2023-05-28T12:05:21-04:00

Bishop “Dr.” [???] James White (words in brown) made the argument that I was supremely ignorant as an evangelical, and so that amply explained my conversion, which need not give anyone the slightest pause.

Hence his description of me in December 2004 as “one who has given very little evidence, in fact, of having done a lot of serious reading in better non-Catholic literature to begin with. In fact, I would imagine Armstrong has done more reading in non-Catholic materials since his conversion than before. In any case, this lack of background will resound loudly in the comments he offers, . . .”

And so I went ahead and showed White exactly what I had read in my 13-year evangelical period, which included many Reformed scholars [he is reformed Baptist] and otherwise solid evangelical biblical scholars or Church historians, such as, e.g., Bernard Ramm, John Walvoord, R.C. Sproul, C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, A.W. Tozer, Francis Schaeffer, Harold Lindsell, Merrill Tenney, James Montgomery Boice, Lorraine Boettner (The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination), Oswald Allis, George Marsden, J. Gresham Machen, Kierkegaard, John MacArthur, J.I. Packer, Billy Graham, Walter Martin, G.C. Berkouwer, F.F. Bruce, D.A. Carson, Norman Geisler, Alvin Plantinga, Gerhard Maier, Augustus Strong, Charles Hodge, Gleason Archer, John Gerstner, A.A. Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, Dunn, Alford, Westcott, J.B. Lightfoot, Peter Berger, Os Guinness, Thomas Oden, John Ankerberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jonathan Edwards, Ronald Nash, Carl F.H. Henry, Charles Colson, Dorothy Sayers, and James Davison Hunter, among many others.

Now, how did White respond to that?: “Mr. Armstrong has provided a reading list on his blog. In essence, this means that instead of blaming ignorance for his very shallow misrepresentations of non-Catholic theology and exegesis, we must now assert knowing deception.”

[further discussion with ecumenical Presbyterian friend Tim Roof (words in green) ]:

For White (and anti-Catholics like him, generally), there is no such thing as an intellectually honest conversion from an educated Protestantism to Catholicism. Thus, he claimed at first that I was dumber than a doornail about Protestantism and never was a true Protestant at any time (never having been Reformed).

After I provided my reading list he (even he!) could no longer plausibly argue that I was an imbecile. I knew too much. Thus, the only choice left in his severely limited thought-world was deliberate deception. I couldn’t possibly be sincere or honest, knowing what I did, in becoming a Catholic.

I have never thought this pertained to you and your own history, Dave. And I would never attribute this to Catholic converts in general. However, I have heard several high-profile men who have converted to Catholicism from Protestantism whose descriptions of what they believed while Protestants bore little relation to what Protestantism actually teaches. I mean, I’ve heard some say some truly astonishing stuff. In those cases, it makes sense to me that they converted to Catholicism since what they believed before was so convoluted. My own Pastor, Carl Trueman, Chairman of the Church History Department at Westminster Theological Seminary has told us, “If you’re not a Roman Catholic, you had better have good, solid reasons as to why you are not.” In other words, don’t be Protestant simply because you’re not Catholic, or because you think it’s “cool” or “hip” or whatever. Know thoroughly what and why you believe the way you do.

I completely agree with your last part. Thanks for not thinking I am either a dumbbell about Protestantism or a deceiver.

I would just add that whenever we speak of “Protestantism” we have to make a hundred qualifications or exceptions; which brand? Thus, those from one sector may not understand others, etc. They are going by their own experiences and may be overly extrapolating to others and being a bit inaccurate.

I think I had a pretty firm grip on Reformed thinking, since I had read so much of it, as seen in my list of books that I had read. But most Arminians have a poor understanding of Calvinists and often vice versa as well. But in any event, we all have to know what we believe and why we do. I help with the latter, as an apologist.

I would only add that most Calvinists started out as your garden variety Arminian, which is to say that Calvinists TEND toward much more serious and deep study. This is the case with me.They typically are better able to give a defense of their faith. This is a generalization, of course; there are always exceptions. But the trend is much more going from Arminian to Calvinist rather than the other way around, and converts to Catholicism TEND to be Arminian as Protestants rather than Reformed/Calvinist.

Calvinists definitely are more educated as a whole, among Protestants. I was gonna actually say that above. Arminians are much more prone to theological liberalism, too.

I think Arminians being more prone to liberalism, as you have said above, may be a function of that system being (in my view) more emotion-based and less intellectual-based. Liberalism TENDS to be much more about emoting and much less about the consequences for others of one’s actions. I am not saying that evangelical Christians are “dumber” than Reformed. However, I do think that pursuit of biblical and theological knowledge is much more characteristic of Reformed theology than general evangelicalism. I am speaking broadly, of course.

I agree again, and I am a former Arminian. Calvinists tend towards other vices: a certain “coldness” and over-intellectualizing of faith; minimizing of legitimate religious experience, disbelief in continuing miracles, and anti-Catholicism, as well as anti-anything other than Calvinism.

You show none of these traits. James White shows all of them.

Conversion is extraordinarily complex (at least for those who try to think through issues). All the more reason to excoriate the tunnel vision “ignoramus or lying deceiver” choice that White has limited himself to . . .

My only caveat to what you have said would be a Calvinist belief in continuing miracles but not a belief in the continuation of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.

It’s interesting to note how Steve Hays (equally anti-Catholic) was, in 2006, still able to say some nice things about me: something White has never ever done in 22 years. He changed a few years later and started saying that I was “evil”, but at this point he was much more nuanced (words in blue):

*****

“An open letter to Dave Armstrong” (9-9-06) [most of it]

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel.

Everyone is entitled to his own usage. I won’t judge someone else’s usage. They have their reasons.

But those are not the adjectives I’d reach for in the case of Armstrong.

Those are words I reserve for extreme cases, not borderline cases.

To judge by his conversion story, he had a rather brief and superficial experience [untrue!] with Evangelicalism—reading popularizers and attending emotive, anti-intellectual churches [untrue as a generalization].

A transition from a shallow brand of Evangelicalism [untrue!] to devout Catholicism is not the same thing as apostasy—much less infidelity. Not by my definition, at least.

And, unless he’s sheltering his wealth from the Feds, I don’t think one can accuse him of changing sides for fast cars, fast women, and a vintage pint of sherry.

So it’s not as if he’s another Kim Philby or Guy Burgess with a Rosary.

I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable.

I also don’t dislike him. And this is not a pro forma disclaimer to prove what a charitable guy I am, for there are some bloggers whom I do dislike. (Sorry, no names!)

I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind.

In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent.

For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind.

Then writing generally in the combox, Hays added (in a remarkably fair way, given his anti-Catholicism):

The term “apostasy” carries with it a heavy presumption that the apostate is a hell-bound reprobate.

I think it’s unwarranted to assume that all Catholics or converts to Catholicism are damned.

In addition, when you use the same adjective for Dave Armstrong or Scott Hahn that you use for John Spong or Robert Price, the charge loses credibility and can backfire.

In fact, some former evangelicals have swum the Tiber precisely because they discovered a disconnect between hyperbolic polemics and the less lurid reality.

We should avoid the temptation to exaggerate and overplay our hand.

I replied in the combox as follows (this comment was later deleted):

Thanks, Steve, for the nice things said. I appreciate it. This was a classy piece. Just a few observations, if I may:

Your theory of my odyssey from evangelicalism to Catholicism is — shall we say? — “interesting.” I was in a shallow environment, so that Catholicism was quite possibly even a “step up” and I get a pass for ignorance; therefore I am not an apostate, etc. (never having been a Calvinist – is the implication). This reminds me of a statement I saw from Phillip Johnson, where he said that much of evangelicalism was worse than even Catholicism in the 16th century.

The problem, of course, is that this is an inaccurate portrayal of what I used to believe and the circles I used to be in. You claim that I “had a rather brief and superficial experience with Evangelicalism—reading popularizers . . .”

James White made the same argument [see above]: that I was supremely ignorant and an evangelical, and so that amply explained my conversion, which need not give anyone the slightest pause.

Will that be your approach now, too, once you have discovered that I was not nearly as ignorant as you would like to make out presently? I hope not.

My “brief and superficial experience with Evangelicalism” included intense anti-cult research and many other informal studies on various theological topics. You can see, for example, what sort of thing I was doing and writing back then by perusing the following papers (dated 1982 and 1987). If you want to classify this as “superficial,” you have every right to, but I don’t think one out of hundred evangelicals who read this stuff would agree with you.

Biblical Refutation of “Hyperfaith” / “Name-it-Claim it” Teaching: Is it Always God’s Will to Heal in Every Instance? 

Jehovah’s Witnesses: “The Apocalyptic Arians”: A Biblical and Historical Critique 

This experience included intensive street witnessing at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in Michigan, for ten straight years, and in many other places (often, Kingdom Halls or Marxist meetings), and a five-year stint as a campus evangelist.

As for “attending emotive, anti-intellectual churches,” this is also grossly inaccurate. It is true that I attended some charismatic churches, but they were not “anti-intellectual” by any means (if they had been, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place). One of the non-denominational churches I went to had an assistant pastor who had a master’s in philosophy. Later, the pastor was Al Kresta, one of the sharpest people I have ever met, who had a very popular evangelical talk show for ten years in the Detroit area, on the largest Christian radio station, WMUZ. He later converted to Catholicism, but in any event, he is no anti-intellectual, by any stretch of the imagination.

I also started out at a Lutheran church, with a brilliant, missions and outreach-minded pastor named Dick Bieber. Lutherans are generally not accused of anti-intellectualism, to my knowledge.

The man who “baptized” me (when I believed in adult believer’s baptism), and who married me has a Ph.D. in education, etc. Another good friend, who pastored a Reformed Baptist church that we often attended, eventually obtained his Ph.D. and is now a professor at a college in Michigan. Hardly “anti-intellectual” circles again . . .

You can stereotype charismatics if you wish as “emotive and anti-intellectual,” but as in all categories (even Calvinism) you can always find solid proponents and shallow ones. I believe in the spiritual gifts, on biblical grounds. I never believed, however, that everyone had to speak in tongues in order to truly be indwelt with the Holy Spirit, because I saw that as contrary to Paul’s clear teaching on the gifts.

At the same time, also, I was issuing strong critiques of excesses within the charismatic movement (see the paper above about healing: from 1982). I was strongly criticizing Jim Bakker even before the big scandal hit. I attended MENSA groups and meetings of university philosophy professors during my evangelical apologist / evangelist period in the late 80s. Etc., etc., etc. “Anti-intellectual”? Um, I don’t think so. Strange that you would claim this.

I became an avid pro-lifer and participant in Operation Rescue all during my evangelical period. Was all this “a shallow brand of Evangelicalism”? I think not.

The only way you could make such a claim (having truly understood my background) would be on the basis that all non-Calvinist brands of evangelicalism are “shallow” and “superficial.” I think that is rather silly and laughable (and would apparently include even your own compatriot Jason Engwer), but then I think that about the tiny anti-Catholic wing of evangelicalism too.

So, thanks again for the nice things you said, but I had to correct the misrepresentations of the state of my theological and spiritual knowledge and what sort of fellowships I was involved in as an evangelical.

I converted precisely for the reasons that I have explained in my four or five different accounts. It wasn’t because I was ignorant of evangelical Protestantism. It wasn’t because I despised or hated same or came to regard it as worthless. It wasn’t because I was disenchanted with where I was. My journey began out of simple intellectual curiosity about why Catholic believed certain things that I thought were exceedingly strange and puzzling (particularly, the ban on contraception, and infallibility).

Many of the things I hold very dear now (love of the Bible, interest in Christian worldview, pro-life, opposing cults and atheists, evangelism, fighting cultural sexual immorality, apologetics in general, strong family values, political conservatism, concern for the poor, love for great Christian authors and thinkers) were cultivated during those days. That’s where I initially learned all that stuff. It was the air I breathed. I’ll always be thankful for that and remember those times with the utmost fondness. Ironically, you appear to view many of your evangelical brothers and sisters far, far more negatively than I would ever dream of characterizing my own past.

You see, those of us who were evangelical and loved it, who later become Catholics, don’t have to reject our past and regard it as an evil, bad thing. We simply think that we have come to understand in faith some additional elements of Christianity that were lacking in our previous Christian circles (a sense of history, sacramentalism, ecclesiology, the saints, greater emphasis on the Incarnation and actual sanctification, etc.).

As I wrote recently, it isn’t “evil vs. good”. Rather, it is a matter of “very good” and “better” or “a great deal of truth” and “the fullness of truth” or “excellent” and “best.”

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Unfortunately, two-and-a-half years later, Steve Hays’ fairly tolerant, nuanced analysis quickly changed to an outright hostile one:

I used to think that Dave Armstrong was just a jerk. Not deeply evil. Just a jerk. . . . He isn’t just a narcissistic little jerk. He’s actually evil. It’s not something we can spoof or satirize anymore. He’s crossed a line of no return. (4-13-09)

[I]f you do a spot-on impersonation of someone who’s hypersensitive, paranoid, an ego-maniac, narcissistic, with a martyr and persecution complex, then how are we supposed to tell the difference between the person and the impersonation? The make-up, inflection, &c, is just uncanny. . . . For that matter, have you ever encountered a self-obsessive individual who admits to being a self-obsessive individual? Don’t we expect a self-obsessive individual to deny how self-obsessive he is? A self-obsessive individual spends endless amounts of time talking about how he’s not a self-obsessive individual, which, of course, is just another way of talking about himself–over and over again. Does that ring a bell? Sound like anyone you know? . . . Not only is Dave an idolater, but a self-idolater. He has sculpted an idol in his own, precious image. A singular, autobiographical personality cult. (7-16-09, on James Swan’s Boors All site [later deleted by Swan] )

[Y]ou play the innocent victim when someone exposes your chicanery. . . . you’re a hack who pretends to be a professional apologist . . . you don’t do any real research. . . . If I did pray for Armstrong, do you think I’d announce it in public? But suppose I didn’t? . . .  Dave isn’t somebody who lost his faith and went quietly into the night. No, Dave is a stalwart enemy of the faith. He’s no better than Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Just like the militant atheist, his modus operandi is to destroy faith in God’s word to make room for his alternative. In this case, his corrupt denomination. (1-28-10; comment at 11:53 PM)

I realize that, due to your persecution complex (by the way, you need to have your psychiatrist up the dosage), you imagine that only “anti-Catholics could ever find fault with your stainless conduct . . . Are you hearing voices? . . . I didn’t say you were evil in this one instance. You have an evil character. This particular instance brought that to the fore. . . . Since you can’t out-argue [Jason Engwer], you try to discredit him by creating a deceptive narrative about his performance. . . . There’s always a clientele for P. T. Barnums like you. . . . I’m supposed to be taken in by your bipolar tactics? (1-29-10; two-part comment at 8:25 PM)

It’s entirely possible for a schizophrenic guy like Armstrong to contradict himself from one moment to the next. Indeed, just look at the wild mood swings which he has put on display in this very thread. . . . The question is not whether the accusation makes sense, but whether Dave makes sense. Dave is confusing logical consistency with psychological consistency. It’s psychologically possible for an emotionally unstable guy like Dave to be logically inconsistent. . . . 

That disclaimer would be a bit more plausible if Dave didn’t go on and on and on in one hysterical comment after another after another. One of Dave’s problems is his lifelong love affair with himself. He reacts to any imagined slight the way a normal man reacts if someone slights his wife or mother or girlfriend. . . . Dave is self-important. . . . People who are truly self-effacing don’t ordinarily crow about how truly self-effacing they are. If would help Armstrong if, in refuting the allegation that he’s emotionally unhinged, if he didn’t become emotionally unhinged whenever he hears the allegation. A hundred hysterical comments later: . . .
*
Well, since you ask, one of Armstrong’s problems (yes, the list is long, I know) is his repudiation of Pauline sola fide. And we see the practical outworking of his life. Because he doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation, Dave has an insatiable need for self-justification. He, like other Catholics, has no peace of mind. . . . 
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Yes, Dave, that’s evil. Pure evil. . . . 
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Of course, that’s symptomatic of Armstrong’s instability. He will post reams and reams of high-strung reaction pieces in the heat of the moment, then, after a cooling off period, when it dawns on him that his impetuous commentary unwittingly backfired, he will follow that up with a mass purge. (4-18-10, on James Swan’s Boors All site [later deleted by Swan]. Somehow, when Swan engaged in his “mass purge” of Hays’ remarkably unhinged comments, that evidenced no metal instability on his part. Nor did Hays’ own multitudinous deletions of my comments on his page, and eventual banning of yours truly indicate his own psychosis)
*
Both Paul Hoffer and Dave Armstrong are bad men who imagine they are good men. That’s not unusual. Bad men often have a high opinion of their own motives. And Catholicism reinforces that self-deception. (12-7-11; comment at 12:51 AM)

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(Dec. 2004; added dialogue from 2-21-17; additional citations added on 2-24-18)

Photo credit: photo by Nick Youngson [The Blue Diamond GalleryCC BY-SA 3.0  license]

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2017-04-20T17:55:35-04:00

DinosaurMan2

Photograph by Alex Beynon (5-16-14) [Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0 license]

***

(9-18-10)

*****

TAO (The Anonymous One; aka Turretinfan)

A plain reading of the Old Testament and the Gospels makes it clear that the world was created supernaturally by God in the space of a week, and more particularly, in six days each consisting of an evening and morning. This event took place less than 10,000 years ago, which we can calculate more or less accurately from geneologies provided, for example, in Genesis 5 and the gospels.

Frankly speaking, there is no reason for anyone who excludes outside information from the Bible to arrive at any other conclusion. The Bible, on its face, is clear. God created the world, he did so in six days, and rested on the seventh day. In celebration of this fact, we observe the week.

Nevertheless, from time to time, weak Christians are tempted to believe the testimony of scientists (and their acolytes) who claim that they have unshakable evidence (some may even claim “proof”) that the earth is older than 10,000 years. These Christians, led astray by the lies, deceit, or simply errors of the “science crowd” believe the testimony of the crowd.

Some do so by disbelieving the testimony of Scripture outright: these are the so-called Theistic Evolutionists. They deny that God created man from the dust of the Earth and woman from the rib of man. Others, however, seek to harmonize the Bible somehow to the old earth claims of the science crowd. These are termed Old Earth Creationists. They create novel and sometimes bizarre interpretations of Scripture to try to justify a timeline that holds the universe to be tens of billions of years old, and biological life to be billions of years old. . . .

Today, the idea that man was created less than 10,000 years ago is out of vogue with the science crowd, . . . the science crowd will not agree that all of humanity descended from a single pair of human ancestors who lived less than 10,000 years ago. Instead, we see modified old earth creationists holding to ever more erratic views of the text of Scripture, as they attempt to remain popular with the scientific crowd. (7-3-07)

There is no need for further evidence for Young Earth Creationism (YEC), since Scripture speaks clearly via the Creation account (one week) and the Old Testament genealogies. (11-7-07)

Open Challenge on the topic of YEC.
Thesis: Resolved, that Scripture conveys that the Earth was created in week, less than 10,000 years ago.
UPDATE: I get to AFFIRM the resolution.
Anyone wish to deny the resolution? (11-8-07)
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Steve Hays

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I don’t link to an OEC like Hugh Ross because I don’t find much of either scientific value or exegetical value in his writings. . . .

The universe is between 6000-10,000 years old, give or take. . . . I agree, but with certain qualifications . . . (10-22-06)

YEC takes Scripture as its frame of reference . . . (3-9-09)

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“Saint and Sinner”

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Due to my philosophy of science, Instrumentalism, I allow Scripture to speak for itself, and so, I am a YEC. (3-11-07)

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R. C. Sproul

*

I now hold to a literal six-day creation, . . . Genesis says that God created the universe and everything in it in six twenty-fourhour periods. According to the Reformation hermeneutic, the first option is to follow the plain sense of the text. One must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain meaning of Genesis 12. The confession makes it a point of faith that God created the world in the space of six days.

(Truths We Confess: A Laymans guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Volume I: The Triune God (Chapters 18 of the Confession)[Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2006, pp. 127128, cited at a YEC website)

We have a problem not only with a six-day creation, but also with the age of the earth. Is the earth a few thousand years old or billions of years old (as scientists today insist)? . . . If we take the genealogies that go back to Adam, however, and if we make allowances for certain gaps in them (which could certainly be there), it remains a big stretch from 4004 BC to 4.6 billion years ago. (Ibid., pp. 121122)

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Bishop “Dr.” [???] James White

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I haven’t yet found any indisputable proof that White is a young earth creationist; however, in his tract, Evidence for Special Creation From Scientific Evidence, he cites at length a foreword written by Dr. Dean H. Kenyon, Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University, who is a well-known young earth creationist. The book that Dr. Kenyon endorsed (and by strong implication and logical deduction, that White also approves of), is The Mystery of Lifes Origin, written by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen (Lewis and Stanley, 2nd edition, 1992).

Thaxton’s book, The Soul of Science (Bible Science Association, 1994), co-written with Nancy R. Pearcey (a young-earther) and Marvin Olasky (yet another young-earther), is listed in YEC icon and central figure Henry Morris lengthy Young-Earth Creationist Bibliography. Morris states: “The books listed in this bibliography represent works of authors advocating literal creationism, including the six-solar-day creation week and a worldwide cataclysmic flood.” That pretty much proves that Thaxton is in the YEC camp.

Bradley and Olsen, however, are old-earthers. There is a chance White is the same, but in favorably citing YEC Kenyon’s foreword to a book at least partially written by YEC Charles B. Thaxton, the likelihood is that White, too, is a young earth creationist, since those who deny the YEC position generally don’t cite YEC’s as reputable scientific authorities (I certainly would never do so).

Moreover, White hosts on his website, the article, “The Flood, Dinosaurs, Oh My!,” by his colleague Jeff Downs, who states, “I’ll admit that I’m a YEC.” It’s difficult to imagine that White would host such a piece, while fundamentally disagreeing with it, but he might. The more plausible interpretation, in my opinion, is that he agrees with it.

