Triablogue: Dividing up Christianity is just as easy as we suggested

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Jason Engwer entitled:

Dividing Up Early Christianity Is More Difficult Than Often Suggested

It's common for people commenting on Easter issues, as well as issues in other contexts, to put one strand of early Christianity against another. They'll claim that a particular belief is found in one gospel, but not another. The Pauline letters have one view of a subject, but a contrary view is found in the gospels.

They are correct.  Apostle Paul taught that righteousness doesn't come from the Law.  Galatians 2:21.  But Jesus not only taught that it does (the context for Matthew 5:17-20 is not "imputed righteousness" but v. 21 ff, which make actual personal righteousness a requirement for salvation), but that anything he taught the original apostles is also required of all future Gentiles, see Matthew 28:20, the part of the Great Commission most Christians miss.  If that is true, then because Jesus ordered the apostles to obey the Pharisee's commands (Matthew 23:3), Matthew also thought the risen Christ required the same of Gentiles. 

And that's how you prove Matthew was one of the Judaizers that Paul cursed in Galatians 1:8. 

And so on. In the context of Easter, we'll be told that Paul had no concept of the empty tomb

Making me wonder what you do with skeptics like me, whose arguments against the empty tomb are far more powerful than that.  1st Corinthians 15 is too convoluted to bother with, and any idiot who believed what you think Paul believed, could have expressed himself more clearly on the point.  Had Paul any concern for the historical Jesus, which he didn't, he could have appealed to the resurrection of Lazarus, and that would have made things as clear as Jesus wanted.  Adding apostle Paul to your Christianity is like getting married to a mentally retarded criminal.  You have to be sick in the head to do it.

or that some portions of early Christianity believed in a form of resurrection that didn't involve the transformation of the body that died, for example.

Ever read 2nd John 1:7?  How could the 1st century gnostic Christians possibly believe in a bodily resurrected Christ, when they asserted that his pre-resurrection body was illusory?   And there you go, a first century group of Christians who saw nothing particularly compelling with the "bodily resurrection" hypothesis.  Hell, even Paul's churches included people who denied resurrection outright (1st Cor. 15:12).

One of the points that ought to be made in these contexts is that the alleged differing strands of early Christianity often express agreement with one another. On the resurrection, Paul refers to how he and the rest of the apostles were in agreement (1 Corinthians 15:11).

FAIL.  That is only Paul alleging that the other apostles experienced things similar to himself.  A quick analysis will reveal serious problems justifying skepticism toward Paul's testimony here:

 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
 6 After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep;
 7 then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles;
 8 and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. (1 Cor. 15:3-8 NAU)

Paul's list was intended to convey the notion of chronological progression, therefore the appearance to Cephas was first.  But assuming the gospel of Mark really is the written form of Peter's preaching as some church fathers alleged, sure is strange that Peter (assuming he is the same as Cephas) didn't mention his own experience of the risen Christ (didn't the apostles value eyewitness testimony as much as Triablogue does?  If the apostles didn't find it necessary to write 6,000 articles addressing every possible trifle against theiir faith, Triablogue will have to admit there is a serious probability that it's sin of word-wrangling truly does signify a lack of sanctification.  A true Christian cares more about walking in the light, and less about "my arguments are still powerful whether I live in sin or not"). 

It's more strange if Peter did give his testimony and Mark somehow didn't think that part sufficiently important to justify mentioning despite the fact that Peter was the source, and the resurrection of Jesus the capstone of the gospel.  Your conjured up possible scenarios (Maybe mark forgot, maybe this, maybe that) will never be powerful enough to render my skepticism at this point unreasonable. Even stranger, even assuming Mark's long ending is canonical, there is no appearance to Peter there either.  We are fully justified to say the gospels don't mention any appearance to Peter before an appearance to the 12, because the gospel authors did not know of any such appearances, not because they were knowingly suppressing relevant testimony.  They already had a hard case to prove, they would likely regard ALL resurrection testimony, which they viewed as reliable, to be indispensable.  So skepticism toward Paul's resurrection summary is justified.  Contrary to popular belief, skepticism doesn't need to be founded on absolutes anymore than Christian faith does.

The appearance to 500 brothers at one time is recorded nowhere else in the NT, and worse, there can be no intellectual constraint on the skeptic to admit that testimony, since you don't know whether Paul says such a thing based on his own personal knowledge, or if he is conveying hearsay, or if he simply made it up in the typical fashion of Semitic exaggeration, which Flannagan and Copan tell us was the case with the "kill'em all" passages in the OT.

There is no appearance to 'James' in any of the gospels, except of course the Gospel to the Hebrews...wanna go there?  I didn't think so.  Like the atheist who has already decided that miracles are impossible, YOU have already decided that the Gospel to the Hebrews is not worthy of being taken seriously, since you aren't stupid enough to open epistemological doors you'll never close again.  Welcome to the club of smug presuppositionalism.  Maybe God wants you to do something else in life beside spend his money resurrecting demon inspired events for posterity, you fuckin fool.

Paul's using the same word for "appear" (Greek: horao) for all the listed appearances including to himself was dishonest, since the most explicit NT stories about Jesus appearing to Paul, neither express nor imply that he was an "eyewitness" in the sense that the gospels portray the Christ-appearances to the other apostles.  Go ahead, read Acts 9, Acts 22 and Acts 26.  Let me know when you find anything saying Paul saw anything more than a "light from heaven".  I also answered Steve Hays' trifles about the historicity of Paul's Damascus road experience, here.  Paul was NOT an "eyewitness" of the risen Christ.  And it wouldn't matter if he was, the apostolic test for apostleship is not "did you see the risen Christ?" but "were you present among Jesus' followers from the beginning of his earthly ministry"? (Acts 1:21).  You'll excuse me if I reject Paul's criteria of apostleship in favor of Peter's.  Feel free to join J. Vernon McGee in accusing Peter and the church in Acts 1 of defying the will of God, but don't say so publicly, you're liable to get steamrolled with details in Acts 1 you've shut your eyes to.

On the other hand, a theory that Paul wasn't being dishonest in 1st Cor. 15 would require that the manner in which Paul experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus is the way Paul thought the apostles experienced Jesus, which is bad news for you, given the nonsensical "Jesus-was-there-but-didn't-allow-anybody-to-see-him-except-Paul" absurdity, the likes of which would get any case based on similar nonsense tossed out of court, the the Plaintiff sued for filing a frivolous claim.  The reasonableness of the skeptical alternatives is not going to disappear merely because you can trifle about this or that.

To cite another example, see here regarding the likely reference to Luke's gospel as scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18.

Don't forget to tell them that some inerrantist Christian scholars deny the connection:

  It is not likely that Paul was quoting the Gospel of Luke, a document whose date of writing is uncertain. Paul may have been referring to a collection of Jesus’ sayings, some of which appear in Luke’s Gospel.
Lea, T. D., & Griffin, H. P. (2001, c1992). Vol. 34: 1, 2 Timothy, Titus (electronic ed.). The New American Commentary (Page 156). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

But I'm sure that Jason Engwer will still "expect" spiritually dead skeptics to successfully navigate the disputes that conservative inerrantist Christian scholars have with each other.  To think anything else is to give them excuse to deny God, and Romans 1:20 must be upheld to the death, amen?

Paul's letters are referred to as scripture in 2 Peter 3:15-16.

You say nothing here that might intellectually obligate a non-Christian to agree.

An example cited less often, but which has a lot of significance, is the early patristic attestation of how highly John viewed the Synoptic gospels.

Matthew made Jesus into a Judaizer (23:3, 28:20), yet John's gospel nowhere expresses or implies that Gentiles must obey the Pharisees.  Perhaps somebody can have high regard for an author, without agreeing with everything that author said?  Just like Jason Engwer has high regard for Steve Hays, while thinking Hays' Calvinism is an absurd misinterpretation of scripture (or did you become a Calvinist since 2015?)

See here concerning what Papias tells us about John's view of the gospel of Mark.

And just forget about  Papias' credibility problems.  You are here to live through your blog, not "convince" anybody of anything.  Also forget about the fact that you cannot demonstrate that any modern person is under the least bit of intellectual or moral obligation to give two shits about ancient hearsay.  So when we refuse to consider it, we aren't breaking any rules of intellectual or moral integrity. 

It sucks to be you because you are doing more to promote the gospel than even your own god!  Don't tell me God works through you, or I will ask why you don't profess to write inerrantly.  Where does the bible say God's inspiration would affect people of the future to a lesser degree than it did the biblical authors?

