Monday, November 19, 2018

Cold Case Christianity: Four Things We Won’t Need in Heaven

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




As a Christian, I have a reasonable expectation of Heaven, based on the clear teaching of Scripture and the logical consequence of God’s nature.
Which is about as meaningful as the Calvinist saying "As a Calvinist, I have a reasonable expectation that God causes people to sin, based on the clear teaching of Scripture and the logical consequence of God’s Sovereignty".
I also anticipate a particular experience in Heaven based on the teaching of the Old and New Testament.
 Do you anticipate that time will operate in Heaven the exact same way it does on earth.  Every biblical description of heaven depicts the events there are taking place one after the other with no less temporal chronological progression than we find events taking place on earth.
I’m looking forward to what each of us will become when we are united with God.
You should.  God could have caused Adam and Eve to have "incorruptible" bodies you think Christians will get at the resurrection, and presto, Adam and Eve would have been no more likely to sin than any saint who is now in heaven.  If God can do something to ensure that freewilled sinners never actually sin (which is supposed to be the case after you get to heaven), he could have done the same with the original creation of Adam and Eve, and then, like the saints who are now in heaven, they'd be "free", but they'd be guaranteed to never sin. If you try to refute this analogy by saying the people who have already died and gone to heaven no longer have freewill, that can be allowed as long as you remain consistent with that theory, and admit that because God turns people into righteous robots when they enter heaven, he actually doesn't respect human freewill...which means, contrary to most apologists, God does not have a problem with using the "righteous robot" solution to dissaude people from sinning.   So all of that boring apologetics talk about how God is required to all freewill humans to choose good or evil merely so they can also authentically love him, is total bullshit.  If you think the dead saints who are now in heaven authentically love and worship god despite being unable to sin, then apparently you do not have to be capable of choosing evil, in order to be capable of authentically loving God.  That is, the old worn out "God gave Adam and Eve freewill, if he didn't allow you to sin, you couldn't authentically love him either, and forced love is rape" excuse is total bullshit.

God knew there was a way to get creatures to authentically love him without also giving them the ability to sin...but he rejected that option.  You don't need to be a Calvinist to have biblical justification for saying all human sin on earth is nobody's fault but God's.
At the same time, I recognize there are some earthly pursuits I will abandon in the next life. While many of our cravings and desires will be satisfied once we are reunited with the One who has created us in His Image, some needs will simply vanish once we leave this world. As we think about the future with God, let’s remember what won’t be needed in Heaven so we can live differently while we are here on Earth:

The Need to Have Faith
Faith is the mechanism through which we are saved, and although the nature of faith (as it is described in Scripture) is not blind, it does require us to trust in the most reasonable inference from the evidence Jesus provided, even though we don’t have first-hand access to Jesus or the eyewitnesses who wrote the Gospels:

Hebrews 11:1-2
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

In this life, we are asked to trust in something often unseen (God), on the basis of something that was seen (Jesus as He was described in the Gospels) and for which there is sufficient evidence (as observed in our universe and world). God’s “hiddenness” requires us to draw conclusions and inferences from evidence, but a day is coming when we will see him directly. In that day, faith (as we understand and experience it here on earth) will no longer exist. We will simply know.
Sorry, but Hebrews 11:1 says that faith constitutes evidence (i.e., faith IS the substance of things hoped for, faith IS the evidence of things not seen.   And Paul was very clear that the hope which saves is blind, otherwise (he argues) it wouldn't be "hope":
 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:
The Need to Study
We won’t find ourselves cracking the books in Heaven to have knowledge about God. We won’t be in seminary classes, trying to understand the complexity of the Trinity or the nature of God. In Heaven, our direct contact with the God of the universe will open our eyes to the mysteries we’ve been struggling to understand:
 Which must mean that because God doesn't kill you right now and take you to heaven right now, he must want you to continue struggling....despite his own rules which say if you get any of this theological bullshit wrong, you go to hell.
1 Corinthians 13:11-12
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Our desire to learn will be fully satisfied in Heaven. Much of what we spend hours trying to master here on earth will be available to us immediately once we are in God’s presence.
One has to wonder how much sin would be preempted if God put forth himself the same amount of effort that pastors, scholars and apologists do to "explain" biblical matters.  
The Need to Comfort
We also won’t find ourselves crying on each other’s shoulder in Heaven. In fact, we won’t find ourselves crying at all. We won’t need each other’s comfort in difficult times because there won’t be any difficult times:

Revelation 21:3
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them, and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
 But the souls under god's altar appear to notice an injustice in god's delay of justice, despite their formally admitting god is holy and true, no different than our sensing that an earthly judge has done wrong in delaying justice, while we nevertheless couch our complaint in the formal wording "Your honor...."
 9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:9-10 NAU)
 Not exactly the reaction you'd expect from anybody whose is honestly "content" with the way the boss is handling things.  They sound more like children who don't understand why Dad is taking so long to get ready to go to McDonalds.
Our current struggles with sin (and the consequences we often experience as a result of our poor choices) will vanish in the next life. Better yet, our search for mercy and justice will be fully realized in God’s presence.
But Christians still have a duty to praise God for the times when other people foist unjust evil upon them:
 40 They took his advice; and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them.
 41 So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. (Acts 5:40-41 NAU)
 In other words, if a Christian woman is raped by a non-Christian man who got mad at her for shrugging off his sexual advances with a biblical quotation or two, it would be spiritual immaturity for her to cry and become depressed, and it would be spiritual maturity for her to rejoice that she was counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name. 

