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

Cold Case Christianity: What Will We Experience in Heaven?
Posted: 14 Nov 2018 01:43 AM PST

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.

What Evil? (The Problem of Evil on Empiricism)

This is my reply to an article by J.W Wartick entitled

What Evil? (The Problem of Evil on Empiricism)

Posted by J.W. Wartick ⋅ December 23, 2010

The problem of evil is often seen to be the greatest philosophical challenge to theistic belief.

Count me out.  Proving somebody evil doesn't prove they don't exist.  And while the bible-god is without a doubt as evil as humans could possibly be, I don't argue that this proves he doesn't exist.  I simply insist that it proves that the bible-god's self-serving statements about being "loving" are total bullshit.

The problem of evil is also most frequently raised by people who are ardent empiricists (which undergirds their atheism).  There are many versions of empiricism, but the one we will investigate at the moment is naturalistic, atheistic empiricism, which holds both that there is nothing but the natural world in the sense of the world which can be directly accessed via the senses and only sensory, empirical evidence is sufficient evidence for holding a proposition to be true.

Sure is funny that it was by use of your naturalistic senses that you believe you came across proof that more things exist than simply those that are physical.  Sounds like the abilities of our 5 physical senses are much closer to being infallible than you give them credit for.  Unless of course you qualify and say that prayer and telepathy were part of the way you confirmed the existence of any non-physical thing.

On this view, it seems extremely difficult to figure out what exactly evil is.

 Perhaps because you haven't debated me yet.  Evil is the word that people subjectively use to characterize situations and actions which they subjectively think tend to cause unnecessary harm.  One woman will call abortion evil, another woman calls it a blessing. 

Sam Harris is well known for trying to show that science is capable of dealing with moral issues (discussed here). The method basically involves finding out what makes people happy (which is “good”) and what makes them unhappy (which makes it “bad”) (see here). It remains totally unclear to me, however, how Harris makes the jump from “happy” to “objective good.” Measuring people’s happiness doesn’t mean measuring goodness. There are serial killers who are very happy to go about secretly killing as many people as possible. That doesn’t make their action “good”, unless you boil “good” down to a purely subjective basis, on which nothing can be decried as “evil” unless 100% of people agree it is indeed evil.

 Haven't read him recently, but the problem I see here is that you are automatically assuming "good" can be objectively defined (given your apparent eschewing of a subjective definition of the word).  But you theists have your own problems, for example, if everything your god does must necessarily be morally "good" without exception, then when God "stirs up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women in Isaiah 13:15-17, the fact that these men are doing the will of God logically requires that such rapes were morally good.  If God knew evil would happen should he step out of the way and allow evil men to act unrestrained, that's not morally different from you, knowing your dog will attack the jogger should you let go of the leash, letting go of the leash.  Nobody will listen to you carp about how the dog's nature caused the attack and not your choice to let go of the leash.  Accordingly, we don't listen when you "explain" that the Medes' evil nature to commit rape, not God's letting go the leash on their evil tendencies, was the cause of the rapes in Isaiah 13.  Furthermore, the fact that the text says God "stirred up" the Medes to commit rape makes it sound more like God was encouraging them or putting a rape-desire into their hearts...a lot more evil than merely "stepping out of the way and allowing evil people to do what they want".

You will ask how I can call rape evil when I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in objective morals.  I'm not using my own sense of morality to judge god, I'm using the fact that there's a contradiction in the bible between God's causing men to rape women, and God saying he "loves" everybody, to show that the bible-god doesn't even live up to his own standards, in which case, he is probably also lying about himself elsewhere in the bible, in which case it makes better sense to regard him as a sadistic lunatic (and on the basis of other arguments not relevant here, a fictional story character made in the continually evolving image of ancient barbaric tribes).

Returning to the problem of evil, then, it seems like theists can simply ask the atheists a question: “What evil?” Judging something as “evil” is necessarily a valuation of an action. How does one make an experiment which can make a value judgment?

That's the wrong question.  The truth is that our morals come from two empirical sources; our genetic predispositions (which is why some people are just more aggressive and selfish their whole lives than other people), and environmental conditioning (in which case you can warp a normal child's mind and turn them into a criminal).