(And for more about Papias and his relationship with the apostle John, see here.) Clement of Alexandria cited some elders who commented on John's view of the Synoptics. See here for more about that passage.

Wow, I never knew Triablogue put so much stock in ancient hearsay at third-hand.  Jesus' resurrection is as obvious as the existence of trees.  I faint from fear of your god.  Can I borrow some dust and ashes?  Or are you a dispensationalist?

Notice, too, that much of what I'm saying here holds up even if the traditional authorship attributions of the New Testament documents are rejected. I explain some of the reasons why in my article on 1 Timothy 5:18 linked above, and those principles apply to other documents as well, not just 1 Timothy.

How much would Christianity suffer if it could be proven that the modern person is not under the least bit of intellectual compulsion to give two fucks what the 4 gospels say?  Sounds like a reasonable argument for rejecting traditional gospel authorship, which I can easily make and have made numerous times before, disposes of 4 of those resurrection witnesses, in a circumstance where you don't have very many witnesses anyway, and therefore the loss of 4 witnesses could not possibly be trivilaized, unless you are a Pentecostal Calvinist like Steve Hays, who thinks his personal experience of Christ counts for beans in such a debate.

Similarly, even if you think the elder Papias referred to was somebody other than the apostle John, the fact would remain that Papias was highly influenced by the Johannine documents (as I argue in my material linked above), and he held a high view of the Synoptics.

He also held a high view of talking grapes.  Let's just say I don't exactly lose sleep at night wondering whether Papias should still be believed or not despite his credibility problems.   I've rejected him and you haven't given me the slightest reason to worry I might have been wrong.  The difference between you and I is that I'm always open to dialogue and debate; YOU are just a chickenshit cocksucker who carefully avoids explaining why he won't put up or shut up.

For example, I asked you for all the evidence you had on the Enfield Poltergiest that you think God wants you to endless blog about, perhaphs thinking in doing so you are mirroring the apostles.  I'm still waiting.  Perhaps you have a new theory?  Maybe atheists who want to evaluate the same evidence you do, are not "worthy" to be given access?

 You can tell from my debates here that when I'm involved in formal debate, I use nicer language, so don't hide behind the pretext of "foul language".  I'll talk nicer if that's what you demand, you posterboy for masculinity, you.  And if you demand I talk nicer, I'd love to hear you comment on whether James Patrick Holding's use of foul insulting language and slurs for the last 20 years can intellectually justify a person to be suspicious that his claim to salvation is complete bullshit.

Any fool can post endless blog entries about Christian theology, but direct debate is where you find out whether their blog posts are substantive, or just organized noise.

Furthermore, saying that the elder Papias refers to wasn't the apostle John doesn't change the fact that he was some sort of prominent early church leader who didn't write the gospel of Mark and seems to have operated largely outside of the circles that gospel's author is usually associated with, yet he held a high view of that gospel.

An anonymous person held a high view of an anonymous gospel.  Don't make me put my beer down, turn off the stereo and start trembling in fear before your empty sky.

Rejecting something like Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy or the identification of Papias' elder as the apostle John would weaken my argument, but the argument would still carry some weight.

But you'll never establish that there is the least bit of intellectual or moral obligation upon any modern person to so much as CARE what the gospels say in the first place.  I can make a reasonable biblical case that Jesus' warnings about eternal conscious torment contradict the Old Testament, so that there's about as much danger in rejecting the gospel as there is in deleting spam email.

Times are changing, you won't be scaring anybody into heaven if I can help it.   Now tell yourself the Holy Spirit allowed me to post this rebuttal piece because he wants you to think of new creative ways to convince yourself that you can stand up to my debate challenges without needing to actually debate.

Demolishing Triablogue: The Jewish objection to the empty tomb is a reasonable justification for skepticism

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

Early Jewish Acknowledgment Of The Empty Tomb

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A few early Christian sources tell us that their Jewish opponents acknowledged that Jesus' tomb was found empty after the body had been placed there. Were the later sources just repeating what the first one, Matthew, told them?
Even if so, there's no good reason to reject Matthew's report.

You are blindly assuming we are obligated to believe anything we read in ancient religious history unless somebody comes along and proves the source unreliable.  You are high on crack.  I have about as much intellectual obligation to believe Matthew's report as I have to believe 1st Enoch.  You couldn't demonstrate the unreasonableness of complete apathy toward the gospels if your life depended on it.  FUCK YOU.

The gospel seems to have been written by a Jew and seems to have been written for an audience with a lot of knowledge of Judaism, Israel, and other elements of Christianity's early Jewish context.

Which is precisely why Matthew's failure to say anything that might support apostle Paul is telling.  Matthew was a Judaizer.

R.T. France notes that the idea of non-Jewish authorship of the gospel "enjoyed quite a vogue" during the third quarter of the twentieth century, "but is now not widely supported" (The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2007], n. 26 on p. 15).

Ok, then you cannot complain if a skeptic bases some of their reasonableness-arguments on the fact that some belief is "widely accepted".

Grant Osborne comments that "One major consensus is that Matthew writes a Jewish gospel." (Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2010], p. 31) Matthew comments that acknowledgment of the empty tomb by Jewish opponents of Christianity originated just after Jesus' death and existed "to this day" (Matthew 28:15), a claim that easily could have been falsified if untrue.

You are blindly assuming that the Christians made such a big spectacle of the resurrection preaching that opponents would have cared enough to "refute" it.  Since Acts is a combination of history and fiction, I don't really give a fuck if it presents the Jews as angry at Christian preaching.  And it is far from certain that the Jews would have known which exact tomb Jesus was buried in.  Must it be that Joseph of Arimathea told them where it was?  Must it be that the cemetery was crowded with people when Joe was putting Jesus inside the tomb?

And like so much else in Christian history, it remains possible that the Jews DID falsify the empty tomb theory, but accounts of this were suppressed or destroyed (at least one wasn't, Justin knew of such account).   Indeed, the Jews could have done such a thing in less than one day's time, and there's no reason to suppose a written record of that would have been made or would have survived.  So quit implying the impossibility of the skeptical theory.

And of course, Jesus' resurrection can be falsified on numerous grounds independent of your trifles about the empty tomb.  IMO, the only reason there was early tradition about Jesus being buried in a rich man's tomb was because this was a fiction invented to make his death conform more to Isaiah 53.  Under stupid apologist reasoning, skeptics have no reasonable choice except to believe anything that is "multiply attested"...such as Matthean priority.

William Lane Craig discusses some other evidence that Matthew's account is reliable.

Around the middle of the second century, Matthew's account is corroborated by a passage in Justin Martyr in which he seems to quote from a Jewish source on the subject.

Gee, 1st Enoch also "corroborates" Genesis 6.

In section 108 of his Dialogue With Trypho, Justin seems to cite a Jewish document or tradition, in which Jesus is referred to as a "deceiver" and reference is made to Jesus as Him "whom we crucified", apparently speaking from the perspective of non-Christian Jews ("we"). This passage in Justin contains multiple details not found in Matthew's gospel. For example, Michael Slusser's edition of Justin has him referring to how the Jews "chose certain men by vote and sent them throughout the whole civilized world" in order to argue against Christianity, including by accusing the disciples of stealing the body from the tomb (Dialogue With Trypho [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2003], p. 162). It's not as though people would have been dependent solely on Matthew for information on such subjects. Justin had more than Matthew's account to go by. And he seems to be quoting some sort of Jewish document or tradition.

It may well have been that the Jews said the disciples stole the body.  I don't see the problem, as that's a very reasonable criticism, since Christians cannot deny that at least some of the original players knew where Jesus was originally buried (Matthew 27:61).  So you cannot deny their ability to steal the body.  Then we also have a motive to steal the body if we assume historicity of the accounts in Acts.  You will insist they were cowards without a motive at Jesus' crucifixion, but I don't believe everything in the gospels the way you do.  Such stories of cowards can easily be accounted for by the theory that by making them into cowards, their "transformation" upon seeing Jesus seems more dramatic.

You will say they wouldn't have stolen the body because they later died for their beliefs as martyrs.  But the best that can be gleaned from such legends is that the apostles were executed for being Christians.  I'm not aware of any reliable accounts that say any apostle was given a chance to deny Christ and live.  So the fact they were executed, if true, does not increase the probability that they endured such death willingly.  But since I say the original bodily resurrection story was rooted in nothing but visions, we are dealing with fanatics who could easily deceive themselves so much as to be willing to die for beliefs that had no external corroboration.

