J. Warner Wallace and the flying spaghetti monster flop

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

“Believing in God is the same as believing in the ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’”

Posted: 14 Oct 2019 01:29 AM PDT

Response #1:
“What do you mean by ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’? Are you referring to the fictional deity created by Bobby Henderson in 2005?

Yes.  It's comparable to the fictional character created by Iron Age goat-herders.  Hence the analogy.

Mr. Henderson created that character (and a larger narrative called, ‘Pastafarianism’), to protest the fact that Intelligent Design was being considered as part of the science curriculum in the state of Kansas.

Good for him.  You open the door to ID in the schools, fairness demands that you give equal time to ALL over views.  

No one actually believes in a Flying Spaghetti Monster, including its creator, Mr. Henderson.

Ok, then we'll use the analogy of "tooth-fairy" or "Santa Claus". 

He’s tried to protest the existence of religion by equating Pastafarianism to religious belief, and he’s even applied for religious status in a number of countries. He’s been repeatedly denied, however. Why? Because international legal bodies understand the difference between religious claims and fictional claims. Can you see the difference as well?”

And since international bodies have no ulterior motives to keep the status quo, their solitary motive in denying the FSM religion is their advanced degrees in philosophy,  no doubt. 

No one actually believes in a Flying Spaghetti Monster, including its creator, Mr. Henderson.

But if he started publicly proclaiming belief in such god, America and certain other countries would likely permit him freedom to exercise that religion. 

Response #2:
“Are you saying that belief in God is the same as belief in fairy tales or imaginary characters?

Yes.  There is no more evidence that adherents of major world religions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc) have any more accurate knowledge of the deity they worship, than Henderson has of the FSM.  But most of them are probably deceived into thinking that because people have cooked up lots of stories about these others gods for thousands of years, there is something "more" to the "major" gods.  Not so. 

If so, this assumes that fictional characters and God are equally unsupported by the evidence.

They are. 

But this isn’t true at all. What evidence do we have, for example, to support the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

About as much evidence as there is to support your Christian notion that your mind exists in another dimension, or that your moral outlook is beamed into you from another dimension. 

Is there anything other than the text written by its creator (in this case, Bobby Henderson)?

Yes, the big bang proves that the FSM is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, etc. 

The case for God’s existence, by contrast, is evidentially robust, even without any ancient text.

Hold it just a cotton pickin' minute:  there is nothing about the word 'god' that distinguishes it from the FSM, you are merely choosing to use a term that has been around longer.

For example, the existence of our finite, finely tuned universe points to an all-powerful, creative force outside of space, time and matter.

Except that speaking of "outside of space, time and matter" is to defend an incoherernt concept, since there is no such thing as "outside" of "space", or "time".  The universe is no more finely tuned for humans than your attic is finely tuned for mold-growth, and your own bible contains passages that logically contradict the notion of God's omnipotence.  Since every biblical description of heaven indicates events take place there in no less temporal progression than they do on earth, biblical "heaven" is not in another dimension, it is within "time".  You will insist all such language is mere "anthropomorphism", but you'll have to demonstrate the non-literal intent from the context of each passage, you cannot, and if you did, you would open the door to the possibility that some other biblical passages, the literal interpretation of which you require to ground your theology, were not intended literally. 

The inexplicable origin of life (driven by information in the genetic code)

God of the gaps fallacy.  No, you are not saying this because the origin of life looks like intelligent design.  You simply rest upon the fact that science doesn't have all the answers yet. 

and appearance of deign in biology point to an intelligent creator who has a purpose in mind.

If so, then that purpose was that carnivores exist before sin entered the world, which means the sadism in nature is not a result of evil or sin, but of God being like a demented toddler, and chaining two dogs together just because he knows they will massacre each other.  Sure, you can escape those problems by being a young earth creationist and hence blame all the yucky stuff on 'sin', but the biblical case for old earth creationism is strong, in which case we are reasonable to interpret the biblical god as desiring carnivores to inflict misery on other creatures long before "sin" happened.  For example, birds obviously cause misery to lower life forms, such as eagles which tear apart the squirrel, fish or rabbit while it is still alive, yet Jesus says it is God who supplies the birds their food: 

 26 "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? (Matt. 6:26 NAU)

  41 "Who prepares for the raven its nourishment When its young cry to God And wander about without food? (Job 38:41 NAU)
  9 He gives to the beast its food, And to the young ravens which cry. (Ps. 147:9 NAU) 

Really?  It is god who not only wanted predatory birds to tear apart their still-alive prey, but for some of them to eat the newly hatched chicks straight out of the nest (see here), not much different than the human cannibal who sneaks into your infant's bedroom and eats him alive.  There will be stupid Christians out there who insist that birds of prey make sure their prey is dead before they rip into it, which would then mean that certain videos on youtube are just really clever photoshops.  See here.

Wallace continues: 

Our experience of consciousness and free agency is also incomprehensible under atheistic materialism, but can be easily explained if we were created by an immaterial, conscious, free agent. 

The consciousness argument is ridiculous, as Christians don’t believe animals are made in the image of god, yet animals still have a “consciousness”.  Sure is funny that consciousness becomes more and more complex as we move up the ladder from simpler to more complex life forms.  As for freewill, there is no scientific evidence that the will of a person is “free” from the laws of physics (alcohol, drugs and brain injury obviously cause an impact on our “freewill”, and attributing this to the mind being the brain, is far more rational and reasonable than the trifling that maybe the mind comes into the brain from another dimension, and has trouble manifesting itself if the brain is altered).  If the will could be free from physics, it would thus be free from the laws of cause and effect, which would then mean freewill proves that we are ultimately irrational.  At the end of the day, there really is no "reason" why you choose a pencil over an equally available pen...you "just" did...the very definition of irrationality (i.e., action without reason).

“easily explained”?  Ok, if you are trying to keep Christian “babies” from apostatizing, then yes, whatever the "easier" explanation is, would be their preferred choice.  But truth is not limited to what’s easy.  however, given that you wish to make money selling Jesus, I can understand why you'd be quick to give those potential donors to your ministry, or buyers of your books, the "easier" solution. 

Finally, the existence of transcendent, objective moral truths and obligations are best explained by the existence of a transcendent, personal moral law giver. 

You are also high on crack:  there is no such thing as objective moral truth in the transcendent sense you intend.  I don’t care if you insist “thou shalt not torture babies to death solely for entertainment”,  YOU are the one that has the burden of showing any moral to be transcendentally “objective”, and you aren’t doing that by discovering that other human beings agree with you about certain morals. 

You will say the fact that the vast majority of people in history obeyed this is proof that it is objective, but that’s like saying that because most dogs have a natural inclination to attack anything that is trying to get into their food, this moral only comes into them from "god". 

Can you see how – based on science and philosophy alone – the existence of God is reasonable even while the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not?

No, but I see how by switching out "Flying Spaghetti Monster" for "god" would likely cause your mostly Christian readership to think all is well.  The truth is that "god" is nothing but a made up word with made up definition, and like the FSM, does not link to anything in the real world.

Can you also see that the case for God can be made without any ‘sacred text,’ while the case for the Flying Spaghetti Monster is entirely dependent on Mr. Henderson’s text?”

Didn't you know that Henderson chapter 1 v. 20 says you are inexcusable because what may be known of FSM is manifest, because the FSM has declared it unto you?  The more you deny this truth, the more you prove to be a disciple of the devil.  I go to Henderson church every Sunday, and I'm not gonna let you steal my joy in the FSM.

Response #3:
“There’s one incredibly important difference between belief in God and belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the creator of the Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson, mistakenly admitted the difference when he first created the character. Henderson conceived the fictional deity as a form of protest against religious belief in general. He originally claimed that his belief in the Spaghetti Monster (called ‘Pastafarianism’) was the same as other religious beliefs because Pastafarians had ‘several lengthy volumes’ explaining all the details of their religion and that there were ‘over 10 million’ Pastafarians (neither fact is true, however). Henderson’s intentionally false claim, however, reveals the error in comparing God to the Spaghetti Monster. Henderson assumed that belief in God was dependent on religious texts and accepted belief.

Blame it on the fundamentalist Christians who think quoting the bible infuses magic into the air.

 Neither is true, however. A belief in God is reasonable even without a religious text, 

First, what's reasonable for YOU does not dictate what's reasonable for another person.  Reasonableness and accuracy are not the same thing.

Second, my attack on Jesus' resurrection is solid, therefore, Christianity is false.  If Christianity is false, you would likely just play the odds and start stacking all of your money on the God of pre-Christian Judaism.  But the falsity of Christianity would then mean you had been misrepresenting that god for 2,000 years, in which case, there is far more evidence that, under the assumption Christianity is false, whatever god still existed would be far more pissed off at the Christians than he would at atheists.

Third, the god of the bible has no problem getting rid of a person's sin with a wave of his magic wand (2nd Samuel 12:13) and causing people to believe and do whatever he wants, with a wave of his magic wand, see Ezra 1:1.  So if I was in trouble with this god, I would be able to correctly protest that he must have wanted me to make all the decisions I did, because he had both ability and opportunity to make me think differently, and yet just sat there doing nothing....like a man who notices a woman being raped, sees no further danger in reporting this to the police, has ability and opportunity to so interfere, but then doesn't report anything, then later insists he cannot be held morally accountable because he was just doing what god was doing, and respecting the rapist's freewill.  FUCK YOU.

and even if no one joins a religious group. God’s existence can be inferred from cosmological, biological, neurological (mental) and moral evidence in our universe, unlike a belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 

We can fix that right now:  Let's stop saying "Flying Spaghetti Monster", and start saying "Flying Spaghetti GOD who decides when and where to open the eyes of unbelievers".  There, now we use the word "god", and we infuse into our new cult the same bullshit theology you tell yourself to explain why some people resist your religious claims.  Maybe we'll incorporate a "still small voice" in there somewhere, achieve tax-free status, make up songs about the FSM, and eventually put you completely out of business?