John MacArthur

The hypothesis that the earth is billions of years old is rooted in the unbiblical premise that what is happening now is just what has always happened. This idea is known as uniformitarianism. It is the theory that natural and geological phenomena are for the most part the results of forces that have operated continuously, with uniformity, and without interruption, over billions and billions of years. (5-7-10)

According to Scripture, God created the universe over six days time and rested on the seventh day. . . .
To reject a literal, six-day interpretation is to confound that memorial. Furthermore, it is a denial of the completeness of Gods creation. (6-20-10)

Uniformitarian geologists start with the assumption that the earth is millions and millions of years old. When they go to the evidence, they find what they’re looking for old fossils, old rocks, and the marks of long ages of time. But what if you start with a different set of assumptions? What if you go to the evidence assuming the biblical record is true, namely, that the earth is relatively young and there was a cataclysmic event known as the Flood. (7-2-10)

Phil Johnson (Pyromaniacs)

I know, of course, that old-earthers like to fudge on the questions of whether all creation (or Eden only) was a perfect paradise; whether the six days are a chronological account of creation or merely some kind of poetic framework; whether the flood was a global or regional deluge, and whatnot. But regardless of what hermeneutical machinations one imposes on the text, I can’t see how any reasonable person someone for whom words are in any sense truly meaningfulcould think it possible to reconcile the first nine chapters of Genesis with the bald assertion that “the same processes we see shaping the earth today have been at work since God created the world.” . . . every biblical creationist who rejects uniformitarianism strongly affirms divine providence. . . . Few old-earthers truly grasp how much their capitulation to evolutionary theory compromises when it comes to hamartiology, hermeneutics, biblical history, biblical anthropology, and the authority and reliability of the Scriptures. But it would be nice to see a conscientious effort from old-earthers to deal with Christian doctrine and the foundations of Christian faith seriously. (6-21-10)

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“Rhology”

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It has to do w/ the age of the earth. As I’m sure you know, it is oft claimed that an old earth is the more “scientific” position, and that one would have to hold to a young earth position (say, less than 10,000 yrs old) solely on faith. What I’ve been discovering in my journeys of thought, debate, and polemics over the last 3-4 yrs, however, is that any opponent of my position who accuses me of blind faith has at least an equal investment of blind, unprovable faith in their own position, but they don’t realise it (for the most part) or hide it (I suspect that is the case for at least a few). (2-19-07)

[Catholic Peter Sean Bradley] you seem to think that defending a literal six days of creation is completely different.

Since Scr[ipture] teaches the 6 days of creation and doesn’t teach geocentrism, I don’t see any reason to make an apology on that. (11-9-07: on the notorious know-nothing Boors All blog)

The Bible doesn’t really support an old earth . . . (5-2-08)

. . . Young Earth Creationism, especially the kind that I generally argue, where my answer to why geological structures appear to be really old is b/c God created them, like Adam, with a certain appearance of age to the natural eye. (9-25-09)

*****

Discussions in the combox (see the complete huge discussion):

I would describe the YEC position along the lines of (to put it diplomatically) being “scientifically challenged.”

The Church never teaches that the earth is a certain age; therefore, to embrace it “dogmatically” is a rejection of Church authority.

By the same token, a Catholic is free to believe it, since it isn’t dogma. But he can’t say that the Church teaches YEC as a matter of dogma, because that is simply untrue. There is no such dogma. The Church takes no dogmatic stand yay or nay on evolution, either. It requires every Catholic to believe in a primal pair of human beings (Adam and Eve) and original sin; also in the supernatural creation of every human soul (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, 1950). That is consistent with either a creationist or theistic evolutionary view.

So its not a dogmatic issue, but YEC is a scientific issue, and can be rejected on that basis. From the perspective of science, I say it is pure bunk and refuted many times over in many ways, by the usual means of scientific, empirical observation. An old earth is exceedingly supported by scientific findings.

I haven’t called anyone a nut or a wacko, etc. (I specifically rejected such categorization). Others in the thread have done that, but not I. The original intent of the post was simply to document a strong sociological association of YEC with active, zealous anti-Catholicism. Since then I have clarified some things, and noted what I think is some profound ignorance of scientific method and findings, but haven’t attacked anyone’s person. Ignorance of so-and-so is a belief someone holds, not the person himself or herself.

The common ground is lack of education. The YEC is uninformed about science (esp. geology) and the anti-Catholic is uninformed about historic theology (esp. ecclesiology). So it stands to reason that a person given to lack of learning and understanding in one area will have that approach spill over into others. And that is indeed what we see.

Also, both views almost always stem from fundamentalism and all that that entails. I described the “mindset” of that as:

. . . an inability to understand definitions of words, multiple definitions, non-literal interpretation, idiom, context, cultural background of how words are used in the Bible, ancient Hebrew (biblical) thinking, and so forth. I see that as essentially the root of the whole error.

With this sort of attitude, going into science, with all its complexities and nuances, one can see that there is little prospect of one with fundamentalist presuppositions arriving at scientific truths and the consensus of the scientific community on a thing like the age of the earth: because they bring an already profoundly mistaken view of biblical hermeneutics to the table, and they think one can only conclude from the Bible that the earth is 6000-10,000 years old (as Steve Hays holds).

But I haven’t stated that YECs are “nuts.” I don’t think that about YECs. I think they are simply guilty of hopelessly confused and mistaken conclusions about certain scientific matters (and also ecclesiological ones, in the case of the anti-Catholics).

2016-12-28T18:04:57-04:00

Bryan

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) as a young man [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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(6-6-09)

***

[Note: a few years after I wrote this, I was able to visit the famous courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee]

*****

I don’t think Bryan was so much a “pseudo-intellectual” as he was simply ignorant of biblical exegesis and the latest developments of science at the time of the Scopes Trial.

The man was a lawyer (second in his class), a US Congressman, three-time presidential candidate, and Secretary of State from 1913 to 1915. He was influential in the movement to popularly elect senators, and women’s suffrage. According to Encyclopedia Britannica (1985), “he made a distinctive contribution to world law by espousing arbitration to prevent war.”

I’m not sure a man becomes a “pseudo-intellectual” simply because (being a lawyer, politician, diplomat, and social reformer) he is not up on his biblical exegesis and apologetics, and philosophical apologetics, and was trapped on the stand by a very clever opposing (secularist) lawyer.

We are in danger of accepting the secularist stereotypes of all “fundamentalist” Christians as ignorant troglodytes. That was not the case (especially not in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). But it is so easy to join the bandwagon and pile on Bryan because of the Scopes Trial.

We always hear about the episode with Clarence Darrow ad nauseam, while very few people are familiar with the Piltdown Man hoax, that dazzled and duped evolutionists for 41 years, or Nebraska Man, introduced as evidence at the Scopes Trial, that turned out to be the tooth of an extinct pig (all “it” was, was a tooth), or embarrassing scientific espousal of eugenics and phrenology and suchlike: used to bolster cultural racism and Nazism (Nazi Germany being a very scientifically advanced culture).

No; forget all that. Even we Christians have been brainwashed to believe that Bryan was merely a doltish idiot because he did a poor job defending an over-literalism of the Bible that was itself an unworthy position, in its extremity. But Darrow was simply wrong, too, in some of his line of questioning (see the transcript of his questioning of Bryan). He implied that it was patently ridiculous for Jonah to have been swallowed by a large fish or whale. But we know there have been instances of that, where men actually survived the ordeal. Therefore, it is not unthinkable at all. It isn’t even a miracle. Darrow asked hackneyed, garden-variety skeptical questions like “where Cain got his wife”. Moreover, he showed the seething condescension that we are so familiar with, with folks like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens today, saying, “You insult every man of science and learning in the world” and referring to “your fool religion” and “your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.”

Bryan showed, for example, that he was not a young-earth, six literal days creationist, as many fundamentalists (even relatively sophisticated ones) are today:

Q–Have you any idea how old the earth is?
A–No.
Q–The Book you have introduced in evidence tells you, doesn’t it?
A–I don’t think it does, Mr. Darrow.
Q–Let’s see whether it does; is this the one?
A–That is the one, I think.
Q–It says B.C. 4004?
A–That is Bishop Usher’s calculation.
Q–That is printed in the Bible you introduced?
A–Yes, sir….
Q–Would you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old?
A–Oh, no; I think it is much older than that.
Q–How much?
A–I couldn’t say.
Q–Do you say whether the Bible itself says it is older than that?
A–I don’t think it is older or not.
Q–Do you think the earth was made in six days?
A–Not six days of twenty-four hours.
Q–Doesn’t it say so?
A–No, sir. . .
Q–Does the statement, “The morning and the evening were the first day,” and “The morning and the evening were the second day,” mean anything to you?
A— I do not think it necessarily means a twenty-four-hour day.
Q–You do not?
A–No.
Q–What do you consider it to be?
A–I have not attempted to explain it. If you will take the second chapter–let me have the book. (Examining Bible.) The fourth verse of the second chapter says: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,” the word “day” there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period. I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, “the evening and the morning,” as meaning necessarily a twenty-four-hour day, “in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth.”
Q–Then, when the Bible said, for instance, “and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day,” that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours?
A–I do not think it necessarily does.
Q–Do you think it does or does not?
A–I know a great many think so.
Q–What do you think?
A–I do not think it does.
Q–You think those were not literal days?
A–I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.
Q–What do you think about it?
A–That is my opinion–I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does.
Q–You do not think that ?
A–No. But I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6,000,000 years or in 600,000,000 years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.
Q–Do you think those were literal days?
A–My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.

In this instance he was not defending biblical hyper-literalism. In fact, most of those who do so today would consider him a “flaming liberal” on this basis alone. There are, for example, still geocentrists today (even Catholic ones), but Bryan didn’t take that position:

Q–The Bible says Joshua commanded the sun to stand still for the purpose of lengthening the day, doesn’t it, and you believe it?
A–I do.
Q–Do you believe at that time the entire sun went around the earth?
A–No, I believe that the earth goes around the sun.
Q–Do you believe that the men who wrote it thought that the day could be lengthened or that the sun could be stopped?
A–I don’t know what they thought.
Q–You don’t know?
A–I think they wrote the fact without expressing their own thoughts.

Note again that he does not stake out a position of extreme literalism. The window is left open for a more sophisticated phenomenological view. Bryan isn’t required to have known every jot and tittle of exegetical / philosophical speculation about Bible matters, in order to “prevail” in this exchange between two legal minds. It’s unreasonable to expect him to be such an expert. In fact, he states exactly why he wanted to testify. Apparently (from what I can gather from this) Darrow had taunted him beforehand (probably off the record):

Bryan–The reason I am answering is not for the benefit of the superior court. It is to keep these gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet them and let them question me, and I want the Christian world to know that any atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, can question me anytime as to my belief in God, and I will answer him.

Darrow–I want to take an exception to this conduct of this witness. He may be very popular down here in the hills….

Bryan
–Your honor, they have not asked a question legally and the only reason they have asked any question is for the purpose, as the question about Jonah was asked, for a chance to give this agnostic an opportunity to criticize a believer in the word of God; and I answered the question in order to shut his mouth so that he cannot go out and tell his atheistic friends that I would not answer his questions. That is the only reason, no more reason in the world.

So sure, we can critique his answers on the stand (and that’s very easy to do safely hid away and with the hindsight of 84 years) , but it’s not necessary to insult the man’s intelligence and make out that he wasn’t a real intellectual: to accept all the stereotypes we are supposed to believe as dogma, from our secularist overlords. That simplifies and caricatures true history, which is always, invariably more complex and interesting than the spoon-fed versions of he public schools. Bryan’s closing speech (that he actually didn’t give, for some reason), contains some very eloquent and wise observations, that were much-needed, then and now:

Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.. . . If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings, alone, can solve the problems that vex heart and perplex the world….

Again, we need not agree with Bryan in every particular. I don’t. But there is no necessity to disparage him as a “pseudo-intellectual.” Bryan probably accomplished more good things in his life than all of us reading and writing these things will ever do, put together. He was not an idiot. And he deserves to be remembered for more than a few (perhaps) stupid or philosophically / theologically insufficient remarks made under the pressure of an intense cross-examination on a blistering hot day.

Related paperMy Claims Regarding Piltdown Man & the Scopes Trial Twisted

*****

Meta Description: Analysis of William Jennings Bryan, of Scopes Trial fame (1925): beyond the usual stereotypes.

Meta Keywords: Christianity & science, Christianity & evolution, creationism, theistic evolution, William Jennings Bryan, faith & reason, Scopes Trial, scientific method, scientism

2017-02-24T15:51:05-04:00

GalileoTrial2

Galileo Before the Holy Office, by Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797-1890) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

*****

Clinton Hooper is an agnostic. He showed up in a Facebook thread of mine that had a meme with 16 Catholic scientists. It sarcastically stated: “Catholics are Anti-Science. We’d Probably be in the Space Age by Now if it Weren’t for Those Catholics.” His words will be in blue. I won’t bother to correct all of his lack of capitals, etc.

How many of those catholics were catholics because to openly not be catholic during their time was basically a death sentence….

I should rephrase I suppose… how many of those catholics were quite literally ordered under threat of imprisonment and the possibility of torture to not disagree with the church…. easiest example: galileo…. may have been catholic, but he was also explicitly ordered not to hold a heliocentric view by the church and subsequently imprisoned by the church… how much worse would that punishment have been if he had been like “meh, i’m not a catholic anymore either!”

[I posted links to three of my related papers]

Galileo: The Myths and the Facts [5-11-06]

“No One’s Perfect”: Scientific Errors of Galileo and 16th-17th Century Cosmologies [7-29-10]

Dialogue on the Galileo Fiasco and the State of Scientific and Astronomical Knowledge in 1633 (vs. Eric G.) [5-13-06]

The Church clearly made mistakes in the Galileo affair, but none that affected infallibility. Galileo was sentenced to a luxurious palace with a supporter.

This is nothing like how the “enlightened” atheists in France treated great scientists. Lavoisier, the father of chemistry, was killed. For some reason, no one ever hears about that at all!

i’m glad you can google, but nothing you’ve posted disagrees with what I said…. in 1633 galileo was imprisoned for the rest of his life under “house arrest”… being comfortable does not make a prison any less of a prison.

Not to mention the “officially atheist” Chinese and Soviet treatment of scientists.

This isn’t about atheists… or protestants…. it’s about catholics. Also, galileo according to the first article you posted galileo was only in the palace for a few months. he spent the rest of his life under house arrest with “friends”.

I wasn’t Googling. These are all my own papers.

What is your worldview, Clinton? Yes, it’s about Catholics. We freely admit that we screwed up about Galileo. But things must be put into perspective, and a fair-minded approach taken. That’s what I attempt to do in my treatments of it. There is a huge double standard. It’s always Catholics and their error here [that are brought up].

Never mind that scientists at the time were, e.g., neck-deep into astrology. No one ever hears about that. Never mind that Galileo’s notion of scientific method was less modern than Bellarmine’s was. Never mind that Copernicus’ famous book was endorsed by the pope at the time.

It’s only Catholics who are supposedly “anti-science.”

My point in bringing up Lavoisier is obviously to argue: “if you are gonna get all righteously indignant about Galileo’s house arrest, as if this is the height of anti-scientific bigotry, then also get much more indignant about Lavoisier being murdered by the French radicals of the so-called ‘Enlightenment.'”

Don’t simply highlight one bad thing and ignore a far worse thing. That gives a wrong impression and is lousy history. But it happens all the time. The analyses are so often anti-Catholic in motivation.

Fair enough, the google comment was out of line.

My world view is irrelevant to the conversation, however I believe that there may or may not be a god. go back far enough and there’s still things that science cannot answer with current theories. who’s to say that far enough back there wasn’t a creator and he didn’t put all of this into motion…. go back far enough and even science relies upon blind faith in the form of assumptions.

I don’t take issue with catholics in particular, and I don’t really think Catholicism in its current state is anti-science… but that doesn’t mean that it was always the case. galileo is a prime example of this. was galileo wrong? absolutely, that’s the way science works… we’re constantly disproving someone else by presenting a better argument…

When the discussion is stifled by fear of persecution by the church, then the church (at the time) is anti-science. pretty much every major form of Christianity has been anti-science at one point or another.

I should say pretty much every major form of religion, including atheism, has been anti-science at one point or another.

Thanks for sharing your worldview, and I appreciate the qualifying statements.

Worldviews are always relevant to conversations, because everyone has a bias, and opposing positions have to be informed as to what someone’s position is in order to sensibly argue against them (because knowledge of premises of one’s debate opponent is key to all constructive dialogue).

You being an agnostic means that you will tend to view things in certain ways regarding all sorts of topics, just as I will tend to have many views because of being a Catholic.

I also put together an entire book about this issue.

Herein lies the problem. my worldview is not pertinent to the facts… you are arguing against me rather than discussing the facts. not to say this isn’t a perfectly valid strategy in order to “win” a debate, but it’s not the most effective way to get to the truth.

Worldviews are relevant for precisely the reason I gave: it creates some bias and others need to know about that. I am biased too. That’s all I’m saying.

I’m not arguing against “you” as an agnostic. That’s silly and a piece of sophistry. I have made all kinds of arguments in my papers and book on science; that the Galileo fiasco is not the height of “anti-science” in the history of the world. Far, far from that . . .

I used to think much like you when I was an evangelical. I thought that the Catholic Church was uniquely anti-science, till I studied the actual facts about the Galileo case.

It was temporarily, partially “anti-science” in a sense, and in a much more limited way than the standard secular / Protestant critical (and sometimes anti-Catholic) approach portrays it.

“how many of those catholics were catholics because to openly NOT be catholic during their time was basically a death sentence”

 

Yeah; how many priests and nuns had their heads chopped off in “Enlightened” France simply for being Catholics? You tell me. Again, if we’re gonna criticize one viewpoint, concerning a time when things were pretty universally intolerant, let’s be sure to do comparisons, so no one gets the impression that only Catholics persecuted folks, as if the secular / agnostic crowd did not do so.

As soon as these clowns got power in France, they started killing tens of thousands of people for disagreeing with them: priests, nuns, great scientists . . . And that was supposedly “enlightened” and a reaction against all those wicked intolerant Catholics.

Here are the numbers of murders in less than one year, in the Reign of Terror in France [1793-1794]: “The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris), and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.” [Wikipedia article]

You keep trying to compare… saying “oh well these people were much worse!”… well getting punched in the gut is not as bad as being punched in the face, but it’s still being punched. in much the same way what happened elsewhere in the world was worse, but that doesn’t mean that the church wasn’t bad. the question at hand is not “was the world anti-<insert literally anything>” but specifically “is/was the catholic church anti-science”…

In that limited scope of topic, literally anything else is irrelevant. my beliefs, your beliefs, the “enlightened” and the reign of terror.. all irrelevant to the question of “is/was the catholic church anti-science”….. this scope limitation isn’t brought about by me, but by your original post.

Oh and by the way, never once did I say or even imply that what happened to galileo was unique to the catholics nor the “height of anti-science”… just that it was an excellent example of the church being anti-science for a time.

Well, you didn’t put it in such a sophisticated, nuanced fashion the first time. You stated: “how many of those catholics were quite literally ordered under threat of imprisonment and the possibility of torture to not disagree with the church.”

Yes, how many? Good question. Why don’t you tell us how many you think it was, and give us documented examples? You came up with Galileo as your “easiest example.” He wasn’t tortured. He was put under a relatively luxurious house arrest.

Since you imply that such things were widespread, why don’t you give us some more examples? If you can’t, then don’t go around implying that it was common, expected treatment for scientists to be threatened with imprisonment and torture in Catholic circles.

One anomalous example of poor treatment of a scientist doesn’t overcome the meme and establish that as a general rule, Catholicism was “anti-science.” It was not. We had a short period of time when the Church wrongly assumed that geocentrism was factually true: just a few decades after the great scientist Tycho Brahe held the same position, and when virtually all of the leading scientists (including Galileo) were enthralled with the pseudo-science of astrology.

There’s every reason to believe that Copernicus would have faced similar trial and imprisonment as galileo had he not died shortly after publishing his book on the same topic. according to my friend google (which I readily acknowledge does not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth) here are a couple of examples other than galileo….

Bacon was imprisoned, and the church restricted him (as friar) from publishing works without their specific approval…

Descartes fled from france and take refuge in Sweden, to have his works banned by the catholic church after he passed…

Now, how many of the folks who had their works banned or condemned overall were catholic I don’t know… but the number of scientists and philosophers condemned by the church, or who had works banned/condemned by the church seems to be quite large for an organization that has never been anti-science.

It seems to me that the church went through a good long stretch where some science was embraced, so long as it didn’t contradict with anything they had previously taught…. but where works exhibited support for ideas that didn’t necessarily agree with the church got their authors in some serious trouble.

[Roger] Bacon is not a very good example of your dubious thesis. According to Wikipedia:

The Condemnations of 1277 banned the teaching of certain philosophical doctrines, including deterministic astrology. Some time within the next two years, Bacon was apparently imprisoned or placed under house arrest. This was traditionally ascribed to Franciscan Minister-General Jerome of Ascoli, probably acting on behalf of the many clergy, monks, and educators attacked by Bacon’s 1271 Compendium Studii Philosophiae. Modern scholarship, however, notes that the first reference to Bacon’s “imprisonment” dates from eighty years after his death on the charge of unspecified “suspected novelties” and finds it less than credible. Contemporary scholars who do accept Bacon’s imprisonment typically associate it with Bacon’s “attraction to contemporary prophesies”, his sympathies for “the radical ‘poverty’ wing of the Franciscans”, interest in certain astrological doctrines, or generally combative personality rather than from “any scientific novelties which he may have proposed.

Thus, scholars either question that it took place at all, or hold that if it did, it had nothing to do with science.

2017-12-22T16:09:24-04:00

+ Comment on the Inadequacy and Unbiblical Nature of Libertarianism

Smoking

Figure 8-6, page 288, chapter 8 in: Mitchell, Richard Sheppard; Kumar, Vinay; Abbas, Abul K.; Fausto, Nelson Robbins Basic Pathology, Philadelphia: Saunders ISBN: 1-4160-2973-7. 8th edition. Häggström, Mikael. “Medical gallery of Mikael Häggström 2014“. Wikiversity Journal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.008. ISSN 20018762. [released into public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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(2-25-08)

* * * * *

These are some related thoughts that have come up in different discussions on the CHNI board. My thoughts here are not honed and refined: just thrown out “off the cuff” for consideration. The discussion in one case was about whether drinking alcohol was a sin. An analogy to sports was made (somewhat facetiously, as it turned out). It was said that playing sports sometimes causes brain or spinal cord injuries, or serious ongoing knee problems, etc. Therefore, why do people play sports if there are such serious risks?

* * * * *

Interesting analogy. I’ll take a crack at it.

The difference is that sports are a calculated risk, whereas something like alcohol abuse or smoking are known harmful things that are always or intrinsically harmful (alcohol at the point of abuse, not absolutely any alcohol).

When one says: “sports are dangerous” as opposed to “smoking is dangerous” this is really meant (when closely analyzed) in two different ways. Playing sports is dangerous in the way that driving cars or climbing a very tall mountain is dangerous. There is a known risk involved. So many people will be killed or injured. We know this will occur without doubt. Yet it doesn’t stop us from driving. And that is because the percentages and risks are very small, comparatively speaking, so that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Sports are the same. Some will get a spinal injury. A baseball player was killed in 1920 when struck by a pitch. Some basketball players can have a heart attack and die (that happened to Reggie Lewis of the Celtics, as I recall). But these are tiny percentages as well.

