Cold Case Christianity: Wallace fails trying to resurrect Turek's moral argument

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

Why the University of Miami’s Chair for Atheism Confirms the Existence of God

Posted: 19 Mar 2018 01:02 AM PDT

Two years ago, the University of Miami established the Appignani Foundation Chair for the Study of Atheism, Humanism, and Secular Ethics. It is the first of its kind, filled this year by a former “professor of metaphysics and the philosophy of science at the University of Notre Dame.” Louis J. Appignani funded the position with a 2.2-million-dollar endowment, hoping to “legitimize the word ‘atheism’” in the public sphere by creating a foundation whose “founding principle asserts that the planet will only survive if ‘non-acceptance promoted by faith-based ideology’ is replaced by ‘rational scientific reasoning.’” The creation of this foundation, however, only confirms the existence of the God it seeks to replace.
In the original New York Times article, Appignani (himself a committed atheist) said, “I’m trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists, so this is a step in that direction…” In a recent interview with  The Atlantic he argued that “atheists are one of the few minority groups in the country to still be widely ostracized by society. While other marginalized populations, such as women and LGBT people… are active in American politics, that’s still not the case for atheists.” In essence, Appignani believes that atheists are being treated unfairly, and he funded the foundation in an effort to correct this morally inappropriate, discriminatory behavior.
As a theist (someone who believes in God), I can’t help but wonder what Appignani means by unfair or immoral in the first place. If atheism is true, after all, moral truths are simply subjective.

Morals being mere opinions, doesn't mean they don't exist.  The time you require your kids to go to bed on a school night is completely subjective, but nobody would saw your kids could therefore legitimately object to your parental authority in this on such grounds.   

In other words, they emerge from the beliefs of individuals, or groups of individuals (like communities or nations). Who decides if a behavior is right or wrong? Individuals or communities decide under atheism, because this worldview denies the existence of any transcendent moral judge, like God. But if individuals determine what is right or wrong, how are we to decide what is morally true when two individuals (or two groups of individuals) disagree?

There is no such thing as moral "truth", as morals are mere value judgments, and you might as well say that a grandmother hosting a garage sale is "wrong" to value a used lamp at $5.   There is no objective basis upon which to assign such value, which is precisely why people at garage sales often haggle.  There's no way to "prove" that the seller is asking too much or that the buyer is offering too little.

While it might be tempting for Appignani to appeal to “rational scientific reasoning,” history demonstrates that individuals can disagree, even on scientific grounds, and moral truths are entirely philosophical, rather than scientific.

And since Christianity is itself divided on exactly those subjects too, it has no more claim to be guided by a God who has the alleged answers to those problems, than secular society does.

If, as atheism must admit, moral truths come from people groups, the majority consensus is all that we can appeal to for direction.

And you cannot demonstrate any higher basis for morality than this, either. That's precisely why cultures and nations change through the years.  There is no objective basis for morality

Regardless, you are a fool to say majority consensus is all we have to appeal to.  Many moral changes can take place, being initiated by the minority and their grass roots efforts.  The U.S. Supreme Court's gay decision in Obergfell v. Hodges was prime case of the minority view eventually replacing a majority view.

As far as moral "guidance", we are guided by our childhood conditioning, the chemicals in our brains and bodies, our fear of jail or consequences, and our instinct, which causes us to agree or disagree with the majority on occasion.

But, when it comes to the way atheists are treated in America, Appignani appears to disagree with the majority consensus.

 There is nothing about atheism that says majority consensus is the only legitimate guide to morality.

He is correct in observing that most Americans are suspicious and distrusting of atheists. A 2016 Pew Research Center Poll revealed that more than half of us would be less likely to support an atheist for President, for example. Another recent study even revealed that atheists are suspicious of atheists.

And Christians are suspicious of other Christians, as testified to most abundantly by the likes of Christian Research Institute and 2,000 years of internal disagreement and finger-pointing.  So?

And here-in-lies the dilemma for Appignani if atheism is true.
If most of us agree that distrust and suspicion of atheists is morally acceptable and fair (and this appears to be the case in America), on what grounds can an atheist object?

We call it "fuck the majority, in this matter we find our own intuition better than the majority view."

To whom (or what) can the atheist appeal?

To arguments that the majority view is worse for society than the atheist perspective.

And you Christians fare no better.  Despite your alleged access to God to resolve moral dilemmas, you have experienced denominational splits on moral and not just theological issues, for 2,000 years.  Apparently, adding a "thus saith the Lord" to whatever moral position you take, doesn't actually solve the problem of the two people disagreeing with each other.

The majority has already made its moral proclamation on the matter, and for every reasoned argument related to “survival of the fittest” (or any other atheistic standard), his or her counterpart could make an equally reasoned counter-argument. To whom or what then could the atheist even appeal for a decision about the rational, reasonability of the arguments?

By analysis of the presuppositions behind those arguments.  Furthermore, you use of polls is just stupid, as atheists come in all moral and ethical flavors, just like Christians.  If the majority of people think Christians are more trustworthy, they are sorely mistaken. 

In both situations, humans would be the final moral and rational arbiters, and if history has taught us anything, it’s demonstrated that humans can find a way to twist their moral reasoning to suit their own nefarious purposes.

Aren't Christians guilty of the same?  You consistently fail to tip the balance in favor of Christianity, Wallace.

Theism offers a better alternative. If God exists, moral truth is grounded not in the minds or opinions of humans, but in the nature of God.

But with so many Christians disagreeing about the nature of God (Calvinists seriously think God infallibly predestined all child rapists to perform they rapes they did, and because of the decree's infallibility, there was no possibility that the rapist could avoid it or choose to act differently), apparently adding "thus saith the Lord" to whatever moral position you take, doesn't fix the problem.  

Christians would hardly be as divided on gun control, birth control, abortion, death penalty, military service, etc, if God existed or was interested in providing them the "right" answer to these moral issues.

And if we assume the bible is the basis for morality, have fun showing from the bible that a 25 year old man, living in a country where adult-child marriages are legal, is morally wrong to marry and have sex with his 8 year old child-bride. God was apparently more worried about homosexuality and bestiality than he was about pedophilia.  Romans 7:7, if it's not mentioned in the Mosaic Law, you cannot show that it is a sin. So why do you believe sex within adult-child marriages would have been a sin in the eyes of the Hebrews living in the days of Moses, Wallace?  

Moral righteousness is a reflection of His Divine nature,

Not if the Christian debate on killing children in OT days has anything to say about it.  Google Lydia McGrew and Matthew Flannagan.  What, does God have a schizophrenic divine nature?  How could Christian scholars disagree about God's morals, if the issue was as capable of definitive resolution as you imply?

and humans can appeal to this nature to decide between right and wrong

 and doing that resulted in little more than a Christianity that become more and more internally splinterred over the last 2,000 years.