Demolishing Triablogue: Substance dualism is total bullshit

 This is my reply to an article at Triablogue by Steve Hays entitled 

Monday, October 07, 2019

Moreland–is there life after death? 

In this post I'll use "dualism" as shorthand for substance dualism. I subscribe to Cartesian interactionist dualism. I don't subscribe to Thomistic dualism (hylomorphism).

Apostle Paul forbids Christians from wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14).  Since in context he is discussing doctrine, and he concludes word-wrangling to be "useless" and harmful, the interpretation which says Paul in his old age disagreed with his prior instigating verbal wars with Jews in synagogues and otherwise defying this principle due to his youthful but ignorant zeal, is a reasonable interpretation.

Notice how little I care about "reconciling" the Paul of the Pastorals with the Paul of Acts and other epistles.  I think it has something to do with the fact that because most Christian scholars deny inerrancy or otherwise cannot agree with each other on its scope, there is no intellectual compulsion upon a non-Christian to automatically attempt harmonization of NT concepts.  If the profferred interpretation is consistent with the grammar and immediate context, that's all that is necessary to render it 'reasonable'.  Merely suggesting that we wouldn't expect one author to contradict himself, and questions of whether the larger context is "equally" important, venture into far more ambiguous areas.

However, even assuming bible inerrancy is true, reconciling my absolutist interpretation of 2nd Timothy 2:14 with Paul's previous desire to start verbal wars is easy:  What does Paul mean there?  Well, we can know what he didn't mean (if we are to assume his teaching were all consistent). He didn't mean you should engage in scholarly arguments about the meaning of words and phrases, because other related advice he gives indicates Paul thinks "teaching" and "persuading" are limited to your "preaching at" others, not interacting with the details of their arguments:

 9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning,
 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned. (Tit. 3:9-11 NAU)

First, Steve's hardcore inerrancy and Calvinism force him to classify any arguments against anything he believes as "foolish", so the unbeliever could reasonably argue, if they wished,  that by refusing to consider Steve's arguments, they are helping him avoid foolish controversies, sonething he would be drawn into by logical necessity if he chose to reply to the rebuttals of skeptics.

Second, Paul apparently believed that if you disagree with him, his followers are to "warn" you.  Since under bible inerrancy, he cannot have contradicted his 2nd Timothy 2:14 command to avoid word wrangling, then smooshing all this biblical crap together gives us the following result:  You are to limit yourself to two warnings when replying to those who disagree with Apostle Paul's theology, and those warning cannot consist of conduct that would amount to wrangling of words.

The reasonableness of that interpretation is not going to be diminished or made to disappear merely because the inerrantist reader can thump his chest and confidently boast that surely Paul was not condemning informed sincere scholarly interchange. 

So if the unbeliever wished to use Steve's word-wrangling as an excuse to say he is a hypocrite for failing to follow his faith-hero's basic advice about methdology, they would be reasonable to do so, if they so chose. 

And if Steve obeys this interpretation and he actually stops interacting with skeptics after the second "warning" (as he did with me), then the skeptic could easily get the "last word", then boast that Steve has failed to maintain his position against criticism.  Then Steve's mind would be a whirlwind of "should I respond to protect my pride?" and "or should I just tell my friends that God infallibly predestined me to drop the debate?"

Back to Steve's comments:

A. This is a fairly useful exchange as far as it goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfsZ_-Z_OY But it tries to cover far too much ground in far too little time.

So if the unbeliever felt it was unconvincing, there might actually be an intellectually justified basis for her to dismiss this video and regard her need to do laundry as more important than using her emergency rent money to purchase Dualism books by Moreland.

Oh, did I forget?  While J.P. Moreland is hailed by all Christians as an especially smart Christian philosopher, up there with the likes of William Lane Craig, he is not a Calvinist. That is, Steve is foced to admit that not even being a very smart person in Philosophy and the bible, and not even being genuinely born again,  provide the least bit of guarantee that you will EVER correctly understand biblical truths that Steve insists are "clear".

Steve will be unhappy to know that Moreland is an evidentialist, and despite being one of the world's smartest christian "philosophers", still thinks Presuppositionalists see no reason to "correct" a fallaciously question begging approach:

One's response to this objection will turn, in part, on one's approach to apologetics. If one is a fideist or a presuppositionalist (roughly, the view that rational argumentation and evidence cannot be offered as epistemic support for Christian theism from some neutral starting point), then one may say that begging the question is not a problem here. If one is an evidentialist, as I am...

Christianity and the Nature of Science, Baker, 1989, p. 205, fn. 42)

And yes, Steve and Moreland both agree that god's word is "perspicuous" or "clear".  What could be more funny than two Christians who each believe God's word is "clear", who nevertheless still accuse each other of denying the "clear" teaching of scripture?  Steve continues:

Also, Moreland and the interviewer are talking at cross-purposes for a while, which squanders precious time.

Same answer.

B. Moreland probably has far more to say about religious pluralism, but due to time constraints, deflected that issue.

Nice to know you are willing to use your background knowledge of Moreland to justify this speculation.  It will come in handy the next time you berate a skeptic for depending upon his own background knowledge of life to justify opposition to miracle claims, the way a mother depends on her background knowledge of her daughter to justify strong suspicion the daughter is lying...at a time before the mother can conclusively prove such.  You are a fool if you think it's always irrational to use one's background knowledge to justify dismissing a truth-claim.  I don't have all the answers to every trifle a Mormon apologist could possibly raise...so is my rejection of Mormonism irrational?

C. Up to a point, dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent explanations. Both are consistent with the data that the interviewer cited, viz. memory loss, inability to form new memories, and loss of cognitive function.

Only in the opinion of somebody who thinks a theory that invokes "other dimensions" is equal to a theory that is purely naturalistic, when that clearly isn't the case.  "an angel did it" and "Bill did it" also possibly explain why a book is sitting on a table.  But the naturalist explanation obviously wins hands down apart from very compelling reasons to invoke invisible people and other dimensions.

According to dualism, the brain is an interface between the mind and the physical world.

Which means according to dualism, your mind comes into your brain from another dimension.  And yet Christian apologists want their views to be given equal consideration.

It mediates action or information in both directions. If damaged, the brain blocks input or output at both ends.

You would never say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, because its obvious from the fact of muscle damage = loss of muscular strength that the "strength" or emergent property of the muscle is no less purely physical than the muscle itself.

But no, because the bible teaches the mind can exist apart from the brain, you will fight and die before you'll draw a similar conclusion from the fact that brain injury = loss of mental ability. 

If the brain is damaged, that may block new sensory input. That prevents the mind from receiving new information from and about the sensible world.
 If, conversely, the brain is damaged, that may block the ability of the mind to communicate with the outside world. Memories are stored in the mind, not the brain. If the brain is damaged, that impedes retrieval.

Except that physical memory molecules are real (see here), therefore, when brain degeneration takes place (Alzheimer's, i.e., the actual degradation of brain tissue and not merely blockage of neurons), memories actually disappear after the disease progresses from neuron blockage to actual degeneration of brain tissue.

Sorry Steve, but your twilight zone dualism would fail Occam's Razor before any naturalistic explanation would, regardless of how petulant and petty your endless trifles of language might be when you are trying to defend your position.

The memories can't get through a washed out bridge.

You may as well say muscular damage is why the strength, coming from another dimension through the muscle, cannot manifest as perfectly when the muscle or interface is damaged. Oh wait...the bible doesn't say muscular strength comes from the spirit-world, so that's the only reason you are comfortable thinking the purely naturalistic explanation of strength is permissible.

And before you get all cocky about how the mind = the spirit, you might want to google for that verse that says the spirit can pray without the mind understanding (i.e., not every bible verse agrees that the mind equals the spirit), and then explain to atheists why Paul defended a type of communication with god that is, by definition, 100% irrational.  You don't know what the fuck is going on...but yeah...you are legitimately "praying" to god nonetheless.  LOL.

So long as the mind is embodied, that imposes limits on mental activity.

Once again, your view presupposes the mind comes from another dimension, and the efforts of your cohort Jason Engwer to prove the reality of the Enfield Poltergeist do little more than show that everybody at Triablogue have been brainwashed to the same extent as the fools who trifle that playing with live rattlesnakes is a sign of spiritual maturity.  In both cases, the fact that anybody would dare challenge what they believe, is just proof that the challenger is either biblically incompetent, or being used by the devil, or both. 

The idea that you might actually be wrong about something, is completely off the table in your mind.  In other words, you have equated the posibility of you being wrong, with the possibility of god being wrong, since you wipe both possibilities completely off the table.

