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

    ☍

    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

☍

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.

Cold Case Christianity: the bible is racist and imperfect

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

Cold Case Christianity: No GQ, the Bible is not Racist, Sexist or Boring

Posted: 18 Jun 2018 01:34 AM PDT

Recently, the editors of GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly online) released its list of 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read. They boldly claimed, “…not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon.” The Bible was smack dab in the middle of their list.

You may recognize a few other classic works on GQ’s roster of “racist,” “sexist,” and “boring” books: Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. These books were listed for a variety of reasons, but the editor’s explanation for the inclusion of the Bible was particularly harsh: “It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned.”

While many may find those words to be rather severe, they actually sounded familiar to me when I first read the GQ article. As an atheist, I can remember saying something similar to a Christian co-worker. But that all changed as I began to investigate the Bible using the skills I had developed as a detective. I’ve now come to appreciate the Bible above all other texts (religious or otherwise), largely because the editors of GQ are wrong:

The Bible’s not racist: The Bible doesn’t divide people based on their racial identity.

 Jesus held off granting a healing request to a Gentile women until she cleverly responded to his racist remark by admitting it was correct to characterize the Jews as children and herself as a dog:

 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)

 Inerrantist scholar has to trifle that the wording here suggests the Gentiles are not wild dogs, but pet dogs, as if this reduces the stigma!

15:25–28 The woman merely repeats her plea for help but also kneels. Whatever her intention, Matthew will see some kind of worship here. Jesus pursues the question of the distinction between Jews and Gentiles (v. 26). Jews frequently insulted Gentiles by calling them “dogs,”— the wild, homeless scavengers that roamed freely in Palestine. But the diminutive form here (kynarion rather than kyōn) suggests a more affectionate term for domestic pets, particularly since these dogs eat under the children’s table. Even at best, Jesus’ remarks still strike the modern reader as condescending. Jesus apparently wants to demonstrate and stretch this woman’s faith. The “children” must then refer to Israel and the “bread” to the blessings of God on the Jews, particularly through Jesus’ healing ministry. The woman disputes none of Jesus’ terms but argues that, even granting his viewpoint, he should still help her (v. 27). The Gentiles should receive at least residual blessings from God’s favor on the Jews. In fact, the Old Testament from Gen 12:1–3 onwards promised far more than residue. The woman reveals a tenacious faith even as a Gentile (v. 28). Jesus explicitly commends this faith, closely paralleling the narrative of 8:5–13 (as does also his instantaneous healing from a distance). Matthew’s distinctives underline her faith by the addition both of her words in v. 22 and of Jesus’ praise here. “Your request is granted” more literally reads let it be done for you as you wish.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.).

Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 244).

Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Evangelical scholar Hagner admits what "dog" really meant:

This word, used first by Jesus and then by the woman, recalls that Gentiles were sometimes likened to the unclean dogs that roamed the streets (cf. 7:6). κυρίων, “masters,” suggests the superiority of Israel as the people of God over the Gentiles.

Hagner, D. A. (2002). Vol. 33B:

Word Biblical Commentary : Matthew 14-28.

Word Biblical Commentary (Page 442). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Wallace continues:

Skin color, along with other external human features, are unimportant to God.

But it was apparently important enough to the Jews that black people had to remind Jews to stop focusing on skin color:

 6 Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun. My mother's sons were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards; my own vineyard I had to neglect. (Cant. 1:6 NIV)

 Wallace continues:

According to the Bible, God created humans – all humans – in His image (Genesis 1:27), and unlike the rest of us, God doesn’t judge people based on their outward appearance, but instead “looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

If God doesn't judge by outward appearance, he probably didn't give the command requiring all Gentile men among the Hebrews to get circumcised:

48 "But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. (Exod. 12:48 NAU)

 Numbers 31:18 says that among the Midianite women captured in war, only the females whose hymens are still intact can be spared the death-penalty:

 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. 31:17-18 NAU)

 One has to wonder how Moses and his army men figured out which of the women were virgins and which weren't.  But we can be fairly sure that it involved something a bit more physically intrusive than prayer.

The Apostle Paul wrote that “there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” (Galatians 3:28), and the Apostle Peter said that, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).

And yet, long after the Great Commission wherein the risen Christ told the original apostles that they were to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19-20), we still find them intentionally limiting their efforts solely to the Jews, and allocating the entire Gentile mission field to Paul alone, Galatians 2:9,

When Martin Luther King Jr. – a Bible believing, Baptist minister – argued for the dignity and equality of African Americans, he did so based on the teaching of Scripture. This alone is adequate reason to read the Bible.

