Demolishing Triablogue: Annoyed Pinoy revs the engine, but still spins the wheels

Mr. Pinoy,

I'm allowing your lengthy comments one last time, to which I respond.  But I would ask that in future, you keep your "replies" limited to one specific sub-topic.  The "reply" function limits me to 4.096 letters, so if I wish to provide a point-by-point response to what you say, I have to create a brand new original post, like I'm doing here.  Try to ask concise questions one at a time, such as why I don't think a bible verse you find to be relevant, is relevant to the debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
Honestly, I haven't read all of your former blogpost, so I may say some things which you've already addressed or anticipated.

Thanks for your honesty.

I don't have the time to give my full attention to the issues brought up in both blogposts. I'm trying to give an answer as quickly as possible. My overall aim is to defend the truth of Christianity.

It would seem defending the truth of Christianity might require you to devote more effort than answering "as quickly as possible".

I wrote the following late at night, so my grammar may be messed up. Though I haven't proofread it, I think you should be able get the gist of my main points even if it might be incoherent at spots. I'm nodding off while I'm typing.
 The burden of proof is on the claimant.
 I agree. You wrote in the earlier blogpost, "No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. " That's a claim on your part. A claim that seems to assume 1. that the only criteria God gave is in that single passage,

Yes, because

a) I cannot find any more biblical criteria God thinks must be fulfilled before the girl is ready for marital sex,

b) while Mosaic law certainly isn't exhaustive in fact, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 indicate the author wished the reader to believe it was exhaustive, in which case, no, you are not allowed to add "thou shall not have sexual relations with thy wife until she [insert whatever age or signs of maturity/puberty here]" to Mosaic Law.  So because Mosaic law doesn't condemn marital pedophilia, you, the Christian, have no biblical basis for saying God's view such act as sinful.  Do not say God thinks some human action is "sin" unless you have biblical authority for saying so; and

c) if Paul couldn't know coveting was a sin without Mosaic law specifically telling him so (Romans 7:7), it would appear that no Christian can know what human acts are sinful without Mosaic law specifically telling them so.

and 2. only explicit criteria count.

But when you try to argue for identifying sin on the basis of non-explicit criteria in the bible, you open the door to others being able to justify disagreement with you.  Indeed, it doesn't matter if Ezekiel 16:7-8 really does tell us what age of marriage for girls the ancient Jews deemed normative, it certainly isn't worded in an absolute way.  People 2000 years from now could legitimately say that Americans used to believe the minimum age of sexual consent was 18, and they would be correct, but that would hardly argue that therefore Americans always held that view even in earlier days.  The age of sexual consent in Delaware in the 19th century was 7.  So learning what the Jews of 600 b.c thought about the minimum age of marriage, doesn't provide reasonably reliable guidance for how Jews of 1200 b.c. thought about the same matter.

However, one can reasonably infer from OT and (especially) NT ethical standards [the latter building on the former]

Not really.  Christians are constantly attacking each others' morals by quoting the bible.

combined with inductive medical experience that it's biologically unwise and and therefore morally illicit to engage in sexual activity that will likely result in pregnancies that will (again likely) permanently injure or kill the mother.

That makes sense to me, but leaves you without ability to explain statements in the Babylonian Talmud that says girls aged three years and one day are "suitable" for sexual relations, such as

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

If adult men having vaginal intercourse with three year old girls were as obvious a risk to the girl's life as we modern people believe it is, how do you explain these Talmudic rabbis finding girls of such age "suitable" for sexual intercourse?  How could these rabbis bother saying such things if they saw in the bible the same absolute prohibition on adult-child marriage/sex that you do?

Humans are made in God's image and therefore have dignity on that account.

If that dignity prohibits abortion, it would also prohibit infanticide, Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:3.  You are also assuming that dignity is degraded by sex within adult-child marriages, and while we see it that way today, the question is whether the ancient Jews and biblical authors saw it that way.  The Talmud rabbis and sages, well aware of man being made in god's image, didn't.

The quality and quantity of each others' lives are to be considered by fellow human beings [esp. in marriages and families]. This is true both before and after the times of Abraham, and later Moses [and the Mosaic Covenant]. The story of Cain and Abel implicitly teaches that we are our brothers keeper in some sense [especially the closer they are to us relationally, biologically, familially etc.].

If so, then you'd have to condemn Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg for a) knowing that James Patrick Holding defamed and libeled me in extreme ways, but b) never approached Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18 to deal with it, despite my having consulted them first before suing Holding.

Before the distinction of Jew and Gentile, Noah was taught about human dignity (Gen. 9) as well as the brotherhood of mankind despite the different "races" (Gen. 10).

He was also taught capital punishment, Gen. 9:6, which many Christians oppose.

There's also the natural law consideration as well.

Which doesn't help matters, since it invites questions such as why God made females capable of conceiving as early as 10 years old, if their involvement in sexual intercourse at that age was against his intended design.

Presumably God intends women to bear children in such a way and in such a time that the likelihood of permanent injury and/or death is not maximized, but minimized.

But Triablogue Calvinist Steve Hays thinks it is God who causes the pedophile to rape girls, and that it is God who causes men to get barely pubescent girls pregnant.  You should go further with your point until Steve explains to you how it makes sense for God to inflict shame and guilt upon those who He causes to fulfill his "secret" will.  If God secretly wills for a 30 year old man to have full vaginal intercourse with a 4 year old girl, God can hardly condemn the acts that He desires to take place.

By "intends" I mean by God's Will of Delight, and God's Will of Design (see my 6 distinctions of God's will blogpost if one is curious, HERE). Someone might argue that God apparently didn't design pregnancy and birthing very well since infant skulls are so large that they can barely narrow pelvises. But if we really do live in a fallen world, then such an apparent flaw might be due to such a Fall.

True, but the biblical explanation for the "Fall" is that God intentionally "cursed" women to endure that pain and injury during child-birth, Genesis 3:16.  So God is still the cause, you cannot relegate it to the naturalistically degrading effects of Adam and Eve's bad freewill choice to disobey God.  David also disobeyed God by committing adultery with Bathsheba, but God apparently has the option to arbitrarily exempt David from the otherwise applicable death penalty ("the Lord has taken away your sin..." 2nd Samuel 12:13).

Even assuming a historical Fall didn't really happen, a design need not be perfect for it to genuinely be designed.

And the more you attribute to God the abilities of the human eye, the more you attribute to God the ability of 10 year old girls to get pregnant.  YOu cannot attribute precocious puberty to the Fall, since the Fall is a degradation, while puberty constitutes an increase in the young girl's complexity.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM
If God intends humans to be fruitful and multiply, then that assumes they do it in such a way that it doesn't leave the wife (or wives given OT polygamy) chronically sick and/or otherwise diminished in her ability to continue bearing healthy children.

No, read Genesis 3:16, God wanted women to endure injury and pain during childbirth.  So the fact that girls endure injury and pain if they give birth at 10 years old, isn't sufficient for you to prove your point.

If the wife dies, then she obviously cannot reproduce any more children, assuming the first one even survived. The common (though not universal) Islamic practice of not waiting for a female to be physically mature to engage in intercourse (IMO) stems from pedophilic desires of their men. With Mohammed being both the Prime Example and Exemplar.

Agreed, but again that leaves you unable to explain the above-cited Talmud passages.  One explanation is that the pedophile rabbis who made such statements believed that instead of delaying sex with girls until they were old enough to safely give birth, God would miraculously protect them from getting pregnant, meaning any girls who got pregnant and died, were those God intended to kill by that method:

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.14”

 Footnote 14 reads:  

Ps. CXVI, 6; sc. those who are unable to protect themselves. From this it follows that a girl under the age of twelve is incapable of normal conception.

So the answer of Talmud Sages is that girls under the age of 11 are not allowed to use a contraceptive, because God would keep them safe from getting pregnant at such a young age. You really need to work on avoiding seeing the ancient Jews through the rose-colored glasses of your modern eyes.  Excuses we today find stupid, were deemed just back then.

I'm not aware of any passage of Scripture where God permits or encourages as morally licit sexual activity for prepubescent females.