What we can be sure of, however, is that the so-called "evidence" for non-physical life is complete horseshit.  I don't care how many articles you write exploiting the minutia of the Amityville Lutz family drama, to pretend that some aspects of their experiences are consistent with demon possession. Gee, I'm pissing myself with worry that there might actually be another dimension or a real god (the historical evidence supporting Jesus' resurrection is incredibly weak, therefore, he more than likely stayed dead, therefore, Christianity is false, therefore, if the emergency backup god you plan to invoke in that case is the god of the OT, then because Christianity misrepresented that god for 2,000 years [i.e.., he didn't raise Jesus from the dead], that god is likely more pissed off at Christians than he is at atheists, since Christians, as teachers, thus receive the greater judgement, James 3:1, while those who are ignorant get lesser punishment, John 9:41).

In other words, when I get rid of Jesus' resurrection, you lose on all points.  The mere existence of a god and my own atheism would not begin to suggest that I was in the least bit of danger.

All things being equal, the scales tip slightly in favor of physicalism as the simpler explanation.

Damn straight.

All things considered, additional evidence weighs heavily on the dualist side of the scales.

Sorry, I've investigated Moreland's The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Moody Publishers; New edition (March 1, 2014), and now I'm even more certain that dualism is false and requires Paul's worshippers to violate 2nd Timothy 2:14 just to make their case.  That's not the only dualist case I've considered.  (and since you think people are foolish to deny NDEs, the denial of NDEs constitutes a "foolish contention" and therefore constitutes the type of thing Paul told you to stay away from.  Titus 3:9.  You aren't "staying away" from such things when you blog about them and expect atheists to engage, that's rather intentional disobedience on your part to divine command.

D. Moreland greatly understates the evidence for the afterlife. I'll begin by proposing a more complex taxonomy:

Then apparently, if an unbeliever saw this video, wasn't impressed, and dismissed it, you really couldn't blame them.

1. Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife 2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife 3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife 4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife Let's run back through these: (1)-(2) constitute evidence for dualism. If there's evidence that the mind is ontologically independent of the brain, then that's indirect evidence for the afterlife. That's what makes disembodied consciousness possible.

Take your best shot, as I'm sure you will tell yourself you'll try.

1.  Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife i) The hard problem of consciousness. Philosophical arguments that the characteristics of consciousness are categorically different from physical structures and events. ii) Roderick Chisholm's argument: https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/body-and-soul.html

I now respond to the arguments at that link:

------------
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Body and soul
The hard problem of consciousness is the best-known philosophical argument for substance dualism, but here's another argument by the eminent American philosopher Roderick Chisholm: 

In metaphysics, he held the view that ordinary objects (tables, chairs, etc.) are ‘logical fictions’, and that what exists “in the strict and philosophical sense” are parcels of matter. Parcels of matter cannot lose parts and continue to exist as the same things, according to Chisholm. But what we think of as ordinary objects are gaining and losing parts all the time, he noted. Some molecules that once composed the table in front of me no longer do so. They have been chipped off, and the table worn away with time. The same holds for human bodies. They gain and lose parts all the time, and thus for Chisholm, human bodies don’t persist through time “in the strict and philosophical sense.” But persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body.

That's foolish, people's bodies get old and then they die, they no more "persist" through time than does a tree or a dog.

Therefore, he concluded, persons are not identical with their bodies, nor with any part of the body that can undergo change.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/75/On_Roderick_Chisholm

Would love to see you work that into America's criminal justice system, something that you would agree is a place where people want to find out the "actual" truth:  the fact that the criminal's body committed the crime doesn't necessarily prove that his PERSON committed the crime (i.e., Calvinist theology:  when a genuinely born again Christian sins, this is not their person, this is only the sin WITHIN them (Romans 7:17, 25).

Now what Steve?  Maybe the fact that mixing America's legal system with biblical ideas of self would cause America to die a horrific death just vindicates the bible?  And then you don't understand why other people say you are completely brainwashed?   How are you philosophically any less committed than the terrorist who praises Allah for each shriek of pain the child emits as he beats it to death?  "God's ways are mysterious" is therefore such a dangerous excuse that this is enough to justify the atheist to dismiss it when Christians use it, and demand either sufficient explanation or concession that the Christian has lost the debate.

CWB9/10/2019 10:57 PM☍Steve, what are your thoughts on his statement that persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body? Is that true, and how do we know, apart from our sense that we are the same person over time? I think that the strength of the argument for dualism is predicated on the fact that my (any of us) awareness of my body is an awareness of a physical object, but no part of my awareness of my personhood (which I call the me inside of me) includes awareness of anything physical, and it is not perceived through any of the [five] senses by which we perceive matter.
 steve9/10/2019 11:08 PM☍That's a good way of putting it.
-----------------

And Steve actually thinks stupid trifling pathetic bullshit like this contributes to the reasons why unbelievers are "without excuse" before God.

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife i) Veridical near-death experiences and veridical out-of-body experiences.  ii) ESP, psychokinesis. If all mental activity takes place inside the brain, then the mind can't know about the physical world or act on the physical world apart from sensory input or the body interacting with its environment. If, conversely, there's empirical evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain, then that's evidence for the metaphysical possibility of disembodied postmortem survival.

Sure.  Go ahead and give evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain.   I would have said be sure to use your brain in this endeavor, but I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence.

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife i) The biblical witness to the intermediate state.

I may as well be listening to an Arminian quote the bible to prove Arminianism.  Seventh Day Adventists cannot be considered unsaved because they fall within the pale of orthodoxy, so when they give an interpretation of the bible, you are not free to pretend it is unworthy of serious consideration because it comes from spiritually dead people who cannot possibly know better....yet they insist on soul sleep, and that the life of the sinner cannot be separate from the body.

Peter Van Inwagen in 1995 was a Christian and offered a critique of the mind-body dualism he admitted many Christians hold to.  Dualism and Materialism:  Athens or Jerusalem?, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Vol. 12, No. 4, October 1995.  See another Christian critique here.

I'm not trying to pretend these articles "refute" dualism.  I'm only showing that because even spiritually alive Christians don't find it convincing, YOU are the fool to 'expect' the spiritually dead person to appreiciate the alleged force of your own arguments in favor of dualism. Doesn't matter if dualism helps refute atheism or materialism...you have to first worry whether your own theory is "truthful", and because so many Christians reject dualism, this will always be sufficient rational warrant for the atheist to dismiss your arguments outright as leading to something other than actual truth.  What are atheists intellectually obligated to do?  Address each and every argument that any fool theist drums up?  No.  Are YOU intellectually obligated to address each and every argument for naturalism that any fool atheist might drum up?  No.  And yet it only takes one successful argument for naturalism to overturn your Christian belief.  So if you can be rational to place your own limit on how much research you need to do before you can draw ultimately conclusions about the subject matter, then atheists are going to be equally as reasonable to similarly place their own limits on how much research they need to do before they think it is enough to justify drawing ultimate conclusions.

That is, the childish "I got the last word, you didn't answer this argument over there, you are without excuse, Romans 1:20 has been vindicated!" means precisely nothing, especially to mature people.

If there's good evidence that the Bible is a trustworthy source of information, then that's indirect evidence for whatever it teaches.

And if there's an invisible taco that wants to attack you with bubbles on the planet Pluto, that's direct evidence that common sense is actually dangerous.

ii) The resurrection of Christ That's evidence, not for the immortality of the soul, but a reembodied state. That's what "Christian physicalists" pin their hopes on. However, the immortality of the soul is a bridge to the resurrection of the body. A philosophical objection to "Christian physicalism" is that if consciousness ceases at death, then what God resurrects isn't the same person who died but a copy of the person who died.

So?  We often accept copies as if they are indistinguishable from the originals, such as library books which are obviously different from the finished manuscript the authors turned over to the publishers.

Furthermore, the very fact that Christians allegedly get "incorruptible" bodies at the resurrection is already telling the reader that the person God changes you into, isn't going to have the same personal disposition toward sin that is currently the definition of your very nature.  So "copy" is actually a welcome change, not a concern.  What fool would pretend that the "you" who can never sin again is the same "you" that loved sin previously?  Some would argue that the resurrection is so drastic of a change that the new "you" really is better called a 'copy'.  I can mail you a razor blade if you don't like the parts of the bible that force you into blind stupidity.  They are just paper that can easily be easily sliced away.

And that raises questions of personal identity. If your existence is discontinuous, if there's a break or gap in your existence, then what does God restore? Is a copy of you you?

No, but because the bible says "yes", the problem is yours, not mine.

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife i) A subset of near-death experiences report meeting a decedent who wasn't known to be dead at the time. In a variation, the decedent imparts information that could not naturally be known. If the report is true, that's direct empirical evidence for postmortem survival.

Sorry, I've investigated enough NDE's and there comes a time when throwing clothes in the laundry become more important than saving 50,000 google search hits for me to 'investigate' later.  I don't ask Christians how I should limit or expand my investigations into such things, that's not for you to decide, anymore than it is for me to decide how much you should investigate Marian apparitions before you can be reasonable to draw ultimate conclusions on who or what was doing the appearing.  Unless you plan to say that atheists are under an intellectual obligation to investigate thousands of instances of whatever phenomena you boast proves your case (which would justify viewing you as a pompous fool), you are going to have to admit that there can come a time when the atheist's choice to stop investigating and do something else is NOT irrational.  Since you cannot really pin down when and where that piont would arrive, you are no authority on the matter and therefore that question is not properly yours to answer.  If I decide NDEs are fake because I read a single book by a skeptic about it, you couldn't condemn me unless you also condemn every Christian who "accepted Jesus" at a time when their knowledge of the bible was equally as limited...something you likely wouldn't do.