Equality in the bible doesn't mean it contains no inequality or racist statements. Only those who believe in bible "inerrancy" would engage in such a broad brushing assumption.

The Bible’s not sexist: Given the cultural setting in which the Bible was written, it’s unfair to claim it is sexist.

 Is that why the bible says girl babies make the mother unclean longer than boy babies?

 2 "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: 'When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean.
 3 'On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.
 4 'Then she shall remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are completed.
 5 'But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days. (Lev. 12:2-5 NAU)

 Reminder to the apologists:  the text says the mother remains UNCLEAN longer upon birth of a baby girl. It is neither expressed nor implied that the extra time was to allow more bonding between mother and infant.  UNCLEAN is a yucky state of affairs, never something positive.

Wallace continues:

In fact, Jesus’ continuous interaction with women was countercultural. He had female disciples, many of his closest friends were women (i.e. Martha and her sister, Mary), and some of his most profound theological teaching was first shared with women (as in John 11:20-27).

He also talked down to his own mother:

  3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine."
 4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come."
 5 His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it." (Jn. 2:3-5 NAU)

And Jesus dishonorably refused to agree with somebody who considered his mother honorable:

  27 While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed."
 28 But He said, "On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it." (Lk. 11:27-28 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

It was a woman who first acknowledged the identity of Jesus as the Messiah (the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John),

 That's in the gospel of John, the latest of the gospels, and you don't have the first fucking clue whether this story is real or just made up by John, in light of conservative NT scholars Craig Evans and Mike Licona and their belief that John puts in Jesus' mouth words he never said.

and it was a woman (Mary) who first discovered the empty tomb.

But the low status of women might be inferred from the fact that the women are never credited by Paul or other apostles in their actual preaching of the resurrection.   Its not about who was first to see the empty tomb, but who Jesus actually appeared to.  And despite Jesus appearing to the women in all 4 gospels, the women are never cited as resurrection witnesses in Paul's infamous list of resurrection witnesses, 1st Corinthians 15:

 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)

Wallace continues:

Women played a critical role in the ministry of Jesus, because as Paul said, “there is no male and female” for we are all one in Christ.

 Nope, apostle Paul cited to Eve not being the first to be created, and Eve having been successfully hoodwinked by the devil, as his basis for refusing to allow women to teach in the church:

 9 Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments,
 10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.
 11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.
 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.
 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
 15 But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. (1 Tim. 2:9-15 NAU)

 Commentators who pretend Paul only said this because of some local heresy, is total bullshit.  Paul's reasons for prohibiting women from teaching are reasons that would easily be taken as biblical evidence that women are intellectually inferior to men.

Wallace continues:

This teaching about the value, status and identity of women, written two millennia prior to modern feminist movements, once again makes the Bible worth reading.

The Bible’s not boring: The Bible isn’t simply a collection of moralistic stories and proverbial proclamations, and it isn’t uninteresting. It is a description of the world the way it really is.

Yeah right.  A book that mentions talking snakes, a parted Red Sea with a "wall of water" on either side of the escaping Israelites, a talking donkey, angels flying, people walking on water, rising from the dead, flying up to heaven, enjoying telepathy...this book describes the way the world really is?  FUCK YOU.

It presents a comprehensive view of reality, answering the most foundational questions asked by humans for thousands of years.

Correct.  Humans have been asking for thousands of years why evil like rape occurs, and Isaiah 13:13-17 answers:  this is God causing men to rape women:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.  (Isa. 13:13-18)

Wallace continues:

It describes how we got here, why our world is broken, and how it can be fixed. The overarching narrative of the Bible has served to inspire artists of all kinds. Writers such as Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Dickens, artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Del Greco, and musicians such as Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach found creative inspiration on the pages of Scripture.

It's also been a source of dangerous confusion for many people because it is more ideological than realistic.  You are never allowed to sin, and yet, reality makes it impossible to avoid sinning. So the bible-god intentionally commands the impossible, and yet wants his readers to believe that he shakes the mountains in fiery wrath when sinners sin.  One wonders whether God also sends judgments upon dogs for barking.

If you’re wondering what stirred these great creative geniuses, you might want to read the Bible for yourself.

And if the bible has confused your mind and made you think 'god' is a psycho more interested in himself than his victims, throwing the bible away might be the lesser of two evils.

As I began to investigate the claims of the Bible using my skillset as a cold-case detective, I found that the Gospels varied in content and style, just as I would expect if they were reliable eyewitness accounts of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

They also contradict each other,  but perhaps as a detective you never worry about witnesses who contradict each other?  You cannot find any non-Christian historian who thinks the variation in the gospel testimony justifies moving beyond the details and concluding that Jesus rose from the dead even if some of the witnesses are in disagreement about other matters.