Then read 2nd Samuel 12, the account of David's adultery with Bathsheba.  That she was prepubescent or near is legitimately inferred from Nathan's analogizing her to a young ewe lamb who was taken from her rightful owner.  God condemnation of the sex act implies pedophilia was considered acceptable, since God condemns the adulterous aspect, but says nothing about the fact that she was so young, yet you'd figure if God was as against pedophilia as you are, God would have cited her prohibitively young age first, since under your own reasoning, there is more that is sinful and wrong with specifically pedophilia than there is with general adultery.  Once again, the ancient authors did not always see things the way we do today.  The only thing you get from God's condemnation of David is that he sinned by committing adultery with another man's wife.

The fact that in the allegory YHVH WAITS for the female to develop breasts should say something.

Not according to your prior post, where you said "Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose..."   apparently indicating that we shouldn't be drawing conclusions about what the ancient Jews believed about the minimum age of girls for marriage, from Ezekiel 16

He didn't marry her when she was prepubescent.

But Calvinist Steve Hays thinks adult men are still fulfilling god's "secret" will when they vaginally rape 4 year old girls.  Again, Pinoy, it appears you are asking me to decide that Hays' views about what God wants are incorrect, but if spiritually alive people cannot even agree on whether or how god "wills" such things, you should conclude that spiritually dead people, which is the way you see me, will only fare worse, hence counseling that you shouldn't be telling me about what God "wills" until you resolve your disagreements with other Christians

Likely because He cared for her and wanted to bless her, not harm her. What's missing in your interpretation is how lovingly and tenderly YHVH took care of the child during her prepubescent years.

Ok, so apparently you've changed your mind, again, and now consider the allegory to be suitable for drawing conclusions about ancient Jewish morality?

Again, this is Ezekiel in 600 b.c, whose authority for representing the morals of Moses from 1200 b.c. is anything but clear, and about as prone to fallacy as using the morals of Americans in 2017 to tell us what the morals of Americans were like in 1417.  600 years more than likely introduces some changes.

Read the passage again:

 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.
5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
6 "And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
 YHVH waited all this time and can't wait a few more months or a year(s) till it's relatively safe for her to have children, as opposed to when it's relatively and statistically risky?

The ancient Jews apparently thought the risk was negated by biblical promises that God would protect the simple.  See above.

You apparently are so hostile to Christianity and want to attack it so much that you have to take THE MOST Uncharitable interpretation as the natural and ONLY interpretation, contrary to the tenderness and patience YHVH is described as having exercised in the previous verses. [*cough* eisegesis *cough*] Your interpretation goes against the whole tenor of the passage.
CONT.

You first used the passage to draw conclusions about what God or the Jews believed about pedophile marriage, THEN you changed your mind and told me it was allegory and not to be pressed for details, NOW you changed your mind again and have decided the allegory does indeed reflect on what Jews thought about the proper age for marriage.  Some would argue that your own inability to keep to one interpretation suggests that the passage is too ambiguous to be useful in our debate.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:10 AM
In the ESV (v. 7) she is likened to a plant in a field "...and arrived AT FULL ADORNMENT. Your BREASTS were formed..." [ESV]. Other versions translate the verse differently. For example, in the ASV she is told, "...thou didst increase and wax great". The sense I get in some translations is that she is like a plant (or a field of plants) that's ready to be reaped because nearly fully ripe. That's contrary to your interpretation that reduces YHVH to a buck in heat that's ready to mate as soon as the gate is opened.

It's also contrary to the Talmud rabbis who felt three year old girls were "suitable" for sexual relations, see above, a view they'd hardly hold if there was something else in their religion that absolutely forbade girls of such age from having marital sex.

Notice too that verse 8 indicates even more time passed, when it says, "When I PASSED BY YOU AGAIN and saw you, behold, you were at the AGE FOR LOVE". Apparently the "age for love" is some time AFTER the mere and first appearance of (to use your words) "boobs and pubic hair".

I don't deny that the Jews of Ezekiel's day felt sex within adult-child marriages was taboo.  What I deny is your ability to establish from the bible that breaking such taboo would have been considered "sin".   God's original model for marriage was monogramy, yet evangelical scholar Richard Davidson (Flame of Yaweh) and others say God "tolerated" polygamy.  So even if you are correct that Ezekiel 16:7-8 provides the divine blueprint for minimum age of marriage for ancient Jewish girls, you aren't showing that the model is absolute.

It should be noted that not everything OT people (or ANE Semites in general) did was necessarily moral.

But what they did is material toward modern people drawing conclusions about what was acceptable and unacceptable to them.

The same is true for post-Tanakhian Jews (e.g. Talmudists). And even if some things were permissible or a concession on God's part, that doesn't mean it's the ideal.

Philsophically, it is unlikely that an infinitely perfect God, allegedly as angry at pedophilia-marriage as you are, would ever "tolerate" deviations from his original model of marriage.  So if Richard Davidson and other Christian scholars on marriage are correct that the bible god "tolerated" polygamy, then this god's perfection is not "infinite".

Moreover, there's God intended moral development within the OT as well as between the Testaments. For example, the ideal in the NT is monogamy, though polygamy in the OT was permitted/tolerated.

An infinitely perfect God who hated polygamy as much as you think he does, would not "tolerate" it, but would, like you, specify it to be sin.  Nowhere does the Mosaic law specify polygamy to be sin.  Deuteronomy 17:17 no more means a King cannot have two wives than it means he cannot have two horses.  He is not allowed to "multiply" wives to himself.  The infinitely perfect God is regulating, not condemning, polygamy

Jesus Himself taught that the OT Jews often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT laws. Or didn't interpret them in a truly consistent way.

And I teach that Jesus and Paul often misinterpreted and misapplied the OT Laws.

Had they, they would have had a more Christonomic interpretation of the Torah.

I'm an atheist, I don't find non-Christonomic Torah-interpretation to necessarily be faulty.

Finally, it's the Christian claim that its morality is higher than that of Judaism.

No, it was the claim of Jesus that his followers be careful to obey the spirit and letter of Mosaic law, see Matthew 5:17-20.  Paul's view of the Law was often at odds with the legalistic view held by Jesus.

The Messiah would magnify the law and make it glorious (Isa. 42:21).

Which seems to indicate that Christian parents need to burn their teen prostitute daughters to death.  Leviticus 21:9.

That's why Jesus could say, "BUT I say unto you" without contradicting the the OT (Matt. 5:17). And why Jesus said of the Jews that they added to the Word of God by teaching as doctrine the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).

I see no reason to distinguish Jesus' view of the law from Moses' view, for purposes of this discussion.

BTW, I'm not a "Theonomist" as it's commonly understood. I agree with much of what they say, but I have enough disagreements to not use that term. I prefer, "Christonomist".
 as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.
 Ready in what sense? Ready to marry, or start considering marriage?

Well according to Ezekiel 16:7-8, ready to actually marry, not merely consider it.

Since there was often a betrothal period that was also considered (in some sense) marriage even before consummation, that delayed period allows for even more time for the female to sexually mature even more.

But the betrothal itself was created by the act of vaginal intercourse with the three year old girl:

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69aR. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her... 

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:11 AM
What I said was true. Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.
 Now you seem to be reducing your claim to only Ezek. 16, when your original claim seems (?) to include ALL of Scripture (or at least the Tanakh).

No, I'm only pointing out that you have no textual justification for asserting that Ezekiel 16:7-8 expresses or implies that any criteria beyond boobs and public hair need be fulfilled to declare the girl ready for marriage.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist. I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments. 

IF Christianity is true, then the OT can not only be interpreted in isolation, but also in light of the later fuller revelation.

But since Christianity is not true, I am free to limit my understanding of an OT text to just what the author intended by examination of his grammar, immediate context, chapter, and genre.  Discerning meaning that way is objective, while trying to read the OT through Christian-colored lenses is absurdly controversial.

Also, it touches on the issue of the consistency of the Testaments. I would seek to defend it. While you'd be fine with there being irreconcilable contradictions between the two. You wouldn't take the NT to be authoritative, but the consistency between the Testaments has some abductive argumentative force.

I don't see the point, not only is there nothing in the NT against sex within adult-child marriages, there is the theological principle that you cannot know a human act is a sin unless there is a prohibition against it specified in Mosaic Law.  See Romans 7:7.  Either Paul was wrong for speaking in such absolute terms about how sin cannot be identified apart from Mosaic law, or he, and by extension Christians, cannot know what acts are sin without Mosaic law telling them so.  If Paul wouldn't have known coveting was a sin without Mosaic law, YOU don't know that sex within adult-child marriages is a sin without Mosaic law telling you so.  Are you smarter than apostle Paul?

