Sorry, Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes: Isaiah 7:14 is not a prediction about Jesus

This is my reply to the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 as found in Geisler & Rhodes, "Conviction Without Compromise" (Harvest House Publishers, 2008).

(Triablogue published its own defense of the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 7:14, and my reply to that is here)

Geisler and Rhodes argue:



See here.

First, none of this matters: Paul says the resurrection of Jesus is the Achilles' Heel of Christianity:

 12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised;
 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.
 15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.
 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised;
 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
 19 If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:12-19 NAU)

I have extensively rebutted the arguments of Licona, Habermas and W.C. Craig for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.  So under Paul's logic, keeping Jesus in the ground after death would override whatever benefit you thought you could obtain by "proving" that Isaiah 7:14 was a prediction of Jesus.

Apologists will say Isaiah's ability to predict Jesus 700 years in advance still proves god's existence so atheism is still wrong.  But even supposing atheism to be wrong, Paul warns that Christians would be false witnesses of God if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  If the atheist rebuttal to the resurrection arguments are solid, there is a corresponding rise in the likelihood that any "god" that is still there, will be more pissed off at the Christians for false witness, than he would be at those who simply deny his basic existence.  See Deut. 13.  If Galatians 1:8-9 is true, then apparently MISrepresenting God is far worse than simply refusing to believe he exists.  What the apologist never bothers with is why the alleged wrongness of atheism should be of any concern.  Being wrong cannot be a rational basis for concern to correct oneself, unless the wrong can be shown to increase the  probability that one will endure disaster.

Second, the late Geisler's promoters admit elsewhere that fulfillment of this prophecy "may be" two-fold (i.e., double-fulfillment, the last desperate exegetical acrobatic left to the fundie when you prove the immediate context isn't talking about Jesus). See here.

Third, Evangelical Christian scholars disagree about what is happening in Isaiah 7:14, which would hardly be the case if the "predictive" view espoused by Geisler and Rhodes, supra, was the only "reasonable" one. Apparently, some genuine Christian scholars don't think we should read the bible as if it was yesterday's headline in the New York Times. They are fearful that there are subtleties that will be easily missed by the childish fundamentalist method. The Christian scholars who see Isaiah 7:14 as not predictive, but merely typological are found contrasted with the fundamentalist views in David L. Turner's Matthew, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 69-73.

The apologists at "Triablogue" offer a bit more about this tendency among Christian scholars to doubt whether Isaiah 7:14 refers to the virgin conception of Jesus:

Wegner states, "There is little doubt that Isa. 7:14 and its reuse in Matt. 1:23 is one of the most difficult problems for modern scholars."⁶⁷ This stems from a growing amount of evangelicals who question whether Isaiah 7:14 prophesies about a virgin birth. To be clear, these scholars acknowledges that Jesus was certainly born of a virgin as Matthew states (1:23). However, did Isaiah intend for that idea originally? Is there any movement from Old Testament to New Testament in this case?

See here.  Christian scholars who are "evangelical" and thus have a higher view of the bible than "liberals" therefore have strong predisposition to just blindly insist that Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14 is correct.  So when "evangelical" Christian scholars become disenchanted with this fundamentalist view, its probably because they sense serious scholarly reasons for doing so, not because they are being used by Satan as wolves among the sheep...or any other scare-analogy to keep the blindly ignorant fearful of God's wrath upon heretics.

How probable is it that the simple-minded fundamentalist "read-the-bible-like-a-newspaper" interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 is the only "reasonable" one?

No student of the Old Testament need apologize for a treatment of Isaiah 7:14 in relation to the doctrine of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. From earliest times to the present the discussions which have centered about this theme have been both interesting, varied, and at times even heated. Lindblom characterizes Isaiah 7:14 as “the endlessly discussed passage of the Immanuel sign.” Rawlinson maintains: “Few prophecies have been the subject of so much controversy, or called forth such a variety of exegesis, as this prophecy of Immanuel. Rosenmueller gives a list of twenty-eight authors who have written dissertations on it, and himself adds a twenty-ninth. Yet the subject is far from being exhausted.” Barnes emphasizes the obscurity of the passage: “Who this virgin was, and what is the precise meaning of this prediction, has given, perhaps, more perplexity to commentators than almost any other portion of the Bible.” Again, he insists, “Perhaps there is no prophecy in the Old Testament on which more has been written, and which has produced more perplexity among commentators than this. And after all, it still remains, in many respects, very obscure.” Skinner seeks in a general way to pinpoint the source of the difficulties. He states: “Probably no single passage of the Old Testament has been so variously interpreted or has given rise to so much controversy as the prophecy contained in these verses.

Charles Lee Feinberg, The Virgin Birth in the Old Testament and Isaiah 7:14,

BSac—V119 #475—Jul 62—251

One Evangelical Christian scholar, J.D.W. Watts, explains Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14 as the result of taking OT passages out of context, a disaster-prone hermeneutic that nevertheless enjoyed wide popularity in 1st century Judaism:

A second factor facilitated the use of Isa 7:14 in Matthew. A hermeneutical method was in general use which allowed verses to be separated from their contexts. Verses or individual words were understood to have esoteric meanings whose significance could be revealed to an inspired teacher or writer. Thus the entire Scripture was viewed as a prophecy intended to interpret the moment in which the reader lived. Verses were abstracted from both the historical and literary setting in which they originally appeared. They were then identified with an event or a doctrine which was altogether extraneous to the original context or intention. This kind of interpretation presumes a view of inspiration and of history in which God moves in all ages mysteriously to plant his secrets so that later ages may put the puzzle together and thus reveal his purposes and the direction of his intention....This kind of interpretation is subject to the criticism that it ignores the rightful demands of contextual and historical exegesis which call for a meaning related to the end of the Syro-Ephraimite War in terms of v 16.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33. 

Word Biblical Commentary (pp.103-104). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

So, just in case you might have thought that Isaiah 7:14 causes any atheist bible critic to lose any sleep at night, think again.  Your own Christian evangelical scholars refuse to push that verse as much as the fundies do when in fact by being "evangelical" and "Christian" those scholars know they stand much to gain by pretending that this verse is straight up predictive prophecy.  Seems reasonable to infer that the scholars are aware there's a hell of lot more complexity going on here than what we get with Geisler's "read the bible like a newspaper" crap.

Fourth, Giesler admits in his "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics" (Baker Books, 1999)

"Single Reference to a Natural Birth. Liberal scholars and some conservatives view Isaiah
7:14 as having reference only to the natural conception and birth of the son of the prophetess." (entry for "Virgin Birth in Isaiah 7:14").

We would not expect any "conservative" bible scholars to limit Isaiah 7:14 to an unknown boy born naturally in 700 b.c., unless what the text really means is far less clear than Geisler pretends.