Are you willing to die for Jesus?

And yet you are not an eyewitness, right?  See how that works?  You CAN get to the point of having a martyrdom complex even when you have no first-hand knowledge.

Justin is familiar with many Jewish responses to Christianity, as his interactions with their scripture interpretations, for example, demonstrate. He "shows acquaintance with rabbinical discussions" (ibid., n. 9 on p. 33). Bruce Chilton writes that Justin "appears to adapt motifs of Judaism", and Rebecca Lyman comments that Justin "is aware of Samaritan customs as well as some patterns of rabbinic exegesis" (in Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, edd., Justin Martyr And His Worlds [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007], pp. 83, 163). He wasn't just repeating what he read in the New Testament documents. He's aware of Jewish arguments outside of those reflected in the New Testament, and he's aware of post-apostolic developments in Judaism. His willingness to compose a work as lengthy as his Dialogue With Trypho tells us something about his interest in Jewish arguments against Christianity.
Though Justin wrote around the middle of the second century, he sets his dispute with Trypho earlier, around the year 135. And the Jewish tradition he's citing in the passage I mentioned above would date even earlier.

So?  I don't see anything unreasonable in accusing the disciples of stealing the body, as I take the gospel descriptions of the post-crucifixion disciples as cowards, to be mere hyperbole or straight up lying, since the gospels also expect us to believe they were obstinately stupid even after watching Jesus perform genuinely supernatural stunts for three years.

If you think "multiple attestation" proves me wrong, then apparently you are a dipshit who is not aware of how a single false belief can take root and become repeated by thousands of others.  See Acts 21:18-24.  Multiple attestation is not a worthless criteria, but you push it too god-damn hard and act as if skeptics have nowhere to run as soon as one report is "corroborated".

And since most Christian scholars posit a theory of literary interdependence between the Synoptics, it is less likely these are three independent witnesses to disciple cowardice and only one report that is merely being repeated with fictional modification by the later gospels.

  You also don't acknowledge that two contrary positions can be equally reasonable, probably because you have no objective criteria for reasonableness.  Probably because if you did, you'd eventually have to explain why most professional historians don't find the gospel narratives particularly believable.

Late in the second century, Tertullian summarizes Jewish arguments concerning the empty tomb:
"This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!" (The Shows, 30)
Notice that Tertullian mentions something that neither Matthew nor Justin had reported.

Which means we have no choice but to accept it as gospel truth.

Apparently, the argument that the disciples stole the body was still the primary Jewish response.

Which is reason enough to take the Jewish response seriously, instead of dismissing it with "the Jews sure did care about Christianity immediately after Jesus died!  Wouldn't they have exhumed the body and put forth all that effort to suppress the resurrection message!?!"

But some Jews had argued that the body was moved by a gardener, perhaps because of how implausible the argument for theft by the disciples had become in light of the suffering and martyrdom of the disciples.

No, you cannot historically justify saying the disciples were "martyred".  It could very well be that in addition to the correct theory, another theory to explain the empty tomb became popular.  1st century Palestine was a hotbed of false rumor.  Read Josephus.  Early Christianity was a hot-bed of fictional claims that attracted ignorant converts.  Read the pastorals.

Keep in mind that the argument that the disciples stole the body originated before any of the disciples died as martyrs and before they had suffered much. The argument was better early on than it would become later.

No, you find the Jews declaring the "disciples stole the body" argument in Matthew, then you blindly assume the Jews were saying such things in 34 a.d.  But most scholars date Matthew to 70 a.d., which is right when most of the apostles would have already died.  That is, the author safely delayed his accusations of what Jews were saying in 34 a.d. until the actual Jews that would know better, were likely dead.

Now what are you going to do?  Suddenly discover that Matthew was  published in 34 a.d.?

It should also be noted that Tertullian, like Justin, wrote an entire treatise against Judaism (An Answer To The Jews). The idea that he would have been dependent solely on Matthew for his knowledge of the Jewish response to the Christian claim about the empty tomb is unlikely.

So?  Once again, I think accusing the disciples of stealing the body is reasonable, and so would anybody else who is objective and doesn't blindly insist on biblical inerrancy, or misunderstand rules of historiography as infallible guides.

All three of these early Christian sources include information not mentioned by the others. All three would have had easy access to the Judaism of their day, and they all show interest in interacting with Jewish arguments against Christianity. Matthew and Justin are making highly public claims that could easily have been discerned to be false if they had been false (e.g., "to this day" in Matthew, men "sent throughout the whole civilized world" in Justin).

And since most scholars date Matthew to 70 .a.d., we are reasonable to say the earliest date Matthew publicized such story of Jewish scheming was 70 a.d.  You have no fucking clue the extent to which Matthew's oral preaching repeated anything in his written gospel.  But I'm sure you will pretend that the only reasonable conclusion is that he would have preached every bit of the written form....something that would identify him as a Judaizer and opponent of Paul.

And once again, you continue pretending that the the earliest Christian resurrection preaching would have bothered the Jews enough for them to desire to go exhume Jesus' body, when in fact it is likely they would not wish to rob such grave, it was illegal, and they'd need Roman permission which likely wouldn't be granted.

 I also believe the original resurrection belief was "visionary", so that the Jews would be even less worried to "refute" such mindless bullshit.

All three include information unlikely to have been made up by a Christian (see Craig's article about Matthew; Justin seems to be citing a Jewish source; Tertullian or a Christian source he relied on probably wouldn't have made up an alternate argument about the removal of Jesus' body that avoids the main problem with the theft argument). For reasons like these, and because there isn't any good argument to the contrary, it seems likely that there was early and widespread Jewish acknowledgment of the empty tomb.

Except that the earliest gospel, Mark, candidly acknowledges that an anonymous "man" wearing a "white robe" was at the open tomb and had been there for some time before the first witnesses, the women, got there.   You'll kindly pardon me if

a) I don't get "angel" out of "white robe" or "man", and
b) I have an alternative theory that this man moved the body, and Mark has simply morphed a grave-robbery story into a resurrection story.

The pastorals and Acts 21 make it clear that the earliest Christians had a habit of making up false claims and successfully hoodwinking thousands of others about what the apostles did.

Answering Cerebral Faith's 4 questions, plus a whole lot more...

This is my reply to an article by Evan Minton entitled

Cerebral Faith

4 Questions Everyone Investigating The Case For Christianity Should Ask Themselves

posted by Evan Minton on July 09, 2019  

When it comes to investigating the evidences and arguments for and against worldviews, we need to realize that we human beings are not mere thinking machines; only considering the facts and logic, and generating conclusions based on hard, cold rationality. We're not perfect, and one of the effects of the fall said by theologians is said to be "The Noetic Effect", that the sin nature affects our ability to reason properly.

Maybe that explains why apostle Paul prohibited the very type of "word-wrangling" that you ceaselessly engage in:

 12 If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
 13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.
 14 Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. 15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
 16 But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, (2 Tim. 2:12-16 NAU)

That is, while you should do 'apologetics' you must still avoid "wrangling words".  See Titus 3:9-11 for an example of Paul's idea of how to convince those who are in error.  they get two chances to shut up and confess Paul's belief true. If they persist in disagreeing with Paul, you avoid them thereafter.  There is no "constantly discussing" the issue.  Like so many other apologetics blogs and websites, you appear dedicated to violated this word-wrangling prohibition with all of your might, on a rather consistent basis.

Then you increase your sin by using your word-wrangles as a means to make money, by asking people to donate money and in exchange they can have more access to your word-wrangles.

Sin doesn't completely debilitate us from reasoning. If that were the claim, it would be self-refuting in nature for we could ask "Did you use your reason to come to the conclusion that you cannot trust reason?"

Good point, so apparently you agree that Paul erred by pushing the human/pot analogy too far in Romans 9:20-22?  I have to wonder why Paul didn't absolve sinners of sin right there, since under his pressing logic, pots avoid doing lots of things, such as "sinning".

Nevertheless, we need to be aware that biases, emotional like or dislike of implications, and other things can lead us away from the truth.

So can the belief that the Holy Spirit is empowering you to believe whatever you believe.  This "holy spirit" crap is precisely what makes many fundamentalists equally as close-minded to their errors as you think atheists are.  What's sad is that you'd think by being at least "Christians", the fundamentalists would have a somewhat better track record of recognizing when they have erred.  But no.