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested... 

Apparently you claim we do have enough records from those very sources to tell us that adult-child marriages were accepted.

No, I think they were accepted on the basis of the biblical and Talmudic statements.

I'm dubious of the claim, but even if true, that doesn't make it morally licit according to the Mosaic Covenant or the teaching of the rest of the Tanakh. If it does, I'm not aware where.

See Romans 7:7, supra.  If you don't have a Mosaic Law specifying a human act as sin, you have no warrant for calling it sin in the first place.  So either find a Mosaic law that prohibits sex within adult-child marriages to the same degree that it prohibits coveting, and you'll dodge the Romans 7:7 bullet.  If you cannot provide such a text, then you never had any theological justification for labeling sex within adult-child marriages to be sinful in the first place.

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, 

Not necessary attempts, but that they always had that potential.

Well then the man could easily limit himself to sex acts that cannot make the girl pregnant, in which case  your rebuttal based on the dangerousness of potential pregnancy, is deprived of force.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears: 

Hebrews 13:4 says nothing about oral sex.

It also doesn't say anything about vaginal intercourse, but you certainly feel free to infer that the author's words "marriage bed undefiled" are saying vaginal intercourse between monogamous Christian couples is undefiled.

While Canticles MIGHT refer to oral sex in one or more passages, it's not certain.

Most conservative Christian scholars take it in its obvious sexual sense.  From the inerrantist-driven New American Commentary:

4:16 This, with 5:1, is the high point of the Song of Songs. She calls on the winds to make her fragrance drift to her beloved, thus drawing him to herself. Maintaining the metaphor of the garden, she invites him to come and enjoy her love. This is the consummation of their marriage.

...5:1 a,b The man responds. The poetry is discreet and restrained; it conveys the joy of sexual love without vulgarity; at the same time, the meaning is quite clear. The catalog of luxuries here (garden, myrrh, honey, wine, etc.) imply that he has partaken of her pleasures to the full.
Garrett, D. A. (2001, c1993). Vol. 14: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 407). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The important point is that in marriage coitus is the norm and would be expected to begin the marriage.

I don't see how that trifle helps you.  That's also the norm for marriage today, yet I've known many Christian couples who said they abstained from sex on their wedding night.  So again, while coitus was probably normative among ancient Jews for consummating the marriage, that doesn't argue that deviations were disallowed.

Without consummation via coitus the marriage wouldn't be fully legal. A bleeding hymen was meant to signify the cutting/enacting of the covenant of marriage.

By that logic, the marriage wouldn't be fully legal if the man had erectile dysfunction.  You need to stop interpreting what Mosaic law presents are normative, as if it was absolute and exclusive.

You refer to adult-child marriage, but I don't know what you mean by, and how you define "child".

In this discussion, by "adult-child marriage" I mean men who are in their 20's or older, getting married to girls who, by reason of lack of puberty, can still be called "child".

Or in what way you (presumably) frown upon adult-child marriages.

I frown on them for the same reason the Legislators and Congress do:  such unions are more productive of lasting physical and emotional harm to the girl.

I don't deny that a some females consummated marriage at an early age. Maybe even at 12. But some girls enter puberty earlier and progress faster than other girls.

That's right. the reality of precocious puberty means it is possible that in Ezekiel 16:7-8, God was thinking about a 9 year old girl whose breasts and public hair had grown, as the template for his allegorical language.

This is also true of the girls of some ethnic groups as compared to others. So, randomly citing the age of 12 is meaningless unless one also addresses and acknowledges the issue of the fact that different female would be sexually mature sooner than others.

I don't see your point, most scholars of the ANE agree that these people usually delayed marriage until puberty.  You appear to be concerned to make your trifles look like serious objections.  No dice.

I don't know what you're entire claim is, but my claim is that given OT ethics (and especially NT ethics), it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications.

That's not good enough.  Your claim is that your god views sex within adult-child marriages as "sin", so it is perfectly legitimate to ask why you call it a sin when you cannot provide any biblical evidence that it is.  Sin is trangression of God's law (Romans 7:7, 1st John 3:4), it is not "deviation from what's normative".

Regarding pedophilia of prepubescents in the Talmud, even if your interpretation were correct, that doesn't tell anything certain about the beliefs and practices of Jews during Biblical times.

It does it we accept the conservative Christian assumption that oral traditions among the ancient Jews were carefully handed down from generation to generation.  If you start screwing with the reliability of those oral traditions just to get out of this jam, then you increase the likelihood that the oral traditions laying behind the OT text were corrupted before being written.

Even then, the beliefs and practices of Biblical Jews is not sure indicator of what the OT law itself requires or allows.

I don't need to have a "sure" indicator.  I will be rationally warranted in my arguments if I have a "reasonable" indicator.

Since many things recorded are explicitly or implicitly taught to be wrong. Think for example of how the book of Judges records the general degradation and moral decline in Israel.

But from a historical perspective, it is how the ancient Jews were, not whether their acts squared up with their religious claims, that helps one form an opinion on which among the historical possibilities is most probable.  If the ancient Jews allowed pedophile-marriages, then it is unjustified for modern-day apologists to be shocked at my argument, as if the ancient Jews' morals were a mirror image of those held by modern conservative Christians.  What's "obvious" to us today doesn't tell us what would have been allowed by ancient Jews.

Much of the OT is a record of how the majority often disobeyed God, from generation to generation.

And the most substantial portion is the Mosaic Law.

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:12 AM

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited... 

That is or close to an argument from silence.

So?  Arguments from silence are not automatically fallacious, which is the sense you appear to be intending with your short unqualified sentence.  It is perfectly reasonable to assume that if the bible god exists and really does regard sex within adult-child marriages as abominable as you do, he would have specified a prohibition against it.

Laws and Case Laws are meant to be studied and applied to cover situations not mentioned.

And I see no biblical warrant to suppose that, where the 3 year old bride's father agreed to give her in marriage to an adult man who paid the dowry, the sexual relations between this couple after the wedding would constitute a legal case requiring application of law.

In America, one state's criminal law code is limited to less than 100 pages, so if Moses was inspired by God, he has no excuse for failing to specify as sin any and every human act god thought was a sin.  We specify the minimum age, why couldn't god?

Your duty as a Christian to obey Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 is more important than your desire to come up with a clever way to read things into the law.

In fact, if the Mosaic Law included every possible situation the Pentateuch would be larger than the U.S. Library of Congress.

How much extra room in Moses' books would "you shall not marry a girl until she is at least 16 years old" have taken up?

Also, Natural Law gives us some indication.

You mean like the natural fact that most girls become capable of getting pregnant around 11 or 12 years old?  Does this natural law tell us anything about what God intended?

Especially when it's coupled with the OT Revelation. For example, the very passage you cite (Ezek. 16). If females should wait till sometime after puberty begins to get married and be sexually active, then it makes sense that that's the case for boys too. Nocturnal emissions happend after the onset of puberty, not before. Prior to that a boy is not fertile. The libido of both sexes kicks in at high gear at puberty. Since one of main the reasons for marriage is to propogate the species (Gen. 1:28), AND since the OT prohibits extra-marital sexual relations, AND since fertility only occurs after the onset of puberty, it therefore makes sense that the consummation of marriage was meant to also be after the onset of puberty in both the male and female.

I don't see the point, you are only specifying what makes sense and what's normal, you are not making a case that God believed sex within adult-child marriages was "sin".   "Sin" is not merely "deviation from the norm".

Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know. 

I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin.

!?

At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex.

You haven't made a very convincing case that your god thinks marital pedophilia is sinful.  If my blog educated you, a thanks would be in order.

Another issue that one would expect some atheists to look down upon is arranged marriages (AM). AMs could potentially motivate adult-child marriages. Or what of the hypothetical where two groups of parents arrange the marriage of prepubescent children and foregoing the betrothal period. Would it necessarily be sin if a 7 year old "husband" and a 7 year old "wife" engaged in sexual intercourse? I'm not sure.