Therefore, the analogy breaks down, because something like smoking has overwhelming risk in doing it at all. To know that yet to keep doing it is (I would argue) an abuse of our bodies. Alcohol becomes the same harmful thing in excess, or for an alcoholic.

* * *

Someone else — following up on this argument — argued that the sport of professional boxing was “objectively immoral.” My reply:

I think boxing is the sport that comes closest to being classified as “abuse” (if one wishes to make that argument); however, I reject the notion that it is objectively immoral on the basis of reductio ad absurdum. Any number of physical activities, after all, would cause one to be exhausted and “physically unable to stand on his feet.”

I mentioned in this very thread about climbing Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. I couldn’t stand over and over, my 49 yo, sports-weakened knees hurt so bad at the top of that monster. It’s a willful activity that leads to physical exhaustion after a while.

If we say that boxing is objectively immoral, what about mountain climbing (serious climbing, like Mt. Everest)? People die doing that, or get frostbite and lose toes and fingers. You could sever your spine in a fall. So no one should ever climb a mountain? Moses couldn’t have even gone up on Mt. Sinai.

How about marathons or the bicycling in Tour de France? Are they not utterly exhausting? Sonny Bono was killed by running into a tree, while downhill skiing. So now that sport is out, too?

We can’t avoid risks in life. Some sports, granted, carry a much greater risk factor (e.g., auto racing, boxing). But I think it is only a matter of degree, not of essence. Boxers agree to undergo possible harm. That is the difference. But if someone comes up to you on the street and punches your face and breaks your nose and rearranges your jaw, that is, of course, a sin, because you didn’t voluntarily participate in that, train for it, etc.

I don’t think the case can be made. Smoking is very close to “objectively immoral,” but even there, the Church has apparently not declared it to be a sin, and it certainly has not done so with regard to boxing.

Based on your first argument, I attempted to draw analogies and create a reductio ad absurdum: if “a goal of reducing another to a state of being physically unable to stand on one’s feet” is objectively immoral, then why not also mountain climbing, and foot race and bicycle marathons?

Granted, the goal of those things is not to be unable to stand (it is getting to the top or first to the finish line), yet being unable to stand will be a virtual inevitable result, so the actual end result is the same. Therefore – so I argued — your argument fails unless you also condemn these other sports. No analogy is absolutely perfect because analogy is not equation.

It also occurs to me that it isn’t possible to say about boxing that the goal is always the knockout for the ten-count, for matches are often decided without one, or without even a knockdown (falling down but getting up before a ten-count). The goal is to get more points than the other guy by more direct hits and relatively less received. The secondary goal of a knockdown or knockout help bring about victory: the former by probability and the latter by certainty. If the knockout was the only criterion of victory then matches would continue until it occurred. But instead they are predetermined to have so many rounds and then end.

I’m not trying to “argue” — if by that one means being obnoxious or contentious — but simply responding to a very serious claim that a sport (one that I have enjoyed myself) is “objectively immoral.” The strong claim requires a strong response. I am arguing by logic and what the actual facts of the matter are according to the self-definition and competitive goals of professional boxing.

* * *

I’ve written about alcohol. As for cigarettes, I think that is more clear cut and not merely an issue of moderation: it is an abuse of our bodies, period. We know that it causes cancer. We know that even secondary smoke has serious negative health effects. It can also cause emphysema. My father has lung cancer because of it (but he is doing remarkably well for all that). I remember a chain-smoking neighbor who slowly died of emphysema. These aren’t pretty sights, and in most cases they were completely preventable.

Arguably, it is wrong to do anything that mutilates or harms our body.

* * *

I never said, myself (lest anyone think this) that smoking was a mortal sin. It would be tough to make that argument, even in the objective sense, let alone subjective. I think one would have to greatly misunderstand the nature of addiction, to try to do the latter.

What I said was that there is little doubt now that smoking harms your body in a serious manner. And it is not a good thing to do anything that does that, whether it is technically a “sin” or not. I think it’s very borderline; quite a complex thing to discuss. The same arguments can be made for overeating, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, eating lousy, unhealthy foods to the detriment of healthy foods, or over-dependence on various medications and drugs.

It’s a very tricky business because it is so much a matter of degree. Gluttony and drunkenness are clearly sins; eating a Twinkie or sipping a Scotch are clearly not. My wife and I have followed a pretty strict health food diet for 25 years. We try to avoid white sugar as much as possible, and eat whole foods as much as we can (financially permitting). We like natural, whole foods (based on serious, scientific studies on what is more healthy and health-promoting). But we never tell our kids that not doing that is a sin, because we don’t believe that. They get the usual candy at Halloween and Easter and at Christmas parties. We’re not legalistic at all about this.

We simply tell them the principles that we have learned and try to live by, and give them this kind of food, as much as it is in our power. If they don’t want to eat this way when they’re grown up, fine. Consequently, however, none of them have grown up with the terrible “junk food junkie” mentality” that I grew up with, because my mother is crazy about sweet stuff. They don’t even crave sweets half as much as I do myself.

I would go beyond the “legal” question and ask, “whether smoking is a sin or not, do you really want to do something that has been proven beyond any doubt to harm your body, and to take off years of your life (statistically)? Do you want to deprive your spouse or kids or parents, or friends, of possibly many years of your life because you refused to stop doing what you should have known full well was harmful?”

That works whether it is considered sinful or not. It’s a matter of charity towards our loved ones and stewardship of the bodies and good health that God gave us.

* * *


The issue is a bit more complicated than people often make out. Let me try to make a somewhat tentative argument. I’m “thinking out loud”; not trying to speak in “dogmatic” terms. The Church teaches that it is a sin to mutilate our bodies; for example to have a vasectomy. It’s wrong because it is doing things to our bodies that are harmful and not intended to be that way by God. The Church would also oppose the practice of clitorectomies, that take place in, for example, Africa, so that women will not experience as much sexual pleasure. These things are intrinsically wrong.

In the case of vasectomy, we are trying to avoid causing a conception altogether and to engage in contraception, which is itself an intrinsically disordered, sinful act. So it is already wrong on those grounds, but it also goes against the natural way a (male) body is supposed to operate.

The analogy to smoking isn’t perfect (very few analogies are), but I would say it is reasonable to argue that if we know beyond any doubt that smoking is antithetical to lung functions, and yet keep doing it, that this is wrong, and indeed, may be a sin, because by our action we are deliberately causing physical injury to ourselves. What would we say if we stabbed someone in the kidney and they had to have it removed? That is wrong not only because it was attacking another and causing them pain, but because that person’s body is now not fully operative in the way it was intended to be.

Now, is it essentially different when we are talking about our own bodies? No. It is a serious sin to commit suicide. The Church doesn’t agree with assisted suicide and euthanasia, because our bodies are not our own, and we are made in the image of God, with eternal souls created directly by God, and we are the temples of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not libertarian: we don’t “own” our own bodies; God does. We don’t own the bodies of our preborn children, and so cannot kill them as we please. It is a serious sin.

Therefore, if it is wrong to cause harm to other persons’ bodies, it is also wrong to cause harm to our own, by the same principle of our bodies being given to us as a gift of God, so that we are stewards of them. In a sense, we’re “renting” our bodies from God the Creator.

Nor can we say in the case of smoking, that it only affects us — just as libertarians argue that drugs and pornography and homosexual acts only have consequences for those who are doing that and no one else. And that is because we know now that second-hand smoke also can do harm to other people (not nearly as much, but still some).

I grew up my entire childhood, breathing the smoke from my father’s cigarettes. I also grew up in southwest Detroit breathing the pollution from the Ford Rouge Plant, just a mile and a half away (the largest factory in the world, at least at one time). Pollution was sort of like smoking on a huge scale. These factories were belching out harmful smoke with little or no control, until the 1970s and a greater awareness of the environment (and it’s not just radical, wacko, far left hysteria: pollution of air and water is objectively, demonstratively a bad thing).

So Ford (where my dad worked, like a typical Detroiter) and other companies got up to speed and did a better job there. In fact, Ford is doing quite a bit environmentally, now, because I just took the tour of the factory in the last few weeks, and they were describing a number of (rather fascinating) environmental programs that the plant is now promoting and practicing.

Cigarette smoke is known (without any doubt) to harm our lungs especially. Why would anyone want to do that (even apart from the sin question)? There is an aspect of this (I agree with another commenter) that is just plain stupid, whether it is technically a “sin” or not. Who would go around bashing their foot or hand with a lead pipe, so that it became increasingly damaged? Who would stab their ear so that 47% of the hearing were lost over time? Who would scrape their back with a sharp object so that it became raw and infected and permanently harmed, or try to deliberately break a finger or a toe?

All of that is considered irrational, “nutty” behavior. Yet if someone smokes and smokes and destroys their lung capacity and sets themselves up for cancer, is that not wrong and dumb, too, on the same grounds? I don’t see any difference. Perhaps someone can explain to me what the difference would be.

Who would make a theoretical choice where there were two doors (like Let’s Make a Deal) and two paths to choose from?:

Door A: a “healthy” lifestyle which is less “fun” but which will render it statistically probable that you can live a healthy, fairly happy life up to age 75-85 or even longer.

Door B: a lot more fun of a life with stuff like excessive alcohol intake and smoking and junk food that will “fulfill” the person at the time but which will cause a great statistical likelihood of cancer and other debilitating diseases and a loss of 10, 15, 20 years off of the person’s lifespan, so that they have a much greater likelihood of dying “early” (and often in horrible, tragic fashion).

Now, would a rational person who cares about his own life and body and about his loved ones, deliberately choose Door B (and, by the way, Door B is also the “choice” of the active homosexual, because we know beyond a doubt, that this lifestyle is unhealthy and takes many years off of lives, statistically)? Yet with the issue of smoking, in effect, millions choose Door B and seem to think little of it.

Whether smoking is a sin or not, I’m not sure. Now I am curious and would like to research this, in terms of what Catholics and other Christians have thought. I suspect that it will be a borderline thing. But at the very least it is an irrational and stupid choice, and I think there are strong arguments to abstain from it whether it is a sin or not. Not everything that is “legal” is necessarily “good”, which is a far smaller category. The Christian ought to pursue what is good and life-affirming and edifying.

And I say this without the least judgment of persons at all (and not the slightest pretense that I am “better” than anyone else). I’m just looking at the thing itself, and I see no good coming from it at all. If the pleasure of it is sought, certainly are plenty of other pleasures that can substitute, without the harm done. I would say it is an act of charity to try to reason with the smoker to stop. After all, it is their life and the life of their loved ones who is harmed. My own father has lung cancer, as I write, because he wouldn’t listen to reason and stop smoking years ago.

Someone argued that “Nicotine, like caffeine is a neurotransmitter analogue and in small doses can relieve stress.” I’m sure it can. But there are tons of natural tranquilizers and sedatives that can do the same with absolutely no harm or side effects. Niacin from Vitamin B does that. So does calcium and magnesium. There are a number of herbs that are quite calming, like chamomile or valerian root. There are now a great many natural anti-depressants, such as St. John’s Wort and SAM-e. My wife takes natural amino acids to relive her tendency to mild depression (as I have written about). There need not be the risks or side effects involved, and there is no addiction, either. Even exercise is known to relieve stress. Talking and laughing does that. Why should anyone seek that benefit from something that is known to harm and to be addictive? It’s not a rational choice.

* * * * * * * *

Christianity is not libertarianism. It’s valid for folks to be concerned with acts and behaviors that may harm others or cause them to stumble. It’s the Christian charity for others that comes into play here. Mere legalism doesn’t care about that, because it is all about “rights” and not “what’s right.”

Someone wants to argue by libertarian principles? St. Paul in the Bible also has principles too, that he tries to live by (and he calls us several times to imitate him). For example:

Romans 14:13-21

Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for any one who thinks it unclean. If your brother is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for any one to make others fall by what he eats; it is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother stumble.

This is biblical ethics. It goes beyond what I can do or not do, to considerations of how my actions may affect others. Libertarianism doesn’t give a damn about that: it is all about “my right to do this, and if you don’t like it, you can lump it.” Libertarianism assumes that “I am not my brother’s keeper” and that my actions do not affect others. That’s why libertarians defend things like pornography and mind-altering drugs and even legal prostitution. It’s brought us wonders like abortion and assisted suicide. And I’m the first to say, by the way, that I think this libertarian mentality has infested both US political parties. The thought of many conservatives is shot through with this unbiblical sort of thinking. Smoking (or the “right to smoke”) might be another instance where libertarian reasoning is often utilized.

Oftentimes, folks are not personally libertarian, but they will argue like one, having been influenced by those cultural currents (whether they are aware of it or not), and they are not being sufficiently biblical and Christian in their outlook.

Note that St. Paul above even says to refrain from a thing that is good in and of itself, if it stumbles someone else. This is highly significant. Even if something is a perfectly good thing, and it is causing stumbling, that alone is reason enough for a Christian to refrain from it. That ain’t “self-righteousness”; it is plain old biblical, Christian, Catholic, Pauline righteousness. See also 1 Corinthians 8:

1 Corinthians 8:8-13

Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol’s temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall.

I remember being at a wedding once, way back in 1981, when I was just starting to be a serious evangelical Christian. One of the persons at our table said, “I’m not gonna drink wine, because our friend x is a recovering alcoholic, and I don’t want to do anything to make him stumble.” I was profoundly affected by that and distinctly remember the incident. This woman (who later returned to the Church, by the way) was applying Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 and showing profound love and concern for a fellow Christian who was weak in that regard.

This is Christianity. This is communal Christianity, not a bunch of renegade individuals strictly concerned with themselves, like the “Me Generation” or the stupid “rugged individualism” so beloved in American culture from the beginning. Chances are that Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill, riding off into the sunset, couldn’t care less about Christianity. They probably didn’t even go to church. I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they didn’t. And if they happened to be good Christians, I’m sure one could produce many other examples of the “American individualist” who were not, and in part because of this unChristian mentality of the atomistic individual, in no need of a Christian community, and clueless about the necessary relationship with others in the Church (whether Protestant or Catholic).

Another libertarian argument we often hear, and which is very widespread now in Christian circles, is the compartmentalization of life, so that certain areas are seen to be separate from Christianity, and our own little domain, away from God and faith and religion.

But the Church and Christianity deal with all aspects of life. Jesus is Lord of all of life. To deny this and to reserve various areas of life immune from the influence of God, is pure libertarianism and postmodernism. The Catholic, Christian, biblical worldview utterly rejects this. All of creation is God’s; therefore, God can give instruction, through His revelation and Church, regarding every aspect of life and Christianity has something valuable to say about everything.

We don’t make an absolute separation between science and religion. Hence, we oppose the materialism in science that wants to pretend that God had no part in the material universe whatsoever, even though science (by its very definition and essence) can’t say anything about that, since it deals with matter, and God is Spirit. It’s a self-contradiction. The truly scientific position (i.e., by science’s own internal self-definition) is to be agnostic on the question of God. But atheist scientists (people like Richard Dawkins) are often more atheist than scientific and they insist on meddling into religious matters, when (usually) they are profoundly ignorant of same. And some Christians meddle into science when they don’t have a clue (such as young-earth creationists). It’s the same mistake from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Christianity doesn’t separate reason from faith. It is my own life’s work to connect the two, and I’m very honored and excited to be involved in that endeavor, as an apologist. Christianity doesn’t take the view that what goes on behind closed doors is “none of God’s business.” It certainly is! Hence, we condemn homosexual acts not only because they are intrinsically wrong, but because they DO affect other people, besides the ones doing the sin, even in terms of health, despite all the libertarian, secular nonsense we hear, that there is no such effect, and all people are atomistic individuals, as if they lived in a bubble.

Catholicism abhors abortion precisely because every conceived child is made in the image of God and has a soul specially created by God. The mother does not own her child and cannot do with him or her whatever she likes. That may fit with Roman paganism or a slave mentality or modern-day Democratic platforms, but is utterly opposed to Christianity. And so we are the preeminent pro-lifers, because we refuse to grant that there are areas of life where God has no relevance.

That’s why Christians are almost always in the forefront of social change for the better, because that is part of God’s world, too. Hence, William Wilberforce conducted virtually a one-man crusade to abolish the slave-trade and all slavery in England, and succeeded (in 1807 and 1833). Martin Luther King was a Baptist preacher. Pope John Paul II and Lutherans in Germany and other Christians in Eastern Europe and Russia (folks like Solzhenitsyn) played key roles in bringing down Soviet Communism.

But Margaret Sanger, who crusaded for contraception, and founded Planned Parenthood, was a blatant racist who admired the Nazi eugenics programs.

Etc., etc., etc. So I hope we can all realize that it is not true to think that the Church ends where our house begins. God is everywhere and the Church is concerned with all areas of life. No exceptions. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed think (a whole ‘nother discussion that I’d be more than happy to take up).

2017-03-27T13:03:50-04:00

Hell4
Photograph by “ulrikebohr570” [public domain / Pixabay]
(1-2-09)
* * * * *
This is a continuation of a previous discussion with a doctoral student in philosophy who is seriously considering conversion to Catholicism, but who struggles with the doctrine of hell, and aspects of God’s function as Judge. His words will be in blue.
* * * * *

Thanks for your reply. To clarify briefly, after having glanced at your reply, I don’t believe in predestination to hell, per Catholic teaching. Catholics believe in predestination to heaven, but without ruling out or superseding our free will. It’s a paradox and not totally understandable by the human mind, but that’s what we believe. It requires faith.

When I speak of there definitely being persons in hell, it is not from reasoning or deduction alone, apart from revelation (i.e., not purely philosophical). It is based on what we know from the Bible, which says that there will be people who are damned, as opposed to those who are saved. The Bible teaches neither universalism nor annihilationism. It also explicitly describes the devil and his angels being tormented in hell indefinitely.

Jesus on several occasions matter-of-factly states that hell is a reality, and that people will end up there. I know that doesn’t cut it in a purely philosophical discussion, but we’re also discussing Catholic theology, which entails a consideration of revelation (which you will have to accept anyway, should you decide to become Catholic). I’m trying to do mostly philosophy here (badly as I might be doing it), because that’s your area, but I can’t totally divorce my position (surely you understand) from revelation and biblical evidences for hell.

I’m assuming, too, that you accept the distinction between foreknowledge and predestination (God being out of time and knowing all things). This doesn’t necessitate predestination. All who end up in hell freely made the choice to do so.

* * *

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses. In particular, thank you to David and Dave for replying so thoroughly. I’m in the process of writing a response to Dave in particular. Dave, you make a great many important points and I want to respond to them fairly systematically in another post.

Thank you. Glad to be of any service to you.

However, for the moment, I want to refer briefly to your exchange with Geoffrey and Kevin about universalism etc. I took your advice and had a look at it. To be honest, I found a great deal of what you said there very troubling. So before I post my response to your response to my questions I want to clarify some concerns I have with your statements in this discussion.

Okay.

I have to say that after reading the discussion carefully a number of times I do think that you missed the point of Geoffrey’s question. As it stands, your arguments seem to me to involve a defence of some kind of predestination, whereby some individuals are necessarily destined for hell. Obviously this claim needs to be clarified, which I will attempt to do here.

It seems to me that Geoffrey made his point quite clearly.He is not claiming that necessarily no one has or will choose hell. This would clearly involve a denial of free will. What he is asking is whether it is permissible to believe that as a contingent fact nobody will choose to go there. In each and every case a person may go one way or the other. It is possible, however, that in each and every case the person involved will freely choose God, rather than hell. I presume, because of the discussion of the possibility of a last minute reprieve, that Geoffrey is concerned with the possibility of somebody repenting at the end of their life.

As I replied in another brief post already: granting a belief in revelation and NT revelation in particular (which you have done in large part by accepting most of the Nicene Creed), it is not possible to believe that no one will end up in hell, because the NT clearly states that they will. Several passages imply a great division between the saved and the unsaved; “few” are they who take the Christian road, etc.

The “beast” and the “false prophet” in Revelation are human beings. The Bible tells us that “these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulphur” (Rev 19:20). This is reiterated in chapter 20, with mention of large numbers of people (the dead in Hades) also being consigned to hell:

Revelation 20:10-15

[10] and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. [11] Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
[12] And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.
[13] And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
[14] Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire;
[15] and if any one’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Therefore, if you accept biblical revelation, you have no choice but to accept this. You can’t pick and choose what you personally like and don’t like, or what you think God should have done, rather than what He has revealed that He has done and will do. Christianity doesn’t work that way. Why would you think you could totally understand everything, anyway? I understand that a philosophy doctoral student will use his mind more than most of us, and work through things by that method. I have no problem with that in and of itself, as long as the limits of it are acknowledged. But Christianity is not philosophy: it is a religious faith. It is not contrary to reason, but it does go beyond it. Surely you know this, and I don’t have to remind you of it, but I am writing for everyone reading this, too. It requires faith and grace to believe in its entirety.

Your replies clearly negate free will.

They do not. You must have misunderstood them if you got that impression, or you are argung from a supposed logical reduction of my arguments.

You say for example:

“I don’t see much of a distinction between believing in a hell that the reprobate and damned go to and then turning around and saying that it is quite possible that no men go there…”

I’m not sure what I meant in this statement, but I think it is muddled and unclear, looking back at it after 4 1/2 years, and I would like to remove it because if I can’t figure out what I meant, I suspect readers won’t be able to, either. Much more clear is what I wrote immediately afterward:

As I said before: if no men go to hell, then why is so much of the NT devoted to warning men to not end up there by virtue of their rejection of God? Why would the Church tell us that all mortal sins place us in potential danger of hellfire, when in fact, that never occurs because no men end actually up in hell?

That makes no sense to me. It seems to me that if universalism were in fact the true state of affairs and that all men end up in heaven, then we would be informed of this in the Bible, as it is a wonderful truth. Instead, God plays a sort of game by scaring us half to death with all this business about hell and fire and torture and all, and then no one goes there anyway except the devil and his demons.

I find that as silly and implausible as a parent who constantly scares his children with threats of punishment, but never follows through with any of it. Just as the child would not believe the parent when they make such claims, after a few years of that, I wouldn’t trust God’s word, either, if He acted in such a weird, arbitrary fashion with us, involving virtual deception.

I’m not sure whether Geoffrey would agree with the following formulation of an argument for the possibility of an empty hell, but in any case I think the idea is quite simple:

1) There is a hell.

2) If a given person chooses hell then they will go to hell.

3) If a given person does not choose hell then they will not go to hell.

4) Human beings have free will.

5) Since human beings have free will it is not the case that any human being will of necessity go to hell.

6) From this it follows straightforwardly that it is possible that hell is empty because, as a contingent fact, ( not as a necessity) no one has chosen to go there, i.e. everyone has repented before death and been reconciled to God.

