December 30, 2020

December 30, 2020 By

Dr. David Madison is an atheist who was a Methodist minister for nine years: with a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Boston University.  I have replied to his videos or articles 43 times as of this writing. Thus far, I haven’t heard one peep back from him  (from 8-1-19 to 12-29-20). This certainly doesn’t suggest to me that he is very confident in his opinions. All I’ve seen is expressions of contempt from Dr. Madison and from his buddy, the atheist author, polemicist, and extraordinarily volatile John Loftus, who runs the ultra-insulting Debunking Christianity blog. Dr. Madison made his cramped, insulated mentality clear in a comment from 9-6-19:

[T]he burden of the apologist has become heavy indeed, and some don’t handle the anguish well. They vent and rage at critics, like toddlers throwing tantrums when a threadbare security blanket gets tossed out. We can smell their panic. Engaging with the ranters serves no purpose—any more than it does to engage with Flat-Earthers, Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, and those who argue that the moon landings were faked. . . . I prefer to engage with NON-obsessive-compulsive-hysterical Christians, those who have spotted rubbish in the Bible, and might already have one foot out the door.

John “you are an idiot!” Loftus even went to the length of changing his blog’s rules of engagement, so that he and Dr. Madison could avoid replying to yours truly, or even see notices of my replies (er, sorry, rants, rather). Dr. Madison’s words will be in blue.

Presently, I am replying to his article, “Bible Blunders & Bad Theology, Part 4: The perils of comparing the gospels” (10-16-20).

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The Gish gallop is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott; . . . It is similar to a methodology used in formal debate called spreading. During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the “Gish galloper” takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place. The technique wastes an opponent’s time and may cast doubt on the opponent’s debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics. (Wikipedia, “Gish gallop”)

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus comes out of nowhere to be baptized in the Jordan River, . . . 

Mark simply chose to start the story from the vantage-point of the average Jew at that time, observing that this man named Jesus had appeared on the scene after being unknown. Dr. Madison wants to make an issue of this: as if it is a supposed contradiction with other Gospels. It’s not. The four evangelists offer stories and accounts of the same overall events from different perspectives: emphasizing selected things as they choose and please.

Many atheists seem to possess this goofy, silly notion that all four of them must be exactly the same, or else (if not!) they are allegedly endlessly “contradictory.” Well, that’s a dumb and groundless presupposition in the first place, and in fact the Gospels do not contradict, as I have demonstrated innumerable times, as have many other Christian apologists and theologians. And in fact, almost all of the alleged “contradictions” brought up by anti-theist atheist polemicists are simply not contradictions, from the criteria of logic itself.

Here Jesus is portrayed as an apocalyptic prophet . . .

Yes; as He is in all four Gospels. But there are, as I said, different emphases, so this is a relatively minor point.

he promises those at his trial that they will see him coming on the clouds of heaven.

Yep, just as He does in Matthew 24:30 and 26:64 and, in effect, Luke 22:69, where the clause, “Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (RSV) is obviously the same reference as Mt 26:64: “Son of man seated at the right hand of Power”: just without the added mention of the “clouds.” All three passages clearly allude to Daniel 9:12-14: one of the most famous messianic passages. There is no rule or requirement that every Gospel writer must cite complete prophecies and can never cite part of them.

And (need I mention it?), such selective citation does not mean there is logical contradiction, merely as a result of differential citation. It’s like people citing different portions of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. They don’t contradict. Anyone even slightly familiar with American history knows what’s being cited. That’s how it was with messianic prophecies.  Jesus in the Gospel of John expresses the same notion (both the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and His Second Coming) but in a different, more personal way (expressed to His twelve disciples only, at the Last Supper): 

John 16:5, 10  But now I am going to him who sent me . . . [10] . . . I go to the Father . . . [i.e., “at the right hand of the power of God”] (cf. Jn 7:33; 8:21; 14:2-4, 12, 28; 16:7, 17; 17:11, 13)

John 14:18, 28 I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. . . . [28]. . . I will come to you . . . 

Mark also portrays Jesus as an exorcist.

So do the other two Synoptic Gospels. Mark mentions (in RSV) “demon[s]” or “demoniac” etc. 17 times, but Matthew mentions these words 19 times, and Luke, 24 times.  But there is also the description of “unclean spirit”: which Mark references 13 times, Luke 5 times, and Matthew twice. Luke also uses “evil spirit” twice (and four more times in Acts 19, but we won’t count those). So the grand total, including all three terms are:

Luke: 31

Mark: 30

Matthew: 21

Thus, we can say that Mark emphasizes this element a bit more — being much shorter than Luke (which is fine and dandy), but it’s certainly no “contradiction” compared to Matthew and Luke.

Moreover, he puts far less emphasis on Jesus’ teaching role; Mark says that people were astounded by his message, but little of the content is provided.

This is untrue, and it’s amazing that Dr. Madison could claim that it is. We can observe the term “astounded” used once in Mark (6:51), “astonished” (five times), and “amazed” (eight  times). In all but three of the 14 cases, or 79% of the time in Mark, preceding context makes it clear what they were amazed / astonished / astounded at. Jesus taught them either by word or by deed (miracles send quite a “message” too!):

Mark 1:22: unspecified

Mark 1:27: Jesus had cast out a demon (1:23-26)

Mark 2:12: Jesus had forgiven the sins of a paralytic and healed him (2:3-11)

Mark 6:2: unspecified

Mark 6:51: Jesus has just walked on the water and stilled the wind (6:48-51)

Mark 7:37: Jesus had just healed a deaf man with a speech impediment (7:32-36)

Mark 9:15: unspecified

Mark 10:24: Jesus had just taught about the relation of riches to serving God, in his encounter with the rich young ruler (10:17-23)

Mark 10:26: this is the same reaction as in 10:24, for the same reason. He had added: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (10:24-25)

Mark 10:32: Jesus had said to them specifically that they would “receive a hundredfold . . . and in the age to come eternal life” as a reward for their great sacrifices in being His disciples (10:27-31)

Mark 11:18: Jesus had just cleared the temple of the moneychangers and explained that the temple was for “prayer” rather than “robbers” (11:15-17)

Mark 12:17: Jesus had just taught about paying taxes and “rendering unto Caesar” (12:13-17)

Mark 16:5: the dead Jesus was no longer in His tomb (16:5), then the angels says, “do not be amazed” (16:6) 

How odd, then, that Dr. Madison thinks “little of the content is provided.” Granted, it’s another fairly minor point, but it does illustrate Dr. Madison’s relentless quest to find supposed “contradictions” where there are none, and how he is consistently wrong, even on smaller issues. No one (except an apologist like myself) would have neither time nor desire to “check” him on this matter (which is precisely the desired result of the unsavory Gish gallop method of “argumentation”). But this is why I do what I do. I have both time and desire to deal with all of these things, so that others, reading, can get on with far more important matters, and not let Dr. Madison’s nonsense be a stumbling-block to them.

By some estimates, its story of Jesus could have taken place in just two or three weeks . . . 

By comparing it to the other Gospels, it becomes clear that this isn’t the case.

Matthew, indeed, proved to be a master of invention. Other cults felt that virgin-birth was an appropriate credential for their sons of god, so Matthew decided to add that to Jesus; he goofed when he used a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14 to slip virgin birth into his story.

I dealt with and disposed of this objection:

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: “Mistranslation” of “Virgin”? (Isaiah 7:14) (with Glenn Miller) [7-26-17]

Dual Fulfillment of Prophecy & the Virgin Birth (vs. JMS Pearce) [12-18-20]

But Matthew added troubling Jesus-script (10: 37), unknown to Mark; how does this rank on any scale of moral teaching? “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” We can infer from this that, by Matthew’s time, cult fanaticism was trending in the Jesus sect. As we shall see, Luke made this text worse. . . .  Moreover, he [Luke] felt that Matthew 10:37, was too mild, i.e., “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…” He changed Jesus’ words to: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (14:26) You have to hate your own life. 

This is classic cult fanaticism; today we recommend deprogramming for people who get suckered in.  The devout are rightly shocked by Luke 14:26 and assume that surely it’s a misquote. But this verse provides insight into Luke’s agenda: he didn’t want people in the Jesus cult who had divided loyalties. Of course, this text has been a challenge to professional defenders of the faith: How to tone it down? The editors of the English Standard Version use the heading, “The Cost of Discipleship,” for this section, instead of, say, “Jesus the Cult Fanatic.” Most decent Christians would reject hatred of family as a “cost” of discipleship. 

Dealt with already:

Dr. David Madison vs. Jesus #1: Hating One’s Family? [8-1-19]

Madison vs. Jesus #5: Cultlike Forsaking of Family? [8-5-19]

When Luke got to work on his gospel, he knew that Matthew had to be corrected as much as Mark did. 

Right. Now, I dare to ask (sorry for being rational and logical): how could anyone possibly “know” such a thing, unless Luke expressly stated it? This is, of course, the fallacy of the argument from silence.

What a dumb idea—he must have thought—having Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Egypt, so he deleted that from his birth narrative.

See my previous paragraph. This is the “dumb idea” here: not what the Bible describes about Jesus’ infancy.

But he had the even dumber idea of an empire-wide census that required people to travel to the home of their ancestors to sign up. No other historian of the time mentions any such thing; major chaos would have resulted from such a decree. 

Dealt with here:

The Census, Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem, & History: Reply to Atheist John W. Loftus’ Irrational Criticisms of the Biblical Accounts [2-3-11]

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: Herod’s Death & Alleged “Contradictions” (with Jimmy Akin) [7-25-17]

Luke did include the Sermon on the Mount, but he shortened it, broke it up, altered the wording—and said it took place on a plain.

Dealt with:

Sermon on the Mount: Striking Topographical Facts (9-16-15)

His Jesus had been present at Creation, so he [John] left out the virgin birth; . . . 

This is beyond idiotic. All four Gospels teach the divinity / Godhood of Jesus (the incarnation). They all teach that He is eternal, and the Creator. The virgin birth doesn’t contradict the deity of Jesus. It’s simply the way that God became man. See:

Jesus is God: Hundreds of Biblical Proofs (RSV edition) [1982; rev. 2012]

Holy Trinity: Hundreds of Biblical Proofs (RSV edition) [1982; rev. 2012]

Deity of Jesus: Called Lord/Kurios & God/Theos [10-24-11]

Seidensticker Folly #55: Godhood of Jesus in the Synoptics [9-12-20]

Mark had claimed that Jesus taught only in parables (4:34), but John has no parables.

But Jesus does talk (as recorded in the Gospel of John) in many metaphorical or proverbial (non-literal) ways that bear resemblance to the synoptic parables. For example:

John 2:19-21 (RSV) Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” [20] The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” [21] But he spoke of the temple of his body.

John 3:8 The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

John 4:13-14 Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, [14] but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

John 10:11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (see also 10:1-10, 12-18, including Jesus calling Himself “the door” three times)

John 11:12-14 But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” [11] Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, “Our friend Laz’arus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep.” [12] The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” [13] Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. [14] Then Jesus told them plainly, “Laz’arus is dead;”

But before we even get to that, one must properly understand Mark 4:34: “he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.” This does not teach “that Jesus [all the time] taught only in parables.” And it doesn’t because we have to understand whether the statement was referring only to the immediate context or to all of Jesus’ teachings whatever. It’s patently obvious by reading the Gospels, that Jesus did not always teach in parables. So that isn’t even in question. Only a totally biased skeptic and apostate like Dr. Madison could even think that it is. He must twist his mind into a pretzel to believe such a ridiculous thing.

Secondly, even when Jesus used parables a lot, it doesn’t follow that He could never use other teaching methods (it’s not a mutually exclusive situation). Mark 4:34 could simply mean, “Jesus often included a parable when He taught.” The Bible uses a lot of hyperbole as well. Even in this passage, it says, “privately to his own disciples he explained everything.” But that’s not literally true, either. It’s only broadly true. So, for example, Jesus said to His disciples: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (Jn 16:12). In another instance, when Jesus started explaining that He was to be killed, and that this was God’s plan, Peter didn’t understand, and disagreed. Jesus rebuked him, but didn’t further  explain:

Matthew 16:21-23 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. [22] And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” [23] But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” (cf. Mk 8:31-33)

Here’s another similar example:

Luke 9:44-45 “Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men.” [45] But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

This was not a parable, but rather, a literal a prophetic statement about what was to happen, and Jesus did not explain it to His disciples.