Well, if your God hasn't made clear to you that prepubescent kids having vaginal intercourse is "sin"...

What's clear to me is that if such a situation continued the girl would likely get pregnant long before her body could handle giving birth.

And since puberty is an increase in the girl's complexity, you cannot relegate the problem of girls becoming capable of conception while it is still dangerous to give birth, to the Fall. The "Fall" didn't cause human beings to increase in complexity, the Fall was a degradation.  So it would seem that nature's equipping girls to get pregnant at such dangerously young ages can be blamed squarely on your god, not the Fall and not "evolution".

Leading to the likely death of both her and the child. Also, I think an adult male with fully developed sexual organs engaging in coitus with a prepubescent girls can do serious damage.

That was probably also obvious to the Talmud Rabbis who said three year old girls are "suitable" for sexual relations:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

There are modern cases where death or infertility ensued. Whatever nearly ensures injury or death would likely be considered sin.

How much did the odds of injury/death increase when Moses roused the Hebrews to dispossess the Canaanites and make war?

Apostles boldly confronting their captors with the gospel would likely ensure their deaths, so perhaps there are times when preaching the gospel would be a sin?

The difficulty women have in childbirth is not due to "sin", but God's voluntary choice to curse the woman, Genesis 3:16.  From 2nd Samuel 12:13, God's nature does not "require" him to punish sin in any certain way, he can exempt a sinner from punishment by simply waving his magic wand.  So under your logic, God was sinning since his curse on the birthing process increased the odds of a women suffering injury or death.

The case of Adam and Eve is our exemplar. They were man and woman, not boy and girl when God presented them to each other for marriage.

But because God made concession for one deviation from this model (polygamy), you have to be open to the prospect that he'd make similar concessions for other deviations from the model.

He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off,
 I have no knowledge about the dispute between the two of you. I'll leave that between the relevant parties and the law. When it comes to Matt. 18, I think that's in the context of internal matters within the church.

No, Christians, especially Christians who take up the office of teacher, are required to have a good reputation with unbelievers, 1st Timothy 3:7, so when they fail Paul's standard, they fail their own self-imposed standard and have engaged in the biblical equal of sin.

Disputes between Christian brothers. If so, then it doesn't apply to you since you're not in the church.

So under your logic, if you murder me, none of your Christian brothers have a biblical duty to confront you about this sin since I'm not in the church.

You mention Rom. 13. That's the very chapter that acknowledges the state's role in the punishment of crimes. If there's a place for ministers to address Holding's sins, it would be his immediate elders and not random spiritual mentors who don't know or have the time or resources to investigate the issues.

Which is precisely the problem since Holding is the type of apostate who believes himself spiritually above any immediate elders.  Blomberg and Habermas would have known this, so because they chose to discuss the matter with him a little bit, they committed themselves to rebuking him for his sin.

When it comes to CRI, I suspect that folks like Perry Robinson who have complained about Hanegraaff's behavior for decades seem legitimate (from my limited knowledge). Also, I think the role of teacher and apologist are two distinct things. One can be one, or the other, or both. The role of a teacher implies authority and reliability in doctrine. Whereas neither need be the case with an apologist.

Yes, they do, at least for the apologist who thinks god works through him to promote the gospel.

Finally, what lies of Walter Martin are you specifically referring to?

He claimed to have been a descendant of Brigham Young

ANNOYED PINOYJanuary 2, 2018 at 1:51 AM
What's the NAU translation?

New American Standard, 1995 Update.  You can't be serious.

Re-reading my comments I see I may have been slightly inconsistent. For example, in one place I wrote, "it would have been morally wrong for a female to have been given in marriage for consummation before she had sufficiently matured so as to lessen the chances of birthing complications." Yet, in another place I wrote, "I'm not sure I would say that it was/is always sin. At the very least I think the Biblical ideal (additionally attested by natural law) is that marriage should be between two sexually mature individuals of the opposite sex. "
 But those two statements need not be contradictory. In the former quotation I wasn't speaking absolutely, but generally and usually. While in the latter I was speaking in terms of absolute and unchanging designation and moral evaluation.

I think the fact that you can't make out a biblical case for saying God views marital pedophilia as "sin" speaks clearly enough.

Demolishing Triablogue: No, Steve Hays, ticking time-bombs aren't relevant to child-rape

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Causing evil

A stock objection to Calvinism goes something like this: it is evil to cause evil.

That's because the only exception anybody perceives to the rule, is when Calvinists need to get their ass out of a theological jam.

But the God of Calvinism causes evil (or determines evil, which amounts to the same thing). Indeed, the God of Calvinism causes human agents to commit evil. Yet making someone else do evil is at least as bad if not worse than doing it yourself.

And only religion would motivate a person to consider that causing evil might be good.

Let's examine that objection. Take the ticking timebomb scenario. Many people think torturing a terrorist to find out where the bomb is hidden, to save innocent lives, is immoral.

Not if the good of torturing him is likely to outweigh the bad of hundreds of people dying in an explosion. Your argument here might refute ridiculous liberals who think Constitutional rights are the inerrant word of God, but that's a far cry from arguing that your Calvinist god is "good" for causing men to rape children to death.

Why is that immoral? Presumably, they think torture is wrong because they think excruciating pain is evil. If so, then it's evil to cause excruciating pain.

You won't find anything in the NT to support the idea of Christians inflicting pain for the sake of a greater good, except in the irrelevant sense of excommunication or shunning.

If they don't think excruciating pain is evil, then it's unclear why they think torture is wrong. They might not think that's the only reason torture is wrong. They might think torture is wrong in part because coercion is wrong. But presumably they think the evil of excruciating pain is a necessary condition of what makes torture wrong, in cases where torture utilizes pain. Indeed, pain is coercive. The two are inseparable in that scenario.

You'd do a better job had you addressed the real problem:  Your god thinks it is "good" to cause men to rape little kids to death.  Deal with that.  What, your all-powerful God just couldn't achieve his purposes in any other way than to predestine a man to rape a child to death?  Either your god is a scumbag, or he isn't all-powerful.  Since you are a Calvinist, you likely won't be invoking W.L. Craig's "what if" scenarios whereby his evaporating illusions take the place of serious argumentation.

The justification for torturing the terrorist is to save innocent lives. But since they regard torture as intrinsically wrong, the goal, however noble, can't justify that expedient. So goes the argument.
 But let's vary the illustration. Take a field medic during the Civil War who operates without anesthetic, because none is available. If excruciating pain is evil, then it's evil for the medic to inflict excruciating pain on his patients. Yet most of us think his action is justified. He must amputate the arms and legs of gunshot victims to prevent the greater evil of death by gangrene. Yet in that event, there are situations in which causing evil isn't evil.
 In addition, suppose there's a patient he's loathe to save. It may be the enemy. But the field commander orders him to operate on that patient because the field commander wants to pump the enemy soldier for information. He may force the unwilling medic to operate at gunpoint if need be.
 That would mean he's causing an agent to commit evil, assuming that pain is evil. If, on the other hand, we grant that it's not inherently evil to cause the evil of inflicting pain, then it's not evil to cause an agent to cause evil, in that respect. At least, that seems to break the chain of inference.
 Although that's a hypothetical comparison, it has a real-world counterpart. We experience physical pain because God designed the human body to have that sensitivity. But if excruciating pain is evil, then that means God causes evil by designing and making bodies with sensitivity.
 Let's consider some objections to my argument:
 i) Pain isn't good or bad in itself. Rather, it's context-dependent. For instance, pain can be a warning sign to avert or avoid greater harm. The painful sensation of burning deters us from taking chances with fire. Temporary pain protects us from greater harm.
 One potential problem with that reply is that it makes it harder to oppose torture in the ticking timebomb scenario.

But it kills you in the context of a man raping a child to death, since the resulting pain there cannot be rationally said to be "required" to achieve any greater good (otherwise, you'd have to commit to the premise that the child who survives a rape is better off than had they been spared the experience).  The bible doesn't present God as causing men to do such things for the sake of a greater good, but that he causes men to do such things to punish nations in a corporate manner.  Isaiah 13, Hosea 13, Deut. 28.  Christians who feel a sense of unfairness when bad luck comes their way, simply don't know their bibles...god will cause a man to rape a woman solely because she belongs to a sinful nation.  The corporate guilt doctrine in the bible is utterly lost on mainstream Christianity.