None of us is immune, whether we are Christian or Non-Christian, and each one of us needs to do deep introspection when we're evaluating competing systems of thought.

on the contrary, you are to blindly presuppose that anything against Christ is automatically from the devil:

24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. (2 Tim. 2:24-26 NAU)

Minton continues:

In this blog post, I will mention 5 questions we need to pose to ourselves and meditate upon when it comes to evaluating whether Christianity is true or false.
 Question 1: If I Knew Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Christianity Were True, Would I Follow Christ?

Yes.  But that answer means nothing useful, since I might decide that the Christianity that is "true" is Marcion's gospel, which said the OT YHWH was a demon.  So my ability to be objective and answer your question "yes" doesn't really accomplish much in your eyes unless I get lucky enough to pick the particular set of beliefs YOU say are essential to salvation.

The first thing you need to decide is whether or not if Christianity were demonstrated to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, you'd become one of Christ's followers. If you knew God existed, would you worship Him?

No.  that would be about as dumb as a lower life form worshipping YOU merely because you are in fact, a higher life form.  Well your being a higher life form doesn't automatically imply that anything you do is morally good or realistic. 

Would you try to live the life that God wants you to live?

Not if you are talking about the god of the OT.  No, I wouldn't go around killing children even if I was convinced the bible-god was telling me to do it for the sake of his mysteriously good reasons.  I'd instead tell him to fuck off, just like I'd tell any enemy that is more powerful than I, to fuck off.

Furthermore I don't see any reason to give a fuck about obeying God, given that the arguments for literal conscious eternal torment are themselves unbiblical and contradict the type of justice the bible says God requires.  So disobeying god would only result in me dying and going out of existence, something I already believe will happen and have no fear of.

Would you give up anything in your life that He considers sin?

Jesus told his followers that giving up custody of their kids would cause material and spiritual abundance to flow into their lives (Matthew 19:29), but you are crazy if you think I'd follow that kind of advice 2,000 years after the fact.

If you hesitate or if your answer is no, then your problem is not with regards to the strength of the evidence for Christianity or lack thereof, your problem is either emotional or moral.

That's right.  Your God threatened to cause men to rape women (Isaiah 13:15-17), and like you, I consider rape to be without rational justification, so whoever causes rape is IMO best avoided or killed.

In other words, you simply don't want Christianity to be true.

If you mean I don't want to serve a god that inflicts rape and torture on children, then yes, like you, I cannot imagine myself ever giving in to the whims of such sadistic lunacy.

If Christianity were true, then you would have to repent or else face judgment.

Correction:  if the Christianity YOU believe is the right form, were true, then we'd have to repent or else face judgment.  But as far as I can tell, the Christianity of the NT contradicts the OT god's standard of justice and is not consistent about the nature of hell, so once again, I don't see the danger in telling your pedophile savior Christ to fuck off.  It apparently involves as much danger as giving the bird to the driver who cuts me off in traffic.  Let's just say I'm not exactly fearful of the wrath of an obviously fictitious god.

Rather than live life in open rebellion against God knowing that Hell awaits, they comfort themselves by talking themselves into believing that The Bible is nothing but a book a fairy tales.

But hell is contrary to the OT god's standard of justice.  So it's reasonable for me to react to the contradiction by viewing the OT as the golden standard.  Therefore eternal hell does NOT await.  Only physical death and extinction of consciousness...something I already accept without fear.

It's much easier to live your life in sin if you can convince yourself that there isn't someone who's going to hold you accountable beyond the grave.

If you intended to talk to stupid shit juvenile delinquents, then i guess you had a point.  But most of your readers aren't that depraved, so your characterizing them as living in sin is questionable at best and insulting at worst.  If you are so fanatical that you think I'm "sinning" by going to work everyday, guying groceries, paying the bills, and doing the daily routine most other Americans do, then i'm afraid your fanaticism puts you beyond any possibility of reasoning with.  You might not say its good to play with live rattlesnakes in church, but your bigotry and closed-mindedness are still as intense as it is for those fools.

If Christianity is true, then several implications follow.

But only after you've reasonably decided which denomination is true.  You aren't going to do that...not with evangelicals themselves being in so much disagreement they've been fighting each other for years over every biblical thing except perhaps Jesus' gender.

It means that if you're living in sin, you'll have to repent.

I'm not living in sin.  Sin presupposes god's existence.  God doesn't exist, for the same reason that bwickfullmers don't gofleding.  "God" is an incoherent concept.

Jesus said that if you even look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart (Matthew 5:28), and adultery is one of the things God said not to do (Exodus 20:14).

But Jesus' refusal to insist on the death penalty for any man who lusts after a woman, indicates his disagreement with Moses.  You will say Jesus is God and can modify his law at will, but I say the prohibition on adultery is something Frank Turek would say emanates from God's morally good "nature", and therefore God can no more allow exceptions to his mandated justice, than you can choose to levitate yourself over a traffic jam.

If you like to spend your evenings downloading and looking at pornography, you'll have to get that out of your life or answer to God for it (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Or we can blame God, who, like the parent guilty of child neglect, has the power to make us do whatever he wants (Ezra 1:1, and Cyrus was a pagan idolater whose sins were therefore far worse than merely gazing at nude women), but who chooses to avoid employing that magic fairy dust. 

But porn watchers don't want to do that. Watching porn is fun! It's exciting! Porn watchers don't want to give up porn because they enjoy it too much.

If God didn't want me to watch porn, he'd use his Ezra 1:1 magic fairy dust to convince me otherwise.  If that crap works on pagan idolaters like Cyrus, well, I don't fuck animals or burn children alive, so if your god has a method of convincing that works on sinners far worse than myself, your god is a dumb fuck and therefore less likely a higher life form and more likely a fiction or lower life form.

Others may want to sleep around, bouncing from woman to woman. According to Hebrews 13:4, this is a no-no. If someone engaged in this behavior doesn't repent, they'll be facing judgment.

But the OT doesn't condemn the single guy who has sex with a non-virgin woman, and since you aren't allowed to add to the word of the Lord, (Deut. 4:12), that type of activity cannot be called sin.  See Romans 7:7 if you think you could have discovered coveting was sin without seeing it condemned in the Law.

Romans 1:26-28, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:9-11 prohibit homosexual relationships. Some people don't want Christianity to be true because it means they'll have to stop having sex with their same-sex partner.

Agreed, but i'm not homosexual, so, dismissed.  But you might wish to send those verses to James Patrick Holding. He is a closet homosexual or else was before I started telling the world the evidence for it, as abundantly documented at this blog.

2 Corinthians 6:14 prohibits a believer marrying an unbeliever. Some people may not want Christianity to be true because they know that if it is, they need to become Christians or else they face Hell, and if they're Christians themselves, they'll be prohibited from marrying their boyfriend or girlfriend who is also an unbeliever.

You are assuming Christianity's truth involves apostle Paul.  I say Paul was a heretic and liar, so Paul's legalistic bullshit wouldn't really bother me.  I'd become a follower of Christ, not a follower of his dishonest followers.

For many people, it's a purely intellectual issue. Merely being presented with the evidence for Christianity, as I've done in several posts on this blog and as I've done in my books, will be sufficient to persuade them to become Christians. For others, they will talk themselves out of any argument, no matter how compelling it otherwise would be. They have to. Their autonomy is at stake.

Not according to 5 point Calvinists.  According to them, we resist the gospel because God infallibly decreed that we resist the gospel.  Then God judges us with pain and punishment for doing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted, how he wanted, while he was pulling our puppet strings in those directions the whole time.

This is why the Christian Apologist and Oxford mathematician John Lennox said: "If religion is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark, then atheism is a fairy tale for those afraid of the light."

Cute talking point.  Dismissed.

1 Lennox was echoing the words of Jesus; "This is the verdict; that light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will come nowhere near the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed." (John 3:19-20).

And what would you think of an atheist who says "everyone who resists atheism is resisting correct knowledge"?  If sound bytes don't convince you, how can you expect sound bytes to convince us?

Ask yourself, am I suppressing the truth in my unrighteousness?

No, in fact you and most other apologists studiously avoid debating me despite the fact that I always argue on the merits.  Maybe you should ask yourself the same question.  You deal with me, and you start giving your readers less reasons to donate money to your word-wrangling ventures. 

Is my love of sin overriding my love for finding the truth?

No, I have extensively reviewed and meticulously falsified the dogshit put out by Habermas, Craig and Licona.