And you are a fool to pretend that atheists "should' check out your claims, since checking them out requires time.  But if you believe I'll go to hell immediately and forever upon physical death, and you believe I cannot really predict when I'll die, you have to believe that every moment I delay repenting, the more chance I take of ending up in hell.  Given your beliefs about the afterlife and how urgent the danger is for with every passing second, all you are doing when telling me to check out your arguments, is telling me that I can safely delay the day of my repentance, or, If I should happen to die while in the middle of checking out your claims, that's an exceptional situation that means I'll be given a second chance in the spirit-world...you know...the position taken by Lydia McGrew...or...you don't really care whether I actually end up in hell or not.  Reconcile THAT bullshit with the bible!

ii) Veridical postmortem apparitions, viz. poltergeists, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, Christophanies.
Posted by steve at 8:57 PM 

But enough skeptical debunking of such things has been done as to rationally justify the atheist wife who thinks that in her busy family life, any "free" time she might have would be better spent on family activities that have nothing to do with religion or the paranormal.  That is, the mere fact that you could trifle that some apparitions are true and thus another dimension exists, would not be sufficient to intellectually compel the atheist to "check it out".  I'm no Mormon scholar, but the fact that Mormon apologists continue on and on, relentlessly trifling away in the effort to show the historicity of the book of Mormon, does NOT operate to intellectually obligate anybody to either keep abreast of the latest such trifling, or admit that they are without reasonable justification for Book of Mormon skepticism.  There comes a time when not having the last word or not having a rebuttal argument, no longer counts as evidence of being "inexcusable".

But I'm quite sure that the fools at Triablogue are positively certain that their god would punish them severely if they didn't keep themselves updated on every biblical and metaphysical trifle under the sun.  After all, if they dared admit that their own chosen time to limit their study and start drawing conclusions, left them rational and reasonable, the skeptic could cite such arbitrary choice to justify the skeptic's similarly choosing to limit how much 'evidence' they investigate before it becomes safe to start drawing ultimate conclusions.  That would hurt Triablogue, who insist blindly that because they can come up with arguments an unbeliever refuses to deal with, said unbeliever is being irrational.

And don't even get me started on how the contradictions in the bible on god's justice reasonably justify the skeptic to view biblical hell as completely figurative...so that rejecting Christianity is about as dangerous as rejecting Mormonism, leaving the skeptic free from any intellectual obligation to "check it out".

Wasting Time with Triablogue's morals-expert Steve Hays

Christian fundamentalist Matthew Flannagan wrote an article defending William Lane Craig's Divine-Command Theory (DCT).  Atheist scholar Richard Carrier wrote a rebuttal.  Steve Hays comments on Carrier's rebuttal.  This is my reply to Hays' criticisms.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Richard Carrier on the rampage

 I'm going to comment on a screed by Richard Carrier:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/8708

That account was suspended but wayback still has it, here.

You have to wonder if Carrier had to much to drink when he wrote it.

Not even people who have that "higher" morality that Steve boasts for himself can resist calling names.  Surely we are idiots to deny how you have been transformed by Christ into a new creature who now avoids wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14).  Steve Hays has never committed that sin after he got saved, has he?

It's an attack on Matt Flanagan's Divine Command Theory. In commenting on Carrier's post, I'm not going to get into the weeds of DCT. That's Flanagan's specialty, so I will leave that to him. He can more than hold his own against the likes of Carrier.

That's quite a concession, you often don't hear hyper-Calvinists admitting the intellectual brilliance of other Christians whom the Calvinist thinks are missing the biblical forest for the trees.

But much of what Carrier says isn't tied to DCT, per se.
Before delving into the details, I'd like to make a general observation. Carrier evidently regards atheism as synonymous with secular humanism. His attack on DCT goes way beyond the negative, minimalistic definition of atheism as "nonbelief in God or gods." Rather, he proceeds as though atheism entails social obligations. 

    Theology has no salvageable theory of morality. Theists complain atheists have no reason to be moral. But in fact theists have no reason to actually be moral, as in: to elevate compassion, honesty, and reasonableness above all authority, even the authority of their own gods.

 There's nothing inherently wrong with the argument from authority if the appeal is to someone who is, in fact, a legitimate authority figure.

I would agree that some atheists try to transform the denial of god into social policy.  For my own reasons, I decline.  You also shouldn't teach children that collateral damage can be morally justified.  Some people simply aren't ready to learn certain hard truths, and will never be ready, to learn certain hard truths.

    Unless they covertly adopt a naturalistic moral theory (and most do), they are not actually moral people. They are minions. Theists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of whatever monster manufactured the universe. Or rather, whatever monster some men made up and duped them into thinking it made the universe. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever random ignorant madmen wrote their scriptures and now thumps their pulpits with sufficiently fiery claims of special divine communications at bedtime. 

Atheists are not actually moral people. They are minions. Atheists are essentially the unquestioning gestapo of amoral physical determinism, which duped them into thinking their beliefs are rational. Which means, they are essentially the gestapo of whatever mindless, random natural process wired their brains and pushes their buttons. 

    I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Theism actually has no moral theory. 

I’m sorry to say, but that’s the truth. Atheism actually has no moral theory.
 

    This is why.    Hannibal Lecter created the universe? He escaped from a future holodeck simulation and then used a stolen TARDIS to Make the Universe after evaporating God by discovering the Babel Fish? Oh crap. Well, I guess we better get down with murder and elegant cannibalism or else he’ll be angry with us and send us to hell. Because he is now eternal and the supreme being and made the universe. So we can’t deny, his will and character is now the ground of all morality. And, oh yeah. This all totally makes sense.Is that any more sensible than…? 

That's an argument from analogy minus the supporting argument.

Not every critique requires "argument". There IS such a thing as choosing, for good reason, to air one's opinion without giving the supporting argument.  Decisions on what to slice and what to keep are largely subjective and thus mostly insulated from criticism.  Before you provide examples, perhaps you should consider that, given your Calvinist statement of faith, whether the bible could have been written in a more clear way had God commissioned John Calvin to do the work?  Oh gee, no way, Romans 9 just makes Calvinism more obvious than Calvinism makes itself, amen?

Carrier needs to demonstrate that this is, in fact, parallel to Christianity. All he's done is to stipulate an invidious comparison.

Steve Hays needs to demonstrate criteria by which reasonable people would agree on what arguments to include or exclude from an argumentative article.  If you write a book defending the resurrection of Jesus, can we call you stupid because you "didn't mention" certain skeptical arguments?  Writing about a certain subject does not mean you are intellectually obligated to back up every last breath you take therein with argument.  Waxing polemical without argument is something we learned from the biblical authors, so don't be too skippy on the "need" to "provide argument".  And read Mark's parenthetical remark (13:14) before you foolishly insist that by providing no explanation, the claimaint puts no intellectual obligation on the reader.  Gee, "let the reader understand" is supposed to take the place of "argument" or "support"?

    A cosmic Jewish zombie named Jesus who telekinetically fathered himself by a virgin and now resides in outer space, is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost that is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself and an ancient Canaanite storm god, and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that has eternally tainted our mammalian flesh ever since a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. So you better do what he says. 

Carrier has strung together a series of caricatures. What does that accomplish?

Probably this:  by boiling down biblical 'truths' to the irreducible cores, such "truths" tend to strike the average reader as absurdities, and thus unworthy of being taken seriously.

Since it's not an accurate description of Christian theology, how does ridiculing a caricature disprove Christian theology? Let's run through some of these descriptors:     "Cosmic" No. The Son is not a part of the cosmos. Rather, he essentially exists outside the physical universe.

Wrong, the bible says the Son "fills all things" Ephesians 4:10, and the fact that he does so after going to the "heavens" suggests he went to a place within the cosmos.  And since "outside the universe" is about as coherent as "north of the number 4", we continue to be rational in viewing Christian theology as incoherent.

    "Zombie" No, Jesus is not an ambulatory, cannibalistic corpse with minimal brain function.

A weak criticism if scholar Carrier knew the dictionary definition of zombie and intentionally took literary license, which is likely.  If I said Jesus was a clown, Hays would probably retort that there is no biblical or patristic support for the notion that Jesus wore makeup.

Rather, he died, then was not only restored to life, but glorified, so that he now has an ageless, youthful, immortal, disease-free body. His mental faculties are fully intact.

Telling us you likely intended your criticism more for Christians than for non-Christians, as only Christians would find it the least bit compelling.  Yes, I am assuming the stupidity of the arguments for Christianity.  I'm under no intellectual obligation to provide argument for every opinion I set forth.

    "telekinetically, telepathically" Carrier uses this terminology because he thinks telepathy and telekinesis are ridiculous. Yet these are well-attested phenomena.

Telling us you are likely high on crack.  The secular evidence of such is total bullshit, we are rational to insist the studies be done while we watch in real time before we become intellectually obligated to believe any such thing is real.  Furthermore, if you were talking about "miracles" (as if you think miracles happen) I've issued a challenge to Craig Keener by email and open letter for him to show us the one miracle claim recounted in his two volume "Miracles" work that he thinks is the most impervious to falsification.  So far, zip.  I've already interacted with you before about the stupidity of claiming miracles happen in the modern world, and, characteristic of somebody who fears their bluster won't last long under cross examination, you dropped the debate after you gave your two-cents.  Perhaps you were too busy at your second job in your effort to help Engwer help fund the digitization of the Maurice Grosse's Enfield tapes so that you could then prove that poltergeists are real.  Let's just say I don't think disregarding Triablogue leaves me ignorant of any part of reality.  I choose when I'll bother with your ridiculousness the way I choose which vintage cartoons to watch during a boring moment.