Certainly, one can try to argue, as does Harris, that values are just [scientific] facts (note that the theist agrees that moral values are facts… but facts centered on the nature of God, not on empirical grounds).

 God's nature causes men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16, so apparently, the only reason you think rape is always evil, is because your god hasn't "stirred" you up to commit rape just yet.

But simply asserting something doesn’t make it so. I often say “God exists.” People don’t tend to take this as profound evidence that the statement is true. (Though, perhaps if I said “God exists is a fact.” I might win some over… at least those who take Harris seriously when he makes a similar claim about values in the video linked above.)

So the question remains: What evil?

 If you think God views rape as evil, then my criticism of God is that he makes people engage in the very actions that he himself calls "evil".  That is, your god is a hypocrite, thus justifying suspicion that he has more to do with being made in the image of mankind and less to do with inspiring people to write scripture.

And while he might not necessarily be "forcing" men to rape women in Isaiah 13, force is obviously present in Ezekiel 38:4 ff, where God boasts that his control over the freewill of future pagan armies is correctly analogous to putting a hook into their jaws.  Nothing spells force quite like putting a hook in somebody's jaws and drawing them along in whatever direction you want.  NOW your god isn't just "stirring" up people to do evil, he is forcing them to do the very acts that he himself views as evil.  And read those chapters of Ezekiel carefully, god will also punish those puppet nations for moving in the direction that he was pulling their strings in.  Sort of like the irrational fool who kicks you through his living room window, then charges you with destruction of property.

On an atheistic empirical standpoint, there doesn’t seem to be any way to judge actions or events as “evil” other than by saying “I don’t like that.”

 And there is no evidence that evil is anything more than an action that somebody or a group of people have expressed dislike for.

But perhaps I do like that same event/action. Who’s to judge between us? Bringing numbers into the mix won’t help either. Imagine a scenario in which 1,000,000 people thought some action (rape) was evil. On the other side there were 10,000 who thought the same action was perfectly reasonable, because, after all, that’s how our ancestors behaved. Who is right?

 I deny the legitimacy of the question.  If it is a moral issue, there is no objective "right" answer.  But there might be a lot of people who mistake their strong subjective feelings for objective truth. 

Well, on empiricism, perhaps one could argue that the 1,000,000 are right, but then we’re making a judgment on values simply because of a majority vote. Science doesn’t work that way. We don’t just vote on what is empirically correct.

Correct, but irrelevant.  You haven't demonstrated any logical or evidential flaws in moral relativism.

The only way to solve this problem would be to argue that in moral questions, the majority is correct. Yet I don’t see any way to argue in this matter other than metaphysically, which is exactly what the empiricist is trying to avoid. Therefore, on empiricism, there is no such thing as evil. Just good and bad feelings. And that’s not enough.

 Why not?

And so we get to my main argument.

1) One cannot rationally hold both to a proposition’s truth and falsehood.

2) On atheistic empiricism, there is no evil.

Correction, there is no "objective" evil.  That's because there's no objective standard for evaluating the morality of human actions, there's only human opinion.

3) Atheistic empiricists argue that evil disproves (or challenges) the existence of God [implicit premise: evil exists].

Then count me out, it's perfectly obvious that you cannot disprove Hitler's existence by showing he was evil, so it would be the same with God.  And personally, I find that the alternative position (i.e, your god's forcing people to do things that he himself thinks are evil, then blaming them for acting that way,  therefore, your god is a hypocrite) has much more force when dealing with apologists.  They don't like atheism, but they are much more offended by biblical proof that their God is a sadistic lunatic.

4) Therefore, atheistic empiricists hold that both evil does not exist, and that it does exist (2, 3).

5) Therefore, atheistic empiricism is irrational (1, 4).

 I've already admitted that yes, it doesn't make sense to say that a being doesn't exist, because the information allegedly showing his existence, shows him to be evil.