Do I love truth when it enlightens me, but hate it when it convicts me?

Maybe.  So what?  You are a sinner, your Christianity does nothing to make you more welcoming of uncomfortable truth, as evidenced by the obvious fact that you refuse to debate me.  I've said too much and debated too often for you to pretend that I'm just too ignorant.  Your motive to avoid debating me is your fear that actual truth might be different than what you've chosen to make money with.

Love of sin is not the only non-intellectual "reason" you might have for rejecting Christ. Perhaps, like Charles Darwin,3 you know that if Christianity is true, someone you loved who died as a non-believer is in Hell. If you can convince yourself there is no God and there is no Hell, you don't need to walk around with that uncomfortable thought. But, our feelings do not determine truth. How you feel about Christian doctrine is irrelevant to whether or not it's true.

But not irrelevant to whether I have rational warrant for rejecting your religion.  And yes, I've already decided that rape cannot be morally justified, so I am smart and wise to say "fuck you" to any notion of a higher life form that threatens women with rape, such as your God (Isaiah 13:15-17, Deut. 28:30).

Question 2: What Evidence Would I Expect There To Be If Christianity Is True and Is This Expectation Reasonable?
 The second question you need to ask yourself is how what kind of evidence you would expect to find if Christianity were true? What kind of evidence are you looking for that would lead you to say there is or is not any evidence?

What kind of evidence would convince you that space aliens control your thoughts from another dimension?

For me, a universe with an ex nihilo beginning that is impeccably fine-tuned to permit life to exist on both the cosmic and local levels,

The universe did not have a beginning, see 1st law of thermodynamics (matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed).

The Big Bang and you and Turek depend so heavily on, is considered unbiblical, unscientific, and a lie of the devil by multiple creationist Christian organizations like AiG and ICR.

Life is nothing but the natural result of the circumstances.  Gazing in wild wonder at life on earth is about as smart as gazing in wild wonder that mold grows in damp attics, or that a cup holds water.

the existence of the moral law,

Sorry, there are no objective or absolute morals.  You aren't meeting your burden by simply blurting out "thou shalt not torture babies to death solely for entertainment" and then pretending the debate is foreclosed thereby.  You are forgetting that there is a very good but purely naturalistic reason most people find baby torture immoral, and you would be forgetting that your own god tortured at least one baby for 7 days before allowing it to die (2nd Samuel 12:15-18).  All of the atrocities you think are absolutely immoral, are caused by God, including parental cannibalism and murder (Deut. 28:15-63, 32:39).

the modal possibility of the existence of a Maximally Great Being,

your worship of Anselm is truly revolting, since, like the term "god" itself, "maximally great being" is also incoherent, as "greatness" is horrifically subjective. 

and five historical facts about Jesus' death and what happened afterward and the fact that only the resurrection can account for all five of those facts is exactly what I would expect if Christianity were true.

You were already schooled by me on why those five facts do not place any intellectual compulsion on the skeptic, but you chose to let me have the final word, and you walked away from that debate.

If Christianity were false, the universe should have always existed,

Good call.  it has.

the possibility of biological life should be way more probable,

It is.  If another planet formed the way earth did, similarly near to its home star, there is no reason to think life wouldn't eventually form.

we should have no moral law written on our hearts,

We don't.  According to your bible, those morals come from a stick.  See Proverbs 22:15.

a Maximally Great Great Being should be conceptually incoherent,

it is.  What's greater, a god who can play guitar as fast as Paul Gilbert, or a god who has decided to avoid learning how to play the guitar?  Or did you forget that Paul prohibited you from word-wrangling?

and Jesus' tomb should have remained occupied with all of his disciples moving on with their lives as they did before they even met Jesus.

No, you need to surf youtube if you think religion cannot cause people to believe crazy shit upon little or no evidence.  And the evidence for the empty tomb is laughable.

But we don't live in that kind of world. 4
 However, that's just me. What kind of evidence are you looking for?

Can it be reasonable for me to arrive at that time in my life when I think I don't need to examine Mormon claims anymore, and to therefore draw a skeptical conclusion about it's ultimate nature? 

Then it can also be reasonable for me to consider that I've done enough study of the bible to justify drawing a skeptical conclusion about its ultimate nature.  You don't know where to draw that line, so you'll pardon me if I draw it for myself.

If you say "there's no evidence", you must either have not encountered the aforementioned evidence or else they don't fit your definition of evidence.

There's plenty of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.  But it is so horrifically lacking in plausibility and authentication that it isn't worthy of credence.

Moreover, is what kind of evidence you're looking for reasonable to expect if the Christian worldview is true?

Christianity is too convoluted and contradictory to predict what kind of evidence should be showing itself if the religion were true.  What kind of evidence would you expect if "aliens control my thoughts from another dimension" were true?

Perhaps your epistemology is too restrictive. There are those who hold to a view called Scientism. This view asserts that the only truth that can be known is what can be tested by science.

That's true.  The more you push data that can be seen and heard, the more you testify, even if unwittingly to the stupidity of being open to messages from aliens living in other dimensions.

If this view is true, then supernatural entities like God, angels, demons, souls, et. al. cannot be known since they cannot be tested by science.

Sure, there might be truth out there science cannot currently detect, but if that's the case, YOU wouldn't know about it either, because you don't provide any justification to think you are some special person with special powers to peer into the unknown.

Although, I do think that science can provide evidence in a premise in a philosophical argument for God's existence (e.g The Kalam's premise that "The universe began to exist").

The universe didn't begin to exist.  Try again.

If scientism is your epistemology, then it's no wonder why you aren't convinced by philosophical arguments for God's existence or the historical evidence for Jesus' divine self-understanding and resurrection from the dead. This is because philosophy and history aren't scientific enterprises. Science is great and it has provided us with much knowledge of our world over the past several centuries. However, it is fallacious to say that science is the only path towards truth. Think about it. Can the statement "Only science can provide knowledge" subject to scientific testing?

It doesn't need to be.  There are such things as axioms, which are beyond "testing".

Can you put the claim "Only what science can establish as true is true" underneath a microscope or a super collider? No!

But science isn't limited to what can be seen through a microscope or supercollider.  you are also doing scientific testing when you compare what somebody says about themselves, with their known pattern of behavior.  It's all induction.

These are philosophical statements not subject to scientific testing. Since they cannot be verified through science, and only that which can be verified through science can be known, then the epistemology of scientism cannot be known! Scientism is self-refuting. It collapses under its own criterion.

Sounds like you love the sin of word-wrangling.

Question 3: Am I Setting Too High Of A Standard Of Proof? How much evidence is enough evidence?

You cannot know, therefore, you cannot condemn those who decide for themselves when enough is enough.

You need to reflect on whether or not you're setting the bar too high.

The Holy Spirit needs to get off his ass now that he knows his sinners cannot do his job for him.  You will say arguments can never take the place of the work of the Holy Spirit in convicting a person of sin, but pretending your arguments can never do the job of full convincing merely turns the Holy Spirit into a gratuitous afterthought.  Can you imagine a lawyer or criminal investigator making his best empirical case, then telling the jury "empirical arguments cannot convince, only the Holy Spirit can convince"?

Are you a skeptic or a hyper-skeptic? What's the difference?

Nothing but rhetoric, sort of like you christians who constantly recharacterize consistent 5 Point Calvinists as "hyper-Calvinists".  No, they are just consistent, that's all.

I'll never forget a Facebook post my friend Luke Nix made several years ago. He said, "Hyper-Skepticism is having to drink an entire carton of milk before concluding that the milk is bad and should have been thrown out after the first sip."

And regular skepticism says if the first taste of milk is sour, you are a fool to think that if you keep drinking it, the sour will go away.  Well excuse me, but I've already tasted Christianity and found it rotten.  There is no intellectual compulsion on me to continually worry that maybe it was just my taste buds that deceived me into thinking the milk was bad. You Christians cannot even figure out what types of theology-milk are bad.

The fact is that the vast majority of the conclusions we reach, even in our daily lives, are based on probability, not absolute certainty.

Correct.

I don't even have 100% certainty that I'm sitting at my desk right now typing up this blog post. It's possible that I'm just a brain in a vat of chemicals with electrodes hooked up to my brain, and there's a scientist sending stimulates into my brain to make me experience the sensation of sitting at my desk, typing up a blog post. There is a possibility that that is the case, but that possibility is so unfathomably tiny that I don't give such a scenario any serious consideration. I am 99% certain that I am not a brain in a vat, but I still can't get up to 100% certainty.