    "fathered himself" I take it that Carrier is suggesting that's an oxymoron. But that ignores the preexistence of the Son.

That's right.  And because Mark wanted to prove Jesus was the Son of God, his silence on the virgin birth is less likely due to authorial intent, and more likely due to his either not knowing such stories, or disapproving of them.  Jesus also ignored issues of his own preexistence when talking to Gentiles...apparently, the canonization of the NT made Christian belief more complex for Gentiles than Jesus ever intended it to be.  We thus WORRY about "ignoring" the preexistence of the Son like we WORRY should we misquote Goldilocks.

    "by a virgin" A miracle, which functions a sign.

And assuming Matthew wrote the gospel now bearing his name, he apparently 'expected' that what he said about the virgin birth was sufficient to intellectually compel Gentiles to believe the story...despite his taking Isaiah 7:14 out of context (i.e, the more honest way of saying "typological fulfillment"). 

    "now resides in outer space" Where did Carrier come up with that?

What pre-scientific notion of the heavens did Jesus intend to encourage within his disciples when he intentionally "ascended" in their sight "into heaven"?

 51 While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. (Lk. 24:51 NAU)

 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. (Acts 1:9 NAU)

Apparently, "heaven" really does exist "up there", a premise supported by scores of other bible verses. 

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

 20 For it came about when the flame went up from the altar toward heaven, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar.  (Jdg. 13:20 NAU)

Once you ask "how would these passages have been interpreted by their original pre-scientific audiences?", you know perfectly well the "heaven is up there" belief is what was held by all of the biblical peoples.  Whether you can reconcile such statements with modern cosmology is quite beside the hermeneutical point.  And only a Christian worried about biblical "inerrancy" would feel motivated to care about such a word game anyway.

The Bible doesn't say that. Does Carrier equate the Biblical concept of "heaven" with "outer space"?

Well given the bible says heaven is "up there", and means it literally, and science tells us "up there" consists of nothing more than "outer space", the answer is yes.

    "is possessed by the spirit of a supernal ghost" A ghost is the soul of a dead human being. The Holy Spirit isn't human, and never died. Indeed, the Holy Spirit isn't "alive" in the biological sense.

Like it matters.  "not alive in the biological sense" merely means "alive in an incoherent sense".  Now what, Steve?  Gonna point to the Enfield Poltergeist that Engwer spent all that money on trying to research, to "prove" that non-physical "life" can be real?  LOL.  If the voice is heard within the cosmos, why do you automatically suspect origination from another dimension?

    "That is in some sort of parallel-dimensioning identical with but distinct from himself" Carrier's attempt to parody the Trinity. A more accurate analogy would be a mirror symmetry.

Ok, Jesus sees the father when he looks in the mirror.  What are you going to do now, start the world's first Calvinist Oneness Pentecostal denomination?

    "and promises to make you live forever in an alternate dimension" If that's an allusion to the intermediate state, then it's not a physical dimension. Discarnate souls don't exist in space.

But since you cannot show that "outside of space" is even coherent, what you suggest can be safely and reasonably dismissed as nonsense-talk.

If that's an allusion to the final state, then that's not an alternate dimension, but the renewed earth.

Like it matters.

    "if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood" Most evangelicals don't think you acquire eternal life by celebrating the Lord's Supper.

Then apparently they never read Jesus' statement to that effect, which was taken so literally by many of his followers that they fell away, when in fact if it had been obvious when Jesus said it that he was speaking only figuratively (as evangelicals maintain), the statement would not likely have caused such controversy and apostasy.  Let's now consult the bible's "devil-verse":

 57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.
 58 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."
 59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
 60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?"
 61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble?
 62 "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?
 63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
 64 "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.
 65 And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."
 666 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. (Jn. 6:57-66 NAU)

If Jesus really did do genuinely supernatural miracles in sight of his disciples, it is absurd to think that a Christ-saying that Steve Hays, 2000 years after the fact, can still tell is merely figurative, would have caused such apostasy.  "Yeah, I know he did real miracles, but his figurative statement about eating his flesh was just too much".  LOL.

    "a rib-woman" Is there something antecedently false about the idea that God made the first woman from a tissue sample of the first man?

Fallacy of loaded question.  The concern here is what "god" did "in history", and therefore is subject to probability analysis, you don't just win merely because the allegation falls within the bounds of the logically possible.  And that's to say nothing of the growing list of Christian scholars who think the story of Adam and Eve is pure metaphor, despite the concerns of fundies that metaphorical interpretation of Adam and Eve would destroy the NT.  If Christianity's theology requires interpreting the story as historically literal, then I guess Christian theology is false.   Why would I worry about the interpretation of Adam and Eve as given by idiots who constantly took the OT out of context (Paul) as even admitted by other Christian scholars?

    "by a talking snake" The Hebrew designation is probably a pun that trades on the multiple senses and connotations of the word (snake, diviner, shining one).

And there you go again, setting up an opportunity to wrangle words and to thus disobey apostle Paul's prohibition in 2nd Timothy 2:14.

    "to eat from a magical tree" The text doesn't indicate that the tree of knowledge is a magical tree. That's like saying the ark of the covenant is a magical box, or that Moses' staff is a magical stick. Rather, what we have is a divinely assigned correlation.

I'm not seeing much of a difference.  You can make a bunny come out of the empty hat by "magic" or because God created the bunny ex nihilo after you showed everybody the hat was empty.  But since you seem hell-bent on disobeying 2nd Timothy 2:14, feel free to cherry pick your NT moral obligations.  We only expect such from those who disobey such bible passages.

These are ordinary objects. They have no special power. The result comes from God, not the object.

See above.

Is Carrier deliberately misrepresenting Christian theology, or is he actually that ignorant?

Is Steve just ignorant?  Or does he realize that "magic" in the biblical world view meant to make use of invisible people to accomplish what normal people could not?

    And lest we forget, that’s the Jesus who has nothing to say against slavery or the subjugation and disenfranchisement of women Argument from silence.

Not all arguments from silence are fallacious.  See Wigmore.  Yet you act as if "argument from silence" is all that need be uttered to reasonably view the criticized position as being fallaciously unsupported.

For that matter, Jesus said nothing against the disenfranchisement of men. It's not as if Roman rule was democratic. Most men had not vote.

Well then, Steve, what DO you think about Christians who believe God is working in them to create change in American politics, when in fact Jesus's silence about his disciples becoming involved in the world suggests he didn't want them wasting their time on "worldly" concerns?  Does there come a point when a person's misunderstanding of the Jesus in the gospels starts eroding the viability of their claim to be genuinely born-again?

    or the execution of homosexuals, other than, at best, It's striking to see contemporary atheists jump on the bandwagon of "gay rights." I don't recall atheists in the past spearheading the campaign for "gay rights." Were Antony Flew, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Paine, and Alexander White in the vanguard of the "gay rights" movement? Did I miss that? How did this suddenly become a self-evident moral maxim when so many prominent atheists of yore failed to discern it? Rather, atheists waited until it was safe to champion "gay rights." Waited until they felt the wind behind their backs.

I agree with you against Carrier on this.  I'm an atheist, yet I see nothing about my atheism that means the rational next step is to support gay rights.  I have arguments against male homosexuality that are not employed by fundamentalist Christians, which show the reasonableness of viewing legalization of the act as an absurd departure from America's values and likely contributing to further complexity and thus bobsledding this nation on the way to societal collapse.  In the ancient world and before, the male who had no sexual attraction to females was likely that way due to genetic malfunction; nature selecting him for extinction.

     that you shouldn’t invite sluts and homos to legally murder the sluts and homos because that would be hypocritical (John 7:52-8:11, a forgery). The fact that the Pericope Adulterae is a scribal interpolation is hardly news. Any standard edition of the Bible will footnote that familar fact.
     Oh no, you are supposed to wait for Jesus to murder them (Matthew 3:12). i) To begin with, that text does't single out "sluts and homos."
ii) How does Carrier infer "murder" from that text? It's about eschatological judgment.

You are a CALVINIST, and you don't think killing people is part of god's "eschatological judgment"?

It doesn't even say God kills them.

Doesn't have to, it was addressed to Jews, who would have attempted to reconcile it with Deut. 32:39.

Rather, that might well be postmortem punishment. Not to mention the figurative imagery.
And even if God did kill then, killing isn't synonymous with murder. 

If advanced space aliens came to earth and started zapping people dead, it would be rational to accuse them of "murder" despite the technical fact that they have their own set of laws that say it is legally allowable to kill earthlings.  So the fact that murder is different than "killing" merely because it techically means "unlawful killing" is a trifle of semantics that doesn't do you much more good than proving, once again, you have no intention of obeying 2nd Timothy 2:14.  Why not just end the suspense and admit that you finally discovered a command from Paul, applicable to you, that you refuse to obey?

    if the conditions he imagines existed, rape would be ethical—namely, if it was the loving and just thing to do (and we can imagine scenarios, though Flannagan wisely avoids attempting it: like, maybe, being forced to rape someone lest, the coercer informs you, the victim will be killed instead. Carrier fails to explain why, from the standpoint of secular ethics, it would be unethical to rape someone if the alternative is the victim's death.