Moral reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. (himself a Baptist minister) understood this. He began a movement as an individual who held a minority moral view; he would have been powerless to effect change if moral truths were determined by the majority.

Well you were wrong, most mature adults do not feel constrained to act a certain way merely because the majority happens to see it that way.  Martin Luther could have accomplished his moral reform even if he never mentioned god.  God was added because he was addressing a nation that was predominantly Christian, but the basis for equality of the races is the U.S Constitution, not "god" or "bible".

King, instead, successfully appealed to a transcendent moral standard to make his case.

he reminded a racist America that their own bible said all men are made in the image of God.

That doesn't constitute going to "god" for guidance, that only constitutes appealing to the popular authority for argument.  You can often prove a currently popular mormon belief wrong by appeal to how the original book of Mormon read, or how original Mormonism viewed something...but that is hardly an appeal to "god", except in the eyes if the Mormon.

If Martin Luther King Jr.’s example, as a believer, is invalid to someone like Appignani, he might consider the words of a fellow atheist, C. S. Lewis, who, before becoming a believer, argued against the existence of God based on the injustice he observed in the world. He eventually realized his definition of injustice only confirmed God’s existence:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?

Easy, people naturally feel anything that inhibits them from doing what they want to do is "unjust".

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

Correct, and we all have "some idea" of what actions are morally good/bad.  That hardly implies 'god'.

What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

You were comparing it to your own desires.  Whatever gets in your way, you feel is immoral.

…Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.” (from Mere Christianity)

But 'really' unjust only goes back to one's personal feeling.  i feel that rape is unjust because the women is being harmed.  I suppose if I had been raised to believe women were of inferior status and their experiencing harm was less important than when a man feels harmed, I might have a different view.  

I hope the new Appignani Foundation Chair for the Study of Atheism, Humanism, and Secular Ethics will begin its study by examining the basis for that thing at the end of its title: “ethics.” They just may find that moral and ethical principles are more than a matter of personal or cultural opinion.

They already know that.  Unfortunately, dishonest Christian apologists often capitalize upon an unbelievers choice to speak in a normal unguarded way.  If I say that rape is immoral, I'm NOT appealing to a standard any higher than the standard I was raised with and the standard of the society in which I live.  And indeed, the world shows us that your mind can be conditioned to believe that actions most Americans view as immoral, are good.  We would not expect the mind to be that malleable if there were some other-dimensional invisible friend planting his absolute values in our hearts.  you cannot blame that on "sin", since in the bible, God instructs his own followers to do things you think are immoral, such as burning teenage prostitutes to death (Leviticus 21:9).  Nothing could be more obvious than that the barbaric morality of the OT reflects absolutely nothing but the minds of the ancient brutes who wrote it.

Transcendent moral truths confirm the existence of a transcendent moral truth giver.

That follows logically, unfortunately, there are no transcendent moral truths.   A grown man having sexual intercourse with a 4 year old girl is not wrong for transcendent reasons, its wrong because of purely naturalistic and subjective reasons; the child needs to grow up to realize the purpose of being conceived and born, and this is threatened if she is raped, and even brute animals instinctively retaliate when their young are treated in a way that threatens their lives (i.e., you don't need to be made in the image of god to recognize that some act is immoral), and the pain caused to the girl is a universal sign that something is contrary to the normal order, that's why we have a sense of pain (which is admittedly not perfect, since not all pain is bad, pain from a workout hurts, but builds up muscle). 

You cannot analyze that situation apart from the sense of conditioned morality you already have.  And you don't have jack shit in the bible to show that sex within adult-child marriages is immoral or sinful, and you sure as hell have no interest in having a scholarly discussion about those few passages that you think proscribe it.

If Appignani’s foundation truly seeks to correct a transcendent injustice such as discrimination, it will first have to admit the existence of a transcendent, just God.

 Nah, we get rid of the transcendent by pointing out that a) our motive to call some act immoral arises from purely naturalistic desires, and b) all talk about any "non-physical" intelligence "transcending" the human level is, as David Hume said, nothing but sophistry and illusion.  Your God is nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Cold Case Christianity: Why do most people believe in miracles? Because they lack critical thinking skills and prefer what feels good to what's most likely

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

Why Almost Everyone Believes in the Miraculous

Posted: 16 Mar 2018 01:00 AM PDT

As an atheist, I considered myself a committed philosophical naturalist, and I rejected supernatural explanations related to scientific or historical inquiry. If I encountered an ancient account describing a supernatural event, I immediately rejected it as “history” and assigned it to the category of “mythology.”

You still do that as a Christian, at least with respect to ancient stories that aren't in the bible.  When you say you are open to the possibility that ancient pagan accounts of miracles are describing something miraculous, you don't do so because you find the account historically compelling, but solely to avoid the criticism that you only believe biblical accounts of miracles.  Telling me that you think miracles happen in ancient pagan religions, but that these were accomplished by use of black arts and demons, merely shows your willful ignorance.  You have no compelling evidence that demons exist, just like you have no compelling evidence that miracles ever happen.  The only reason you don't openly discount all ancient pagan miracle claims is because you know you will be hit with the "you-only-believe-ancient-accounts-of-miracles-when-they-appear-in-the-bible" criticism. Other than that, you couldn't give a fuck less about Caesar's ghost rising to heaven from the funeral pyre, or about a cow giving birth to a lamb as Josephus asserted.

Unfortunately, the fact that you haven't spent near as much time investigating the ancient pagan miracle claims as you have spent investigating Christianity, prevents you from completely covering up your obvious bias against anything that it outside the bible.Your present commitments to Christ as a "bible-believing" Christian would also naturally require that you spend little to no time "investigating" ancient pagan miracle claims and devote most of your time to promoting your own religion.

True history, after all, cannot involve supernatural fictions. As with most atheists, miracles were not part of my worldview, even though many of my Christian co-workers seemed quite comfortable with them.

Did you also, during your atheism, deny the miracle-healings alleged by televangelists and others?

Now, many years later, I’ve come to realize I also believed in miracles, even when I was a philosophical naturalist. Dictionary.com provides the following definition of a “miracle”:

1. An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

Given this definition, nearly everyone believes in one kind of miracle or another, including those who reject the existence of a supernatural God.

Then you were an incredibly stupid atheist. No wonder you write incredibly stupid apologetics books and obsessively mistake promotion of yourself as promotion of Jesus.

Even as an atheist, I accepted the reasonable reality of at least one supernatural event. The Standard Cosmological Model (SCM) of naturalism is still the “Big Bang Theory,” a hypothesis that proposes that all space, time, and matter (the attributes of the natural universe) had a beginning (at a point of “cosmological singularity”).

I was right, you were an incredibly stupid atheist, given how many scientific and metaphysical problems there are in standard big bang cosmology, and which could have been found through reasonable study even back before the 90's.