However, the evil nature of the OT god does indeed logically contradict John 3:16 and other passages that allege god "loves" us...unless the apologist is willing to redefine divine "love" so that it eventually looks suspiciously opposite of the only kind of "love" that we can agree exists, human love.  There would be little reason to call it "love", if it is supposed to be so broad and encompassing that it will allow even those acts that loving people would never allow to happen to each other.  If we can rightfully dispute that a father "loves" his daughter after finding out he stepped out of the way and allowed some other man to rape her, there is no compelling reason to reach a different conclusion if the "father" who allows rape happens to be the bible-god.  And since I correctly reject the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, no, I do not think that scriptural statements assuring us that God always does good, must be read into Isaiah 13:16 and other statements where God is obviously contradicting his own alleged values.

In order to avoid the argument, the atheistic empiricist can simply deny 3). However, this would disarm the strongest anti-theistic argument. I see no reason to feel threatened by the problem of evil when it is leveled by an empirical/naturalistic anti-theist. In fact, some have argued that:

1) If evil has meaning, then God exists.

 no, evil can have a meaning in the dictionary. that hardly implies that God exists.

2) Evil has meaning.

Subjective meaning.  The answer to whether Hitler was evil only seems "obvious" because Frank Turek's audiences are predominantly Christian, take place in the continental USA, and those who support Hitler usually don't attend.  But the truly objective analysis doesn't automatically conclude the majority American view on Hitler is correct, the analysis will give legitimate weight to all human opinion on the subject.  And I'm afraid that human opinion about human worth has radically changed over the centuries. 

3) God exists (1, 2, modus ponens).

This argument is a kind of reverse moral argument, and I think it works, though I doubt one will find many anti-theists who will accept premise 1). As is the case with the moral argument [1) If objective morals exist, then God exists; 2) Objective morals exist; 3) therefore God exists], I believe atheists will vary between denying 1) and 2) as they find convenient.

 We do.  You haven't demonstrated that any morals are "objective" in the sense of their basis transcending human opinion.

I leave it to the naturalistic/empirical atheist to show that science can, in fact, test for objective morality, rather than just measuring feelings.

I leave that to Sam Harris too, since I don't say objective morals exist any more than I say an objective value exists for a used dvd player at a garage sale.

Atheism’s Universe is Meaningless and Valueless? Ultimately, yes...so what?

This is my reply to an article by J.W. Wartick entitled

Atheism’s Universe is Meaningless and Valueless
Posted by J.W. Wartick ⋅ January 3, 2011    

“‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’

says the Teacher.

‘Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.'” – Ecclesiastes 1:2

My most recent post on the problem of evil granting empirical atheism generated some thoughtful discussion. Most importantly, it lead me to the following argument:

1) On materialistic [I use materialism and physicalism interchangeably, as is common in philosophy today] atheism, all we are is matter in motion.

Correct.  Our sense of evil is no more ultimately significant than the sense of danger experienced by a gazelle being chased by a lion.  But lack of ultimate meaning doesn't imply lack of subjective purpose.

By the way, plenty of you Christians believe that God intended for carnivores to populate the earth before sin.  Read up on Hugh Ross.  Apparently, when your god said all he had created was "very good" before the Fall (Genesis 1:31), he was talking about a world which, before sin, was full of animals ripping each other apart.

2) There is no objective reason to value matter moving in way A over matter moving in way B

 Correct.  That doesn't mean it is unreasonable to identify certain bits of matter as moving in ways contrary to our personal subjective goals, and to fight back or avoid accordingly.  And by the way, your Frank Turek reductionism is unconvincing.  We might be nothing but atoms, but that doesn't mean all atomic structures share equal abilities and limits.  You may as well say that 9 is equal to 4, simply because they ultimately reduce to "numbers" or "signs".  Yes, that's ultimately what they are, but what they ultimately are doesn't tell you whether they have specific individual properties that distinguish them from each other.

3) Therefore, on materialistic atheism, there is no value or meaning

Ultimately?  Correct. You probably don't blink your eyes with the intent of laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven.  Doing things in life for reason not having jack shit to do with god or religion, is perfectly normal everyday reality even for fundamentalist Christians.

Premise 1 seems self-evident. Materialistic atheism, by definition, says that “everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The physical world is matter.

Premise 2 also seems like it should need little defense, yet atheists continually come up with ideas to try to get around it.

I disagree with Dan Barker and other atheists who think some morals can be objective.  I'm a really big problem for apologists like Frank Turek who push the objective morality bit.  I agree that if atheism is true, there would be no objective morality, only subjective opinions.  When such apologists debate me, they are debating somebody who agrees with them on more principles than most atheists agree with them on, making it much more difficult for them to refute my arguments.