They weren’t overly “repetitive” nor “self-contradictory,” especially given my experience interviewing thousands of eyewitnesses.

But you've never interviewed eyewitnesses who lived in Palestine in 40 a.d.  Some would argue that your experience is useless for discerning the truth-content of ancient testimony given by people of vastly different cultures.  What are you gonna do next?  Call Matthew to the witness stand?

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.

Cold Case Christianity: Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

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

Why Would God Punish Finite, Temporal Crimes in an Eternal Hell?

Posted: 06 Sep 2017 01:01 AM PDT

240I was interviewed recently on a large Los Angeles radio station about the existence of Hell.

Did you tell them about the liberal Christian scholars who say hell-fire in the NT is mere metaphor? 

One caller objected to the duration of punishment in Hell. From his perspective, the idea our temporal, finite sin on earth warrants an eternal punishment of infinite torment in Hell was troubling, at the very least. The punishment does not seem to fit the crime; in fact, the disproportionate penalty makes God seem petty and vindictive, doesn’t it? Why would God torture infinitely those who have only sinned finitely?

Did you have any callers who objected that the bible god sometimes gets rid of sin by simply waving his magic wand, no atonement needed?  Or were the callers just a bunch of ignorant skeptics who didn't know the bible as well as I do?

Better, the OT God makes it clear that human sin is completely forgiven by means of animal sacrifice, even if the sin was one normally calling for execution, such as adultery:

  20 'Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment; they shall not, however, be put to death, because she was not free.
 21 'He shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering.
 22 'The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the LORD for his sin which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him. (Lev. 19:20-22 NAU)

 The bible also says Yom Kippur completely cleansed Israel of sin:

 30 for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD. (Lev. 16:30 NAU)

But no, J. Warner Wallace believes Hell is literal and eternal, and thinks the bible doesn't have any mistakes, and so insists that regardless of how this passage reads, it cannot mean that you are "really" cleansed of sin before the Lord, because we have to account for why requires an eternal hell of torment in the NT.  Well excuse me, but biblical inerrancy is total bullshit, so you cannot get rid of Leviticus 19 by pointing out that Jesus taught a literal hell in Luke 16.

If this sexual sin was rape, the easy way to obtain divine forgiveness makes God a mysoginist prick.

If this sexual sin wasn't rape, it was likely intentional, for what sexual sin between consenting adults wouldn't be?  But then the forgiveness here for this intentional sin contradicts the explicit teaching of the bible that intentional sins cannot be forgiven:

 30 'But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.
 31 'Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him.'" (Num. 15:30-31 NAU)

 26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Heb. 10:26-28 NAU)

Wallace continues:

I think it’s important to define the nature of Hell and sin before our discussion of the eternal nature of punishment can have any meaning or significance.

And good luck in your attempt to show that any Christian scholars who define hell a pure metaphor, are just spiritually dead. 

Objections related to the eternal nature of Hell result from a misunderstanding of four principles and terms:

Those objections also arise from a belief that the bible has mistakes, another presupposition you won't be refuting anytime soon, indicating that while you pretend to be writing to equip Christians to answer skeptics, the truth is, you are only writing to convince people who carry around the same basic Christian convictions that you hold.

We Fail to Understand the Meaning of Spiritual “Torment”

The Bible says those who are delivered into Hell will be tormented, and the degree to which they will suffer is described in dramatic, illustrative language. But, the scripture never describes Hell as a place where God or His angels are actively “torturing” the souls of the rebellious.

Yes it does:

 10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. (Rev. 14:10 NAU)

 8 "But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Rev. 21:8 NAU)

The Revelation author was pro-Jewish and lived in the first century, where prisoners were routinely tormented or punished in the presence of, and by the authority of, the local king or other ruler.

 Jesus likened God to a king who beat his subjects:

 45 "But if that slave says in his heart, 'My master will be a long time in coming,' and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk;
 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers.
 47 "And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,
 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few.  (Lk. 12:45-48 NAU)

Why should the rational person distinguish Wallace's god who doesn't "actively" torture anybody, from the biblical god Jesus taught, who apparently throws unbelievers into a furnace of fire?  What's the difference between selectively burning a person on their body with a blow torch, and throwing them into a furnace intended to burn them without killing them?

 40 "So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.
 41 "The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness,
 42 and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:40-42 NAU)

 Jude describes the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire as "punishment"

 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1:7 NAU)

To make sure you cannot quibble, the bible specifies that God was hurling fireballs "from heaven" down onto these two cities:

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

Now are you still sufficiently fundamentalist so as to admit that God does the punishing?