And yet something tells me you aren't quite as stupid as biblical theology requires, and thus you do not remind the recently raped emotionally distraught Christian woman that her confusion, anger and depression are a sign of spiritual immaturity.
The Need to Reach Others
We won’t be planning missions trips in Heaven. We won’t be trying to figure out the best way to witness to the lost or reach those who don’t yet know Jesus. Truth is, there is only one chance to place your faith in Christ, and that time will have expired by the time we get to Heaven:

Hebrews 9:27-28
Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Under your fundamentalist interpretation, you leave yourself no rational or reasonable justification for telling non-Christians to purchase your books or do any amount of study whatsoever, because you seriously believe that they are always a mere heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternal hell. 
Wallace continues:
We die just once, and then we are judged. There is no second chance in Heaven, even though there are so many chances for each of us here on earth. This is the place where we are asked to trust the most reasonable inference from the evidence; to place our faith in what cannot be seen. Once it has all been revealed to us, the opportunities to do this will be gone.
For you to tell the atheist to check out your books or view arguments on your website, is for you to say they can safely delay the day of their repentance if they use up that time in such bible study.  But you don't actually know whether an atheist will or won't be killed as he drives to the local library to check out a book you wrote.  If you seriously believe eternal conscious torment in hell for such people is THAT urgent of a danger (i.e., no second chances after death), then the only way you can preach consistent with this extremist view is for you to tell atheists, skeptics and non-Christians that because they could die and seal their horrible fate at any moment, they need to repent and believe the gospel, now, RIGHT now.

That would be more consistent with the fundies who deny the possibility of any second chances after death...but it comes at a high price...you'd be asking non-Christians to make a decision about a very controversial complex matter with a quickness that forbids the least bit of preparation or study.  After all, if you tell the atheist to take the next week to study one of your books, they might die before they actually repent, and if there's no second chances after death, then the fact that they weren't a Christian at death, means it doesn't matter how interested in the gospel they were at the point they were killed:   they weren't saved at that time, hence they go to hell.

If the stakes really are that high, you are only encouraging atheists to believe falsely they can safely delay the day of their repentance when you tell them to "check out" any of your apologetics crap.  Apologetics and theology are complex, it takes more than a few weeks for the biblically illiterate atheist to be able to know enough to say with any degree or reasonable confidence which specific Jesus-salesman is correct.  But in those few weeks of bible study, they could die, and under your current belief, it doesn't matter how interested they were becoming in repenting...if they weren't already born again at the point of physical death, they suffer in hell for the rest of eternity, there's no second chances for anybody, ever, period.

There is simply no way to reasonably reconcile the theory that it is good to study biblical theology comprehensively before salvation to make sure you don't align yourself with a false gospel...with the other theory that says the more you delay "getting saved", the more chance you take of dying and having your fate irreversibly sealed forever.
The more I understand about the nature of Heaven (what I can expect and what I cannot), the more committed I am to an intentional life here on earth.
 Then I'd live to hear you debate a Calvinist.  You know, those fools who say they should use God's absolute predestination as license to sin or be lazy...but if they do, they must have been predestined by God to be a lazy or sinful Christian.
Some activities and pursuits will be unnecessary or irrelevant in Heaven;
One wonders how much sin would have been avoided after Adam and Eve's original sin, if God had magically made us so that we don't require food to continue physical life.  How much sin would be preempted if the concern to grow and consume food completely disappeared from human history?

You think God created the sexual drive in people and sin perverted this?  How much sexual sin would have been preempted had God chosen to make erectile dysfunction and lack of sexual drive a result of the Fall?

For that matter, could God simply just create individual human beings from scratch the way he did Adam, and thereby achieve the goal of filling the earth, but without needing to involving sexual desire to do it?

I think this is where you start in with the old excuse that Mormons find so blessedly convenient when they get their ass kicked all over hell and back: "God's ways are mysterious".
they’re only important while we are living our daily, temporal lives. As I get older, I’ve learned to do the things today I won’t be able to do later. Now is the time to run a marathon; I won’t be as physically able in the years to come. All of us have a “bucket list”; a series of temporal goals we want to achieve before the opportunity is lost forever. It’s time to rethink our “bucket lists” and embrace heavenly goals before we pass from this life and the opportunity is lost forever.
 Yup, you are highly inconsistent to pretend to love unbelievers, and then tell them to go "check out" the bible and your apologetics arguments.  It takes days and weeks and months for the average person with a life, to be able to do this, and in that time of checking things out, they might die.  If you truly love them, and if you truly believe they cannot safely delay the day of their repentance, and if you truly believe there are no second chances after death, you won't be telling them to check out your arguments, you'll be telling them they need to repent and believe the gospel now, right now.

I don't give a shit if the apostles did preach that way.  If they believed everything you did, and yet still felt comfortable giving unbelievers reasons to delay repentance (i.e., by telling them to go study the scriptures or listen to sermons), then the apostles' actions were inconsistent with their theology.
Now is the time to reason from the evidence and trust, to learn and defend, to comfort those in need, and to share the Gospel.
I'm taking my chances with the philosophers on Mars' Hill, who responded to Paul with

"...What would this idle babbler wish to say?..." (Acts 17:18 NAU)

Friday, November 16, 2018

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays' dishonestly simplistic analogy between seeing god and seeing people

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays entitled




It's common for the average atheist to say the burden of proof is on the Christian, because the Christian is affirming something to be the case whereas the atheist simply lacks belief in deities.
The actual truth is that anybody who makes a claim, has a burden of proof, including atheists.  If they affirm there is no god, they are making a knowledge-claim that existing evidence does not support theism.  We expect an innocent defendant in court to explain why the alleged evidence of his guilt doesn't really show his guilt, so, no reason to think otherwise in the case of the atheist confronted with alleged theistic evidences.
The implication is that an existential claim or affirmation has an initial presumption against it, which the claimant must overcome by providing countervailing evidence.
No.  If a complete stranger comes up to you on the street and says "I work at the circle-K store in Souix Falls", you are not intellectually obligated to agree with the claim, that obligation doesn't arise until they provide at least some type of evidence beyond their mere word to support it.  The alternative is a stupid theory of gullibility that says we are initially obligated to believe any logically possible thing anybody tells us unless we are prepared to disprove that claim.  
If so, that's a general principle which applies to all kinds of existential claims, and not to Christianity in particular. But is that reasonable?
Yes, it is reasonable to consider an alleged matter unproven if the claimant refuses to supply corroborating evidence independent of their solitary word.  That includes claims that atheism is true.