Fifth, the "sign" is not the fact that the woman who conceives is a "virgin". The "sign" is the timing between when the boy learns to distinguish good and evil, and the fall of the two other kingdoms which Ahaz feared. This is clear from the immediate context, for which the following quote is longer than normal:

3 Then the LORD said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller's field,
4 and say to him, 'Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.
5 'Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying,
6 "Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,"
7 thus says the Lord GOD: "It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass.
8 "For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people),
9 and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last."'"
10 Then the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying,
11 "Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven."
12 But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!"
13 Then he said, "Listen now, O house of David! Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well?
14 "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
15 "He will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.
16 "For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.
17 "The LORD will bring on you, on your people, and on your father's house such days as have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah, the king of Assyria."
18 In that day the LORD will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. (Isa. 7:3-18 NAU)

As is clear from the preceding context, the subject is King Ahaz's fear of other kingdoms, so we would only expect that the "sign" for him would consist of something to do with his safety or the defeat of those other kingdoms. "Look at that woman over there, her hymen is still intact, but she is pregnant anyway, what a miracle!" wouldn't fit the context as part of the "sign".

Sixth, the context makes clear that the words of encouragement are for Ahaz to find relief in. He lived in 700 b.c. He could hardly find relief in a prediction that some virgin would get pregnant 700 years after he died. That would be like some dipshit saying "don't worry about the gang-members plotting to kill you next year, because 700 years from now a woman will get pregnant from god in a way that doesn't rupture her hymen..." (!?). Evangelical Christian scholars agree:

14–16 The “sign” is revealed anyway. A young woman who is apparently present or contemporary, but not yet married (i.e., a virgin) will in due course bear a child and call his name Immanuel meaning God-(is)-With-Us. By the time the child is old enough to make decisions, the land of the two opposing kings will be devastated. The sign is simple. It has to do with a period by which time the present crisis will no longer be acute or relevant. This is parallel to the statement in v 8b but indicates a much shorter period. The shorter period accords with history. Tiglath-Pileser’s reactions to Rezin and the son of Remaliah came in 733 b.c. when he reduced most of Israel to the status of an Assyrian province.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary : Isaiah 1-33. 

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 97). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Seventh, the conception/birth of Jesus have precisely nothing to do with the fall of the two kingdoms Isaiah predicts in 7:16.

Eighth, there is no historical evidence that the Jews, expectant as they were of a coming messiah, ever thought Isaiah 7:14 was a prediction of any such messiah.

Giesler and Rhodes continue:




The argument is that the woman is described as still having her hymen intact, despite the fact that she is pregnant, hence, a conception-miracle that could only have been caused by God.  There are numerous powerful objections:

a)  Once again, the born child in question must have something to do with giving King Ahaz relief from his fear of other kingdoms.  Telling him to take courage because a virgin will give birth to a son 700 years later doesn't exactly make "sense".  You don't change this contextual constraint by pointing out that almah in Hebrew always means woman with hymen intact.

b) The context does not support the premise that the "sign" is the pregnant woman still being a virgin, rather, again, the "sign" is the timing of the child's learning good/evil, and the fall of the other kingdoms Ahaz feared.  You don't change this contextual constraint by pointing out that almah in Hebrew always means woman with hymen intact.

c) According to the NRS, Isaiah uses the present tense (i.e., the young woman IS pregnant), which translation, if accurate, is a rather forceful proof that the child in question would be born in 700 b.c. and thus could not possibly be Jesus.  This is probably why die-hard fundamentalists blindly insist in "double-fulfillment" (i.e., when they cannot overcome the contextual constraints that show the child in question cannot possibly be Jesus, they suddenly discover that there can be a "primary" fulfillment and a "secondary" fulfillment...but such double-fulfillment fancy runs contrary to the standard rule of context, which says the subject IS about what the context says.

d) "But what is the precise meaning of ’almah? There are numerous scholars who are noncommittal as to whether the term signifies a virgin or a married woman. Rogers states his position clearly: “First of all, it must be said that the Hebrew word almah may mean ‘virgin,’ but does not necessarily mean anything more than a young woman of marriageable age. Had the prophet intended specifically and precisely to say ‘virgin,’ he must have used the word bethulah, though even then there would be a faint shade of uncertainty.” From BSac—V119 #475—Jul 62—255, supra.

e) "If one looks to Isaiah 7 and reads this passage in its context, he will see that the prophet was not primarily speaking of the birth of Christ…There is really no way that one can make this prophecy apply exclusively to the birth of Christ without totally disregarding the context of Isaiah 7…Nothing in the context of Isaiah 7 would demand a virgin birth."  Biblical Interpretation, Principles and Practice: Studies in Honor of Jack Pearl Lewis. Kearly, Myers, Hadley, editors, Baker Books, third printing, 1987, p. 279

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Joel 1:8 doesn't say the girl is married.

 6 For a nation has invaded my land, Mighty and without number; Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, And it has the fangs of a lioness.
 7 It has made my vine a waste And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become white.
 8 Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom of her youth.
 9 The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off From the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, The ministers of the LORD. (Joel 1:6-9 NAU)

The NET and NIV reflect this subtlety, thus proving such understanding is not "unreasonable":

NET  Joel 1:8 Wail like a young virgin clothed in sackcloth, lamenting the death of her husband-to-be.

NIV  Joel 1:8 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth.

Geisler and Rhodes  continue:

"The upshot of all of this is the conclusion that there is no defensible linguistic logic for suggesting the meaning “virgin” for the Hebrew almâ. Exegetical methods lead us to the meaning “youth” or adolescent.” It is only hermeneutical considerations, or should we say theological considerations, that would demand that the issue be pushed further than linguistic analysis could support."

John H. Walton, Isa 7:14: What’s In A Name? JETS 30/3 (September 1987) 293

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

But I don't believe the NT is inspired by God, since there is no way to "show" such a thing except by demanding that the historical happenstance that ended up giving us a NT was something guided by "god", which is not going to sound persuasive to anybody except those who already believe.

I also have no reason to think Matthew himself was inspired by God since nothing in the book now bearing his name indicates he claimed any such thing.  When your witness refuses to admit something that you need to help your argument, that means you lose.  What else are you going to say about Matthew that you don't know the first fucking thing about?  That he liked pizza more than cake?  he didn't say shit about that either, but don't let a lack of factual detail prevent your brain from conjuring up whatever you need to make you feel better.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Doesn't matter if the woman in question was a virgin at the time of the statement, saying she would conceive a child isn't the same as saying she would conceive a child without sexual union.   Especially if Isaiah is speaking prophetically, he could just as easily be referring to the fact that a woman who is now a virgin, will in the future conceive a child.  That doesn't necessarily mean her hymen will remain intact during conception.