I accepted the SCM wholeheartedly as an atheist, even though the model presented a problem for my naturalistic worldview. If the SCM is true, we are living in a caused universe (whatever begins to exist must be caused; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe must be caused).

No, your appeal to the kalam cosmological argument is unavailing.  The only reason "whatever begins to exist must be caused" sounds reasonable, is because we often say something "came into existence" when in reality it was just a new reconfiguration of previously existing atoms.

If by "whatever begins to exist must be caused", you mean "any new configuration of preexisting atoms must be caused", there is no problem, we see that happening all day every day.  The metal that makes up a car once existed only as ore in the earth.  Of course that metal ore taking the new shape of the car, or the car "coming into existence" had to be "caused".

But...if by "whatever begins to exist must be caused", you mean there are some things that were formed from new atomic substructures that didn't previously exist in any way, shape or form, then you have no evidence that this particular type of "creation" has ever occurred, which means that first premise of your Kalam argument is bullshit, which means your Kalam argument, built upon bullshit premises as it is, fails.

Which means you don't have an argument that anything was ever created by new unprecedented matter, and that means you kiss goodbye your "Creation Ex Nihilo" interpretation of Genesis 1:1.

Which means you fail to overcome the implications of the 1st law of thermodynamics, namely, matter and energy have always existed, the only "begin to exist" that ever happens is when preexisting materials are reconfigured to make a different form. Sure, that book on your coffee table "didn't exist" 15 years ago, but the paper it is made out of did, in the form of a tree or other preexisting object.

You have ZERO evidence that any such thing as brand new creation or creation "ex nihilo" has ever occurred.

The cause of this universe, however, could not have been spatial, temporal, or material (because these attributes of the natural realm came into existence as a result of the cause).

There is no compelling evidence that the universe was created or once didn't exist.  Quite the contrary, the Hubble Deep Field shows exactly what we'd expect if space were infinite...as far as our best telescopes can peer into space, there appear little more than an endless field of stars, galaxies and supervoids.  There is literally no end to it.  You might have to deprogram yourself of some prior bad thinking habits before you can appreciate that the limitations normally applicable to earthly things we ponder about, would not apply to the entire cosmos.

As Thomas Aquinas first argued, something cannot cause itself to come into existence because it would have to exist before it could bring itself into being, and this is clearly absurd.

Sure, but since you have no evidence that your specific type of "come into existence" has ever occurred in the first place, Aquinas' trifle doesn't benefit you here.

So, even as an atheist, I believed there was a non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial first cause of the universe.

I was right, you were an incredibly stupid atheist.

Let’s return to our definitions for a moment to examine the meaning of “supernatural”:

1. Of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

Our non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial first cause clearly fits within this definition of “supernatural,” doesn’t it?

If you give credence to things supported by zero evidence, then yes.

The cause of the universe is, by definition, “above or beyond what is natural” in that it does not possess the attributes of the natural realm (it is not spatial, temporal, or material) and cannot be explained “by natural law.”

One atheist argument is the argument from the incoherence of religious language. You people are always talking about what is "above or beyond what is natural", when in fact anything that exists thus qualifies to be called "natural". God is no less natural than trees, IF she exists.  Therefore, the whole "natural/supernatural" debate is a classic case of deceptive semantics.  That dichotomy doesn't actually exist, it was invented so as to keep God separate from the "world" and to be thus more "biblical", but from a purely metaphysical perspective, there's no more reason to say God is "above" nature than there is to say that fish are. And certain biblical passages, by crediting God as the basis for all material things, tends to support a pantheism you don't believe it, even if the biblical authors themselves fallaciously refused to go what their own logic led.

As it turns out, the most spectacular and impressive miracle recorded in the Bible is actually found in the opening line of Genesis Chapter 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

It's a wonderful story, I'll grant you that.  But we also grant a floating sleighs when speaking to children and people who need to grow the fuck up.  Then again, if you can find a bunch of people to oooo and ahhh at you because they also believe the fairy tale, then by all means, engage in the herd-mentality that macro evolution conditioned you to engage in.  You survive better when you believe your social support structure approves of you.  It's how the Mormonism grew by leaps and bounds in the last 150 years, despite the fact that their Book of Mormon is an obvious fraud.

Christians believe the beginning of the universe to be a supernatural miracle. Atheists agree.

Go fuck yourself, count me out.  I am an atheist who denies the traditional big bang model, and by crediting the evidence that the universe is infinite in size and extent, there is no "beginning" to it that needs to be trifled about. And you apparently are still blissfully unaware of the many atheists who cite to the traditional Big Bang model as evidence against God.

You also say nothing about the obvious discord there is between a primal cosmic explosion, and the purposeful divine artistry that the Genesis 1 author ascribes to God.  the originally intended and mostly illiterate readers or hearers of Genesis 1 would never have construed that account of creation to have involved some gigantic explosion and millions of years of time. Yet, how the text was likely understood by its originally intended audience is a normative rule of hermeneutics.  You need to worry more about what Genesis 1 is teaching, and less about how to "reconcile" what it says with modern cosmology.

As a skeptic investigating the claims of Christianity, I eventually had to admit I also accepted at least one supernatural, miraculous event, and if I was willing to accept there might be a force capable of accomplishing something this remarkable, the lesser miracles described in the New Testament seemed much less implausible.

I was right, you were an incredibly stupid atheist, given that academic and scientific opposition to the traditional Big Bang model existed even back in the days when you were an atheist. Apparently, something other than concern to investigate thoroughly was driving you toward Christianity.

As an atheist, my “reasonable” account of the history of the universe included a miraculous event. How could I then reject the Christian accounts of the Jesus’ life and ministry just because they also included miraculous events?

Easy; because the gospel stories contain obvious embellishments from pre-Christian pagan religious concepts, like virgin birth, going to the underworld, coming back to life, etc, etc.  

Gee, Wallace, if the "miracle" of the creation of the universe stopped you from classifying the gospel stories as fiction, did it also stop you from classifying other non-biblical ancient miracle stories as fiction?

Did you do as much research into Herodotus' miracle claims as you did into biblical claims?

Or did you predict that your results from researching ancient pagan authors probably wouldn't sell very well?

To be consistent, all of us (theists and atheists included) need to suspend our presuppositional biases against the supernatural to assess the claims of Christianity fairly.

That's right, if somebody comes to us saying they can prove that the things that went bump in the night in the Amityville Horror House were actually demons, we should forget all the evidence indicating the story was total bullshit and allow this ignoramus to make their case first.  FUCK YOU.

Do you suspend your Christian beliefs when an atheist gives you an argument you haven't heard before?

If so, you aren't being very biblical, the bible's comments on investigating things NEVER express or imply that you should be open to Christianity being false.