The problem for you then is when it becomes reasonable to move from "this has remained unproven" over to "therefore it probably isn't true".  Well if a bunch of people continually fail in their efforts to prove a proposition true, you cannot blame the skeptic for starting to be suspicious at some point that this occurs because the proposition really is false.  How long have Mormons failed to demonstrate the divine authenticity of the book of mormon?  Can you blame the atheist who says if that book wasn't fraudulent, surely some Mormon apologist would have made a good positive case for it by now?
Is that a principle atheists accept in general?
Yes.  You don't believe my claim to be able to levitate objects solely by my mind, unless I give corroborating evidence of some sort, and I don't believe god exists unless you show corroborating evidence of some sort.

Actually, my most powerful reason for rejecting god's existence is the argument from the incoherence of religious language.  Yes, there's a "definition" for god in the dictionary, but there's also a definition for "fairy".  Once we start asking questions about it, we find that the only way to make 'god' coherent is to insist that language not operate the way it normally does, i.e., god can hear me, but he doesn't have any physical mechanism to receive audio signals, he can see me, but he doesn't have any physical mechanism to process light, etc.  

So it doesn't matter if there really exists some type of immaterial basis enabling god to notice such physical things, you cannot demonstrate such immaterial basis in the first place.  And that's your first lesson in why your god is an incoherent concept.  

It doesn't matter if the criminal defendant is innocent, if it looks like he is guilty (i.e., his gun at the scene of the crime, and several witnesses contradicted his alibi), can you really blame the jury for calling it like they see it? I think not, despite the fact that it really sucks to be convicted of a crime you didn't commit.  What are you going to do now?  Start a grass-roots movement to change the law so that inerrancy-affirming Calvinists are the only people legally authorized to be jurors in court trials?   After all, wouldn't that, in Steve Hays' opinion, increase the probability that juries will return correct verdicts?

Or did Steve Hays' god infallibly predestine him to not care about false jury verdicts that much?
Suppose two students are standing outside a class room, peering into the class room through the open doorway. One student says the class room is occupy.
Your blindingly perfect god of inerrancy must not have been inspiring you while you were typing out that last incorrectly spelled word.  And in the bible, whether god speaks through you is the more serious question, not whether your arguments can be supported philosophically.  This is an absurd criticism in light of my own standards, but makes perfect sense under your own belief in bible inerrancy and the blinding theoretical perfection of this sky-based theory you put so much stock in.
His classmate, with the same view, says he has no opinion on whether the class room is empty or not.
And if the atheist-classmate's looking for himself into the classroom to check, has the potential to bring a shitload of problems into his life, he might be reasonable to refuse to look into that classroom himself.  That is, his atheism might be technically "wrong", but it causes him less havoc in life than if he choose to look, get interested, and correspondingly get caught up in the "which god is real" debate that Christians have with each other, and spend the next 50 years of his life enduring other Christian fundamentalists who say the particular Christian god he chose was the wrong one. 

Many people just don't need the crap that comes with marriage, and likewise many people don't need all the extra crap that the atheism-Christianity debate brings.

And such atheists can be rationally warranted to consider the matter unimportant by noting that the eternal conscious torment-view of hell has been disputed by Christians throughout history and even conservative Christians (who would be least likely to dispute such a thing)  are starting to dispute it within the last 50 years, not to mention the fact that it contradicts the standards of god's own justice elsewhere in the bible.  

And that's to say nothing about how all Christian doctrine goes right in the toilet all because of my inerrant argument against the resurrection of Jesus.   If Christ is not risen, your faith in literal hell-fire torture for atheists is in vain.  Indeed, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that means you've been misinterpreting the OT for 2,000 years, making it reasonable to suppose that after falsifying Christianity, the OT is nothing but a fatally ambiguous fairy tale that one is better to consign to the past as a historical curiosity instead of taking it seriously.  So the more Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the more even basic Judaism is incorrect.

At that point, the alleged proofs for theism would have to be just as potentially threatening against Christians as they are against atheists.

And let's not forget that you, Steve Hays, are a Calvinist.  When you show the world that atheists are stupid and unreasonable for refusing to take Christian evidence seriously (i.e., for disagreeing with your opinions), what you aren't telling the world is that, according to your allegedly biblical calvinist theology,  atheists were infallibly predestined by your god to adopt this false attitude, and therefore any sense of their having a choice to know what the truth is and act accordingly, was only illusory.   Nothing is more comical than a strong Calvinist having the least bit of motive to go out and evangelize the lost, which is precisely why Steve Hays gives no impression that he ever wastes his time doing any such thing. After all, if you choose to just sit at home googling the latest in Christian scholarship all day long,  well then your god surely must have infallibly predestined you from all eternity to disobey his revealed command that you evangelize.

