Countering the Counter: Why evangelical defenses of the virgin birth are unconvincing

This is my reply to an article by "BK" entitled

A Brief Review of Arguments Evangelicals Use to Support the Virgin Birth  

By BK  - December 21, 2017

Christianity Today published an article on December 20, 2017 entitled The Virgin Birth: What's the Problem Exactly? by Mark Galli. In the article, Galli set forth in a very concise form the arguments by those who contend that the Virgin Birth was either not true or not part of the earliest teachings of the church, and the responses to those arguments by those who support the historicity of the Virgin Birth.

Then "very concise" was Galli's problem, since the reasons supporting the skeptical position are weighty, and the Galli's "concise" articulation of the evangelical replies wasn't sufficient to pass historiography muster.

Since I had never seen the arguments set forth in this fashion before, and since Christianity Today articles drop behind a paid wall after awhile, I wanted to share the summarized arguments on the blog. Galli writes:

For the fundamentalists, the Virgin Birth is a consequence of belief in inerrancy, Christ’s deity, and the belief in the miraculous. This is one large reason why it was singled it out for defense. A lot depended on this doctrine. The main lines of liberal argument against it were: 1. It is not mentioned in the rest of the New Testament; Paul, in particular, doesn’t ever discuss it. Likewise, it is rarely mentioned in the first three centuries of the church’s existence.

And we'd naturally expect to see mention of it in such early sources if in fact that story was believed by the early Christians to be a doctrinally and historically true fact.

2. Matthew and Luke were using a faulty translation (the Septuagint) of Isaiah 7:14, which in the original Hebrew did not predict that a “virgin” would conceive a coming messiah, but only a “young woman” would. Thus they either made up the story or shaped it according to their misunderstanding.

The better skeptical argument is that a) Isaiah provided enough details in 7:13-16 to show that the "sign" was something for King Ahaz back there in 700 b.c., and b) Isaiah 7:14 was never characterized by pre-Christian Jews as messianic, or messianic prophecy.

3. It imitates pagan and Jewish myths that credit virginal conception to spiritual heroes.

It does.  Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 is the oldest of the Zeus + Danae stories, and says he got her pregnant while he was in the form of a mist of gold, then it continues to characterize her as the "virgin goddess" even while she is in the midst of labor pains giving birth to Perseus.  So that's the concept of virgin birth existing in 400 b.c.  Sorry, but all Matthew and Luke were doing was taking an older motif and putting a new spin on it.  As any dummy the least bit familiar with copyright issues knows, you don't have to imitate the original with exactitude, before the investigators can be reasonable to conclude you got your idea from a prior source.  You cannot find an exactly precursors for Medusa, but you are perfectly certain that such a story character was the result of ancient Greeks taking parts of older legends, adding some new twists, and coming up with a new idea.  The single solitary reason you don't like the idea of Matthew and Luke having done that is that such admission would destroy your wood and stone idols of bible inerrancy.  

4. It’s not possible for a human being to be conceived outside of intercourse between a man and a woman, and that’s the only way God providentially designed humans to be fruitful and multiply.

I'd never make that argument.

These were easily countered by fundamentalist authors. They replied:    

3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true.

On the contrary, the more Christianity looks like its pagan ancestors, the more justification we have to say Christianity was nothing more than a new twist on older motifs.

It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age.

Precisely because stories of gods having sex with humans was typical in that age.

4. More recent science has shown that parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction) is possible in plants and some animals, if extremely rare (see “Virgin Births Happen all the Time,” by Ted Olsen). The fundamentalist reply of the time would have simply been to say, “Who says God could not or would not do this?”

I don't see the point, as a fundamentalist you are stuck forever with defending Matthews and Luke's specifications that the seed of Christ was planted by God in Mary's womb.  You cannot shake the parallel to pre-Christian religions by simply noting that science acknowledges parthenogenesis sometimes occurs in lower life forms.

1. It was not discussed by Paul and other New Testament writers, nor by writers in the early church, because it was not controversial.

You don't know that this was the reason for their silence toward it, that's nothing but a possibility.  The winners of the historical debate are those whose reasons are more likely true than those theories which merely stay at the "possible" level.  First, the scholarly consensus is that Mark was the earliest published gospel, so it appears conclusive that the earliest form of the gospel said nothing about a virgin birth.  Second, the virgin birth stories show Jesus to be Lord from birth and strongly support a claim that he was God's Son, one of Mark's main themes.  It doesn't matter if it is "possible" for Mark to have knowingly refused to use material he believed doctrinally and historically correct to substantiate his teachings, people don't normally walk away from their best evidence and rely on lesser sources, therefore, it is more likely that Mark's silence on the virgin birth is because he either didn't know about it, or felt it was a legend unworthy of the gospel.  Third, it is the same problem with the other NT authors.  The virgin birth story says much that would have been particularly useful to them in combating adoptionist heretics who said Jesus' sonship to God didn't start until he was baptised or resurrected, even if those adoptionists somehow still believed Jesus to be born of a virgin, because the canonical versions of the stories clearly indicate Jesus' divine sonship began at his birth.

There was no reason to argue for it because no one doubted it.

Then under your logic, everything else that the NT "argues for", it does so because the subject was doubted within the church.  Under your logic, everything Mark did jot down in his gospel, he recorded because there were doubts in the church about those things.  So I guess the reason Mark does mention the public ministry of Jesus and his resurrection is because the original church was internally split on those matters?

I guess that means that the original church was fraught with internal divisions on the resurrection of Jesus, the significance of his death and what exactly he said and did.  If you say a NT author's mentioning something doesn't imply there were doubters, then you cannot argue from their silence that it was never doubted.

There was room in the original church for the idea of maintaining silence toward a thing because it was viewed as immoral or doctrinally incorrect.  See Ephesians 5:12, where one such reason was that certain things done by others in secret was best kept out of one's conversation.

The fact that it emerges in the Nicene Creed without argument or debate suggests this was indeed the case and that it was a core belief for Christians.

If you date Mark to 50 a.d. to grant any fundies' wet dream, you've got at least 275 years between Mark and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue that is plenty of time for false doctrines to take hold.  Notably the scholarly consensus is that Mark was neglected in favor of Matthew throughout the early church, and this is easily explained as Matthew's being richer in details.  But it tells you nothing about whether Matthew's author was inventing stories or passing along false traditions.

2. Biblical prophecies work on many levels, some literally,

Not so. Take your best example of a bible "prophecy" that you believe was fulfilled, and let's get started.

some metaphorically, and some both. We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies.

So much freedom that they, like "heretics", often obtain their fulfillments by taking such bible passages out of context.  ONly desperate apologists would carp that the NT authors should be allowed to take the OT out of context.  People without an ax to grind prefer condemning everybody who take things out of context.  You cannot use "second temple exegesis" to disguise the hard truth here.  I don't care if Paul's argument from singular "seed" in Galatians 3:16 was consistent with second-temple hermenuetics, anybody who takes something out of context, deserves censure.  It's not like there's some law of the universe saying some people are correct to take the bible out of context.

Besides, Mary was clearly a “young woman,” which Isaiah foresaw under the inspiration of the Spirit; that she was also a virgin is revealed in the Gospel accounts.

Again, nothing in pre-Christian Judaism took Isaiah 7:14 as messianic, and the context makes clear that the sign was a political development Ahaz was promised to see within his own lifetime, putting the burden on the Christians to show that Matthew's use was legitimated by Isaiah's immediate context.  By so whittling down this messianic prophecy to the purely typological, it's apologetic worth is ultimately negated.  Stop wasting your time with it.

In fact, the assumptions of 19th-century liberal theologians arose not from indisputable objective starting points but from unprovable assumptions. Most were strict materialists, or close to it, and believed that anything that happened in history had to have a material cause.

Since it defies coherence to say something happened in the material world that did not have a material cause, sounds like the naturalist interpretation of history is probably going to win any specific debate on the subject. Feel free to take your best shot.

Fundamentalists countered that the Bible, in fact, has a different starting point: God intervenes in history now and then, and when he does and it defies the laws of nature, it’s called a miracle.

Oh gee, an ancient book has a different starting point than modern science.  Let's just say your doing a rather poor job of giving me the slightest reason to worry about naturalism being wrong.

