility of repenting and "getting save" until he or she has done enough research to satisfy themselves that a) NT authors give us correct theology, and b) that church over there in the modern world is the "right" one.  Since smart Christian scholars battle each other in these denominations, the time necessary to figure out which view of the NT is "right" is going to be a lifetime, since that's how long smart Christian scholars disagree about essential doctrines like Lordship salvation and the doctrine of grace.  So that the argument from extensive research time ends up justifying the skeptic who decides that the NT doesn't make a prima facie case in the first place, and therefore, the only people that should bother with it are those who personally find it fun to argue theology. 

If Christians can’t even agree on what they believe, why should anyone else believe Christianity is true?

Good point, but remember, the skeptic is completely outside Christianity.  He will not agree with you that "true" Christianity agrees about the Trinity and salvation by Grace, etc.  He will insist that the Jehovah's Witnesses and other "cults" disagree with mainline protestantism, and their views on NT theology deserve research no less than does the Trinitarian neo-evangelical view.

Truth, by its very nature, is often elusive and difficult to ascertain.

And according to Ezra 1:1, God can cause a person to believe whatever he wants them to believe with a mere wave of his magic wand. 

The more hidden or complex the truth claim, the more difficult it is to determine, given our limited capacity as humans.

And your god's apparently unwillingness to make the required theology clear justifies the skeptic to say that they will start getting serious with God when god starts getting serious with them.  Until then, God is free to pretend that his fortune cookie answers in the bible are sufficient to keep sinners accountable.  He is also free to believe that Japan is located in Germany. 

To make matters worse, our innate, fallen qualities of pride and rebellion cause us to disagree and separate from one another along the way.

Which only proves you are now preaching the choir.  Skeptics do not agree that it is humanity's sinful fallen limited nature that is to be blamed for their spiritual disagreements.  We rather say those disagreements arise because the bible is fatally ambiguous on those points.  otherwise you'd have to say that if you seriously believe your denomination is the "right religion", then you are a better person than Christians in other denominations, since you were able to figure it out, or you did something more than they did to attract god's enlightening grace.  But if you cannot charge Christians who disagree with your theology with being more sinful or stupid than you, then you are admitting that they can be just as saved and smart as you, and yet still misunderstand the bible.  Why you think this mess of conflicting views foists the least bit of intellectual obligation on any skeptic to jump in the fray, is anyone's guess.

Christians are not alone in their struggle to understand the truth. We aren’t the only people who struggle with disagreement and separation:

But skeptics who disagree with each other are in a better position than you:  they aren't claiming that it is the same god that is guiding all of them.  

So, Wallace, do you say God is guiding any denomination that you happen to disagree with?  

Human Disagreement is Common to Every Field of Study

The differences is that the non-Christians who disagree with each other aren't claiming they are being guided by any god.  The only way you can recover from that rebuttal is to allege, like a good Calvinist, that maybe god wants Christians to disagree on theology because he has a higher mysterious purpose.  But then such appeal to mystery provides skeptics even further reason to disregard Christanity.

So, you can't really say whether God will direct me to the right religion no matter how sincere I am in asking him to?  Then why the fuck would I bother with such a god? 

Very few fields of study are characterized by uniform agreement. As an example, secular scientists who study the origin of the universe have divided into a number of theoretical camps, including “Big Bang” Cosmologists, “Steady State” Cosmologists, “Conformal Cyclic” Cosmologists, “Ekpyrotic” Cosmologists, “Multiverse” Cosmologists, “Pre-Big Bang Theory” Cosmologists, “Quantum Theory” Cosmologists and many more. These careful thinkers are examining the same set of facts, yet have separated in disagreement with one another, even though they agree on many essential issues.

Same answer.

Human Disagreement is Common to Every Worldview

More expansive worldviews are not immune to this kind of disagreement. For example, a quick search on the Internet reveals those who deny the existence of God have categorized themselves in a number of varying ways, including “Implicit” Atheists, “Explicit” Atheists, “Weak” Atheists, “Strong” Atheists, “Iconoclastic” Atheists, “Pragmatic” Atheists, “Mono” Atheists, “Myopic” Atheists, “Realistic” Atheists, “Scientific” Atheists, “Logical” Atheists and many more. Even people who have examined the same set of facts and hold an atheistic worldview have distinguished themselves as distinct from one another, even though they agree on many essential issues.

Once again, we don't claim to be guided by a god, so our disagreements with each other are not problematic.  YOU claim that mainline Protestant Christian denominations are guided by God, otherwise you'd have to publicly specify which such churches you think aren't guided by God, and you wouldn't dare pretend to be that smart.

Human Disagreement Does Not Negate the Existence of Truth

But human disagreement can justify an outsider's skepticism that the truth can be successfully found, thus justifying the skeptic to avoid devoting serious effort to discovering that "truth". 

While people may disagree about a specific truth claim, this disagreement does not mean a particular truth does not exist or cannot be known.