In both cases, you have an ends-means justification. If the deterrent value of pain to avoid death or serious injury by fire justifies pain, then why not torturing a terrorist to save innocent lives? Both utilize temporary pain. Both justify harm for a greater good.
 ii) We absolve the field medic because he lacked access to anesthetics. But the analogy breaks down in application to God, who doesn't suffer from analogous limitations.
 Up to a point that's true, but I'm testing the principle. The objection makes blanket statement: it is evil to cause evil. Or it is evil to cause another agent to cause evil.
 If, however, there are exceptions, then that isn't wrong in principle. It depends on the situation. If something is intrinsically wrong, that precludes exceptions.

So do you think child-rape is intrinsically wrong, Steve?  Or do you call child-rape good because the doctrine of divine command theory requires to you automatically label as good anything God causes to happen?  Let's do this by syllogism;

Premise One - consistent Calvinism says God is always responsible for causing men to rape children
Premise Two - All of God's acts are righteous.
Conclusion - God is righteous in causing men to rape children

We have to wonder:  Does Steve think God ever punishes people for doing what God wanted them to to?

Notice how the Calvinist God must think:

"I'm going to make babysitter Bill rape that 4 year old girl to death.  Then I'm going to cause him to have a strong feeling of personal guilt over it, and to conclude in his mind that he is inexcusably culpable and guilty, and I will further cause him to think, contrary to the biblical truth of my infallible predestining decree for all human choices, that his refraining from doing that crime was always just as legitimate and real of a possibility as was his ultimate choice to commit it."

We have to wonder:  What would God do to a Calvinist who got just as happy at the news that his 7 year old daughter was raped, as he was upon discovering that his daughter graduated from second to third grade?

If God wanted the girl raped, why does God put in the hearts of most humans a feeling of revulsion and hatred toward those who carry out certain aspects of God's will?

What sense does it make to say we should only be happy when certain limited aspects of God's will are actualized on earth?  If God's righteousness is vindicated in his causing men to rape children no less than it is when he causes Calvinists to donate to charity, then logically there cannot be any moral difference between getting happy about God's will being done on earth, and getting happy about God's will being done on earth.

Did God, during the earthly ministry of Jesus, want the Jews to obey his revealed will?

Yes (Luke 13:34)
No (Calvinist doctrine of God's sovereignty; God infallibly ordains whatsoever comes to pass).

So under Calvinism, God both wants and doesn't want the Jews to obey his revealed will.  If God appears to you and says "I want you to give $10 to this person", you'd be presumptuous to conclude that God is being honest.  Just because God says he wants you to do something, doesn't necessarily mean that he actually wants you to do it (!?).

Now you know why Calvinists take more pleasure in sin than other Christians.  Not only is it God who is causing you to screw the neighbor's spouse, thus falsifying any notion that you could have chosen otherwise, but your adultery glorifies God no less than does your donating food to a local charity.

And only a fool says God doesn't wish to be glorified.

Calvinism is a good illustration of how bible inerrancy can sicken the human mind, as apparently the religion becomes more important than logical consistency.  And since most Christian scholars think Calvinism is bullshit, Steve Hays cannot relegate my critique of his Calvinism to my alleged spiritual deadness/blindness...lest he step even deeper into his cultic mindset and accuse all anti-Calvinist Christians of spiritual deadness/blindness.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays helps unbelievers stop worrying about hell

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled

Scandinavian hell
I'd like to make a brief observation about hell. There are Christians, apostates, and atheists who get carried away with the poetic imagery.

And the more even spiritually alive people get hell wrong, the more justification spiritually dead people have to toss the entire business out the window, knowing they can only do worse if they try.

If, however, the Bible was originally revealed in, say, Iceland, the Yukon, or Scandinavia, rather than a hot dry climate like Palestine, the hellish imagery might instead draw on snow and ice, arctic temperatures, a polar vortex, and a continuous polar night.

So if the bible was originally revealed in, say, Sacramento California, 1986, the hellish imagery might instead draw on constant traffic, ceaseless urban growth and non-stop crime.  

The "geography" of hell is based on the Middle East. The "geography" of hell would vary if originally revealed in regions with different landscape and climate. The metaphors are to some degree culturebound. A tropical depiction of hell might be characterized by an abundance of nasty reptiles and stinging insects.

The problem being that your alleged God refuses to specify exactly what hell is.  Yet under Calvinism, despite God predestining me to fault him for such ambiguity, I'm still "without excuse" for doing what God forced me to do.

Calvinism makes me feel better about rejecting the gospel...there was no way I could have contradicted God's reprobative decree.  It's out of my hands, so any sense of personal responsibility on my part can only be a misleading illusion.

Cold Case Christianity: Why does J. Warner Wallace run away from this rule of evidence?

How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100) Posted: 28 Dec 2017 01:56 AM PST In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner continues to discuss the practices and principles of good investigators and applies these techniques to the Christian worldview. When juries are asked to evaluate a case, they are instructed in the rules of evidence. In this episode, J. Warner discusses three important evidence instructions: 1. The fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true, 2. Everything has the potential to be used as evidence, and 3. Whoever makes the claim, has the burden of proof. J. Warner demonstrates how a proper understanding of these rules can help you prepare people to hear the case for Christianity. This approach is described in more detail inForensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. Be sure to check out Forensic Faith and the accompanying curriculum. Be sure to watch the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast on NRBtv every Monday and Saturday! In addition, here is the audio podcast (the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast is located on iTunes or our RSS Feed):

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For whatever reason, Wallace never comments on why he thinks the gospels would pass the provenance criteria in the "ancient documents rule".  A recent Google search turns up nothing from Wallace on the subject, but places my blog piece, critical of him on this matter, at the top of the search hit list.

Pretty much the same is true even if one conducts a Duck Duck Go! search.

So it doesn't matter if Wallace has somehow managed to deal with this somewhere.  He apparently doesn't deal with it enough for the major search engines to pick up his discussions thereto.

I suspect that is because Wallace likes the sales gimmick of using modern American rules of evidence to govern investigation of the gospels (he has to favor that approach, that's the whole point of his "Cold Case Christianity" spiel), and he thus merely avoids discussion of any rule of evidence whose operation would  otherwise justify skeptics in dismissing the gospels as inadmissible.  I believe the laymen's term for such conduct "running away".

I explain in detail what the provenance-component of the ancient documents rule is, and why the gospels fail it with great gusto

If they do indeed fail that test, then they are "inadmissible", and no more deserve to have other rules of evidence applied to them, than is deserved by any other bit of evidence that was also rendered inadmissible.

The logical conclusion is that because the gospels do not pass muster under the rules of evidence used in American courts, the reliability of the gospels can never be sufficiently demonstrated as to intellectually or morally compel the unbeliever to acknowledge such.

However, I suspect that because Wallace is in the apologetics game to the point that he wants to make money with this crap, he has no intention of going where his own gimmickery leads, and will instead either continue avoiding the ancient documents rule or will serve up some flop-defense if his followers dog him about his silence on the matter long enough.

Wallace, if you are reading this, you have the option of breaking the silence by arguing that the ancient documents rule is so likely to result in unfair exclusion of powerful relevant evidence, that you were justified to ignore it.  

But if so, then you'll still have to follow those rules of evidence which govern admissibility of document testimony anyway.  Here are your options under FRE 901 for "authenticating" the gospels:

(1) Testimony of a Witness with Knowledge. Testimony that an item is what it is claimed to be.

(2) Nonexpert Opinion About Handwriting. A nonexpert’s opinion that handwriting is genuine, based on a familiarity with it that was not acquired for the current litigation.

(3) Comparison by an Expert Witness or the Trier of Fact. A comparison with an authenticated specimen by an expert witness or the trier of fact.

(4) Distinctive Characteristics and the Like. The appearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive characteristics of the item, taken together with all the circumstances.

(5) Opinion About a Voice. An opinion identifying a person’s voice — whether heard firsthand or through mechanical or electronic transmission or recording — based on hearing the voice at any time under circumstances that connect it with the alleged speaker.