What follows is the response I posted to the CADRE blog on December 27, 2017 after whittling it down to meet the word limits:
---------------

"1. Silence due to nobody doubting it"
-------The author doesn't do a very good job of supporting his interpretation of Mark's silence.  His conclusions, i.e., that no one doubted it because it wasn't controversial, don't count because they are conclusions, not arguments.  That leaves only his absurd argument that the VB found its way into the Nicene Creed without controversy.  Granting for the sake of argument the fundie dream that Mark is dated to about 50 a.d., that's 275 years between Mark's original and the Council of Nicaea.  Some would argue 275 years is plenty of time for false legends and fables to deceive a substantial portion of the church.  False rumors about the apostles took strong root in the original church within the lifetimes of those apostles, see Acts 21:17-27.
 "2. Biblical prophecies."
-------I've yet to see any Christian scholar or apologist convincingly argue that any bible prophecy was fulfilled literally, that is, in a way that "god" is the best explanation for the biblical data.  I'll debate anybody on Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 53-55, Daniel 9, or whatever biblical prophecy you think is most impervious to a naturalistic interpretation.
 " We see the New Testament writers using a great freedom in using such prophecies."
------Leading to disagreements among Christian scholars on the matter (i.e., Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology, 2008, by Kenneth Berding, editor), thus rationally warranting the unbelieving reader to turn away from the entire bible prophecy business, concluding that if spiritually alive people can't figure it out, spiritually dead people are only going to fare worse.
 "Isaiah was inspired by God."
-------So apparently the author wasn't writing for skeptics, but solely for Christian readers, for whom Isaiah's inspiration and gospel accuracy are foregone conclusions.  Edifying to the Christian, laughable to the skeptic.
 "3. That other religions have similar stories has no bearing on whether this particular story is historically true."
--------You cannot find either numerous or precise parallels to Medusa in pre-Medusa pagan stories, but that doesn't slow you down from saying the Greeks more than likely just took older similar but not exact motifs and gave them a new twist to create this gorgon monster, correct?  Why should anybody think Matthew and Luke are doing anything different?  One apparent proof that Matthew wasn't above creating fiction is Acts 11:18, not at all consistent with the apostles agreeing with Matthew 4:15 that Jesus had preached salvation to the Gentiles...
 " It just indicates that the idea of virginal conception didn’t seem preposterous in that age."
----It could also indicate what it had indicated to Justin Martyr, i.e., making Jesus sound more like the heroes of pre-Christian mythology would increase the odds of the unbelieving pagan audiences taking Jesus' claims more seriously than they otherwise would have.
 Fundies are committed to defending Matthew's and Luke's reasons for the story, that God really did get Mary pregnant while "overshadowing" this young teen girl.  Sorry, but this is just Zeus by another name.
 Since the consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest among the canonical 4, you likely won't be using Matthean priority to justify saying Mark intentionally omitted the VB.
 If the consensus of spiritually alive Christian scholars can be wrong, that's a powerful incentive for the unbelieving reader to conclude that spiritually dead people will only fare worse entering this fray, thus giving them rational warrant and reasonable justification to turn away from the whole business entirely.
 A copy of my comments here will be posted at my own blog.

Demolishing Triablogue: Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms

This makes a point which dovetails with a point I've made on more than one occasion. The argument from evil is typically formulated against a very abstract concept of God, a concept derived from some version of classical theism or philosophical theology, rather than a more concrete, specific concept such as biblical theism:

Then I must be doing much better than the atheists you prefer to pay attention to.   Your God causes men to rape women (Deut. 28:30, 63;  Isaiah 13:13-18).  While for most Christians rape's absolute immorality is a non-negotiable, Calvinists like yourself are required to call it just as good as Christian worship of Jesus, since both constitute something God is making people do, and you are more committed to God's acts being good, than you are in common sense, apparently.

Jeanine Diller (2016) points out that, just as most theists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists, most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God does not exist.

That's true about me and my atheism.  The gods of the bible , including everybody from Yahweh to Dagon, do not exist except in the imagination.

Indeed, many atheists are only vaguely aware of the variety of concepts of God that there are.

But atheists like me are keenly aware of the fatal problems ensconced in your biblical god.

For example, there are the Gods of classical and neo-classical theism: the Anselmian God, for instance, or, more modestly, the all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good creator-God that receives so much attention in contemporary philosophy of religion. There are also the Gods of specific Western theistic religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism, which may or may not be best understood as classical or neo-classical Gods...Diller distinguishes local atheism, which denies the existence of one sort of God, from global atheism, which is the proposition that there are no Gods of any sort—that all legitimate concepts of God lack instances.

And less informed atheists would be more rational to throw up their hands at all this confused bullshit, than they would be to just carry around a "what if I'm wrong" as a motive to ceaselessly examine every stupid claim possible.

Global atheism is a very difficult position to justify (Diller 2016: 11–16).

Not at all, the argument from religious language:  You cannot define god in a way that "coheres" with known scientific reality, hence your God is an "incoherent" concept and that's alone sufficient to win the debate.  No, you cannot show that any such thing as "disembodied intelligence" exists, even despite anything you might find in “The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters”, J.P.Moreland, Ph.d,  Moody Publishers, 2014.  So the whole idea of your god runs afoul of the evidence that claims the most successful empirical demonstration.  Your god is no more likely to exist in some place I haven't checked, than Vishnu is.

Indeed, very few atheists have any good reason to believe that it is true since the vast majority of atheists have made no attempt to reflect on more than one or two of the many legitimate concepts of God that exist both inside and outside of various religious communities.

Then count me out of the criticism.  The argument against God from religious language is conclusive against ANY life form existing without a physical body.

Nor have they reflected on what criteria must be satisfied in order for a concept of God to count as “legitimate”,

"Legitimate" would minimally require "subject to detection by empirical means".  You couldn't show that criteria to be too demanding without your own resort to empirical means to establish the rebuttal...so apparently requiring empirical confirmation really is reasonable.

let alone on the possibility of legitimate God concepts that have not yet been conceived

Disqualifying YOUR particular god from the race is all I care about.  If in fact there is some god out there not yet known, you run the risk of being in more trouble with him than I.  According to your own bible, misrepresenting god is worse than general disbelief.  Atheists might be "fools", but damnation is assured for those who teach about God wrongly  (Gal. 1:8, James 3:1).  So your own presuppositions counsel that steering clear of "God" altogether are likely the safer route, than would be taking the chance, "accepting Jesus" then flipping a coin to figure out which of the thousands of denominations isn't engaging in the sin of misrepresenting god.

and on the implications of that possibility for the issue of whether or not global atheism is justified. Furthermore, the most ambitious atheistic arguments popular with philosophers, which attempt to show that the concept of God is incoherent or that God’s existence is logically incompatible either with the existence of certain sorts of evil or with the existence of certain sorts of non-belief [Schellenberg 2007]), certainly won’t suffice to justify global atheism

Your "rebuttal" to the skeptical theory of god's incoherence, is something less than frightful.

Nor is it obvious that evidential arguments from evil can be extended to cover all legitimate God concepts, though if all genuine theisms entail that ultimate reality is both aligned with the good and salvific (in some religiously adequate sense of “ultimate” and “salvific”), then perhaps they can. The crucial point, however, is that no one has yet made that case.

Not worried; your bible god causes men to rape women and children, and causes men to to beat children to death.  I plan to have a glorious career successfully motivating Christians to use what the bible says as a perfectly reasonable justification to say the Christian god is a moral monster and thus not likely anyting more significant than the wishful thinking of the biblical authors.

PeaceByJesus12/21/2017 9:27 PM☍It seems that at least for the militant atheists who make Hitler a Christian but deny atheism had anything negative to do with chairman Mao etc,

I am in agreement with apologists that you cannot judge a belief system merely by what you find its converts doing, since they could very well be acting contrary to their belief systems.

and presume omniscient morally superiority to God when railing against Him to exterminating terminally wicked cultures (when they are not blaming Him for not dealing with the wicked), then it seems that the God they have such animus to may be a supernatural version of their own father, since it can seem so personal. Which is the nature of us after all.

Then count me out;  my reasons for calling your God a piece of shit are strictly biblical, and the fact that most Christians have had problems with the divine atrocities of the bible forbids  you from grounding my views solely in spiritual blindness or some other esoteric bullshit, unless of course you too are a Calvinist.  But if so, then because God predestined me to be blind and I cannot resist it, you'd have to call that act of God good.  Hence, atheism is good because it is an act of God who blinds men's minds.