There is no Eucharist in John’s; instead he washed the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. 

It’s not stated, but we know that it took place, because this was the Last Supper, which was the Jewish Passover (a meal), incorporated into the new understanding of the Eucharist, instituted by Jesus. Since the three Synoptic Gospels mentioned the institution of the Eucharist, John didn’t necessarily have to. He concentrates on other things Jesus said during the last Supper. What Dr. Madison seems to think is a “contradiction” and a big concern, is none at all.

John also left out the Sermon on the Mount, . . . 

Technically, he didn’t “leave out” anything. He wrote exactly what he wanted to write in his account. If three accounts of something already exist, why have a fourth? Sometimes John also records events from the Synoptics, but he is under no obligation to do any of that. Only atheists seem to have this ludicrous idea that all four evangelists must always write exactly the same about everything, lest it is one of their endless pseudo-“contradictions.” Because of this warped, illogical, irrational mentality, Dr. Madison can write a ridiculous statement such as this, in conclusion:

With these examples, I’ve just scratched the surface. A careful study of the gospels—especially using a gospel parallels version—shows that, right from the start, the authors of the Jesus story couldn’t get the story straight, and it was a blunder to publish the four conflicting accounts side-by-side. Given this mess—so many different ideas from which to pick and choose—it’s hardly a surprise that Christians are so deeply divided. The bigger blunder, of course, was conferring “Word of God” status on these ancient novels. That’s an added layer of magical thinking.

The Bible truly describes people like Dr. Madison:

Proverbs 15:2 . . . the mouths of fools pour out folly.

Proverbs 15:14 The mind of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly.

Proverbs 18:7 A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to himself.

Ecclesiastes 10:13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is wicked madness.

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Photo credit: netkids (3-22-16) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

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December 29, 2020

December 29, 2020 By

Dr. David Madison is an atheist who was a Methodist minister for nine years: with a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Boston University.  I have replied to his videos or articles 42 times as of this writing. Thus far, I haven’t heard one peep back from him  (from 8-1-19 to 12-29-20). This certainly doesn’t suggest to me that he is very confident in his opinions. All I’ve seen is expressions of contempt from Dr. Madison and from his buddy, the atheist author, polemicist, and extraordinarily volatile John Loftus, who runs the ultra-insulting Debunking Christianity blog. Dr. Madison made his cramped, insulated mentality clear in a comment from 9-6-19:

[T]he burden of the apologist has become heavy indeed, and some don’t handle the anguish well. They vent and rage at critics, like toddlers throwing tantrums when a threadbare security blanket gets tossed out. We can smell their panic. Engaging with the ranters serves no purpose—any more than it does to engage with Flat-Earthers, Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, and those who argue that the moon landings were faked. . . . I prefer to engage with NON-obsessive-compulsive-hysterical Christians, those who have spotted rubbish in the Bible, and might already have one foot out the door.

John “you are an idiot!” Loftus even went to the length of changing his blog’s rules of engagement, so that he and Dr. Madison could avoid replying to yours truly, or even see notices of my replies (er, sorry, rants, rather). Dr. Madison’s words will be in blue.

Presently, I am replying to his article, “Bible Blunders & Bad Theology, Part 7″ (12-18-20).

*****

Proverbs 26:11 (RSV) Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.

2 Peter 2:22 . . . the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire.

Proverbs 1:22 How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Proverbs 9:7-8 He who corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. [8] Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you.

*****

The gospel of Mark is a good place to start. Do Christians really want the Jesus depicted here? In an article I posted here in January 2018, “Getting the Gospels Off on the Wrong Foot,” I said this: “If you accept the Jesus of Mark’s gospel, you are well on the way to full-throttle crazy religion. No slick excuses offered by priests and pastors—none of their pious posturing about ‘our Lord and Savior’—can change that fact.” 

In the fifth chapter, for example, Jesus encounters a mentally ill man, and by a magic spell he transfers the guy’s demons into pigs. Most of us today wouldn’t agree that mental illness is caused by demons, or that a holy man could send them into pigs. That’s a sample of the superstition we find in Mark. Yes, we can chalk this up the naiveté of ancient thinking, and it’s too bad the Word of God didn’t rise above that.

But we find something even more troubling in Mark 4, an alarming text that should alert Christians that something is amiss. After Jesus has told the Parable of the Sower, 

“When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’” (Mark 4:10-12)

Devout scholars have been wringing their hands about this text for a long time. How can it be that Jesus tells parables to prevent people from repenting and being forgiven? On what level does that make sense?

I thoroughly refuted this pseudo-“objection” (so-called “blunder” and “bad theology”) over a year and four months ago:

Madison vs. Jesus #7: God Prohibits Some Folks’ Repentance? [8-6-19]

But since Dr. Madison deliberately ignores any critique of his contentions that I provide, he simply returned to his vomit and wallowed in the mire yet again.

Sometimes the cult-centric texts sound nice, for example, Mark 12:30, a command from Jesus: “…you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” How can a loving God require this level of devotion and subservience? Divine narcissism is fueled by the certainty that worshippers love at this all, all, all, all level. 

But what’s the point? Indeed most Christians—at least those who don’t choose monastic seclusion—have families, jobs, hobbies and pastimes that require major commitments of their hearts, souls, minds, and strength; they are not as fanatically obsessed with God as Jesus commands in Mark 12:30. Very few take this text seriously.

I thoroughly refuted this pseudo-“objection” (so-called “blunder” and “bad theology”) over a year and four months ago:

Madison vs. Jesus #6: Narcissistic, Love-Starved God? [8-6-19]

But since Dr. Madison deliberately ignores any critique of his contentions that I provide, he simply returned to his vomit and wallowed in the mire yet again.

And it gets worse. Mark 12:30 is a preamble to train wreck verses in Matthew 10; when Christians read these, why don’t they cancel their memberships?

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” (verses 34-36)

And then Jesus the cult fanatic—Matthew’s version—puts the frosting on the cake: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”  (verses 37-38)

Luke, however, wasn’t satisfied with even this. He added hate to the formula: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (14:26) 

Not only hatred of family, but hatred of life itself.

I thoroughly refuted this pseudo-“objection” (so-called “blunder” and “bad theology”) over a year and four months ago:

Dr. David Madison vs. Jesus #1: Hating One’s Family? [8-1-19]

But since Dr. Madison deliberately ignores any critique of his contentions that I provide, he simply returned to his vomit and wallowed in the mire yet again.

For quite a while now I have used the term Ancient Jesus Mystery Cult to describe Christianity. Indeed the early followers of Jesus were in competition with other cults in the first century, others that celebrated resurrected gods and knew secret formulas for achieving eternal life. Sacred meals were sometimes part of the package, and the Jesus cult was not to be outdone, especially in the theology imagined by the author of John’s gospel. 

So we come to the final train wreck verses to examine here—perhaps a highpoint of bad theology. The sacred meal proposed by John included Jesus’ body parts. After all, according to John, Jesus had been present at creation; he was “one with the father,” so how could his body not have magical properties? John invented this Jesus script:

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”  (John 6:53-57)

This is an extreme—and disgusting—example of magical thinking; making it a “sacrament” adds to the disgrace. When Christians are asked to pretend—to simulate—drinking blood, that’s the time to head for the exit!

I thoroughly refuted this pseudo-“objection” (so-called “blunder” and “bad theology”) over a year and four months ago:

Madison vs. Jesus #8: Holy Eucharist as “Grotesque Magic”? [8-7-19]

But since Dr. Madison deliberately ignores any critique of his contentions that I provide, he simply returned to his vomit and wallowed in the mire yet again.

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Photo credit: Mark Peters (9-26-10). Yorkshire pigs wallow in mud at the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license]

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December 18, 2020

December 18, 2020 By

Atheist and anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce’s “About” page states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.” His words will be in blue.

*****

Jonathan wrote a paper called “On Harmonising Biblical Contradictions” (7-23-17). I replied with “Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Swine, & Atheist Skeptics” (7-25-17). He then counter-replied with “The Demons! The Demons! Replying to Armstrong on Biblical Contradictions” (7-29-17). This is my reply to the latter.

Problem 2 – one or two demons

Problem 2

I will start with Problem 2 because Dave appears not to have even read my original piece, deferring to the very argument I decry. . . . 

The number of demons are multiple in all accounts (Mk 5:9-12; Mt 8:31; Lk 8:30-33), so that is a non-issue as well. Why, then, does Jonathan wonder about “one or two demons”? It’s neither. It is “many.”

Wow. Okay, so he starts out by attacking my logic, and then says that they all state many. But the passages are very explicit, as I quoted them:

[he then merely reposts the passages as he did in his first piece: Mark 5:1-2; Matthew 8:28; and Luke 8:26-27]

Note that at this point in the argument he is discussing how many demons were mentioned in these stories, not men (that comes later). He claims I didn’t even read his arguments, but I did, which is why I denied that the issue of either one or two men and one or more demons involves technical logical contradiction. Hence, in the larger citation of my words one can see how I included both:

The “one or two” [men / demons] supposed “contradiction” is clearly not one at all, by the rules of logic.

But (again) here at this point, following Jonathan’s own progression of argument, he mentioned only the numbers of demons. Readers will note that the passages I list, having to do with the incident, are from the latter parts of the accounts, where all mention multiple demons. That‘s what I was referring to. Mark 5:9 (RSV, as throughout) has the demons saying “we are many”. 5:12-13 add “they begged him” /  “Send us . . .  let us  . . .” / “he gave them leave” / “unclean spirits”. So there are multiple demons involved, not one. Matthew 8:31 (and 8:32) are very similar, mentioning “demons” and using plural forms of words several times. Luke 8:30-33 is also the same, mentioning “many demons” and “the demons” etc.

This was my reply to “one or two demons.” Even that is an inaccurate way to describe the passage. The question is whether there was one demon or many. All three gospels fully agree that there were many. So Jonathan’s query as to supposed contradictoriness is literally nonsensical. There is no “problem” here. It may be, however, that Jonathan was mistakenly using the term “demons” to refer to the men. The proper term to use is “demoniacs” or “demon-possessed men.”

Then right after citing his three passages (needlessly, since I saw them already in his first piece), he goes right into the supposed “contradiction” of one or two men (depending on which Gospel report one reads):

Whether you like it or not, Jesus was either met by one man or two. I couldn’t give a withered fig as to whether this is remotely important or not, but it is a contradiction.

Once again, it is not a contradiction, and I explained why in what he already cited from me. He doesn’t seem to grasp it, so here it is again:

Mentioning one is as easily explained as saying that one writer drew from a (non-infallible) oral tradition in which one was mentioned, and the second from a tradition that mentioned two. Even those weren’t necessarily contradictory. In order to be, one account would have to say “only one” and the other “two.” That would be a logical contradiction. But they don’t . . .

This basic fact of the nature of a numerical contradiction remains true, no matter how much Jonathan prattles on about how folks ought to talk about numbers (“bastardisation of the English language” etc.). He also wastes much ink arguing with another apologist, J. P. Holding. He’s more than able to defend himself. I defend my own arguments, thank you.

But there are additional observations about this that may be helpful: having to do with emphasis. The Thy Word is True website (“Demoniacs: One or Two?”) gives a perfectly plausible explanation that I think Jonathan hasn’t considered (nor did I myself before I read it; but it makes perfect sense):

[I]n Matthew 8:28, it is giving an extra information, that there was a second demon-possessed person. One was the leader of the two. Of course, one of the two was possessed by “Legion”. Yet, it is also possible that these “legion” of demons possessed both of the unfortunate men. Whatever the case, the thing is that only one of the two demon-possessed men responded to Jesus Christ after He set them free from the demons and cast the demons into the group of swine.