And again, I have stated that if the discussion involved merely philosophy and the question of free will, of course your statement about necessary truths and possibilities of human choices would be undeniably true. But this discussion also involves revelation, and that revelation informs us that it is a certainty that in fact many human beings will reject God and thus end up in hell. It’s a fact that is yet to happen: known by God in His foreknowledge and omniscience. God has communicated this fact to us, and repeatedly warns us to avoid the same fate. It’s no less fact because it happens to be “future” to us. It’s not future to God. He knows all that will happen in the future because He is already there.

It is crucial to be clear about where the necessity lies. It is a necessary truth that if a person chooses hell then they will go to hell. So if some group of people chooses hell, then that group will necessarily go to hell. It is a completely different thing to claim that necessarily some group of people will go to hell.

I understand that. I took logic in college too. But it’s not my claim in the first place. It is a statement of fact based on the revelation of what will happen. I made this very clear in the dialogue of mine that you reference, as well, so you should already know that my reasoning is entirely consistent, with regard to incorporation of biblical revelation, which I as a Catholic am not at liberty to deny (nor will you have any such liberty should you decide to become Catholic). As it is, now you accept some revelation and reject other portions of it that you find difficult. That is the logically inconsistent position, not mine.

This only follows if it is necessarily true that some group of people will choose to go to hell. And this flatly contradicts the reality of free will.

As I have not asserted this, it is not a problem of my position that I have to explain.

Geoffrey seems to me to pick up on the troubling consequences of this way of thinking when he says:

“The Catechism condemns the teaching that God predestines anyone to Hell. Therefore there can be no certainty that some are in Hell…”

It seems to me that what you are defending clearly implies that some are predestined to Hell.

Not at all. This exhibits the rather common confusion between predestination and foreknowledge. Since God is outside of time (and I actually took a philosophy of space and time course in college too), He has the ability to state what will happen in the future (acts and facts) back to us for whom the acts are not yet accomplished. So we human beings can make a free choice in the future that God knows (knowing all things). He can tell us now that there are people who will be damned, and He has indeed done so in the Bible. You need not take my word for this.

Your reply to this really does miss the point. You say:

“It follows from the fact of original sin and mortal sin. There are people who fall into the latter, and we are all (except the Blessed Virgin) subject to the former. Therefore there will be people in hell, because there are people in original sin and mortal sin.”

By your own claim, the Catholic Church teaches that the moment of death determines the fate of the soul. Now assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, it would certainly be true that if some person dies in a state of mortal sin they will go to hell. This is just a specification of the general if-then statement above- If some person chooses hell, that person will necessarily go to hell. But you are claiming something else: Some person will necessarily go to hell. But this is completely dependent on whether some person chooses hell, in this case, dies unrepentent and in state of mortal sin. For your view to follow you would need to hold that at least one person will of necessity choose hell. In a concrete sense you would need to be able to say with absolute certainty that a given person has not repented and been reconciled to God. I don’t see how anyone could claim this kind of knowledge of what goes on in someone’s heart. This is predestination plain and simple, and makes a mockery of free will.

It was overstated a bit. I should have said “it is extremely likely” or some such. But the overall thrust of my statement remains true, based on what we know from Revelation. The Bible clearly states that those who are beholden to serious, mortal sin will not inherit the Kingdom (and that means hell, when we harmonize all related biblical teachings) and that unbelievers will be judged and sentenced to eternal darkness and separation from God. Jesus assumes this as a fact on several occasions.

Your subsequent statements only seem to confirm that you hold to some form of predestinationism, in other words that there is some definite group of people who will of necessity be damned.

Incorrect. There is a group that will be damned, as we know from the Bible and as a function of God’s omniscience, but not because they were predestined. They freely chose to reject God.

In your response to me you say clearly that Catholicism is not Calvinism,

Indeed.

that the Catholic Church does not teach that people are predestined to hell.

That’s correct. You can take it from me, as a longtime apologist. If the Catholic Church did teach that, there is a strong likelihood that I wouldn’t have converted to it myself, as I was an Arminian and never a Calvinist.

I am glad if this is the case, but I fail to see how your own statements avoid the charge of defending predestination.

I have amply explained it by now. You may object to God being outside of time or omniscient, for all I know. That would entail an entirely different discussion. You may subscribe to some form of process theology, that is heretical according to Catholicism. Other discussions . . .

* * *

I’d like to make a start on a reply to the various ideas that have so far arisen in this thread. Part of the problem in a discussion like this, especially from my side, as someone who does not share all of the assumptions which my Catholic respondents do,

In the case of hell, it is also historic Protestantism and Orthodoxy that disagree with you, not just Catholicism, because all Christians pretty much agree on this.

is that I can’t assume that people are aware of or understand my own theological, moral, and philosophical presuppositions. What I would like to do is lay out as clearly as possible the main problems I have with the doctrine of hell, more clearly than I have so far, present as clearly as possible my own presuppositions, and then proceed to fairly systematically work through the various thoughtful and generous responses I’ve received.

Okay. And I will counter-reply.

I would like to begin by outlining what I take to be the key claims involved in the dominant or traditional conception of hell. To do this I would like to refer to the work of the philosopher of religion Jonathan L. Kvanvig whose book, “The Problem of Hell” presents many of the issues with admirable clarity. Kvanvig lists the following theses as being central to the traditional concept of hell:

” (1) The Punishment Thesis: the purpose of hell is to punish those whose earthly lives and behavior warrant it.

(2) The No Escape Thesis: it is metaphysically impossible to get out of hell once one has been consigned there.

(3) The Anti-Universalism Thesis: some people will be consigned to hell.

(4) The Eternal Existence Thesis: hell is a place of unending conscious existence.”

Now I basically agree with Kvanvig that this is an accurate account of how hell has, for the most part, been understood throughout the history of Christianity.

Because that is precisely how the Bible has presented it! That’s why Christians have believed this in the first place.

Kvanvig himself argues for a version of annihilationism, in other words the view that the damned simply taken out of existence. I disagree with his arguments here, but the above formulation should give people participating in this thread a fairly clear idea of what I’m objecting to.

Annihilationsim cannot be squared with the biblical data. I knew this 25 years ago, when I used biblical arguments to disprove the Jehovah’s Witnesses position, which is the same.

Now I would like to briefly state some of my presuppositions. Since I will describe my presupposition as far as content is concerned as I go along, I want to begin here by stating what one might call my methodological assumptions, in other words how I approach the Christian faith, how I understand the relation between Faith and Reason, and where some of my basic influences lie.

Good.

This is meant also to be a partial response to David’s contention that my ” fixation with reasoning to a conclusion” is causing me to stumble.

Insofar as you don’t also include revelation in the analysis, I think he is correct. It’s impossible for any Christian to intelligently discuss hell without taking that into account. But as you clarify, I think the problem may not be so much “hyper-rationalism” as it is “selective revelation.” You accept part of revelation and reject another part, and the criterion is reason and your feelings about things like hell. The orthodox Christian replies that this is unreasonable and arbitrary.

David made a number of points about the relation of reason, and thus philosophy, to religion. His view seems to be that reason is flawed as an approach to religious truth.

He’s certainly less inclined to philosophy than I am, but I think it would be most unfair to categorize him as “anti-reason” in any way. David can speak for himself, but I think he means it in the sense that I described above. He wants to harmonize faith, revelation, and reason, as I do. We usually have different approaches in our answers on this forum, as the folks here are well aware (and which I think is wonderful), but on that broad principle we are in complete agreement, I can assure you.

I have to say I disagree strongly with this view. I certainly have specifically philosophical reasons for disagreeing, which it wouldn’t be appropriate to go into here. But quite apart from this this view does not seem to me to accurately reflect the profound influence which philosophical thought has had on Catholicism. Thomism is one obvious example. I mention this because my own philosophical convictions on a great many questions are basically Thomist, with a strong element of phenomenology. David made the point that philosophy students often make the mistake of legislating for God, of thinking that they can judge God’s actions and so on. Now I think this criticism is to a large extent valid, and not only of philosophy students but also great philosophers. There is a lot of titanic presumption in the history of philosophy ( e.g. Hegelianism). At the same time I think this charge is unfair with respect to my own concerns.

I hope so, and I’ll accept your word on that.

I would never presume to legislate what God Himself can or cannot do. But none of what I say is directed at God, rather it is directed at human conceptions of God with which I disagree.

But that is a fine line, because in this case the human conceptions are directly derived from revelation, which we believe is from God. If one accepts the validity and truthfulness of the NT, hell is part of the package. It is as impossible to extract from it as it was for Thomas Jefferson to eliminate all the biblical miracles from his ridiculous Bible. To do so guts the NT and it is no longer the NT after that ransacking of it.

When a philosophical theologian says that God cannot do evil, he is not telling God what he can or cannot do, he is simply clarifying a truth which follows necessarily from the nature of God, if we the virtually universally accepted view that God is Perfectly Good.

Yep. No problem there. And this is grounded in Revelation as well.

In the same way if someone says that God cannot make a square circle, he is not legislating for God, or claiming to know God’s mind better than God.

That’s right. I made that very argument in my first installment, as I recall.

Similarly, my claim is not that I know better than God, but rather that on my understanding of God’s nature ( which is not merely some arbitrary personal construction but informed by many years of studying) the doctrine of hell seems to be incompatible with God’s nature.

And I deny that just as vigorously.

There are certain things which I accept without philosophical argument. I believe and accept everything contained in the Nicene Creed, with two provisos: 1) I would have a different interpretation of what is involved in God’s judging the quick and the dead than Catholics; 2) I have doubts as to whether the ‘ One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ refers exclusively to the Roman Catholic Church.

To do so one must accept revelation. You have done that in large part. Yet when it comes to hell that same revelation isn’t sufficient for you. This is the incoherence that I see in your position thus far.

I do not question what I take to be the central truths of the Christian faith: the Trinity, The Fall, the Son’s Incarnation, Death and Resurrection, The Last Judgment and so on, not only because I believe them to be true by faith, but because they enlighten my reason, because the beauty and moral grandeur of these idea inspires me unlike any other religious conception. So faith and reason are not for me at odds with each other.

Great.

On the other hand there are clearly things in both the Old and New Testament which are morally unacceptable: one obvious example is the fact that slavery is not only never condemned in the Old Testament, but is clearly practiced by some of Israel’s prophets. In the New Testament similarly, there is St. Paul’s injunction that slaves should obey their masters. Now it seems obvious to me that by any sane contemporary standards of morality St. Paul was in error, in so far as he did not speak out against the institution of slavery and even, in some places seems to give it a partial acceptance.

Slavery in the Bible (in most instances) was essentially being an indentured servant. Paul’s conception of slavery was not identical to the chattel slavery of early America. But this is a sidetrack. See these articles:

Development or Reversal? (Slavery) (Avery Cardinal Dulles)

A Response to John Noonan, Jr. Concerning the Development of Catholic Moral Doctrine (Usury, Marriage, Slavery, Religious freedom) (Patrick M. O’Neil)

On Slavery in the Old Testament (Luke Wadel)

Catholic Encyclopedia: Slavery and Chrisrtianity

Catholic Encyclopedia: Slavery, Ethical Aspect of

This is just one instance of many, especially as pertains to the Old Testament, where God Himself is presented, at least if read literally, as counselling the Israelites to commit genocide against their enemies, killing every last woman and child.

This is perfectly defensible as acts of judgment on God’s part (Who has this prerogative as our Creator). See:

How Could a God of Love Order the Massacre of the Canaanites?

Shouldn’t the Butchering of the Amalekite Children be Considered War Crimes?

To me it is obvious that it is moral duty for any one who believes in God, but for Christians in particular, to reject those aspects of Scripture which are clearly immoral ( slavery) as representing not an unchanging truth, but rather the historically limited understanding of people ( even Saints) of the time, or, as in the case of the Old Testament, reject a literal interpretation of God’s actions and find an interpretation which saves God from the calumny of seeing Him as a genocidal tyrant.

Have you read intelligent defenses of the biblical outlook on these matters, such as the ones I have presented to you presently? Gotta read both sides. Christianity can always offer some sort of answer. it may be regarded as implausible or false, but we do always at least offer some defense of our beliefs, which counts for something, I think. Many belief-systems are unable or unwilling to sustain an apologia after just one strong critique.

It is one thing to appeal to mystery when it is a matter of doctrines ( such as the Incarnation) which exceed our understanding but which can in no way be accused of being immoral. It is quite another thing to appeal to mystery when it is a matter of ideas, like slavery, or like the idea that God is a wrathful and jealous tribal deity, which are clearly immoral by any reasonable human standards.

The latter is merely a deliberate anthropomorphism on God’s part (rather common in the OT and a well-known aspect of Hebrew poetry and sacred literature), and poses not the slightest problem.

Furthermore, there is the fact that concepts central to the issue of hell, such as free-will, are simply not given any clear articulation in the New Testament. There is no doubt that we have free will, but what this means and how we are to understand this, how it relates to God’s will, to issues of God’s knowledge of the future and so on, is simply not a Scriptural matter. All the complex accounts of these issues developed over the centuries by Christians represent a development which, while we may believe it is divinely inspired, is nevertheless rational and philosophical, or philosophical-theological.

To the contrary, there is some explicit biblical indication, right from Jesus, even of Middle Knowledge (a sophisticated philosophical concept), which I have noted in the past, in my defense of same (being a Molinist myself):

Matthew 11:21-24

[21] “Woe to you, Chora’zin! woe to you, Beth-sa’ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
[22] But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you.
[23] And you, Caper’na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
[24] But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

There is also considerable data concerning God being out of time, with no beginning or end, and omniscient. I’ll refrain from getting into all that now, but rest assured that I can produce plenty of it, if needs be.

As such one cannot invoke faith to defend them from rational scrutiny.

I certainly can invoke revelation (Mt 11:21-25) and faith in same to defend Middle Knowledge, as well as other passages showing His omniscience, foreknowledge, sovereignty, providence, omnipotence, eternity and being outside of time, etc.

The fact is that even the Scriptures need to be interpreted, we do not simply passively take in a content which is obvious and clear as to its meaning, as the history of Christianity amply points out. When people defend hell using concepts like Justice, eternal existence of souls, and so on, they are dealing in human concepts, concepts whose sole meaningful content derives from the way in which they have been developed and articulated throughout the history of thought. So I think that you simply cannot avoid discussing these issues at the level of rational argument.

Nor can you avoid dealing with how Scripture presents hell as a plain, simple fact (especially Jesus Himself).

So much for my assumptions as to the relation of philosophy, or rather reason, and faith. But I should make it clear that the source of my doubts about hell is not purely rational. The most important theological influence on my thoughts in this regard comes from St. Isaac the Syrian, also known as St. Isaac of Nineveh, a hermit and ascetic universally recognised in the Orthodox Church for his personal sanctity, although his universalism was rejected by the Orthodox Church.

That should tell you all you need to know. It is the corporate Church that decides what is orthodox. It is not any one saint or even collection of them, no matter how saintly. We ought not go looking for saints who agree with our predispositions and biases. The Catholic and Orthodox approach is to accept an authoritative Church. If you continue to insist on an unbibical universalism you can always join the Unitarian Universalists. If you think annihilationism is true, you have the option of Seventh-Day Adventists (trinitarianian) or Jehovah’s Witnesses or Christadelphianism (both Arian in Christology).

If that is your methodology: to pick and choose a religious group based on their agreement with your previous philosophical conclusions, then that is thoroughly Protestant and individualistic, and you have many options available to you. But the Catholic accepts the entire package of Catholic dogma in faith, as something far greater than himself. St. Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman (my own intellectual hero) both made this very clear.

Virtually all of my views about hell either come from St. Isaac, or if they were developed independently, received their confirmation in his teachings, in particular as expressed in his Ascetical Homilies.

Every heresy originally started with one person.

I won’t describe his views, but will instead provide a link to an article on St. Isaac by Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna, who has written on of the few scholarly books on St. Isaac’s thought.

Okay; thanks. But I warn anyone who would want to read this, that it is considered rank heresy to deny the existence of hell.

Next I would like to articulate the main issues I have with regard to this conception of hell. These questions for the most part directly relate to things said by respondents in this thread.

1) The problem of God’s Justice and its relation to His Mercy. There are various issues here:

(1a) Is the relation between Justice and Mercy in God such that both are equally essential to His nature, or does one of them exceed the other in importance?

Equal, I believe.

(1b) A slightly different but related question is whether both God’s Justice and His Mercy exist on the same level, whether, to put it metaphorically, they are the two sides of a balanced scale, or whether one of them exceeds the other not simply in the sense that the scale is weighted in its favour, but in the sense that it includes both sides in a higher synthesis.

Two sides of a balanced scale. Every parent understands this when we punish a child for their own good and follow it up by explaining and hugging them.

This is important to my argument because I believe that it is a basic mistake to view Justice and Mercy as equally essential to God’s nature.

So you demote Justice?

I’ve chosen the metaphor of a scale quite consciously because of its association with the concept of Justice. It seems to me that people who emphasize the equal, but competing claims of Justice and Mercy in fact, implicitly subordinate both to an overarching conception of Justice. The very idea that there is a conflict between Justice and Mercy, involves a conception of a weighing up of relative merits which is at odds with the radically gratuitous nature of God’s love.

Who says there is a conflict? They are simply two different but perfectly harmonious things.

My deeply held conviction is that Mercy, which is just another word for Love, transcends the apparent opposition between Justice and mercy (with a small m).

On what basis do you assert this “conviction” and build systems of thought upon it?

Obviously we need new words to express this without confusion, but the basic idea should be clear. Mercy is not one of the sides of the scale, it is the whole scale itself. Or perhaps more accurately, it is the still point from which the two sides of the scale hang.

Everything God does is out of love. I agree if that is what you mean. It is loving even for God to allow human beings to have free will, which many will use to reject Him. That is not only loving it is extremely humble (just as the beginning of the Incarnation and the crucifixion were). It’s because God loves us that He gives us free will and abides by the decisions we make as a result. But if we can freely serve Him we can also freely reject Him, and God won’t force anyone (out of love) to serve Him against their will. Thus hell follows inexorably from this granted free will which is an aspect of God’s love for His creatures.

But it also follows from justice, insofar as evil deeds and adoption of a stance of thorough rebellion against God and goodness do not go unpunished for all eternity. Thank God for that, too. I couldn’t live a day with just the abominable outrage of abortion alone if I didn’t believe in a cosmic justice, or God’s judgment.

There is nothing new or morally compelling in the ethic of strict justice or retribution. The desire to avenge wrongs, to extract justice with “an eye for an eye” is I think a tendency as old as humanity itself.

God’s justice is not vengeance. You’ve been greatly affected by secular thinking in this respect, to adopt such a perspective. And that is very common in post-“Enlightenment” philosophical environments, of course.

If this was in fact what Christ taught then the Christian ethic would bring nothing new to the world, and would be inferior in certain ways to others ( for example, in failing to express the same universal compassion for the non-human world, e.g. animals, as found in Buddhism and Jainism).

Jesus lays it all out in Matthew 25. Revelation 19:11,15 shows Him coming back to earth with a sword in His mouth, to judge the nations. Nor was Jesus a pacifist. See also:

Matthew 16:27 (RSV) For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.

JOHN 5:22,27 (KJV) For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son . . . (27) And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. (cf. Mt 3:10-12: John the Baptist)

JOHN 9:39 (KJV) And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

ACTS 10:42 (KJV) . . . it is he which was ordained of God {to be} the Judge of quick and dead.

2 TIMOTHY 4:1 (KJV) I charge {thee} therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;

Christ’s injunction that we love our enemies, forgive those who sin against us is, conversely, an ethic of unprecedented radicality and beauty. This is not an ethic of justice.

Injunctions as to personal behavior do not cancel out the social responsibility of Christians to oppose injustice. This is a common secularist, pacifist perspective, but it is not biblical. The same Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount also praised the faith of Roman centurions and told the disciples to purchase a sword (Luke 22:36).

Even more telling is the fact that God, in the Person of Christ Crucified forgives human beings the ultimate sin against His very own Person. Human beings murder God Incarnate and His response to this is ” Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. This is far removed from any considerations of strict justice.

He forgives them personally (or more correctly, asks God the Father to forgive them), but they still have to face judgment if they are unrepentant. They knew not what they did. That is one thing. But God will judge us for what we knowingly do, if it is evil.

We presuppose on this forum that one accepts the Bible as God’s inspired revelation. You argue, contra Scripture, that God has no concept of justice, cannot judge, that He is (?) supposedly a pacifist; cannot take any human life in judgment, etc. It’s no wonder you don’t believe in hell, because you have taken out the justice that is its fundamental rationale, along with free will, causing poor, deluded souls to prefer it to heaven.

If anything tells against the idea that our God is a God of strict justice it is this. The people who reviled Christ, the Romans who scourged Him, the Jews who demanded His crucifixion, had far more reason to believe in Him that any one today. They saw Him, witnessed, or at least heard by direct testimony of the miracles wrought by Him, and heard Him preach unmediated by centuries of theological interpretation and disagreement. And yet they rejected Him, and Crucified Him, and He forgave them, despite the fact that it would be very unlikely that they first repented.

You miss the point. They didn’t know what they were doing. But in Peter’s sermons and Paul’s epistles they made it clear that there was blame to Jews (not just ones at the crucifixion or calling for it) who rejected Jesus and His claim as Messiah and Lord:

Acts 3:12-19

[12] And when Peter saw it he addressed the people, “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?
[13] The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.
[14] But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,
[15] and killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.
[16] And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know; and the faith which is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.
[17] “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.
[18] But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled.
[19] Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,

Acts 4:8-12

[8] Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders,
[9] if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a cripple, by what means this man has been healed,
[10] be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.
[11] This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has become the head of the corner.
[12] And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

This precise message was why Stephen, the first martyr, was killed:

Acts 7:51-53

[51] “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. [52] Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered,
[53] you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”

I’ll refrain from documenting what Paul wrote about this, too, for space’s sake.

2) Even if we assume that Justice is a primary value, equal to Mercy, there remains the question whether it is just for anybody to be consigned to hell. There are various issues here too:

(2a) The first issue here was stated in a fairly representative way by Dan:

“To sin against something that is infinitely good deserves infinite punishment or reparation. Man, being finite cannot make infinite reparation. Because God is merciful, we do not need to. To have contrition and going to Confession is enough. But there are those who reject the Sacraments. During the Last Judgement, there will be the select few that enter into Paradise because they have lived just lives. God being just cannot award eternal pleasure to the just without “awarding” eternal punishment to the unjust.”

Kvanvig describes just this sort of argument in his book, and in the article on Heaven and Hell in the Stanford Encylopaedia of Philosophy ( I give the link at the bottom of this post.) He writes:

“According to defenders of the traditional view, punishment deserved is also a function of the status of the individual one has wronged, and they argue that all wrongdoing constitutes a wrong against God, and that wronging God is as bad a thing as anyone could do- they are infinitely bad thereby justifying an infinite punishment”.

I think I already anticipated this in my analysis of souls being intrinsically eternal. If they reject God, then they exist eternally apart from Him, and that entails a suffering because being absolutely separate from God with none of His grace any longer present is an unutterably horrific thing.