Steve might reply "If we love Jesus, we won't desire to use God's infallible predestining decree as a license to sin or be lazy", but that doesn't necessarily follow:  what if your Calvinist god infallibly predestined you to think that the fatalistic theology of the bible was a justifiable license to sin?  You will say no self-respecting Calvinist would think that way, but that's about as stupid as saying no self-respecting Calvinist would desire to commit adultery.

Lest the reader think I am pushing Steve into an extreme form of hyperCalvinism he doesn't actually espouse, let his comment from another Triablogue entry settle the matter forever:
iii) If someone disobeys God's revealed will, that's because God "secretly" willed them to disobey his revealed will. 
 See that full blog here.

In other words, Steve thinks that when Christians commit adultery, their violation of God's revealed will in the 10 commandments "thou shalt not commit adultery" was nevertheless what God "secretly" willed them to do.

And then Steve wonders why most non-Calvinist Christians find Calvinism be a shocking deviation from normative behavior?

 So i guess a good question for hyperCalvinists like Steve is how they can pretend atheists have the least bit of intellectual obligation to do anything Steve tells them to do.  In light of Calvinism, that's the same thing as saying atheists have an intellectual obligation to deviate from God's infallible decree that they remain blinded to the light.  Looked at another way, Steve should compliment atheists for their blindness...it came from God no less than Steve's salvation did. 

Perhaps Steve will "explain" that god gets "mad" at people who do exactly what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants? Is the bible seriously so wonderfully perfect and amazing that it intellectually obligates us to throw away all basic common sense reasoning?  I'm a skeptic, and I doubt it.

Let's just say THIS atheist doesn't exactly worry about the question "what if Christianity is true!?".   I'm quite aware that if I adopted that religion, I could very well end up joining the "wrong" denomination for decades before discovering that it was heretical.  Between generically denying god's existence, and misrepresenting the Christian god to the world, it would seem the former is the lesser of the two evils.

Hays continues:
Suppose the first student said the class room is occupied because, peering through the doorway, other students appear in his field of vision. He sees students (or the impression of students) inside the class room. Is there an initial presumption that his affirmation is false?
No, Steve, the atheist being hit with a barrage of Christian metaphysical, historical and philosophical arguments for theism, of the sort which intellectuals of all stripes have intensely debated for centuries, is not analogous to the atheist having the opportunity to look through a door to see if people are in a room, and then trusting what his eyes tell him about the situation.  Your analogy fails because it is absurdly more simplistic than the real convoluted complexity that attends all Christian arguments for theism.  Otherwise, you'd have to say that I can see God by looking into the sky just as easily as I can see people in a room by looking through the doorway.

But nice try.
Is something additional required to overcome that initial presumption to the contrary? 
 For the above-stated reasons, yes.  If God could be discerned as easily as physically looking into the sky the way people in a room can be discerned by looking through the doorway, you wouldn't need to be making arguments like this.

So...Steve...is God's existence as easily discernible as that?  Can I see god in the sky just as easily as I'd see a class full of students through a doorway?  Or did you dumb down the complex issue of theism more than is philosophically defensible?
He simply finds himself in an epistemic situation where he's confronted with manifest evidence that something is the case.
I believe what my eyes tell me is there.  If I could physically see God as easily as I could see kids in a classroom, I wouldn't be an atheist.
What more is required? There's no shift from a presumption to the contrary to an affirmation. Was there a prior point at which the onus was on him to justify his belief?
No, because no fool denies the possibility of students existing in classrooms.  But since smart people have debated whether "god exists" for centuries, one can be reasonable to say you have deceptively taken a very complex matter and pretended it to be analogous to a very simplistic case involving things that nobody seriously denies. 

Now as a Calvinist you might think people who deny god's existence are akin to people who deny the existence of students who can obviously be seen by simply looking through the door into the classroom, but the fact is, your god cannot be as directly observed as kids in a class, and it's the fact of the need to make inferential leaps in the case of 'god', that condemns your simplistic analogy here.
And what about his classmate? Even though students appear in his field of vision as well, does he have no burden of proof so long as he makes no claim one way or the other? Is the onus not on him to explain how he can be noncommittal in the face of evidence that eliminates one of the two options (either it's vacant or occupied)? Is he justified in withholding judgment at that point?

Same answer, and nice try, but no dice.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Cold Case Christianity: What Will We Experience in Heaven? Probably the same asshole-god we see from earth?


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







There are good reasons to believe we are more than simple material beings.
A better way of putting that is that science hasn't yet figured out every mystery about the human body.
If we are living souls (as described in Christian Scripture), there’s no reason to think our true immaterial nature will be limited by the fate of our physical bodies.
Which means the Christians who cry the loudest upon experiencing the murder of a child, are the least spiritually mature, since nothing could be a greater joy than knowing a loved one actually entered heaven and is thus eternally secure from the possible eternal torture of hell that comes with living past the age of accountability. 

Frank Turek would have you believe that people don't really die, they merely "switch places".  Since I know of no evidence that a mother became distraught by watching her child move from the living room into the kitchen, I guess Turek doesn't really know why a mother will be distraught when her child moves from earth to heaven.  Perhaps he might be open to the prospect that even within Christianity, a hell of lot more is involved in death than merely 'switching places'.
Our expectations of justice, satisfaction and joy (given God’s holy and perfect nature) provide us with good reasons to expect a life beyond this one.
 Another way of saying that is that our being born into civilized society equips us with expectations of justice that actually don't really work too often in the real world, inspiring us to conjure up fantasies about how any wrongs in this world that go unaddressed will surely be corrected in an "after world". 
If God has infinite power, it’s reasonable to believe He has the power to eliminate imperfection.
And if God is perfect, it's reasonable to believe he'd have been perfectly "content" before creating anything, and as such, would have refrained from creating anything for as long as his perfect contentment existed.  If you are content after eating a large meal, do you continue eating?  No.  If you are "content" with your marriage, do you seek divorce?  No.  So if God created anything that didn't already exist from eternity, such as the universe, the earth, angels and people, this necessarily implies that he wasn't fully satisfied (i.e., content) with the pre-creation state of affairs, and hence, one possible perfection, perfect contentment, is something your fanciful incarnation of systematic theology lacked.
God’s perfection must certainly characterize the nature of Heaven,
It would also characterize the nature of his Earth...where he has "allowed" creatures to sin.  If God's perfection doesn't demand that his earth-creatures always refrain from sin, his perfection also doesn't necessarily require that his heavenly creatures always refrain from sin.  And assuming as true the Christian legend (nowhere supported in the bible, especially Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28), namely, that Satan was originally a good angel who fell by freewill choice to become prideful, then apparently, not even one's living in heaven is any guarantee that a freewilled creature will consistently refrain from sin for the rest of eternity.

