Reply to Steve Hays replying to Greg Bahnsen on the resurrection of Jesus

This is my reply to a Triablogue article by Steve Hays entitled:

Is it improper to argue evidentially for the Resurrection?
A friend asked me to comment on an old article by the late Greg Bahnsen:
https://answersingenesis.org/apologetics/the-impropriety-of-evidentially-arguing-for-the-resurrection/

However, a serious difficulty arises when the epistemological significance of the resurrection is separated from its soteriological function. It is correct to hold that God’s raising of Jesus from the dead saves us both from sin and agnosticism, but it would be mistaken to understand by this that the epistemological problem could be handled independently of the (broader) moral problem which is at its base. It is with regret that one notices neo-evangelicals severing the justifying efficacy of Christ’s resurrection from its truth-accrediting function. In reality, the latter is dependent upon the former. Only as Christ’s resurrection (with its ensuing regeneration by the Holy Spirit of Christ) saves a sinner from his rebellion against God and God’s Word, can it properly function to exhibit evidence for God’s truthfulness.

i) The significance of the Resurrection is multifaceted, so it's a question of which facet it is deployed to prove. It has an soteriological value but also evidential value. By raising Jesus from the dead, the Father vindicates the mission of Jesus, confirming who he claims to be. If Jesus was a false prophet, God would leave him to rot in the grave.

Then apparently Steve Hays forgot about that bible verse that says God may allow a false prophet to work genuinely supernatural miracles.  See Deuteronomy 13:1-3.  Apparently, the doing of a real miracle does NOT end the discussion about whether that person's message is what God wants the hearers to accept.

The problem for the Christian apologist at that point is how spiritually dead people are supposed to figure out which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are approved by God, and which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are false prophets god is using to test people.  Especially if spiritually alive people such as Catholics and Protestants cannot even agree on whether God has caused Mary to miraculously appear in modern times.

ii) The reversal of death is an overwhelming phenomenon, 

Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and his turning a few fishes and loaves into enough to feed 5,000 people is also an overwhelming proposition, yet curiously, today's apologists reserve the mighty change in the disciples solely to Jesus' last alleged miracle, his rising from the dead.  What fool would trifle that there is an important difference between watching your messiah friend raise a 4-day dead decomposing corpse back to life, and your messiah friend being alive three days after he died?

ii) Due to common grace, some unbelievers are more reasonable than others. They retain more common sense. 

thanks for supplying me with all I need to justifiably blame god for my inability to see things your way.  I didn't deserve to be born into a sinful human race, but if your god made it happen anyway, then your ideas about what's morally "good" are probably too deranged to suppose you could profit from rebuttal.

Furthermore, since inductive argumentation is dependent upon the premise of uniformity, and since this premise can only be established by a Christian presupposing the truth of Scripture (for Hume’s skepticism has yet to be countered on anything but presuppositional grounds), the “evidentialist’s” argument is really presuppositional at base anyway. The non-Christian has no right to expect regularity in nature and the honest skeptic knows it; so, an inductive argument for the historical resurrection could only have been probative force for one who granted the truth of Christianity already. 

It's true that induction presents a paradox for secular philosophy. 

it's also a paradox for the inerrantist Calvinist who is sure that the stranger's claim of gold fish who audibly testify to the gospel, is false, but who nevertheless cannot absolutely deny that possibility due to his belief that stranger things have happened.

ii) It's true that many atheists raise a classic uncomprehending objection to the Resurrection by laying odds–as if this should be treated the same way as a naturally occurring event. 

It's true that many Calvinists raise a classic uncomprehending objection to the "god made my gold fish speak to me in English" report from the stranger on the bus, by laying odds, as if this should be treated the same way as a naturally occurring event.

i) It's true that there's often not enough common ground between Christians and some unbelievers to make a case for the Resurrection that an unbeliever will find convincing. 

then you disagree with Van Tilian Calvinist Jeff Durbin, who insists that unbelievers are quite sure that Jesus rose from the dead, they just don't wish to admit it because they like to live in rebellion against their creator.

ii) But this also raises the problem of the criterion. Which enjoys priority: criteria or paradigm examples? If you witness a miracle, you don't begin with criteria but with the event itself. 

Then you obviously disagree with Gary Habermas, Mike Licona, William Lane Craig and other evidentialists who start with criteria.  A fracture in the body of Christ likely more significant than whether you all agree that Tabasco sauce tastes great.

iv) I don't think it's necessary or realistic for a Christian apologist to assign odds to the case for the Resurrection. We simply marshall the available evidence. It is what it is. There's no need to conjure up an artificial statistic regarding the degree of probability. 

Then you disagree with all modern historians, including all apologists who defend the resurrection of Jesus in terms of probability, such as Gary Habermas, Mike Licona, and William Lane Craig.  You are horrifically naive, to say that the evidence "is what it is".  Do you need to be told why tautologies never promote the cause of truth?

v) I'd add, as I've mentioned on several occasions, that there's an overemphasize on scrutinizing ancient documentary evidence. While that foundation is indefensible, Christianity is a living religion with a living Savior. Jesus answers prayer. 

Let me know when you find any such case that you think is the most impervious to falsification.

Jesus appears to people. 

Really?  What's your best evidence?  I'm ready to discuss it bit by bit.  Consider yourself challenged to put up or shut up.

Christ’s resurrection does not entail his deity, just as our future resurrection does not entail our divinity! And one could not argue that the first person to rise from the dead is God, for on that basis Lazarus would have greater claim to deity than Christ! The evidentialist may prove the resurrection of Jesus, but until he proves every other point of Christianity, then resurrection is an isolated, irrelevant, “brute” fact which is no aid to our apologetical efforts. Only within the system of Christian logic does the resurrection of Christ have meaning and implication; and that system of logical entailment and premises can only be used on a presuppositional basis-you do not argue into it. 