Kvanvig himself presents a number of telling arguments against this view.

The first of these is relevant to another issue I will discuss later, so I will mention it only briefly here. He makes the fairly obvious point that it is simply not true, in the vast majority of cases, people ” do not intend to harm God or to defy Him in some way when they act wrongly”. On any defensible notion of “intention” it is not simply implausible, but patently false to say that all people who act wrongly thereby intend to defy God or sin against Him.

The Bible teaches (particularly in Romans 1 and 2) that those who are judged have knowingly rejected God. Kvanvig can speculate all he likes, but he is contradicting plain Scriptural testimony.

Our everyday sort of intuitions about intention and culpability recognise that intention is crucially important in determining the moral and legal gravity of an act, hence the distinction between murder and manslaughter, among other things.

Exactly. And that is how the Bible describes those who are judged and damned:

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:20-21 Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

Romans 1:32 Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.

One could give many everyday examples of this, but the obvious one that jumps out is the case of atheists. It is absurd to say that in sinning the atheist intends to defy God, for the simple fact that the atheist does not believe in the existence of God. I’m not talking here about militant atheists like Richard Dawkins but virtuous, thoughtful atheists who despite their best attempts to understand and affirm belief in God cannot do so.

I have argued that it is possible for atheists to be saved if they are truly ignorant, and that not all atheists are evil people, so I agree. Many times they are not ignorant, however, and their “atheism” is just a cover and pretense for true hatred of God, just as Romans 1 describes. I know; I’ve debated many of them.

The same obviously goes for small children and for those who, through no fault of their own have never been exposed to a credible form of Christianity.

Exactly. That’s why Catholic theology allows for that, following Romans 2 and other such passages.

So there is obviously something missing here, some further assumption which motivates the view expressed by Dan and characterised by Kvanvig.

According to Kvanvig, and I agree with him here, it is the assumption of a kind of ownership relation between God and His creatures. The idea is, one can wrong a person by destroying their property without being aware who the owner is, and without intending to wrong them.

Of course. That is not at issue. Christians believe that knowledge of God is innate in human beings. People can unlearn that, however, by secular education, bad experiences, following a path of sin and corruption, etc.

He also makes the important point, in his book, though not in the article, that this sort of thinking is a kind of relic of feudal relations, that it conceptualises the relation between God and human beings along the lines of the relation between an absolute monarch and his subjects. I cannot see how Dan’s position could possibly be defended without this sort of underlying paradigm being assumed: namely, that God, as absolute sovereign has complete and arbitrary power over his subjects,

He has power over those He created. God gave life and can take it away. That is His prerogative. He didn’t have to create us at all. He is under no obligation to save anyone, either, after the human race rebelled against Him (the Fall). He does so out of love and mercy. We owe our life and existence to Him. Your mistake is to conclude that this power is arbitrary. It’s not at all.

and that a sin against God is so heinous because of God’s status in the cosmic hierarchy.

God is God. A=A: the first law of logic.

This seems to me to be fundamentally at odds with the Gospels’ picture of Jesus Christ. We are not presented here with the picture of a proud sovereign but with a God Who takes the form of a servant, who washes the feet of sinners, and Who dies, as far as the external world is concerned, the shameful death of a common criminal.

He also speaks of judgment and reiterates that He Himself is a judge and will judge sinners on the Last Day because he is one with the Father.

Quite apart from this objection, namely that this conception of God involves the projection of onto God of certain outdated and discredited political assumptions about authority,

The usual anthropological condescending disdain of the Bible and ancient Jewish religion that is observed so often . . . It won’t help you progress in your inquiry at all, to adopt this approach.

there is also the serious problem of making any sense of the idea of an “infinite sin”.

The unforgivable sin is to call evil good and reject God’s plan of salvation for human beings. That causes separation from God, which is hell.

This is not as clearly stated by Dan as by Kvanvig, but it is clearly implied by his view. He works explicitly with the image of a scale of justice: sins against God, who is infinitely Good, are infinitely bad, therefore they deserve infinite punishment.

We don’t need to get into all that to defend hell.

The first problem with this I have already discussed. If sins against God are infinitely bad, then one must ask, for whom? The only possible answer is, for God. God on this view, judges all sins as sins against His own Person, and as infinitely bad. This position makes no sense unless one assumes that God is the kind of being Who can take offence, something which I find absurd. It makes sense in the context of a political relation between a sovereign and his subjects, because here we are obviously dealing with an instance of wounded pride, which demands satisfaction. I think this is deeply mistaken. Great political rulers, especially absolute rulers have for the most part been monsters of titanic pride and any tendency to conceptualise God along these lines is fundamentally flawed, as well as being at odds with the Christ of the New Testament.

Your argument at this point rests, with all due respect, on a series of fallacies, disproven by the Bible and, I think, natural law reason and common sense. And to the extent that revelation is accepted, it contradicts many facts at every turn, too. Even if the NT is accepted as an accurate historical account of Jesus and His teachings, you have huge internal difficulties.

3) Next I would like to respond to Dave’s statement that God gives every person adequate grace and opportunity to accept Him and thus to avoid hell. I think this is highly doubtful.

Then you again discount the data of revelation. This creates an incoherence in your stated position. One cannot pick and choose from revelation. It stands together as a whole.

The fact is that countless people deal on an everyday basis with all manner of things which seriously undermine their ability to exercise their free will. People in their millions live in conditions of unimaginable poverty, violence and oppression, so much so that God would have to be unbelievably callous to fault such people for not believing in Him. It is one thing to fault a healthy, well educated, person living in relative luxury in a western country for holding to a facile atheism. It is quite something else to condemn someone for being unable to believe in God if they have lived a life in which there has been virtually no sign of love, or justice or meaning.

God doesn’t judge as men do: outwardly only. He knows the secrets of our hearts, so that He judges justly and fairly. No one will be sent to hell because they lacked sufficient knowledge (Romans 2:15-16). All of this speculation is, then, a moot point.

More seriously still is the fact that millions of children, who can in no way be held morally responsible for the situations in which they find themselves, are born into grinding poverty, virtual slave labour, sexual and physical abuse and so on.

Ditto.

I don’t know if Dave intended to imply that everyone gets not only an adequate chance, but also an equal chance. I sense that this was implied, but I may be wrong. If it was then I think these considerations refute it fairly obviously- people are not given an equal chance, far from it.

They get an equal chance at salvation, because God takes all these factors into account. “To whom much is given, much is required.” Obviously, they don’t get an equal chance at the opportunities and luxuries of earthly life, but we’re talking about salvation, not earthly happiness. It is the fact of heaven after this life, that puts our sufferings here in proper perspective (Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”).

Even if Dave did not mean this, and meant simply that everyone has an adequate chance, adequate to their circumstances, I don’t think this is true. Take the example of a child who endures horrendous abuse, poverty, lack of education. Let’s say that as a result of this the child grows up to be an adult who is not able to form the right beliefs about God, which in this context would mean beliefs in consonance with those of the Roman Catholic Church. To say that on the basis of such a life this person would be competent to decide their eternal destiny, that it would be fair or just for them to be consigned to hell on the basis that they had ample opportunity to get it right, simply beggers belief. To say this is to speak in abstractions. Human life is not that simple.

I think this is all a red herring. I believe in a perfectly merciful, loving, and just God. I don’t lose one second’s sleep wondering about whether His judgment of souls will be fair or not. Of course it will be. Jesus reveals the nature of God and His love.

4) This links up directly with another very significant problem- the fact that the Catholic Church makes it, in my view, unconscionably easy to end up in hell because it sets the conditions for entry far too low. Previously there has been some discussion of the question whether somebody could be eternally obstinate, so hard hearted as to be impervious to any divine influence. Now I would be far more willing to contemplate the possibility of hell if we were talking about paradigmatic cases like Hitler, where we have conscious, and unrepentent evil on a massive scale, perpetrated by a human being who, though it is hard to imagine, was probably not insane. Although even in such cases it makes no sense to speak of an “infinite sin”, they at least begin too approximate this.

But the fact is that the Church teaches that it is possible to go to hell for dying unrepentent in a variety of sins, which to my mind do not by any stretch of the imagination approximate a severity for which eternal damnation would be a just response.

God looks at the whole picture. It’s not Catholicism that sends people to hell for being unrepentant sinners, but the Bible:

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-23 Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

Your problem, then, is again with the Bible, not Catholicism, which is merely following it. And if you have a problem with the Bible, you have a problem with God Himself: the real one: not some imagined Being dreamt up and “projected” by ancient tribes (as anthropologists love to mock and disparage). God has revealed Himself. It is up to us to accept or reject this. I’ve given you more than enough myself, from revelation, to establish these things. Your task is to be willing to accept these truths, in faith, with the help of God’s grace.

Take the case of fornication, of sexual activity outside of marriage. Now I don’t deny that this is sinful in the sense of “missing the mark”, that it fails to achieve the full meaning of human love and sexuality, that it is imperfect. At the same time there are many people who live in lifelong completely faithful and monogamous sexual relationships. This includes of course people who believe in God, and who in many other areas of their lives are very moral people. While I am quite prepared to agree that such a state is not ideal, and that it would be better for them to be married, it seems absurd to me that their committed, loving life long union should be understood as a fundamental rejection of God deserving of eternal damnation (whether understood as punishment or as the absence of God).

If they know full well it is wrong, and continue to do it with full consent of the will, then they are in distinct danger of hellfire. If they truly don’t know, then it is still sin, but not mortal sin (see 1 John 5:16-17). We make that very distinction that you call for. Your real beef is with the Calvinists and other Protestants who often don’t make the distinction and discount the subjective and willful element of sin as having an effect on relative culpability (as in civil law).

I could give many, many other examples. One other particularly galling one is the fate of infants or embryos who die unbaptised. As I understand it the Church has made no definitive statement on this. I recall reading somewhere that the Catholic Church has recently cast doubts on the traditional ( though as I understand never dogmatically stated) belief that unbaptised infants go to Limbo. Obviously the issue arises because of the Catholic belief in original sin. I can’t even begin to imagine how someone could take this question seriously. It is so patently unjust and so at odds with any sane standards of moral culpability that a God Who would consign unbaptised infants to hell would be a monster.

I don’t think He does, nor does the Church: not in this crass, absurd sense that you despise (as I do also). Again, it is the Calvinists who believe in double predestination, including infants, with whom you have the beef here. 

The list goes on. What about the fate of Saints of other religions? Is Gandhi in hell? Is the Buddha? Will the countless saints and holy men of other religions who knew nothing of Christ live for an eternity of suffering without God?

Not necessarily at all. See my many papers about salvation “outside the Church” on my Ecumenism page.

Christian tradition is as far as I know fairly unanimous regarding the eternal destiny of the Prophets of the Old Testament, even though it would be very difficult to argue that they believed in Christ, or held any of the distinctive doctrines of the Christianity, let alone the specific views of the Roman Catholic Church. If they don’t go to hell, what justice would there be in sending the saints of other religions to hell, when by all fair accounts they often equal Christians in their asceticism, their love of God and neighbour, and their sanctity?

All depends on what they know and how they acted on it (Romans 2).

This has already got too long so I will end it here, to be continued later as replies come in…

You need to figure out your opinion as to what revelation teaches on any or all of these matters. You seem to reject revelation wherever it disagrees with your present opinions. That makes no sense, given your self-described espousal of most of the Nicene Creed, which is clearly itself based on revelation; not just natural reason. It remains your primary internal problem of incoherence and inconsistency, as I see it, anyway.

Thanks for the dialogue. I hope I have given you some food for thought, and have helped move you towards orthodox Catholicism. But God’s grace and human free will are ultimately the key factors as to who believes and who doesn’t.

2017-03-29T14:24:55-04:00

Anti-ChristianSign
Sign at a “gay rights” protest at Federal Plaza, Chicago on November 15, 2008. Photo by Andrew Ciscel [Wikimedia Commons /  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license]* * *
 (9-27-07)
* * * * *

ExChristian.Net is a flourishing atheist site. Dave Van Allen was formerly the webmaster. I have an ongoing interest in demonstrating how these common “deconversion” stories of former Christians do not rationally explain why they or anyone else should forsake Christianity. The task is to “defeat the defeater” — as philosopher Alvin Plantinga might say.

If these are the reasons that atheists give for being an atheist and rejecting Christianity, and we can repeatedly show that they are insufficient for their purpose, then we can systematically demonstrate that whatever the basis for these deconversions are, they are not reasonable or rational, let alone compelling. Yet atheists often pride themselves on being greatly intellectual superior to gullible, rather dumb Christians (that is the tendency, anyway; I hasten to add that there are notable exceptions to the general manifest condescension). Dave’s “anti-testimony” story is posted on his site. I shall examine it with a fine-toothed comb. His words will be in blue.

* * * *

I find it absolutely fascinating that at the end of his “anti-testimony” Dave states:

None of this proves or disproves Christianity, I realize, but the purpose of this paper is to show the thinking processes that led to my de-conversion.

Huh?! (scratching head). Are you thinking what I am thinking? If such stories give no reason whatsoever to reject Christianity, then (not to be insulting), I humbly submit: what good are they at all? Who cares about someone’s purely subjective experience if it has no bearing on whether someone else should accept or reject Christianity? I appreciate the intellectual humility of admitting that it offers no disproof, but then, doesn’t that pretty much defeat its very purpose? It’s like one is saying, “here are the reasons why I am not a Christian, but there is no reason to accept my reasons as any reason to reject Christianity.” Rather self-defeating or at least intellectually meaningless, wouldn’t you think? It’s almost as if reason and fact truly don’t matter. All that matters is that some other human being has become an atheist and left Christianity. Actual reasons matter less than the bald fact that they have done so, so that others can have company and not feel alone in a dominant-theist society. Having expressed this disclaimer and puzzlement, nevertheless I press on.

* * *


It is invariably a shock to Evangelical Christians to come across someone who has turned his or her back on the “faith was once delivered unto the saints.”

Usually, but not always. After all, the Bible often mentions those who will fall away from the faith.

Most believers will quickly dismiss an ex-Christian by piously pointing out that anyone who turns away from Christ was never a real believer.

Calvinists have to believe that because their system does not allow any other interpretation (i.e., the doctrine of perseverance of the saints). But the great majority of Christians now and throughout history (Catholics, Orthodox, Arminian and Wesleyan Protestants) are not Calvinists, and believe that one can truly be a Christian and fall away, lose grace, salvation, etc.

Or, as an insider might say it, “They were never born again.” There is Biblical support for the assertion. 1 John 2:19, which addressed the problem of First Century apostates, states that: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” (KJV)

Of course, sometimes that is true. But it is not necessarily true in every case. I dispute the assertion that no real Christian can ever fall away (there is much biblical data about that).

(I’d like to point out here that the previous verse, verse 18, suggests that the writer also believed it was the end of history and that the Antichrist was about to appear. It seems that whoever penned 1 John was premature in announcing it to be the “last time.” He may have been mistaken in his quick judgments against those ancient infidels as well.)

This is an involved argument as to what “last times” means.

For those from a Calvinistic background, the fifth petal of TULIP uncompromisingly declares that those truly chosen by God for salvation will persevere in the faith. They will persevere in the faith because God will preserve them in the faith. Or, as a Baptist fundamentalist might express it: “Once saved always saved.” For fundies, a believer gone bad was just faking their salvation or is presently backslidden and will eventually return to the fold, with their tails between their legs.

If they are Calvinists, yes. Not all “fundamentalists” are, though, of course. Even most Baptists are not five-point Calvinists, although they agree with eternal security.

There are also a plethora of competing denominations that teach people can lose their salvation. To members of those denominations, a fellow believer who has fallen away might have really been saved at one time, but is now lost again. They believe it is possible to get saved, and lost, and saved again, many times, before a person’s allotted lifespan runs out.

True. The Catholic or Orthodox, however, would not say a person is “saved” over and over (even most Arminian Protestants, as I once was, would not speak in such terms) because we view salvation as more of a process that is only completed at death (or what Protestants would call “eschatological salvation” — i.e., the salvation of the future when one actually gets to heaven). Catholics would say such a person was in mortal sin, separated from God, out of God’s graces, etc.

The reason for this brief essay is to share my testimony about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and my repentance from that relationship. What follows may unnerve some of my closer associates and will likely alienate some of my good friends. I have absolutely no desire to alienate anyone since I have already spent years as a zealous evangelical Christian, alienating dozens and dozens of people in the name of Christ. However, it is only fair to those who know me to allow them a glimpse into where I am coming from, now.

Fair enough. I don’t deny this past experience. I don’t have to. But I am free to deny the reasoning that led to his rejection of Christianity, as inadequate and insufficient, because if that influences other people, and it is untrue and found wanting, then Christians (and especially apologists like myself) are duty-bound to expose its weaknesses and fallacies.

When I was very young, my parents attended a Presbyterian Church. I used to watch my father pray during the service. His eyes would close and his chin would rest against his chest. I wondered if he was asleep. At home, my mother would tell my brother and I Bible stories. I always had questions for her: “Why did God put the tree of knowledge in the garden since he knew what would happen?”

Well, so that human beings could exercise their free will and choose to obey God or disobey Him. I would ask the child back: “why do you presume to question God’s purposes for doing anything, or act as if we would or could or should understand everything that God does, in the first place?”

I also wondered whom Cain married, if dinosaurs were taken on the ark, and all kinds of things my mother could not answer.

The seeds of atheism, because a mother couldn’t answer every garden-variety objection of a bright kid . . . but of course, that is where the function of apologetics is very helpful.

My parents stopped regularly attending church when I was nine,

Much like my experience (I was ten).

but still sent my brother and me to Vacation Bible School during the summer. I was diligent to learn all the Bible lessons, stories and doctrines, earning multiple gold stars in each class. Though I do not remember it, my mother likes to tell a story that even when I was 5 years old, I would come home from Sunday School, gather the un-churched neighborhood kids together on our porch, and parrot all I had been taught that morning.

Zeal that later, unfortunately, was applied to atheist pursuits . . .

I was eleven years old in 1969.

Me too!

My grandmother was a staunch Baptist. In fact, she was one of the founding members of the First Baptist Church in Ashtabula Ohio, and was absolutely devoted to the place. The Church had hired an aggressive youth minister who wanted to see more young people attending services. His name was Norm, and he organized a youth rally which featured a movie produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The movie’s aim was the conversion of young people. My grandmother invited me to the meeting and of course I loved my Grandma, so I got a ride from my Dad and sat with her to watch the show. I don’t remember the title of the movie, but the basic plot centered on one of the male characters who accepts Christ and starts to tell his friends about it. One of his unbelieving friends makes terrible fun of the whole thing, mocks Christ, and mocks the threat of going to hell. The unbelieving friend ends is horribly killed up accidentally trapped in a burning barn toward the end of the film and dies horrifically, going straight to a Christless grave.

I am not sure how powerful of a flick it was, but it got to me.

As it should. The threat of hell is very real.

Before that movie, I knew about God and the Bible and Jesus, but now I realized I had no personal relationship with Christ, and I needed one. When the altar call was given to come forward and accept Christ, I did not go forward, but listened intently, memorizing the “sinner’s prayer.”

I had a very similar experience around the same time, at a Baptist church that my sister found out about, through a friend. It was short-lived, though, because it wasn’t followed-through with regular church attendance or Christian education. so I wasn’t particularly pious and shortly after got fascinated with the occult, the paranormal, and ESP, etc.

Later that night, in the dark and quiet of my room, I got down on my knees confessed my sins, repented as much as I knew how, and accepted Christ into my heart. It was a mind-altering experience for me. In my mind’s eye I visualized the Creator of all physically with me in the room. I felt overwhelmed with what I believed was a personal and direct manifestation of the LORD. I cried and cried. The emotional cleansing and reality of that moment has never left me, and as I write about it now, it comes alive once again.

I had that sort of experience in my evangelical conversion of 1977, when I was 18.

The very next morning, I started carrying a small New Testament to school with me. I was in the sixth grade, reading a KJV, and doing my best to understand what I could from its inspired pages. I began attending church that week, and became a regular customer at the local Christian Book Store. My paper route wages and tips found investment in books and comic book tracts by Jack Chick, which I read and distributed zealously.

Ignorant, anti-Catholic material; the very stereotype of fundamentalist know-nothingism . . .

After my twelfth birthday I was asked if I would like to be trained as a counselor for the new Billy Graham evangelistic movie entitled “For Pete’s Sake,” which was being sponsored by several local churches. The showings were to be at Shea’s Theater in downtown Ashtabula. I eagerly agreed and dutifully submitted myself to the counselor training by memorizing the required verses and receiving a certificate as a bona fide counselor. At the end of each night, a short salvation message was shared by one of the local pastors, followed by the traditional Billy Graham style altar call. During the course of the weekend, I was able to assist several young people from my own age group as they came forward to make decisions for Christ.

Good for him. God had mercy on his soul, insofar as he did these good works before falling away.

Following that crusade, I was excited. I began to do street evangelism on my own. I witnessed to other kids at school, and even led a fellow Boy Scout to the lord while on a week long Boy Scout camp. His name is Phil and is presently a pastor at an American Baptist Church outside of Youngstown Ohio.

Good fruits last. Becoming an atheist later on doesn’t undo the helpful things that were done while a Christian.

I started a junior high school Bible study group, and taught the others who joined how to lead others to Christ ala Billy Graham. (“The Romans Road” with some small variations, was what Billy recommended back then.) The early 1970’s saw the height of the Jesus People Movement in the US,

My brother Gerry got caught up in that, and this was a serious influence that later led to my conversion, after fighting it for six years.

so naturally I became involved with other non-denominational youth study groups held at various houses around town. I was introduced to CS Lewis, Watchman Nee and other famous Christian authors during this time. I drank every word written in those books like it was water. A prolific reader even in junior high I was insatiable for more and more information.

Good (though Watchman Nee has some questionable teachings).

Reggie Kirk, my Boy Scout Master, recognized my thirst for more spiritual enlightenment and invited me to his church, the local Assembly of God, where I learned I needed the Baptism in the Holy Spirit to be a complete Christian. I attended one Sunday night when, providentially, the topic being discussed was that very doctrine. I went forward during the altar call to receive the “Baptism” and kept those poor people there long after the service ended as I pleaded with the Almighty to grace me with the Holy Ghost and tongues. Finally, after two hours of eye watering, knee hardening prayer, and some helpful coaching from a woman who stood with me, I babbled a few syllables. Everyone pronounced proudly that I had indeed received the Holy Spirit. Now, as a full-fledged tongue-talking Jesus person, I went full steam into making a difference in the world for Christ.

He may or may not have spoken in tongues. There is a lot of fakery that goes on (I know, from attending an A/G church myself for four years, and other charismatic fellowships).