If you don't suspend your Christian presuppositions when listening to atheist arguments you haven't heard before, you are a hypocrite to expect atheists to suspend their atheist presuppositions when dealing with a Christian argument they haven't heard before, for then you expect your adversaries to be more objective than you expect yourself to be.

The truly biblical Christian doesn't say "I'll go wherever the evidence leads."

The truly biblical Christian will instead bring every thought captive to Christ:

 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh,
 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, (2 Cor. 10:3-5 NAU)

 The truly biblical Christian dons a tinfoil hat and talks to himself like we talk to children:

 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Pet. 5:8 NAU)

You Christians have thus adopted a view that inhibits you from being as objective as you could be.

Contrariwise, atheists have no creed or magical book requiring them to take every thought captive to naturalism, or that some invisible enemy is responsible for causing them to doubt their atheism.  FUCK YOU.

Cold Case Christianity: Mark's textual variation from the other 3 gospels destroys Christianity

This is my reply to a post by J. Warner Wallace entitled

How Can the Bible Be Inerrant If It Contains Variants? (Cold Case Christianity Broadcast #106)

Posted: 15 Mar 2018 01:45 AM PDT

In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Broadcast, J. Warner answers listener email about the existence of variants in the earliest manuscripts we have for the New Testament. Does the fact that ancient copies of the Gospels don’t agree entirely mean that we can’t trust them?

 Yes.  The consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark intended to end his gospel at 16:8.

The consensus of Christian scholars is that Mark is the earliest published of the 4 canonical gospels.

If we  put these two facts together (i.e., the earliest gospel said nothing about a resurrected Jesus being seen by anybody) then we are reasonable to conclude that the correct form of the gospel (the earlier version of the story is usually closer to the truth, its the retellings years later that usually contain all the add-ons and embellishments) does not assert the existence of any person actually physically witnessing a resurrected Jesus. 

Wallace might be talking about textual variants in the existing ancient manuscripts of the NT, but Mark's resurrection story, being textually shorter and less embellished than those of Matthew, Luke and John, provides the unbeliever with rational warrant for saying the eyewitness testimony to Jesus rising from the dead, is limited to later embellished gospels, not the original, and that of course makes legitimate the question of whether the whole "resurrection eyewitness testimony" stuff is pure fiction.  If it was original, why does it only appear in the later versions of the gospel?

If Mark believed the resurrected Jesus made all the appearances to the disciples that we know from the endings of Matthew and Luke and John, would Mark have "chosen to exclude" such stories?  Obviously not, especially if we assume he agreed with apostle Paul and all other Christian "apologists" that Jesus' resurrection from the dead is the main pillar upon which Christianity rests.

How does this impact our notion of Biblical inerrancy?

Jesus and Paul told you everything you need to know to be true and spiritually growing Christian.

Not once did they ever express or imply, by word or their own actions, that Christians should go around trying to convince the world that there are no errors in the scriptures.  In the days of Jesus and Paul, the Old Testament was the authoritative 'scripture', yet despite the obvious fact that there would have been professional philosophers who put no stock in such holy books (Acts 17), never once does the NT indicate that Jesus or any of his followers ever tried to convince unbelievers or other "liberal" Christians that the Old Testament was free from all mistakes/errors.  And in Acts 17, when the Gentile philosophers laugh at Paul's bullshit, he leaves immediately:

 30 "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,
 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."
 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, "We shall hear you again concerning this."
 33 So Paul went out of their midst.
 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. (Acts 17:30-34 NAU)

But if that passage were modified to reflect modern Christian apologists and their ways, it would read like this:

 30 "God cannot overlook times of ignorance because he is all-holy and must punish sin according to his infinite nature.  God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,
 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.  However, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, so while you need to live as if each step was the end, the end probably won't come for thousands of years.   Therefore it can be correct to for Jesus to say in the first century that the end is near, and yet for the end to still be thousands of years into the future."
 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, "We shall hear you again concerning this."
 33 So Paul stayed there and issued to them the chicken-challenge, taunting them to prove an error in the bible.  Some said this, others said that, and Paul wrangled words with them for many months.

So any Christian of today who chooses to make "bible inerrancy" an issue, is a hypocrite and fool.   And Lord knows, the way the inerrancy debate has played out in the last 2,000 years of Christianity, Jesus probably thinks all "apologists" for inerrancy are just as guilty as the Pharisees of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, and neglecting the more important matters in the process.

Cold Case Christianity: J. Warner Wallace's god caused the Florida school shooter to kill those kids

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

How Can God Allow Horrific Evil Like School Shootings?

Posted: 12 Mar 2018 01:57 AM PDT

Unsurprisingly, our national conversation about gun violence intensifies following any well-publicized shooting or murder, especially if it occurs in a school or public setting. The recent massacre in Parkland, Florida, for example, leaves many of us searching for answers. As a Christian who happens to be a homicide detective, I’ve wrestled to understand how an all-powerful, all-loving God would allow the horrific evil I’ve observed over the years. Human free-will is an important part of the answer. If God exists and wants us to genuinely love one another, He must first allow us something dangerous: personal freedom. This kind of liberty is risky, because it must, by it’s very nature, also allow the freedom to do great harm. Human free agency is a double-edged knife, and each of us must decide how we will handle it responsibly.
So, as I talk with others about what happened in Parkland (or in any other recent shooting), I do my best to address the issues as both a detectiveand a Christian, balancing the relationship between our God-given freedoms and our civic responsibilities:

Apparently, Wallace is more concerned to make God more politically correct to modern ears than God really is, and less concerned to confine his theological opinion solely to the allegedly "sufficient" biblical langauge. 

In the bible, one reason women are raped is because God causes men to rape, He doesn't merely "allow" it.  In Isaiah 13, God reacts to his Hebrew followers worshipping idols and such, by causing pagan men to war against the Hebrews and rape their women and massacre their children, despite the obvious fact that children cannot rationally be considered accountable for following the religious traditions imposed on them by their parents:

NAU  Isaiah 13:1 The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw. 2 Lift up a standard on the bare hill, Raise your voice to them, Wave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles. 3 I have commanded My consecrated ones, I have even called My mighty warriors, My proudly exulting ones, To execute My anger. 4 A sound of tumult on the mountains, Like that of many people! A sound of the uproar of kingdoms, Of nations gathered together! The LORD of hosts is mustering the army for battle. 5 They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, To destroy the whole land. 6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. 7 Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man's heart will melt. 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame. 9 Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light. 11 Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. 12 I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir. 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger. 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land. 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword. 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished. 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children. 19 And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans' pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 20 It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there. 21 But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will live there, and shaggy goats will frolic there. 22 Hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged.   (Isa. 13:1-22, NAU)

The question is:  who is identified in the immediate context of Isaiah's rape prediction (v. 16) as the cause of such rapes?  Clearly it is the pagan men who will do the raping, but...does the context identify who is causing those men to do such things?  Yes:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger....... 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them...