That's too ambitious and quite artificial. Take the actual eyewitnesses to the Resurrection.

If you could show that anything in the NT comes from "actual eyewitnesses to the Resurrection", you might have a point.

They didn't prove every other point of Christianity to acknowledge and be revolutionized by what they saw. They didn't have to operate within an explicit system of Christian logic.

yes, they did, you are to reject all forms of logic except those which lead to apostle Paul's version of Christianity.  see Colossians 2:8.   True believers do not merely accept the evidence, they have been transformed by the renewing of their mind, Romans 12:2.  And they maintain such belief by automatically avoiding any gainsayer after the second warning, see Titus 3:9-11.

i) But the Scriptures were not enough. Disciples had to actually witness the Risen Lord to be convinced.

But the risen Christ still blesses blind faith.  Ask yourself what "do not see" means in John 20:29.  I suppose the reason John dishonestly placed his own theology in Jesus' mouth was because Jesus stopped appearing to people, and he needed to answer the concerns of converts asking "if Jesus appeared to you, why doesn't he appear to me?"

ii) An apologist has no control over the mindset of the unbeliever. Either God will open the eyes of the unbeliever or not. The duty of an apologist is simply to marshal the evidence that God has put at our disposal and leave the results to God.  Posted by steve at 11:30 AM

Then since you think the bible is best source of information possible, you are making Christianity unnecessarily complex if if you do anything more than quote bible verses to unbelievers to fulfill your apologetics obligation.  Perhaps your desire to go beyond the bible actually signifies you don't seriously think the bible is "sufficient", and you are just deceiving yourself by saying you think the bible is "sufficient".

The sanctification argument for refusing to listen to certain Christian apologists

Here is an argument I posted at another forum.  I argue that despite the fact that many bible scholars are consistently Christian in their faith, their unwillingness to break fellowship with other Christians they know are living in sin, proves that such scholars probably aren't true Christians to begin with.  The internet allows Christians who live in the sin of slander/reviling to run wild with little to zero chance that their local pastor, will ever know, and when the pastor is told, he typically brushes this off without employing the admittedly emotionally difficult disciplinary measures required in Matthew 18 and 1st Corinthians 5:9-13
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In my experience, while some Christian might have a lot of knowledge of bible scholarship, they are often shockingly lacking in sanctification.  I've known really smart Christians who are routine drunks, really smart Christians who routinely engage in pre-marital fornication, etc.  God only knows how many Christian "internet apologists" there are who download pornography while posting defenses of biblical inerrancy to debate forums.

The problem is bigger than just the Christians who "live in sin" as we typically use that phrase.  The problem includes Christian scholars and leaders who exhibit zero motive to fulfill the harder parts of the bible, like obeying Matthew 18 and excommunicating the so-called "brother" who refuses to repent of some sin committed against another. 

For example, many "internet apologists" routinely hurl insults at whoever they are debating.  Apostle Paul told Christians to stop communicating with so-called Christian "brothers" who constantly "revile" other people:

  9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; 10 I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. 11 But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler-- not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 13 But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES. (1 Cor. 5:9-13 NAU)

But how good are the odds that any such sinful Christian's pastor knows about this, and can therefore implement this biblically necessary discipline?

I've witnessed plenty of cases where well-known conservative christian scholars became knowledgeable that one of the Christians they fellowship with routinely "reviles" everybody including other Christians, using language that is in clear violation of Ephesians 5:4 and Colossians 3:8...but these scholars did precisely nothing to address it.  They simply never attempted the least bit of biblical response.

How long can a Christian scholar turn away from the more demanding morals the bible requires of him, before the skeptics can be justified to say such scholar is likely lacking in sanctification?  Does 1st Corinthians 5:11 place a burden upon all Christians, or only on local pastors?

I'd like to know what the Christians here would think of the skeptical argument that says a Christian can be safely deemed to lack salvation, if despite a scholarly-level knowledge of the bible, they carefully refrain from addressing issues of sin in their own lives, or in the lives of other Christians whom they regularly fellowship with.

I'm not saying nobody can be a Christian unless they are sinless.

I'm saying the more you disobey the biblical requirement to reprove sinful brothers and disfellowship the unrepentant, the more the outsider is justified to conclude your lack of sanctification testifies to your lack of salvation. 

Sure, the the bible will allow for the husband who commits adultery to still be a Christian.

But does the bible allow a husband to be a Christian if he has been committing adultery every day of the week for the last 20 years?

So the ultimate question is:  even if the skeptical attack is not infallible, can the attack still be "reasonable" in concluding that where Christian scholars either live constantly in sin, or sheepishly run away from a need to rebuke a sinful brother, this lack of evidence of sanctification increases the odds such Christians are not authentically born again?

No biblical justification to think God lives "outside" of time

I posted this to another forum I participate in:

I don't understand why Christians put so much effort into distinguishing the eternity of heaven from the earth-based sense of temporal progression, as if there were the slightest biblically justified reason to distinguish the two as qualitatively different.

Each and every biblical description of heaven presents events taking place there as if they are just as bound to temporal chronological progression as earth-bound events are.  Servants present themselves to kings on earth, and the sons of God presented themselves before God (Job 1).

Soldiers stand before their king awaiting orders on earth, and god's demons stand before his throne awaiting orders to go make people tell lies.  1st Kings 22:19 ff

The modern Christian belief that heaven is another dimension, is not biblical.  Nothing in the bible remotely expresses or implies that heaven is some other dimension.  Flying in heaven requires wings, which indicates heaven has air (Isaiah 6:1-7).  Such a reference also logically implies gravity in heaven (i.e., the angel would fall down if he tried to fly without wings).