(6) Evidence About a Telephone Conversation. For a telephone conversation, evidence that a call was made to the number assigned at the time to:

   (A) a particular person, if circumstances, including self-identification, show that the person answering was the one called; or

   (B) a particular business, if the call was made to a business and the call related to business reasonably transacted over the telephone.

(7) Evidence About Public Records. Evidence that:

   (A) a document was recorded or filed in a public office as authorized by law; or

   (B) a purported public record or statement is from the office where items of this kind are kept.

(8) Evidence About Ancient Documents (presumed deleted)

(9) Evidence About a Process or System. Evidence describing a process or system and showing that it produces an accurate result.

While FRE 901 says that list is not exclusive, expect a hell of an uphill battle if you try to authenticate a testimonial document in court in any manner other than the ways proposed in the rule.  And the great age of the gospels would make the Court even more unwilling to allow you to authenticate by means beyond those actually stated in the rule.

Here are your options under FRE 902, telling you which documents are "self-authenticating"

Rule 902. Evidence That Is Self-Authenticating

The following items of evidence are self-authenticating; they require no extrinsic evidence of authenticity in order to be admitted:

(1) Domestic Public Documents That Are Sealed and Signed. A document that bears:

(A) a seal purporting to be that of the United States; any state, district, commonwealth, territory, or insular possession of the United States; the former Panama Canal Zone; the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands; a political subdivision of any of these entities; or a department, agency, or officer of any entity named above; and

    (B) a signature purporting to be an execution or attestation.

(2) Domestic Public Documents That Are Not Sealed but Are Signed and Certified. A document that bears no seal if:

    (A) it bears the signature of an officer or employee of an entity named in Rule 902(1)(A); and

    (B) another public officer who has a seal and official duties within that same entity certifies under seal — or its equivalent — that the signer has the official capacity and that the signature is genuine.

(3) Foreign Public Documents. A document that purports to be signed or attested by a person who is authorized by a foreign country’s law to do so. The document must be accompanied by a final certification that certifies the genuineness of the signature and official position of the signer or attester — or of any foreign official whose certificate of genuineness relates to the signature or attestation or is in a chain of certificates of genuineness relating to the signature or attestation. The certification may be made by a secretary of a United States embassy or legation; by a consul general, vice consul, or consular agent of the United States; or by a diplomatic or consular official of the foreign country assigned or accredited to the United States. If all parties have been given a reasonable opportunity to investigate the document’s authenticity and accuracy, the court may, for good cause, either:

    (A) order that it be treated as presumptively authentic without final certification; or

    (B) allow it to be evidenced by an attested summary with or without final certification.

(4) Certified Copies of Public Records. A copy of an official record — or a copy of a document that was recorded or filed in a public office as authorized by law — if the copy is certified as correct by:

    (A) the custodian or another person authorized to make the certification; or

    (B) a certificate that complies with Rule 902(1), (2), or (3), a federal statute, or a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court.

(5) Official Publications. A book, pamphlet, or other publication purporting to be issued by a public authority.

(6) Newspapers and Periodicals. Printed material purporting to be a newspaper or periodical.

(7) Trade Inscriptions and the Like. An inscription, sign, tag, or label purporting to have been affixed in the course of business and indicating origin, ownership, or control.

(8) Acknowledged Documents. A document accompanied by a certificate of acknowledgment that is lawfully executed by a notary public or another officer who is authorized to take acknowledgments. 

(9) Commercial Paper and Related Documents. Commercial paper, a signature on it, and related documents, to the extent allowed by general commercial law.

(10) Presumptions Under a Federal Statute. A signature, document, or anything else that a federal statute declares to be presumptively or prima facie genuine or authentic.

(11) Certified Domestic Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. The original or a copy of a domestic record that meets the requirements of Rule 803(6)(A)-(C), as shown by a certification of the custodian or another qualified person that complies with a federal statute or a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court. Before the trial or hearing, the proponent must give an adverse party reasonable written notice of the intent to offer the record — and must make the record and certification available for inspection — so that the party has a fair opportunity to challenge them.

(12) Certified Foreign Records of a Regularly Conducted Activity. In a civil case, the original or a copy of a foreign record that meets the requirements of Rule 902(11), modified as follows: the certification, rather than complying with a federal statute or Supreme Court rule, must be signed in a manner that, if falsely made, would subject the maker to a criminal penalty in the country where the certification is signed. The proponent must also meet the notice requirements of Rule 902(11).

(13) Certified Records Generated by an Electronic Process or System. A record generated by an electronic process or system that produces an accurate result, as shown by a certification of a qualified person that complies with the certification requirements of Rule 902(11) or (12). The proponent must also meet the notice requirements of Rule 902(11).

(14) Certified Data Copied from an Electronic Device, Storage Medium, or File. Data copied from an electronic device, storage medium, or file, if authenticated by a process of digital identification, as shown by a certification of a qualified person that complies with the certification requirements of Rule (902(11) or (12). The proponent also must meet the notice requirements of Rule 902 (11). 

It should be clear that, given how furiously even conservative Christian scholars disagree about the authorship, audience and provenance of the 4 canonical gospels, the earliest surviving manuscripts we have would never pass these kind of tests. 

So here's the predicament Wallace is in:

a - If you leave the ancient documents rule alone, then the provenance-element remains legitimate, and the inability of Christian scholars to know or agree on the provenance or place or origin for these manuscripts ensures they fail this test.  One has to wonder what Wallace would have to say about the gospels failing authentication under the "rules of evidence".  Would he be objective and quit the gimmicks?  Or would he simply do what conservative Christians do, and insist any evidentiary rule the gospels couldn't pass, was created by Satan?  If so, on what basis does Wallace determine which Federal Rules of Evidence were created by those interested in truth and which were created by those interested in deception? 

b - If you support the modern push to delete the ancient documents rule from Federal Rules of Evidence, then because all documents in court must still be "authenticated", you'd be forced to show that the ancient gospel manuscript of your choice passed at least one of the above-cited criteria from either FRE 901 or 902, and as already pointed out, the chain of custody for ancient gospel manuscripts his hopelessly speculative and lost, thus such documents ould never pass these standard authentication tests.

For those curious to delve further into the issue, here is a reasonably comprehensive pdf on the history and purpose of the ancient documents rule, and the arguments for and against deleting it from the current Fedral Rules of Evidence.

My advice is that Wallace give up this marketing gimmick before he embarrasses himself more than he already has.  

Cold Case Christianity: purchase my marketing gimmicks, or the Holy Spirit won't do his job

J. Warner Wallace absurdly counsels other Christians on how modern American rules of evidence can "prepare" a person to hear the case for Christ.

Cold Case Christianity: How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100)

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How the Rules of Evidence Can Ready Evangelism – Part 1 (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #100) Posted: 28 Dec 2017 01:56 AM PST In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner continues to discuss the practices and principles of good investigators and applies these techniques to the Christian worldview. When juries are asked to evaluate a case, they are instructed in the rules of evidence. In this episode, J. Warner discusses three important evidence instructions: 1. The fact the other side can make a case doesn’t mean it’s true, 2. Everything has the potential to be used as evidence, and 3. Whoever makes the claim, has the burden of proof. J. Warner demonstrates how a proper understanding of these rules can help you prepare people to hear the case for Christianity. This approach is described in more detail inForensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. Be sure to check out Forensic Faith and the accompanying curriculum. Be sure to watch the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast on NRBtv every Monday and Saturday! In addition, here is the audio podcast (the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast is located on iTunes or our RSS Feed):

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Gee, Wallace, you wouldn't think the Holy Spirit needs human beings to help him do his job, do you?

If the Holy Spirit is to be solely credited with convicting sinners, and if the Holy Spirit really is the "third person of the trinity", then it would seem that merely quoting the NT to unbelievers would be sufficient, under NT principles, to discharge your obligation to present the gospel.

But no, the way you argue, its as if there's no Holy Spirit at all; if Christians don't purchase your marketing gimmicks and employ the standard persuasion tactics of secular institutions that you also apparently approve of, unbelievers won't be clobbered as strongly as they otherwise could be.

Demolishing Triablogue: how to get nowhere fast, a reply to "annoyed pinoy"

"Annoyed Pinoy" who frequents Triablogue responded to my criticism of his views.

I reply by new blog post instead of "reply" because the word count is greater than the 4, 096 allowed for "replies".