Clearly, the context indicates it is "God" who will cause these men to commit these sexual crimes.

This contextual constraint will not disappear just because you are positively certain your allegedly good God "would never" want such a thing to happen.  If you believe that way, you worship something conjured up on your mind, not the "biblical" god.

Sorry to say, but nothing could be more clear in the bible, than God's willingness to impose horrific atrocities not just on the guilty, but on those who are associated with them (i.e., the little kids can hardly be accountable for being idolatrous, nevertheless their mothers and sisters will be raped and killed, and the kids will be massacred).

For "bible believing" Christians, there can be no discussion of why certain people in America take loaded guns to schools and commit mass murder:  It is God causing them to do so, likely with the same type of coercive telepathic ability God uses in Ezra 1:1 to make even an unbelieving pagan idolater do what God wants:

NAU  Ezra 1:1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying: (Ezr. 1:1, NAU) 

The Hebrew word for "stirred up" there is ur, the same Hebrew word that underlies Isaiah 13:17, in saying God would "stir up" the Medes against the Hebrews.

So we have to wonder:  If God has both power and willingness to cause people to do whatever he wants, including pagan unbelievers like Cyrus, supra,  then why didn't he use this magic fairy dust on the Hebrews themselves, so that they avoid worshiping idols in the first place?  Wouldn't use of his power in that preemptive way be morally superior to reserving it solely for when the Hebrews disobey Him?

If you don't find it very convincing when heretics use "God's ways are mysterious" to get their asses out of a theological jam, fairness dictates that YOU not be permitted to employ that dishonest excuse either.

Having been been divested of your typical explanation, now what's your excuse for God choosing to cause men to rape idolatrous Hebrew women, when God could also just as easily have waved his magic wand the other way, and caused those Hebrew women to refrain from idolatry and thus avoid Isaiah's threatened atrocities in the first place?

Could it be that the theological statements in the OT arise solely from human imagination that didn't think the ramifications all the way through?  Gee, sinful Christians could never be wrong about bible inerrancy, could they?  Isn't there a law of the universe that says if you've posted at least 349 blog entries in favor of biblical inerrancy, you are incapable of getting that doctrine wrong?

Cold Case Christianity: The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

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

The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 05:49 AM PST

Skeptics sometimes portray Christians as both “unreasonable” and “unreasoning”. The Christian culture only exacerbates the problem when it advocates for a definition of “faith” removed from evidence.

Blame it on Hebrews 11:1 which says faith "is" evidence, and speaks about faith in a way that today's apologists wouldn't be caught dead speaking.   If Hebrews 11:1 doesn't promote blind faith, why don't more apologists quote it in non-defensive contexts?

Is true faith blind?

Yes:

 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." (Jn. 20:29 NAU)  

The hope that saves is the kind that doesn't see:

 24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom. 8:24-25 NAU)

Wallace continues:

How are true believers to respond to doubt?

Like a child, i.e., when you doubt, that's just the devil trying to steal your joy:

...Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
 9 But resist him, firm in your faith,  (1 Pet. 5:8-9 NAU)

Wallace continues:

What is the relationship between faith and reason?

It isn't good.  When Paul addressed the Corinthians, he specifically disclaimed any attempt at persuasive reasoning:

 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
 3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,
 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:2-5 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Richard Dawkins once said:
 “Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”
 This view of Christian belief is common among skeptics and believers alike.

Then you cannot blame the skeptics for viewing faith as blind assent the way so many Christians do.  If spiritually alive people can't even get it right, you are a fucking fool to expect spiritually dead people to do any better.

Critics think Christians accept truth claims without any evidential support and many Christians embrace the claims of Christianity unaware of the strong evidence supporting our worldview.

Dream on, none of the evidence supporting Christianity is strong, it is rather weak, full of holes, and that's probably why the Christian scholars who go around trying to prove this crap are a decided minority.

Dawkins is correct when he argues against forming beliefs without evidence.

Then apparently you never read Hebrews 11:1

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1 NAU)

Wallace continues:

People who accept truth claims without any examination or need for evidence are prone to believing myths and making bad decisions.

Which must mean the original Jerusalem church under James was prone to believing myths:

 17 After we arrived in Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
 18 And the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
 19 After he had greeted them, he began to relate one by one the things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
 20 And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Law;
 21 and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
 22 "What, then, is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.
 23 "Therefore do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow;
 24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law. (Acts 21:17-24 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Christians Are Called to A Reasonable Faith
Christians, however, are not called to make decisions without good evidence.

Yes they are.  The Jesus whose miracles during his earthly ministry were so fake that his own family didn't believe him (John 7:5, Mark 3:21) wanted any mothers and fathers following him to give up custody of their kids just to follow him around, with a prosperity gospel promise that they'd get eternal life by doing so:

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

Wallace continues:

The God of the Bible does not call his children to obey blindly.

then why does apostle Paul think he can persuade a bitterly immoral and divided Corinthian church that he might possibly have physically flown up to heaven, by simply telling them a story?

 1 Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
 2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago-- whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows-- such a man was caught up to the third heaven.
 3 And I know how such a man-- whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows--
 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.   (2 Cor. 12:1-4 NAU)

If Paul expected such a congregation to believe this crap, then trust me, his god wanted them to believe blindly.  Wallace continues:

The Gospels are themselves an important form of direct evidence; the testimony of eyewitnesses who observed the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Correction, only two of them could possibly claim to be eyewitness testimony, Matthew and John.  If hearsay was so clearly useful for establishing facts, to the point that Mark's and Luke's non-eyewitness status ends up being no problems, I don't think most modern courts of law would routinely exclude hearsay.   Most Christian scholars deny apostle Matthew wrote the gospel now bearing his name, and with conservative scholars like Craig A. Evans admitting in his debates with Bart Ehrman that Jesus never actually said "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), you've got serious problems pretending the gospel authors only wished to assert facts.

That’s why the scriptures repeatedly call us to have a reasoned belief in Christ, and not to resort to the behavior of unreasoning animals:

Jude 4, 10
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

That passage is not calling anybody to anything, it is labeling heretics in a defamatory way.

The Bible uses this word for “unreasoning” in a pejorative manner; to be unreasoning is to act like a brute animal. God clearly wants more from beings created in His image.

Paul cursed his judaizer opponents in Galatians 1:8-9, this might suggest Paul approved of childish reasoning that automatically sides with whoever appears more serious or more flashy.

Christians Are Called to An Examined Faith
In fact, God wants us to examine all the evidence at our disposal and to study the things of God with great intensity. When we do this, we truly begin to worship Him with our mind:

But you cannot say what exact degree of intensity, which makes the statement useless.  Does God want a Christian wife and mother to quit her job and homeschool her kids so she can keep her kids' minds unstained from the world?  You wouldn't try to answer that in a definitive way to save your life, despite the fact that it agrees perfectly with all the rest of the fanatical devoted bullshit in the bible a bout how the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Matthew 22:37-38
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.”