In any case, this imaginary god is from the devil, who, right from the beginning, presented God (to Eve) as a malevolent tyrant who selfishly kept her from what was rightfully hers, thus making her a victim of injustice by God, who needed to "share the wealth" - not in mercy or grace (which is antithetical to the ethos of the devil), but as a matter of justice.

Your idiot god could have avoided the problem of the Fall by keeping the Tree of knowledge out of their physical reach.  I would advise that your god is rather stupid and mentally ill since he apparently wasn't satisfiied with the way things were going in the pre-creation state, otherwise, he'd have been content thereto and thus would have had no motive to go complicate his life.

And which was an extension of the "share the wealth" demand behind the first "occupy movement," that of the devil presuming to occupy the position of God, not at a matter of grace to an object of mercy, but as his right, as the first of the liberal self-proclaimed elites, who "climb up some other way" (Jn. 10:1) to obtain what God gives in grace in recompensing the obedience of faith, and seduce souls with the idea that they are victims of injustice if they do not have what others obtained by merit. And to such these political psychologists present themselves as saviors, though they typically will not share the plight of their victims, but present themselves as examples of what can be obtained if they are given or maintain power.

Sorry, but fools like you are beyond help, with how blindly you trust in the truth of an ANE story where a snake talks to a woman.  Snip:

I guess i got carried away, but the atheists are apostles unawares of the Evil One.

And your hero Steve Hays, a Calvinist, blames God for their "unawares", and blames God for causing men to rape children, yet inconsistently, despite his calling all acts of God "good", he refuses to say God's act of forcing men to rape children is "good".

Demolishing Triablogue: that material in Luke is NOT against his interest

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer entitled

Material Against Luke's Interest In Luke 1-2Posted by Jason Engwer at 4:32 AM 

Some examples of how Luke's material on Jesus' childhood is different than we'd expect under skeptical scenarios: 

- Even though so much space is given to discussing John the Baptist, there's no anticipation of his work as a baptizer. Francois Bovon remarks that "The lack of any preliminary announcement of John's baptizing [in Luke 1:13-17] is surprising…

No it isn't.  Not every omission of useful information constitutes a conservative's argument.  But Luke's willingness to try to convince his readers on the basis of some story about angelic vision is sufficient to justify skepticism of his reliability.  If it weren't, Christians would have argued that the revelatory Jesus of Revelation is just as strong of a proof of the resurrected Jesus as the gospels and Paul's writings were.

The Benedictus surprisingly conceals John's primary activity, his baptizing." (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 37, 75)

Inerrantist R. H. Stein explains "Luke’s readers already knew of John the Baptist and his role in salvation history..." (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.).  New American Commentary (Page 75).

Bovon goes on to say (75) that there's probably an allusion to baptism in the reference to forgiveness of sins in Luke 1:77, though he acknowledges that baptism doesn't "grant forgiveness" in Luke's writings. It's doubtful that Luke is alluding to baptism. Even somebody who thinks he is alluding to it, though, like Bovon, finds it "surprising" that baptism isn't referred to explicitly anywhere in Luke's material on Jesus' childhood.

Sorry, I'm not seeing why you think a skeptical view of Luke would expect Luke to pay any certain degree of attention to John the Baptist.  Luke's fanciful tale about the conception and birth of John the Baptist is quite sufficient to justify skepticism toward his honesty.

- Not just with regard to baptism, but more broadly as well, Bovon notes that "the Christian traces are minimal in the birth legend of the Baptist" (ibid., 30).

Nobody said a forger has to stuff his narrative to bursting at the seams with Christianity-biased information.  The fact that Luke doesn't tie Jesus into John the baptist at this point is hardly noteworthy.  You don't explain how skeptics are put at a loss to explain this phenomena in Luke.

- The premarital timing of Mary's pregnancy is unnecessary,

The timing of Danae's pregnancy in Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12 was also "unnecessary".  Not enough about Luke's audience can be known to explain why Luke thought having God impregnate a single girl was better than God impregnating a married girl.

a departure from the precedent of Old Testament accounts of supernatural births,

Agreed,  nobody said 1st century Christians were incapable of putting new twists on old motifs.

and highly susceptible to moral objections.

but not in the context of the blindly trusting believers Luke most likely wrote for.  If you include skeptics in Luke's originally intended audience, you turn Luke into an unspeakably stupid historian.

As Raymond Brown wrote, if Luke or his source made up the account, "one must deem it a great religious blunder; for it gave rise to the charge of illegitimacy against Jesus that was the mainstay of anti-Christian polemic for many centuries."(The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], n. 28 on 143)

Not a blunder, early Christians misunderstood Isaiah 7:14 to be speaking of Mary, and were thus required to conjure up circumstances of the messiah's birth that would "fulfill" the prediction that a "virgin" would get pregnant.  Having Jesus' mother be a virgin was required, and the girl most likely to be a virgin is the unmarried girl.

 Bovon refers to the premarital timing of the pregnancy as "shocking" (Luke 1 [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002], 85).

Not shocking in the least.  Luke needed Jesus' mother to be a virgin because he and other early Christians misinterpreted Isaiah 7:14 to be God giving a sign to Ahaz that wouldn't materialize until 700 years after Ahaz died, and since they falsely thought the sign was the virgnity of the pregnant girl, their story of Jesus' birth had to tell about a literal virgin becoming pregnant, and literal virginity is mostly found in girls before marriage.  Having married get pregnant before marriage was required, not "shocking".

- The Messianic hopes of figures like Mary and Zechariah seem more nationalistic, political, and militaristic than what Jesus' ministry and his movement in general would turn out to be later in Luke's gospel and Acts.

That's correct.  But sometimes Jews and Gentiles can get caught up in stupid fanciful "spirituality" in which all empirical problems melt away in visions and hallucinations.

Bovon goes as far as to contrast the highly nationalistic views of Luke's infancy material with how "at the end of his two volumes, Luke has little hope left for the people of Israel" (ibid., 103).

We also don't know how early Luke wrote, and yet to what degree Christians of his period were already indoctrinated into the subtleties of how the predicted OT physical ruler could be an invisible spirit, cannot be known, but Paul's stupid spiritualistic bullshit might give us a clue as to how esoteric Luke's originally intended audience was.

- The portrayal of Jesus' parents and their relationship with him at the close of Luke 2 is unusually negative.

No, even supposing Luke was telling the truth, they were right to be offended at their allegedly divine son simply disappearing among the people and not telling them where he was.

2:44 says they supposed him to have been traveling with others in the group, and make it seem like they were conmfortable with that assumption, which is unbelievable if we are to accept that they both "knew" on the basis of rather memorable assurances from angels and other matters that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

James Edwards makes a lot of good points on the subject in his recent commentary on Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2015). For example:
 "In the male-dominated temple one would expect Joseph rather than Mary to address Jesus [in Luke 2:48]

Perhaps Luke is telling the truth about Mary confronting Jesus in the temple?  How would that import credibility to the miracle-portions of Luke's story?  Skeptics do not generally hold that where there's a miracle story, the entire matter is 100% fictional.

….She addresses him not as pais (v. 43, 'boy, young man'), but with a more juvenile and subservient term, teknon (v. 48; 'child,' NIV 'Son')…. Her reproach expresses less concern for Jesus than for what he has done to them….

Perhaps she was really pissed at him, which would suggest the prior story about her knowing the boy was conceieved by power of the Holy Spirit, is bullshit.

Mary's distress is a first fulfillment of Simeon's prophecy that a 'sword will pierce her soul' (v. 35)." (94-95)

unspeakably weak argument.

Additionally, Jesus rebukes them in verse 49, and Luke comments on their lack of understanding in verse 50.

So v. 50 gives you Luke's literary reason for having Jesus' parents act in such ways.  No skeptic would require otherwise.

Brown comments that Mary's reproach of Jesus in verse 48 is "all the more startling since Luke tends to avoid reproaches to Jesus by the disciples during the ministry….For instance, in 9:21-22 in reporting Jesus' reaction to Peter's confession, Luke drops the reproach by Peter found in Mark 8:32. The Lucan disciples are more reverential to Jesus." (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], 489 and n. 35 on 489)

Where exactly an ancient historian has fudged the facts is often hard to tell, especially where, as with Luke, there's only his version of the story of how Mary responds to Jesus in a reproachful way.