Shouldn't have to.  Secular ethics are necessarily relative.  Smart  secularists don't fall into the trap of pretending there's some "objective morality" out there which they aspire to.  But I have to admit lots of people are truly ignorant about moral philosophy, and yes, they will pretend as if their moral beliefs are "absolute" without realizing what that implies, or caring.

If that's a forced option, isn't allowing the victim to be murdered worse than saving the victim's life, even if that entails rape? What is the secular basis for Carrier's disapproval? In fact, Carrier later says:
     To successfully argue that “loving and just” decisions are moral requires (i) appealing to the consequences of “loving and just” decisions and the consequences of “unloving or unjust” decisions, and then (ii) appealing to which of those consequences the moral agent prefers. But DCT can accomplish neither, except in exactly the same way ethical naturalism does. Therefore, DCT reduces to ethical naturalism in practical fact. It therefore cannot be an improvement on it. So he himself stipulates that taking the consequences into account are a necessary element in ethical decision-making.

I also observe the stupidity of the anti-consequentialist camp.  What fool would ever tell a kid, in the name of moral truth, that they can be good without considering the consequences of their actions?

According to his own hypothetical, the end-result of one choice is the death of the victim, while the end-result of the other choice is saving the victim's life–albeit by rape. If ethical decision-making comes down to weighing the respective consequences, then on what secular basis does Carrier conclude that rape would be wrong in that situation?

That's a good question for atheists who think morals can be "facts".  Count me out.  I observe that moral wrongness is utterly subjective.  While I would fight off an attempted murder of myself, that too is subjective, as I really wouldn't care if the whole world agreed I should die, I'd still subjectively try to save my life and thus act against those trying to kill me.  Frank Turek is correct:  if atheism is true, morals are relative.  But Frank Turek is also wrong:  if atheism is true, then asking "who is right, Hitler or Mother Theresa" is the fallacy of loaded question, falsely assuming that because a moral disagreement exists, surely somebody has to be in the "right", or both must be in the "wrong".  Nope.  You wouldn't ask that about two wild dogs fighting over a piece of meat, why ask it about human beings, who are just more intelligent dogs?

    DCT produces “infantile” moral reasoning, not only by reducing it to obeying what someone else says God wants, rather than applying one’s own critical reasoning to ascertain what is right, but also by eliminating any stable adult motivation to be moral. As atheists well know, from all the theists who terrifyingly admit they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell, this is profoundly immature moral reasoning. Where are all the theists who allegedly admit that "they would murder and rape everyone but for their fear of hell"?

This is an inference drawn after asking the question "why did NT authors want people to fear hell?  Were they trying to scare them into resisting their baser instincts?"

I haven't encountered them. To begin with, there's no reason to suppose theists in general even want to rape or murder everyone.

If you think that what people say in public is an accurate reflection of what they privately believe, then sure.

The actual argument is this: if a person would like to commit rape or murder, would he refrain even though he could do so with impunity?

My experience of other people tells me that a substantial number of them would commit various types of crimes if they were as sure as possible that they wouldn't get caught.  But for obvious reasons, few such people would publicly admit this baser instinct, because that admission has enough power to destroy marriages and friendships or partnerships.  If you need people to be honest about their dark secrets so you can record reliable data, you'll need all the luck in the world.

It doesn't imply that he in fact desires to rape or murder anyone, much less everyone. Rather, it's a conditional or hypothetical scenario. If someone happens to feel that way about someone else, would he act on his impulse if he could get away with it? It doesn't mean he normally has that impulse. He may never have that impulse.

Correct. 

    Adults reason differently: they won’t murder and rape anyone because they care about them.  There's no empirical evidence that atheists care about everyone. Indeed, there's abundant empirical evidence that atheists don't care about everyone.

I think Carrier meant to say that adults would never reason that raping a person they care about might possibly signify the rapist's "care" for them, which would then be completely opposite to the divine atrocities of the bible, wherein the fact that you obeyed god and forced a woman into marriage (Deut. 21:10-14) is all you need allege to show that such shot-gun wedding was "loving" toward her.   That is, Carrier likely meant that smart people gauge whether something is morally good or bad based upon the extent to which it causes others misery.  But in bible land, beating children to death is morally good solely because God willed it, and the god who willed it can never be evil, end of story.

In Christian ethics, by contrast, you should treat people justly even if you don't care about them personally.

Except that in a Calvinist's mind, God might have predestined you to commit the sin of acting unjustly toward another person, which, because it was infallibly divinely decreed, turns the unjust act into a just act, since the god who ordered it is necessarily good in all that he does, meaning god's act in forcing people to sin is a morally good act. 

You treat them justly because that's the right thing to do, and not because you care about their wellbeing. You may treat them justly in spite of what you think of them.
     on DCT, you can’t decide God is “evil” and thus to be defied, not obeyed…no matter how evil God is If an atheist came to believe in the existence of an evil God, would he defy him? That would be pretty foolhardy.

Not any more foolhardy than Jews of WW2 who preferred death over respecting Hitler.  He may indeed have had the power over their lives, but they were not irrational to decide that wearing the badge of martyrdom was better than conforming to an evil dictator's will. I'm not seeing a whole lot of practical difference between fighting Hitler to the death and fighting the biblical god to the death. Especially given that the doctrine of eternal conscious torment in the bible has a high degree of falsity to it, so that fighting the bible god becomes about as fearful as punching snowflakes.

    He never responds to Sinnott-Armstrong’s actual point: which is that either moral facts are wholly unknowable on DCT (and therefore DCT entails we can know nothing about morality, and therefore by definition cannot ground any morality), or they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT. But if they are knowable by virtue of observable properties apart from DCT, then they are already sufficiently moral by virtue of those properties. So we don’t need DCT. In what sense are "moral facts" "observable properties"? In ethics, we apply moral norms to concrete situations. Moral norms or ethical standards are not observable properties. Rather, they are ethical criteria by which we evaluate events or contemplated courses of action.
     Even if God exists, indeed even if a loving God exists, this is of no use to us in ascertaining what is and is not moral. Because He simply isn’t consistently or reliably telling anyone. Which begs the question.

No, Carrier's contention about God's inconsistent revelation is not the fallacy of begging the question, as there is plenty of good reason to suppose there is no god, or that the god is very inconsistent in how he communicates his will to human beings.  Carrier is speaking from what he observed in past research. Gee, Steve, if you make a statement in support of Calvinism, but you don't follow it with an 800 page book of arguments thereto, does that mean you have "begged the question"?   Do you seriously think its "wrong" to give your opinion without providing argument to back it up? 

Actually, you didn't support your contention that Carrier "begged the question"...so does that make you guilty of the same fallacy?  Must people ALWAYS follow their statement of belief with an argument before they can correctly avoid "begging the question"?  Obviously not.

    So all we have left is the ethical naturalist’s best alternative: an increasingly well-informed moral agent who cares about herself, and a body of advisors who care about her (crowdsourced knowledge, tested and accumulated from past to present). That’s the best you get. You don’t have access to an omniscient advisor. So you have to make do. And that means caring about whether you have enough information (about yourself and the world), and caring how to make the information you get more reliable, and caring whether you are reasoning from that information without logical fallacy or cognitive error. That’s the only way to get closer to the truth in matters of morality. Phoning God simply isn’t an option.  How does that rise to the level of moral realism?

That's a good question for an atheist who aspires to moral realism.  Count me out.

    Notice that this is Flannagan’s moral theory, minus the primitive hocum about sky spirits.
 In classical theism, God is not a "sky spirit." In classical theism, God subsists outside the physical universe.

And "outside the physical universe" is no less incoherent than "sky spirit".  If your god is so wonderful that human language fails to do proper justice, you might concede that words are not always good enough for you to convey to skeptics your other-worldly ideas.  Have you ever tried telepathy?

    DCT is therefore unlivable, even if it were correct. It puts moral truth inside an inaccessible black box, the mind of one particular God, whom we cannot identify or communicate with in any globally or historically reliable or consistent way. We therefore cannot know what is moral, even if DCT were true. Which assumes, without benefit of argument, that we don't have access to divine revelation.

Not necessarily.  The disagreements of Christians over morals would make it reasonable to assume that there is no more god concerned to resolve those disputes than there is a god who cares about resolving disputes between the ACLU and Trump.  Especially given that many Christians in such debates are not morons, but are skilled in apologetics and are serious about their faith.  That is, it doesn't even matter if you are a genuinely born-again Christian sincerely seeking god's will, not even THAT is enough to break into that black box and discover what moral god wants you to follow.

This is even worse for Calvinists like Steve Hays, who say God wants the world to believe He doesn't want them to commit adultery (revealed will, the Law), but that God secretly wills all adulterous acts before they take place, and wills them "infallibly".  You know, the parent who says "don't eat the cookies before dinner", but then sets up everything to increase the odds as much as possible that the child will disobey this and conform to the parent's "hidden" will...then when and if the child disobeys, the parent punishes the child for engaging in the disobedience that the parent secretly intended the whole time.  THIS is "god" according to Steve Hays.  And he seriously thinks atheists should view such a large bucket of morally duplicitous horseshit as some type of "threat".

    The supernaturalist is stuck in the exact same position as the ethical naturalist: attempting to ascertain from observable facts what the best way is to live. It's not the same position if the theist relies on moral intuitions which have their source in natural revelation whereas the atheist relies on moral sentiments that have their source in social conditioning and amoral evolutionary psychology.