You will say Satan wasn't given an incorruptible resurrection body, and that might be true, but if so, that makes God look stupid:  If God has the ability to place a freewilled creature into the kind of body that a) retains their freewill, but b) also ensures they'll never sin...then why didn't God create Satan in that way?

Until you can answer such questions with positive evidence, our speculation that your god must have wanted Satan to sin (a contention that is held by at least the Calvinist Christians and many Reformed and conservative Christians) is not going to be any less plausible than your own speculation that god didn't want Satan to sin and must have had higher mysterious reasons for demanding sinless perfection from a creature that he refused to give that ability to.  Sort of like creating a vase on a pottery wheel, then demanding that the vase take a job as a paralegal in a law office.  Everybody will say you fucking delusion, and like your god, you will respond "Just because you can't see my whole purpose doesn't mean there isn't one".  
 and the Bible describes how each of us, when united with God, will be transformed and made complete, in spite of our present earthly imperfections.
 Begging the question of why God didn't give Adam and Eve such a constitution of the will/mind at their original creation, in which case they'd have always chosen the good and never the evil, thus effectively preempting all future sin and thus all future reason for God to be wrathful, and doing so in a way that didn't violate their freewill.  

How will you defend the moral goodness of a god who could have made freewilled creatures who are guaranteed to never sin, but chose to avoid giving them such ability?
We Will Have Perfect Knowledge
Someday we are going to be in the presence of the one who understand everything.
Then apparently you never read Genesis 6:6-7, God regretted his own prior choice to create mankind. 
 1 Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them,
 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years."
 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
 5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
 6 The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
 7 The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."

 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
 9 These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.
 10 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Gen. 6:1-10 NAU)
We do God a favor by inferring that he regretted this because he didn't know mankind would become so sinful.  You hurt your own god by pretending that God knew from all eternity that he would regret creating mankind, sort of like the mature adult who knows he will regret it if he takes a stroll through the east Los Angeles and shouts angry racial slurs at every minority he sees...but chooses to do so anyway.  When you know you will regret what you are about to do...but you do it anyway...you are, obviously, stupid at best or mentally ill at worst.

No, Mr. Wallace, Genesis 6:6-7 is not an "anthropomorphism".  Calling it an anthropomorphism constitutes "interpretation", and you have to justify your interpretation of Genesis 6:6-7, and there is nothing about the grammar, the immediate context, the larger context, or the genre of Genesis 6 that suggests those specific verses were intended as anything less literal than the Nephilliam and wickedness in the prior verses, and the literal records of Noah mentioned in the following verses. 

As a conservative, you won't like the idea that Judaism's theology substantially morphed and evolved through the centuries, and you won't like the idea that the theology of Genesis is more primitive than the theology of Isaiah, but we don't judge what's biblically true or false on the basis of whether the presuppositions of conservative Christian apologists would be offended.  Everything about Genesis 6:6-7 tells us that the author meant those words literally, and that interpretation has at least some support from the literal immediate context, while the anthropomorphic interpretation has zero such contextual support.


And since I have good reasons to reject bible inerrancy, then no, I do not say my interpretation of a bible verse must be wrong merely because it would contradict another part of the bible.  Since even conservative Christian scholars cannot come to agreement with each other on the nature and scope of bible inerrancy (Licona v. Geisler, for example), I have exceptionally solid rational warrant for saying this doctrine does not deserve to be exalted in my mind to the status of governing heremeneutic, and therefore, the fact that my interpretation of a bible verse would make it contradict something elsewhere in the bible, will not, without something more, intellectually obligate me to view such interpretation as wrong.

So the literal interpretation of Genesis 6:6-7 survives all of your likely attempts to get away from it, and effectively refutes your contention that your bible-god has "perfect" knowledge.  About all you have left at this point is to admit that God must be viewed as infinitely smart even IF he chooses to continue doing something that he knows he will regret later.

Yeah, and the hooker who has unprotected sex even after 5 years of working the corner, is infinitely smart too.
He’ll be available to answer questions.
 That doesn't sound impressive, as the fact that those people made it to heaven implies they had no problems with the yucky parts of the bible, and hence won't be asking god anything.

But if I could ask God anything I'd ask:

1 - If you are omnipresent, does that mean you had a more intimate connection to the neurons in my brain, than I did?  If you were part and parcel of the molecules that made up my neural chemistry, then what were you doing in those locations while I was utilizing those molecules to make immoral decisions?  Were you doing the same things you were doing back when I utilized those molecules to make a decision to accept Jesus as my Savior in a doctrinally correct Trinitarian Protestant church?

Or did I forget that Romans 1:20 authorizes you to halt any Q and A as soon as the heat gets turned up?