My parents, who at best were only nominally religious, viewed my obsessive enthrallment with church-stuff as disconcerting and worrisome. My mother, knowing I loved to read, decided to introduce me to her understanding of reality which was embodied in the writings of Edgar Cayce. My mother was a Reincarnationist. I rejected her teaching, witnessed to her unceasingly for the next 25 years about the love of Christ, and read everything published concerning the psychic Cayce.

Interesting . . . I would have probably tried to defend Cayce, in my occult-leaning period.

My grades suffered terribly in junior high, as I could not see any value to secular learning. I viewed the world as passing away, valueless compared with heavenly knowledge with eternal relevance.

That is a classic fundamentalist mindset, that is out of the mainstream of Christianity, and should never be equated with the latter (though many atheists collapse Christianity into know-nothing fundamentalism, so that it can be dismissed as “anti-intellectual” and “anti-science”). Billy Graham would never countenance such a view. He helped found the magazine Christianity Today, which is one of the leading vehicles of evangelical thinking and scholarship today.

As puberty became more influential in my thought processes, I struggled terribly with the hormonal demands of my body verses the tenets of the Church concerning any sort of sensual pleasure. Jesus taught that it is just as sinful to have any sort of lustful thought, as to actually act on any of them. I found adolescence very difficult on my thought life, finding myself in a perpetual war with guilt. I agonized over my sexuality, begging God to deliver me from temptation, to no avail. It was depressing.

No one is saying it is easy. But it is possible to abstain from immoral sexual activity with God’s help. I did it, and if I could, anyone could.

I began to distinguish myself in music during this time, receiving nothing but positive feedback on my performance. By the time I was 14, I was being hired to play trombone semi-professionally.

Lots of similarities there. I played trombone in a very good, nationally-known high school orchestra and band (Cass Technical High School in Detroit). I took lessons from the first chair in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, even before I got to high school, in order to get into the symphony band. That’s how high the requirements were!

It was fun. I had begun finding inconsistencies in the Bible when I noticed numerous contradictions between various number citations in the Old Testament.

Again, what makes him think that he knows better than scholars who have studied these things for years? This is a common motif in atheist deconversions. They know better than everyone else. They can see “obvious truths” that most Christians, in their naive gullibility, miss. That’s not to say that there are no biblical problems to be worked out. Of course there are many things that scholars debate and mull over. But that is no different from, for example, the scientific method. There are a host of difficulties and unexplained things in science, yet it doesn’t lead people to reject science because it doesn’t possess all answers to everything. So why should the Bible and Christianity be approached differently?

Then I was confused by the multiple conflicting details in the resurrection stories in the Gospels, as well as in Paul’s version. One of the biggest contradictions I could not rectify was whether or not Judas threw his money into the temple and hanged himself or bought a field and fell headlong into it.

Let’s examine this alleged contradiction:

Matthew 27:5-10 (RSV) And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.”

Acts 1:18 (Now this man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.

Now, do these two descriptions necessarily formally contradict? No. For example, here is one way that the seeming discrepancy of the purchase of the field can be explained:

Regarding the “purchasing” of the “field”…both accounts are true. The temple rulers bought the plot of ground, like Matthew says. Acts does not contradict Matthew. Remember that the priests said, “it is not lawful to put them into the treasury”. In other words, they were not taking actual ‘receipt’ of the money, diverting it, instead, to purchase the plot of ground. Thus, in a ‘legal’ sense (?) since they were not taking ‘ownership’ of the money, it was still Judas’ money. And when Peter speaks of “wages of iniquity”, it is not that Judas bought the plot of ground…but that the money he had received to betray Jesus had bought it. The money was Judas’ “wages”…but he threw it back, and the priests weren’t accepting it. These “30 pieces” were like the proverbial “hot potato” BLOOD MONEY both parties were trying to get rid of. Technically it was still Judas’ money, which the priests used to purchase the plot of ground. Thus, in a legal sense, it could be said that Judas bought it, because it was ‘his money’ that bought it.

. . . And so, did Judas hang himself…or did he “fall headlong”? Both are obviously true. He hung himself. When did he fall headlong? Did the rope break? Or did his “entrails gush out” when others came along to cut him down from the tree (assuming he actually hung himself from a tree limb)…and he split open when he hit the ground? There is a lot of data the Bible doesn’t tell us. How tall was the tree? If he hung himself on a tall branch, it might not have been possible for somebody to hold the body while another cut the rope. So, if a single person went up and cut the rope, and the body fell a great distance to the ground (not gently), the chances might be good that the body would land, making a ‘mess’.

[ source ]

The supposed contradiction of the purchase is also clarified by looking at the Greek words involved, as another Christian site devoted to alleged biblical discrepancies explains:

Once we examine the original Greek, we see Matthew and Luke differentiate between terms of ownership. Matthew uses the word ajgoravzw (legal ownership) while Luke uses ktaomai (physical possession). In other words, Judas purchased the field in his name and was therefore the legal owner, but after his death, the priests obtained the field for communal use yet did not possess the legal rights to it. In layman’s terms, Judas purchased the field but the priest acquired the field after his death.

And Judas’ manner of death is speculated upon by another web page, without falling into necessary contradiction:

1. First, Judas tried to kill himself by hanging himself. And this is not always a successful way. Maybe he tried, and failed (as have many others who have tried to commit suicide by hanging). Then after some time, he threw himself off a cliff and fell upon some jagged rocks. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon for people who commit suicide to have tried it before.

2. Judas could have tied a rope to a tree branch that extended over a cliff (after all, you have to get some space between your feet and the ground to hang yourself). In this situation, the rope/branch could have broke before or after death, and Judas plummeted to the ground and landed on some jagged rocks.
Certainly, these explanations are plausible, thus a contradiction has not been established.

MAT 27:5-8 Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.” And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

First of all, notice that the text does not say that Judas died as a result of hanging. All it says is that he “went and hanged himself.” Luke however, in Acts, tells us that “and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.” This is a pretty clear indication (along with the other details given in Acts – Peter’s speech, the need to pick a new apostle, etc.) that at least after Judas’ fall, he was dead. So the whole concept that Matthew and Luke both recount Judas’ death is highly probable, but not clear cut. Therefore, if I were to take a radical exegetical approach here, I could invalidate your alleged contradiction that there are two different accounts of how Judas died.

Notice verse 5.”Then he…went and hanged himself.” Matthew does not say Judas died, does it? Should we assume he died as a result of the hanging?
What does Acts say? ACT 1:18 (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.

ACT 1:20 “For it is written in the book of Psalms: ‘Let his dwelling place be desolate, And let no one live in it’; and, ‘Let another take his office.’
Here we may have a graphic explanation of Judas’ death. Of course, maybe someone can find some medical source somewhere that discusses the possibility of one having their entrails gush out after being burst open in the middle, and still survive. :)
So, my line of reasoning to dispel the contradiction myth re: the “two” accounts of Judas’ death is this. Matthew doesn’t necessarily explain how Judas died; he does say Judas “hanged himself”, but he didn’t specifically say Judas died in the hanging incident. However, Acts seems to show us his graphic demise. Therefore, there is no contradiction between Matthew and Acts re: Judas’ death.

We do know from Matthew that he did hang himself and Acts probably records his death. It is possible and plausible that he fell from the hanging and hit some rocks, thereby bursting open. However, Matthew did not say Judas died as a result of the hanging, did he? Most scholars believe he probably did, but….

One atheist I debated along these lines said… the Greek word “apagchw” (ie: hang oneself) is translated as a successful hanging. I replied, No you can’t only conclude this, although…this was a highly probable outcome. But Matthew does not state death as being a result. The Greek word is APAGCHO. Matthew 27:5 is it’s only occurrence in the New Testament. In the LXX (the Greek translation of the OT used at the time of Jesus), it’s only used in 2 Samuel 17:23 : “Now when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not followed, he saddled a donkey, and arose and went home to his house, to his city. Then he put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died; and he was buried in his father’s tomb.” Notice that not only is it stated that Ahithophel “hanged himself” [Gr. LXX, APAGCHO], but it explicitly adds, “and died”. Here we have no doubt of the result. In Matthew, we are not explicitly told Judas died. Also, there is nothing in the Greek to suggest success or failure. It simply means “hang oneself”.

The same page discusses the aspect of the purchase:

Perhaps here, the following maxim holds — “He who does a thing by another, does it himself.” That is, yes it was the chief priests who actually bought the field, but Judas had furnished the occasion for its purchase. Thus, the verse in Acts could be employing a figure of speech where we attribute to the man himself any act which he has directly or indirectly procured to be done. After all, we attribute the “Clinton health care plan” to Bill Clinton, when in reality, it is a plan devised by others associated with Bill Clinton.

So we see that very plausible Christian explanations can be and have been advanced for these things. I doubt that young Dave sought these out. He merely asked questions of people who usually weren’t prepared to give an adequate defense and counter-explanation. Then Dave used their non-answer as a pretext for falsely supposing that no Christian could provide any plausible explanation, thus leading to the further unwarranted conclusion that the Bible was untrustworthy (hence, Christianity itself).

In stark contrast, here is Dave’s counter-“explanation” from the combox:

[T]he real point is that neither the writer of Matthew nor the writer of Luck actually saw any of it – it was all hearsay. It seems obvious that each writer merely tailored the details of the fable in order to demonize either the Jewish leaders or Judas, depending on the writer’s personal motive.

Besides, I’ve heard that worn out apologetic a hundred times, and for many a year I even tried to believe it. I’m ashamed to say I even preached it to others.

However, both stories cannot be true – period. Since there is some measure of inaccuracy in at least one of the stories, that would suggest that the Bible is not inerrant. If the Bible is not inerrant in even one sentence, then there is error, and that means it is NOT the word of a god.

. . . the evidence remains that Judas either hanged himself in a field he purchased, or he had a nasty fall in a field that someone else purchased. More than likely, neither story has a shred of truth in it and the writers of the two gospels simply felt that Judas needed to end up dead after his horrible “mortal” sin of kissing God on the lips.

You (be you atheist or Christian or something else) decide which is more reasoned and plausible, and which is mere dogmatic denial based on a preconceived bias.

Clearly, anyone could reject anything if they utilized such a “method” and refused to seek out the more informed proponents of said belief-system before finding it wanting. That is Mickey Mouse pseudo-intellectualism, not serious thought and seeking of truth. if Dave Van Allen conceded (today) that this is not a case of two obvious contradictions, then he would have to remove this objection from the collection of those that caused him to reject Christianity.

If the Christian could (speaking hypothetically for the moment) systematically debunk all of his similar objections, does that mean his deconversion is nullified and he would again become a Christian? Maybe so, but that is ultimately a matter of God’s grace and faith. Apologists can only remove the roadblocks of false objections. We can lead the horse to the stream and show that there are no unassailable hindrances in getting to the stream, but we can’t force the horse to drink.

I wrote to an evangelistic radio ministry out of Richmond Virginia, asking for direction about these apparent problems. I was only thirteen and they responded to my cry for help with a short note. Instead of an intellectually satisfying apologetic, they merely admonished that some things could only be answered through the eyes of faith. I pretty much got the same answer everywhere I went.

Exactly my point. But he did not seek enough answers. There are entire books written about such things, such as, for example, volumes by biblical scholars Gleason Archer and William Arndt. It’s even easier now with the Internet (I found the above explanations in short order via Google). Dave didn’t have that back then, but books existed in those days, way back in the 60s and 70s. But instead, young Dave settled for non-answers from fundamentalist types unacquainted with apologetics and an intellectual grounding for their faith.

Maybe he didn’t know any better then, and can be given some slack (he at least tried to get answers from someone) but he should now, especially after reading this (assuming he ever does). It’s a classic case, though, of the absence of apologetics, where it was crucial that it was present, in order to help a young zealous Christian harmonize faith and reason without contradiction or serious difficulty. It wasn’t there, and by his own admission, this led him to later reject Christianity.

This is why I do what I do. Apostasy can be avoided in part by an understanding of the reasons why we believe what we believe. That’s apologetics. It is extremely important in a Christian’s life. As the proverb goes: “the heart cannot accept what the mind believes to be false.”

Regardless, I continued to attend Baptist Church on Sunday mornings, Assembly of God on Sunday nights, and various home study groups during the week. Then, the summer before entering High School, the Baptist church hierarchy decided to fire the youth minister. He had held an all night youth rally event at the church. The geriatric power people in the church thought his tactics to lure young people to church were inappropriate, so they brought the issue to vote and that settled the matter. He was there one week and gone the next. During the same time period, the Pastor of the Assembly of God church was caught having an affair with one of the lady members. Both he and the woman were married to other people, so when the affair was discovered, he resigned and left the church. I still wonder how long that had been going on.

Sin and hypocrisy observed firsthand causes a lot of people to reject Christianity, but of course, such sad events offer not the slightest reason to reject Christianity. All it proves is that there is such a thing as a Christian who falls short, or fails to repent, or is a miserable example of what Christian ought to be; a hypocrite. All it proves is that the human heart is desperately wicked, in and of itself, and that we can only follow God and live righteously by His grace. Since people have a free will, they can simply choose to go their own way.

But that is scarcely any reason to blame God or Christianity as a system, because some people fail. I should think that it rather confirms the Christian system that already predicted the real possibility and factuality of these things in the real fallen world: the same belief-system that teaches that Christianity is a narrow way, while the way to destruction is broad and that one of Jesus’ own disciples betrayed Him. So why would any Christian (presumably knowing his Bible fairly well) be so surprised when this stuff happened, to cause them to lose faith? That makes no sense. But these decisions are often purely emotional, without any legitimate reason being brought to bear.

My growing dissatisfaction with the church’s inability to answer my Biblical questions, my budding musical career and the hypocritical church politics worked together to help me fall away from Christianity for a time.

None of which offers the slightest rationale to reject Christianity, as shown . . .

My grades in school improved immensely. I finished High School early, in the top 10% of the class. I auditioned for the Air Force Band, was accepted, and as soon as I turned seventeen, I left for basic training in San Antonio.

As the years went by, I continued to have an interest in the Bible, studying textual variants and translation problems. I had several years of revival, when I buried my questioning and simply emulated the faith of a little child, trusting that though I could not understand many things, God knew what he was doing.

Why is it that a thinker, in the top 10% of his class: a guy with a brain and a head on his shoulders, could not seek out plausible Christian answers given by scholars and apologists, and instead chose to “bury” his questioning and adopt the non-rational fideism that his fundamentalist surroundings apparently promulgated? He must take some of the blame in this.

One sees this dynamic over and over again in atheist deconversions: they recount horror stories of dreadful and miserably misinformed and underinformed Christians, and sinning hypocrites, and then use that as a pretext to reject Christianity, as if these experiences represented the whole sum of what true Christianity is. it’s bad thinking through and through. yet atheists so often pride themselves as being overwhelmingly superior in intellect to Christians. I respectfully suggest that there is plenty of fundamental work to be done in their own heads, before they start attacking Christianity as irrational and inconsistent.

Eventually, I would get a headache from such pious mind games and find myself drifting again. I spent years in and out of Charismatic meetings where healings were performed as well as Words of Knowledge, messages from God, and rousing sermons proclaiming the imminent return of Christ. The emotional feeling of those early charismatic events was like a drug high.

There are numerous excesses and problems in these circles as well, and they are not exactly known for solid biblical thinking. You get nuts running around saying, for example, that the Bible teaches that all people should be healed. I was refuting that way back in 1982.

During these up and down spiritual times, I swung between being fanatically zealous, to totally apostate.

That was a clear sign that something was radically wrong. As a Christian, he should have sought some serious pastoral counseling. Surely someone in his circles could direct him to apologetics books that would have dealt with his objections? There may be temperamental and psychological factors involved too (he doesn’t say, but the above description suggests the real possibility to me). If he was prone to cycles of depression, for example, then that is an independent problem that could not be blamed on Christianity.

I comforted myself on my lack of consistency by reasoning that at least I was not lukewarm. In the next few years I belonged to several different Baptist Churches and several different Charismatic Churches in succession.

Church-hopping is not conducive to a stable spiritual life. This is a huge problem in Protestant circles.

I was married, had a son, got divorced, remarried and had two more children. In my thirties, I finally hit bottom and decided I would simply dig in, buy books like crazy, and study until I got all my answers.

I’d love to see what orthodox Christian books (particularly of apologetics) he consulted, and on what basis he rejected their reasoning. We are what we read. If one decides to read a bunch of liberal Christian, or skeptical, or atheist books, then obviously they will tend to believe along those lines. This is why I always urge everyone to read different perspectives on a given issue: the best of each position, to rationally make up their minds, using their critical faculties. This is why I am so big on dialogue and amiable but serious and vigorous interaction between viewpoints.

My second wife and I were deeply involved in an English speaking Assembly of God church while living in Japan. We ran the music ministry, the bookstore and participated in English evangelism at a local Japanese speaking Assembly of God. Once again, my inquiring mind reared its ugly head and put me at odds with the church. For years I had accepted the Pentecostal teaching that all Christians must speak in tongues to demonstrate they had been baptized in the Holy Spirit.

This is unbiblical, of course (1 Corinthians 12:4-11,28-31 being the clearest biblical disproof of it) as I knew full well when I attended Assemblies of God myself. I never formally became a member precisely because I disagreed with this.

I had also accepted the harsh Arminianism preached there. As I began to study John Calvin, Matthew Henry, John Bunyan, Matthew Poole, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther and a host of other teachers from the past, I began to realize that there was a whole other gospel of which I was completely ignorant. I questioned the pastor of our AG church on some of these matters.

I don’t see how it is a different gospel. There are some disagreements within soteriology, but it is the same gospel, biblically-defined.

He did not answer any of my questions, assuring me that God would comfort my heart as to the truth of the Assemblies’ teachings in time.

Another pastor who didn’t have a clue about apologetics and how important it is. He failed in his duty to spread a faith that was intellectually solid and confident. This problem is sadly widespread in all Christian circles. That is one reason why Catholic apologetics has exploded in the last twenty years. People were so desperately hungry for reasoned answers to their questions . . .

He responded to my inquiry by removing my wife and I from all our leadership responsibilities until such time as we came to peace with the issues I brought up.

Typical . . . I was denounced from the pulpit too (and lied about publicly), when I dared to disagree on some excesses in my church.

He said if I were to remain in leadership with doubts on various Pentecostal doctrines, it would cause confusion for the congregation.

It is reasonable, I would say, that if Dave didn’t believe something that was part of the confession or creed at his church, that he could not in good conscience, be in leadership. If he didn’t accept their teaching on tongues, then he should have voluntarily refrained from any “leadership” positions. Isn’t that common sense? I didn’t engage in that personal contradiction because I didn’t become a member of a belief-system that I didn’t fully accept. That was the only honest thing I could do. But it looks like Dave didn’t do that. So in that particular sense some of the pastor’s reaction may have been fully justified.

Of course we were welcome to stay and attend the services, he said. We left the church that day.

Again, if he didn’t believe some of the doctrines, then the leadership can’t be blamed for pointing out that an Assemblies of God leader ought to fully accept the doctrinal statement of the Assemblies of God denomination.

I started a home Bible study where we studied such things as Romans 9, Ephesians 1, and other strikingly Calvinistic chapters, without forcing any dogmatic conclusions.

The beginning of lone ranger, unsupervised sectarianism, that often causes much harm and leads to heterodoxy . . . another huge problem in Protestant ranks. Dogma was starting to be minimized. That is the sure road to skepticism and possibly atheism. Dave’s story demonstrates the dangers involved in such a course.

It was well attended. I led that group into street evangelism in Japan, passing out tracts at train stations and other public areas. I wrote letters to Christian leaders all over the world, soliciting their input on various doctrinal issues and spent a small fortune on books, studying the reformed theologians who lived prior to this century’s “charismania”.

I’d love to see some of those now. I suspect that Dave had some false beliefs of his own (i.e., from a mainstream Protestant perspective). We don’t know because he doesn’t spell it out in detail.

I retired from the Air Force, left Japan and started over again in the town where I grew up. My parents and other relatives were apprehensive of my resettling near them, since they knew I was a religious fanatic. We attended, and even joined, several churches over the next few years, trying to settle in with the local evangelical, non-charismatic Christians.

More church-hopping. To me this suggests instability and inability to be submitted to spiritual authority. He wanted to go his own way.

We wanted to find acceptance, and learn sound doctrine. As I learned more, and leaned more toward the Reformed Faith, I was made aware that I was living in adultery with my present wife. This was because my previous marriage did not end with a scriptural divorce. One counselor advised me that I should leave my present wife and live celibate in order to obey Christ’s commands. Failure to leave my present wife was considered continuous adultery in this Reformed denomination. This made no sense to me.

If you were not truly divorced (and were truly married the first time) then it could possibly be the sin of adultery. Sounds like this church was trying to follow traditional Protestant moral (biblical) teachings on marriage. Catholics would say that perhaps the first marriage was invalid, thus freeing Dave to marry (for what would actually be the first time). It’s difficult to say without knowing more details.

Can one grievous sin be offset by committing another, I wondered? Should I really abandon my wife and two children because I blew it on my first marriage? I also discovered that any illusions I might have of ever being in any kind of leadership in any Reformed church, was out of the question. Divorce and remarriage was treated, except under the narrowest of scriptural scrutiny, as if it were more unforgivable than murder. The husband of one wife was the badge of acceptance required above all.

Marriage and divorce is a huge subject I can’t get into at the moment. But let’s grant for the sake of argument that this church was indeed wrong in what they stated. Would that be a reason to reject Christianity, because one church congregation got something wrong? Of course not (and clearly so).

Of course I still had questions. That, apparently, is a bad thing, as it did nothing but set me at odds with pastors and congregants alike.

More evidence that apologetics is desperately needed.

We finally found a Reformed Baptist Church in Pennsylvania, which accepted my past miscarriage of wedlock

Perhaps in Catholic circles it would have been a case of legitimate annulment.

and we attended for several months. Originally the church had been an Independent Baptist Church and quite Arminian in theology. They had made the switch to Calvinism in soteriology, but remained Darbyite in eschatology. The primary preoccupation they seemed to have was with such important topics as head coverings for women and hating homosexuals.

Did they truly “hate” homosexuals or simply oppose the sin of sodomy? I’d love to see their doctrinal statement.

If the pastor was questioned in private concerning even the smallest detail of his teaching, the next service would be laced with personalized rebuke and condemnation pointedly aimed at the doubting inquiries and directly at those mouthing them. We left that church too.

That is definitely excessive and an abuse of his office as pastor. It happens quite a lot. I experienced it myself.

We found another church some 35 miles away from our house that seemed promising. This church had been very charismatic originally, but had found deeper meaning in the teachings of R.J. Rushdooney. They had made a complete 180-degree turn toward Reconstructionism. I was totally unfamiliar with this brand of Christianity, so we stayed there for over three years.

This is an extreme variant of Calvinism.

In that time we experienced and were taught a whole new brand of Christianity.

Not new Christianity; just a brand of the sub-group of Calvinism.