And this interpretation violates the rule of context, since as demonstrated earlier, the idea that Isaiah might think King Ahaz could take comfort in the "fact" that a miraculous birth would occur 700 years after he dies, is just stupid, but set forth aggressively by apologists anyway in their inerrant quest to messianic prophecy while not being too forthright about what it means to let the immediate context determine meaning.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

No, Isaiah in chapter 8 explains what he means by Immanuel, and it isn't a child born 700 years into the future, and the "god with us" ironically means that Ahaz shall not see political deliverance but only defeat and battle, because he rejected the message of Isaiah, whom the Lord was with:

5 Again the LORD spoke to me further, saying,
 6 "Inasmuch as these people have rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah And rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah;
 7 "Now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates, Even the king of Assyria and all his glory; And it will rise up over all its channels and go over all its banks.
 8 "Then it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass through, It will reach even to the neck; And the spread of its wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel. 9 "Be broken, O peoples, and be shattered; And give ear, all remote places of the earth. Gird yourselves, yet be shattered; Gird yourselves, yet be shattered.
 10 "Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted; State a proposal, but it will not stand, For God is with us." 11 For thus the LORD spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, (Isa. 8:5-11 NAU)

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

That's just stupidity gone to seed:   The natural interpretation is that the speaker now wants all other Jews to hear his message, not merely Ahaz.  So all that is implied is an expansion of the message to other contemporaries of Ahaz.  The burden is on the apologist to show that "house of David" is meant to elicit the attention of future Jews, and despite Isaiah's ability to speak about future people, he indicates no such thing here.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

The extraordinary nature of the sign is simply Isaiah's alleged ability to predict that before the boy in question learns to distinguish good from evil, the land of the two kings Ahaz feared would be abandoned.  Once again, there is no contextual justification for pretending that the pregnancy of the virgin was itself the "sign".  The sign had to be relevant to Ahaz.  Jesus being born to the virgin Mary 700 years after Ahaz and all his generation died off wold hardly qualify, except in the eyes of desperate apologists who will abandon the constraints of context anytime they feel the interests of apologetics would be served in doing so.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

No, as explained above, Isaiah 8 shows that the "Immanual" refers to God being with those who are on Isaiah's side of the debate, a contextual clue that forces the child who is called by this name, to be a boy born in the days of Isaiah.  There is no fucking way any apologist is going to apply the events in Isaiah 8:8 to Jesus' day, except by the wild esoteric bullshit that favors mysticism over well-settled principles of interpretation.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Irrelevant, we've shown that applying Isaiah 7:14 to Jesus is to take Isaiah 7 out of context.

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

What do you mean the same verse cannot refer to opposing things?  I'm not an inerrantist, I don't automatically assume an ancient religious author was consistent in everything he said, especially in the case of Isaiah where it is likely there were at least 3 different authors and what we now have also went through textual modification for centuries before it came to us. 1QIsa only gets you back to about 100  b.c., when in fact Isaiah himself lived 600 years earlier.  Then you are going to tell me 500 years of textual darkness means nothing?

Geisler and Rhodes continue:

Jesus was never called "Immanuel" in the NT, and the fact that the angel of the Lord can speak as god without being god means in OT Judaism there was a doctrine that suffered from cognitive dissonance...the person doing the speaking wasn't himself god, but it was still appropriate to react toward him as if he was.

 11 The angel of the LORD said to her further, "Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the LORD has given heed to your affliction.
 12 "He will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone's hand will be against him; And he will live to the east of all his brothers."
 13 Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, "You are a God who sees"; for she said, "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?" (Gen. 16:11-13 NAU)
 11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
 12 He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." (Gen. 22:11-12 NAU) 

 2 The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.
 3 So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up."
 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
 5 Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
 6 He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Exod. 3:2-6 NAU) 

 19 The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. (Exod. 14:19 NAU) 

20 "Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
 21 "Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him.
 (Exod. 23:20-21 NAU) 

 31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground.
 32 The angel of the LORD said to him, "Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. (Num. 22:31-32 NAU) 

 1 Now the angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, 'I will never break My covenant with you, (Jdg. 2:1 NAU) 

 12 The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior."
 13 Then Gideon said to him, "O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian."
 14 The LORD looked at him and said, "Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?" (Jdg. 6:12-14 NAU) 

Better is Judges 6, where seeing the angel of the Lord face to face is considered equally as deadly as seeing the Lord face to face:
 21 Then the angel of the LORD put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. Then the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight.
 22 When Gideon saw that he was the angel of the LORD, he said, "Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face."
 23 The LORD said to him, "Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die." (Jdg. 6:21-23 NAU) 

 9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, And the angel of His presence saved them; In His love and in His mercy He redeemed them, And He lifted them and carried them all the days of old. (Isa. 63:9 NAU) 

 6 And the angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying,
 7 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here. (Zech. 3:6-7 NAU)

The issue is not "can Christians be reasonable to view Isaiah 7:14 as a prediction of Jesus?".

The issue is "can a person be reasonable to deny that Isaiah 7:14 is a prediction of Jesus?"

Yes, obviously.

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast)

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

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Hard Questions About Christianity (Podcast) 

Posted: 11 Dec 2019 01:40 AM PST

In this episode of the podcast, J. Warner joins Bill Arnold on Faith Radio to respond to listener questions. How do we present the Gospel to people who are dying of a terminal disease?

You tell their relatives to follow Jesus, and use the phrase "let the dead bury the dead" to discourage their attendance at the inevitable funeral:

 21 Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 22 But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead." (Matt. 8:21-22 NAU) 

 59 And He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father."
 60 But He said to him, "Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God." (Lk. 9:59-60 NAU)

Then you tell them Jesus came for the purpose of breaking up families:

34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
 35 "For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW;
 36 and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (Matt. 10:34-36 NAU)

Jesus being the perfect example of such since his own immediate family saw nothing compelling about his miracles and continued failing to properly honor him:

 4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." (Mk. 6:4 NAU)

Then you tell them exactly what actions Jesus thought this information implied, such as Jesus promising that those of his followers who abandon their own children will receive salvation and other rewards:

 29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life. (Matt. 19:29 NAU)

That's how you act when you want to be more "Christ-like".   Wallace next asks:

Can we make a decision for Jesus even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can we make a decision for Mormonism even though we have big, unanswered questions?

Can skeptics be reasonable to make a decision about the resurrection of Jesus, even if they have big, unanswered questions?

That puts Christian apologists in a pickle, as they are rather hypocritical and arbitrary. as the following represents how most "apologists" feel:  

"you can always be rational to make a decision for Christ no matter how stupid you are, as putting off the day of your salvation is quite dangerous in light of even the non-flame version of hell, and the fact that you could die any second.  But skeptics?  They are not reasonable to deny the resurrection of Jesus even if they delayed that decision while they conducted 20 years of research into the arguments of Habermas, Licona and William Lane Craig.  Such blind dogmatism is the way we fundies continually foster a protective 'us v. them' mentality, keeping them in the faith is more important than whether their reasons for staying are academically rigorous.  But only for Protestant Trinitarians.  All other "Christians" are intellectually obligated to keep saying "I don't know", no matter how much research they do, until they find a reason to join the Protestant Trinitarians."