- John the Baptist is referred to as having had an unusual upbringing in the wilderness (Luke 1:80), reminiscent of Moses' upbringing in the house of Pharaoh and Samuel's upbringing in a sanctuary setting with Eli, for example. But Jesus just grows up in an ordinary home with his parents (Luke 2:51).

Probably because Luke writes for Gentiles, and thinks pitching Jesus to them will be more successful the less Jewish Jesus is.

Luke gives Jesus a less auspicious upbringing than John and makes no attempt to parallel Jesus with individuals like Moses and Samuel, even though we're so often told that the infancy narratives are unhistorical efforts to parallel Jesus to such Old Testament figures.

I'd disagree with any such skeptics.  The infancy narratives are unhistorical for reasons far outweighing any theory that they are trying to make Jesus parallel to OT figures.

Cold Case Christianity: Christmas is Christmas Because Jesus is God

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

Cold Case Christianity: Christmas is Christmas Because Jesus is God

Posted: 22 Dec 2017 01:53 AM PST

79As we approach Christmas in just a few days, I’ve been thinking about what separates Jesus from other great religious figures of history. Many faith traditions lay claim to famous religious leaders and founders, but Jesus is different.

Correct.  Most religious leaders don't have half the self-contradictory and absurd descriptions as are given to Jesus.  Blame the stupidity on Philo and the Council of Nicaea.

Jesus claimed to be more than a good teacher or leader. Jesus claimed to be God. Some deny this truth about Jesus’ teaching, but the New Testament leaves little room for doubt: Jesus claimed to be God and taught this truth to His followers.
 He Spoke As Though He Was God

He also spoke as if he wasn't god.

While all Biblical prophets of God made statements on God’s behalf, they were careful to preface their proclamations with “This is what the LORD Almighty says,” or “This is what the LORD says,”

No, it is not always possible to distinguish the prophet from God.  Remember the story of God telling the Israelites how to use the bathroom?

 12 "You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there,
 13 and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement.
 14 "Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you. (Deut. 23:12-14 NAU)

In describing God as "walking among you" and in teaching that God cannot see feces after it is buried in the ground, the author is ascribing limits to God that normally aren't admitted.  This is likely because God's presence among the Israelites constitutes nothing more than Moses' presence, in in that ancient context, such confusion of identities was accepted as something profound.

Otherwise, you'll have to explain how the omniscient all-seeing all-knowing creator of the universe can be prevented from seeing feces merely by burying it in the ground.  Stop pretending as if the only correct interpretation is the one that "makes sense".  You don't have the first fucking clue whether the author intended to "make sense" in the first place.  But you presume such anyway because you care more about impressing the Christians whom you mostly write for, than you do for the scholarly skeptics who continually refute your nonsense.

but Jesus never used such a preface. Instead, Jesus always prefaced his statements with, “Verily, verily, I say to you,” (KJV) or “I tell you the truth,” (NASB). Prophets spoke for God, but Jesus consistently spoke as God.

So then apparently it was a schizophrenic god who cried from the cross "why have you forsaken me"  Mark 15:34?  You will say Jesus only said that from his human nature not his divine nature.  But "nature" is not something that can be implicated or avoided.  If it is your "nature", then it is implicated in ALL that you say or do, it cannot be avoided.  So assuming for the sake of argument the logical absurdity that Jesus had "two natures", BOTH of them would be equally implicated in whatever he did, which would then mean you cannot allocate Jesus' cry of the Father's abandonment to just Jesus' human nature.   Therefore if Jesus said this, he also said it from his divine nature and not merely his human nature.

He Claimed the Title Used by God
Faithful Jews recognized the fact that God identified Himself to Moses as the great “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Yet Jesus (in referring to Himself) told the Jewish religious leaders that “before Abraham was born, I AM”. They immediately recognized that He was identifying Himself as God and were so angered by this ‘blasphemy’ that they “picked up stones to stone him.”

But Jesus' attempt to use Psalm 82 to justify his claim to deity in John 10 strongly suggests that he was only claiming to be god in the same sense that Psalm 82 says human judges of the OT were sometimes referred to as Elohim.  If Jesus was God by nature and not by mere association or label, he would hardly use the humans-are-also-called-gods argument of Psalm 82 to convince the Jews that his claim to be god was accurate.

 30 "I and the Father are one."
 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.
 32 Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?"
 33 The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God."
 34 Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, 'I SAID, YOU ARE GODS '?
 35 "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),
 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God '?
 37 "If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me;
 38 but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father."   (Jn. 10:30-38 NAU)

It is Jesus' fault if I misunderstand his nature, since, allegedly as God, he could have made far more clear his relation to the Father, than he did with this controversial citation to Psalm 82.

God apparently loves us so much that whether we fry in hell forever depends on whether we can properly decipher his fortune cookie bullshit.

(Jesus also identified Himself as the great I AM in Mark 14:62, John 18:5-6, 8:24, and 8:28).

No, in Mark 14:62, Jesus is only saying "I am" in reply to the question "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One", which no more shows a claim to deity than if you say "I am" when somebody says "are you the owner of this car?":

 61 But He kept silent and did not answer. Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?"
 62 And Jesus said, "I am; and you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING WITH THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN."
 (Mk. 14:61-62 NAU)

In John 18:5-6, there's a "he" following "am", in which case, Jesus is simply admitting to being a specifically named person:

 3 Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.
 4 So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them, "Whom do you seek?"
 5 They answered Him, "Jesus the Nazarene." He said to them, "I am He." And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them.
 6 So when He said to them, "I am He," they drew back and fell to the ground.
 7 Therefore He again asked them, "Whom do you seek?" And they said, "Jesus the Nazarene."
 8 Jesus answered, "I told you that I am He; so if you seek Me, let these go their way,"
 9 to fulfill the word which He spoke, "Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one."
 (Jn. 18:3-9 NAU)

In John 8:24 and 28, is the same, except for Jesus saying "I do nothing on my own initiative", a thing God the Father would never say:

 23 And He was saying to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.
 24 "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins."
 25 So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" Jesus said to them, "What have I been saying to you from the beginning?
 26 "I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world."
 27 They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father.
 28 So Jesus said, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.
 29 "And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him." (Jn. 8:23-29 NAU)

You will say that the "I do nothing on my own initiative" was spoken solely from his human nature, but as I argued above, "nature" is not something that can be selectively implicated.  Whatever your nature is, is necessarily implicated in ALL that any person says and does.  So if Jesus had two natures (an absurd supposition on its own anyway), BOTH natures would be equally implicated in what he said or did, in which case it was also his divine nature implicated too, when he said he didn't do anything on his own initiative.

He Claimed the Home of God
Every time Jesus was asked about where he came from, He told His listeners that He came not from Bethlehem or Nazareth but from the same realm where God abides.

Which could just as easily be claimed by Enoch, Elijah or angels.

Jesus claimed to come “from above”. He repeatedly said that He was “not of this world” (John 8:23-24) and even told Pilate that he was a King whose Kingdom “is from another place” (John 18:36-37).

Apparently Jesus toned down his kingship claims when on trial.  Nothing in the Synoptics teaches that Jesus is anything less than the earthly King for his followers.  So when he says at trial "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36), he is clearly trying to pawn off on the Roman authorities (i.e., he was answering Pilate there) an interpretation of his purpose that would show no threat to the Romans.   Quite a dumbing down from his extroverted in-your-face claims to the contrary in Matthew 4:17.  Matthew 11:12 implies Jesus' kingdom was presently on the earth.

He Claimed Equality With God
Jesus said that God’s angels were His angels and that God’s Kingdom was His Kingdom (Matthew 13:41). Jesus even said that the judgment typically understood to be reserved for God was actually Jesus’ judgment to make (Luke 12:8-9). Jesus told His followers that when they saw Him, they saw God; if they knew Him, they knew God, and if they loved Him, they were loving God (John 14:6-9 and John 14:23).

He Saw No Distinction Between Himself and God
Finally, Jesus simply and plainly told His followers that there was no distinction between Himself and God the Father. When talking about the manner in which saints are selected for Salvation, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:29). He did not mean that they were ‘one’ in purpose or power, but that they were one in identity. His hearers understood what He was saying and picked up stones again to stone him “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).