Pinoy and others raise the issue of whether Ezekiel 16:7-8 constitutes criteria for sexual readiness, and the issue of my prior lawsuits against James Patrick Holding.

Thanks AP for the reply. 

“Because of a comment HERE, I did a very quick search of your blog for my nick and I noticed you made the following response to me.”
No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. “
That's an example of poor reasoning and poor reading skills. Different types of literature should be read according to their genre and intent/purpose. Just because two criteria are given doesn't mean there are only two criteria.

 That’s technically true, but there are several problems your response creates:

1. The burden of proof is on the claimant.  You apparently claim Ezekiel and or God think more criteria than the “boobs and pubic hair” need to be fulfilled before the girl can be considered legitimately ready for marriage (since apparently you don’t like the idea that they believed only two criteria needed to be met).  I don’t know why you claim this, you have absolutely nothing in the bible to indicate God felt more criteria needed be fulfilled, than these two.  Indeed where does the bible indicate girls need to have more qualifications than signs of puberty, to be deemed legitimately ready for martial relations? 

2. If God believes just as strongly as you that more criteria than these two must be fulfilled for a girl to be deemed legitimately ready for marital relations, don’t you think he would specified what those minimum criteria are?  If he was willing to specify prohibitions against conduct that is “obviously” sinful (like homosexuality, bestiality), you cannot argue that pedophilia is so obviously immoral that he didn’t think we needed a prohibition against it.  We also didn’t need to be told bestiality is wrong, but God specified a prohibition against that act anyway.  So it is reasonable, whether detrimental to you or not, to assume that your God will not shy away from specifying a prohibition against certain acts even if he trusts us to intuitively “know” they are immoral. 

3. Your implication that more criteria than those two were needed, fails on historical grounds anyway, as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.  For example, Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-332 B.C.E., Daniel C. Snell, Yale University Press, 1997. p. 90 

“You're reading that INTO the passage. The point of the passage is that YHVH waited till the girl was mature.”

And the criteria for maturity are given by the author.  If you wish to argue ancient Jews believed more criteria for marriage-readiness were required to be fulfilled than the two Ezekiel mentions, that is your claim, for which you incur the burden of proof.  Good luck.  Evangelical scholar L. C. Allen sees no problem with the boobs and public hair being set forth as sufficient signs of sexual maturity:

“The creative command turned into fact, and the baby grew into adolescence and sexual maturity, marked by breasts and pubic hair…” Allen, L. C. (2002). Vol. 28: Word Biblical Commentary : Ezekiel 1-19. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 237). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Pinoy continues:

NOT your claim that, "...your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair."

What I said was true.  Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.   So why you insist there was more to the criteria-story than that, remains a mystery.  Perhaps your bible says things my bible doesn't?

“Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose.”

No, I’m only responding to other apologists who, in sheer desperation, resorted to Ezekiel 16 to refute my argument that the god of the bible approves of sex within adult-child marriages.  I actually agree with you that the passage was not intended to instruct the reader on what the ancient Jews believed to be the minimum signs of marriage-readiness for girls.

“Since the passage is NOT about the criteria of when it's permissible for a female to get married and become sexually active. It's about the spiritual infidelity of God's people.”

Correct.  And when you find biblical criteria telling what signs or age indicate a girl first becomes ready in her life for martial relations, let me know.  But for now, that's a change in your interpretation, as earlier this year you DID argue that what Ezekiel 16:7-8 can tell us what ancient Jews thought about the minimum age of marriage for girls:

   ANNOYED PINOY7/08/2017 3:00 PM  
    I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.
    That's a powerful statement by Steve. Christian ethics based on the Bible takes into consideration natural law. Even if Islam could theoretically do the same thing, Islam nevertheless teaches that it's okay for men to have sex with prepubescent girls. As I said in the comments of another blog:
    To add to what Steve said, if one reads Ezek. 16:1-8 (and following) God likens his relationship with His people as Him having found her like a newly born abandoned child. He waited until she was sexually mature to "marry" her in covenant. I think that suggests the same thing Steve is saying. I think we can inductively infer from this what the Jews believed during that time and what God Himself approves of regarding when it's appropriate for a female to get married.

Pinoy continues:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?- Micah 6:8”29 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."- Mark 12:29-31 The former passage is a summation of Jewish theology and ethics in the OT, the latter a Christian summation in the NT. But it would be eisegetical (not exegetical) to assume that those passages are all there is to Jewish and/or Christian theology. You make a similar mistake about Ezekiel 16.”

See above.  I don’t think Ezekiel 16 is giving criteria for marriage.  I’m simply responding to Christian apologists who appeal to it as such in their desperate effort to refute my theory that the god of the ancient Jews approved of sex within adult-child marriages.  Apparently you and I agree that such apologists are using the passage in a way Ezekiel did not intend.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist.  I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments.  

“You're completely ignoring cultural context of the passage. As far as I know, there are no records that describe ante-Christian Jewish communities that regularly had problems of mothers dying or suffering from having infants at too early an age.”

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested, neither of which resolve the issue of to what extent early pregnancies were fatal in ancient Israel.  Not all arguments from silence are fallacious, but the one you now advance surely is. 

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, when in fact Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears:

 4 Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Heb. 13:4 NAU) 

 16 "Awake, O north wind, And come, wind of the south; Make my garden breathe out fragrance, Let its spices be wafted abroad. May my beloved come into his garden And eat its choice fruits!" (Cant. 4:16 NAU)

Pinoy continues: 

“Unlike what regularly happens among Muslims communities. Yet writings like the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud have many discussions about the finer aspects of the law as it relates to human living. Including addressing some medical issues.”

The Talmud also says girls at least three years and one day old are “suitable for sexual relations”, and more words to that effect.  I’ll be more than happy to discuss the context these verses sit in, to disabuse you of any possible “they-were-just-talking-technicalities-about-the-extreme-fringes-of-the-law-not-intended-to-apply-to-real-world-situations” foolishness you might share with most of the unfortunate Christian souls who attempted this fallacious trick to get rid of this rather embarrassing historical evidence.

These particular rabbis and sages are quoted in the older more authoritative Babylonian Talmud, and are they are the earlier human teachers, it is only the later teachers in the B.Talmud who voice concerns against adult-child marriage:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Niddah 44 b

Misnah: a girl of the age of three years and one day may be betrothed  by intercourse;

Gemara: Our Rabbis taught: A girl of the age of three years may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

...An objection was raised: A girl of the age of three years and even one of the age of two years and one day may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69a

R. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her...

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.”

One who is under the age of 11 must carry on her marital intercourse in the normal manner (i.e., without an absorbent [contraceptive]).(!?)

They would hardly have a rule like this, if in their law or view of the law there was some absolute prohibition against vaginal intercourse with girls under the age of 11.  Having Rabbis regulate the sex life of prepubescent girls while absolutely forbidding girls of that age from sexual activity, would be about as stupid as California telling 9 year old girls how and when they can have sex within marriage, despite California law absolutely prohibiting any and all sexual contact with a 9 year old girl.  The more reasonable interpretation of the Talmud is that the Rabbis issue such regulations because prepubescent girls having sex within marriage was not absolutely forbidden.

Gleason Archer and others have accepted that some kings in the Monarchy were fathering kids at 11 years old.“But the males didn't physically suffer from such a situation.”

But ancient Jewish boys having sex at 11 years old still bounces the vast majority of Christian apologists out of their theological comfort zones.  Years ago when I started this craze on the internet, the apologists were saying pedophilia likely wouldn’t even enter the mind of the ancient Jew.  NOW they are softening their position, and admitting that happened but was considered a crime.  Maybe in the next 10 years they’ll figure out there’s no biblical anything to substantiate their view that Moses or the bible god views sex within adult-child marriages as “sin”.  I am not an extreme skeptic, I don’t say Moses used prepubescent girls like disposable love dolls, I simply say there is no plausible biblical argument to justify the proposition that God has always thought sex within adult-child marriages was “sin”.

“Also, not everything the monarchs did were morally licit.”

I’m only using the monarchs to refute the apologists who desperately deny that the ancient Jews would ever have done any such thing.  Child sex wasn’t quite as unheard of in ancient Judaism as most of today’s apologists insist it was.

“Even assuming some pregnancies were licit, they probably impregnated women who were older than them and were mature enough to bear children without destroying their bodies.”