There's fire in heaven (Isaiah 6:6) so the second law of thermodynamics operates there too.  What was on fire was a "coal", which indicates there are sources of fuel in heaven, such as wood.  The reality of the fire logically necessitates that oxygen is in heaven too. 

That beings in heaven are limited to time-bound temporal progression is clear from the departed souls under God's altar, who complain that God is taking too long to mete out his vengeance. Revelation 6:10.

Then there's that verse that absolutel shows heaven to be bound to time, that verse that proves there's no women in heaven.  Rev. 8:1.

Christians are not saving face or winning the debate by conjuring up clever theories to reconcile biblical statements with modern physics.  The priority is not "how can we reconcile this biblical statement with obvious reality?"

The priority is "how did this biblical author intend the reader to understand this phrase?" 

A major rule of hermeneutics is to ask how the originally intended addressees would have understood the passage in question.

Christians have no hope of pretending that such pre-scientific people would have been suspicious that the above-cited passages were mere "accommodations" to the limited mental capacities of sinful man...or that heaven was a different "dimension".  It is perfectly reasonable to take such passages literally, and the only possible motive a Christian could have to insist they are mere cases of phenomenological language is a desire to promote biblical inerrancy, regardless of intellectual cost.

What Christians will never do, in ten lifetimes, is demonstrate that the above-cited skeptical interpretations of such bible verses is "unreasonable".  But if we can be reasonable to interpret those passages literally, the inerrantist is deprived of the intellectual right to insist we give him a hearing.

Perhaps the cherry on top is the Ascension of Jesus in Acts 1.  Skeptics say Jesus did this because he knew heaven was physically "up there".

Inerrantists will say "no, he knew heaven was just a different dimension not attainable by moving in any spatial direction, but he was merely accommodating himself to the false cosmological viewpoint held by his 1st century apostles".

Have fun demonstrating THAT using normative principles of hermeneutics, such as grammar, immediate context, and genre.

Cold Case Christianity: Answering Wallace on miracles

This is my reply to questions asked by J. Warner Wallace.

Are There Any Good Reasons to Believe in Miracles? (Video)

Posted: 19 Jun 2020 06:15 AM PDT

Why are we so resistant to the notion of miracles?

First, given you are talking to Christians, it's funny you should ask that.   Are many Christians infected with the disease of miracle-skepticism?  Or is miracle-skepticism more aligned with reality and common sense than you are willing to admit?

Second, it doesn't matter if God exists and performed miracles through Jesus.   Deuteronomy 13 justifies a skeptic's suspicion toward Jesus even if the skeptic feels comfortable admitting Jesus rose from the dead:

 1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deut. 13:1-3 NAU)

What problem does Deuteronomy 13 create for Christians?  Easy:  God's approval of Jesus cannot be automatically deduced from the mere fact that Jesus performed genuinely supernatural miracles, he could still possibly be a false prophet whom God has empowered in order to "test" Israel.

I don't see how the Christian could convincingly solve that problem, as the question is "How can we know which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are approved of by God, and which workers of genuinely supernatural miracles are merely false prophets God is using to test us?"

The natural answer of somebody like Wallace would be "if the wonder-worker teaches in harmony with the bible, then he is approved by God."

But in practical life, "teaching in harmony with the bible" is really "teaching in harmony with my interpretation of the bible" (don't pretend the subjectivity is non-problematic, google "New perspective on Paul" and discover how easily the Protestants can be misled for hundreds of years.  Google Arminianism and Calvinism.  Consider Norman Geisler's criticism of other inerantist evangelical Christian scholars in "Vital Issues in the Inerrancy Debate".  Christians who say the bible's teachings are "clear" are high on crack).

So, naturally, apologists like Wallace would blindly assume that if the wonder-worker taught the Trinity, salvation by grace alone, Jesus' full deity and humanity, Wallace would assume such wonder-worker was approved by God.

But that makes things impossibly complex for the skeptic.  Wallace is not god.  His belief that the bible teaches the Trinity is not infallible, but subject to revision.  Norman Geisler left the inerrantist Evangelical Theological Society for their progressively growing more and more liberal.  Wallace cannot seriously say any of the doctrines he currently views as biblical, he will continue viewing as biblical in the future.  The point is that there is no serious hope if "theology" is the only way we can tell whether a worker of genuine miracles is approved of by God, or merely a false prophet god is using to "test" us.

What presuppositions keep us from inferring the miraculous?

The same presuppositions that keep J. Warner Wallace skeptical of somebody's story that god causes their goldfish to speak audibly and teach them theology whenever nobody else is around.  We already know that fish don't talk, and we already know that god will never cause a fish to talk. Agreed, my fellow David Hume disciple?

If not, then perhaps you'd like to go on record as the most gullible idiot in creation, and insist that you wouldn't make any positive or negative judgments about talking-fish miracle claims until you could examine the evidence?  

What presuppositions keep us from inferring the miraculous?

The uniformity of nature is not merely what skeptics use to justify miracle-skepticism, its also what lay behind any and ALL skepticism toward ANY claim.  The only way you could justify suspicion toward anybody's testimony is if you thought some of their testimony ran contrary to the uniformity of nature that YOU personally experience.  If you leave little Johnny at home alone and tell him not to eat the cookies, then you come home and find several cookies missing, what is the reason you suspect Johnny's profession of ignorance is a lie?  Easy:  in your uniform experience, the child's disobedience is far more likely than some other theory, like fairies, gremlins or burgers with unexpectedly excellent timing.