Once again, you obviously don't give one holy fuck about answering skeptics, you write solely to make money helping other Christians feel better after the fact.  John was written last, all scholars acknowledge that in John there is a greater theological reflection going on than can be seen in the Synoptics, in which case you don't really know whether John is quoting Jesus in the way newspapers quote politicians, or if John is putting in Jesus' mouth a reworked version of what Jesus originally said.

Yet you run around acting as if the gospel of John was the equal of video tape despite many of your own conservative scholar brothers refusing to go that far.  Your blindly trusting proof-texting guarantees you intend to market to a gullible audience.

Like I said, you don't write to refute skeptics.  You write for the same reason most Christian con artists write, to use the Jesus-scandal to make money off of his gullible followers.

Tough Questions Answered: Why Don’t the Synoptic Gospels Recount the Raising of Lazarus?

This is my reply to an article at "Tough Questions Answered" entitled

Tough Questions Answered

Why Don’t the Synoptic Gospels Recount the Raising of Lazarus? – #4 Post of 2017

Posted: 21 Dec 2017 06:00 AM PST

Some critics have cast doubt on the veracity of the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel because it is not recorded in the other three Gospels.

That's perfectly reasonable given that both historiography and rules of evidence in American courts have prescribed the conditions under which the argument from silence will have force.  Only stupid people insist that all arguments from silence are necessarily fallacious.  Though I admit that this particular argument from Synoptic silence isn't exactly forceful, which is precisely why I don't use it myself.

John’s Gospel is believed to be the last Gospel written, so the critics allege that John invented the story to further his particular agenda.

Because, among other reasons, Clement of Alexandria said John knew the Synoptic authors already published the "external facts", and not wishing to duplicate their efforts, instead wrote a "spiritual gospel".  The way Clement sets "external facts" apart from "spiritual gospel", certainly justifies the interpretation that he meant that John wished to give the reader something "deeper" than mere "external facts".

While that need not require that he invented the resurrection of Lazarus, rules of historiography don't require one interpretation to be "required" before one can be reasonable to hold it.  Otherwise, 99% of all Christians are unreasonable, given their differing views on all biblical matters, since the numbers of disagreements and willingness of Christians to change their minds seems to indicate they don't hold their current interpretations to be "required" except on basics.

Andreas Köstenberger, in The Gospels and Acts (The Holman Apologetics Commentary on the Bible), argues against this viewpoint. 

This critique is part of a larger argument against the historicity of John’s Gospel based on its omission of many events found in the Synoptics and its inclusion of material absent from the other Gospels. However, this critique is ultimately unconvincing. For no matter one’s theory as to how John composed his Gospel, it is apparent that he had a large amount of material from which to choose. If John was aware of the Synoptics as he was writing, which is probable (see Bauckham 1997a, esp. 147– 71; Köstenberger 2009, 553– 55), then he could reasonably be expected to assume much of the material they contain.

I don't see how imparting to John a knowledge of the prior Synoptic gospels, does anything to weaken the argument from silence that says the Synoptic authors didn't know Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, because they surely would have mentioned such a strong supporting proof for their theory that Jesus was God's Son, had they known about it, or believed the story to be true.

It his unlikely that they would have known and believed such story but yet "chose to exclude" it from their gospels nonetheless.  This whole idea that the gospel authors "chose to exclude" ANYTHING they believed God did on earth in the person of Jesus, just doesn't make sense.  If the gospel authors seriously believed Jesus was the divine Son of God, they would more than likely have found it best to record as many of his words and deeds as they could possibly remember.  Choosing to exclude some of these is what we'd expect only if they viewed Jesus as something less.

Other Christians agree that John's gospel is far more complicated than the "external facts" that average Christians think that gospel provides.  It is far from certain John is talking about real events when describing something Jesus said or did.

On the other hand, if John wrote without knowledge of the Synoptics, then it is likely that at least some of the differences can be attributed to the large amount of material from which he had to choose.

Since I late-date John, I need not worry about the possibility of John being ignorant of the Synoptics.

This corresponds with what John later writes: ‘Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book’ (20: 30).

The author felt compelled to admit he wasn't giving a full record.  Obviously, he was a truth-robot, incapable of lying. Please excuse me while I go consign the rest of my life to investigating biblical inerrancy.

Craig Blomberg rightly notes, ‘Any two ancient historians’ accounts of a given person or period of history differ from each other at least as much as John does from the Synoptics, when they do not rely on common sources for their information’ (Blomberg 2007, 207).

The issue is not John "differing" from the Synoptics, it is the Synoptic silence on the resurrection of Lazarus, and the argument that they surely would have mentioned it had they believed it true, that justifies skepticism toward John 11, even if such argument is not a "smack-down".  Christ knows apologists don't have any "smackdowns" themselves.

In addition, it stands to reason that John had his own theological emphases and unique perception of the significance of the events surrounding Jesus, not to mention his own individuality, style, interests, and distinctive eyewitness recollection from which to draw.

Doesn't matter, the resurrection of Lazarus ranks high on the scale of proofs that Jesus was the divine son of God, so it doesn't matter if it is true that the Synoptic authors believed it true but chose to exclude it for their own literary reasons from their own productions...the claim that John's gospel is historically reliable is a claim implicating historiography, which is an art implicating probability theory, which is a science implicating discussion of the argument from silence, which is an argument whose force depends on how likely it is that the author, whose silence is in question, would have mentioned a thing, had the author known of the thing.

The Synoptic authors' agenda was to provide literary evidence that Jesus was the divine son of God.  Sorry, but only stupid people "choose to exclude" the most dramatic evidence underscoring their case.  One has to wonder why the gospels authors picked and chose as they allegedly did, when in fact any Christian fool today can conceive of far more persuasive ways the gospel authors could have made their case.  Such as comprehensively indexing each and every miracle of Jesus, names of eyewitnesses, obtaining their testimony, and recording how Jesus' brothers answered the question of why they refused to believe in him during his earthly ministry (John 7:5, Mark 3:21).  It is to the gospel authors' detriment that far more efficient and accurate means of arguing gospel truth were available to them, than the sorry 4 productions we now call canonical.

And the more you attempt to trifle that the Synoptic authors wished to prove their case only implicitly, the more you get crushed under the wheels of the the Transfiguration; Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:29.  The Synoptic authors were not likely to hold back from giving the reader knowledge of the more dramatic proofs Jesus gave of his divinity.

If the raising of Lazarus really did occur, why would the other Gospel authors fail to include it in their biographies? Surely an event of this significance would necessitate inclusion, the critics argue.  Köstenberger disagrees:
 Why does an event require multiple attestations in the Gospels to be considered historical?

It doesn't.  The rule is the more attestation, the more likely true, the less attestation, the less likely true.  No, genius, we don't "just" believe singular testimony from ancient sources until a skeptic can prove it false, otherwise, since protestants cannot prove false the many allegations of Marian apparitions and healings in Fatima and Lourdes, they are obligated by their own reasoning to accept those accounts not just as true, but as also establishing the Catholic version of Christianity to be true.  

Throughout the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus performs a host of miracles, including raising people from the dead (an admittedly rare feature), so critics certainly cannot legitimately argue that Lazarus’ resurrection fails to comport with the general Synoptic portrait of Jesus.

The Synoptic evidence of Jesus raising people from the dead is scant and not very convincing:

They give a general report that Jesus raised people from the dead (Matthew 11:5 / Luke 7:22), but a detailed analysis justifies skepticism toward this generalization.

Jesus specifies that Jarius' daughter was not dead but rather asleep (Matthew 9:24).

The parallel from Mark 5:39, by having Jesus specifically wonder and inquire why the people would be so upset when she hasn't died, confirms that it was literally true that he hadn't died.

The parallel in Luke 8:52 also has Jesus specify that the girl wasn't actually dead, but only sleeping.

In Luke 7:11-18, it is specified several times that the person on the coffin whom Jesus raised back to life had actually been dead.  This weakens to some degree the skeptical argument that the Lazarus story in John 11 is fiction due to Synoptical silence on it.  But because this particular story is found only in Luke, Luke's credibility is at issue.  Luke's report of the Council of Jerusalem spends 98% of Acts 15 telling about the apostolic arguments, and about 2% recording short summary statements of the Judaizer opinion, so Luke's bias is sufficiently high in favor of his own party that skepticism of his honesty is justified.  Most scholars agree Luke depended to a significant degree on Mark, which makes Luke a liar for saying in his Preface that he drew from eyewitness testimony, leaving the false impression that eyewitness testimony is ALL he used.