2 - Do you follow the Golden Rule yourself?  If so, how'd you like it if somebody caused you to suffer in fire for all eternity?  Didn't yo' mama teach you better?  Don't feel too good now does it?

Hank Hanegraaff was also "available" to answer questions in a way that promoted Protestant Evangelicalism as the most true form of Christianity.  Then after more than 20 years of this, suddenly discovered that the Greek Orthodox church was the right religion.  So you'll excuse me when I say that I see no reason to think I'd be increasing the chances I'd discover divine truth even if I became a Christian apologist and defended standard Protestant orthodoxy for more than 20 years

hence, rationally justifying my decision to say that no amount of bible study or analysis of apologetics arguments offers enough of a guarantee of truth-discovery so as to justify engaging in such monumental effort.  Hence justifying my choice to view acquisition of bible-knowledge of nothing more than a hobby. I might get around to reading about Calvin's doctrine of double-predestination if I run out of beer and funny dart-games.
We won’t be frustrated and straining to understand and believe. We’ll be at peace with the truth:
That sounds real nice.  Too bad it's nothing but the hope of the hopeless.  What are you doing, Wallace?  Did you give up on apologetics, and feel called by God to quit publicly embarrassing yourself and decide the safer course was teaching devotional studies at Sunday school?
1 Corinthians 13:9-12
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
 What you don't tell the reader is that conservative Christian scholars admit there are at least three different interpretations of "when the perfect comes", thus justifying the skeptic to classify the passage as fatally ambiguous, and be rationally warranted to dismiss it entirely from consideration.  See Robert L. Thomas, Tongues…Will Cease,  JETS 17:2 (Spring 1974) 81-89.  See also here.
We Will Be in the Presence of Perfect Glory
Glory is a word used often in the Bible, but we sometime read right past it
 And surely this cannot be the fault of the God who admits to blinding people to ensure they miss the truth:
 9 He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.'
 10 "Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed."
 11 Then I said, "Lord, how long?" And He answered, "Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people And the land is utterly desolate, (Isa. 6:9-11 NAU)
 Wallace continues:
Glory expresses perfect beauty, excellence and greatness. All of us appreciate beauty and excellence in our physical world because we are created in the image of God, who is not only the source of glory, but the ultimate example of glory:
 So our being made in God's image is the reason why men have basic agreement on the criteria for female beauty?  Guys go nuts over cleavage, tight sweaters, perky tits, bubble butts and curvy hips, because we are made in the image of God?  Then apparently, since God cannot create what he doesn't already possess, he must also be enamored with female beauty.

Furthermore, if this sexual desire came from God, then you as a conservative Christian are morally bound to do what the early church fathers did, and condemn any clothing style of females that does anything at all to draw the eye toward their sexual parts.  Lipstick and makeup cause a woman's face to look far more attractive that it really does.  Tight pants increase the odds the man looking at her won't stop at the pants, but will conjure up in his mind what she probably looks like nude.  Tight shirts, cleavage or otherwise emphasizing boobs would be equally condemnable.

Yet we don't often hear "apologists" condemning the fool Christian women of today who dress like club-rats.  And when they do, they don't demand that women wear burkas, the problem being that the sexy-stuff in modern America is out of control, so the Christian woman must make an even more intense effort to avoid giving worldly men any reason to lust after them.  Some apologists will say the lust problem is solely the fault of the man, but apostle Paul does not believe the person who sinned is the only one culpable for it; anybody who did anything to encourage the sin, or anybody who refused to accomodate the weaker brother's weaker will, is equally culpable should he sin:
 19 So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.
 20 Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense.
 21 It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles. (Rom. 14:19-21 NAU)
 9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.
 10 For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols?
 11 For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died.
 12 And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.
 13 Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble. (1 Cor. 8:9-13 NAU)
Read 1st Cor. 8:13 again.  If Christian women know perfectly well that non-Christian men are little more than dogs who walk upright, then the more they claim alliance with the morale in v. 13, the more obligation they impose upon themselves to accommodate the weaker person (the non-Christian man), and to therefore be especially careful to avoid accentuating ANY of their sexuality.  If a Christian woman knows that men have a high sex drive, she has a moral obligation to avoid doing anything to accentuate her sexuality outside the bedroom.  Doesn't matter if she doesn't have an obligation to non-Christian men, she has to regard Christian men as the "weaker brother" regardless.

If you cannot precisely determine exactly how much cleavage a Christian women can show in public, then you leave no logically possible room to declare that any amount of legally acceptable cleavage is biblically inappropriate, or that wearing a burka would contribute to lust.


 If you think THAT amount of cleavage is outside what's biblically acceptable, what bible verses do you base that judgment on?  Or is safeguarding the amount of tithes you get to your dogshit ministry so much more important than a Christian woman's personal holiness before the Lord, that you should avoid the subject?
Matthew 24:30
“…and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”
If you are ever looking for a cheap thrill, google how preterists answer this bullshit.  They hem and haw here about as much as they do when trying to explain away Acts 1:11.
Matthew 25:31
“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.”
And I worry about this.
Mark 8:38
“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
Read 1st Enoch and discover the obvious truth that Jesus thought that book was canonical.
We Will Enjoy Perfect Rest
Why do we love to sleep in on our days off? Is it just because we are lazy? Or is it more because we become so weary of the struggles of life? Many of us love to work, achieve and be productive, but also understand life’s burdens can simply wear us out. God promises Heaven will be a place of rest. Not a place that lacks work, but a place where the burdens and struggles of life will be lifted.
Ok, if heaven doesn't lack work, then what kind of work will you be doing in heaven?  Trash Collection?
We won’t have to strain to be ‘good’, struggle to maintain Godly relationships or behaviors. Our character will be changed and our struggles will be lifted:
Hebrews 4:9-11
There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience.
 Ok, then God could have given such character trait to Adam and Eve from the beginning, this would not have violated whatever "freewill" you think they had, and all future sinning by their descendants would have been effectively preempted.  