[I will use RSV for the Bible citations in this quote]

Mark 5:18-19 And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. [19] But he refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”

Luke 8:38-39 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but he sent him away, saying, [39] “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

This is why only Mark and Luke mention only one demon-possessed person because only he was of significance to the story. Only he gave thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord for setting him free from Satan’s minions. The other was not mentioned because he probably gave no thanks to Jesus Christ and ran off still stuck in his evil ways. Now look at the man who did respond to Jesus Christ.

Luke 8:35 Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.

Matthew does not mention that this man expressed appreciation and a desire to follow and be with Jesus. So the key to the difference is “Mark and Luke mention only one demon-possessed person because only he was of significance to the story. Only he gave thanks to Jesus Christ . . .”

Gleason L. Archer, author of the wonderful (but to atheists, notorious and infamous) Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1982) approaches the same question differently, but still similarly:

Mark and Luke center attention on the more prominent and outspoken of the two, the one whose demonic occupants called themselves “Legion.”

As a seminary professor I have occasionally had small elective courses containing only two students. In some cases i remember only one of them with any distinctness, simply because he was the more brilliant and articulate of the two. If I were to compose a set of memoirs and speak of only one of my two-student class, I could hardly be charged with contradicting the historical fact that there were actually two of them in the elective course. (p. 325).

Likewise, Mark and Luke don’t contradict the other two because they mention only one man anymore than a baseball player contradicts himself in reminiscing: “I distinctly remember a person who expressed extreme gratefulness when I gave them my autograph on opening day.” He may also mention scores of others who were also there getting his autograph or he may not. But in any event, it’s not a contradiction to mention one person only. It would be only if he said, “this person was the only one there that day getting my autograph.”

Luke takes the same approach in the story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus. Archer elaborates:

Matthew was concerned to mention all who were involved in this episode . . . Matthew is content to record that actual scene of healing, whereas Luke gives particular attention to the entire proceedings, from the moment that  Bartimaeus first heard about Jesus’ arrival — a feature only cursorily suggested by Mark 10:46 — because he is interested in the beggar’s persistence in request before the cure was actually performed on him. As for the second blind beggar, neither Mark nor Luke find him significant enough to mention; presumably he was the more colorless personality of the two. (Ibid., p. 333)

Jonathan then moves onto the “Gadarene / Gerasene / Gergesene” issue. Here, he chose to ignore the subtlest and most detailed portions of my argument: mostly citing experts. Therefore, I’ll post it again (between the two sets of five asterisks) — repetition being a great teacher!:

*****

Here are the actual descriptions (RSV):

Mark 5:1 . . . the country of the Ger’asenes.

Luke 8:26 . . . the country of the Ger’asenes . . .

Matthew 8:28 . . . the country of the Gadarenes . . .

Note that the texts don’t say Gerasa or Gadara, so they aren’t necessarily referring just to one of the cities. They all say “country of . . .” (in the sense of region, not “nation”). “Gerasenes” could have had a sense of reference to the entire region (as well as to a city: just as “New Yorker” can refer to the state or city), and “Gadarenes” likely was a reference to the most prominent city of the region at the time. Smith’s Bible Dictionary provides what I find to be a quite plausible explanation (not “special pleading” at all), and analogous to how we still use place names today:

These three names are used indiscriminately to designate the place where Jesus healed two demoniacs. The first two are in the Authorized Version. (Matthew 8:28; Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26) In Gerasenes in place of Gadarenes. The miracle referred to took place, without doubt, near the town of Gergesa, the modern Kersa, close by the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and hence in the country of Gergesenes. But as Gergesa was a small village, and little known, the evangelists, who wrote for more distant readers, spoke of the event as taking place in the country of the Gadarenes, so named from its largest city, Gadara; and this country included the country of the Gergesenes as a state includes a county. The Gerasenes were the people of the district of which Gerasa was the capital. This city was better known than Gadara or Gergesa; indeed in the Roman age no city of Palestine was better known. “It became one of the proudest cities of Syria.” It was situated some 30 miles southeast of Gadara, on the borders of Peraea and a little north of the river Jabbok. It is now called Jerash and is a deserted ruin. The district of the Gerasenes probably included that of the Gadarenes; so that the demoniac of Gergesa belonged to the country of the Gadarenes and also to that of the Gerasenes, as the same person may, with equal truth, be said to live in the city or the state, or in the United States. For those near by the local name would be used; but in writing to a distant people, as the Greeks and Romans, the more comprehensive and general name would be given.

The Biblical Training site (“Gerasenes”) elaborates:

The fact that Matthew places the healing of “Legion” in the “country of the Gadarenes” whereas Mark and Luke place it in the “country of the Gerasenes” may be harmonized on the historical grounds that geographical boundaries overlapped, and on the exegetical consideration that “country” embraced a wide area around the cities.

It’s simply alternate names for the same area: thus not contradictory at all. I think the coup de grâce is to look up the Greek word for “country” in these passages, to see what latitude of meaning it has. In all three instances the word is chōra (Strong’s word #5561). Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines it as “the space lying between two places or limits . . . region or country.” The Sea of Galilee was clearly one of the limits.

In Luke 2:8 it is applied to the city of Bethlehem; in Acts 18:23 to Galatia and Phrygia. In Mark 1:5 it is used of “the land of Judaea” (KJV) and in Acts 10:39,to “land of the Jews” (KJV). In Acts 8:1 we have the “regions of Judaea and Samaria” (KJV), and in Acts 16:6, Galatia alone. Thus it is not always used of one specific country (nation), but rather, usually to regions or areas of either small (Bethlehem) or large (Judaea and Samaria) size, including regions surrounding large cities.

All of this sure seems perfectly consistent with calling the same area the “country” (chōra) of either the Gerasenes or the Gadarenes, after the two major cities.

*****

Maybe this time Jonathan will grapple with these portions. His blithely passing over all this material is a classic example of what I meant when I wrote on his blog two days ago:

I think what happened in 2017 is that I saw that you were not addressing my arguments in full, but rather, taking shots at a few carefully selected ones and ignoring the others. And so I must have decided (one makes such decisions when there are many possible topics to write about) not to reply further. It looks like you only addressed (at all) two of my four Christmas-related posts and blew off my papers on “Contradictory” Genealogies of Christ? and Bethlehem & Nazareth “Contradictions”.

Obviously, then, you selected what you would spend time on, just as I did. I do give you credit, on the other hand, for at least doing that, in light of the behavior of many of your cohorts like Seidensticker, Madison, Loftus et al, who absolutely refuse to engage, other than with insults. And you haven’t banned me. Kudos!

Just for good measure, I’ll add a bit more material that Jonathan can choose to either again ignore or actually address. Gleason Archer tackles this “problem”:

[I]t is entirely possible that the political control of this region was centered in Gadara as the capital city. Hence it would be called “the land of the Gadarenes.” . . . (Ibid., p. 325).

 

The site Evidence for Christianity focuses on the different intended audiences for the Synoptic Gospels:

On the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee (actually to the Southeast) there are two cities. One is Gadara.  The other is Gerasa.  Gadara is the chief Jewish city of the area, so the more Jewish-oriented Matthew naturally calls this the region of the Gadarenes.  The principle Graeco-Roman city in the area known as the Decapolis, was Gerasa . . . The more Roman-oriented Mark and the more Greek-oriented Luke naturally call the region, Gerasa and tell us the demoniac came from the region of the Gerasenes. Both cities are to the Southeast of the Sea of Galilee.  Gerasa is larger, but is farther from the Sea. It was the chief city of the area. Gadara was closer, but not as significant a city.  There is no contradiction here.  If someone lived in the city of Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, some would say that the person lived in Norwalk.  Others would say that he or she lived in Los Angeles.  If speaking to someone from Europe, surely they would say Los Angeles, but if speaking to someone from LA county, they would say Norwalk.  This is not contradiction. It is a different description of the same facts, adapted to the audience of the facts.

Apologetics Press basically concurs:

Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writing of the same general area. The Roman city Gerasa was a famous city that would have been familiar to a Gentile audience, but Gadara, as the capital city of the Roman province of Perea, was the chief of the ten cities in Decapolis . . ., so even those who lived in Gerasa could have been called Gadarenes. The stamp of a ship on Gadarene coins suggests that the region called Gadara probably extended to Galilee . . .

Logic & Light comes at it from a different (and fascinating) angle:

Dr. Timothy McGrew persuasively argues that “country of the Gerasenes” refers not to Gerasa, but to the town of Kursi (which was in the region of Gadara).  [Alleged Historical Errors in the Gospels, published online, 2012, pg. 52-53] He makes this argument based on the fact that the original Aramaic names for Gerasa and Kursi would have been spelled very similarly if not identically.  Therefore, the identification with Gerasa is potentially due to an early copyist mistake or misinterpretation of Kursi.

Dr. McGrew’s theory is strongly supported by the geography of Kursi and early church history.  Kursi is on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and has a steep hill that runs directly into the water . . .

In addition, the early church, through the 3rd century church father Origen, identified Kursi as the town in which this miracle occurred.  Further, an early 5th century Christian monastery was built in Kursi and seems to have been located there to commemorate this event.

I think all these attempts to harmonize the seeming contradiction are plausible and respectable. Jonathan will likely disagree. But then it gets down to an extremely complex discussion of why and how people differ on relative plausibility. In any event, I think the language Jonathan uses in his second post on the topic towards Christians who may believe explanations like the above (“disingenuous” / “scenarios that are unbelievably unlikely”) is unwarranted. As always, I appeal to fair-minded readers, attempting to be rational and objective, to make up their own minds. Both sides have been presented here.

***

Photo credit: Map of the Decapolis; Nichalp (12-14-05) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license]

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November 25, 2020

November 25, 2020 By

Atheist and anti-theist Bob Seidensticker runs the influential Cross Examined blog. He asked me there, on 8-11-18: “I’ve got 1000+ posts here attacking your worldview. You just going to let that stand? Or could you present a helpful new perspective that I’ve ignored on one or two of those posts?” He added in June 2017 in a combox: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.” Delighted to oblige his wishes . . . 

Bob (for the record) virtually begged and pleaded with me to dialogue with him in May 2018, via email. But by 10-3-18, following massive, childish name-calling attacks against me,  encouraged by Bob on his blog, he banned me from commenting there. I also banned him for violation of my rules for discussion, but (unlike him) provided detailed reasons for why it was justified.

Bob’s cowardly hypocrisy knows no bounds. On 6-30-19, he was chiding someone for something very much like his own behavior: “Spoken like a true weasel trying to run away from a previous argument. You know, you could just say, ‘Let me retract my previous statement of X’ or something like that.” Yeah, Bob could!  He still hasn’t yet uttered one peep in reply to — now — 64 of my critiques of his atrocious reasoning.

Bible-Basher Bob reiterated and rationalized his intellectual cowardice yet again on 10-17-20: “Every engagement with him [yours truly] devolves into pointlessness. I don’t believe I’ve ever learned anything from him. But if you find a compelling argument of his, summarize it for us.” And again the next day: “He has certainly not earned a spot in my heart, so I will pass on funding his evidence-free project. Like you, I also find that he’s frustrating to talk with. Again, I evaluate such conversations as useful if I can learn something–find a mistake in my argument, uncover an error I made in Christians’ worldview, and so on. Dave is good at bluster, and that’s about it.”

Bible-Basher Bob’s words will be in blue. To find these posts, follow this link: “Seidensticker Folly #” or see all of them linked under his own section on my Atheism page.

*****

Today’s critique is a case study in a person who is utterly unwilling to be instructed (certainly not by one of us lowly, ignorant Christians!). I observed Bob railing about supposed unresolvable contradictions in Ten Commandments accounts in the Bible, in one of his comboxes. In this instance, a Christian (“Scooter”) was there trying to talk sense into Bob, who would have none of it. Undaunted, he simply kept up his pitiable anti-Bible polemics and rhetoric:

Read Exodus 34. This is Moses getting the second set of tablets (remember that he smashed the first set).

Ex. 34:28 says: “Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.”