Except that a skeptic could easily undercut such self-serving idiocy by raising the specter of the unbeliever who is tempted to make a decision for Christ... that is, the Christ of Jehovah Witnesses.  Ahhh, then suddenly, you "must" recognize that Jesus is god or else the Christ you accept will false and thus insufficient to actually save you, and picking the wrong form of Christianity increases how much trouble you are in with God (Galatians 1:8-9).  FUCK YOU.   Wallace continues:

Why does the Bible seem to condone slavery?

There's no "seem" about it:  the kind of slavery Moses wanted his Hebrews to practice was as follows:  Go make war against that nation over there, kill everybody including the male babies, spare only the prepubescent girls so they can become your house slaves, and remember, if any such recently traumatized girl refuses to do the dishes like you ask her to after you get her back to your house, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft":

 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. (Num. 31:12-18 NAU)

 23 "For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.  (1 Sam. 15:23 NAU)

That is how you say "fuck you" to Paul Copan, Matthew Flannagan, and other allegedly Christian "apologists" who prefer to spend their every waking moment pretending there's nothing more to say about Hebrew slavery except what can be extracted from the more politically correct portions of the "Law".

I could go on on that subjet alone, for example, Moses in Numbers 31 is reasonably construed as thinking that those little girls did not have the stain of the sexual sin at Peor which was being avenged (Numbers 25).  But even assuming the girls' virginity was still intact, did Moses not realize there are other ways to sexually sin beyond vaginal intercourse?  If one of those prepubescent Midianite girls engaged in cunnilingus with a Midianite man, wouldn't this count, in the eyes of Moses, as making her guilty of sexual sin?  What, did Moses think the sin of pedophile cunnilingus was more forgivable than the sin of pedophile intercourse?  How would that help the apologist who wants to eliminate every possible vestige of pedophilia from the Israelites?

How would the Hebrews have determined whether a girls' hymen was still intact?  If it was typical back then for virgin girls to wear clothing distinctive from the clothing worn by non-virgin girls, then all of the Midianites would have known this, and if as Christian apologists allege, rape was an inevitable war atrocity among the pagans, then the non-virgin Midianite women would have recognized the value of dressing in the clothing of virgins as soon as they detected their nation was under attack....in which case we have to wonder how many Midianite woman, non-virgin and stained with the Midianite sexual sin, brought their sinful selves into the homes of the Hebrew army men.

In light of how important virginity was to the Hebrews, they might have felt this justified using their eyesight to confirm the virginity of the spared girls...just like nobody likes to stick something up their ass, but when you doctor says its time for a checkup, you generally subjegate your normative preferences for others, for the sake of higher good.  So it doesn't matter if you can't stand the thought of the Hebrew army men viewing the vaginas of kidnapped prepubescent girls recently traumatized by watching their families be slaughtered by the same Hebrew men, skeptics are more worried about actual reality, than in helping you spin history to make yourself feel better about what must have been horribly brutish culture wars that now stain the pages of your bible.

Notice also, Moses didn't need a specific word of the Lord, his men would obey his atrocious orders even if he didn't specify that he was speaking for God at that particular moment. So the Hebrews would that much more stupid and brutish for being willing to kill kids merely on command of their human leader, in absence of any proof that such command was required by their 'god'.

Christian apologists know perfectly well that if what happened to those poor Midianite girls happened to themselves in very similar circumstances, they would immediately conclude, from the barbarity alone, that their captors are nothing but brutish sociopathic slugs.  They would not trifle about all the possibilities that the bible-god willed this and perhaps their sinful imperfect selves might have read too much evil into the possible "good" of massacreing people and kidnapping some to use as slaves.

But no, when its in the bible and approved by god, you cannot do anything else except automatically call it good. You have all the objectivity of a hysterical Pentecostal during an exorcism during a 1960's tent-revival.  FUCK YOU.

What did early Christians believe about hell?

Irrelevant, the one place where Jesus (the gold standard by which anything else must be judged, at least as far as Christian apologists are concerned) most clearly presented eternal conscious misery as a possible fate for Gentiles is Matthew 25, and after the quote, I follow with some disconcerting concerns:

 31 "But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
 32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
 34 "Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
 35 'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.'
 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?
 38 'And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You?
 39 'When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
 40 "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'
 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
 42 for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;
 43 I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.'
 44 "Then they themselves also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?'
 45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:31-46 NAU)

The following considerations are reasonable, and their reasonableness is not going to disappear merely because a desperate Christian apologist misrepresents some other legitimate possibility as if it was the only "correct" interpretation:

First, my rebuttals to Licona, Turek, Habermas and Craig on the resurrection of Jesus are weighty and substantial (e.g., the 1st Corinthians 15 "creed" has no historical value, there are only 3 eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus, all three of these are easily falsified on the merits, nothing in the NT or extrabiblical historical evidence such as Josephus justifies inferring Jesus' brother James ever actually converted to Christianity, Paul was a deluded maniac who thought he could physically fly up into heaven, the kind of witness any juror would not only disbelieve, but murder as well, the multiple attestation of Jesus' burial is rather weak, Jesus' family not finding his miracles the least bit credible and their committing the unpardonable sin justifies concluding Jesus was more like Benny Hinn than a truly miracle working prophet, Deut. 13 reminds us that even false prophets can work true miracles so that Jesus' miracle of resurrection would not answer the question of whether he was truly the son of God, The earliest gospel did not allege the risen Christ was seen by anybody, there is no rule of common sense or logic that requires any living person to ever give two fucks what is stated in religious documents more than 1,000 years old, etc, etc, etc), so in light of how reasonable it is to view evidence of Jesus' resurrection as incredibly weak and unworthy of credit, what exactly Jesus taught and what exactly he meant or how best to interpret his surviving words, is about as relevant to a person's eternal safety as is which box of cereal they should buy to shut up their screaming tykes.

Second, even assuming Jesus rose from the dead and therefore unbelieving Gentiles endure a real risk of entering an eternity of misery and shame upon death, nothing about "faith" is expressed or implied anywhere in this Matthew 25 "judgment of the nations".