Suppose Johnny has cookie crumbs all around his mouth.  Why do you interpret that evidence to mean that Johnny's claim of ignorance is false?  Because in your uniform experience, crumbs are more likely to get on our mouth due to our conscious choice to eat something, not because the God empowered the devil to manufacture fraudulent crumbs to make us suffer unjustly and thus build up our faith.  The trifle that crumbs can possibly get on your mouth by means other than your conscious choice to eat, does precisely nothing to make you back off and take more time to investigate Johnny's excuse.  The crumbs around his mouth are only capable of one reasonable interpretation despite the possibility that the devil made him do it.

If there is a possibility that god views the Catholic church as theologically correct, there is a possibility that God is angry with those who reject the Catholic church, so, shouldn't non-Catholic Christians prioritize investigation of Catholic miracles, the way the skeptic's possible punishment from God should motivate them to prioritize investigation of Jesus' resurrection?  Yet no doubt Wallace and most other Protestants became comfortable to confidently conclude the Catholic church was heretical, and in most cases before they even knew that "apology" meant "defense".  Yet these lovers of limited research will hypocritically condemn skeptics who similarly draw negative conclusions about Jesus after conducting similarly limited investigation.

If you are satisfied based on your own limited investigation that Catholicism is false form of Christianity, then you cannot fault skeptics who similarly do a limited investigation into apostle Paul's religion, and conclude it is a false form of Christianity.  If you don't have to bat out of the ballpark every last trifle a Catholic theologian could conjure up, neither do skeptics have to bat out of the ballpark every last trifle a Christian apologist could conjure up. I've been investigating Jesus' resurrection for 35 years.  How long have you been investigating Catholicism?  I've learned enough to smash any Christian apologist in any debate right now.  How well do you think you'd do, Wallace, if forced to debate a Roman Catholic apologist right now?

What “miraculous” aspects of the universe are commonly accepted even by people who reject the miraculous?

I believe the universe has always existed, it did not "begin".  I have excellent rebuttal to Aquinas' Five Ways, i have scientific reasons to deny the Big Bang theory, and even some inerrantist Christian groups deny the Big Bang, such as AiG and ICR.  Philosophical attempts to show that the universe once didn't exist, are completely absurd. 

There is no mystery of evil, only a mystery of thick-headed obstinate Christians

I respond to a Christian who articulates the problem of "evil".  See here.

In case the post gets deleted, here's what I said:

Barry Jones18 Jun 2020 at 10:59 pm 

The only problem with evil is the Christians who falsely continue to view God as some sort of good-willed grandfather type figure. Wrong. Read Ezekiel 37-38. God views human beings like little boys view toy soldiers. In fact, the bible god is more evil than the Canaanites. I’ve proven Frank Turk was wrong in stating the Canaanites “watched their babies sizzle to death”, as there is no historical evidence, whatsoever, that Canaanites used fire as the means to kill kids. The historical sources say the child’s throat was cut before they were placed on the altar. None of the sources makes an equal specification that the kids were still alive when placed in the fire, and the Hebrew’s own historical example of Abraham trying to kill his son before lighting the fire (Genesis 22:19) would provide a reasonable basis to confirm the throat-cutting practice. 

Cremation of a corpse is not the same thing as immolation. See my scholarly post at https://turchisrong.blogspot.com/2017/10/frank-tureks-dishonesty-concerning.html 

So because there is no evidence the Canaanites used fire to kill children, while the bible makes clear that God wants the preteen girl to be burned to death merely for a single act of premarital fornication (Leviticus 21:9), Turek must admit the ironic fact that his attempt to make the Canaanites appear to modern Americans as more “deserving” of genocide actually backfires. 

Then again, being a bible-believer makes you immune to certain morals. If God told you stab your child to death and burn his body, well….you DO admit you have the faith of Abraham (Genesis 22:10/Hebrews 11:19), correct.

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Screenshot: 

God commands genocide, my challenge to Claude Mariottini

There's this book called Show Them No Mercy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003) wherein several Christian scholars debate the thorny issue of the bible-god's apparent ordering the ancient Hebrews to slaughter all Canaanite men, women and children living in certain specified locales, and whether this can be reconciled with God's alleged command in the NT that his people be loving toward everybody else.

In other words, a problem of consistency that only worries those who ascribe to bible "inerrancy".

One of the Christian scholars to contribute an article in that book was C. S. Cowles, who wrote the article “The Case for Radical Discontinuity". He emphasizes NT passages which say the Old Covenant was imperfect and is passing away.

Dr. Mariottini has a blog and responded to Cowles, trying to argue under a presumption of biblical inerrancy that there is no inconsistency between the OT God commanding such genocide and the NT God who commands people to love one another.

I replied to Mariottini, see here.  I post the content below in case the good doctor deletes my post:

          Barry Jones says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 17, 2020 at 4:25 pm

Dear Dr. Mariottini, 

Frank Turek and other "apologists" strongly emphasize that objective morality proves god. Turek thus argues that most of humanity recognize rape as immoral, yet atheism cannot account for this pattern of opinion in human history, therefore, god did it. But most people also strongly oppose infanticide (Numbers 31:17, 1st Samuel 15:2-3), and they equally oppose using fire to kill a preteen girl merely for having premarital sex in her father's house (Leviticus 21:9, by having sex in her father's house, she likely still lives there, and thus is likely still unmarried and thus likely not older than about 12). 

If the collective human condemnation of rape proves God, why shouldn't we extend Turek's logic and similarly presume that because it is the Holy Spirit who convinces everybody that rape is absolutely immoral, it is also the Holy Spirit who convinces everybody that infanticide and burning children to death are absolutely immoral?