After you’ve done that, tell us what you’ve found. (11-20-20)

Scooter: I note that quite often your responses suffer from the “I’ve got my mind made up, don’t confuse me with the facts” syndrome. So I encourage you to read Deuteronomy 5 again that debunks the idea that there were 2 different sets of Commandments. (11-21-20)

As Greg noted, don’t whine to us about who has his mind made up.

Ex. 20 and 34 have two very different sets of 10 Commandments. Or is God’s holy word something that you don’t bother reading or understanding?

The Documentary Hypothesis very neatly explains this and other conflations of two stories in the Bible (Flood, Creation, and others). (11-21-20)

Scooter: The Documentary Hypothesis and the arguments that support it have been effectively demolished by scholars from many different theological perspectives and areas of expertise. Read Ex.34 verse one very carefully. (11-21-20)

[W]hen you read the 10 Cs in Ex. 34 and compare that with “the words that were on the first tables” in Ex. 20, you find two very different sets of commandments. (11-21-20)

Since you refuse to address my point about the 2 incompatible versions of the 10 Commandments in the same book of the Bible, I’ll assume that you agree that it’s a problem.

As for the Documentary Hypothesis, it has been tweaked, but the core idea is unchanged: the Pentateuch that we have is the mixing of a number of different traditions. If you want to attack this, give me a reference. (11-22-20)

Happy to oblige:

Documentary Theory of Biblical Authorship (JEPD): Dialogue [2-12-04]

Silent Night: A “Progressive” and “Enlightened” Reinterpretation [12-10-04; additionally edited for publication at National Catholic Register: 12-21-17]

Documentary Theory (Pentateuch): Critical Articles [6-21-10]

“Higher” Hapless Haranguing of Hypothetical Hittites (19th C.) [10-21-11; abridged 7-7-20]

C. S. Lewis Roundly Mocked the Documentary Hypothesis [10-6-19]

The Bible states:

Proverbs 1:22 (RSV) How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Proverbs 13:16 In everything a prudent man acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly.

Proverbs 15:14 The mind of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly.

Proverbs 26:11 Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.

Sirach 21:18 Like a house that has vanished, so is wisdom to a fool; and the knowledge of the ignorant is unexamined talk.

2 Timothy 3:7 who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

This is Bob’s problem. He won’t accept any instruction or even clarification from Christians. He knows all. He knows better than Christians (even scholars) who have devoted their lives to studying and understanding the Bible. He thinks that he’s virtually infallible (judging by his constant words and actions), when it comes to the Bible and Christian theology, even though he himself at least honestly admitted (2-13-16): “My study of the Bible has been haphazard, and I jump around based on whatever I’m researching at the moment.” How impressive . . . 

I thoroughly refuted his “two contradictory sets of Ten Commandments” schtick over two years ago: Seidensticker Folly #16: Two Sets of Ten Commandments? A person who was confident of his positions and interested in open-minded, interactive dialogue would have welcomed such an opportunity.

But because Bob refuses to learn anything about the Bible (or read or respond to any of my 65 critiques), he simply repeats his same old stupid errors. He has no interest whatsoever in constructive dialogue. This is (to put it very mildly) not an impressive or constructive intellectual “place” to be. The true thinker is always willing to dialogue, be corrected, and learn. It’s the blind leading the blind. Bob offers up yet more slop on almost a daily basis, and his sycophants and cheerleaders sop it up, no matter how noxious or toxic his “stew” is.

All we Christian apologists can do is offer reasonable counter-explanations and refutations and shake our heads at the silliness and sheer impervious irrationality of what goes on on a regular basis at Cross Examined and many other anti-theist “bubble” venues like it (such as John Loftus’ Debunking Christianity site).

***

Photo credit: paulbr75 (8-30-18) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

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November 23, 2020

November 23, 2020 By

vs. Dr. Steven DiMattei 

Dr. Steven DiMattei is a biblical scholar and author, formally trained in the New Testament and early Christianity, with M.A degrees in Classics and Comparative Literature as well. Rumor has it that he is an atheist, but I haven’t been able to confirm that on his site. He put up a website called Contradictions in the Bible. It seems inactive now (or he has lost interest or moved onto other things: who knows?), but the themes are things I really enjoy discussing and debating, and his articles are still online for all to see; thus fair game for critique — and stimulating food for thought, too. There is almost nothing I like to discuss and think about more than the interpretation of the Bible. Steven wrote in a post dated 5-7-16:

One of my reasons in choosing the word “defend” to describe my aims as a biblical scholar and author was in part to attract Christian apologists to my work and hopefully to get them to read these ancient texts on their terms and from within their own cultural contexts and to create a conversation around the biblical texts, their authors, and their competing beliefs, messages, worldviews, theologies, etc. As you can imagine this has proven quite difficult, nay impossible. Many Christian apologists and fundamentalists just cannot read, or simply identify, the text on its own terms separate from the beliefs and assumptions about the text handed-down through this collection of ancient literature’s title, “the Holy Book.”

Here  I am: an apologist quite willing to engage in conversation. It takes two. So we’ll see if Steven is willing to follow through on his stated desire. I have had my own long history (in almost 40 years of apologetics) of “difficult, nay impossible” attempts to discuss matters with many people who tend to be of a few particular belief-systems, though I have no problem talking with anyone who is civil and can stick to a topic. I don’t just say this, I have a demonstrable record of doing it, which is evident on my blog, with its 1000+ dialogues. But as I said, dialogue takes two, and I would add that it also requires a degree of at least minimal mutual respect. Steven’s words will be in blue.

*****

I am critiquing two related articles of his, on alleged “biblical contradictions”:

#159. The Golden Calf OR the Golden Cherubs? (Ex 32:4 vs Ex 25:18-20, 37:7-9)

#157. Is the festival associated with the Golden Calf a festival to Yahweh OR to other gods? (Ex 32:5 vs Ex 32:1, 32:4, 32:8)

I shall deal with #159 first, because its errors are more basic, groundless, and indefensible.

What is the difference between these golden cherubs and the golden calf? Why is it permitted to fabricate golden cherubs and not the golden calf? 

Short answer: because one was intended to be gross idolatry (the calf) and the other was a permitted non-idolatrous religious image, sanctioned by God. I have written about the details of the outrageous and blasphemous idolatry of the golden calf and the nature of idolatry as the Bible defines it:

Is the Mass Equivalent to OT Golden Calf Worship? [1996]

Biblical Idolatry: Authentic & Counterfeit Conceptions [2015]

On the other hand, there are many examples of permitted images in Old Testament worship, including the temple and ark of the covenant (in other words, not all images were forbidden “graven images” or idolatrous):

Veneration of Images, Iconoclasm, and Idolatry (An Exposition) [11-15-02]

Bible on Holy Places & Things [1-8-08]

Bible on Physical Objects as Aids in Worship [4-7-09]

Biblical Evidence for Worship of God Via an Image [6-24-11]

The Bronze Serpent: Example of Proper Use of Images [Feb. 2012]

“Graven Images”: Unbiblical Iconoclasm (vs. John Calvin) [Oct. 2012]

Worshiping God Through Images is Entirely Biblical [National Catholic Register, 12-23-16]

Statues in Relation to Bowing, Prayer, & Worship in Scripture [12-26-17]

Biblical Evidence for Veneration of Saints and Images [National Catholic Register, 10-23-18]

Crucifixes & Worship Images: “New” (?) Biblical Arguments [1-18-20]

Is Worship of God Through an Image Biblical? (vs. Luke Wayne) [11-10-20]

The ark of the covenant, which included the two golden cherubim on top, was never intended to be a representation of God. One can search the Bible in vain and never find the slightest hint of any such thing. God gave elaborate instructions for the construction of the ark and its use. I recently engaged an anti-Catholic Protestant who correctly noted that these two cherubim were not to be worshiped, but that God appeared in the space between the two of them (as the Bible states several times). But there was a permitted image involved (a cloud), as I detailed:

Luke makes a clever and interesting argument that the space between the mercy seat on top of the ark of the covenant, where God says He is present and to be worshiped (despite being surrounded by carved cherubim [angels]) is “empty space” and “imageless space” and “with no image.” But this is untrue, as the Bible informs us:

Leviticus 16:2 and the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at all times into the holy place within the veil, before the mercy seat which is upon the ark, lest he die; for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.

This cloud was visible, just as in other passages above, like Exodus 13:21; 19:18; 24:16; 33:10 (“the people saw the pillar of cloud”), and others like Numbers 16:42 (“the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD appeared“) and Deuteronomy 31:15 (“And the LORD appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud“). The very word “appear” in Leviticus 16:2  and the last two passages also proves it. God doesn’t just say that He will be “present”, but that He will “appear” in this cloud.

The Bible draws a big distinction between a permitted, non-idolatrous image and idolatrous images deliberately intended to be idols.

Aren’t they both idols? Furthermore, why would Yahweh’s most Holy of Holies contain two golden cherubs? Were these representations of the god? Was the golden calf a representation of the god?

These are remarkable questions: asked by one who is highly educated in Bible study. It’s amazing to have to answer such questions at all. But here I go. I dealt with the golden calf in depth 24 years ago. Here are some highlights:

*****

In Exodus 32:1, the NRSV reads, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us……” (cf. 32:23)

Exodus 32:4-5 informs us:

    He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”

It is, therefore, clear that this is idolatry and otherwise sinful, on many counts:

1) It represents not even the one God, but “gods,” so that it falls under the absolute prohibition of polytheism which was known to any observant Hebrew (see, e.g., Ps 106:19-23; cf. Hab 2:18).

2) Nowhere are the Jews permitted to build a calf as an “image” of God. This was an outright violation of the injunctions against “molten images” (Ex 34:17; Lev 19:4; Num 33:52; Dt 27:15: all condemn such idols, using the same Hebrew word which appears in Ex 32:4, 8, 17: massekah).

3) Aaron built an altar before what the people regarded as “gods,” thus blaspheming the true God.

4) Lies were told and believed about “gods,” not God, liberating the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery.

6) NASB and NKJV read “god” at Ex 32:4 (not even capitalized), so that is clearly not intended as a reference to the one true God, YHWH, according to the accepted practice of all Bible translations. NRSV, KJV, RSV, NIV, NEB, & REB have “gods.” In either case, the view is not monotheistic, nor is it at all analogous to the belief and practice of those Christians who accept the Real Presence.

[as to even the early portions of the Bible (and all portions) being monotheistic, see:

Seidensticker Folly #19: Torah & OT Teach Polytheism? [9-18-18]

Seidensticker Folly #20: An Evolving God in the OT? [9-18-18]

Loftus Atheist Error #8: Ancient Jews, “Body” of God, & Polytheism [9-10-19]

Do the OT & NT Teach Polytheism or Henotheism? [7-1-20]

The Bible Teaches That Other “Gods” are Imaginary [National Catholic Register, 7-10-20] ]

Exodus 32:1 (cf. 32:23),. . . is revealing as to the state of mind of these idolaters. They ask Aaron to “make” them “gods.” Obviously, they could not have YHVH in mind at that point, since I imagine they at least knew that He is not “made by hands” and is eternal. Then they say these gods “shall go before us.” In my opinion, , the most straightforward interpretation of that is the golden calf being carried before them. How could they think (even in their debased state of mind) that YHVH Himself could be compelled to “go before them?” Therefore, they must have regarded the calf as a pure idol of their own making, not as a mere representation of the true God, because these contextual verses make clear that they didn’t have YHVH in mind.

If the above data isn’t sufficient, surely Psalm 106:19-21 nails down my case (NRSV):

    They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a cast image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt.

*****

If the biblical writers regarded the golden calf as an idol and condemned propitiating it or any image, then why is not the same upheld for these golden cherubs?

See the above. Short answer: the cherubim were never conceived as representative of God (or even “gods”), let alone worshiped as such. God said that He appeared between their wings, in a cloud. The golden calf, on the other hand, clearly was conceived as, and worshiped as an idol, in place of the true God.