Third, those who according to this teaching make it into heaven likely did not have specifically Christian faith, because they honestly did not realize what anybody with Christian education would know, that to help the poor is to help Jesus (vv. 37-39).  Jesus certainly cannot be talking about the Gentiles who actually heard him teach, since they would then not expres that ignorance on judgment day.  So Jesus was likely mostly talking about Gentiles that never actually heard his teachings.  Inerrantist Craig Blomberg trifles:

25:37–39 Many of the sheep are understandably surprised. No doubt several of these conditions did characterize Christ at various stages of his earthly life, but the vast majority of the “righteous” will not have been present then and there to help him. So how did all this happen? Many interpreters have seen this surprise as indicating that these people were “anonymous Christians”—righteous heathen who did good works but never heard the gospel. But the text never says they were surprised to be saved, merely that they did not understand how they had ministered so directly to Jesus.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 377). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

What Blomberg is missing is that the one kind of people most likely to fail to realize that their helping the poor constituted helping Jesus, would be non-Christians.   And since Jews wuld likely know that Proverbs 19:17 defines helping the poor as helping God, it is highly unlikely that the righteous crowd expressing surprised at Jesus are Jews.  "The least of these my brethren" more than likely means the poor in general, which is consistent with Luke's Christ-Beatitudes, where the author does not qualify "poor" or "hungry", reasonably implying that Jesus thinks just anybody that is poor and/or hungry in any way, deserves to be called "blessed".

Fourth, this teaching on 'how to get saved' is perfectly legalistic: not only is there evidence against the righteous here having any 'faith' whatsoever, that is the context within which Jesus makes clear that it was because they engaged in good works that they are given salvation (vv. 34-36). What theory best explains the tendency of 90% of fundamentalist Christians to immediately quote from Paul but never Jesus on the subject of "how to get saved"?  Easy:  Jesus was a legalist...today's protestant fundamentalist are not.  You tend to avoid quoting authorities you disagree with.

Fifth, I have very good reasons for saying bible inerrancy is a confused hurtful doctrine that cannot even be resolved by those who adopt it, and is likely false anyway, therefore, I am reasonable to regard it a false doctrine, and therefore, obviously disqualified from consideration as a hermeneutic (i.e., there is no intellectual constraint upon me to worry that I need to reconcile my interpretation of a bbile verse with the rest of the bible, before I can be confident my interpretation of the verse is accurate). 

So if I can be reasonable to avoid using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, then there is no intellectual compulsion on me to "harmonize" my interpretation of this "judgment of the nations" Christ-teaching with anything else in the bible.  So I don't give a shit if concluding Jesus was a legalist would require that he taught contrary to apostle Paul.  I have definite reasons to assert, on the merits, that Paul's gospel was in contradiction to the one Jesus taught.  Therefore I remain reasonable to limit my interpretation of Jesus' words to just the teaching itself, and not give a fuck whether that interpretation would make the bible contradict itself.

that Jesus taught leglism sure seems clear if we allow the immediate context to have primary importance when interpreting Matthew 5:17-20:

 17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
 20 "For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17-20 NAU)

Fundies will insist righteousness is imputed to us from the cross, but unfortunately:

a) what Jesus meant must first be gleaned from the "immediate context".  Romans 4:4-5 and Galatians 2:21 are not the "immediate context" for Matthew 5.  Slopping different parts of the bible together the way a little girl makes one big ball of ice-cream out of two scoops might be the manner of a fundamentalist who thinks "proof-texting" is the human body's only hope of processing oxygen,  but I prefer a method that is a bit more exegetically responsible.  The immediate context here would be Matthew 5:21 ff, where Jesus makes it clear that he demands his followers evince actual personal righteousness.  The burden is therefore on the fundie who would trifle that nobody can produce righteous works until they first undergo righteousness by imputation.  once again, with good reason, I'm not an inerrantists, so I'm not the least bit unreasonable in refusing to "harmonize" my interpretation of Jesus in his own context, with anything the apostle Paul taught.

b)  Since the allegedly risen Christ said ALL of his pre-Cross teachings apply to Gentiles after the Cross (Matthew 28:20), and since, obviously, the alleged author Matthew certainly seems to believe the gospel to the Jews is identical in every way to the gospel to the Gentiles, you cannot even escape the legalism with dispensationalism and pretending "the cross changed the covenant".  What Jesus actually meant in his own context is probably more important than the fallible inferences you draw based on your equally fallible and more than likely false belief in biblical inerrancy.   Wallace's next question:

What does it mean to “trust” the Gospel?

Whatever it means, it cannot mean "Lordship salvation", and it doesn't mean "walking daily with Jesus", since Jesus explicitly forbade the Gentile Gerasene demonic, who converted to Jesus and wanted to become his close compansion, from staying near him, and in such a charge Jesus did not express or imply that the man ever needed to get near Jesus in the future:

38 But the man from whom the demons had gone out was begging Him that he might accompany Him; but He sent him away, saying,
 39 "Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. (Lk. 8:38-39 NAU)

Therefore, Jesus thinks one can reasonably be construed as trusting the gospel even if the way they converted did not and does not lead to them "walking daily with Jesus".

Fudies will scream that this is false, but on the contrary, Jesus' interactions with actual gentiles in actual instances consistently show that he felt he needed no more association with them than to grant their particular request.  The real Jesus had nothing to do with the fundamenetalist Jesus that demands a close daily walk with Gentiles, and warns them to constantly study the scriptures, etc, etc:

 22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed."
 23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us."
 24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
 25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, "Lord, help me!"
 26 And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
 27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."
 28 Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once.   (Matt. 15:22-28 NAU)

 5 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him,
 6 and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented."
 7 Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him."
 8 But the centurion said, "Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
 9 "For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go!' and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this!' and he does it."
 10 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, "Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.
 11 "I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven;
 12 but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
 13 And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed that very moment.   (Matt. 8:5-13 NAU)

Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman in John 4, but she leaves with intent to tell others (v. 28) and we never hear about her again.

Jesus had an initial ministry to Gentiles (Matthew 4:15) and was often followed by large crowds likely including Gentiles, but according to Mark 1:45, Jesus didn't always want fellowship with those who desired to hear him preach.  That doesn't mean such crowds were only superficially interested in Jesus, as he refused to immediately dismiss such crowds (John 6:26, where John unwittingly testifies against the credibility of Jesus' miracles by alleging that that lots of people were following Jesus not because he did "signs" but because he gave them food).

Once again, the babies will scream that our interpretation cannot be correct unless it can be harmonized with everything else in the NT, but this is false on two fronts:

a) as I already explained, bible inerrancy is not nearly so clear that it deserves to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic, so that failure to do so does not render us "unreasonable" as inerrantists would otherwise scream, and

b) when you seek to harmonize your interpretation of one verse with the "rest of the bible", it is more correct to say you are trying to reconcile your interpretation with your interpretation of the rest of the bible.  Fundies often say "this part of the bible is so clear it doesn't need interpretation', but that's just ignorance.  When it comes to correctly understanding ancient texts, by necessity they cannot ever be as automatically clear in meaning as, say the headline for yesterday's edition of the New York Times.  The very fact that smart Christian scholars and apologists disagree with each other about nearly every biblical matter (except perhaps Jesus' gender) robustly witnesses to the fact that "letting the bible speak for itself" is nothing more than a dangerously stupid colloquialism.  Therefore, using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic really IS a case of insisting there is harmony between your interpretation of a bible verse, and your interpretation of the rest of the bible.