But that Jesus' miracles during his earthly ministry were likely fake is justified on the basis the unbelief of his own family members in John 7:5, a point in time about a third of the way into his earthly ministry.

Matthew 11, John the Baptist sends from prison a question to Jesus about whether he is the messiah.  Jesus asks his disciples to answer John the Baptist by mentioning that among the miracles, raising people from the dead is something Jesus has already done at that point:

 1 When Jesus had finished giving instructions to His twelve disciples, He departed from there to teach and preach in their cities.
 2 Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples
 3 and said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?"
 4 Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see:
 5 the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. (Matt. 11:1-5 NAU)

Luke 7 is the parallel:

19 Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, "Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?"
 20 When the men came to Him, they said, "John the Baptist has sent us to You, to ask, 'Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?'"
 21 At that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits; and He gave sight to many who were blind.
 22 And He answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. (Lk. 7:19-22 NAU)

It thus appears that about a third of the way through his earthly ministry, Jesus had raised people from the dead, and yet it is about a third of the way through his earthly ministry that John says is the point at which his "brothers" were still refusing to believe in him, John 7:5.

From this I deduce that his brothers likely had good reason to believe whatever miracles Jesus was doing, were not likely to be authentically supernatural.  John 7:5 passes the criteria of embarrassment, so that verse deserves our trust more than other parts of John.

And because the circumstances of how exactly the brothers of Jesus named James and John rose to positions of leadership in the post-resurrection church are never stated in the bible, we have justification to believe that they obtained those positions more because of their relation to Jesus and less because of any theory that they believed Jesus risen from the dead.

Indeed, there is no evidence Jesus' brothers did ever believe, until after Jesus died.  So his brothers apparently stayed in unbelief throughout the entirety of Jesus' earthly three year ministry...(!?)

You lose, no matter what theory you fantasize about.  If you say Jesus' brothers during his earthly ministry were just stupid idiots would couldn't get the point if they sat on it, then you lay a good ground for skeptics to say their resurrection testimony lacks credibility.  If you were falsely accused or murder and facing a prosecution witness on the stand whose credulity soared the same heights as those of Jesus' brothers during his earthly ministry, you'd be screaming your head off about how absurd it is to believe willfully blind idiots like this.

If you say Jesus' brothers didn't believe him in spite of the miracles because they had good reason to believe those miracles were fake, then such fakery justifies skepticism of Christianity in general.

The desire of John and James to allocate the entire Gentile ministry to Paul while they themselves would confine their ministry solely to Jews (Galatians 2:9), constitutes their disobedience to the resurrected Jesus' alleged mandate that they, and the original 11 disciples, evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19-20).

Therefore, we are justified to believe that if John and James got to high positions in the church after Jesus died, they likely did so through sheer politics in spite of their less-than-amazing experience with the allegedly resurrected Jesus, which means they carried around unbelief toward their messiah brother despite his alleged doing of miracles during their lifetimes where they could have checked the facts very easily.

This problem of the unbelief of Jesus' brothers during Jesus' earthly ministry either justifies rejection of Christianity in whole, or justifies viewing the resurrection testimony of these dolts as more credulous than believable.  God gave Adam and Eve freewill...it's your choice.

Although it is impossible to know for certain why a given author selects or omits particular material in his or her account, one possible reason for the omission of the story of Lazarus in the other Gospels is their focus on Galilee (the raising of Lazarus takes place in Judea). Also, in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Bauckham (2006, 184– 87) cites favorably G. Theissen’s theory of ‘protective anonymity,’ according to which the evangelists sought to shield individuals who were still living from persecution by not naming them.

So the gospel authors did not agree with the author of Acts, that suffering for the name of Christ was a blessed thing about which one should be happy.  Acts 5:41.  Another reason to think Acts has, at best, white-washed history.  Nobody said truth is required to create a spiritually edifying story.

If Lazarus was still alive when the Synoptic Gospels were written, but died in the interim between their publication and the composition of John’s Gospel,

Sorry, John 11 contains a shitload of evidence that Lazarus' raising was to teach "resurrection", not "reviving", and as such, if he was "resurrected", honesty requires that he was raised in a resurrection body that cannot die.  Skeptics have everything in John 11 on their side, Christians (who say Lazarus died again) have NOTHING in John 11 on their side to support their theory.  

this, likewise, may account for the Synoptic non-inclusion of the account and John’s inclusion of it. Lazarus’s death would have meant he no longer needed protection from persecution, so that John was free to include the account of his raising from the dead by Jesus.

Sure, skeptics who push the argument of the Synoptic silence on Lazarus, aren't giving the world's most powerful argument, but that criticism plagues Christian apologists equally well.

I believe that the argument from John 7:5 is conclusive against any trifles of gospel miracle details any apologist can bring up.

My reply to Alisa Childer's interview of J. Warner Wallace

At Childers' blog I posted the following:

To my knowledge, Wallace, for all of his promotion of the idea that we can discover truth in the gospels if we guide our investigation into them with the same evidentiary rules American courts use, never explains how the gospels would pass the provenance-authentication requirement in the ancient documents test (Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(8)(B), i.e., the documents were located in a place where, if authentic, [they] would likely be.)  

Our earliest copies of the gospels have unknown provenance outside general remarks about how they were found in some monastery or obtained from a chain of mostly unknown persons or otherwise procured through illegal antiquities sales. 

If Wallace knows what everybody else knows, that the provenance of the gospels is utterly unknown and even conservative Christian scholars disagree about where they originated, then he must either concede that the gospels can never pass muster in a court of law because they would be deemed inadmissible (which would invalidate his attempts to use other rules of evidence in investigating the gospels)...or...he should argue that there are aspects of the American courts' evidentiary rules that he thinks do more to hide the truth than enable its discovery. 

I explain why the gospels fail the ancient documents rule at my blog which has plenty of posts refuting articles Wallace has posted within the last year....https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/are-gospels-all-just-hearsay-yes-thanks.html 

Wallace also knows about my blog, but has shown no interest in interacting with my many well-founded criticisms of his arguments, his populist sensationalizing and his ceaseless relentless promotion of his imperfect commentaries on biblical matters (a sin Frank Turek and many other modern apologists are equally guilty of).

Cold-Case Christianity: Rebuttal to Wallace's 5 reasons for trusting the Nativity stories

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

Five Reasons You Can Trust the Story of Christmas Is True 

Posted: 18 Dec 2017 01:53 AM PST

Story of Christmas Is True.  Detectives create lists. As a cold-case detective, I’m no different. When investigating an event in the distant past (in my case, an unsolved murder), I collect evidence, make lists and do my best to reach the most reasonable inference.

And if the theory of the suspects innocence required you to believe some alibi premised on a miracle (i.e., he was in two places at once), you'd become an anti-supernaturalist real quick.  So apparently, skepticism toward miracles really does deserve to be the default position.  Not even Christians will acknowledge miracles where they are alleged to occur outside their own religion.

When I began to investigate Christianity at the age of thirty-five, I approached the gospels the same way I approached my cold-case files. Lists were an important part of the process. One New Testament claim was particularly interesting to me: the conception and birth of Jesus. When I first read through the gospels, the birth narratives seemed incredible and unreasonable. I’m not the only person to express such a concern. In an article posted in the Herald Scotland, Reverend Andrew Frater called the Nativity story a “fanciful, fairy tale” and called on Christians to “disentangle the truth from the tinsel”. Frater is a minister and a believer, and even he doesn’t believe in the virgin conception of Jesus. As an atheist, I was even more skeptical. I rejected supernatural claims altogether, and the first Biblical claim about Jesus was a supernatural one.

But as I collected the evidence and formed my lists, I found there were many good reasons to trust the story of Christmas.

Which means you disagree with most Christian scholars since they reject the nativity stories.  No, it is not only fundamentalist evangelicals who qualify as Christian scholars.

I’ve assembled them here with links to longer treatments of each topic:
 Reason 1:
The Supernatural Nature of the Virgin Conception Shouldn’t Disqualify It
When I began to investigate the virgin conception, I was actually investigating my own philosophical naturalism. I was, in essence, asking the following questions: “Is the natural world all that exists?” “Is there anything beyond the physical, material world we measure with our five senses?” “Are supernatural events possible or even reasonable?” In asking these questions, I was putting naturalism to the test. It would have been unfair, therefore, to begin by presupposing nothing supernatural could ever exist or occur.