But Christian disagreement on biblical doctrine has persisted for 2,000 years, strongly implying that either Christians are a special breed of stupid, or else the biblical wording is genuinely fatally ambiguous, the latter of which would justify anybody to avoid wasting their time trying to figure out your god's fortune cookie bullshit. 

In every jury trial, two sides oppose one another; one side believes the defendant is guilty, the other side believes the defendant is innocent. There is a truth related to the defendant’s guilt or innocence, in spite of the disagreement. Even though both sides are examining the same set of facts, they’ve come to two separate conclusions. One of them is right and one of them is wrong. Truth is not negated by their disagreement.

But the fact that so many juries become deadlocked suggests that some pursuits of "truth" are exercises in futility.

Worse, apologists conveniently forget that they are dealing with allegeldy "spiritual" truth, so that when they encourage the skeptic to study biblical truth, they are not doing the equal of asking the skeptic to study geographical truth.  They are asking the skeptic to get involved in what the apologist views as a realm that is full of spiritual danger.  Apologists are fucking idiots to do what they usually do, and encourage skeptics to enter this realm, since by their own opinion, a person's only protection from spiritual deception is their salvation in Christ.  Smart skeptics would likely conclude the demonstrable benefits of "getting saved" are outweighed by the alleged "dangers".

Christians of every denomination have examined the same set of facts from the Biblical text and the 1st Century evidence. While we may disagree about a number of peripheral matters, we agree on the essential doctrines of the Christian Worldview.

No, you disagree about the nature of Christ's resurrection, his deity, the trinity, how to get saved, whether "getting saved" is even understood correctly by the fundies, etc. 

You will trifle that your disagreements with Jehovah's Witnesses and other legalists or "heretics" don't count beacuse those guys are just "cultists", but it is the skeptic who has to decide whether these groups count in the final analysis.  They do.  What are you going to do, demand that a spiritually dead skeptic "recognize" that Christians who deny Christ's deity and bodily resurrection aren't "true" Christians?  LOL.  Why don't you also teach calculus to a dog? 

As a result, we can accurately call each other “brothers and sisters in the faith.”

There is nothing in the bible supporting the modern Christian premise that God cares more about "essential" theology.  If God inspired the entire bible, then it would appear that the Christians are only inventing the "essential/non-essential theology" distinction because that is the best way they can think of to deal with the doctrinal differences without admitting defeat.  But just read Revelation, it certainly seems like the allegedly divinely inspired author expected his readers to know what he was talking about...thus God expected the readers to know what he was talking about...thus when two Christians disagree on their interpretation of Revelation, it MUST be that one of them is not correctly hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Unless you charge that Christian with lack of salvation, lack of sincerity or having unconfessed sins (accusations you aren't likely to hurl), then you must live with the logical possibility that God wants that other Christian to misunderstand Revelation.  Hopefully you don't need to be told why skeptics would tell any god who toys with people that way to go fuck himself. 

These disagreements are a reflection of the fallen nature of humans.

No, they are the result of the biblical wording being genuinely fatally ambiguous. 

All of us, regardless of worldview or area of study, are influenced by our pride and rebellion; we often separate from one another over minor issues having no bearing on the overall truth of a matter. Christians are no more immune to this tendency than those who deny the existence of God altogether.

But the bible seems to clearly insist that Christians be immune to that tendency.  Philip. 2:2, etc, supra.

While we may disagree about a number of peripheral matters, we agree on the essential doctrines. As a result, we can accurately call each other brothers and sisters in the faith.

Then apparently you didn't write this in an effort to refute skeptics, you were only trying to help Christians feel better about transcending their denominational differences.  Which means you failed to support your basic thesis that denominational disagreements don't falsify Christianity.

When a skeptic refuses to enter that allegedly dangerous realm of the spiritual unless god makes the truth equally as clear to her as God made it clear to apostle Paul, as they asking too much of the bible god, yes or no?  What use is the bible if you are going to make endless excuses about why God no longer wishes to reveal truth the dramatic way he allegedly did in the bible?  Doesn't that teach the skeptic that becoming a Christian requires them to sharpen their skills are picking and choosing?

Jason Engwer either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, authenticating evidence: The Enfield poltergeist farce, again

 I cannot believe what a dipshit Jason Engwer is.   I've written about his Enflield Poltergeist crap before.  See here and here.

He is expecting his readers to draw confident conclusions about the paranormal based on audio recordings of the "Enfield Poltergeist" that somebody else uploaded to YouTube.  See here.

Gee, Jason, have you never heard of authentication, and what is implied when you cannot or will not authenticate the evidence you supposedly want skeptics to deal with?

Or maybe you think authentication was invented only by skeptics to make sure they could get rid of most of the evidence for the spiritual world?

An examination of the people who uploaded that audio also doesn't inspire confidence:

DescriptionWe are The Paranormal Detectives - a duo of paranormal investigators that visit haunted locations in an attempt to catch evidence of the paranormal on camera. Everything you see on this channel is real. No evidence is tampered with. Nothing is faked. Be sure to subscribe to us and follow our journey of the paranormal world.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalDetectives/about

In other words, Engwer wants his Christian readers to think that these promises of authenticity are dependable, when in fact the "paranormal detectives" won't claim to have been the person who made the recording.  