Steven attempts to argue that Jeroboam’s similar idolatry could be seen as some kind of permissible worship by ancient Hebraic standards (partly derived from practices of surrounding or prior cultures):

It is quite possible that the calf altars that Jeroboam constructed, of which the golden calf story is a parody (#157), were throne seats as well. There is ample evidence from the ancient Near East of deities seated upon bulls. Scholars have certainly started to envision Jeroboam’s calf altars as just that—not representations of Yahweh, but his thrones. In this case, the calf-altar cult of the north rivaled the southern temple in Jerusalem. The depiction of the golden calf as an idol, or as gods, was part and parcel to the propaganda and polemic of the pro-Jerusalemite scribes who wrote it. In the end, however, these cultic symbols were no different than the cherubim that stood in the Holy of Holies and also served to represent the deities presence.

This is all arbitrary speculation, of course (as is much of documentary theory, which has long since been discredited). The actual biblical texts show quite otherwise. Ahijah spoke the word of the Lord concerning Jeroboam’s sin:

1 Kings 14:9 (RSV) . . . you have done evil above all that were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods, and molten images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back.

Also:

1 Kings 12:28, 32 So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” . . .

. . . and he offered sacrifices upon the altar; so he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made.

Note: this is not intending “Yahweh to be worshiped through” the graven images, as you claim, but rather (according to God Himself, Who knows all things) “other gods.” Jeroboam himself refers to “gods”: a rank polytheism and idolatry indeed. We know that he sacrificed to these stupid molten images. It couldn’t be more clear than it is.

The New Bible Dictionary (edited by J. D. Douglas, 1962), in its article on Jeroboam, noted:

They threatened true religion by encouraging a syncretism of Yahweh worship with the fertility cult of Baal and thus drew a prophetic rebuke. (p. 614)

Likewise, in its article on “Idolatry”:

[I]t is a most significant thing that when Israel turned to idolatry it was always necessary to borrow the outward trappings from the pagan environment . . . The golden calves made by Jeroboam (1 Ki 12:28) were well-known Canaanite symbols, and in the same way, whenever the kings of Israel and Judah lapsed into idolatry, it was by means of borrowing and syncretism. (p. 552)

Albright, in his discussion of the bulls of Jeroboam, noted:

So Jeroboam may well have been harking back to early Israelite traditional practice when he made the “golden calves.” It is hardly necessary to point out that it was a dangerous revival, since the taurine associations of Baal, lord of heaven, were too closely bound up with the fertility cult in its more insidious aspects to be safe. The cherubim, being mythical animals, served to enhance the majesty of Yahweh, “who rides on a cherub” (II Sam. 22:11) or “who thrones on the cherubim” (II Kings 19:15, etc.), but the young bulls of Bethel and Dan could only debase His cult. (From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd edition, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957, 301)

The brilliant biblical scholar F. F. Bruce draws a similar comparison and contrast:

It may be asked whether there was any difference in principle between the use of bull-calf images to support Yahweh’s invisible presence and the use of cherubs for the same purpose in the holy of holies at Jerusalem. The answer probably is that the cherubs were symbolical beings (representing originally the storm-winds) and their images were therefore not “any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” [note: Ex. 20:4; Deut. 5:8], whereas the bull-calf images were all too closely associated with Canaanite fertility ritual. It appears from the ritual texts of Ugarit that El, the supreme God of the Canaanite pantheon, was on occasion actually hypostatized as a bull (shor), and known as Shor-El.  (Israel and the Nations, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963; reprinted 1981, 40-41)

I move on now to Steven’s paper alleging a “biblical contradiction” #157:

[T]he people clamor for gods who “will go in front of us” since Moses has apparently disappeared. Aaron abides by their wishes, and melting the peoples’ gold jewelry down he “fashioned it with a stylus and made a molten calf,” and then proclaimed: “these are your gods Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” As our first textual anomaly, we notice that one calf is made, yet the text proclaims “gods” in the plural. Why?

Now Steven is making the orthodox Christian argument for us. Thanks!

Second, and largely illogical in the larger narrative context, merely days after the Horeb revelation, the giving and acceptance of the laws by the people, one of which stipulated no images, and apparently only a short time after witnessing Yahweh’s “signs and wonders” in his destruction of Egypt, their land, livestock, plants, and all firstborns, and the parting of the sea of Reeds, it is these new gods who are proclaimed as the gods “who brought you out of Egypt.” There is much that initially does not make any sense here.

Idolatry and rebellion against God never does: yet it is the constant, continual pattern of the Old Testament.

Lastly, Aaron builds an altar before the molten image and proclaims “a festival to Yahweh tomorrow!” And then we’re told that “they got up early the next day and made burnt offerings and brought over peace offerings”—that is, common sacrificial offerings to Yahweh. So, what or who exactly is being celebrated: Yahweh, the golden calf, or the “gods” who apparently brought Israel out of Egypt? Additionally, what is the relationship, that the text firmly implies, between Yahweh, the Golden Calf, and the “gods” of which it speaks?

It was an heretical mixture of orthodox and heterodox elements (as heretical departures invariably are). Aaron refers to “gods” as supposedly the ones who liberated the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery, builds an altar to the calf who represents them, then speaks of a “festival to the LORD” (Yahweh): Exodus 32:4-5. It’s classic heterodox syncretism: that Judaism and Christianity have been “blessed” with since time immemorial.

Even more puzzling, this all occurs right on the heels of the Exodus, the miraculous crossing of the Red sea, the witnessing of Yahweh’s ten terrifying signs and wonders by which means he destroyed Egypt and redeemed the children of Israel. The story of the Golden Calf makes no sense within this literary context. Even granting the people’s inclination, if you like, toward disobedience, it still makes no sense following the array of Yahweh’s awesome signs, wonders, miracles, and theophany, as well as their own verbally expressed consent to be Yahweh’s people and uphold his covenant. Like so many of the murmuring stories in Exodus and Numbers, the stories have little historical semblance and make no sense in their literary contexts . . . 

Again, rebellion and heterodoxy never do make any sense; and they don’t because they aren’t rational to begin with, and originate in grace-deprived hearts filled with disbelief, lack of faith in and gratefulness to God, and rebellion. Steven doesn’t get it because he himself suffers from the acceptance of scores of false presuppositions and false conclusions drawn from same.

Rather, the Golden Calf episode was written as an independent story with a specific message to a specific audience. It was later inserted, rather poorly it must be said, into its current literary context in Exodus.

Faced with this evidence of irrational behavior of the ancient Jews, Steven does what all biblical skeptics do: he starts to construct imaginary interpolations into the text, from different writers in different times. There’s no proof (I dare bring up!) of any such thing. It’s all completely arbitrary speculation.

So what is the purpose and message of the Golden Calf narrative?

Don’t forsake the true God with blasphemous and downright silly and foolish idolatrous beliefs and practices . . .

Here is an example of the ridiculous speculation that adherents of the documentary theory habitually make:

The statement in 1 Kings 12:28 is claimed to have been said by Jeroboam I, the northern kingdom’s first king after its secession from Solomon’s tyranny. It must also be borne in mind that this is what the author, most likely the pro-Solomonic southern Deuteronomist, says Jeroboam says. It’s certainly a discriminating remark, and was used despairingly to depict Jeroboam as an apostate. This was, no doubt, the Deuteronomist’s intention.

Note that (as always), he attempts to provide no actual evidence or proof of these contentions. None is needed in this mindset. Baseless speculation reigns supreme!

Both the Golden Calf incident as well as the Deuteronomist’s account portray Jeroboam and his Aaronide lead cult as apostates. 

Perhaps (I merely suggest) this is because (duh!) they actually were that!

The only question remaining is: why is Aaron depicted as the one leading the Israelites into sin?

Maybe — just maybe — because he actually did?!

This is a perfect example of how ancient scribes wrote archaized stories as polemical attacks on contemporary rivals.

And how does one prove such a thing in biblical particulars? We hardly if ever see such explanations in the skeptical / atheist anti-biblical polemical narrative fictions.

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Photo credit: BrunoMarquesDesigner (5-15-20) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

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September 8, 2020

September 8, 2020 By

Atheist and anti-theist Bob Seidensticker, who was “raised Presbyterian”, runs the influential Cross Examined blog. He asked me there, on 8-11-18: “I’ve got 1000+ posts here attacking your worldview. You just going to let that stand? Or could you present a helpful new perspective that I’ve ignored on one or two of those posts?” He also made a general statement on 6-22-17: “Christians’ arguments are easy to refute . . . I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.” 

He added in the combox: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.” Such confusion would indeed be predictable, seeing that Bob himself admitted (2-13-16): “My study of the Bible has been haphazard, and I jump around based on whatever I’m researching at the moment.”

Bob (for the record) virtually begged and pleaded with me to dialogue with him in May 2018, via email. But by 10-3-18, following massive, childish name-calling attacks against me,  encouraged by Bob on his blog (just prior to his banning me from it), his opinion was as follows: “Dave Armstrong . . . made it clear that a thoughtful intellectual conversation wasn’t his goal. . . . [I] have no interest in what he’s writing about.”

And on 10-25-18, utterly oblivious to the ludicrous irony of his making the statement, Bob wrote in a combox on his blog: “Someone who’s not a little bit driven to investigate cognitive dissonance will just stay a Christian, fat ‘n sassy and ignorant.” Again, Bob mocks some Christian in his combox on 10-27-18: “You can’t explain it to us, you can’t defend it, you can’t even defend it to yourself. Defend your position or shut up about it. It’s clear you have nothing.”

And again on the same day: “If you can’t answer the question, man up and say so.” And on 10-26-18: “you refuse to defend it, after being asked over and over again.” And again: “You’re the one playing games, equivocating, and being unable to answer the challenges.”

Bob’s cowardly hypocrisy knows no bounds. Again, on 6-30-19, he was chiding someone for something very much like he himself: “Spoken like a true weasel trying to run away from a previous argument. You know, you could just say, ‘Let me retract my previous statement of X’ or something like that.” Yeah, Bob could!  He still hasn’t yet uttered one peep in reply to — now — 48 of my critiques of his atrocious reasoning.

Bible-Basher Bob’s words will be in blue. To find these posts, follow this link: “Seidensticker Folly #” or see all of them linked under his own section on my Atheism page.

*****

I was browsing Bob’s website, looking for something else of the innumerable items that are ripe for Christian refutation, and I happened to come across a citation where he actually cited me (!!!). This was just before the period where he (very conveniently) dissed me as unworthy of anyone’s further attention. Here it is:

Let’s continue with Christian apologists’ justifications for praise and worship of God . . . 

3. Worship isn’t for God’s benefit but Man’s

We don’t worship God because He needs it (He needs nothing and is entirely self-sufficient), but because we need it. . . . God “needs” no worship whatever because in Christian theology, He needs nothing. He’s completely all-sufficient and self-sufficient. It’s for our sake that we “render unto God’s what is rightfully God’s.” (Source) (God as Donald Trump: Trying to Make Sense of Praise and Worship (part 3) ) (8-27-18)

This is an adequate summary of the Christian position on worship, I think, but as usual, it goes over (or through) Bob’s head, and he doesn’t get it. Just nine days ago I refuted Bob on this very topic (Seidensticker Folly #47: Does God Need Praise? [8-31-20] ). That’s the basic Christian response. Presently, I will highlight a few different aspects of the question.

Don’t tell me that God gets no benefit from human actions.

God gets no benefit from human actions. Sorry!

Burnt offerings are a “pleasing aroma” in the Bible, 

Of course, He says this because the idea is that “proper worship of human beings is good for them, because they ought to praise and worship the God Who created them.” But it’s not literal; rather, it’s an instance of the very common anthropopathism and anthropomorphism in the Bible. This is what Bob has to learn and understand. He obviously is completely unfamiliar with it, so this is what comes from biblical illiteracy and ignorance.

Again, God doesn’t need anything. This is standard theology proper (theology of God) in historic Christianity: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike. Moreover, the “pleasing aroma” is necessarily symbolic because God the Father is a non-material spirit and has no nostrils. He’s simply communicating in terms that human beings can understand: condescending to us. The idea is human obedience and doing what is best for us (serving and obeying God, for out own happiness and well-being). This was a poetic, easily comprehensible way to express, “yes, you’re doing well and good.”