I think you missed the point:  You cannot have a "Christian morality" unless you cite observable "facts" to support such morality.  DCT doesn't merely get up, shout "I'm correct", then walk away, as if the report came hot off the plates from Mt. Siani. DCT'rs do indeed cite to what they regard as "observable facts" to justify it.  Otherwise, Flannagan's articles on DCT would not require more than once sentence.

    But we cannot demonstrate that the “God” (or “ideal agent”) we have thus modeled in our mind or intuition is the “one true” God or not, except by appeal to natural facts that require no actual God to exist. Which disregards theistic proofs that appeal to "natural facts."

So? There IS such a thing as regarding your presuppositions as so settled that you can be reasonable to rely on them when debating people who disagree with them.  Such as you just did by pretending that the theistic proofs were some sort of formidable obstacle that Carrier was fearfully avoiding.  You "disregarded" showing that such theistic proofs were powerful.  Shame on you.

    Otherwise, we cannot know the God informing the intuition of Islamic suicide bombers is the incorrect God.
 If Muhammad appeals to the Bible to vouch his own prophetic credentials, when, in fact, his message contracts the Bible, then he's falsified his own claims.

Stick with the subject, Hays.  Carrier wasn't talking about Islamic suicide bombers who cite the bible to justify their crimes.  He was talking about how, if we have no reliable to way to discern the "true" god's morality, then whether god is or isn't inspiring the Isalmic suicide bombers is not the kind of question that can be resolved, therefore, the DCT'rs who think it can be resolved, are incorrect.  His larger point was that DCT lands us at a dead end, proving itself to be useless.  If god refuses to specify which religion is true, in a way that people can agree on, why would it matter than the moral goodness of an act is rooted in his nature?  Jesus stayed dead, so if there really is some "god" out there, you have no reason to think he would be more angry with atheists than with you.  Worse, if Christianity is false, the first god-option you'd likely exercise is the god of Judaism.  But if Christianity is false, that means its use of OT scripture was false, which means Jesus wasn't the real messiah, whcih means the god of the OT probably views Christians as promoting idolatry. Go ahead, Steve, how often in the OT does god display wrath against "atheism", and how often does he display wrath against idolatry?  or did you suddenly discover how late you are for church?

Of course you will pretend the bible is more reliable than the Koran and extremist Muslim theology, but I would argue that because your god committed so many 'divine atrocities' in the bible, you cannot realistically deny that Isalmic suicide bombers are reflecting the morality of your Christian god. 

Worse, as a Calvinist, Steve Hays also believes that God infallibly predestined any and all bombings caused by suicidal converts to Islam.  That is, when we look at the worst evil in the world, we are seeing things that God thinks are morally good.  After all, if God is morally good by nature, whatever he approves of must also be morally good, since by nature such morally good God would not approve of morally bad acts.  This gets Calvinist Hays in more trouble, though, because Hays will say God's expressed hatred of certain 'bad' things is merely god's "revealed" will, and you cannot really know whether such expressions are telling you the actual truth about God's hidden will.  I've been saying for 20 years that Calvinists are idiots if they wish to take part in DCT discussions.  The Calvinist God's distinction between good and evil is an absolute farce, and a misleading one at that.

    And the most important turning point here, is where theists simply can’t defeat Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma from 2400 years ago.
 i) Even a secular ethicist like Richard Joyce has argued that the Euthyphro dilemma is a failure:
http://personal.victoria.ac.nz/richard_joyce/acrobat/joyce_2002_euthyphro.dilemma.pdf
ii) Likewise, in a book which Flannagan recently coauthored with Paul Copan (Did God Really Command Genocide?), they devote two full chapters (chaps 13-14) to the Euthyphro dilemma.
So Carrier has his work cut out for him. He can't win the argument by taking intellectual shortcuts.

Sure, there's always the 'mysterious ways' third option, but even if the ED isn't a logically necessary deduction, the fact that it reasonably justifies atheism is enough.  Because we are people, we aren't going to maintain objective neutrality toward the truth of a highly improbable conclusion merely because it doesn't go all the way and become logically impossible.  We are going to live as if those things that are highly improbable are logically impossible, despite the fact that these are different things.  What is the practical difference between "i don't care about your idea because it is too improbable to deserve consideration", and "I don't care about your idea because it is logically impossible"?  In the real world, NONE.

    Because for DCT to be true, what Flannagan needs to say is, “we should obey whatever character God happens to have,” which would mean, we should all be the mass murderers that the God of the Old Testament actually wants us to be. Which begs the question of whether Yahweh is a mass murderer.

Probably because Carrier expected his readers would already know that truth.  Hays' word wrangling attempts to trifle that God's demand that children be massacred (the Flood, 1st Samuel 15:2-3, etc) is something other than mass murder (all because it cannot be "murder" if the lawgiver has authorized it) merely fails to intuit that Carrier was using "murder" in the colloquial sense of killing.  You'd be a fucking idiot to reply "which begs the question whether god's killings in the bible were unjustified" since even you yourself often make points without providing supporting argument.

    Or admit the Old Testament God is a demon the worthy of any horror film villain himself, and somehow convince everyone that we are lucky enough that that God just happens not to exist. (Oh wait. Atheists are already doing that.)
 How do you disprove the existence of a Being who, if there is such a God, exists outside the physical universe?

By pointing out that "outside the universe" constitutes an incoherent concept, and therefore, is sufficiently false as to intellectually justify those who choose to infer that it is positively false.

What would count as evidence for his nonexistence?

Well given that the place he exists doesn't even qualify as coherent thought, none.

    The commands of a loving and just person is a conceptual category that does not require that person to exist for their commands to be loving and just. If it is good to obey such commands, it is good regardless of whether they are fictional or real. To the contrary, good commands involve social obligations. We have no social obligations to fictional characters. Nonentities cannot oblige us.

If it is good to obey a man's advice "don't steal", that would generally remain a good idea even after the man dies. So he doesn't exist anymore, but that doesn't mean his advice suddenly becomes a bad idea.

    or not punishing rapists by legally ordering them to continue raping their victims (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). That's an inept misinterpretation of the passage. It is dealing with a hypothetical situation in which sex could either be coercive or consensual. There are no witnesses. A Jewish judge has no independent evidence to determine if the sex was coercive or consensual.
In that culture, loss of virginity made a single woman far less eligible for marriage. So the law represents a practical compromise: either a shotgun wedding or financial compensation in lieu of marriage.

Gee, Steve, where does that passage allow for the other option of "financial compensation in lieu of marriage."?

 25 "But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die.
 26 "But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.
 27 "When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.
 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.
 30 "A man shall not take his father's wife so that he will not uncover his father's skirt. (Deut. 22:25-30 NAU)

Looks to me like this is no "either/or", but a "both/and", i.e., the man must BOTH pay financially AND marry her.

You also overlook that because not much more is stated, the "marriage" would then authorize the sexual union, and the burden would be on you to show that further sexual activity was prohibited.  That is, the rape victim would be expected not to resist the rapist-husband's attempts at sex after marriage.  Some apologists scream to high heaven that this marriage would not authorize sex, but then that means God thought that depriving the rape victim of the joy of sex for the rest of her life was the best thing to do, which is obviously stupid under the popular Christian belief that the sexual joy evinced in Song of Songs was something to be aspired to by all married believers.  And God depriving the victim of this joy certainly opens the fundies' mind to the prospect that the bible god probably is a bit more sadistic and callous than Sunday's well-wishers give him credit for.

    As I commented for Loftus in The Christian Delusion (p. 101), “any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong.” That's willfully naive. Serial rapists know how raped women feel, which is precisely why they rape them. They hate women. The psychological damage is intentional. How women feel is a presupposition of the serial rapist. He aims to inflict maximal harm.

I agree, Carrier got this one wrong.  He has far more faith in humanity's basic goodness than I ever would.

Greg Welty says nothing that embarrasses bible critics

James Anderson has a post about Greg Welty's book Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It?) (Christian Focus Publications, 2018).  I reply to this review:

Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)?

Posted on 8 June 2018  

Having been closely involved in the editing process, I’m thrilled to see this book finally in print. The title reflects what may be the most common reason people give for rejecting the Christian faith and doubting the existence of God. It is indeed a critical question that demands an answer.

If you know any atheists who cite God's allegedly evil acts as reason to think he doesn't exist, count me out.  Being evil hardly implies non-existence.  There is an exception for the god that is hawked by specifically Christianity, since the god of the bible is defined with logically incompatible properties (i.e., he calls himself good, but does things that qualify as evil under any other definition, and the "his mysterious ways" and the "as, creator he has the right to do whatever he wants" excuses, pretending that God is always the special exception to human reasoning whenever you think it convenient to say so, do not suffice.

The appeal to mysterious ways is not accepted when the Christian hears it from a Christian 'heretic' or "heterodox brother",  so fairness demands they be consistent, and not expect us atheists to find the excuse very compelling either.  The appeal to God's rights as creator is fallacious, as we would not hesitate to call a man evil if he exercised his "right" to throw away all of his 17 year old son's possessions merely because yes, he had the right to do so.  As father he had the "right", but if he didn't explain himself and show that doing so was necessary to preeempt evil or achieve a greater good, and if the possesions were typical things like clothes, radio, bed, etc, the mere fact that he had the "right" to toss them out would not stop us from concluding such father is an asshole (one of modern America's many euphemisms for "you are evil").  You will say God is the special exception to the rules of human reasoning whenever you deem it expedient to carpt that way, but in doing so you a) aren't showing atheists to be fools and b) you foist no intellectual obligation upon the atheist to agree that "god" is indeed an exception to all reasoning that would otherwise make him look evil.