That would be like me telling you that the moon rocks in my possession are not fakes.  Given that i wasn't the one who originally obtained them, how the fuck could I possibly expect you to believe that claim of authenticity was reliable?

Engwer is willing to talk all day and night about what he knows from the tapes, but he doesn't upload them, nor provide any authenticity declaration.  See here.

Engwer created a post entitled "The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible",  but, as usual, he doesn't direct us to downloads of those tapes. instead, he boasts "I've only listened to a small minority of the audio so far. I intend to write posts about the contents of the tapes as warranted."  See here.

Engwers most comprehensive resource page for this paranormal fakery appears to be "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism", but, as usual, he doesn't provide links to downloads of the audio, but instead boasts "After the digitizing of Guy Playfair's tapes was completed, I wrote a post about it."  LOL!  See here.

Let's just say that if Engwer were being prosecuted for murder in court, and the chain of custody for the incriminating recordings had all of the flaws the "Enfield tapes" do, Engwer would be screaming his head off that charges need to be dropped for lack of authentication.  We skeptics are not the least bit unreasonable to demand, before we turn over our entire lives to an invisible man, that the evidence in favor of the spirit world meets the highest tests of authenticity. Jason, did you forget that spiritual evil exists everywhere, and according to you, especially in the case of people who are considering taking the spirit world more seriously?

And so you think that believing some shit found on the internet should be "good enough" to pretend that the reviewer has been placed under an intellectual obligation to either confess the reality of the spirit world, or confess their bias against supernaturalism renders them unable to objectively evaluate the evidence?

So unless Engwer thinks the authentication tests required in a Court of law are unreasonably high, he cannot balk at skeptics who demand that checkable Affidavits of Authentication demonstrating a chain of custody and authentication accompany these alleged recordings from the 1970's, before there is any chance of this evidence foisting the least bit of moral or intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to 'explain' it.

Yes, that would make things impossible for Engwer, because the two girls who played this joke on paranormal investigators have never done what would otherwise be normal in court, and testified under oath to the authenticity of those tapes.  At most they visited the haunted house 40 years later, and they have appeared on talk programs, but they have never done anything remotely near as serious as testifying under oath.

So the truth is, you don't have the first fucking clue how much of such alleged audio is authentic and how much isn't.  Maybe Jason has a better idea, but that is hardly relevant to the skeptic, who isn't getting anything more from Engwer except endless trifles about how skeptics aren't dealing with certain details and have misinterpreted the evidence.

Release the properly authenticated Enflield recordings, Jason, or use up some brain cells trying to reconcile the obvious contradiction between your strong belief that this poltergeist was real, and your own refusal to release the relevant recordings.

NOW what are you going to do, Jason?  Maybe direct us to equally unauthenticated videos and audios "from the internet" ?

Since Jason cannot be accused of being retarded, it is certainly reasonable to infer that Jason's refusal to release the tapes is not due to oversight, but intention.  Well gee, if the tapes prove so much, why are you unwilling to release them?  Did you have a deal with SPR to keep the tapes private so other people could make money charging access fees?  What exactly?

Did you have a vision of God who told you to avoid writing down what the clouds said releasing the tapes?

LOL

Jason once said "The case and the tapes deserve further study."  See here.

Correction:  the case and the PROPERLY AUTHENTICATED tapes deserve further study.  Which apparently means they don't become deserving of further study until Jason decides that the unbeliever's peril in refusing to believe in the spiritual is so great as to "deserve" giving them Jason's best possible evidence...as opposed to his ceaselessly trifling about this shit as if he thinks it was the 28th book of the NT.

Jason's post at the Paranormal Detective YouTube channel from about January 2021 is:

Jason Engwer 

2 months ago 

Thanks for posting these clips. I've listened to all of the tapes, in their digitized form, and have posted a lot of articles on the contents of the tapes, if anybody is interested. Search for a post titled "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism" at Triablogue. The tapes have a triple-digit number of hours of material, including a lot that hasn't been discussed publicly much or at all. The evidence for the case is much better than people typically suggest.

Then why aren't you releasing the full and properly authenticated audio?  Maybe you are afraid of bowling over the skeptics with so much evidence for the spiritual world that skeptics will start committing suicide?  YEAH RIGHT.  Triablogue exists for no other reason than to stomp down skeptical arguments.  So we are reasonable to believe that if you seriously believed the Enfield tapes proved your conclusions, you'd have uploaded them by now.  You've had since July 2018 to do this, but you haven't.  You forfeit your right to balk if skeptics become suspicious that you know your evidence is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

So now that we know Jason has all the tapes digitized, we have to wonder why he thinks it would be better for the world if they were only given mere tidbits of unauthenticated bits of the tapes here and there, downloadable without the slightest assurance of authenticity, interspersed with his endlessly trifling comments about how skeptics didn't account for this and that.  FUCK YOU.