By what criteria do we decide when collective human moral opinion ultimately stems from the Holy Spirit, and when it doesn't?

Sure, that would have the effect of proving those parts of the bible are not inspired by God, but wouldn't logical consistency be a higher priority than bible inerrancy, given the former is beyond question, while the latter is the subject of endless confusion and disagreement within the Evangelical Christian camp?

Or do you think Turk is merely overstating the force of the moral argument for God?

My invitation to James A. Jardin

Mr. Jardin in 2013 wrote a paper called The Slaughter of the Midianites in Numbers 31, a Group Exegetical Paper.  I found it through Academia.edu, here.

Therein, he defends the traditional conservative Christian view that Numbers 31:18 wasn't about authorizing rape.  I sent him the following message:

Hello,
With reference to your "Numbers 31:13-24 Exegetical Paper",
 What would be unreasonable in interpreting Numbers 31:18 as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?   It's therefore not about "adultery" or pre-marital "fornication", so I'm not seeing the problem.
 I see nothing in the bible indicating the minimum age the girl must reach before she can be married, not all sexual relations require penetrative intercourse, the atrocities of the ancient Israelites prove they were nothing close to the modern democratic American, God wanted women to experience vaginal pain on first intercourse anyway, and as I'm sure you know, the Babylonian Talmud, which is reasonably presumed to reveal ancient Jewish traditions, several times indicates approval of sexual intercourse between a man and a prepubescent girl.
 In your paper you claim Deut. 21:10-14 was intended to protect female war captives from rape, but on the contrary, this authorization for a man to marry such a woman gives not the slightest indication that the woman's consent was needed, the Hebrew "anah" in v. 14 always means rape in other bible verses describing men interacting with woman, and the decidedly pro-Christian Good News Translation renders v. 14 as "you forced her to have intercourse with you..." which would hardly be the case if those Christian translators felt there was any reasonable way to spin the literary evidence to get rid of the rape-implication.
 Maybe the question should be whether the non-Christian can be "reasonable" to reject the democratic conservative Christiain interpretation of Numbers 31:18 and continue viewing it as approval of sex within adult-child marriages?
 I've done a massive amount of research on those issues, and I'd like to see how a Christian who has studied them answers my concerns.
 Thank you for your time,
 Barry  (barryjoneswhat@gmail.com)

I hope to recieve Mr. Jarden's reply, as nearly no Christians appear willing to take up this challenge.  Of course, there's always the hyena "apologist" who is frightened of real-time debate, and keeps his tithing customers happy by doing the occasional cartoon video about some argument I present here, but I'm requesting seriously interactive scholarship on the level of Outback Steakhouse.  Not the hide-and-seek bullshit one gets at Chuck E Cheese.  The last time I raised the pedophilia-issue in a Christian-chat room, noody could refute me and several admitted they couldn't say for sure whether God condemns sex within adult-child marriages.  I think it had something to do with my combining Romans 13 with a 19th century Delaware law which set the age of sexual consent at 7.

Cold Case Christianity: we are in control

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

Is God in Control or Are We in Control?

Posted: 13 Apr 2020 05:36 AM PDT 

I’m often asked where I “land” on the issue of God’s sovereignty and human freedom. How much free will do we actually have as humans? If God is all powerful and all knowing, if God knows the end from the beginning, if God has predestined us to come to faith, doesn’t it follow that humans are simply along for the ride? 

Rush has the answer:  Attention all planets of the Solar Federation:  we have assumed control...we have assumed control. (the All the World's a Stage album had the best version...RIP Neil Peart).

But seriously, a simple logically deductive syllogism shows libertarian freewill cannot exist if god's foreknowledge is infallible.

Anything God foreknows, is incapable of failing (dictionary definition of infallible)
God foreknows that Julie's will eat a candy bar tomorrow.
Therefore, Julie's eating a candy bar tomomrrow is incapable of failing.

There are only three ways to refute a deductive syllogism:  prove premise 1 is wrong, prove premise 2 is wrong, or prove the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

Sure, premise one could be wrong, but if so, then the doctrine of God's infallible foreknowledge is false.

As a Christian, it’s clear to me that God is powerful enough to accomplish his goals without limit (see Daniel 4:35, Romans 9:15-16, Ephesians 1:5-6, and Romans 1:9-11). I call this power of God to accomplish whatever He wants the “Make Sure” Will of God.

But then if God has any will beyond the "make sure" crap, then he is sort of like a drunk woman, preferrng to be uncertain.  I'll pass.

But if God is in complete control of every aspect of our lives, how do we answer the following questions?
 When people fail to come to faith, is it God who is preventing them?

If you stand around doing nothing while a child in yoru custody fails to use chemicals correctly and endures injury, is it YOU who is preventing their proper use?  If not, you must think we should get rid of our system of civil law, which charges people all the time with "negligence" (i.e., failure to act when acting was within one's power and acting would have prevented an injury without causing another)

 When evil happens in the world, is it God who is responsible?

Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63, then you tell me what is implied by your 2nd Timothy 3:16 trust that such scripture remains profitiable for doctrine, reproof and correction TODAY.

How could God ever hold us responsible for anything?

The same way we capture a wild animal on the loose in the neighborhood.  It's inability to control its dangerous desires doesn't mean we are obligated to turn away.

Is the ‘will of God’ a divine plan for our lives?

As a Christian bible-believer that's YOUR problem. You cannot show from the bible that God has a plan for any particular individual, and you cannot show that the bible has the least bit of relevance to modern humanity beyond the useless trifle of being a historical curiosity.  The question is whether God gives a shit about you at all.  The answer from actual reality is "no".  The answer form the bible only works for the people to who those books were originally intended.  Sucks to be you.