Don't tell me God didn't want them to eat the forbidden fruit.  You may as well place 10 large pizzas into a room full of imperfect hungry teens, then tell them they are forbidden to eat of it, then pretend "they have no excuse" when the inevitable inevitably happens.  If Adam and Eve had freewill before they ate from the tree, then they would have continued having freewill if they never ate from the tree.  That is, God could have kept this tree out of their physical reach, and sin would been guaranteed to never materialize.  So if mom SAYS she doesn't want the kids to drink bleach, but then she puts the bleach bottle inside their room anyway, then fuck you, she's lying.  We atheist are smarter than god, we judge him by his actions, not his self-serving statements.  Talk is cheap.
We Will Relish in Perfect Work
Sometimes when we hear “work”, we think “labor”; a difficult and toilsome burden we must accept to make a living and survive. At the same time, most of us participate in challenging activities requiring great exertion, yet fail to see these efforts as laborious. Our hobbies are often as physically or mentally demanding as our jobs, but they don’t seem like work to us. We love our recreational efforts, but sometimes hate our vocational labors. We find great significance and satisfaction in some efforts, less in others. God designed us to work in satisfying ways,
 Then this would justify the Christian man who refuses to take a job on the grounds that he hates that kind of work.  By refusing such job, he's living up to the way god designed him.  To take a depressing or unfulfilling job that you hate is to act in defiance of the way God designed you...apparently.
and Heaven is the place where this will be perfected. Jesus often described Heaven with parables involving work and responsibility:

Luke 19:17
‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’

Matthew 19:28
And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Oh, ok...so you are one of those few Christians who think it IS appropriate to doctrine from the parables of Jesus?
We Will Participate in Perfect Worship
Have you ever had difficulty focusing on worship at church? Have you ever struggled to keep your mind and heart in the right place? Have you ever wondered why you should worship God in the first place? Well none of that will be a problem in Heaven, where the mere presence of God will provoke a response of worship:

Isaiah 6:3
And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
 And if God could make people like that in heaven, no reason why he couldn't make Adam and Eve the same way on earth, and presto, all future sin by their descendants would be entirely and effectively preempted.  Then you will tell me god didn't want them to sin?  FUCK YOU.  
We Will Share in Perfect Fellowship
Most of us, when given the chance, love to hang out with friends. That’s because we were created in the image of the triune God who (by His very nature) is in relationship with the other persons of the Godhead at all times.
 But if God's internal fellowship before creation was perfect, he would never think something was missing and would thus never be motivated to do anything more. So apparently, God's creating of creatures really does imply that he eventually got lonely...an imperfection for the three-headed hydra you call the Trinity.
Our God is innately and characteristically relational. That’s why we are driven toward relationships.
 You are conveniently ignoring the reality of loners, people who despise human relations.  Maybe they weren't made in the image of your god?
And heaven is the place where this aspect of our nature will be fully realized:

Hebrews 12:22 -24
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.
Wallace, level with me...you recognize that your "prove-it-by-quoting-the-bible" shit is nothing but comedy in the eyes of biblically informed skeptics, right?   If you are doing this furiously unpersuasive bible-quoting shtick mostly to edify somebody who has experienced some type of tragedy, just say so.  For now it simply looks like you have degraded from apologist to Pentecostal. 
We Will Receive Perfect Recognition
Finally, Heaven is a place where each of us will be recognized and rewarded by God.
 How do you reconcile that with your other theory that the only person who deserves credit for YOUR good works, is God alone?  What sense does it make to say God "rewards" you for something you don't deserve the credit for?  Does God also thank the Quakers for dying on a cross for mankind's sins?  After all, they too did not do this work and thus don't deserve a reward for it...but apparently your God rewards people for things that cannot be properly credited to them?
Ever notice how driven we are here on earth for the recognition and praise of our peers? Heaven is the place where our intrinsic desire is finally satisfied. Everyone will be completely satisfied with the recognition and reward they will receive from the King:

Luke 19:15-19
“He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it. The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’ ‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’ The second came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five more.’ His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’
Dismissed.  Why not just come out and say you converted to the Mormon religion, and do what Hank Hanegraaff does...stir the pot.  Controversy sells, just ask Madonna.  And your incessant self-promotion assures me that you would indeed by tempted by any proposed plan of action that would draw attention to yourself.
Heaven is the place where all of our basic instincts and drives will finally make sense.
The sexual drive is pretty basic.  Sex in heaven?  Now that I think of it, how much sin would God have preempted, without violating anybody's freewill, had he chosen to just create individual human spirits that never had physical bodies?  How much sin would have been precluded, without violating anybody's freewill, if freewilled humans on earth lacked a body?  There would be no sex, there would be no desire for material things since these would not benefit us anymore than a gong benefits a ghost. 

But this is Christianity, NOTHING can be done to fix its problems.  For example, while its perfectly clear that the sex drive is entirely physical, the Christian scholars who think Genesis 6 is talking about fallen angels lusting over human females, are therefore saying angels, who are spirits, had a sex drive before the took on human bodies.