Good point.

If you can't believe with 100% certainty that you are not a brain in a vat of chemicals, yet you still give mental assent to the claim that the external world is real, why wouldn't you give mental assent to the truth claims of Christianity?

Because, as i demonstrate over and over, Christianity's best apologists fail miserably to show their supernatural hypothesis of Jesus' resurrection is better than a naturalistic hypothesis.  It doesn't really take a degree in philosophy to recognize that reasonable doubt materializes where the experts fail to make their case.

J. Warner Wallace wrote that "In legal terms, the line that must be crossed before someone can come to the conclusion that something is evidentially true is called the 'standard of proof” (the 'SOP'). The SOP varies depending on the kind of case under consideration. The most rigorous of these criteria is the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard that is required at criminal trials. But how do we know when we have crossed the line and are 'beyond a reasonable doubt'? The courts have considered this important issue and have provided us with a definition:
 'Reasonable doubt is defined as follows: It is not a mere possible doubt; because everything relating to human affairs is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of the jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge.'
 This definition is important because it recognizes the difference between reasonable and possible that we discussed earlier. There are, according to the ruling of the court, 'reasonable doubts,' 'possible doubts,' and 'imaginary doubts.' The definition acknowledges something important: every case has unanswered questions that will cause jurors to wonder. All the jurors will have doubts as they come to a decision. We will never remove every possible uncertainty; that’s why the standard is not 'beyond any doubt.' Being 'beyond a reasonable doubt' simply requires us to separate our possible and imaginary doubts from those that are reasonable."5

I'm sorry to hear that you too give in the stupid "legal apologetic".  You have to be horrifically ignorant of court rules and case law if you think the gospels would pass authentication tests demanded by modern American courts.

Question 4: I Find Theological Position X Unreasonable. Is This A Central Tenet Of Christianity or Is This Debated Within The Church? Can I Be A Christian and Still Reject X?
 Just can't bring yourself to believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old?

No.  Neither can conservative Christian apologist and creationist Hugh Ross and many other creationists, to say nothing of the consensus of non-Christian geologists.

Don't believe a good God would causally determine people to sin?

Is causing another person to sin, objectively immoral, or do you have to first inquire as to who is doing the causing?  Why would you have to first ask who is doing the causing?  Might it be that yes, the bible claims your god causes people to sin, and that is the ONLY reason you don't immediately condemn the causing of sin?

Don't think a just God would leave people in eternal conscious torment?

No, not when he can get rid of sin by arbitrarily declaring it removed (2nd Samuel 12:13).

It's possible that these seem unreasonable because they are unreasonable. And guess what? Many Christians would agree with you. Not every position you find a Christian defending is central to the Christian worldview. Some are. You can't be a Christian and not believe that God exists, that God is one being who consists of three persons (The Doctrine Of The Trinity),

Sorry, but nowhere does the NT express or imply that confession of the Trinity is essential to salvation or to being "Christian". 

that we're sinners in need of salvation,

Jesus doesn't seem to do a whole lot of informing his Gentile followers that they need salvation.  Does god do a healing miracle for a Gentile and then just say nothing about her need to repent?

and that Jesus died on the cross and bodily rose from the dead.

Jesus obviously taught the true gospel before he died and rose from the dead, so the original gospel did not demand that people believe he died and rose from the dead.  If you think things changed since he died, that's your problem.

However, other issues are debatable, such as how to interpret Genesis 1, whether humans have free will or whether God causally determines all things, and whether or not God lets human experience eternal conscious torment or whether God annihilates the condemned from existence (a view known as Annihilationism).
 Don't reject Christianity simply because you find some secondary doctrine unreasonable. I myself find two of the three secondary issues mentioned above unreasonable. That's why I'm an Evolutionary Creationist and a Molinist rather than a Young Earth Creationist and a Calvinist.

Or maybe we can be reasonable to reject Christianity because its apologists appear eager in their effort to commit the sin or word-wrangling, and encourage their readers to do the same by pretending that the word-wrangling that goes on between Christians on the subject of evolution, creation, Molinism, Old earth creationism and Calvinism are useful and lead to the edification of the hearers.  I suggest you read 2nd Timothy 2:14, ALL of it.

Cold Case Christianity: THIS is why missing data in the gospels justifies skepticism

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

Cold Case Christianity:

How Can I Trust the Gospel Accounts When Some Are Missing Important Details? 

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 01:56 AM PDT 

A visitor to ColdCaseChristianity.com wrote recently to express her concerns and growing doubts about Christianity.

Or maybe you are concerned about a criticism I wrote against one of your beliefs, and you are just pretending the concern originated in what this unnamed Christian said.  We must consider all options.  You are a sinner, your honesty is far from deserving of presumption.

Raised in the Church, she finds herself questioning the reliability of the Gospel authors because some of them failed to mention important events in the life and ministry of Jesus.

 Congrats to atheist bible critics like me, because such a concern likely wouldn't originate from within her faith or her church.  It was likely a skeptic who motivated her to grant legitimacy to the argument from silence.

Why does only one Gospel writer mention the Raising of Lazarus?

Given that John has no problems lying about what Jesus said and did, the other 3 likely didn't mention it because it never happened.

Why does only one writer mention the dead people who rose from the grave at Jesus’ crucifixion?

Christian apologist and inerrantist Dr. Mike Licona credits this to the Matthew-author's desire to mix history with fiction.



See here.

You can hardly blame skeptics for agreeing with him. Unfortunately, Matthew also explains the empty tomb in spite of the guards, with a dramatic tale of an angel with appearance of lightning frighting the guards into comatose state (28:4).  That easily qualifies as "apocalyptic imagery" no less than the zombie resurrection. Gee, when did the average evangelical fundamentalist Christian ever learn in church that just because the gospels report something in a manner that looks like historical reporting, doesn't necessarily mean it was actual history?  NEVER.

There are many examples of singular, seemingly important events mentioned by only one of the four Gospel authors. Shouldn’t all of the alleged eyewitnesses have included these events, and doesn’t the absence of information in a particular Gospel cast doubt on whether or not the event actually occurred?

 Since you are so quick to use American law to analyze the reliability of the gospels, you'll be disappointed to know that American law allows the jury to interpret a witness's omission or silence to be the logical equivalent of a positive denial:

"Impeachment by omission" is a recognized means of challenging a witness's credibility. "A statement from which there has been omitted a material assertion that would normally have been made and which is presently testified to may be considered a prior inconsistent statement." State v. Provet, 133 N.J.Super. 432, 437, 337 A.2d 374 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 68 N.J. 174, 343 A.2d 462 (1975); see also Silva, supra, 131 N.J. at 444-45, 621 A.2d 17; State v. Marks, 201 N.J.Super. 514, 531-32, 493 A.2d 596 (App. Div.1985), certif. denied, 102 N.J. 393, 508 A.2d 253 (1986). This principle is widely accepted. Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U.S. 231, 239, 100 S.Ct. 2124, 2129, 65 L.Ed.2d 86, 95 (1980) ("Common law traditionally has allowed witnesses to be impeached by their previous failure to state a fact in circumstances in which that fact naturally would have been asserted."); Kenneth S. Broun, McCormick on Evidence § 34 (7th 784*784 ed. 2013) ("[I]f the prior statement omits a material fact presently testified to and it would have been natural to mention that fact in the prior statement, the statement is sufficiently inconsistent."); 3A Wigmore on Evidence § 1042 (Chadbourn rev. 1970) ("A failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of the fact.")

 from Manata v. Pereira, 93 A. 3d 774, 783-4- NJ: Appellate Div. 2014

That is cut and pasted from my more in-depth article that shows how the basics of American jurisprudence render the gospels unreliable and inadmissible.  See here. 

Wallace continues:

My experience working with eyewitnesses may help you think clearly about these issues and objections. You can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details:

 Then you are already contradicting modern laws of evidence.  Wallace...you are not allowed to automatically assume that any possible "how-it-could-have-been" scenario you conjure up to explain an eyewitness's silence, is the only reasonable way to interpret said silence.  We the jury shall make our own decision whether the witness was silent because she thought it false, or merely "chose to exclude" it for her own unknown reasons.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Scope

When I interview an eyewitness, I am very careful to set the parameter for the testimony before I begin.

Something you obviously cannot do with ancient written testimony whose authors have been dead for 2,000 years.