Because if you don't, he will foist innumerable atrocities on you, like rape (Isaiah 13:13-16) and parental cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28:53-57).  Obviously God calls you to a reasoned faith.  Nobody wants to get raped, so the other option is to believe what the sky-tyrant tells you.  That's "reasonable".

This kind of faith is unafraid of challenges.

Then apparently J. Warner Wallace doesn't have Christian faith, because I've been challenging him routinely on everything he believes, and yet he bears more "self-promotion/marketing gimmick/just-ignore-the-competition" fruit than he bears "unafraid of challenges" fruit.  Of course you don't have "time" to debate me, you are always flying around the country so you can appear on another Christian's t.v. or radio show.  Should we just call you J. Warner Commercial?  How did the world ever get along before you were born?

In fact, Christians are encouraged to examine what they believe critically so they can be fully convinced:
 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21
Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good…

And in context, "everything" is limited to prophetic utterances.  If you don't arbitrarily limit the "everything" even further, than apparently God wants Christians to fully inspect anything and everything in their lives that has to do with god, which would leave them no time to cook, clean, or purchase books by self-promoting attention-whore apologists.  You wouldn't want that, would you?

1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Verses 2 and 3 indicate the test wasn't for everything, but only for whether a spirit did or didn't confess that Jesus had come in the flesh:

 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 Jn. 4:2-3 NAU)

Romans 14:5
Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

And the part that you missed is "let", since apparently you do not "let" people believe what they want, you instead force your religion on other people.

2 Timothy 3:14
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them…

Rather bad advice for any Christian who is starting to recognize that the church she joined is heretical.  Apparently this verse doesn't apply as broadly as you thought it did.

Christians Are Called to An Evidential Faith
Critical examination requires us to investigate the evidence,

and contrawise, love "believes all things" (1st Cor. 13:7).

and God holds evidence in high regard.

Not when it comes to the type of hope that saves.  Hope that is seen is not hope.  Romans 8:24 supra.

He wants us to be convinced after we examine the facts. Jesus valued evidence and continually provided evidence to make his case:
 John 14:11
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

Apparently you didn't notice that Jesus distinguishes there two possible bases for conversion, and only one of them required drawing conclusions from the evidence.

Jesus continued to provide evidence to the disciples, even after the Resurrection:
 Acts 1:2-3
…until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Nevermind the fact that while this alleged 40-days of kingdom-of-God preaching by Jesus surely must have been as important if not more important than his pre-Cross teachings, the NT authors don't give us shit from those 40-days, despite Matthew's admission that the risen Christ wanted future Gentile followers to obey "all" that he had taught the disciples (Matthew 28:20).

The earliest Christians understood the connection between reason, evidence and faith, and they did not see these concepts as mutually exclusive.

Wrong, Paul refused to use persuasive reasoning, see 1st Cor. 2:4

In fact, Paul often used direct evidence to make his case for Christianity:
 Acts 17:30-31
“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Nevermind that Paul there was quoting Aratus out of context and applying his Stoic polytheism to Christian monotheism.  Nevermind that the philosophers laughed him off (v. 32).  Nevermind that Paul left immediately after their skepticism manifested itself (v. 33).

Acts 17:2-3
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead

The same Paul would later write in contradiction to his younger contentious days, and require that anybody who doesn't see things his way after two warnings (not two lessons) must be shunned and avoided thereafter, Titus 3:9.

Christians Are Called to A Case-Making Faith
When believers use their minds, investigate the evidence and become convinced, something wonderful happens: We have the courage to defend what we believe using the same evidence, logic and reasoning power we used to come to faith in the first place:

And Mormons would testify in agreement with you that something wonderful happens when they use their minds to investigate the evidence and become convinced that the book of Mormon is the inspired word of God.

1 Peter 3:15
…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…

Christians in all disciplines of inquiry and discovery have used their reasoning power to investigate the evidence. Christians are not irrational, and Christian faith is not blind. The rich intellectual history of Christianity calls each of us to have a reasonable, examined, evidential, case-making faith. This kind of faith honors God and withstands skeptical criticism and personal doubt.

The part you left out is that the doctrinal divisions of "true" Christians are so serious and deep, your customers could not even believe obtaining a Ph.d in New Testament studies would help them restore unity to the body of Christ.  Calvinists don't just disagree with Arminians, they disagree with fellow-Calvinists (5-Point Calvinism, 3-point Calvinism, infralapsarianism, supralapsarianism, and many Christians' hostile attittude toward Calvinism suggests they perceive Calvinism to be faulty on essentials, not peripherals).  Apologists don't just disagree with skeptics, they disagree with other apologists (Presuppositionalism?  Evidentialism?, including even on how to argue the resurrection of Jesus, Geisler, v. Licona, Dan Wallace, etc?).  Creationists don't just disagree with evolutionists, they disagree with other creationists (young earth v. old earth?  Ken Ham v. Hugh Ross?).  Conservatives don't just disagree with liberals, they disagree with other conservatives (is bible inerrancy true?  What is it's scope and extent?  Geisler v. Licona?).

You want your customers to believe the Trinitarian Protestants involved in the above-cited debates are genuinely born again, yet you also want them to believe that the holy spirit won't necessarily give them the correct interpretation of a bible passage despite their seeking such with a right heart for perhaps decades?

Christianity's internal divisions and splintering of sub-groups is more likely the result of god not existing, than of God having mysterious reasons for refusing to do his part to enable Christians to obey his command to be like-minded in all things (1st Cor. 1:10)  FUCK YOU.

Cold Case Christianity: gospel contradictions trump eyewitness reporting

This is my reply to a video by Ja. Warner Wallace advertised as

Why Differences Between the Gospels Demonstrate Their Reliability (Video)

Posted: 20 Feb 2018 01:10 AM PST

Fat chance.  In Matthew, Mary doesn't leave the tomb until she is made perfectly well aware of what happened to the body of Jesus:

NAU  Matthew 28:1 Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave.
 2 And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
 3 And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow.
 4 The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men.
 5 The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.
 6 "He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.
 7 "Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you."
 8 And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. (Matt. 28:1-8 NAU)

But in John, Mary is at the tomb, then she runs and complains to Peter and John that she doesn't know what happened to Jesus' body:

NAU  John 20:1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.
 2 So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." (Jn. 20:1-2 NAU)

Apologists dismiss this by speculating either a) Mary in Matthew split off from the group of other women before they got to the tomb, wasn't there to recieve the angelic report, and John is talking about Mary after she comes back from the detour having missed the show, or b) Mary was told what happened to Jesus' body along with the other women, but because of what's written in John, apparently the truth just hadn't "hit" her just yet (!?)