But isn’t it one Christians have been answering for centuries? Yes, of course.

No, they have simply appealed to God's mysterious ways, and Frank Turek pushes the ripple-effect answer, not realizing that in moral analysis, anything at all that helped create a moral good is therefore also "good", or at least logically qualifies as such whether we wish it so or not.  I'm pretty sure America's general stupidity in the moral department means they are still a long way from being willing to be consistent and honestly admit where moral relativism logically leads.   Nobody said typical American morality was the least bit consistent.

There are many fine works already available on this issue, both ancient and modern, and Welty acknowledges his debt to them. But I think this book fills a particular niche at this time. So many contemporary books on the problem of evil fall down in one or more of the following areas:
 They don’t pay close attention to what the Bible actually says about the nature and origin of evil and suffering in the world, and how they fit into God’s purposes for his creation.

The only mystery in the problem of evil is how so many Christians can read their bibles for decades and still miss what's obviously implied by God causing horrific evils in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Moses sure doesn't talk about God's relation to evil the way your local Christian pastor does, amen?

They end up taking positions that aren’t theologically orthodox (e.g., denying God’s omnipotence or omniscience).

I would advise Christians to worry whether a theological proposition is biblically justified, not whether it happens to harmonize with "orthodoxy".  As open-theist Christians have shown, there are biblical texts that contradict the "orthodox" doctrines of God's omnipotence and omniscience.  This notion you carry aaround that you "need" to reject any interpretation of a bible verse that would cause it to contradict something else in the bible, merely arises from your belief that the bible is inerrant.  Since even most Christian scholars deny bible inerrancy, and since needing to harmonize anything a person said with everything else they said is not even considered a justifiable hermeneutic by anybody outside those involved in funamentalist religious, I have intellectual justification to accept Deuteronomy 28:15-63 on its own terms, deny the interpretation that harmonizes it with anything Jesus taught, and conclude that such passage really does contradict other biblical teachings.

And don't even get me started on how Copan and Flannagan's "semitic exaggeration" excuse (to get away from God's commanding his people to kill "everybody"), opens the door to the genuine possibility that the tendency of Semitic exaggeration also infects those bible verses that declare God to be omnipotent.  How do you know, admitting the ancient Semitic mind exaggerated things, whether their statements about God were also somewhat exaggerated from what they truly believed?  Perhaps the laudatory nature of the Psalms on God's wonderfulness was never meant to be taken any more literally than the husband's expression that his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.  Well gee, classical theism requires all such biblical phrases to be taken in a plain literal sense.  Are you quite sure these ancient Semitic biblical authors weren't speaking in an exaggerated sense when extolling god's alleged virtues?  Do you have criteria for knowing when an ancient semitic author is speaking in exaggerated terms about his god and when he isn't?  NO.

They engage in philosophical speculations that aren’t tethered to (and sometimes go against) the teachings of the Bible and the creeds of the Christian church.

That can only be a good thing.  Get out while you can, fool, especially given that christianity's "danger" alarm can be proven to be about as dangerous as kittens playing with bubbles in Candyland.  Why put yourself through the torture of fundamentalism when there is no compelling reason to?

They lack clarity and precision at the very points where clarity and precision are needed. They serve up a big fat waffle-burger instead of a lean filet.

No doubt having something to do with the fact that they are genuinely born-again and sincerely ask God to guide them as they research biblical theology, right?  In other words, not even being born-again and sincerely seeking god's will, is any guarantee that you will avoid drawing heretical conclusions.  You'll excuse me if I don't want to be employed with a game-playing asshole boss like that.

They’re written by authors who lack theological and philosophical training, and who aren’t conversant with the vast scholarly literature on the problem of evil.

No brain-training needed.  See Luke 12:11-12. Just start babbling, and the Holy Spirit will move through thee.

They’re preaching to the choir: helpful for those who already believe, but failing to grapple with real concerns of skeptics.

And whether Christians have any divine obligation to worry about answering "skeptics" is fairly debatable, since because nobody in the NT is debating a "skeptic" or "atheist", it could very well be that Jude 3 carries an implicit qualification, consistent with the rest of the NT, that you are only obligated to defend the faith from other false "believers".  Paul's blind presumption of the divine nature of scripture is all over the NT, and gives the impression he never had anything of a scholarly nature to argue in front of 'skeptics' or "atheists".  I dare you to try and refute me from Acts 17.  Gee, I never knew that running away from a debate challenge after you give your first speech (Acts 17:33) constituted giving "scholarly" argument.   Nothing in Paul's Acts 17 speeches would qualify as scholarly; but they certainly qualifies as preaching to the choir.  You either agree with Paul's presumptions, or he moves on to other people.  Going back and forth would likely create a dispute about the meaning of words, and thus is probably what he would consider "word-wrangling" which he forbade (2nd Timothy 2:14).

They’re either too long-winded to keep the reader’s attention or too cursory to satisfy the reader’s concerns.

Blame it on the Holy Spirit, who can allegedly "cause" any Christian believer to pay attention to anything He thinks they need to pay attention to.  See God exercising similar overriding power in Ezra 1:1. Blame it on God.

And I'm sorry that you appear to believe that the modern Christian's ADHD is something that cannot be solved by anybody except Christian authors employing attention-getting methods of discourse and other known psycholoical tricks intended to keep one's attention.  One wonders how Christians before the age of electricity manged to be edified by those long boring sermons we see in the church fathers.  They couldn't watch it YouTube, so apparently, all hope was lost.

They’re too dry and technical for the layperson.

same answer

Why Is There Evil In The World? avoids all these pitfalls.

You could have simply directed the reader to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, that's the end of the debate about why your kids get kidnapped, or you suffer a mental abnormality, or you become so hungry you start viewing your kids as tasty treats.  This idea you have in your head about how God cries his eyes out because you got lost in the forest and can't find your way home, is total bullshit.  The god who might be planning to let your daughter be raped to death next week, has no plans to tell you in advance, and wants you to continue being happy about him in the present.  What would you do if god gave you an inspired glimpse into his infallible foreknowledge, and you saw that rape happening (i.e., because it is "infallible", what you foresaw is "incapable of failing", see dictionary)?  Would you try to thwart it when that day and time finally arrive, and therefore attempt the logically impossible feat of surprising god, yes or no?  Something tell sme the ONLY reason you love god is because you DON'T know about the evil that he knows you are going to experience in the future.  Keeping you ignorant is apparently the key to keeping you obedient.

Moreover, Greg is ideally qualified to have written this book. He wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so he knows what it’s like to be a skeptical unbeliever. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, an MDiv degree from Westminster Seminary California, and MPhil and DPhil degrees in philosophical theology from the University of Oxford, and he has taught seminary courses in Christian apologetics and philosophy of religion for 15 years. He also serves as one of the pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Wake Forest, so he doesn’t live up in the ivory tower!
 Here’s the table of contents for the book, which should give you a good idea of how Welty tackles the issue:
 1. What is the Problem of Evil?

Easy:  God instructed his people to burn to death the girl who has sex before marriage in her fathers house.  Leviticus 21:9.  Since even spiritually alive people cringe at this thought, there is a very good probability, assuming Christianity is true, that this cringing arises from the Spirit's witness to their heart, not their environmental conditioning, and therefore, it is God himself in the present who is encouraging Christians to hate and despite most of the absurd Mosaic laws.  And if you carp that spiritually alive people can be decieved on this, you are a fool to pretend spiritually dead people can understand this dreck any better, and we have a rational excuse, under your own theology, to dismiss your arguments from consideration.

2. The Greater-Good Theodicy: A Threefold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

Nah, that's merely a Nazi, who, having concluded Hitler can do no wrong, therefore trifles that the holocaust it only bad when seen from a temporal perspective...an argument that would not convince those outside of Nazism.  But probably deemed a clever argument anyway by the Nazis.

3. Licensing the Greater-Good Theodicy: God’s Sovereignty over Evil

Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  he is not merely "sovereign over" evil.  He "CAUSES" evil.

4. Limiting the Greater-Good Theodicy: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

You don't know everything about Hitler, so you cannot really say for sure whether he might have had a greater moral good in mind in slaughtering the Jews.

5. Can Free Will or the Laws of Nature Solve the Problem of Evil?

No, for since there is no evidence the will is "free" from the laws of physics, and efforts to show otherwise are absurd trifles motivated by absolutely nothing but blind commitment to just anything and everything the bible might say.  (i.e., if you have no problem saying the purely physical nature of muscles is why damage to the muscle inhibits the muscle's power, why do you have a problem saying the purely physical nature of the brain is why damage to the brain inhibits the mind?  oh, I forgot...the bible doesn't say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, therefore, you don't really care whether muscular power is purely physical or otherwise.  But if the bible says the mind can be separate from the brain, you will go the rest of your life insisting the mind can be separate from the brain, despite the fact that you violate Occam's Razor with that theory more than the naturalistic theory because you now have to allege further absurdities like other dimensions, and words like "spirit" whose definitions tie to nothing physical and are thus forced to remain in fantasyland.

When you have a thought, where do you perceive it taking place?  In your elbow, or inside your skull?  Gee, only fools would ever say the mind and brain are equal, amen?