For example, one may argue that the subjective suffering of persons should matter. Yet I fail to see how this argument succeeds. Pain and suffering, on materialism, at most supervenes upon neurons firing in the brain (along with chemical reactions and other physical phenomenon). My question for the materialist is: What reason can be provided for favoring matter moving in way A (call it, the way neurons fire when someone is in a state of bliss) over matter moving in way B (neurons firing in the way which causes pain)?

 The reason?  Personal subjective opinion.  And if you can find a bunch of people to agree with you, all the better.  Sorry, but physicalism being true doesn't suddenly make motives and desires irrational or pointless.  As living beings, we automatically like anything that tends to enhance our life without harming those we consider part of our group, and to correspondingly eschew anything that does the opposite.  To be alive is to naturally and automatically prefer anything that keeps you alive, and to naturally and automatically eschew anything that tends to suppress life.  That remains a solidly justified generalization despite the fact that exceptions, such as suicide, exist.  For to be alive is to also be imperfect and to perhaps one day find oneself in a completely hopeless situation.

By the way, your arguments would, if correct, prove that animals, reptiles and bugs have eternal "spirits", since they too find purpose in life and have preferences.  Yet your bible doesn't permit you to say these lower life forms were made in the image of god.  Ok...if the animals can be reasonable to see purpose in life without being made in the image of God, then humans can also possibly be reasonable to find purpose in life without crediting any of it to God.

One answer which may be forthcoming is that creatures and persons tend to try to get away from things which cause B. This argument fails to provide an answer to the question, because all it does is push the question back to a higher level. It would change to: Why should we favor physical observable phenomenon which don’t cause avoidance over those that do?

Because it is axiomatic that to be "alive" is to automatically and naturally favor anything that helps the group survive, and eschew anything that hinders the group from surviving.  You may as well pretend that asking "why should pain hurt" or "why should water require oxygen" are equally legitimate.  They are not.  You need to study up on axioms.  There really is a first rung in the ladder of reasoning, which, by its being FIRST, is exempt from the "why" question.

Again, the avoidance of B would simply be matter moving in a different way. In order to make a judgment between them, one would have to reach beyond the material world and into the world of objective meaning and value; this is, necessarily, a world which is nonexistent on materialism.

 No, once again, being alive automatically requires, at least for mammals, that anything tending to inhibit thriving of the self or group is to be avoided in most situations.  Since we aren't perfect, yes there will be exceptions like suicide and crime and duplicity, inconsistency and hypocrisy.  You do not keep skeptics over a barrel by simply pretending that materialism allows you to ask "but why...." ad infinitum.  When you ask why living things tend to eschew death, it's like asking why water is wet.  Once again, there are things that are axiomatic or foundational to the premise of "being alive". To be "alive" is to therefore be something more than merely "alive", it also implies putting forth some type of effort to STAY alive, even if the effort is de minimus.  If such traits aree axiomatic, then YOU are the one engaging in error by pretending that the "why" question can never be inappropriate in materialism.

Even if one could provide an answer to this second question, say “We tend to not like B. Things we don’t like are bad”, then we would have a purely subjective reality.

So?  Isn't that exactly what humans have proven to be in this world?  The legal world supplies abundant testimony that sometimes there is just no possible way to get two people to agree on what would be the morally good thing to do.

Do your shoelaces not exist because when and whether to tie them or not is an entirely subjective opinion that various shoe-wearers disagree on?

What of the serial killer who delights in torturing himself, causing things to B? What reason do we have for saying what he is doing is wrong, because, after all, he likes B?

Our axiomatic motive to automatically eschew anything that inhibits the survival or thriving of ourselves and those in our group. I already accounted for outliers like criminals and hypocrisy.  Individual people often change their ideas about the degree to which the good of the group should be prioritized in their subjective decision-making.  Should get something to eat on the way home from work because I'm hungry?  Or would it be better to wait so I can eat with the rest of the family at home?  Etc., etc.

Ultimately, on materialism, everything boils down to matter in motion.