While the Bible affirms the sovereignty and power of God, it also provides examples when God does not seem to be able to accomplish something He desires. In Matthew 23:37-38, Jesus seems to be unable gather Israel because they were unwilling.

Agreed.  But as an atheist, I deny biblical inerrancy, and thereore do not expereince any compulsion to decide whether the bible teaches Arminianism or Calvnism.  It teaches both, which means the bible contradicts itself on doctrine.

In 2 Peter 3:8-10, We are told that God does not wish that anyone of us should perish (but that all of us should come to repentance), yet we know that many people in our world will NEVER accept Jesus, never come to repentance, and simply will not be saved. So what’s up with God’s sovereignty?

A better questoini would be:  Why should be blindly assume an apostle's theological viewpoint is necessarily correct?  Especially an apostle who denied Jesus three times, and who, even after experiencing the gift of the Holy Ghost in Acts 2, was condemned as a moral hypocrite by Paul.  Methinks the inerrantist's trust in biblical infallibility is just shy of foolhardy.  It is anything but realistic.

How can it be that something can be within ‘God’s will’ (God can desire something) yet He seems to be unable to make that something happen?

Easy, the bible contradicts itself.  Will that answer cause J. Warner Wallace to stop using Jesus to attract attention to himself?

I think the Bible actually describes two kinds of “will of God”.

That's a sobering admission, coming from an inerrantist.  No, you won't be "haronizing" freewill with God's sovereignty anytime soon, will you.

The first is what I call the “Make Sure” Will of God, the second is what I have come to call the “Sure Wants” Will of God.

Then god is fucking stupid, since if he "sure wants" something and has the "make sure" power to get the job done, then only he is to blame if he refuses to resolve the problem by exercise of his powers.

God wants all of us to be saved;

You cannot show that anything in the NT was intended to apply to modern-day people.  If we can show the NT authors intended to address 1st century people, YOU acquire the burden of showing they intended to address anybody else.  No sophistry about how God can intend a wider audience than the human author intended.  If the authors didn't intend something, then since the author was your only hope of showing the author's divine inspiration, any god who allegedly inspired them also didn't intend that something.  The reaosnableness of that inference is not going to disappear merely because you can preach about how God can have greater plans for a person than their own plans.

He wants all of us to come to faith in Jesus;

Even the people whom he ordained by his providence to live in times and circumstances preventing them from hearing about Jesus? 

He wants all of us to reflect his moral precepts;

He wants us to use fire to kill little girls for engaging in pre-marital sex (Leviticus 21:9)? Or did some dickhead "apologist" on the internet suddenly discover how easily the "satire" excuse can be exploited to defend biblical "inerrancy"?

He wants all of us to love one another.

Even those whom he instructs us to hate (Deut. 23:6)?

But he also knows that none of this is truly possible unless each and every one of us is allowed to have the ‘freedom’ to love, obey and follow (see Mark 3:34-35, 1 John 2:17, Ephesians 6:5-6, Romans 12:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and 1 Peter 2:15-17). Without ‘free will’, humans are simply robots who respond according to pre-programming rather than from a position of true love and obedience.

you are assuming true love cannot exist without the libertarian notion of freewill existing.  Not true.  obviously dogs and lower mammals love their young, yet you would probably argue that as creatures of instinct they do not have "freewill".

You are also forgetting the deductive syllogism I started this post with.  If God's foreknowledge is infallible, then those human acts (such as love) that he foreknows are "incapable of failing", which logically prevents the person from withdrawing the love at the time God infallibly foreknows they will show that love.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’),

Bullshit, the way he turns humans to carnage in the bible, god is quite capable of simply using his power to rescue you from anything.  Telling yourself maybe God allowed you to do evil because of Frank Turek's "Ripple-Effect" sophistry is mere self-delusion.  The ripple-effect theory does nothing to render the atheist theory of evil "unreasonable".

but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

Then he is fucking stupid and his problems are his own fault.

Yes, it is God’s will that no evil should exist in the world (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that evil is eliminated.

Yes, it is dad's will that his baby son not get raped, (it's protection dad 'sure wants'), but this does not mean that dad will 'make sure' that such rape possibility is eliminated.  Nice going.

Yes, it is God’s will that we should live a certain way and seek to know His heart and character, but this does not mean that he will ‘make sure’ that no one behaves immorally.

I'd say you've ventured further out into the surf than atheism can permit.  This Arminian/Calvinist debate is YOUR problem.

There are two kinds of ‘will of God’ passages in the scripture. Some describe God’s sovereignty and some describe God’s moral character and desire for our lives.

And there is no reason to think the bible is inerrant.  So there's nothing unreaosnable in assuning the bible gave rise to churches with contradictory theology, beause the bible itself teaches contradictory theology.

While it is certainly within God’s power to eliminate all evil, to control our behavior and to allow none of us the possibility of rejecting Him, to do so would eliminate the possibility for something precious to God: the ability to love. (I’ve written more on this in the section on Evil here at ColdCaseChristianity.com

So what's more important to god?  The criminal's ability to love?  Or the child's safety from rape?

Under God's stupid reasoning, America's love would be more god-like if jails removed their locks and incarcerated only those who chose to endure their punishment.  if God is going to let rapists and murders run free, how could we have less love than god if we also allowed such criminals the same freedom?  If God isn't going to stop evil, then it must be good to let evil exist.

Yes, it is God’s will that no one should be lost (it’s something that God ‘sure wants’), but this does not mean that God will ‘make sure’ that all come to faith.