But when His people disobeyed Him and became sinful and unrighteous, He expressed the opposite:

Amos 5:11-14, 21-24 (RSV) Therefore because you trample upon the poor and take from him exactions of wheat, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. [12] For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins — you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. [13] Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time. [14] Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said . . . [21] I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. [22] Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. [23] Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. [24] But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is his delight.

Proverbs 21:27  The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination; how much more when he brings it with evil intent. 

Jeremiah 6:19-20 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing evil upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not given heed to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it. [20] To what purpose does frankincense come to me from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.

Malachi 1:6-14 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, `How have we despised thy name?’ [7] By offering polluted food upon my altar. And you say, `How have we polluted it?’ By thinking that the LORD’s table may be despised. [8] When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that no evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that no evil? Present that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says the LORD of hosts. [9] And now entreat the favor of God, that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? says the LORD of hosts. [10] Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire upon my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the LORD of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. [11] For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts. [12] But you profane it when you say that the LORD’s table is polluted, and the food for it may be despised. [13] `What a weariness this is,’ you say, and you sniff at me, says the LORD of hosts. You bring what has been taken by violence or is lame or sick, and this you bring as your offering! Shall I accept that from your hand? says the LORD. [14] Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished; for I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts, and my name is feared among the nations. 

It’s all anthropopathism (i.e., non-literal expression). What is true in this is that God’s will is for man to obey Him: precisely because that is how man will be happy and fulfilled and joyful; not because God needs anything at all. If Bob had the slightest understanding of the very complex, multi-faceted Hebrew literary / poetic idiom, he would grasp this.

but this wasn’t like incense, where God could take it or leave it.

As I just demonstrated, it was exactly like incense. If it was done correctly (whether incense or burnt offerings) by people who were seeking righteousness, God was said to be “pleased” with it (e.g., as regards incense: Lev 16:12-13). But if it was done by sinning hypocrites, He is said to not be pleased (e.g., Lev 26:30).

This is explicitly labeled a food offering 27 times in the Old Testament. 

Yes; so what? There was a right way and a wrong way to do it, depending on the righteousness of the offerer.

And in the Garden of Eden story, God created Adam to be the gardener (Genesis 2:15).

Sure; how is that relevant to the topic at hand?

Getting onto more cerebral or emotional needs, God refers to “everyone . . . whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:7). No, God isn’t “entirely self-sufficient” when humans support his Maslow’s pyramid, providing food and labor at the bottom and glory and esteem at the top.

Nice try. This gets into the silly atheist argument that God is supposedly a “cosmic narcissist” or “egomaniac” and so forth: that I dealt with in my previous paper. Any “glory” given or attributed to God is for our sake, not His: just as if a child honors or praises or obeys his or her parents, it is for his or her own good. In fact, God does share His glory and gives human beings glory, as Scripture informs us. Now why in the world would He do that, if indeed He were indeed such a crazed, insecure egomaniac?:

Psalm 8:5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.
*
Psalm 149:4-5, 9 For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory. [5] Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. . . . [9] . . . This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the LORD! 

Proverbs 16:31 A hoary head is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.

Proverbs 28:12 When the righteous triumph, there is great glory; . . .

Isaiah 60:1-2 Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. [2] For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.

Isaiah 60:4 . . . the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.

Daniel 5:18 O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnez’zar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty;

John 5:44 How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

John 17:22 The glory which thou hast given me [Jesus] I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,

Romans 2:9-10 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, [10] but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

Romans 5:2 Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Romans 9:23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory,

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Ephesians 3:19  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

1 Thessalonians 2:12 to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

2 Thessalonians 2:14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 6:4 . . . partakers of the Holy Spirit,

1 Peter 4:14 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

1 Peter 5:1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed. (cf. 5:4)

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, [4] by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.

See also:

“In Him” An Expression of the Oneness of Theosis? [3-13-14]

Theosis / Deification / Divinization in Western Spirituality [2015]

Christianity confuses itself because God evolved dramatically through the Bible. . . . early in his development, God needed humans, and that included their worship.

Sheer nonsense, as I have shown many times:

Seidensticker Folly #19: Torah & OT Teach Polytheism? [9-18-18]

Seidensticker Folly #20: An Evolving God in the OT? [9-18-18]

Madison vs. Jesus #6: Narcissistic, Love-Starved God? [8-6-19]

Loftus Atheist Error #8: Ancient Jews, “Body” of God, & Polytheism [9-10-19]

Do the OT & NT Teach Polytheism or Henotheism? [7-1-20]

The Bible Teaches That Other “Gods” are Imaginary [National Catholic Register, 7-10-20]

Perhaps an apologist could cherry pick Bible verses later in the Bible to show that God is aloof from human actions. Maybe this god sings along with Simon and Garfunkel, “I am a rock / I am an island.”

I suggest that Bob pick up a good book on the Christian theology of God and get up to speed, so he doesn’t embarrass himself any further (if indeed that is even possible).

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Photo credit: geralt (4-20-18) [Pixabay / Pixabay license]

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May 25, 2020

May 25, 2020 By

This dialogue began when atheist “Sporkfighter” started commenting underneath my paper, Dialogues on “Contradictions” w Bible-Bashing Atheists. His words will be in blue.

*****

What is “Biblical evidence” without prior extra-Biblical evidence of the Bible’s accuracy?

Exactly right. It presupposes biblical inspiration, which must be established on other grounds. The title of my blog is basically a roundabout polemical swipe at Protestants, who agree with us that the Bible is inspired.

We agree that the Bible is inspired?

Who is “we”? A liberal Protestant? Then you wouldn’t. :-) One who actually continues the heritage of Luther, Calvin, and Wesley would.

Unless you can demonstrate that the Bible is more than mythology and that any occasional correlation with fact is more than coincidence, there’s no reason to give it a second glance.

Yep. See: God: Historical Arguments (Copious Helpful Resources).

The Epic of Gilgamesh is set in Uruk, a real city. Sleepless in Seattle is set in Seattle, a real city. Harry Potter is set in Great Britain, a real country. Setting a story in a real place does not mean everything or anything else in the story is real.

The Shroud of Turin? At best, it’s a burial shroud of somebody, but somebody who looks remarkably like medieval European images of Christ with long hair, not the short hair common among first century Jews. At worst (and most likely) it’s an image of a human created by a human to defraud other humans. There was a brisk trade in Biblical relics for more than a thousand years, and educated people have know most of them were fakes for nearly as long. Just read the Pardoner’s Tale from the Canterbury Tales.

Discovery channel documentaries? If I believe those, I have to believe in ancient aliens too.

No, it’s not enough to show some mundane events in the Bible really happened or that places in the Bible really existed or that lots of people believe the stranger parts really happened. If the important, the miraculous parts of the Bible are to be believed, you have to show that those parts are true. Where’s the extra-Biblical evidence for Noah’s flood, for Jesus’ resurrection?

Finally, if any part of the Bible is known to be false, then every part of it is suspect. Since Christians themselves can’t agree on which parts are true, which are allegorical, or what the “true” parts mean, every word in the Bible not validated extra-Biblically is suspect.

Believe if you want, but at least understand why others might not believe. We’re not stupid, we’re not mad at God, and we’re not denying God so we can live debauched lives of sin.

Thanks for your input. I didn’t expect you to respond to the evidences I presented, so I wasn’t surprised. It doesn’t make them null and void, however, simply because you cavalierly dismiss them.

Stick around; maybe in due course you’ll see something appealing in the Christian worldview that you hadn’t seen before. You’re more than welcome as long as you don’t sink to rank insults.

You presented no evidence, just a box of links, most of which I’ve read many times in the past.

Evidence that the Bible is true must reference evidence outside the Bible, so most of your evidence “from the Bible” could at best show the Bible is internally consistent, but well written fiction is always internally consistent, so that would prove nothing even if the Bible were internally consistent, and it’s not.

Evidence that some of the Bible is true is not evidence that all of the Bible is true just as a chemistry textbook from 1880 isn’t all correct because some of it is. This seem obvious, but many apologists don’t seem to get it.

The number of miracles* reported have diminished in grandeur as science explains more, education replaces credulity. This isn’t proof that the miracles of the Bible didn’t happen, but it does lead me to wonder why the sun stood still, people rose from the dead, and virgins gave birth then but not now. You’d need stronger evidence that they happened as well as an explanation for why they don’t anymore.**

*It’s not a miracle when one of a few people survive a disaster without some reason the majority didn’t.

**Curious fact: The number of UFO reports have dropped as cell phones became ubiquitous. If you report a UFO now, people expect pictures. Kind of like miracles, people don’t take the word of anonymous strangers anymore, they expect the evidence.

The Shroud of Turin is a good example of what’s wrong the way evidence for the Bible falls apart when you look carefully, so let’s look at. The Shroud purports to be an image of Christ on linen fabric that could not possibly have been created by humans on cloth preserved for 2,000 years. However…

1. The best dating techniques place its creation between 1260–1390 CE. You can argue against that dating, but that’s not evidence placing it around 30 CE.

2. You can’t prove it’s of Middle-eastern origin, and we know similar fabric has been made in other places and other times, including medieval Europe.

3. You can’t prove it’s not a creation of human ingenuity; how could you without knowing the limits on human ingenuity?

No, the most likely explanation is that it’s a forgery from a time and place that we know and people of the day knew was rife with forged Biblical relics. Just read Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale” from 1387-1400. Moreover, the first evidence we have for it’s existence was in 1390, when the local bishop reported that an artist confessed to creating it! Clearly, the best explanation is that the Shroud is one more of the thousands of forged Christian relics that were common as cats in Europe of the day*.

*Take a guess at how many of Jesus’ foreskins were paraded around Europe…got a number? At least eight and perhaps 18.

All the evidence for the Bible as truth I’ve studied falls apart similarly upon examination. If you have something you’ve personally looked into, I’m all eyes, but don’t waste my time with a bunch of links to arguments you haven’t investigated carefully on your own.

I have in fact investigated many of these things on my own. You may not know much about me. I’ve been doing apologetics for 39 years, have written 50 books (some 30 or so published by “real” publishers: not just self-published), and have 2900 articles on my blog. The fact that you can utterly dismiss all of those articles and play the game as if they don’t present any evidence whatsoever that isn’t circular reasoning, shows that you are in an impenetrable epistemological bubble and impervious to anything outside of it.

You write, for example: “Evidence that the Bible is true must reference evidence outside the Bible . . .”

Of course, all of archaeological evidence (to mention just one thing) is of that nature. But you’re capable of blowing all that off in one fell swoop. You’re not fooling anyone. That’s not a serious attempt to grapple with the relevant evidence.

There are good arguments that the dating of the Shroud is at the time of Christ. In a nutshell, the samples taken that showed later dates were from patches that were later added. There are objective ways to determine this, and they have been demonstrated. That’s only about dating, of course, and is the bare minimum of anything approaching “proof” that it’s the burial shroud of Jesus, but at least it shows that it is not a mere “medieval hoax.”

Basically, you’re saying (in a nice way so far, but still . . .) that Christians are merely blind faith, irrational, anti-scientific dummies. It’s the old atheist line, and it won’t do.

What I’ve been mostly doing with atheists is shooting down their alleged “contradictions” in the Bible. I’ve done that 40 times with Bob Seidensticker (Cross Examined site), 42 with Dr. David Madison (Debunking Christianity) and 21 refutations of Ward Ricker (see the post above), who put together a book with a bunch of these. This is something objective that can be discussed pro and con rather than the “101 objections” routine, where nothing serious can be accomplished.

I also wrote a paper specifically for people like you who want to blow off the extensive scholarly links / articles that I have compiled regarding evidences for Christianity and theistic proofs: Why I Collect Lots of Scholarly Articles for Atheists.