Perhaps you've been listening too uncritically too often to Frank Turek's illogically extremist reductionism.

Sure, ultimately everything is just atoms.  But that doesn't mean materialism requires us to find that the collection of atoms we call "pillow" is equally capable of driving nails into wood, as is that collection of atoms we call "hammer". Materialism neither expresses nor implies that everything is equal.  Materialism fully acknowledges that some atomic structures are more efficient than others at achieving certain goals.

Making value judgments about matter in motion is meaningless.

Ultimately, yes, but not subjectively.  Once again, to be alive is to automatically imply that one will put forth some type and degree of effort to stay alive, therefore logically entailing that one will automatically eschew to some degree anything in the environment that does or appears to inhibit life.

But if everything is matter in motion, then there doesn’t seem to be any way to make value judgments.

Well not everything is matter in motion.  Some of that matter exists in specific configurations that give rise to consciousness and therefore the innate tendency to favor anything promoting life and eschew anything tending to hinder life.

And I could throw the same question back in your face:  You probably think that rape is objectively evil, but this contradicts that bible passage that says God "stirred up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women (Isaiah 13:15-17).  Apparently, the only reason you think rape is objectively evil is because God hasn't stirred up you to rape anybody just yet.  You get precisely nowhere by pretending that atheism cannot account for the human preference to make value-judgments.  Even if we admitted this is a mystery, your own alternative (i.e., a god who causes men to rape women) doesn't look much better.  And regardless, you Christians have no trouble saying the vast majority of your expanatory hypothesis (God) remains an inscrutable mystery, yet you don't think it's mysterious nature justifies the non-Christian to dismiss it. 

So, to be fair, since you don't think "we admit this is a mystery" constitutes defeat, then you cannot characterize atheism as false merely because there are realities that you think atheism cannot explain. 

How does one value a rock over a stick?

The rock might prove much more efficient at breaking open shells or other forms of food contained within hardened enclosures.  What are you going to ask now?  Why somebody would find the tool that is more efficient at attaining their goals, to be more desirable?

But then, on materialism, people are just stuff too; albeit more complex. However, if you were to break us down into our ultimately realities, we are no different than the rock. We are matter organized in a different way. Why value us?

You are simply repeating your questions.  Once again, to be alive is to therefore automatically evince some degree and type of preference for anything that promotes life and eschew anything that tends to inhibit life.  It comes with the territory.  You continue mischaracterizing the situation as one that needs a moral answer, when you ask the "why" question, but as I pointed out earlier, that's like asking "why" water is wet.  You are simply ignorant of what axioms are and why they are fully exempt from questioning.

There is no objective reason to do so.

There's no objective moral law that says what time kids must go to bed on a school night.  But the subjective law imposed by their respective parents, a law that differs wildly from house to house, seems to suffice.  Apparently ultimate subjectivity isn't as hopeless as you think.

Therefore, there is no objective meaning or value.

A problem for those who believe in a higher purpose, not a problem for those who accept the logical implications of their own mortality.

Life is purposeless, meaningless, valueless.

Ultimately?  Yes.  Subjectively?  No.  And one form of Christianity, Calvinism, would say that when atheists draw their incorrect conclusions, they do so because God infallibly predestined them to do so.  An atheist knowledgeable of Calvinism could make a reasonable biblical case that we are doing the will of God by denying any ultimate purpose to life. 

And that point you have to do the stupid thing and insist that we are wrong to fulfill the will of God.

Atheistic materialism demands this bleak view of the universe.

 It's only "bleak" to those who have been previously conditioned to believe that life involves something more glorious after physical death, or it is only bleak to those who fear death and are thus naturally inclined to give in to some after-world religious view.

I’m not saying it’s a good reason to abandon that [un]belief. I’m merely saying that those who hold such a view must be consistent.

You are correct that many atheists falsely aspire to objective morality and purpose.  If atheism is true, then no, there would be no ultimate or objective morality and purpose, only a morality and purpose of individuals living on some damp dus-tball lost in space.

“Now all has been heard;

here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

for this is the duty of all mankind.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

including every hidden thing,

whether it is good or evil.” -Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

 That was about as productive as quoting something from the Koran.  Let's just say I'm not exactly shivering with fright over the question "what if Christianity is true?"