You are only saying that because of the bible's contradictory statements, not because it is at all clear that this is in fact the case.  What a fool to pretend that so many ancient authors, seperated from each other by centuries, nevertheless wrote in perfect harmony about subjects philosphers have disagreed on for millenia.  Not even most Christian scholars accept biblical inerrancy!

How exactly do your musings do ANYTHING to disturb atheism?

Cold Case Christianity: Did Jesus think he was God?

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Did Jesus Think He Was God?

Posted: 07 Apr 2020 12:00 PM PDT

In this video, J. Warner discusses the language Jesus used when describing Himself. Did His words demonstrate what He believed about Himself?

But as I've already demonstrated ad nauseum, many conservative Christian scholars think the Christ-sayings in John's gospel reflect more John's theological views and less what Jesus "actually" said.  So trying to establish high Christology by using John's gospel is foolish.

Mike Licona might argue that you can get Jesus beng God out of Mark, the earliest gospel, but I don't see the point.  Yes, people before the 1st century believed the gods could come down to the them in the likeness of man (Acts 14:11), so the skeptic who tries to argue that the NT's Christology is only high beacuse it is late, is not doing her homework.

At the same time, low Christology can be gleaned from Paul (Jesus was declared the son of God with power by resurrectoin from the dead, Romans 1:5).  Fundies will carp that this doesn't imply Paul thought Jesus lacked divine attributes until the resurrection, but Paul doesn't show much interest in Jesus' earthly life, so fundies have no basis to think Paul thought Jesus was always Lord from birth.  Fundies will cite the kenosis in Phil. 2:5-8, but the "mind" that is spoken of is the one which was in "Christ Jesus", the name given to him at his birth, but not before.  Paul is likely referring to the attitude Jesus had as a man on earth, not as the prexistent logos.

Mark 6:5 said Jesus "could" not do a miracle, but the parallel in Matthew 13:58 changes this to "did" not do a miracle, that is, Matthew the later author is changing Mark's earlier negation of Jesus' abilities, with a phrase that no longer implicates Jesus' abilities.  That is, the earlier version of Christianity had a lower Christology.  We can only wonder how many other changes scribes made to the text of Mark during the first 250 years for which we have no manuscripts, to "assimilate" it back to Matthew.  I think this is the part where desperate inerrantists suddenly discover that the Synoptic Problem doesn't exist, and the similarities of Matthew and Mark imply nothing more than their drawing upon a common core of oral tradition. 

Except that wiggling out of the problem like that doesn't render the skeptical hypothesis unreasonable, it just show you have the same face-saving capabilities that the Mormons have.

Furthermore, the ideas in the Sermon on the Mount are often unrelated despite following each other in chronological fashion.  Most scholars explain this by saying the author has simply made a pastiche of various sayings Jesus spoke in various different circumstances, and grouped such aphorisms into one bunch.

That is, most scholars think the gospel authors replaced the original context of the Christ-sayings with the author's own created literary context, so that we can never really be confident that the "context" we read today is accurately reflecting the oral "context" Jesus originally spoke those words in. 

That creates a further problem:  the gospel authors did not care about "original" context as much as today's inerrantists do, and this justifies the atheist to infer the sources are not sufficiently reliable to attempt getting confident conclusions from.  There was a textually dark period between Jesus' life and the earliest manuscripts, and nobody has any idea how many times scribes in that critical period did what Metzger and Aland contantly accuse them of ('assimilating' one gospel statement with another) so that for all we know, the degree to which the gospels currently agree on facts has more to do with post-authorship emendation, and less to do with what the original authors actually said. 

Cold Case Christianity: Yes, the resurrection is possibly a late legend

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

Quarantine Questionnaire: Is the Resurrection Account a Late Legend?

J. Warner April 3, 2020

Two answers from an atheist:

No, and the rumor about Paul, held by "thousands" of Jewish Christians, that he flouted Mosaic law, also wasn't a late legend.  Acts 21:18-24.  As long as you say that rumor was false, you agree that falsity can exist in the early church, without being "legend" or "late".

Yes...it is reasonable to say the resurrection appearance stories in the gospels are late legends for two reasons:  a) it is reasonable to agree with most Christian scholars that Mark is the earliest published gospel, and b) it is reaosnable to agree with most Christian scholars that the long ending of Mark was a later interpolation.  If both premises are reasonable, then it is reasonable to draw the inference that the earliest form of the resurrectin story was limited to the women hearing about Jesus' resurrection solely from some unidentified man at the suspiciously opened tomb.

Certain dickhead apologists will scream that Mark's resurrection appearance ending would have been necessarily implied due to the oral preaching behind that gospel, is foolish:  the other three gospel authors give plenty of resurrection appearance detail, so it is far from obvious that the reason a gospel author leaves out a detail is because he is expecting the originally intended reader to rely on the oral preaching to fill in the blanks left by the written account.

And now a point by point reply to Wallace:

How can we be sure that the story of Jesus wasn’t changed over time?

You can't:  reconstructing history from ancient sources only supplies probabilities, especially in cases where the ancient assertions are by no means "obvious" and not corroborated by other verifiable details. No, you aren't proving John's resurrection testimony reliable by nothing that archaeologists have found the Pool of Siloam.  What are you?  6?  What are you gonna say next?  Mommy loves you because she took you to McDonalds? Grow the fuck up and quit committing the fallacy of hasty generalization.

How do we know that the virgin conception, the miracles and the Resurrection weren’t added to the story late?

First, your question is irrelevant.  Jesus made clear that christian discipleship depended on generations of Christian leaders passing on for posterity all the things which he had taught the original apostles (see the part of the Great Commission nost people miss, Matthew 28:20).  Not only did Jesus never say one damn thing about his virgin birth, he castigated another person who's comment to him had created the perfect justification for him to mention it (Luke 11:27-28).