Not if you had first tested supernaturalism and found it less epistemically justified than naturalism, as I have.

If we want to be fair about assessing the virgin conception or any other supernatural aspect of the nativity story, we cannot exclude the very possibility of the supernatural in the first place.

We can if we already possess powerful arguments justifying a general rejection of supernaturalism.  But you were writing for Christians who already agree with your views here, so I understand the lack of rigor.

Our presupposition against the supernatural would unfairly taint our examination of the claim.

And your presupposition that God doesn't teleport people between New York and Los Angeles at the speed of light would likewise unfairly taint your examination of a criminal's alibi, where such miracle was being claimed as the basis for innocence of a crime.  You know perfectly well that miracles don't happen, that's why you conduct your criminal investigations under the exact degree of anti-supernaturalism that you condemn atheists for using.  If somebody's alibi asserted levitation as the reason they are not guilty of a crime, you wouldn't care if it was corroborated by 12 of his best friends, you'd just say that increases the number of liars from 1 to 13.  God never does miracles, and you know it perfectly well, at least, whenever your religious defense mechanisms aren't on red-alert.

Reason 2:
The Claim of the Virgin Conception Appears Incredibly Early in Christian History
It’s always easier to tell a lie once everyone who was alive to know the difference has already died.

It's also easier to avoid having the corpse of Jesus used to falsify your claims that he rose from the dead if you wait 40 days after his death before you claim such a thing.  Read Acts chapter 1.

But if you’re going to make a claim early in an area where people are still available to debunk your claim, be prepared to have a difficult time getting away with misrepresentations.

In other words, if those who believe Benny Hinn does real miracles, are going to make a claim early in an area where people are still available to debunk the claim, they need to be prepared to have a difficult time getting away with misrepresentations.  Atheists and even many Christian scholars and the secular media have been debunking Hinn's claims for decades, yet Hinn's popularity did nothing but grow that whole time.

The virgin conception of Jesus is one of the earliest claims in Christian history.

No, if the consensus of Christian scholars is correct in saying Mark was the earliest gospel, then the earliest form of the gospel did not have a virgin birth story to tell.

Again, if the consensus of Christian scholars is correct in saying Paul was proclaiming the gospel in 40 a.d. at least a decade before the 4 canonical written versions were published,  then the earliest form of the gospel did not have a virgin birth story to tell.

Again, aside from Matthew and Luke, none of the NT authors mentions the nativity stories or shows the least bit of knowledge about them, so it is reasonable to thus conclude that the earliest form of the gospel did not have a virgin birth story to tell, and therefore, Matthew and Luke represent a late embellishment of the originally more simple version of the story.

The students of the gospel authors cited the virgin conception as a true claim about Jesus.

No they didn't. Mark was the earliest student of the gospel preacher called Peter, if the patristic traditions can generally be trusted.  Mark says nothing about a virgin birth.

Ignatius, the student of John (an Apostle who chose not to write about the birth of Jesus in his own gospel), included it in his early writings to local churches. Other Church leaders repeated the claim through the earliest years of the Church, and the doctrine also appears in the most ancient Church creeds. Even early non-canonical documents include the virgin conception of Jesus.

All your evidence dates after 70 a.d., when Matthew and Luke had already embellished Mark's earlier and more simple form of the story.

Reason 3:
The Birth Narratives in Luke and Matthew Are Not Late Additions
Critics, in an effort to argue the birth narratives in Luke and Matthew are not reliable, point to stylistic differences and “content shifting” within the gospels. Critics claim that the Greek language used in the birth narrative section of Luke’s gospel is far more Semitic than other sections. But the fact that this section of the gospel is stylistically or linguistically different than other sections does not mean it was a late addition.

When investigating history, you don't discard some explanatory theory to account for the data, merely because the theory is not a "knock-down".

Luke told us he compiled the information for his gospel from a number of divergent sources (Luke 1:1-4).

Which means you must be writing solely for the trusting Christian audiences you ceaselessly peddle your marketing gimmicks to, since an ancient historian's claims about sources doesn't tell you whether he is being truthful or dishonest.  You don't have the first fucking clue who Luke' originally intended audience was beyond a ferverishly unidentfiable "Theophilus", yet knowing who that audience was is critical to ascertaining how honest Luke was in what he had to say.

As a result, we should expect stylistic and linguistic differences within the gospel of Luke.

Yes, Luke's use of various sources is a possible explanation for the stylistic differences found within his gospel.  It's not the only explanation, yet here you fallacious leap from "possible" to "probable" with no reason given why your favored theory is better than the others.

In addition, any claim related to the late addition of the birth narratives defies all the manuscript evidence available to us; there is absolutely no evidence that the gospel of Matthew and Luke ever existed without the birth narratives.

But in the case of Mark as the earliest gospel, we are forced to conclude that the earliest form of the gospel said nothing about a virgin birth.

All manuscripts, translations, early Church documents and references to the gospels, along with every historic, reliable witness testifies to the fact that the birth narratives are ancient and part of the original record.

And likewise there are no manuscripts of Mark or patristic statements saying that gospel had once included the nativity story.  So Mark's silence on that story is likely something original to Mark and not the result of Markan material being lost or edited out.

Reason 4:
The Virgin Conception Was Not An Invention of Early Christians
Some critics of the virgin conception argue that the earliest Christian authors inserted it in an effort to give Jesus a “heroic” birth consistent with other Old Testament heroes.But, not every Jewish hero from the Old Testament had an unusual birth story.

That is irrelevant.  This skeptical argument doesn't require every OT hero to have an unusual birth.  The fact that SOME did is plenty to justify early Christians in thinking that conjuring up an unusual birth story about Jesus would raise him to the level of some OT heroes.

Joshua, King David and King Solomon are just three of the more obvious examples of powerful Old Testament heroes whose birth stories were less than surprising or unusual. In addition, there is no other character from the Old Testament who was born of a virgin through the miraculous conception of the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately for you, the closer parallel to Jesus is Moses, since Jesus took the place of Moses in modifying and explaining Mosaic law, and Moses' birth was dramatic.  Nothing says the forger's copy must imitate the original in all its particulars, or even most, to justify saying imitation was indeed attempted.

This characteristic of Jesus’ conception is unique to Jesus and follows no pre-existing Old Testament pattern.

Ever hear of putting new twists on old themes?  Who says the twist has to imitate the original exactly before it can be legitimately called a plagiarism?  If I wrote a book entitled "Cold-Case Atheism: A Homicide Detective Refutes the Claims of the Gospels", would you deny I was imitating your own stuff merely because the imitation wasn't exact?   Well then, stop pretending as if the failure of the nativity stories to match pre-Christian stories in particular details, must mean the Christians responsible for such stories were not borrowing older ideas and putting new twists on them.

Reason 5:
The Virgin Conception Wasn’t Borrowed from Another Source
Skeptics also attempt to discredit the virgin conception of Jesus by claiming it was borrowed from prior pagan mythologies such as those of Mithras or Horus.

Count me out.  As a skeptic I agree with Celsus that the virgin birth story was borrowed from the earliest version of the story about how Zeus got Danae pregnant while he was in the form of a golden mist (i.e., pregnancy achieved without breaking the hymen).  See Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12, securely dated several hundred years before the 1st century, which says in part:

Perseus, the son of Danae, who they say was conceived in a spontaneous shower of gold. But when the virgin goddess had released that beloved man from those labors, she created the many-voiced song of flutes [20] so that she could imitate with musical instruments the shrill cry that reached her ears from the fast-moving jaws of Euryale.

Notice that she is called a virgin goddess who releases Perseus by labor (giving birth).  Pindar apparently thinks she continues to be rightfully classified as a virgin even during her pregnancy.  Yes, Pindar's poetry constitutes nothing but fiction, of course, but your problem is that the idea of a women continuing to be a virgin even after a god got her pregnant, is certainly found in pagan pre-Christian writings, therefore, you cannot pretend that the copycat savior hypothesis is impossible, and you cannot pretend that the virgin-birth of Jesus was an original concept.  You will have to up your game and argue that despite virgin births existing in pre-Christian literature, Matthew and Luke were not influenced by them.  Good luck and thank Christ you don't intend to convince anybody of your bullshit except other fundamentalist evangelicals who already agree with everything you have to say.