Waving the Westminster Confession as the flag of truth we were encouraged to be filled with anger against sin, against worldly politicians, and to be fiercely aggressive political activists, so we might gain temporal power and obey Christ’s command to go into the entire world. “Discipling the Nations” was their clarion call. When the assistant pastor raised money to go and publicly support a civil war in a small African country, in the name of Christ, we finally knew it was time to leave that arena too. During the three years we were there, not one person became our friend. Everyone was too busy condemning pietism, marching and campaigning, and supposedly changing the world for Jesus.

Lots of faults and shortcomings can be found in any church group, I’m afraid. But if you don’t hang around long enough to make a difference, then can you really complain too loudly? There is the saying in response to the complaint that churches are filled with hypocrites: “there is always room for one more!” And there is Mark Twain’s famous utterance, “I wouldn’t be a member of any church that would have me as a member.” Dave was bouncing from one end of the theological spectrum of Protestantism to the other. To me this suggests a serious spiritual instability. All he seems to talk about is joining and leaving churches. How many did he attend?

Since leaving that church, I have spent the last couple of years reading other materials. Books by disillusioned Christians, pastors and others who find religion generally, and Christianity specifically, lacking in truth has become my books of choice.

So is it any wonder that he ended up atheist? How many solid Christian books did he read, I wonder? He seems to have never been grounded in a reasonable faith, so it is some big surprise that he was easy prey for atheist skepticism to snatch him out of whatever remaining non-intellectual faith he had?

I have come to accept my initial adolescent doubts about the Bible.

That were not insurmountable at all, as I illustrated by the Judas example . . .

It was not simply rebellion, but the seed of good common logic and sense.

Not if he didn’t properly explore the best Christian answers that could be obtained.

I no longer claim to have all, or many, of the answers to life as I once claimed when my fanaticism expanded to full bloom. Since I have had to accept the fact that my theology has been wrong time and again,

Exactly, and this is where the de facto relativism and ridiculous hyper-denominationalism of Protestantism must bear much blame, because it fosters such confusion.

even though I supposedly had the Holy Spirit guiding me,

He had conflicting denominations guiding him, as well as (hopefully) the Holy Spirit.

it is quite unlikely that I have ever been totally right on much.

That doesn’t follow. He may have gotten many things right, and others wrong. The Church and the Bible are the guides to Christians, to the right Christian faith and belief-system.

I have changed my foundational beliefs several times as my religious self-education has evolved. I can’t say that I am content to be stagnant even at this juncture of spiritual understanding – I reserve the right to once again change my mind. Surely, if God could make a mistake and repent of making man,

That’s not what the Bible teaches about God. It is a distortion. Mens’ mistakes are not God’s. That is the whole point of the free will of men. They are free to make mistakes and rebel. And they did!

I can acknowledge error and repent of making a god and any decisions about my belief in it.

And he can be convinced to return to Christianity if he is persuaded (through God’s grace) by efforts such as my own.

What do I believe now? Like I said, I am not sure. I suppose that makes me an agnostic. At this point, that is the most intellectually appealing position for my tortured thought processes. It allows me the freedom to keep an open mind while absorbing all the viewpoints without completely immersing myself in any of them. You might consider it an R&R; from mind control, or perhaps I simply want …………, a sabbatical.

Then there is hope of persuading Dave back into the Christian fold. I think he does sincerely seek truth. He just needs a bit of helpful guidance along the path.

* * *

That is what I said then, and for the most part I would not change a thing. However, as my mind has cleared from the constant programming or self brainwashing I willingly subjected myself to,

And whose fault was that? The fault of Christianity as a whole, or Dave’s and the flawed leaders who fostered such things?

I have upped the “Anti”, you might say. While I really cannot credit or blame anyone else for the positions on religion I have held, I find that much of the feedback I am receiving from this site implies that I have rejected Christ because of how people treated me. I regret I have written in such a way so as to mislead some on this point. Though I indeed was treated poorly by the bulk of Christians I know, I do not hate or dislike any of them. Neither did I leave the faith solely because of their behavior.

Good, because that would be no reason. I’ve seen no good reason at all, yet (as one would expect).

I endured trials like that for nearly 30 years, and though unpleasant, it did not discourage me from my commitment to Christ. I remained stalwart for years, reasoning, as many of the people who write me, that Christians may be imperfect, but they are forgiven, and Christ is not like them, and so on.

Very good.

The main point I had hoped to accomplish in reiterating a few of the unpleasant experiences I had with the “chosen few” was to show that there is nothing supernatural going on in the lives of Christians.

That doesn’t follow. Some folks sin, and this disproves the supernatural? Huh? What did I miss?

We are taught that the Holy Spirit is within us, transforming us, quickening us, destroying our sin nature, putting to death the “old man” and on and on ad-nauseam. The simple truth is: it is not true. Christians are absolutely no different than any one else.

How, then, would Dave explain, for example, the great success in Christian programs in prisons, and in quasi-Christian groups such as AA? People do change. I know hosts of people whose lives have fundamentally changed for the better because of becoming Christians. I know it from my own life, and from people like my brother Gerry, and many many others.

They do not have GOD ALMIGHTY in their bodies, making them into new creatures.

So sez Dave. He can’t disprove the claim. I thought he wasn’t dogmatic about things?

Oh, sure, many resist temptation and endeavor to live a pure, moral life, but their thoughts continue to trouble them, and have to be resisted until death. Anyone who claims otherwise is a lying fool.

Yes, of course. That is concupiscence. Any intelligent, honest Christian recognizes that.

Now, of course someone is going to give me one of the stock theological answers to this puzzle, such as, the sin nature will never be destroyed until death.

Well, what would Dave expect us to say?: that every Christian will be a perfect saint and goody two-shoes and to have the slightest temptations or fall into sin? He can’t have it both ways. He criticizes sinning Christians as hypocrites, but also wants to mock intelligent Christian analyses of temptation in the Christian life as “stock theological answers.” So (like any good dogmatist) he leaves us no chance of giving any serious answers except for his own agnostic ones.

Or they might say that we are never perfectly sanctified in this life.

Yes.

There are plenty of well-rehearsed answers,

But he is not shown that they are wrong. He’s simply mocking now. That is not rational; it is merely emotional and subjective. This is very common amongst atheists. Their rejection of Christianity is far more emotional than rational. And that is why Dave stated at the end of his story that “None of this proves or disproves Christianity, I realize”. Exactly! Couldn’t have said it better myself.

all with supporting Bible verses, and interestingly, many of those bland explanations contradict one another, depending on the denominational bent of the various unharmonious voices.

So he sez, but he has the burden of rationally demonstrating it.

I readily admit that I have never been anything more than a layman. I have no official seminary or theological schooling to adorn my walls.

Me neither.

I have, however, read extensively from the writings of Charles Spurgeon, Charles Hodge, Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, Martin Luther, John Calvin, R.C. Sproul, the historic Confessions of Faith, commentaries without number, The Sword of the Lord, Charisma Magazine, Bill Bright, Frank Morrison, Hendricks, etc.

I’ve read quite a bit, too.

Listing all my reading is possible,

Please do!

but I only mention the books I can see from my computer desk. If I were to go to the basement, I would recite dozens of other well known authors in Christendom. I owned a Dake Bible and I own an old Geneva Bible. I have a reprint of Tyndale’s original English New Testament. I was, and am, highly interested in the Christian faith. Does all this reading make me the authority? No of course not, but it was not only emotional dissatisfaction which led me to my present position.

I’ve seen nothing solid thus far that would lead anyone to reject Christianity. I’m still waiting. It’s always been this way with every deconversion story I have examined. They build my faith up every time.

The more I studied the Christian faith, its history, how it has mutated and evolved over time, I began to realize that I was not being intellectually honest with myself. How can “the truth once delivered” change so much over the course of 2000 years if GOD ALMIGHTY was running the show?

Human free will. How could Judas betray Jesus if GOD ALMIGHTY was running the show? How could Jesus be beaten and tortured and horribly executed if GOD ALMIGHTY was running the show? Etc. How could there be a hell if GOD ALMIGHTY was running the show? Does Dave think Christians haven’t pondered such elementary questions?

For example, Arminianism was heresy to Protestants when the Bible was published in English. Now it is the Calvinists who are held in disrepute.

Protestant internal disputes do not disprove Christianity. It only proves that Protestantism has a sectarian, relativistic tendency. Dave hasn’t even considered the truth claims of Catholicism as an alternate to that chaos.

Chances are that many of the Christians who read the mentions of Calvinism, eschatology, soteriology, etc., have no idea what I am talking about.

Sadly true.

That is another topic that contributed to my first suspicions that Xtianity is a false lie: the striking ignorance and loathing for learning that is rife in the Christian community.

How does that prove anything about Christianity? It only proves things about the deficiencies of the sub-groups that Dave moved around in.

Claiming to love god with all their hearts and souls, yet reading His Word, memorizing it, studying theology to better understand HIM, is quite beyond most, if not nearly all Christians.

Yet it is Christianity that teaches that human beings rebel against God and want to go their own way, and have itching ears, and are like sheep, and temptation, and concupiscence, and original sin, and that the world, the flesh, and the devil corrupts them, etc. All of this is amply explained in Christianity itself, so it comes as no surprise.

Finding anyone who understands the history of Christianity prior to Darby’s Dispensational gospel is nearly impossible.

That is a huge problem especially in Protestantism, but again, no disproof of anything.

I would try to strike up conversations about theological and historical topics that were churning in my mind only to find blank stares in the Christian’s faces to whom I would address myself. Now, that would be understandable if I were addressing novices, or baby believers, but the blankest stares would come from the pastors themselves. One pastor actually admitted to me that he found if very difficult to study the Word of God. He found study of theology very dry and boring and emphasized to me that Christ was relational, seeking a living relationship with his children, not living in dry books but living in beating hearts. Oh, how pious sounding!

And how scandalous . . . but that is a widespread attitude in charismatic and pietistic circles.

No doubt some reading this now have heard such tripe, and maybe some even heard their spirit bear witness to them that, yes that is true, Christ desires a relationship with us. To this nonsense I say that since Christ and his Dad are not talking in any other conventional way except through the words of Scripture in these last days, how is it I can hear His voice, unless I immerse myself in His WORDS? How is it I can say I am filled with the Holy Spirit, I love GOD more than all, I am being made into a new creation, and yet still find studying Christianity to be dull?

Dave is right.

The answer is simple of course. It is dull, and it is dead.

No, the people who say they don’t enjoy and learn from God’s Word are dull and dim-witted. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There is no living Spirit indwelling believers, and only the compulsive, people like me, have the natural drive to totally focus on boring stuff.

So he sez. He has not proven this. Bare claims are unimpressive without substantiating evidence.

Finally, finding no answers to my questions, I read the books of such people as Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Dan Barker, Charles Templeton, Austin Mills, James Randi, Richard Dawkins, and a host of others. I began to see that there was a whole world of Freethinking Ex-Christians, and NON-Christians out there, people who were fairly invisible to the general public, especially the Christian general public.

Just a note for the record: Mark Twain was not an atheist. Nor was Thomas Paine. He was a deist (as was philosopher David Hume, also often falsely thought to be an atheist):

The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.

My mind was opened to reality, and is continuing to be opened to reality, as the myths and gods of my youth are abandoned to be replaced by reason.

So now we come full circle (atheists and agnostic former Christians always do, so it seems). Christianity is a “myth” and opposed to “reality.” It is fundamentally opposed to “reason” by its very nature. Dave now adheres to “reason” rather than “myths and gods.” But since Dave himself was quick to add that “None of this proves or disproves Christianity,” why is he now writing as if it does? Fresh from complaining that his former pastors never provided answers to his probing questions, now he expects his readers to do the same exact thing? We must accept his mere preaching on his baseless authority (that of an admittedly intellectually unstable man who has waffled and shifted opinions for many years) without any reasoning or evidence?

We must find it compelling to hear him rant and rave now, at this late juncture, that Christianity is a myth and outside of reality, and opposed to reason itself, without being able to probe ourselves as to why he thinks this? Presumably his story was for that purpose, yet he denies that any of it “proves or disproves Christianity”. This inane self-contradiction is shot through the entire attempt at giving his story. Using his own proclaimed method, I am right to question it and demand further rational explanations for his current skepticism.

And we shall see how willing and able he is to provide to us what he demanded from other Christians when he was a Christian. so far, whenever I have examined any deconversion, it was met with the utmost scorn and hostility, not unlike that expressed by these pastors that Dave cited, who didn’t like anyone questioning them or their reasoning either. And so we shall see if Dave (like other former Christians I have critiqued) follows their example, or a different, higher model of open discussion of competing truth claims, that I have always advocated.

I do not consider myself an agnostic anymore, finding fence sitting untenable. I could say I am now an evil Atheist, or I could use the softer sounding title of Freethinker.

I’m so surprised that I fell off of my seat. How could this happen!?

For now I will simply call myself an Ex-Christian, though there is more to it than being an ex something or another. I no longer believe in any gods or goddesses, they are all primitive imaginings reflecting an escape from fear and ignorance. There are many things we do not know about the world and the universe at large, but not knowing the how’s or why’s of things does not predispose us to believing in a giant Sky Daddy, or Tri-Daddy, or whatever.

Right. And now Dave worships the wonderful goddess of Reason and his own brain, as if it were the end and arbiter of all things.

I want to see reasons for adopting such a viewpoint. I’ve seen not a single compelling one yet. He claims to be following reason now. Then let him demonstrate that with some solid rational arguments and so-called “freethinking.” But as G.K. Chesterton said, “freethinkers’ are often so “open-minded” that their brains fall out.

* * *

 

Dave provides further “reasons” for his admittedly non-reasonable, subjective deconversion in the combox (these are disconnected excerpts):

Christianity is just another man-made, phony cult – that’s all.

While touting itself as the answer to man’s ultimate questions, all it really does is enslave the mind.

Yes, of course. That’s why modern science began in a thoroughly Christian environment and why virtually all major fields of science were founded by Christians who were scientists, and many crucial discoveries were made by these Christian thinking men (Kelvin, Pascal, Boyle, Pasteur, Cuvier, Babbage, Rayleigh, Fleming, Maxwell, Mendel, da Vinci, Ray, Woodward, Steno, Davy, Linnaeus, Faraday, Kepler, Ramsay, Bacon, etc.; Isaac Newton being an Arian).

If you are trying to say there are good people who happen to be Christians, well then I completely agree. If what you are trying to say is that because there are good people who are Christians that Christianity is true, then I disagree.

Works both ways: “If you are trying to say there are bad people who happen to be Christians, well then I completely agree. If what you are trying to say is that because there are bad people who are Christians that Christianity is false, then I disagree.” Yet this comprises most of Dave’s fallacious reasoning for becoming an atheist. He proved himself, by analogy, that it is fallacious reasoning.

Christianity has condemned all human expression outside of its confining walls to a vague worthlessness.

Absolutely not. Some fundamentalist extremists such as Dave’s old buddies may do that, but they do not represent all of Christianity, by any stretch of the imagination. To the contrary, true biblical Christianity respects anything that is true, wherever it comes from. That’s what Paul did in Athens, in his sermon on Mars Hill. C.S. Lewis expresses this theme in his book The Abolition of Man, as does G.K. Chesterton in his Everlasting Man. Vatican II stressed it, etc. Dave shows his ignorance, in equating a corrupt, anti-intellectual portion of Christianity with the whole.

The Bible means what it means except when it doesn’t mean what it means, therefore this doesn’t mean what it means, it means whatever John says it means.

Get it, y’all?

Nope, I confess that I don’t.

Whenever Christians start asking questions, it’s nearly always to make some point or promote some private agenda.

I ask questions because I am applying the same method that Dave did, that led him out of Christianity. Should he not be subjected to the same scrutiny? Questioning is thinking. That’s why I am a socratic.

Science has not presented an adequate explanation for the beginning of the universe. At least, not to my mind it hasn’t. But then again, I don’t understand quite a few things that scientists have come up with. In fact, I don’t even fully comprehend how my car works, or what makes the Internet work. If I were to list all the things I don’t fully understand, or don’t even understand at all, the list, I fear, would be excessively long.

Why, then, does Dave reject Christianity because he doesn’t fully understand many aspects of it? This confirms an argument I made earlier.

How did this god create the universe? What method did he use? When, exactly, did the process begin? What materials were used. How were the materials materialized? Can we replicate any of this in a laboratory?

My assumption is that the answer for these, and any other salient questions, would be: “HIS ways are unknowable.”

How is that essentially different from a scientist honestly admitting that we don’t have a clue what caused the Big Bang or what existed before it, or how DNA or life itself evolved, or the mechanics of how and why gravity does what it does, or why light travels at the speed it does, and a host of other things that are dark mysteries in science? Why the double standard?

So, in other words, your answer to the question of how the universe began — “God did it” — is no more satisfying or explanatory than the answers from science that you’ve castigated.

To say “god did it” explains nothing. The beginning of the universe remains inscrutable — beyond our comprehension.

Exactly! Both require “faith” in things that cannot be proven, only assumed. Both include reason, but that reason cannot explain absolutely everything. If things in science can be “inscrutable” why not also some things in religion and about God?

when Christianity condemned the pursuit of science, viewing it as an attack on faith, many centuries of ignorant darkness, disease, and painful death resulted.

This is an extreme exaggeration, amounting to a virtual complete falsehood. If it weren’t for Christianity there would have been no science as we know it to begin with. The ancient Greeks didn’t originate modern science. Christians did. Even the notorious Galileo episode is a lot more complex than is made out, as I have written about, in three papers.

. . . ignorance is frequently the refuge of the religious.

How tolerant and unprejudiced to speak in such terms of entire classes of people: the vast majority of mankind.

In just a few sentences you’ve proclaimed to have the ultimate truth, attempted to goad and personally insult those who disagree with you, become angry and offended over constructive criticism , and defended mental laziness as if it were a virtue. Good job.

Obviously, then, Dave will do a far better job in responding to this honest critique.

As far as your comment about the church doing good things throughout history, you really need to take a church history course. Christianity caused the Dark Ages.

Right. Any fool even remotely acquainted with medieval history knows that what is called the “Dark Ages” was a result of barbarianism overrunning Christian environments, not the converse. This is abominably ignorant. Dave doesn’t have the slightest clue what he is talking about. Has he never read about, e.g., the pagan Vikings murdering monks and plundering monasteries? Is he unaware that these same monks were often responsible for maintaining the heritage of classical (i.e., non-Christian) learning, until the barbarians came in and swept that away? Does he not know that St. Thomas Aquinas was inspired philosophically by the pagan philosopher Aristotle, and that this synthesis caused a huge revival of learning in the 13th century? One could go on and on.

Can there be any doubt, based on the nasty, smartass, self-righteous, arrogant attitudes of the “truly born again™” flocking here lately, that if a holy crusade were to be proclaimed in a new, improved, Christian America, there’d be plenty of volunteers joining “Christ’s holy soliders?”

This is truly sad. Religion is complete emotion — thought means little.

To all Anonymous Christian Nazis, I want you all to notice something. If you do a Google search for ex-Christian websites, you’ll come up with a few. Then if you do a Google search for Christian websites, count how many you come up with. Then, of those Christian websites, check how many allow comments to be made by dissenting voices. Hell, check how many allow any comments at all!

Then, ask yourself why.

More reason to expect that Dave will be more than willing to openly discuss my critique.

There must be another verse that says something to the effect that: No matter how ridiculous, illogical, stupid, and irrational, anything in this book seems, all of you who want to call yourselves Christians, and go to a wonderful place when you leave this life, must suspend all rational thought processes, turn your brains off to anything except the particular doctrine being promulgated by your particular sect.

Stick you fingers in your ears whenever anyone suggests to you that everything taught by your particular sect is not absolutely and positively the truth, and the very words of God, and repeat over and over. “I know that everything in the bible is true, because the bible tells me so”

Yes. Dave’s own brainwashed, anti-intellectual past projected onto Christians en masse. What compelling “reasoning” . . .

I was born in America, where Christianity is the dominant religion, Christianity is the religion that screwed with my thinking for so many years. That’s why.

I happen to think those other religions you mentioned are nonsense, but since I didn’t loose 30 years of my life following those idiotic religions, I don’t personally have any emotional or economic baggage associated with those religions. I have no reason to hate those religions. I do have a reason to hate Christianity.

By way of analogy: You can’t hate someone else’s ex-wife. But you can hate your own.

I.e., a warped version of Christianity that cannot be equated with the whole. Illogical . . . and it shows that emotionalism is in the forefront of Dave’s apostasy, not reason.

* * *

I look forward to Dave’s response. I don’t expect to get any response from him (and assuredly I won’t hold my breath), but I would be delighted to be pleasantly surprised that an atheist would, for once, rationally defend his reasons for leaving Christianity (or unreasonable facsimiles thereof).

Stay in touch! Like Biblical Evidence for Catholicism on Facebook:

2017-04-22T18:27:46-04:00

Hell3

Photo by “kummod” [public domain / Pixabay]

* * *

These occurred in the combox of my post, A Defense of Hell. Korou is an atheist who claims he would become a theist / Christian, if only there were any evidence at all for it. He believes there is none. I stated in the combox that I didn’t have time to debate further a very complex topic such as hell, but he kept making short replies, thus tempting me to come back with short counter-replies (you know how that goes, when one feels they have good answers, but little time to give them). We see below the results of this scenario: in no particular order. Other Christians in the thread did answer him at great length, for anyone who is interested. But in this instance, I gave “nutshell” arguments, which are good for people who possess relatively less knowledge about theology. My opponent’s words will be in blue. Some words in green come from a second atheist, Tacitus.

* * * * *

I’ve collected a bunch of scholarly articles about hell.

Thank you, I’m sure they’ll make interesting reading. I’ve just started with [William Lane] Craig and Bradley’s debate. Bradley does an excellent job of pointing out the illogical nature of Craig’s arguments about hell. I’m afraid, though, that no matter how many articles defending the existence of hell you collect they’re unlikely to help you; you still have to address the basic incongruity between a God you say is loving and the existence of hell. Such defenses as we’ve seen in this post and thread only serve, at best, to push the Christian’s difficulties a step back without resolving them.

Hell’s existence with a loving God is no less implausible than a prison’s existence, while there are many loving, merciful judges. The supposed fundamental contradiction simply isn’t there.

Which judge do you know of who would sentence a criminal to an infinite sentence? Which judge do you know of who would regard “I don’t want to be friends with you” as a crime?

* * *

In Christian thought, God is apparent by His creation (Romans 1). But in the next chapter, Paul appears to give a lot of slack to those who through no fault of their own, do not accept the “law” (by extension, the gospel). There is ignorance and there is obstinacy in the face of what one truly does know. I wrote about this distinction.