I usually frame the interview by saying something like, “Please tell me everything you saw from the moment the robber came in the bank, to the moment he left.”

A request you don't know the gospel authors were intending or not intending to fulfill , in their motive to write.  I'd really like to ask Matthew "please tell me everything the risen Jesus told you during those 40 days of appearances which Acts 1:3 says you experienced, not merely the 15 second snippet you limited yourself to in your last chapter."

Unfortunately, such a request for greater quantity is useless in light of the death of the gospel authors.

If you believe in the power of prayer, why don't you ever tell your followers to ask God to fill out for them the factual details they wish the gospel authors would have included?  Or do we all recognize that nothing fails quite like prayer?  If the gospels are divinely inspired, such a prayer to God would be perfectly reasonable.  Yet you've never dared embark on such a futile undertaking as that.

I make sure to set the constraints the same way for each and every witness.

 And since you do nothing of the kind when restricted to documents authored by currently dead witnesses, as is the case with the gospels, all you are doing here is sounding intellectual without actually being intellectual.

Without these parameters, the resulting testimony would vary wildly from person to person.

So since you cannot impose those parameters on the 4 gospel authors, you are required to conclude their testimony varies widely from author to author for reasons not controlled for by your "parameters".

Some would include details prior to or after the robbery, some would include only the highlights, and some would omit major elements in the event.

 That's also because the eyewitnesses didn't all see the same thing or hear the same sounds.  That being the case, why do you automatically reject conservative Christian scholar Dr. Craig Evans' skeptical explanation for the John 11 raising of Lazarus being omitted by the Synoptics (Evans denies that we'd hear Jesus talking the way John's gospel presents, if we cold go back in time and listen to Jesus for ourselves, see here)?  How the fuck would you know whether the people who authored the Synoptics did or didn't know about that event?

But the skeptical solution (i.e., that assuming eyewitness gospel authorship, Matthew would surely have seen Jesus raise Lazarus, and with his desire to use apocalyptic fiction in his resurrection narrative anyway (Matthew 27:53, the zombie-resurrection story Licona denies the historicity of), and in light of the fact that Matthew alone has the risen Christ require his apostles teach the Gentiles "all" of the pre-Cross teachings (28:20), Matthew is especially likely to have mentioned the raising of Lazarus, were this a truely "historical" event).  So his omission reasonably implies he either never knew about it (suggesting it never happened), or he thought the story false (goodbye bible inerrancy). We are not limited to just picking an explanation that supports gospel reliability. 

If I want to be able to compare the testimony of two or three witnesses later, I’m going to have to make sure they begin with the same scope and framework in mind.

Something you cannot control for when dealing with documents authored by witnesses who have been dead for 2,000 years.

Furthermore, I object to your constant resort to "witness" and "eyewitness" in this analysis, as there are numerous cogent arguments that the gospels are at best a tangled pastiche of late Christian tradition and a few things Jesus really did say.  John Meier, Christian scholar, author of the comprehensive 4-volume "Jesus: A Marginal Jew", says that numerous times in the Synoptic gospels, a story about what Jesus said or did is in reality something created by Christian Jews, for example:

 See here.  I think this is where you try to do god service by exclaiming that just because a scholar more competent than you in the gospels, disagrees with you, doesn't necessarily mean he is in the right.  Well he doesn't have to be.  You can hardly label as irrational the skeptic who says the odds of who is right favor Meier far more than they favor you.

The Gospel authors clearly did not testify with the same initial instructions. There was no unifying investigator present to set the framework for their testimony, so their responses vary in the same way they would vary today if the scope of their testimony was not established from the onset. Mark, according to Papias, the 1st Century Bishop of Hierapolis, “became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.” More concerned about accuracy of individual events than the order in which they occurred, Mark offered details like many of my witnesses who are interviewed without a unified parameter. Mark is simply recording the preaching of Peter, and Peter only referred to portions of Jesus’ life and ministry, making no effort to order them for his listeners.

Your uncritical acceptance of Papias' comment that Peter is Mark's source, is found faulty even by conservative evangelical standards.  Guelich says in the evangelical Word Biblical Commentary:

How is one to accept Papias’s testimony? On the one side, the preponderance of scholarship over the centuries has accepted this witness in total. It has its defendants among critical scholars today (e.g., Cranfield, 5; Kürzinger, BZ 21 [1977] 245–64; Hengel, Studies, 47–50). On the opposite side, many contemporary scholars have totally rejected Papias’s views (e.g., Niederwimmer, ZNW 58 [1967] 172–88; Kümmel, Introduction, 97; Körtner, ZNW 71 [1980] 171). Somewhere in the middle are those who accept Papias’s identification of the writer as Mark but question his explanation of Mark’s material as reminiscences of Peter’s preaching (e.g., Pesch, 1:9; Ernst, 21; Lührmann, 5).

Without doubt a close examination of Mark’s material will show that the evangelist did not simply write his Gospel based on his notes or memory of Peter’s teachings. The amazing similarity in language, style, and form of the Synoptic tradition between the Markan and non-Markan materials of Matthew and Luke (cf. John’s Gospel) hardly suggests that Mark’s materials were shaped by one man, be he either Peter or Mark. Furthermore, the Commentary will demonstrate the presence of multiple traditional milieus (e.g., the two Feedings), stages in the development of traditional units (e.g., 5:1–20), and the thematic combination of units into collections (e.g., 4:1–34) within the Markan materials that point to a more complex traditional background than mental or written notes of another’s preaching. Therefore, while Papias may accurately identify the author as Mark, his description of Mark’s source and content is oversimplified at best.

Guelich, R. A. (2002). Vol. 34A: Word Biblical Commentary : Mark 1-8:26.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page xxvii). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 I'm not saying you lose merely because I can find Christian scholars who disagree with your simplistic uncritical trusting acceptance of patristic testimony.  I'm saying you incorrect to charge skeptics with being unreasonable merely because they hesitate longer than you before accepting patristic sources.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Perspective and Purpose

They also vary sometimes because eyewitnesses tell lies or are sincerely mistaken. Funny how you never give that possibility any consideration.  Actually not really, you are an inerrantist:  You are not here to be objective, but to push the inerrancy agenda.  And if you started personally doubting biblical reliability, the fact that you have a history of making money selling biblical reliability justifies the suspicion that you'd never honestly or publicly admit it.  You become a liberal, and you can look forward to being abandoned by the inerrantist apologists you currently network with.  Most people aren't stupid enough to nuke their opportunities to make money and preserve stability.

In addition, the witnesses I interview often want to highlight a particular element in the crime scene or a particular suspect behavior they think is important. Sometimes their choice of detail is influenced greatly by their own life history. Their values, experiences and personal concerns guide their selection of which details they include, and which they omit. Witnesses also typically try to offer what they think I am looking for as the detective rather than every little thing they actually saw. They are speaking to a specific audience (an investigator), and this has an impact on what they choose to include or omit. When this happens, I have to refocus each witness and ask them to fill in the details they skipped over, including everything they saw, even if they don’t think it’s important to me as a detective. If I don’t encourage eyewitnesses to be more inclusive and specific, they will omit important details.

The Gospel authors were not similarly directed. They had specific audiences in mind and particular perspectives to offer, and none of their testimony was guided by a unifying investigator who could encourage them to fill in the missing details.

 Then you are denying their inspiration by God, whom you say could very well have had them fill in the missing details had He wished them to.

Luke clearly had a particular reader in mind (Theophilus): “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught (Luke 1)”. Like other witnesses and historians, Luke likely allowed his intended audience to influence his selection of details. His testimony was also most certainly shaped by his own life experience (as an educated man),his own personal history, and his values.

 And conservative Christian scholars can also be found who say this "Theophilus" was just a figure of speech, and that Luke used this name to characterize any Christian reader:

Where did Luke write from, and to whom did he write? These questions probably are unanswerable. Luke dedicated the book to Theophilus, and Theophilus is a Greek name. Did Luke then write primarily to Gentiles? If so, why did he concern himself so much with Jewish questions? Why the elaborate messianic proofs of Peter’s sermons in Acts 2 and 3 if not to provide his readers with a pattern for witness to Jews? The most likely answer is that Luke intended his work for Christian communities that included both Jews and Gentiles—mixed congregations such as those we encounter frequently in Paul’s epistles.