And the idea of God causing endless unbearable suffering is perfectly consistent with God threatening to cause parental cannibalism, kidnapping, rape and other horrific atrocities in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Read it, then you talk to me again about about how wrong it is to call your god a sadistic lunatic.  Is it really true that the all-powerful creator of the universe could not, during the days of Moses, think of any more humane way to successfully dissuade his people from sin, except to threaten them with horrific plights?

“Torture” is the sadistic activity that is often perpetrated for the mere joy of it.

No, "torture" is intentional infliction of pain, but whether it is inflicted sadistically goes beyond the dictionary definition:

“Torment” results from a choice on the part of the person who finds himself (or herself) suffering the consequences.

No, "torment" is the experience of anguish and pain as the result of harsh circumstances, the dictionary definition does not link the experience to the suffering person's "choices"

However, it is obvious that you've inserted "choices" into the definition of "torment" because of your arbitrary desire to blame hell's torments on those who suffer it, as required by your religion.  You have done an unconvincing job of trying to disconnect Jesus from the cause of those hellish torments.

One can be in constant torment over a decision made in the past, without being actively tortured by anyone.

Immaterial, the bible god actively tortures people on earth AND in hell, see above.

We Fail to Understand the Insignificance of Sin’s “Duration”

If someone embezzles $5.00 a week from their employer’s cash register they will have stolen $260.00 over the course of a year. If they’re caught at the end of this time, they would still only be guilty of a misdemeanor in the State of California (based on the total amount of loss). Although the crime took a year to commit, the perpetrator wouldn’t spend much (if any) time in jail. On the other hand, a murder can take place in the blink of an eye and the resulting punishment will be life in prison (or perhaps the death penalty). The duration of the crime clearly has little or nothing to do with the duration of the penalty.

And according to Leviticus 16 and 19, supra, sins in general and the sin of adultery in particular cease their duration upon sacrifice of an animal.  If the Book of Hebrews in the NT teaches that sin is not "fully" dealt with by animal sacrifices, then the author got it wrong, since full expiation and cleansing before the Lord is exactly how Leviticus' originally intended recipients would have taken those words, and it is what they signify in their immediate contexts anyway.  The whole business of Jesus fulfilling the animal sacrificial system with his own death is total bullshit...how could Jesus "forgive" sins during his earthly ministry as he is alleged to have done (Mark 2:10), if after such forgiveness, the sin still required some type of sacrifice?  But the theological problem of Jesus needing to die for previously forgiven or previously atoned-for sins, is yours and yours alone.

We Fail to Understand the Magnitude of God’s “Authority”

If your sister catches you lying about your income last year, you might lose her respect. If the IRS catches you lying about your income last year, the resulting punishment will be far more painful. What’s the difference here? It certainly isn’t the crime. Instead, we recognize the more authoritative the source of the code, rule or law, the greater the punishment for those who are in violation. If God is the Highest Authority, we should expect that violations of His “laws” would result in significant punishment(s).

No, see Leviticus 19:20-22, supra.  If a slave-owner has sex with his female slave after she had been betrothed to another man, the slave-owner who committed this adultery is spared from the mandatory death penalty because the slave-girl wasn't "free" (she wasn't important enough by god's standards to infuse the sexual act with that much importance or significance), and he will obtain divine forgiveness by nothing more than his giving a sacrificial animal to the priests for slaughter.

Oh, and don't miss the fact that no matter how many times you read that passage, the slave-girl in question is never penalized or punished in any way, despite the fact that, if you deny this act was rape, she consented to the sexual liaison and therefore was no less guilty than the man and thus just as needful of expiation as the man.  So either a) she isn't penalized because the sex act described here was rape (in which case the man obtained divine forgiveness for rape by simply allowing one of his animals to be slaughtered, showing that the god of the OT thinks rape does not require the man to suffer any punishment beyond giving up an animal, when in fact the man being a slave-owner implies he was rich and could afford to give up several animals without feeling any financial sting), or b) she consented and was guilty of adultery as much as the owner, but God for whatever reason finds it unnecessary to address her part in the sin.

We Fail to Understand the Depth of Our “Sin”

Finally, it’s important to remember the nature of the crime that eventually leads one to Hell. It’s not the fact you kicked your dog in 1992. It’s not the fact you had evil thoughts about your teacher in 1983. The crime that earns us a place in Hell is our rejection of the true, living, eternal God.

On the contrary, the bible says people are judged for all of their acts and words, not just the act of rejecting the gospel:

 32 "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
 33 "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.
 34 "You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.
 35 "The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.
 36 "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.
 37 "For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matt. 12:32-37 NAU)

  27 "For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. (Matt. 16:27 NAU)

  12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. (Rev. 20:12-13 NAU)

 No, "according to their deeds" cannot be whittled down to "only because they rejected the gospel".