I would say, with all due respect, don’t waste my time, either, with your flippant dismissal of a whole range of relevant articles and arguments in favor of Christianity, and your epistemological naiveté. It doesn’t work with me. It may with many less educated Christians, and even many less experienced Christian apologists, but not with me. I’m too familiar with the timeworn games and tactics, and I see the sort of counter-arguments that atheists come up with, because I’ve been interacting with them these past 39 years off and on.

I have in fact investigated many of these things on my own. You may not know much about me. I’ve been doing apologetics for 39 years, have written 50 books (some 30 or so published by “real” publishers: not just self-published), and have 2900 articles on my blog.

I, too have been reading and studying for forty years, starting with degrees in mathematics and physics. Chances are excellent that I’ve read some of your research material myself. What are the chances that you’ve read, say, Atheism: The Case Against God by George Smith or other comparable works from the atheist point of view? In my experience, apologists read other apologists and they argue against other apologists’ versions of atheism but not against an atheist’s version of atheism.

If you’ve really studied and written on these issues, you should know better than to give 30 links and call it an argument. One at a time…what’s your best evidence? I can debunk it or I can’t, you can support it or you can’t, but that way it’s possible to hold a discussion.

Yeah, I’ve read books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens (probably the two most well-known atheist books in recent times), and John Loftus. I responded to both Dawkins and Loftus in several papers. Loftus (who challenged me to do it) has ignored my replies. When he has “interacted” with me in the past it was sort of like Mt. Vesuvius or Mt. St. Helens: lots of smoke and fury but little else.

I explained why I provided the links (in my article I linked to). There is nothing wrong with it: no more than books providing lengthy bibliographies for further related reading. I was trying to provide a service to atheists: in effect, “you want some serious scholarly articles from a Christian viewpoint that cover these topics you are interested in? Here you go.” I recognize my limitations: which is why I’m citing scholars in certain areas. I can’t do everything myself. It doesn’t follow that I make no arguments. I do, and I also provide further reading. What in the world is wrong with that is, I confess, beyond my comprehension. Atheists apparently reject the notion of “further recommended reading.” I’ve gone through this silliness several times now.

Asking me what my best evidence is is like asking a happily married man why he loves his wife. I believe as I do because of the cumulative force of scores and scores of factors and reasons and evidences. I’ve written about a great many of those things.

If you are truly interested in dialogue (and not just smug “gotcha!” polemics and breezy dismissals), pick something I’ve written about and go at it. Most atheists simply ignore my refutations of their arguments (especially the alleged Bible contradictions). You can always pick up their slack if you like. But it has to be a dialogue that goes somewhere; has some constructive value (and I don’t mean by that only that one or the other is persuaded; insights and understandings can at least be gained). See my atheism & agnosticism and philosophy & science pages.

Oh, one more thing. If you want to do serious, ongoing dialogue, you’re gonna have to share your real name and some online source that tells more about you. I don’t spend much time on mysterious, anonymous folks. If you have the courage of your convictions you ought to “come out” and reveal yourself beyond nicknames. As it is, even your Disqus profile tells me nothing.

OK, I read “Replies to Atheists’ & Skeptics’ Garden Variety Objections.” [link]

Every point starts with the assumption that God exists. That’s great once you’re there, but how do you get there? My question isn’t “What is God like?” I ask “Is there a god?”

You misunderstand what that paper was about. I answer from within the paradigm of how a question is framed and will argue differently, based on who I am talking to. The first question was, “How can we really know what God is like?” This, in a sense, momentarily posits the existence of God for the sake of argument and then inquires: how do we know what God — if he exists — is like? And so I said, “look at Jesus.” That is the Christian answer.

You are answering questions I haven’t asked precisely because you’re speaking from inside Christianity to people who take the existence of God as a given. None of that matters to someone who doesn’t already believe.

You make an “internal criticism” directed towards the Christian system. Therefore I have to talk about God as I understand Him to be from within that system, to show that there is no inconsistency or incoherence. Same thing with the next section about God and suffering: the classic objection. I can’t reply to that and not mention God, because it is a critique of the Christian God to begin with. Three more questions are of the same type.

The last question in the paper is: “And how can we totally understand God?” One can’t answer that without mentioning God, either. We have to answer according to our theistic and Christian understanding.

This person is arguing, in effect, “your system seems incoherent and inexplicable to me. Please explain it so that it doesn’t seem that way.” And so I did. It depends on what a person is asking for.

In “Bad or Absent Fathers as a Strong Indicator of Atheism” [link] you follow Vitz’s cherry-picked aspects of cherry-picked atheists’ relations with their fathers with this: “It’s a known fact that people’s relationships with their fathers in particular can have a significant effect on their view of God.” Beyond the sociological observation that people generally follow the religion of their parents, isn’t this just a matter of human psychology? What has it to do with the question of God’s existence?

I didn’t claim that the atheists and their fathers paper had to do with whether God exists or not. This is a turning the tables argument against the atheist polemic that Christians are only such because of their upbringing. So we retort by saying: so is atheism, many times. The examples of famous atheists are evidence of that: not of whether God exists. You are analyzing very sloppily and illogically. This is simply sociological observation (my major was sociology and Vitz is a psychologist or psychiatrist).

“Must Christianity be Empirically Falsifiable to be Rationally Held?” [link] A scientific hypothesis should be falsifiable, but is Christianity a scientific hypothesis? Some people would claim that the existence of God is a scientific question in that God does or does not exist, that “no God” could be disproved by his appearance in Times Square. That hasn’t happened but I can’t show that it won’t. Seems like a silly stand for an atheist to take.

I explain carefully the point I am trying to make there and you seem to have missed it. The exact essence of the paper is in its title. It’s not an argument about God’s existence, but rather, about the circular nature of empiricist-only atheist thought and logical positivism. The point is that there are many fields of knowledge which are not ultimately dependent on empiricism and falsifiablility: mathematics and logic being two. Nor can science even begin with pure empiricism. It requires non-empirical axioms such as uniformitarianism to get off the ground.

“Jesus’ Death: Proof of a “Bloodthirsty” God, or Loving Sacrifice?” [link]

Again, you assume God exists, then discuss his personality. The does not address the atheist’s first question: “Does God exist?”

It’s not meant to do what you seem to always demand: ironclad, undeniable proof of God. This is, again, about an internal criticism of Christianity. So one has to tackle it from within the Christian paradigm, explaining how we think His death suggests love rather than a “bloodthirsty” God.

I clearly haven’t read everything you’ve written, but in everything I have read, you take God as a given and move on from there. I’m unwilling to grant you that as an axiom in this context. In real life, you can believe what you want for reasons you find convincing.

All you have shown, then, is that you consistently misunderstand the purpose and nature of individual articles of mine, and the nature and force of the arguments as well. It’s very common. Atheists are in their own little bubble, so they underestimate and often completely miscomprehend Christian apologetics arguments.

Finally, I’ve found many Christians to be mean-spirited and vindictive. They’ve attacked me online, they’ve contacted my employer to try and get me fired, and they’ve threatened my children, so I will not be doxxing myself.

That’s most unfortunate and sad. I am not that way at all, and apologize on behalf of the morons calling themselves Christians who would act in such a way. They make my job very difficult, too, if many atheists approach me thinking I’m gonna act like these jackasses and fools that you describe. I’m trying to represent the thinking of Christians and the spirit of the thing, which is loving all people and God and not falling into all the usual prevalent sins.

Indeed you are not. I have close friends that are Mormon, Muslim, and Christian who know I think their religious belief are unfounded, just as they think I’m not seeing the truth, but we’re willing to let each other be wrong because it’s the only way can all be left to be right.

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Photo credit: geralt (2-16-16) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

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May 16, 2020

May 16, 2020 By

This is a follow-up comment to my Reply to Atheist Ward Ricker Re “Biblical Contradictions” (5-15-20). He replied with a 5 1/2 page article. And now I counter-reply. Ward’s words will be in blue.

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I have just read your reply, and it convinces me that constructive dialogue between us will not be possible, for several reasons:

1) You doubt my good will, good faith, and sincerity (a charge I do not reciprocate): which qualities are absolutely essential to assume in an opponent if constructive dialogue is to occur. Failing these, it never ever is possible, as I know full well from long experience. I have never seen an exception to this dynamic. Examples:

Why would you twist the meaning around as you do? Your “suggestions” contradict the clear “words of god”. Why would you do so?

You are simply unwilling to accept what the Bible says . . .

One wonders if you are just trying to confuse.

2) You fundamentally dislike my writing style and/or methodology:

At the risk of offending, in going through your writings I have noted how convoluted your arguments tend to be. Indeed, I find it difficult to respond even to the few that I respond to here, because your arguments are rather convoluted, confusing and unclear. Your lack of clear, concise statements makes it difficult to write a response. It makes for a lot of work (and, indeed, I have other things to do with my life), so if you wonder why you have trouble getting people to respond to you, you might take that into consideration.

That’s your right, of course (it’s a free country), and such things are largely subjective (and because they are, many people believe exactly the opposite of what you think about my writing). “Different strokes for different folks” / “can’t please everyone,” etc. But it means that you and I will not be able to constructively dialogue, because (from where I sit), you don’t even comprehend (at least some) of my arguments in the first place, and because of that, fall back on a complaint that the problem must be on my end: that I am unacceptably and unfortunately muddled, confused and unclear. It also leads to straw men in such a scenario. You don’t get what I am saying and so wind up fighting straw men that are simply not what my argument was.

3) We have vastly different conceptions as to what dialogue itself is. You don’t want to go point-by-point, as I almost always do (socratic method). You’ll do it for a time, for carefully selected passages, but you ignore others. You selected passages from my Seidensticker series, but never showed a willingness to comprehensively deal with any particular one (which is what I am looking for).

This never works. In my opinion, true dialogue must take into account the opponents’ entire argument, and not pick-and-choose some stuff, while arbitrarily ignoring others. And you can always fall back on your opinion that my writing is frustratingly unclear (#2 above). That means there is no hope for us to constructively engage. I wish it were otherwise, but this is the only conclusion I can reasonably draw, based on your reply.

I lay out my conception of such a serious, philosophical-type discussion here: Good Discussion: Back-and-Forth Dialogue vs. “Mutual Monologue”.

Don’t feel too bad. Virtually no one of any persuasion ever does this, these days (and I endlessly bemoan that fact). But being the idealist and socratic that I am, I will keep seeking it (heaven help me).

4) It appears (as is often the case with atheists) that your past fundamentalism still profoundly affects your present attempts to interpret the Bible, due to relentless false premises, leading to (of course) false conclusions. Examples abound:

a) you clearly don’t understand the very different ancient Hebrew modes of thinking; particularly the “both/and” approach, which is very difficult for modern sensibilities to grasp: with our excessive false dichotomies and “either/or” mentalities. As long as you don’t get this aspect, you’ll never understand many Bible passages, especially ones about God. And it causes you to assert many “contradictions” that in fact are not.

b) you don’t think through the notion of God being a judge. It’s not difficult to find many human analogies to judging and punishing: human judges passing sentences on criminals, the Allies “judging” and defeating the Nazis in World War II, our superiority over animals; parents’ chastising and punishing of children (an analogy to God that the Bible itself makes), police exercising lethal force as the situation warrants. Failing this understanding leads you to conclude that God is engaged in evil, wicked acts of “violence” when He is justly judging. It’s like saying we were “evil” and “ruthless” and “bloodthirsty” when we wiped out the Nazis.

c) you don’t have the slightest clue about anthropomorphism and anthropopathism (I would guess that you probably never even heard the words till now). If you did, you would understand how language is very diversely used in Scripture, and often is non-literal and you would understand things like God “repenting.” This leads you to make inane observations like, “But that’s not what it says. It says that he repented . . . “ [my italics added] Of course, that’s what it “says.” That’s not at issue. The question is whether it is literal or metaphorical. This is what you don’t get.