Polhill, J. B. (2001, c1992). Vol. 26: Acts (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 31). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

In other words, Acts was written for believing communities, and thus not intended to satisfy skeptics, rationally warranting skeptics if they choose to ignore Luke and Acts.  They'd be acting more in conformity to the author's wish, than Christian apologists today who ignore authorial intent and childishly splatter every biblical thing to every part of the cosmos. 

Matthew did something similar when he highlighted the details of Jesus’ life most relevant to Matthew’s Jewish audience.

 But patristic accounts make clear that he wrote for Jews:

The Gospel according to Matthew was written to the Jews. For they laid particular stress upon the fact that Christ [should be] of the seed of David. Matthew also, who had a still greater desire [to establish this point], took particular pains to afford them convincing proof that Christ is of the seed of David; and therefore he commences with [an account of] His genealogy.

See here.

That is, the author of Matthew seriously expected for unbelieving Jews to find his story of Jesus' virgin birth to be true, and to find his use of Isaiah 7:14 to be legitimate.  In other words, if you are going to be so accepting of patristic testimony about gospel authorship, the apostles were rather gullible and anti-intellectual.  Any self-respecting non-Christian Jew, knowledgeable of the OT, would not be persuaded by such presumptive storytelling.  Scholars complain there's no evidence in pre-Christian Judaism that Isaiah 7:14 was considered messianic prophecy.  

Yet we have to believe that the author of the most Jewish sounding gospel, surely knew that non-Christian Jews do not just buh-leeve any interpretation of their OT that outsiders give.  Yet Matthew engages in precisely zero attempted justification for his use of Isaiah 7:14, nor does he provide anything useful to help non-Jews track these things down.  He had the objectivity-level of a KJV Onlyist who thinks screaming bible verses at people causes the Holy Spirit to do things.  He seems to think that there's just no rationality in questioning anything he has to say, thus preempting any need for him to bother with the least bit of documentation of sources.  No thank you.

Eyewitness Accounts Vary Based on Their Knowledge of Other Testimony

Sometimes an eyewitness will only provide those details he thinks are missing from the testimony of others. This is most likely to occur if the witness is the last one to be interviewed and he (or she) is already familiar with the testimony of the other witnesses. When I see this happening, I ask this last witness to pretend like he or she is the only witness in my case, “Try to include every detail like I’ve never heard anything about the case. Pretend like I know nothing about the event.” Once the witness has done that, I may go back and re-interview the prior witnesses to see why they didn’t mention the late details offered by the final witness. In the end, my reports related to everyone’s testimony will be as complete as possible, including all the details remembered by each person I interviewed.

The gospel authors were not similarly directed and re-interviewed. John was the last person to provide an account, and he clearly selected those events important to him, given his stated goal: “…many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name (John 20)”. John knew what had already been provided by others, and he selected specific events (some which were previously unreported) to make his case.

 And as usual, you tell your followers nothing about the growing conservative Christian scholarly view that John's gospel attributes to Jesus things Jesus never actually said or did.  This, despite your quickness to believe everything you read in the early church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria's statement, which clearly differentiates John's subject matter from the "external facts" subject matter in the Synoptics:

But, last of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. This is the account of Clement. ( Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., 6:14)     

But John, the last of all, seeing that what was corporeal was set forth in the Gospels, on the entreaty of his intimate friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. (ANF, Vol. II, Fragments of Clement of Alexandria, From the Books of the Hypotyposes)

 It doesn't matter if you can trifle that Clement's remarks can be plausibly interpreted to say John also provided "external facts", you certainly cannot condemn as unreasonable my own interpretation that says Clement here was saying John's purpose was not to convey external facts.  The fact that my interpretation would kill evangelical conservativism in its cradle, doesn't suddenly mean the interpretation is wrong or unreasonable. 

Wallace continues:

He acknowledged his limited choice of data: “…there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written (John 21)”. John admitted what we already know: witnesses pick and choose from their own observations unless they are specifically directed to do otherwise.

I don't have a problem with the gospel authors picking and choosing what material to include or exclude.  I have a problem with modern-day Christian apologists who blindly assume that only the explanations for this, which help defend biblical inerrancy, are the only explanations that have any significance.  Once again, you also know that eyewitnesses will differ because they are lying or mistaken, but you never entertain this obvious reality here...probably because to suggest the gospel eyewitnesses differ from each other due to lying or mistake, is to raise possibilities you don't wish to raise...such as bible inerrancy being a false doctrine.

Because the gospel authors were not specifically instructed, guided or re-interviewed by a single detective, we simply cannot conclude much from the differences between the accounts.

Bullshit.  If you think Peter was the source behind Mark's gospel, you'll have a hard time explaining one of Mark's more striking and unexpected omissions:

“Messiah”?  or “Messiah, Son of the living God”?
Mark 8	Matthew 16
27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, "Who do people say that I am?"   28 They told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets."   29 And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ."  (omitted!)    30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him.  31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must  suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes,	13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,   He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"  14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."  15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.  19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."  20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. 21 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.

 Now what, Wallace?  Do you seriously think that Mark knew Jesus' answer was as long and theologically significant as the one we today see in Matthew's version, and Mark merely "chose for unknown reasons to exclude" such critically important part of Jesus' answer?  FUCK YOU.

Conservatives defend by saying Peter didn't wish to impose his authority on others, but this is total bullshit, since if Jesus really did give the longer answer preserved in Matthew, we are reasonable to assume Peter would not sideline Jesus' statement, but would have properly done what even Paul did, and make clear how and why he possesses the authority that he does.

Nah, the authority that Jesus bequeaths on Peter in Matthew's longer version is not something Mark would likely have omitted (Mark never has Jesus giving anybody "keys to the kingdom", so you cannot even pretend that "Mark covered the matter once and didn't feel it needed repeating"), had he known Jesus' answer was that long.  Therefore, you cannot blame me, any skeptic, John Meier, or most Christian scholars, for concluding that Mark omitted it because he and Peter remembered Jesus' answer being shorter, and therefore, Matthew's longer version is not what Jesus really said, it is what Matthew has falsely fabricated and embellished in the effort to give more dramatic effect to this particular scene.

Skeptics sometimes infer more from omissions (or inclusions) in the Gospels than what is reasonable, especially given the manner in which the Gospels came to be written.

And inerrantists sometimes give more weight to inerrancy-favoring explanations than the evidence will allow.  But surely its only the skeptics who are dominated by their presuppositions, while Christian inerrantists are objective calculators pushing no agenda.

Because the four authors were not specifically instructed, guided or re-interviewed by a single detective, we simply cannot conclude much from the differences between the accounts.

That's stupid, there's no Christian gospel scholar on the face of the earth that will say our modern inability to get the authors to fill in the blanks means we cannot draw reasonable inferences from the way they differ from one another.  Even inerrantist Christian scholars, such as J.A. Brooks,  explain Matthew's and Luke's softer form of a story than the version Mark gave, is because they are "toning down" language of Mark that they believe is errant or likely to support an errant view:

Mark 6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58.

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic e.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 100). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

If Matthew thought Mark's gospel was "inerrant", he'd no more "tone down" Mark's choice of wording than YOU would.  

We must, instead, do our best to employ the four part template we use to evaluate eyewitness reliability after the fact.

 No, we should examine the gospels using standard techniques that all historians use to analyze the probable truth-content of other similarly ancient documents.  There is some overlap between the methods of historiography used by historians, and rules of evidence as used in modern American courts, but the issues with ancient testimony are far more complicated than modern court rules of evidence were intended to address.  Wallace, do you know of any court cases where trial was allowed on a question that required the truth to rest upon what a 2,000 year old document said?  Obviously not.  When I accuse you of using clever marketing bells and whistles as gimmicks to con Christians into buying your stuff, that's not as inaccurate as you'd wish.  What's your next book going to be?  "True Colors:  How Techniques used by Painters Reveal the Truth of Bible Inerrancy?"

The fact that it doesn't make sense is precisely why there's money in it, remember?

This template (as I’ve described it in Cold-Case Christianity), provides us with confidence in the trustworthy nature of the Biblical narratives. That’s why you can trust the Gospel eyewitness accounts, even though some are missing important details.

I find it funny that you never considered an equally likely explanation, that eyewitnesses often differ from one another because some of them are lying or mistaken.  That's also a stark reality daily experienced in courts of law, but you omit this genuine possibility as if only a crazy person would consider it.

Probably because to even start talking about the possibility of eyewitnesses lying or being mistaken, opens the door to kissing bible inerrancy goodbye forever.   Wow, even criminal investigators are blinded by their own biases.  Thanks for the lesson.