Here's how you stomp the guts out of these speculations and force inerrancy to reveal its ugly head:

All patristic sources and most modern Christian scholars agree that John was written later than the other 3 canonical gospels.

If then you read Matthew's account the way it was originally intended (i.e., by itself, without comparing it to other accounts), you discern not the slightest justification for supposing Mary split off from the group of women before they got to the tomb.

Concerning Gleason Archer's "the truth just hadn't hit her just yet" to explain her ignorance in John, again, if you read Matthew 28:7-8 as it was orignally intended to be read (without worrying about comparing it to or reconciling it with some other account), the statement in v. 8 would be taken by you to mean that Mary, after learning what happened to the body, left with the other women and told the men the same thing the angel said.

If you read Matthew objectively as it was originally intended by its author, you get not the slightest justification to think Mary either departed from the group before they hear the angel, nor that she experienced a failure of comprehension between the angelic announcement and her reporting to the other disciples.

Cold Case Christianity: The Biblical Case for Adam and Eve

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

Cold Case Christianity: The Biblical Case for Adam and Eve

Posted: 16 Feb 2018 01:42 AM PST

I’ve been investigating murders for over 20 years, and along the way, I’ve learned to appreciate the importance of language selection. Consider the following three statements:
 “The Nuggets killed the Lakers last night. They beat ‘em by 25 points.”
“I love this comic; he always kills me!”
“I deeply regret killing my wife, and I wish I could turn back time.”
 All three declarations acknowledge the proper definition of the word “kill,” yet only one of these statements is likely to be of interest to a jury in a murder trial.

And given that most Christian scholars deny the existence of literal conscious eternal suffering, Christianity could never be as serious as a murder trial.

Every time we assess someone’s use of language, we must first examine the context in which the words were spoken. As a 35-year-old skeptic, reading the Bible thoroughly for the first time, I found myself examining the words of Scripture in an attempt to understand Moses’ meaning related to the first two characters in the Biblical narrative: Adam and Eve. Were they real human beings? Were they allegorical figures described by Moses in an attempt to illustrate the plight of early man? Were they written figuratively to represent all of humankind? I knew from my professional work as a detective that the surest way to understand a statement was simply to examine its context and to compare it to other proclamations made by the suspect.

Trouble is, bible scholars are in wide disagreement about to what extent the alleged writings of Moses reflect his actual words.  You don't have the first clue whether the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis was authored by the same person responsible for the canonnical version of Leviticus.

As a skeptical seeker, I took the same approach with Adam and Eve. After examining every passage of Scripture, I found the following:
 Adam and Eve Were Regarded As Real People
In the earliest accounts of Adam and Eve, Moses described them singularly (in contrast to his plural descriptions of other animal groups). The waters were teeming with swarms of living creatures and the skies were filled with birds (Genesis 1:20); the earth was bringing forth living creatures after their kind (v.24), filling with beasts and cattle. God created with great plurality in every category of creature except humans. Adam and Eve were described as singular individuals. It’s difficult to consider them allegorically or representatively, given that Moses failed to use language that could assist us to do so.

Ok, so Moses was speaking just as plainly here about humanity's first two people as did the Sumerian god Enki.

Adam and Eve Responded As Real People
Moses also described Adam and Eve’s behavior in a manner consistent with the behavior of real people.

Except for Eve's lack of surprise in conversing with a talking snake.  Genesis 3:2

And some would argue that an Adam searching through a zoo of animals to see if any could be his life-partner, is not the typical behavior of real people.  Genesis 2:20...why does the text specify Adam found among the zoo no suitable helper, if he wasn't looking for a suitable helper at the time?

Moses put specific words on their lips as they interacted in the Garden, and like other real people, Adam and Eve responded to one another (and to God).

The same could be said for any number of ancient stories about man's origin.  But since you don't infer their truth from their literal intent, you shouldn't be inferring the truth of the biblical accounts merely because Moses intended them to be taken literally.

Adam and Eve gave birth to specific individuals, and Moses intentionally noted the age of Adam when some of his children were born (Genesis 5:3-4).

Ancient Jews were crazy in love with genealogies.

Adam’s offspring (Cain, Abel, and Seth, for example) were identified by name and had a personal history of their own, just as we would expect if they, too, were real people.

People described in the Epic of Gilgamesh also had their own personalized stories.

Adam and Eve Were Recorded As Real People
Moses placed Adam in genealogies alongside other specific individuals who we acknowledge as real, historic human beings. Moses repeatedly recorded the historic lineage of important people (like Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth, and Terah) with the expression, “These are the generations of….” Adam was no exception. Moses used this same expression when recording the generations of Adam in Genesis 5:1. Other authors of Scripture repeated this inclusion in the lineage of real humans. Adam appeared in the genealogy of 1 Chronicles 1:1, in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:38), and in Jude’s reference to Enoch (Jude 1:14). These genealogies and references recorded the names of specific, real individuals, and Adam was included in their ranks.

Paul took the wives of Abraham as allegory:

22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman.
 23 But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise.
 24 This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar.
 25 Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
 26 But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.   (Gal. 4:22-26 NAU)

Notice, in v. 24, the "this" which he says is "allegorically speaking", is the scriptural statement referenced in the prior verse, which comes on the heels of Paul's specification "it is written" (v. 22), which makes it certain that Paul isn't just applying an allegorical exegeical method to literal people, he is saying allegory is the meaning of the scriptural text, and he could not be clearer than in saying "these two women are two covenants..."

Adam and Eve Were Referenced As Real People
Throughout the Old and New Testament, writers of Scripture referred to Adam as though he was a real person and not an allegory or representative of mankind. Job offered Adam as an example of someone who attempted to hide his sin (Job 31:33). Hosea offered Adam as a specific example of someone who broke his covenant with God (Hosea 6:7). In the New Testament, Paul repeatedly referenced Adam as a real person, calling him the “first man” (1 Corinthians 15:45), and describing both Adam and Eve as specific individuals (1 Timothy 2:13,14).

I don't see the point.  Christians also think Jesus is a real person and currently invisible.  Portraying a person as literal apparently doesn't have much of a restraining effect on absurd embellishment.  Consider St. Nicholas.

Adam and Eve Were Held Responsible As Real People
The historic Christian doctrines of sin and salvation hinge on the real existence of Adam as an individual human being, responsible for the introduction of sin into the world.

Despite the fact that Judaism, Church of Christ and other Christian groups deny original sin despite their agreement with you that Adam was a literal person.

In Romans 5, Paul wrote that sin entered the world “through the one man (Adam)” (verse 12) and that life was (and is) given “through the one man, Jesus Christ” (verse 17). Jesus, as a real man, serves as the remedy for sin; the responsibility for this sin was another real man, Adam. In the context of Paul’s divinely inspired teaching, Adam was every bit as real as Jesus.

I should have guessed:  you are not writing to convince skeptics, but only to help those who already believe, feel better about it.  The easier of the two jobs.  I get it.