But any fair examination of pagan mythological birth narratives revels the dramatic differences between the virgin conception of Jesus and stories about the supernatural emergence of mythological gods.

My Chevy pickup has many differences from a Model-T too, so apparently under your logic, the idea for the Chevy model came about wholly independent of any notion of the Model-T.  Only a desperate apologists would insist that in the case of my Chevy and the Model-T, "the differences outweigh the similarities".

While “borrowing” may have occurred between belief systems, the weak resemblances between the Biblical account and pagan mythologies are far more likely the result of the Judeo-Christian influence rather than contamination from a pagan source.

Not in the case of Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12, which is securely dated to at least 400 b.c., so the direction of borrowing is clear and Christianity is thus the party clearly guilty of doing the borrowing.

It’s irrational to believe the early Jewish readers of the gospels would embrace any part of paganism in the story of Jesus’ conception as continuous with the Jewish narrative from the Old Testament.

We don't know exactly how "orthodox" were the alleged Jews that Matthew and Luke allegedly wrote for.  But with Jews like Philo on the scene in the first-century, don't be too sure that Jews would oppose mixing bits of their beliefs with bits of pagan superstition.

In addition, early Christian converts were repeatedly called to a new life in Christ, told they were merely travelers passing through this mortal (and pagan) world, called to live a life that was free of worldly influences, and told to reject the foolish philosophies and stories of men.

And the church fathers like Justin Martyr explain that the reason we find virgin births in pre-Christian paganism is because the devils foreknew the truth about Christ, and sought to retroactively imitate it, so that when the real thing later came along in actual life, men would errantly count it is just another story instead of the truth.

Justin, First Apology, Chapter LIV.—Origin of Heathen Mythology.
But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain. The prophet Moses, then, was, as we have already said, older than all writers; and by him, as we have also said before, it was thus predicted: “There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He come for whom it is reserved; and He shall be the desire of the Gentiles, binding His foal to the vine, washing His robe in the blood of the grape.”115 The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and gave out that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they number wine116 [or, the ass] among his mysteries; and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven. And because in the prophecy of Moses it had not been expressly intimated whether He who was to come was the Son of God, and whether He would, riding on the foal, remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and because the name of “foal” could mean either the foal of an ass or the foal of a horse, they, not knowing whether He who was foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of His coming, nor whether He was the Son of God, as we said above, or of man, gave out that Bellerophon, a man born of man, himself ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said by the other prophet Isaiah, that He should be born of a virgin, and by His own means ascend into heaven, they pretended that Perseus was spoken of. And when they knew what was said, as has been cited above, in the prophecies written aforetime, “Strong as a giant to run his course,”117 they said that Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth. And when, again, they learned that it had been foretold that He should heal every sickness, and raise the dead, they produced Aesculapius.

Chapter 21  Analogies To The History Of Christ
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honorable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire. 

Chapter 22  Analogies To The Sonship Of Christ
Moreover, the Son of God called Jesus, even if only a man by ordinary generation, yet, on account of His wisdom, is worthy to be called the Son of God; for all writers call God the Father of men and gods. And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated. For their sufferings at death are recorded to have been not all alike, but diverse; so that not even by the peculiarity of His sufferings does He seem to be inferior to them; but, on the contrary, as we promised in the preceding part of this discourse, we will now prove Him superior - or rather have already proved Him to be so - for the superior is revealed by His actions. And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Aesculapius.  ---------Schaff, P. (2000). The Ante-Nicene Fathers (electronic ed.). Garland, TX: Galaxie Software.

Chapter LXIX.--The devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and AEsculapius.

Chapter LXIV.—Further Misrepresentations of the Truth.
From what has been already said, you can understand how the devils, in imitation of what was said by Moses, asserted that Proserpine was the daughter of Jupiter, and instigated the people to set up an image of her under the name of Kore [Cora, i.e., the maiden or daughter] at the spring-heads.

Wallace continues:

This group, in particular, would be the last to turn to pre-existing pagan stories and superstitions.

Correct, that group wanted their followers to believe some superstitions were gospel-truth.

If there exists a supernatural Being capable of bringing all space, time and matter into existence from nothing,

If a baby could lift 4 billion tons using nothing but his own unaided muscular strength, while also being in two places at the same time...

such a Being could certainly accomplish the virgin conception of Jesus, the Resurrection of Christ, or any of the other “lesser” miracles described on the pages of the New Testament.

The issue is not whether God could.  The issue is whose theory on the nativity stories accords better with normative principles of historiography.  That would be mine.  You lose.

In addition, there is no historically, textually or philosophically necessary reason to reject the claims of the New Testament authors.

And so you typically end your case with preaching to the choir.  I think you forgot to add that moody music that makes people feel so much better at the close of the service.  The Holy Spirit needs every psychological bell and whistle you can come up with.  If you ask, I'll give you Frank Turek's phone number.  He can show you how modern video animations and expensive apologetics vacation seminars wherein you do little more than make yourself the center of attention, can help the Holy Spirit do a better job than He ever did in the first 1900 years, to convict people of sin.

Or maybe you could read something by Clement of Alexandria and discover for the first time in your life that you and 90% of today's Christians are an absurd departure from the oldest post-apostolic definition of a morally good Christian.

If you’re a Christian this Christmas season, celebrate the birth of Jesus with confidence and certainty. The virgin conception is not a fanciful, fairy tale. It is a true story. In fact, there are five good reasons to trust the story of Christmas is factual, reliable and true.

And all five have been refuted on the merits.  I suggest you dedicate your life to defending Mark as a secondary gospel, otherwise, his more simple form of the gospel is going to look like the earliest form and accordingly make Matthew's and Luke's later versions more likely to be the one's whose differences from Mark constitute later fictional embellishments.

My rebuttal to Kalam, posted to NAMB Apologetics

Here's what I posted over at NAMB's Apologetics Blog:
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Dr. Craig states the Kalam's first premise as follows:
"Everything that begins to exist has a cause." 

There is no evidence that anything has ever "began to exist", except in the sense of rearranging pre-existing atoms.
Rearranging pre-existing atoms is seen every day, cars, babies, books, etc.  These all 'come into existence' only in the sense that they make use of pre-existing matter.   

But that is not the sense Craig and most apologists intend in Kalam's first premise.  Otherwise they'd merely be saying rearrangements of pre-existing atoms requires a cause, which is hardly controversial and proves nothing. 

The sense they intend is "the beginning of the existence of new matter must have a cause".
THAT sense is not confirmed by any scientific evidence.  We have no evidence that matter itself was ever created, or ever once didn't exist; we only have evidence that matter, already existing, rearranges itself into new configurations.  

Therefore, the first premise of Kalam appears certainly false, and as such, the whole of the argument topples, and as such, Kalam does not require a beginning to the universe.  Our intuitions about things needing a beginning never arise from observed instances of creation of new matter, but only arise from observed instances of pre-existing matter being continuously reconfigured.  Hence, our intuitions do NOT tell us that matter *itself* ever had to "come from" anywhere.

My challenge to Sye Ten Bruggencate

Sye Ten Bruggencate is a 5-Point Calvinist whose claim to fame is his promotion of Calvinist apologetics or "presuppositionalism" (i.e., that god's existence is properly basic and not up for discussion, hence, Christians should base apologetics arguments upon the presuppositon of God's existence, and not allow God's existence to be itself debated...a stupid philosophy that arises from the equally stupid first point of Calvinism (unbelievers have "total inability" to believe the gospel).

Here is the challenge I posted to Sye's contact page:

Do you believe it objectively immoral for an adult man to have sex with an adult woman against her will (rape)?
Do you believe that sex between a 25 year old man and his 6 year old wife (i.e., sex within the confines of adult-child marriage) is objectively immoral, yes or no?
Would you be willing to have a discussion about how the bible answers these questions?
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com

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Sye shouldn't have a problem with this challenge, as it is not asking to debate God's existence, but only challenging Sye with a subject he's been willing to debate before: that some human acts are objectively good or objectively bad.

Apologist Youtube channels I am unable to post to

One channel called "1GodOnlyOne" has apparently been up for at least a couple of years, but when I tried to post a reply, all I got was "unknown error":



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