Stop telling people that God didn't want Adam and Eve to sin.   He must have known of several different ways to achieve a world of free creatures that don't sin, and he didn't choose any such option.  Like I said, as an atheist, I'm smarter than your god, and I judge your fictional fantasy character on the basis of his alleged actions, not on his conveniently self-serving words.  The truth "actions speak louder than words" is no less true for 'God' than it is for human beings.  What god actually does, is more likely to tell us the truth about him, than his mere words.  Talk is cheap, especially biblical talk.
We are driven toward knowledge,
Which is a sinful thing, apparently, since it was the tree of "knowledge of good and evil" that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from (i.e., the story asks us to believe God originally intended for Adam and Eve to remain ignorant of certain realities).  God's alleged intent was that they NEVER gain any more knowledge than what he originally created them with.
we long for beauty and excellence,
Only because we are material beings.  Hard to see how ghosts could give a shit about cleavage or high definition pictures of big cities on clear nights.  And the snowy mountainous landscape most of us find appealing, is dreadful to the explorer who is lost there and is slowly starving to death.  Beauty is in the eye of the desktop folder.
we desire rest and peace,
hard to see how ghosts could relate to 'rest' or 'peace', since "rest" implies "tired muscles" which ghosts allegedly don't have.  But no, I don't put it past you to suddenly discover that ghosts have muscles, if saying such a stupid thing would help you save face as you get your ass kicked in an apologetics argument.  Apparently, I forgot about the ghostly muscles implied in Matthew 12:43.
we find ourselves worshipping something in our temporal environment,
If God inspired you to write that, why didn't he have you spell "worshiping" correctly?  Because he is imperfect, or because his ways are mysterious? 

Or did you suddenly discover that God can inspire people to write what he wants without causing them to write inerrantly?  If God didn't inspire you to write that, how can you set forth your personal subjective opinions as if they are the equal of the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit?  Does your website have a disclaimer that says 
"my arguments might sound like I'm trying to steer you toward absolute truth, but I'm not, these are all just my subjective opinions and I couldn't really say whether or not God inspired me to write any particular thing." ?
we seek satisfying and significant work, we desire the intimacy of close relationships
 except for the loners, who were also apparently made in the image of the allegedly relationship-loving YHWH (and your god does not give a shit about personal relationships.  We know that marriages die where the husband doesn't consistently show love with acts and words that his wife can detect with her 5 physical senses, the mere "fact" that she "knows" he loves her, is no substitute whatsoever for seeing this proven with empirical evidence consistently.  So you cannot blame people for giving up on YHWH, that bastard provides precisely NONE of the empirical demonstrations that are part and parcel of the way humans nurture their relationships to each other. 

What kind of a person would you be today, if your biological father consistently refused to let you hear him or see him, and instead demanded in some book that the book, your attempts at mental telepathy with him and your fellowship with other people who claim to know him, shall be the only way that he will ever communicate with you?  And then you are going to tell me that wrapping your life around the bible is a type of relationship that is superior to the one you have with your earthly friends?  FUCK YOU.

By the way, Wallace:  I maintain that the original meaning of the Genesis statements on being made in the image of God really did mean God caused mankind to physically resemble him. When you say "impossible! other parts of the bible say God is invisible!"  I say "bible inerrancy is too controversial even among Christian scholars, to justify any atheist using it as a hermeneutic.  So because the grammar and context support the physical-interpretation of such "image", that's more than sufficient to justify a flippantly dismissive attitude toward any contrary viewpoint appearing in subsequent evolutions of Jewish theology in later parts of the bible."
, and we strive for recognition and praise.
This is also sinful under the conservative view that says our good works aren't really the actions of us personally, but merely god working THROUGH us.
Why are we wired to seek the things we find so elusive in this life?
 Maybe for the same reason animals are wired to seek things that often elude them too?

It must be sin, because the bible says if you have food and clothing, you are required to be content.  1st Timothy 6:8.  Pretending that has any exceptions would destroy the point of the verse.  Why say we must be content with food and clothing, if you can think of thousands of situations where not being content with these two things would be spiritually good? 

What's next?  Maybe there are exceptions to "thou shalt not commit adultery"? 

And do exceptions open the floodgates?  If you trifle and say Paul obviously would have expected his readers to find "bible study" to be an exception to his "be content with food and clothing" statement, then does that mean the exceptions never cease, and so Paul would approve of all the materialistic things that most of today's Christian apologists constantly infuse their lives with (i.e., television, radio, cars, dvds, etc)?
The answer is simple: We are designed in the image of God, but are not yet in the presence of God.
 your god has about as much excuse for getting mad at sinners as the stupid owner of 10 dogs has for her studio apartment smelling like shit all the time.  The owner has nobody but herself to blame.  If god really wanted people to stop sinning, he would do no less than the same as the cop who really wants the criminal to stop eluding arrest.  FUCK YOU.
We are not yet complete.
This bit of comforting wisdom makes god's getting mad at us for exhibiting imperfection, about as reasonable as the mother who spanks her 4 year old daughter for failing a college calculus exam.   What else does your god do when he isn't punishing people for acting consistently with their natures?  Shave with a banana?
Passing through this imperfect world, we are on our way to perfection; to the place where all our desires and instincts will finally make sense and be satisfied.
It's a nice dream, but unfortunately for Christianity, some people don't require fantasy in order to deal with reality.  The fact that the whole religious bit is so popular with people, only testifies that we are still evolving away from our primitive way of thinking.  It's no coincidence at all that it just so happens that the more barbaric form of religion existed centuries ago, and as mankind gradually became more civilized, his religions correspondingly also started looking more and more civilized.  The bible-god's apparently serious acknowledgement of any type of efficacy of animal sacrifices is a final assurance that the god of the bible is nothing more than one false god among many false gods ignorantly worshiped by semi-civlized savages.

Jason Engwer doesn't appreciate the strong justification for skepticism found in John 7:5

Bart Ehrman, like thousands of other skeptics, uses Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 to argue that Jesus' virgin birth (VB) is fiction.  Jason Eng...