But if this be a more accurate way to describe the "inerrancy-as-hermeneutic" phenomenon, then this boils down to merely you trying to make the whole collection of your interpretations of the bible harmonize...which means you are blindly assuming that your imperfect interpretations are indeed correct beyond question.

c) KJV Onlyists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Disciples of Christ, Oneness Pentecostals Calvinists, dispensationalists and others you accuse of inaccuracy or "heresy" also believe in biblical inerrancy and use it as a hermeneutic.  But since you agree their using bible inerrancy as a final check on any one of their particular interpretations has not helped them to see the true biblical light, you can hardly blame the outsider or skeptic for concluding that bible inerrancy really isn't a legitimate tool of hermeneutics, it only looks like that because of the dogma that naturally comes with preaching inerrancy.   You can hardly blame the skeptic who thinks bible inerrancy is, at the end of the day, a completely useless tool, and perhaps a harmful tool; one that would help insulate them from reason should they pick the wrong church and then start insisting that their particular doctrines are "consistent" with the "rest of the bible". 

Therefore, the skeptic has full rational warrant to reject bible inerrancy and limit their tools of interpretation to simply grammar, immediate context, larger context of the author, genre of the book and perhaps insights from the social sciences.   Any interpretation that results from use of these universally acknowledged tools of interpretation is going to remain reasonable regardless of how much a fundie can trifle otherwise.  Wallace next asks:

Is Christianity “anti-science”?

Some factions are more so than others.  Young Earth creationists are high on crack.  Old Earth creationists have not done worse than chug a few beers.

However, the very fact that the Roman Catholic Church cited scripture against Galileo's heliocentric model and found nothing persuasive in Galileo's trifle that maybe scripture speaks "phenomenologically", conclusively proves that, where one is not already aware of scientific facts supporting heliocentricity or the stationary status of the sun, they will more than likely conclude the bible teaches the geocentric model.

Sure is funny that before heliocentricity was confirmed scientifically, no Christian ever noticed that scriptural statements about the movement of the sun were mere "language of appearance".  They didn't start wondering about that until they learned about scientific findings suggesting a spherical earth or a stationary sun.. except of course Galileo, a person who believed the bible was the word of God and thus felt forced to find some way to harmonize the bible with truths he saw through his telescope.

In other words, the pre-scientific people who were the original addressees would never have thought such bible texts were mere "language of appearance".  And every Christian knows about that hermeneutic that says we need to ask ourselves how the originally intended audience for the biblical books would likely have interpreted them.  So it cannot possibly be unreasonable to interpret the bible as teaching geocentrism.

Demolishing Triablogue: Bad Christian apologetics bingo

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays and comments thereto from Epistle of Dude


Steve Hays mocks Genetically Modified Skeptic's newest video game:

The Triablogue villagers reply in kind, and I respond respectively:

Epistle of Dude11/03/2018 12:06 PM

Also:What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

It's better to say that you cannot intellectually obligate another person to give up their belief because you make unsupported comments about reality. 

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

 No, biology is the study of living things, period.  Conclusions about how life arose from non-life are part of biology, called abiogenesis.  Old earth creationists also believe God intended for animals to rip each other apart before sin (i.e., death before sin), which would mean he was characterizing this horrible carnivorous world as "very good" in Genesis 1:31.  See Hugh Ross and Kent Hovind duke this out on the John Ankerberg show.

Materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

 Yes, there might be Christian-hating atheists who are that prejudiced.  But the opposite of materialism is an exercise in sophistry, since all attempts to use empirical evidence to "prove" the existence of non-material things, must fail.  Frank Turek with his big bang spaceless timeless immaterial god is a fucking joke.  For example, even creationist think-tanks such as ICR deny the scientific validity of the big bang and insist it is unbiblical.   How can Turek seriously claim to intellectually obligate skeptics to his view, when other equally orthodox "born again" Christians, all of whom have a master's degree or greater in a scientific field find his position absurd.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

 That's exactly right.  You are an atheist with respect to every non-Christian religion's deities.  The difference between you and me is one single god, YHWH.

The God of the Bible is evil.

he doesn't just kill king David's baby, he needlessly causes it to suffer a horrible sickness for 7 days before killing it...thus proving that this bible-god desires to torture babies:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!" (2 Sam. 12:11-18 NAU)

God causes men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16, as I show in another post.

In Deuteronomy 28, God pushes the following threats on those who would dare disobey him:  He will cause their wives to be raped (v. 30), he will cause parental cannibalism (v. 53-57).  Then god assures them that he will take just as much "delight" to inflict these sufferings on the disobedient, that he took when bestowing blessings upon the faithful (v. 63).

Yes, your god is evil...unless you disagree with Frank Turek's moral argument and suddenly discover that rape can be morally good in certain circumstances?

 Epistle of Dude continues:

The Bible promotes slavery, genocide, sexism.

SLAVERY
In the biblical context, "slavery" was worse than the Antebellum South:  God gave the Hebrews permission to acquire slaves from the surrounding pagan nations:

45 'Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession.
 46 'You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another. (Lev. 25:45-46 NAU)

And apparently Moses, the alleged author of Leviticus, understood this to mean that they could make war against whoever they thought their god wanted them to kill, then keep the surviving little girls as slaves:

 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.   (Num. 31:14-18 NAU)

 (of course, "for yourselves" wasn't limited to merely working, it also meant "marry and have sex with", as even inerrantist Christian scholars admit:

Women who had known men sexually, whether Midianite or sinful Israelite men, were to be considered unclean, since they were the main instrument of Israel’s demise at Baal Peor. Only the young girls would be allowed to live so that they may be taken as wives or slaves by the Israelite men, according to the principles of holy war (Deut 20:13–14; 21:10–14).

Cole, R. D. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3B: Numbers (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 499). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Forcing little girls into marriage or slavery soon after kidnapping them and killing their parents, is clear from:

 10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
 13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
 14 "It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her. (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)

And don't even get me started on how this marriage rite necessarily ignores the desires of the female captive.  And that this marriage rite was prescribing rape is clear from the Good News Translation of v. 14:

¹⁴ Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

GENOCIDE
As far as "genocide", the average person doesn't give two shits about the technical definition: what we mean is that the ancient Hebrews went around killing thousands of people, no different than what the pagan tribes of those days did.  But for geeks who don't have a life and think the point of living is to act like a pretentious jailhouse lawyer, and pretend that technicalities are the only motive the brain has for continuing to function, "genocide" is legitimately defined as "the intentional killing of all of the people of a nation, religion, or racial group"

Genocide is a justifiable term where the point of killing was extermination of any group or nation.  The precise motive (i.e., racism, etc) is irrelevant.