The rejection of God’s forgiveness is not finite. People who reject Jesus have rejected Him completely.

First, that's just plain stupid.  If I reject my neighbor because I don't like his morals, that doesn't mean I'd just stand there and do nothing while watching him drown, or refuse his offer of money if I needed it to avoid being evicted.  What are you going to say next?  That we only reject the light lest our evil deeds be exposed?

Second, those authentically born-again spiritually brothers in the faith you call 5-Point Calvinists believe that God has predestined people to do all that they end up doing, including their sins, which makes God's sending unbelievers to hell even more atrocious, since the only reason they desired to sin was because God forced them to desire this.

Then there's Ezekiel 38:4, where God describes his sovereign forcing of a foreign people to attack Israel, by saying he will put a hook in their jaws and draw them against Israel, and ch. 38 and 39 go on to say God will then punish by great slaughter these foreign nations for doing what he forced them to do.

Wallace, who are you trying to impress here?  The people who already believe everything you say (gee, real toughie there)?  or the skeptics and atheists who agree with most Christian scholars that bible inerrancy is total bullshit?   Given how obscenely weak your theology is, I'd say you've chosen the low-road, and you intend more to make Christians feel confident that their beliefs are true, and less to convince skeptics of the alleged error of their ways.

They have rejected Him as an ultimate, final mortal decision. God has the right (and obligation) to judge them with an appropriate punishment.

Don't call God a punisher unless you credit him with the torments the sinners experience in hell.  Sorry, Wallace, but you are not going to reconcile the biblical picture of God as tormentor, with the modern Christian belief that God doesn't himself torment anybody.  Again, read the most depressing news in the world in Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then come back here and tell me God doesn't inflict torment and torture.

To argue that God’s punishment does not fit our crime is to underestimate our crime.

And although God could have caused Bathsheba to miscarry early after her adultery with David so that the child conceived would never experience any torment, God did not.  And although God could have simply caused the born baby to die immediately, he did not, but struck the child, so that it suffered a tormenting  sickness before finally expiring after 7 days:

 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.  (2 Sam. 12:15-18 NAU)

To argue that a teenager stealing a pack of bubblegum deserves to be roasted alive in hell in screaming mindless agony forever, indicates you deny those parts of the bible that delimit God's power and holiness.  It also tells me you think God's plan to deal with sin is perfect, when in fact you should know from Genesis 6:6-7 and Exodus 32:9-14 that God sometimes discovers later that his original plan was less than perfect.

Your belief that people "deserve" hellish torments forever for temporal sins also indicates you reject those parts of the bible that teach that God was capable of getting rid of somebody's sin by simply waving his magic wand, as he apparently did in the case of David's adultery with Bathsheba:

 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." (2 Sam. 12:11-14 NAU)

If God is capable of just "removing" even sins otherwise requiring death, such as adultery, then you need to stop pretending that God's holiness "demands" that he punish sin.  He "needs" to punish sin about as much as a morbidly obese woman "needs" to eat ice cream. 

How do you expect this senseless rambling of yours to strike the fear of God into the hearts of unbelievers, when it is clear you simply reject any biblical teaching on God that doesn't fit the traditional conservative Evangelical understanding of sin and punishment?

The Bible describes Hell as a place where those who have rejected God will suffer the torment of their decision.

It also says they will suffer burning from fire and brimstone, see Revelation, quoted supra, and the last I checked, there is no logically necessary connection between stealing a candy bar and being burned by fire and brimstone, which means somebody else is responsible for forcing the sin and the punishment to be connected to each other, and since God is the one who punishes sin, it is God who is causing the fire and brimstone to burn the sinner.

It is only jailhouse lawyers like Wallace who would try to explain away the video showing his client murdering another person with a gun, by arguing that it was the bullet, not the client, who "caused" this death.

It’s an appropriate punishment given the magnitude of God’s ultimate authority and the mortal opportunities for each of us to choose otherwise in this life.

Then arbitrarily exempting adulterers from the death-penalty is also consistent with God's nature, 2nd Samuel 12, supra, in which case there is room in God's "nature" to simply eternally avoid punishing a sin.  Your portrait of a God whose nature mandates that he punish sin, reflects less from the bible and more from your choice to be a modern-day fundamentalist intent on selling books to the people who already believe everything you believe.

I'm not exactly quaking in my boots over J. Warner Wallace's pitiful attempts to justify the doctrine of literal torment in a literal Hell.  To quote one of my favorite songs from Deicide, fuck your god.