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited (homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, degrees of incest, etc).  Some would argue that the reason an infinitely holy God doesn’t condemn something is because he doesn’t regard it as sin.

“You're so gung-ho to refute and defame Judaism and Christianity that you fail to make a good faith argument on a topic so simple.”

You’ve got a lot to learn if you think the topic of God’s beliefs about the minimum proper age of sexual consent/marriage is “simple”.

 If I were an honest atheist I wouldn't use such a bad argument. The fact that you do use such bad argumentation gives me some reason to dismiss your other comments.”

Well now you’ve been disabused of your faulty presuppositions.  Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know.  I’ll be ready and waiting to discuss your best evidence and arguments to that effect.

(What follows are what other Triablogue posters gabbed about concerning my blog, and my replies to each): 

JBsptfn12/27/2017 11:58 PM☍

I have read that book, and I don't really think that Colton spun this all by himself. Also, his parents do seem pretty honest, although I don't know them. If it is a hoax, though, I just pray that Colton comes clean someday like Alex did.

Have you seen this, though? Apparently, a guy named Barry is attacking this blog:

Turch is Rong: Triablogue

steve12/28/2017 12:07 AM☍

Thanks for the tip. Looks like Barry has anger-management issues.

A true scholar would not indicate that the irrelevant personal gossipy issues were his first priority.  My alleged anger-management issues have nothing to do with the question of whether my arguments are correct.  But then again, spiritually dead atheists like me are prone to forget that Calvinists were infallibly predestined by God to manifest whatever degree of spiritual immaturity God wants them to manifest.

Epistle of Dude12/28/2017 1:02 AM☍

Barry Jones is just his alias (among many others). His real name is Christian Behrend Doscher. He's a militant atheist.

Correct.  But again, my real identity has nothing to do with whether my arguments are correct, raising the question as to what relevance you think my real name has to the biblical issues I raise. 

JBsptfn12/28/2017 2:21 PM☍

I think that is the guy that tried to sue J.P. Holding.

Incorrect.  I didn’t “try”, I did sue him.  And that he was sinful and immoral in his attempts to avoid the merits of my accusations, may be seen from the fact that he (at least to my knowledge) took down those internet posts that I said were defamatory.

Now the trouble is that despite his actions indicating he thinks those posts were genuinely libelous, he refuses to apologize to me, and refuses to forthrightly acknowledge the libelous character of those posts, the way you might expect a genuinely repentant born-again Christian to do when their sins have been exposed.  Actions speak louder than words, and you will know a tree by its fruit.   

An asshole like James Patrick Holding, with his sordid 20-year fruit of taking gleeful pleasure in defaming anybody who dares disagree with him, would never have folded up shop like that had he sincerely believed at the end of the litigation that the internet posts in question were legitimate non-libelous exercises of his free speech.  So they were indeed genuinely libelous, and my claims were meritorious.  I was correct when I concluded months ago that somebody with far more knowledge of the law than he, must have slapped him in the head with a legal 2x4.  

You’ll have to now decide whether Jesus would want his follows to prioritize legal tricks invented by non-Christian lawyers for helping genuinely guilty persons to avoid having to answer charges on the merits, or whether Jesus would want his followers to engage in honest acknowledgement of the truth and make a reasonable attempt to settle.  

 25 "Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.
 26 "Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. (Matt. 5:25-26 NAU)
 40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. (Matt. 5:40 NAU)

Holding was forced to come up with a way to get around the obvious in Matthew 5:25, 40, since I continued throwing these in his face the whole time.  His absurd interpretation of those passages is contradicted by all conservative Christian scholarship, one example being Craig Blomberg’s.

Holding spent more than $21,000 on a lawyer in his effort to avoid having to litigate my accusations on their merits.    He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off, I forced Holding to disclose numerous private emails during litigation showing how Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg evinced a shocking apathy toward Holding’s immoral conduct.  See my blog, my “Open Letter” to Blomberg.

After I sent Blomberg several emails providing a very detailed documentation of evidence against Holding's fitness for the office of Christian teacher, Blomberg simply replied in private to Holding that he avoided answering me on the matter because he didn't know what was going on.

So apparently we are supposed to believe that if Craig Blomberg reads a summation of charges and evidence, he will not know what is going on.  The reaction that would have been more biblical would be to ask me for clarification of whatever he thought was ambiguous, and then inquire with Holding whether the charges were true.  If they were true, Craig as Holding's spiritual mentor was required to employ the Matthew 18 process.  To my knowledge, he not only never did, he never intended to "get involved" in the first place.  The more spiritually mature person would view the accusations as potential evidence of a fracture in the body of Christ, not merely as a scuffle between two other people.

Habermas did little better, remarking that he was glad to see Holding admitting to not caring to engage in the "strong comeback" that he used to (a conveniently timed admission of Holding, since he never indicated any such thing until after my litigation against him ended).  But in both cases, these spiritual mentors of Holding fell far short of the requirement in the Matthew 18 requirement to confront a sinful brother and eventually regard him as a non-Christian if he doesn't repent.  Holding has not repented of his having libeled me (a sin under Romans 13 because America's libel laws are substantially similar to NT prohibitions on slander).

Apparently, you can be a real smarty pants in the area of gospel reliability and the resurrection of Jesus while being severely underdeveloped in the area of basic NT ethics.  

And Christian Research Institute is equally deserving of condemnation, since regardless of all the proof on my blog that Holding is unfit to hold any office of “teacher”, CRI continues to allow Holding to exercise the office of "teacher" by asking him to write articles for their Journal, despite my having supplied them, numerous times since 2015, with fully documented proof of Holding’s homosexuality, unrepentant attitude, and shocking spiritual immaturity (most signs of which on his website he conveniently took down after I exposed all such).

Between 1992 and 1998, I listened to the many recorded lectures of CRI founder Walter Martin over and over, never dreaming that Martin was dishonest.  But I had to eventually admit it.  The same is true of Hank Hanegraaff.  So I guess proving that CRI is more interested in promoting apologetics than in making sure their writers pass NT criteria for office of teacher, isn't any shocking thing.  So I guess my new attitude toward it all is to just consign CRI a place near Benny Hinn and TBN.

My reply to CADRE: the fool who thinks biblical claims qualify as background knowledge for Bayesian prior probability

from

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-prior-probability-of-resurrection.html

 barry said...

"First, there are the evidence and arguments from natural theology that suggest the existence of God..yhe evidence for the God of Israel is important information to bring to the question of prior probability."
-----But 'god' as used in the traditional religious conception is an incoherent concept. He thinks without a physical brain, sees without physical eyes, etc. You don't stay afloat in the atheism debate by merely saying immaterial life is "possible". There are no confirmed cases of immaterial life in the first place. Your citation to God as relevant background, is about as convincing as citing to ghosts, haunted houses and ESP for relevant background on the nature of humanity.

"What is the probability that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead?""
------Well given that no person in history has been the subject of more historical dispute than any other (his existence, what he taught, how special he was, etc), I'd say the truth about Jesus is too ambiguous and obscure (beyond irrelevant details like his basic existence, his gender,) to be considered the least bit useful for relevant background.

"Jesus was widely reported by followers and detractors alike to have performed healing miracles and miracles of provision."
----Yet his brothers didn't believe in him (John 7:5) and his family concluded that he had gone crazy (Mark 3:21), both times occuring about a third of the way into his earthly ministry, when checking whether his works were authentically supernatural or something less would have been easy. How does the failure of those most intimate with Jesus to appreciate his "miracles", factor into your background knowledge data set?

"Finally, I would suggest there is precedent for a miracle, even a "raising of the dead" of sorts, in the origin of life."
-------But given that the universe is more than likely infinite, all logically possible combinations of chemicals must have happened in the infinite past, including the combinations that we call "life".

Ask yourself why you think you need to improve upon the way the Holy Spirit has caused unbelievers for centuries to "see the light". If the Holy Spirit didn't need Bayesian logic for centuries, he likely doesn't need it now, and as a Christian, your priority is what god wants you to do...not whether you can find a way to reconcile your new approach with the biblical approach.

If the bible is the biggest gun you can bring to any religious debate, I suggest you start acting like it.

12/27/2017 04:41:00 PM

 

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.