Therefore, when Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan argue that the "genocide" charge against the ancient Hebrews is technically false, they are wrong.  Genocide does not require the victors to have any particular motive, only that they engage in large-scale massacre of certain people of any locality or identity.

So it is grammatically justified to characterize the divine command to the Hebrews for wholesale slaughter, to be a command to commit "genocide". The "fact" that the pagans victimized thereby were excessively corrupt (itself a false notion) is irrelevant:

 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. (Deut. 20:16 NAU)

 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:2-3 NAU)

Indeed, you should read the entire chapter 15 of 1st Samuel, the point of the story was that God removed Saul as king of Israel because Saul did not carry out the extermination order as fully as God had required.

Copan's and Flannagan's attempts to get away from the obvious, show them to be struggling against reality in a quite vain and humiliating way.  Christian apologist Dr. Lydia McGrew (wife of bible scholar Timothy McGrew) does not find Copan's excuses the least bit convincing.

How can Christian apologists expect spiritually dead people to recognize such arguments as successful when spiritually alive people often find such arguments fallacious?  Can it be reasonable to suggest that because spiritually alive people cannot even agree on how disgusting god is, skeptics and atheists can be rational and reasonable to consider the biblical data fatally ambiguous and thus unworthy of seriously involved analysis?

SEXISM
As far as sexism, of course Paul was sexist, he thinks "worldly fables" are fit only for "old women":

 7 But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; (1 Tim. 4:7 NAU)

Epistle of Dude continues:

Teaching children religion is child abuse.

 I do not agree with the more radical atheists that this is so.  The average church-goer is not abusing their child by simply going to church and instilling a belief in spirituality in their child.  It only becomes "abusive" when the parent pushes that shit so much that Jesus ends up being every other word.  It is the "fundamentalist" form of Christian faith that is psychologically abusive.  There is nobody there to answer the child's prayers, but they are taught that silence only means god has chosen not to answer...sort of like the reason my coffee table didn't take away my desire to play the lottery when I prayed for this desire to depart,  is because my coffee table doesn't wish to answer me at this time.  FUCK YOU DREAMER.

    Epistle of Dude11/03/2018 12:14 PM

    ☍

    Why doesn't God heal amputees?

 There are several problems with the apologists who pretend that failure to heal amputees isn't a problem:

a) the apologists are always citing to Craig Keener's two-volume work "Miracles" as a game changer in favor of Christian apologetics, and therein, Keener mentions the miraculous regrowth of limbs, which forbids the apologist from pretending smugly that we never see regrown limbs because God never promised such ability.  The fools at Triablogue push Keener's amputee-healing stsories as if they are truth.

b)  the bible does promise that future Christians will do even "greater" miracles than Jesus:

  12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
 13 "Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (Jn. 14:12-13 NAU)

See the atheist perspective here.

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snip-----------

    Jesse11/04/2018 1:02 AM

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    I think that the text of Psalm 103:8-14 (among others) debunks any notion of God in the Old Testament being cruel and hateful. Such a notion could not be further from the truth. Historical narratives are generally descriptive, not prescriptive, in nature. Context is key. All of the events that we may deem unpleasant in the Old Testament are ultimately a consequence of the Fall, and God has chosen to repair creation in the manner that He sees fit. Who are we to question Him? That would be my answer to Dawkins.

 Our being human is apparently sufficient to justify questioning God, it's what Moses did, and he apparently successfully knocked some sense into the divine head:

  9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.  (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

God is such a liar...he gives a really strong impression of seriously intending to kill the Israelites.  And since bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, no, I justifiably refuse to read this story through the lens of "God infallibly foreknows what we'll do".

faith alchemist11/04/2018 1:39 AM

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Blah blah blah Apollonius of Tyana blah bling bloo Dying and Rising gods blimp blorp Ishtar boppa footnote citing Carrier blah.

 Blah blah blah Jesus of Nazareth blah bling bloo rising from the dead blimp blorp god works evil in a way that keeps him immune from culpability for it, boppa footnote citing Will Craig blah.

As you can see, I am very frightened of Christianity, and can only feel better about my atheism by simply turning away from Christian arguments and hoping they'll just go away.  Yeah right.

God and Genocide: An atheist answers Matthew Flannagan's trifles about Numbers 31

Atheist bible critics like myself constantly confront Christian "apologists" with disturbing stories in the bible in which God or his followers committed some type of moral atrocity that we are pretty sure the apologist would never try to morally justify, such as child massacre.  We do this in the effort to use the apologists common sense as a tool to get him or her to give up the bible or take a liberal position on it.

In Numbers 25, the Israelites fall into sexual sin with the Midianite, in a place called Peor.

6 chapters later, God tells Moses to take "full" vengeance on the Midianites because they had tempted Israel into sexual sin.  The following quote is long, but the part about killing children for the sake of convenience is found in v. 15-18:

 1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
 2 "Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people."
 3 Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD'S vengeance on Midian.
 4 "A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war."
 5 So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.
 6 Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.
 7 So they made war against Midian, just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed every male.
 8 They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword.
 9 The sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered.
 10 Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire.
 11 They took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
 12 They brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
 13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the congregation went out to meet them outside the camp.
 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.
 19 "And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh (Num. 31:1-19 NAU)

Most Christians are justifiably scared of this biblical bullshit, and quickly change the subject by talking about how the new covenant in Christ is one of Grace and we are not commanded to kill each other any more, etc.  Many Christians personally hate the OT.  We grant the concession of defeat.

But some Christians are die-hard apologists and would rather be slowly burned alive, than admit their bible-god was an unconscionably barbaric petulant asshole.  They will split hairs all day long like a jailhouse lawyer, just to get away from the obvious meaning of a biblical text.  Jesus is not found in scripture, he is found in playing word-games, and telling yourself that splitting hairs about what should be inferred or not inferred from what God didn't say, is what the seriously Holy Spirit filled Christians spend most of their daily lives doing.

Two such apologists would be Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan, evangelical Christian philosophers and co-authors of Did God Really Command Genocide?: Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (2014, Baker Books).

In that book, Flannagan wastes the readers time with some trifling sophistry in the effort to arrive at the conclusion that the actions of Moses in Numbers 31 were more more barbaric than God had intended.  I reply to these absurd trifles in point-by-point fashion:

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses.

 Then maybe you missed the word "full" in Numbers 31:2?  Was that a superfluous word?

Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

I can give a better reason: first, the "full" in 31:2, as already argued.  Second, the fact that the Midianites successfully enticed the Israelites into sexual sin, just proves the Midianites were not one of the far away nations for whom Mose' rules of warfare allowed to be spared/enslaved, rather the Midianites were one of those "nearby" nations that must, under Moses' rules of war, be "totally" destroyed, since they proved to achieve the sin-enticement result that the mass-annihilation commanded was intended to preempt:

 10 "When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.
 11 "If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you.
 12 "However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
 13 "When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.
 14 "Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.
 15 "Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby.
 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
 17 "But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God. (Deut. 20:10-18 NAU)

Since the Midianites certainly did teach the Israelites to commit idolatry and other sexual sins, only a fool would trifle that because "Midian" isn't specified in the war-book's list of condemned nations, Moses "should have known" that 99% extinction of the Midianites was more than what God wanted.

Flannagan continues:

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question.

The fact that a woman is the mother of a 3 year old girl doesn't necessarily mean she loves the girl, but we are reasonable to presume this would usually be the case and require viewing of good evidence before we are obligated to think that any specific mother/daughter case is an exception.

Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval.

 But the lack of approval also doesn't entail disapproval.  If you wish to claim God disapproved of the higher level of slaughter Moses called for, that is your burden to prove.  Your view of the text is hardly a priori.

31:2 has God saying Moses should take "full" vengeance on the Midianites.  If the result of the war comports nicely with "full" vengeance, then the burden of proof is on the apologist to argue that the the way Moses carried out the attack order was "too full". 

Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There is no reason, other than fear of one's god looking stupid and sadistic, for pretending the "full" of 31:2 meant something less than the full-scale destruction Moses actually carried out.

It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval.

But the burden of showing the way Moses carried out this command of God was more extensive and sinful than God wanted, is on YOU.

In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Not likely; the originally intended recipients were mostly illiterate, they weren't "readers".  Hence, they likely would accept the story at face value, like every Christian commentator on it did between the 1st and the 18th centuries,  and not trifle about what can be implied by God's failure to condemn something.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

Consider Jesus too.  Do Flannagan's trifles here justify a person's refusal to believe Jesus was always in conformity to the will of God?  After all, just because he was the son of God doesn't necessarily...and so you see the desperation in Flannagan's atomistic analysis.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

 Then what's your problem with Moses' refusal to spare any except the virgin girls?  

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Sounds pretty serious.  But your trifles are still pointless:  If you are claiming Moses required more destruction than what God intended in 31:2, then say so and explain why, quit pussy-footing around with trifles about how God can condemn something without explicitly saying so.  What textual evidence is there to suggest God disagreed with the degree of death and destruction Moses called for? 

And Flannagan's skepticism seems more extreme than is warranted for a Christian bible believer.  n Numbers 31:14, Moses is "angry" with his military leaders for sparing the women.

Shouldn't a Christian believer in bible inerrancy like Flannagan first assume that Moses had expected his men to inflict total destruction?

Once again, if 31:2 has God decreeing "full" vengeance on the Midianites, what textual evidence makes Flannagan so positively certain that the full manner Moses carried out God's orders, effected more death than God wished?

Didn't this Moses and his Hebrews believe in corporate solidarity, the doctrine that holds you responsible for sins of your leader even if you were not personally guilty?  

Didn't this god hold entire cities responsible for murders that went unsolved or idolotry committed by a few (Deut 13:12-18; 21:1-9)?

Didn't the Israelites manifest the same observation of corporate solidarity when willing to spare anybody that might come under Rahab's roof (Josh 2:12-14; 6:22-25)?

Didn't this god refrain from revealing Achan as guilty of stealing the wedge of gold, until after God decided this sin, unknown to Joshua, should cause Joshua to suffer more than the expected number of battle casualties (Joshua 7, i.e., only Achan sinned this way, but God spreads the guilt to the entire nation saying "Israel has sinned...they have taken some forbidden things..." v. 11-12)?

Didn't this god kill off seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba, all because David had chosen to take a census of Israel (2 Sam. 24:15 NAU)?

Doesn't this god condition his grace on the children confessing both their own and their fathers' sins (Leviticus 26:40)?

 

Didn't the god Moses served kill a bunch of toddlers and babies with a flood in the days of Noah?  Or maybe Flannagan will trifle that the flood waters  inflicted no harm on anybody below the age of accountability?

Didn't the god Moses served decree that the sin of Adam and Eve should inflict all of their descendants?

 Didn't this god visit the iniquity of the fathers up to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5,6)?

Why should anybody think the killing of the babies in 31:17 was against the will of a god who routinely killed babies for other people's sins?

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick. (2 Sam. 12:13-15 NAU)

There are solid reasons for saying Moses' actions in Numbers 31 didn't inflict more death than God intended in 31:2:

• Christians automatically presume the sinful human leader correctly conveys God's sentiments, always placing the burden on those who would cry for an exception (i.e., Flannagan blindly presumes just whatever the biblical prophets credited to God, really was from God, and requires liberals or skeptics to overcome that presumption).  So Flannagan cannot coherently pretend that an assumption of Moses' consistency with God is too speculative.
• Moses' god routinely killed children for the sins of their parents, so the call to take "full" vengeance, without further qualification, would naturally be taken to mean the children shall share in the guilt of the parents.
• Moses himself adhered to corporate solidarity.   God should have specified this case was exceptional and limited, if He didn't want somebody who believed in corporate solidarity to get the wrong impression about how extensive the vengeance should be.
• God obviously wanted the Midianite men to die, since he called for battle despite knowing the Midianite men would rise to the defense of their nation. 
• it would be stupid and foolish to suggest maybe God only wanted the guilty adult Midianites killed, and the Hebrews should just walk away from their war victory leaving the orphaned Midianite kids to fend for themselves
• God obviously wanted the death of the adult women who were personally guilty of the sexual sin at issue.  If he didn't what sense would it make to say God wanted Moses to make war with the Midianite men, but not the women who were instrumental in causing the idolatry to take place?
• God or Moses was the author of a war-book that included instructions on how to justify impregnating the female war captives (Deut. 21:10-14).  Moses' sparing of the virgin girls was in harmony with what Moses or God allowed elsewhere.
• God obviously wanted the male Midianite children to be killed, since a) raising them as foster children would likely give rise to possible blood-feud after they grew up (an excuse many Christian apologists hide under), and b) God never makes good on his promises, therefore, God's promises that kids will not depart from proper Jewish teaching if they are raised in it (Proverbs 22:6) could not possibly be taken seriously by anybody faced with such a foster care situation.

Flannagan has no basis whatsoever for his trifling suggestion that the massacre in Numbers 31 was somehow more extensive than God intended.

Therefore, the inerrantist who compares Moses' actions in Numbers 31 to everything else that can be known about him, his god, and his ideas about just war, has no other option but to admit the massacre of innocent children and babies in this dreadful story was the will of God.