There are many different genres in the Bible (consider, for example, Jesus’ parables and the proverbs and books like Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon). But because you are a former fundamentalist (most atheists who play the “Bible contradiction” game were), you always have to interpret literally (or so it sure seems so far). That was wrong and dumb and hermeneutically clueless when you were a Christian, and it remains so now. It caused you to arrive at false conclusions then, and it does now. This is an elementary component of biblical interpretation.

d) you object to consulting the original languages: which is essentially necessary in all proper exegesis of the Bible.

e) your wooden hyper-literalism is again sadly evident in how you treat the question of OT references to “many gods”. Clearly the OT teaches that these are not real “gods.” Only God (YHWH) is real. But you can’t see that, out of your (as usual) inapplicable literalism of interpretation. How I explain this makes perfect logical and rational sense. But you can’t see it, because your false premise won’t allow you to. Seidensticker and Madison and Loftus and other Bible-bashing atheists make these same mistakes. It’s nothing unique to you.

But this shows that I wouldn’t have any more success in achieving true dialogue with you than I have with them. You’re willing to talk (good and admirable itself), but because of these factors it’ll never work, and my patience would last no more than a day. All good dialogue can only proceed if there are some premises held in common.

f) you are equally out to sea in examining the traits of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence; some passages concerning these are also non-literal, and you (predictably by now) think they are literal. So you come to the wrong conclusion. It’s because you have very little inkling of how ancient Hebrew thought about things. They weren’t stupid; just very different from us, as we would expect. Our type of thinking (linear / either/or rationalism and syllogistic logic) comes from the ancient Greeks. We have to realize that this is a framework and understand that the Hebrew framework is a different one. We can’t be like a fish in a tank, not knowing that it is.

5) Your conclusion sums up your problem in approaching a Christian apologist like myself, seeking dialogue:

Why would you want to defend a book in the first place that teaches acceptance of murder, slavery, genocide, rape, racism and many of the other evils that still plague our planet today?

Quite obviously (as seen in my replies to Seidensticker), I don’t think it condones any of these things. Your proper task is not to ask asinine, insulting “when did you stop beating your wife?” types of questions, but rather, to try to understand why I come to the opposite conclusion of yours. I’m perfectly sincere and operating in good faith just as I believe you are. In a constructive, mutually respectful dialogue, you would never frame your question in these terms, but rather, would say something like:

“Why is it that you think that the Bible doesn’t advocate murder, slavery, genocide, rape, racism and many other evils, as it seems to in my reading (at least prima facie)? I want to understand your reasoning — borne of your 39 years of apologetics research and writing –, so I can best be in a position to rationally come to the correct conclusion about biblical teaching.”

6) All of this said, I may still take on several of your proposed contradictions, just so I can have opportunity to show how very wrong atheist contentions are (which is one thing Christian apologists do). But dialogue of the sort I seek is clearly impossible between us.

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Related Reading

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“Three Days and Nights” in the Tomb: Contradiction? [10-31-06]

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Death of Judas: Alleged Bible Contradictions Debunked (vs. Dave Van Allen and Dr. Jim Arvo) [9-27-07]
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Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Swine, & Atheist Skeptics (vs. Jonathan MS Pearce) [7-25-17]
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Atheist Inventions of Many Bogus “Bible Contradictions” [National Catholic Register, 9-4-18]
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Photo credit: George Redgrave (11-16-14) [Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0 license]

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May 15, 2020

May 15, 2020 By

Ward Ricker is (as so often) a self-described former “fundamentalist” who likes to poke holes in the Bible and “prove” that it is a terrible and “evil” book, not inspired, hopelessly contradictory, etc. He describes his current belief as follows:

Some people would refer to me as an “atheist”, which is perhaps accurate, since I don’t believe in god, but I don’t particularly like the word “atheist”, since it only tells you what I don’t believe, i.e,, that I don’t believe in god or gods. It doesn’t tell you what I do believe in. “Scientist” tells you what I do believe in.

He read my article for National Catholic Register, “Atheist Inventions of Many Bogus ‘Bible Contradictions’ “ (9-4-18) and wrote to NCR the following letter. This article is my response. I informed him personally of it. First, here is his letter:

I just came across the Sept. 4, 2018, article, Atheist Inventions of Many Bogus “Bible Contradictions”, by Dave Armstrong.  It is an interesting article, in that it claims that “atheists” make unsubstantiated claims about the Bible contradicting itself, yet the article doesn’t list a single one of these unsubstantiated contradictions.  Instead, it goes into a ridiculous story about some people going to a Dairy Queen, trying to suggest that this represents the type of arguments that “atheists” use, without giving any example of an “atheist” argument that follows that same reasoning.
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In fact, Mr. Armstrong is correct; many Bible critics (“atheists” or otherwise) will use some pretty ridiculous arguments (such as saying that the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a whale in one place and by a fish in another).  I’m surprised that he didn’t choose to list any.  But the fact that some people get carried away and make false claims doesn’t invalidate the claims that are correct.  And the fact is that there are a large number of clear contradictions in the so-called “inerrant word of god”.  I have screened out those bogus claims that some critics make and have published my own book (yes, another of those lists that Mr. Armstrong decries) of contradictions that I and others have found in the Bible that are clearly contradictions.  Would Mr. Armstrong or any of you like to challenge any of the over 400 contradictions that I list in one of the chapters of my book, “Unholy Bible,” that you can download for free at www.WardsBooks.com?  (I hope you will also read the other chapters in the book about the vile, evil and abhorrent book that is called the “Holy Bible”.)

One must always determine the purpose and scope of any particular article, before one sets out to critique it. I always try to be very precise and accurately descriptive in titles for my articles. It’s one of the first things any good writer must understand (book and article titles, chapter titles, etc.). We only have 1000 words per article at NCR. I think it’s a nice length, that usually comes out to about 3 1/2 single-spaced pages in a book with a standard font size. People have short attention spans nowadays.

I was specifically going after “bogus ‘contradictions'”: that is, alleged logical contradictions that actually aren’t so, by the laws of contradiction in the field of logic (I took a logic class in college, by the way, along with several other philosophy courses). The Dairy Queen story was, precisely, an analogical example of how atheists and others who don’t properly think through the nature of a literal logical contradiction, make the claim, when in fact, there is no contradiction present at all.

Mr. Ricker may think that is “ridiculous.” I think it is necessary in order to illustrate the common errors in identifying the presence of “contradictions” that I was critiquing. The main gist of my article was to explain the nature of a logical contradiction, as opposed to refuting particular proposed examples of same in the Bible by atheists.

Sure, it would have been nice to include some actual “atheist vs. the Bible” examples, but there simply wasn’t space to do so, after I made what was my primary point in the article: illustrating how many alleged “contradictions” actually aren’t at all. This is a different issue from other examples which appear (at least prima facie) to be actual (honestly alleged) contradictions, that have to be grappled with by the defender of an inspired Bible.
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Oftentimes, that comes down to different genres in the Bible, various meanings of particular words or ideas in widely divergent contexts, translation matters, and interpretational particulars: often having to do with the very foreign (to our modern western sensibilities)  ancient Hebrew culture and modes of thinking. I know these things firsthand, because I myself have offered what I think are good resolutions or “solutions” to hundreds of proposed biblical “contradictions.”

Other times, it could simply be a matter of manuscript errors that crept in through the years. Of course, that sort of error is only in transmission, and is not part of the original text, so it wouldn’t cast doubt on the non-contradictory nature of the original transcripts of the Bible (if indeed we can plausibly speculate that it was merely an innocent copyist’s error).

I do have an article on my blog of what Mr. Ricker suggests: where I provide several actual examples from atheists: Review of The Book of Non-Contradiction (Phillip Campbell) [5-9-17]. It was 1666 words long.
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I have dealt with literally hundreds of supposed biblical “contradictions” (I’ve been engaged in apologetics writing for 39 years). One can see how active I have been in dialoguing with atheists, on my web page devoted to them. On the issue of “Bible contradictions” in particular, I devote a very long section at the end of my Bible and Tradition web page. Mr. Ricker offered a challenge for me or anyone to deal with his “list” of what he thinks are logical biblical difficulties. I like that. It shows that he is confident of his position. I admire that in people, even if I disagree with what they defend or stand for.
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I thought that Bob Seidensticker, webmaster of Cross Examined: a major atheist blog with tons and tons of feedback in the comboxes, also possessed this confidence in his own positions, since he directly challenged me on 8-11-18: “I’ve got 1000+ posts here attacking your worldview. You just going to let that stand? Or could you present a helpful new perspective that I’ve ignored on one or two of those posts?” This was after Bob had virtually begged and pleaded with me to dialogue with him in May 2018, via email. He commented to someone else on 6-22-17: “If I’ve misunderstood the Christian position or Christian arguments, point that out. Show me where I’ve mischaracterized them.”
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Again, Bob mocked some Christian in his combox on 10-27-18: “You can’t explain it to us, you can’t defend it, you can’t even defend it to yourself. Defend your position or shut up about it. It’s clear you have nothing.” And again on the same day: “If you can’t answer the question, man up and say so.” And on 10-26-18: “you refuse to defend it, after being asked over and over again.” And again: “You’re the one playing games, equivocating, and being unable to answer the challenges.”
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I’m not one to decline a challenge, if I think anything constructive can be accomplished by responding to it, so I took Bob up on his offer, and to date, have written literally 40 refutations of his anti-biblical claims and argumentation. So far, not one peep of a response has been heard from him to any of them. And it sure looks like that will be the case indefinitely. His bark is infinitely worse than his bite. All talk and no action . . .

He’s not the only atheist online who waxes so confidently, but then flees for the hills at the slightest whiff of a refutation of ostensibly self-assured claims. Atheist and former Methodist minister Dr. David Madison writes for the very popular Debunking Christianity site, run by atheist John “you are an idiot!” Loftus, infamous for his literally volcanic explosions and implosions when he is forthrightly challenged (especially when such challenges come from me). I have refuted Dr. Madison’s skeptical, Bible-bashing claims 42 times as of this writing. He hasn’t been heard back from as of yet, either, and made his cramped, insulated mentality quite clear in a comment from 9-6-19:

[T]he burden of the apologist has become heavy indeed, and some don’t handle the anguish well. They vent and rage at critics, like toddlers throwing tantrums when a threadbare security blanket gets tossed out. We can smell their panic. Engaging with the ranters serves no purpose—any more than it does to engage with Flat-Earthers, Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, and those who argue that the moon landings were faked. . . . I prefer to engage with NON-obsessive-compulsive-hysterical Christians, those who have spotted rubbish in the Bible, and might already have one foot out the door.
By the time he had written this rationalization of his intellectual cowardice, I had already refuted his particular arguments 35 times. I’ve also done the same with John Loftus, more than ten times. You guessed it: not one word in counter-reply. I had critiqued his book, Why I Became an Atheist: precisely because at one time (in December 2006) he directly challenged me to do so:
Deconversion stories are piecemeal. They cannot give a full explanation for why someone left the faith. They only give hints at why they left the faith. It requires writing a whole book about why someone left the faith to understand why they did, and few people do that. I did. If you truly want to critique my deconversion story then critique my book. . . . I challenge you to really critique the one deconversion story that has been published in a book. . . . Do you accept my challenge?

Eventually, after I became bored and was looking for something to do, I did just that, only to get stony silence and crickets back. This is most unimpressive. It’s now over 100 direct refutations of atheist anti-biblical arguments (there are others, too, besides these three cowards), with no replies whatsoever back from those same atheists: two of whom directly challenged me to do this very thing.

This is pretty much my universal experience with atheists. Mr. Ricker finds the same apathy and/or cowardice or non-interest among Christians. We have that in common. I don’t like to repeat work that I’ve already done, so I would propose the following to him: take on one or more of these 92 papers in which I refuted Dr. Madison, Mr Seidensticker, and Mr. Loftus (since they won’t).

Prove to my Christian readers that atheists are capable of actually defending their positions under scrutiny: not just asserting them and fleeing to the hills in terror at the first hint or sign of a vigorous Christian counter-reply. They won’t respond; maybe Mr. Ricker, having devoted a book to such things, will. In any event, I have put my money where my mouth is, and I am able and willing to 1) defend my general Christian and particular Catholic beliefs, and 2) respond to atheist challenges to same.

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Photo credit: Clare Black (9-2-09) [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]
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