Recent genetic research is challenging the notion that all humanity emerged from a single pair of humans, and some Christians are starting to rethink their interpretation of Adam and Eve in response to this challenge. The number of unanswered questions continues to grow. How reliable are the scientific conclusions? How can Adam and Eve be the source of all humanity if genetic research seems to indicate a much larger original group? Is there an interpretation of Scripture that can reconcile this apparent contradiction?

Other questions might be "Is Christianity's in-house debate on the historicity of Adam one of those "word-wrangling" discussions that Paul prohibited J. Warner Wallace from being part of in 2nd Timothy 2:14?"

I’ve learned an important truth over the years as a detective: Every case has unanswered questions, and we successfully prosecute suspects in spite of this reality.

The justice system also produces a fair number of false convictions, indicating that unanswered questions can be serious problems inhibiting the quest for truth.  Sometimes its wrong to press forward.

We first acknowledge what is evidentially clear, and then search for reasonable explanations in the areas that are less certain.

With the caveat that in your criminal investigations, if you seriously set forth some supernatural explanation for a suspect's guilt, you lose your job.  Another reason why your "cold-case Christianity" is nothing but a marketing gimmick.

As Christians work to reconcile the nature of scientific evidence with the claims of the Bible,

...despite the fact that bible inerrancy is hotly contested by most Christian scholars, suggesting one is wrong to even be motivated to reconcile the bible with science...

one thing is evidentially clear: The writers of Scripture describe Adam and Eve as real, historic individuals. We must begin here and then search for reasonable explanations in the areas that are less certain.

For example, the Talmud reference that says before Eve was created, Adam had sex with the animals, when in fact Jewish abhorrence of bestiality would cause us to expect the ancient Jews would never interpret Genesis 2:20 that way, therefore, they are likely interpreting it that way by feeling constrained by the evidence, not because they are trying to be funny or stupid:

Talmud - Mas. Yevamoth 63a
R. Eleazar further stated: What is the meaning of the Scriptural text, I will make him a help meet
for him? If he was worthy she is a help to him; if he was not worthy she is against him. Others
say: R. Eleazar pointed out a contradiction: It is written kenegedo but we read kenegedo! — If he was worthy she is meet for him; if he was not worthy she chastises him. 

R. Jose met Elijah and asked him: It is written, I will make him a help;11 how does a woman help a man? The other replied: If a man brings wheat, does he chew the wheat? If flax, does he put on the flax?12 Does she not, then, bring light to his eyes and put him on his feet! 

R. Eleazar further stated: What is meant by the Scriptural text, This is now bone of my bones, andflesh of my flesh?13 This teaches that Adam had intercourse with every beast and animal but found no satisfaction until he cohabited with Eve.

my reply to the Habermas/Flew debate

I've replied to the YouTube video of the resurrection debate between Habermas and Flew.




In case my comments get deleted, here they are:

Sorry, but as an atheist myself, I do not think Flew does very well in public debates, despite how much he is lauded by other atheists as a smart guy. Habermas does most of the talking, Ankerberg usually ends a segment after Habermas has had his last say, and the Christians in the audience were no doubt wrongly thinking that because Flew is a smart guy, his performance here shows them how weak the non-believer responses are. I would have argued that under Christian scholar consensus that Mark is the earliest gospel and ended at 16:8, it is reasonable (at least for the unbeliever who has a life and cannot just google Christian scholarship minority positions 18 hours a day) to believe that the earliest form of the gospel did not say a resurrected Jesus appeared to anybody, thus further implying, if patristic testimony can be trusted, that Peter also didn't tell the Roman unbelievers that Jesus made any resurrection appearances, thus further implying that fictional embellishment is the likely reason the later 3 gospels have resurrection appearance narratives, ultimately ridding Christian apologists of the very eyewitness evidence they admit is so crucial to their case. I would also have argued that scholars can neither identify the gospel authors nor establish their credibility or lack thereof, with any degree of reasonable certainty, and unbelievers are rationally warranted to turn away from Christianity's in-house debates on such matters, and to thus regard the critical issue of gospel authorship unresolvable. I would also have argued that, generously assuming the almost certainly false position of apostolic authorship of the gospels, the only resurrection testimony that comes down to us today in first-hand form are Matthew, John and Paul. One could argue that 3 eyewitness testimonies from 2,000 years ago is hardly sufficient to justify changing one's life and worldview. I would also have analogized witness Paul on the road to Damascus, to the witness against you in a murder trial. If that witness said he saw you pull the trigger, and your attorney gets him to admit that the other men standing there with him could hear you, but could not "see" you, despite the fact that it occurred on an open road where you couldn't be hiding behind anything, would you ask for the case to be dismissed because the witness is clearly delusional? Or would you ask the Court to give a legal instruction to the jury that they are allowed to infer a supernatural cause to explain your murdering somebody? Suppose the witness, like Paul, specifies that that he couldn't really say whether he was in his body or out of it at the time he saw you pull the trigger? Do you move for dismissal, or move for a jury instruction telling the jury about how fallacious it is to automatically dismiss miracle-claims? Sure is funny that when you aren't defending biblical bullshit, you "know" that miracles don't happen. If junior comes home from school with a million dollars in his backpack, you don't think the devil put it there. If a stranger on the bus tells you he can levitate by the power of Jesus when nobody is looking, you are no less suspicious of his honesty than an atheist would be. I would also have argued that because the liberals make a powerful case that eternal conscious suffering wasn't what Jesus intended with his teachings about hell, the truth about Jesus' resurrection hardly matters, it isn't like sinners are in as much trouble with god as today's fundamentalists insist. Unbelievers being wrong to reject the gospel is about as dangerous as our being wrong to reject string-theory. There's not enough danger in being wrong to intellectually or morally compel the unbeliever to get involved in the ceaseless bickering of bible scholarship and apologetics. I also would have told Ankerberg that these issues are very complex and that he could do more justice to them if he allowed full episodes limited to just one narrow topic, such as whether it can be reasonable to deny apostolic authorship of the gospels. Flew's performance here was contemptible to say the least. And Ankerberg's choice to cover so many issues, when he knows any one single issue in this debate could fill a book, means Ankerberg thinks quantity is more important than quality. A book-length defense of Mark as earliest gospel, and that he ended at 16:8, and replying to Wright and others who defend the long ending of Mark, would kick Christianity's teeth out of the back its fairy tale skull. THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE GOSPEL DIDN'T HAVE ANYBODY ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY SEEING THE RESURRECTED JESUS, AND THAT INCLUDES PAUL'S EXPERIENCE ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, THEREFORE, CHRISTIANITY DID NOT ORIGINALLY CLAIM ANY RESURRECTION "EYEWITNESSES" IN THE FIRST PLACE. FUCK YOU. http://turchisrong.blogspot.com