Second, given that most Christian scholars agree Mark's gospel is the earliest and lacks the virgin birth narrative despite how its content would have strongly supported Mark's "Son of God" theme, it's reasonable to infer either a) Mark never heard of the VB (justifying the inference it was late) or b) Mark knew of it but considered it fiction (justifying the inference that it is fiction).  The third option screamed about by apologists, c) Mark knew the VB story was true but "chose to exclude" it for his own reasons, cannot be demonstrated with any degree of probability.  Since the inference that Mark never heard of the VB or had rejected it as fiction does rest upon a probability argument, the skeptic has a probability and the apologist has only possibility.  So skeptics are reasonable to draw the negative inference even if there's always that trifling "possibility" that the VB was true.

Similar arguments could be made on the basis of John the latest gospel.  He too doesn't mention the virgin birth, despite how it would have strongly supported his high Christology.  That makes the skeptical hypothesis reasonable, and our reasonableness therein doesn't require that we bat out of the ballpark every stupid trifle any apologist could possibly conjure up. 

Beasley-Murray refuses to decide the matter:

The external evidence for the pl. is overwhelming, and most adopt it without hesitation…The decision is more difficult than is generally acknowledged, and we leave it open.

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (2002). Vol. 36: Word Biblical Commentary : John.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page 2). Dallas: Word, Incorporated

Inerrantist Christian scholar Borchert does not understand why some scholars, despite knowing the plural is the correct reading, still insist the passage is about the virgin birth:

Some scholars have argued that the verse is describing the virginal conception of Jesus, and they have chosen to read the singular form instead of the plural (haimatōn) “bloods.” But the textual evidence for such a reading is virtually nonexistent, and the logic of the text definitely argues against such a view. 

No Greek MSS support the singular reading, yet M. Ē. Boismard, in St. John’s Prologue (Westminster: Newman, 1957), s.v., and others have argued for such a view. Cf. D. M. Crossan, “Mary’s Virginity in St. John—An Exegetical Study,” Marianum 19.1 (1957): 115–26, and “Mary and the Church in John 1:13, ” Bible Today 1.20 (1965): 1318–24. Beasley-Murray (John, 13) relying on E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey (The Fourth Gospel [London: Faber & Faber, 1947], 164–65), thinks that even though the plural is clearly the correct reading and even though the virgin birth may not be in mind, the incarnation could have been in view here. I find this argument difficult to accept.

Borchert, G. L. (2001, c1996). Vol. 25A: John 1-11 (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 118). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Bruce Metzger, otherwise considered by conservative Christian apologists to be the last word on NT textual variation, dashes cold water on the hopes of those fools who insist John 1:13 is talking about Jesus' virgin birth:

Although a number of modern scholars (including Zahn, Resch, Blass, Loisy, R. Seeburg, Burney, Büchsel, Boismard, Dupont, and F. M. Braun)³ have argued for the originality of the singular number, it appeared to the Committee that, on the basis of the overwhelming consensus of all Greek manuscripts, the plural must be adopted, a reading, moreover, that is in accord with the characteristic teaching of John. The singular number may have arisen either from a desire to make the Fourth Gospel allude explicitly to the virgin birth or from the influence of the singular number of the immediately preceding auvtou/.
--------Metzger, Textual Commentary, Page 169

Furthermore, most English translations don't use the singular, they use the plural, so that 1:13 is referring to Christians, not Jesus:

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NAU) 

 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NRS) 

 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NIV) 

 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:
 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13 NKJ)

But no, I'm sure that because fundie Chrstianity is dogmatic by nature, fundies who are frightened at the prospect of not being able to harmonize all NT statements with all NT statements, will insist skeptics are "dumb" or "morons" for adopting the plural in harmony with many conservative evangelical Christian scholars.

I wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, shivering with fear, wondering whether my above-cited arguments are sound.  I'm also a millionaire.

Furthermore, given that out of 27 NT books, only two even mention the virgin birth, it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the earliest Christians did not think that part of Jesus' life was too important. 

Why would Paul think the resurrection proved Jesus to be the Son of God, but the VB wasn't worth discussing?  If we are to presume Paul was a modern-day inerrantist who trusted Joseph's and Mary's stories about portents during her pregnancy as necessarily true, wouldn't it follow that Paul would find the VB story equally as supportive of his view of Christ as the resurrection?  And given that Christianity had major obstacles to getting started, wouldn't shameless promoter like Paul insist on using ALL of his guns?

And don't forget, Paul asserted that Jesus' flesh came from David's "seed" (Romans 1:3, neither genealogy of Jesus makes Mary a descendant of David, but they specify Joseph was a descendant of David, Luke 2:4), and further, that Jesus' divine sonship was declared due to his rising from the dead (v. 4).  Had Paul approved of the VB stories, he would likely would have cited the VB and not just Jesus' resurrection as the basis for Jesus' divine sonship.  That naturalistic problem looms large also in Acts 13:33, Jesus was divinely begotten at his resurrection...how many times was he begotten? Another sign that the speaker (Paul) did not think Jesus recieved such divine titles any earlier.

I'm quite aware of the stupid trifles of internet apologists concerning Mark 6:3 and have answered them here.  Since Christians themselves cannot even agree on whether the VB story is true, or if so, whether it qualifies as essential or non-essential doctrine, the skeptic is certainly reasonable to consider it nothing more than trifling about the details of fairy tales.  You don't know the credibililty of Matthew or Luke, you have no fucking clue how they gained thier material.  Your hypothesis that they asked eyewitnesses is no less conjectural than the skeptic's theory that many gospel stories are just made up