I’ve read your article and appreciate the conciliatory tone. But there seems to be some confusion. The people who honestly do not believe that God exists – me, Richard Dawkins and just about anyone else I’ve heard describe themselves as an atheist – they’ll be treated mercifully. Well, that’s fair enough. Kind of. But who are the other type of people? The obstinate people? These people who apparently know God exists but deny Him? I’ve never met or heard of anyone like them. How could anyone be like that? Who could honestly say “Yes, I know that God exists but I refuse to worship Him”?

Satanists, for one.

Are mostly atheists. They don’t actually believe in God, or Satan either.

I know some Catholic scholars will argue that a “sincerely seeking” Atheist can be saved from Hell, but is that most of them, or a vanishingly small number?

That (salvation of some atheists) has been my argument, too. But trying to determine numbers is simply a mind game. The point is that God knows each person’s heart and He is merciful. Only the ones who know for sure that He exists and reject Him anyway, will be damned for eternity. The free gift of salvation is open to all.

We don’t know how many are saved, but the suggestion from Jesus seems to be that a great number are damned, from His referring to the “narrow way” of salvation and the “broad road” of destruction, and the lack of faith on earth, etc. Scripture seems to imply a large proportion of the damned. From the history of human sin and rebellion against God and His revelation, that seems plausible.

Who are these people who know for sure that He exists and reject Him utterly? I’m not one, and have never met or heard of one. Perhaps you can quote a few people, or link to the websites of these strange individuals? I’m not an atheist like that, and have never heard of or met an atheist like that.

People can delude themselves sometimes, too. They may claim to be atheist, when in fact, they simply don’t want to be constrained by the moral system that God represents. I don’t feel a need to identify who is who. That’s for God to figure out.

Well if I were God, I’d be thinking: “Dear me, most of the human race have ended up in hell forever. I wish I’d thought that out more carefully. Surely there was something I could have done? Maybe if I hadn’t manifested myself just one time in a remote part of the ancient world things might have turned out better…?

Yes, He could have made us all robots who automatically always did right and believed in Him. I’m sure glad He didn’t. It’s cool being a free agent. And with freedom necessarily comes the possibility of making wrong choices and denying the God from Whom we all derive. Free is free. Even an omnipotent God can’t force a free person to make a free will choice, because that is logically impossible.

I’m afraid that’s a false dilemma. There’s plenty of room between the robots you describe and the world we see – a world in which, quite clearly, the vast majority of the human population innocently and sincerely chooses a path of goodness which leads to hell – sincere Muslims, sincere atheists, sincere Jews. The key point is this: if God is as described, then we must assume that this is the way he wants the world to be. Free will is a mathematical argument, but in the real world we know that it’s quite possible to steer people into making a decision we want them to without taking away their freedome of choice. God just obviously isn’t very good at it. 

If we assume that God exists, this is a huge problem. If we assume that He doesn’t, this is just what we would expect to see – a world of religions, all with the same amount of proof – which is to say none – and all of them claiming to be the one true faith.

So Moonies and nutcases like the wacko in Waco or Jim Jones have the exact same amount of evidence for their religion (“none”) as Catholics and Protestants do, huh? This does grave damage to your credibility as a rational debater.

Since you yourself just said that evidence and arguments count for nothingwhen compared to religious experiences you don’t have a leg to stand on when trying to convince an independent party that your religion is more valid than any other. Muslims, Jews, moonies or Catholics – all they have to do is say “I have sincere faith in my religious beliefs” and their arguments are suddenly just as valid as yours.

Sure Catholicism and Protestantism are different from the Moonies and other cults. They’re older, more respected, have more followers and don’t make such ridiculous demands upon their followers. None of this, however, means that they have any less proof than other religions, since all religions function the same way: by faith; and it is on this measurement that all religions are equally valid.

Saying that people come to faith in one usual way is not the same as saying “evidence and arguments count for nothing . . .” The arguments are fine; they just aren’t the way that people usually arrive at a decision to become a Christian. Other ways are the usual means. They help bolster and support faith in most cases. And this is true of apologetics generally.

Your reasoning is like saying, “the way I first discovered love of sweets was through the local Dairy Queen; therefore, cookies and cake and pudding bought at supermarkets count for nothing.”

This is clearly fallacious. The presence of one thing in many instances does nothing to discount the “validity” and goodness of the other.

Nor is this saying that all Christian sects are exactly the same: all having no evidence. That’s your cynical slant. It is not my position, and doesn’t follow from my position at all.

Because they’re not fine. If they were fine then people would be converting because of them. That’s the way that arguments work. Plenty of people do convert to Christianity; but not because of apologetic arguments. Why not? Because they’re not convincing.

You just keep confirming what I say while denying that you’re doing it. I give you credit for your honesty in doing so, but you’re undermining your own case. The apologetic arguments are supposed to provide evidence; they’re supposed to be “reasonable faith” as W.L. Craig titled his book; they’re supposed to be the “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” and “The Case for Faith”. But – by your own admission – they don’t work; people don’t read them and think “Hey, this evidence has changed my view and made me rethink things; I’d better become a Christian.” No, the people who read apologetics arguments are Christians already – and when they’ve read them, they think “Aha! I knew it! My faith is based on good arguments! Those atheists and skeptics were wrong!”

That’s what apologetics arguments are for; not to convert people, but to reassure them.

You have to say this because for you, reason is apparently the means by which anyone does anything. Lots of things are determined on a non-rational basis, such as choice of food, favorite colors for a room or clothes, picking a marriage partner, what determines the friends we pick out, the music we like, appreciation of nature or artistic beauty . . .

We don’t say that all of that is UNreasonable, simply because rationality is not the sole or primary determinant of those choices. It’s simply “other” than rationality. Matter of the heart or artistic taste are that. But I don’t see people running around chiding others for having a “blind faith” in Beethoven or the color blue or lovely sunsets or a preference for petite brunettes with big beautiful eyes (characteristics my wife has). We don’t call poets irrational simply for being poets. Yet poetry is a very subjective, often non-logical endeavor.

Likewise, religion is one of those things that function mostly on a basis of things other than reason and logic per se, while not necessarily (here’s where you go wrong) being illogical or unreasonable.

But because atheists are hyper-rational and often have a poor understanding of non-rational elements in life, they can’t grasp the point I am making; you can’t comprehend it. You can only see it as a plea for blind faith and irrationality.

It’s the same mentality that habitually leads atheists to say that Christians are anti-science merely because we also believe in God and think there are other epistemological considerations and ways of determining truth, like philosophy, and other philosophies besides the narrow atheist bubble-world of empiricism and logical positivism.

You’re a prisoner of your own false presuppositions. This is why I’ve always viewed atheism as mainly an intellectual disorder (lousy thinking) rather than a moral one (exceptionally wicked, evil people), though it could always possibly be a moral problem, too, in any given case.

I could also make your argument as applying to atheists, because the same dynamics apply. I would submit that most atheists don’t become so by virtue of cold, calculated logic. The reasons are usually highly subjective and emotional: they’re sick and tired of Christian rules, or they see Christians as hypocrites or sexually repressed or authoritarian or puritanical in a nauseating way, or they view them as opposed to science or reason. Many atheists are former fundamentalists, and one can see why they rejected that, since it is a urine-poor representation of authentic Christianity.

These are all primarily subjective and emotional reasonings; ones of passion and defensiveness and being fed up. And they are the reasons we observe times without number in atheist rhetoric. The “reasons” for your atheism are manifest in what you guys talk (and complain about). Atheists talk far more like disgruntled former employees or husbands / wives than dispassionate, objective philosophers.

And atheist reasonings and logical arguments are mostly accepted after the fact as well, just as Christian apologetics resonates far more with existing Christians than to non-Christians. This is how most people (theists and atheists alike) operate.

I can turn almost all of your arguments above analogically against you:

Plenty of people do convert to atheism; but not because of atheist arguments. Why not? Because they’re not convincing. [they are bolstered by them after the fact, to justify or rationalize their decision]

They don’t work; people don’t read them and think “Hey, this evidence has changed my view and made me rethink things; I’d better become an atheist.” [because in these matters, reason is not usually the primary cause]

The people who read atheist rhetoric and self-justification arguments are atheists already – and when they’ve read them, they think “Aha! I knew it! My rejection of religious faith is based on good arguments! Those Christians and other religious fanatics were wrong!”

That’s what atheist / anti-theist arguments are for; not to convert people to atheism, but to reassure atheists and make them smugly feel so intellectually and morally superior to Christians.

* * * 

Hell is terrible but justice demands it.

“You made the wrong choice, and justice demands that you suffer forever because of it.” Is that what you’re saying?

No. I would say that human beings are eternal, one way or the other. They can either end up eternally with God (for Whom they were made, and union with Whom is their greatest fulfillment) or without Him. God offers the free gift of mercy and salvation to all who will repent and accept it. No one need go to hell. But God honors the choices even of those who reject Him.

And once they’ve made that choice, they can never change it. Not a minute later, not a day later, not a trillion years later. “So what if you made the wrong choice? You had your chance. You should have been a Christian. Now, go to hell.”

The choice is made during one’s entire life. But even that is not enough for skeptics of God and Christianity: “Naw, 70 or so years ain’t long enough to allow us to make up our minds on the question of God.”

Of course, the false premise is always that God hasn’t manifested Himself enough so that the wise, intelligent, ultra-reasonable atheists can make a “rational” choice of following Him. Obviously, we deny that this is the case.

It would be a better case for God having manifested himself if we had more evidence for them than stories which were written down decades after they were purported to have happened.

You don’t need to be ultra-reasonable to regard the case for God as unproven. Common sense is quite enough.

Compared to the trillions and trillions of years we will live for, and then an eternity beyond that? and by the way, no, it is self-evident that 70 years is not enough time to make up our minds on the question of God – because most people don’t!

Ya lives yer life and ya makes yer choice . . . fer God or agin God . . .

And that’s always assuming that you live a rich, comfortable three-score-and-ten life with plenty of time for philosophical reflection… To borrow a phrase: I cannot for the life of me understand how someone could think that letting someone chosoe between heaven and hell and then NOT letting them change their mind if they made a mistake is either just or loving.

Okay, so you must also think (applying analogy) that a convicted murderer must get a chance to repent right after his sentencing to life in prison. He says he is sorry, so now he’s a free man, huh? I cannot for the life of me understand that. But it’s what you expect of God.

No, that’s what you expect of God. A person can be as vile as is humanly possible, and commit the worst atrocities imaginable; but if they repent and become a Christian God will take them to heaven. Right? What I would expect of a just and loving God is more or less what I’d expect of a just judge; punishment for actual wrongs committed in proportion to how grave they were. Which is why a God who sends souls to help forever is immoral, and talk of people sending themselves to Hell is nonsense.

* * * 

The atheist will always find fault with God. Ironies abound . . .

Quite a defense mechanism there! “If you don’t agree with me it means you haven’t thought it through properly.”

1. I would never make such a broad stupid statement like that. But this is stock atheist tired rhetoric. ZZZzzzzz . . . . (-_-) 

2. I do conclude in some cases that someone hasn’t thought through an issue adequately, but it is never merely because they disagree with me. In some cases it is true. It’s not necessarily a defense mechanism.

Nobody said those words, but they’re the truth of what Dave Armstrong says: “the atheist will always find fault with God.” Atheists are quite willing to be convinced of God’s existence; it’s just that the evidence for God is so very, very poor. Apologists can’t admit that, so they have to pretend that atheists are “hyper rational” or “over-skeptical” – forgetting that atheists are simply applying the same standards that Christians do themselves, to anything except God.

It’s just that no evidence is ever sufficient for them, because they labor under the false assumptions and “empirical-only” mindset of scientism and (yes) hyper-rationalism. Those are legitimate categories and intellectual shortcomings.

I’m an apologist, and I think the cumulative evidence is compelling. I don’t have to pretend anything. And atheist arguments are often very poor: above all when they attempt to do biblical exegesis, which is some of the worst I’ve ever seen.

But I understand that this is how you have to spin it. What choice do you have? You can’t just say, “I’m unconvinced”; no, you must go on to claim that we apologists are supposedly pretending and being hypocritically selective as regards evidence.

An atheist is quite capable of presenting their arguments poorly, and a flat-earther is quite capable of being a brilliant debater. But the heart of the issue is this: why do you believe what you believe? What evidence can you offer for it? And the evidence and arguments that apologists use are never convincing – except to people who are already predisposed to accept them.

Virtually no one comes to initial faith in Jesus or conversion to Christianity through apologetics (and I know this firsthand, due to my own 34-year apologetics efforts, as both a Protestant and Catholic). I didn’t, myself. In that sense, I agree with you.

It is an interior spiritual experience or awareness which is key. But that is where we will likely continue to disagree, because you’ll probably dismiss that, too, with a wave of the hand. This is what atheists do.

If you’re serious about possible conversion (you claim you are willing), I highly recommend that you get past standard apologetics and inquire about these sorts of far deeper analyses.

I recommend three writers who discuss it: Cardinal Newman (Essay on the Grammar of Assent: available online), Michael Polanyi, and Alvin Plantinga. William Alston is good, too.

I’ve even made it easy for atheists to read this great stuff, in my collection of scholarly links (one of many). See section 2.

* * *

I’m quite ready to abandon atheism and become a theist. I’ve just never seen any reason to as yet.

I’m quite ready to abandon theism and become an atheist. I’ve just never seen any reason to as yet.

And you aren’t going to. It’s theism which has the burden of proof. Which brings us back to the only important question we can ever ask: what is your best evidence for God’s existence?
And if you can’t answer that -well, there’s your reason for becoming an atheist.

Here are some of the best arguments I could find:

1) God: Historical Arguments (Copious Resources)

2) Atheism & Atheology (Copious Resources)

3) Science and Christianity (Copious Resources)

4) 15 Theistic Arguments (Copious Resources)

5) Teleological (Design) Argument for God (Resources)

6) Cosmological Argument for God (Resources)

7) Ontological Argument for God (Resources)

The usual atheist response after I present these, that I worked for several weeks compiling is (this has literally happened several times) [my sarcastic embellishment of real events]: “I can’t read all that! Can’t you summarize some of the best ones in slogans and soundbites, so my feeble mind with its short attention span can comprehend it?”

Sorry, I don’t do that. We’re not in kindergarten here. If an atheist asks for the best rational arguments we can give, I think I have collected a great deal of them, and they will have to spend serious time reading, if they are serious about an objective examination of the philosophical strength of the theist or Christian worldview.

My goal is to present the best evidence I can find. I don’t need to always personally argue some argument. Some scholar is gonna be able to do it way better than I am.

Atheist inquirers who weren’t serious in the first place will ignore and mock my links collections. Their goal is usually just to make Christians look stupid and supposedly make themselves look so intellectually superior.

More open-minded, serious ones, on the other hand, who have asked for some solid arguments, will look them over (and should thank me for saving them the trouble, collecting all these articles).

* * * 

If committing a crime is a free choice, then why are there so many more criminals from certain socioeconomic backgrounds than others? This is the flaw in the entire argument. Free will, in reality, is nothing of the sort. Yes, we make our own decisions, but they are heavily influenced by our circumstances, our background, our personality our genes, our upbringing — i.e. our inherent nature and our entire life’s experiences up to that point.

There is plenty of scientific evidence for how elusive the concept of free will is. Even the way a question is presented to you can heavily influence the decision you make in response. Any pollster can tell you that.

Yes, lots of different causes lead to human behavior, good or bad. I’ve always believed that (as a sociology major in college). This doesn’t prove, however, that determinism is true. For that to be true, you have to prove that there can be no free decision that is not predetermined by environment or genetics, etc. And that would be quite difficult if not impossible to do.

My argument doesn’t require the non-existence of free will. I make no claims to be an expert on philosophy or the latest scientific research into how the human mind works, but if you step back and look at the statistics as opposed to each individual case, you can clearly see, for example, the decision to stay out of trouble with the law can be easy for one group of people while it can be next to impossible for another. The difference, when you boil it down, is little more than accident of birth.

And when it comes to your religious faith as a adult, is there any greater determining factor than where you were born and raised? How else can one explain the fact that, say, 97.8% of all the citizens of Turkey are practicing Muslims?

If the existence and nature of God can be so clearly seen and we all have free will, then how did 72 million people out of 74 million get it so wrong?

Yep. Most people simply adopt the view of those around them. I never did that. I was a practical atheist in the late 60s and early 70s. Then I was an evangelical, which is very unpopular in secular circles; then a Catholic, which is even more unpopular.

I conformed to my upbringing at first, but then I didn’t: twice.

* * *

What no orthodox, biblical Christian can deny is that hell 1) will definitely have souls in it, 2) is irrevocable punishment, 3) is eternal, and 4) the choice of the person who winds up there; not God’s predestined choice from all eternity.

#1 through #3 refute universalism / Origenism and annihilationism, and #4, Calvinism, Luther (not Lutheranism), and predestinarian strains of fundamentalism.

2018-06-16T15:55:38-04:00

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011): one of the most famous of the “new atheists”; image by Surian Soosay (12-16-11) [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]

* * * * *

Alphabetical by Author

 

ATHEISM, CRITIQUES OF 

Atheist Demands for “Empirical” Proofs of God (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

Atheism: More Rational & Scientific than Christianity? (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

On Critiquing Atheist “Deconversion” Stories (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

Atheism: the Faith of “Atomism” (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

The Atheism of the Gaps (Stephen M. Barr, 1995)

The Presumptuousness of Atheism (Paul Copan, 1997)

Cosmology – A Religion for Atheists? [Hawking] (William Lane Craig)

Theistic Critiques Of Atheism (William Lane Craig, 2007)

Is Unbelief Culpable? (William Lane Craig, 2010)

Straw men and terracotta armies [atheists & the cosmological argument] (Edward Feser, 2009)

Grow up or shut up [atheists & the cosmological argument] (Edward Feser, 2011)

The road from atheism (Edward Feser, 2012)

Clarke on the stock caricature of First Cause arguments  [atheists & the cosmological argument] (Edward Feser, 2014)

Repressed Knowledge of God (+ Part II) (Edward Feser, 2015)

There’s no such thing as “natural atheology” (Edward Feser, 2015)

My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: A Discussion between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas (2004)

Answer to an Atheist: Are Humans Nothing More Than Bodies? (Hank Hanegraaff, 2000)

Christianity and Pagan Literature (James Hannam, 2003)

Ten quick responses to atheist claims (John Lennox, 2014)

Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality (Chad Meister, 2010)

God on the Brain (Angus Menuge, 2010)

Ghosts for the Atheist (Robert Velarde, 2009)

The Psychology of Atheism (Paul C. Vitz)

 

CONCILIATORY EFFORTS / COMMON GROUND

Secular Humanism and Christian Humanism: Seeking After Common Ground (Dave Armstrong and Sue Strandberg, 2001)

Can Atheists be Saved? Are They All “Evil”? (Dave Armstrong, 2003)

Constructive, Enjoyable Atheist-Christian Discussion Perfectly Possible (Dave Armstrong, 2007)

16 Atheists / Agnostics and Me: Sounds Like a Good Ratio! Further Adventures at an Atheist “Bible Study” Group (Dave Armstrong, 2010)

Clarifications re: Atheist “Reductio” Paper (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

NT on God-Rejecters vs. Open-Minded Agnostics (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

Legitimate Atheist Anger (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

My Enjoyable Dinner with Six Atheist Friends (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

 

EVIL, PROBLEM OF 

Treatise on the Problem of Evil (Dave Armstrong, 2002)

Some Christian Replies to the Problem of Evil as Set Forth by Atheists (Dave Armstrong, 2006)

Dialogue #2 with an Atheist on the Problem of Evil (Dave Armstrong vs. “drunken tune”, 2006)

Dialogue #3 with an Atheist on the Problem of Evil (Dave Armstrong vs. John W. Loftus, 2006)

“Logical” Problem of Evil: Alvin Plantinga’s Decisive Refutation [Dave Armstrong, 2006]

Is the “Strong” Logical Argument From Evil Largely Discredited If Not Dead, Or Alive & Well? (Atheist Confusion) (Dave Armstrong, 2006)

Why Did a Perfect God Create an Imperfect World? (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

How Can God be Just and Ordain Evil? (John A. Battle, 1996)

The Connection-Building Theodicy (Robin Collins, 2012)

Debate: God, Morality, and Evil (William Lane Craig vs. Kai Nielsen, Feb. 1991)

Freedom and the Ability to Choose Evil (William Lane Craig, 2008)

Animal Suffering (William Lane Craig, 2009)

The “Evil god” Objection (William Lane Craig, 2011)

Problem of Evil without Objective Moral Values (William Lane Craig, 2011)

Molinism and the Soteriological Problem of Evil Once More (William Lane Craig, 2011)

On the Goodness of God (William Lane Craig, 2012)

The Problem of Evil Once More (William Lane Craig, 2012)

Gratuitous Evil and Moral Discernment (William Lane Craig, 2013)

God’s Permitting Natural Evil (William Lane Craig, 2013)

God’s Permitting Horrific Evils (William Lane Craig, 2014)

Law’s “evil-god challenge” (+ Part II) (Edward Feser, 2010-2011)

The Logical Problem of Evil: Mackie and Plantinga (Daniel Howard-Snyder)

How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World (Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, 1994)

The Real Problem of No Best World (Frances and Daniel Howard-Snyder, 1996)

Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga’s Free Will Defense (Daniel Howard-Snyder & John O’Leary-Hawthorne, 1998)

Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous Evil? (Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, 1999)

God, Evil, and Suffering (Daniel Howard-Snyder, 1999)

On Rowe’s Argument from Particular Horrors (Daniel Howard-Snyder, 2001)

Grounds for Belief in God Aside, Does Evil Make Atheism More Reasonable than Theism? (Daniel Howard-Snyder & Michael Bergmann, 2001)

Theodicy (Daniel Howard-Snyder, 2006)

The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy (Peter van Inwagen, 1988)

The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence (Peter van Inwagen, 1991)

Probability and Evil (Peter van Inwagen, 1997)

The Argument from Particular Horrendous Evils (Peter van Inwagen, 2001)

The Problem of Evil: Preliminaries (Robert C. Koons, 1998)

Tough-minded and Tender-hearted Responses to the Problem of Evil (Robert C. Koons, 1998)

The Free Will Defense (Robert C. Koons, 1998)

God’s Answer to Human Suffering (Peter Kreeft, 1986)

Evil (Peter Kreeft, 1988)

Does the savagery of predation in nature show that God either isn’t, or at least isn’t good-hearted? (Glenn Miller, 1999)

Theodicy (+ Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V) (Glenn Miller, 2000)

Christian Theism and the Problem of Evil (Michael L. Peterson, 1978)

The Perfect Goodness of God (Alvin Plantinga, 1962)

The Probablistic Argument from Evil (Alvin Plantinga, 1978)

Degenerate Evidence and Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil (Alvin Plantinga, 1998)

A New Free Will Defense (Alexander R. Pruss, 2002)

Limiting God to solve the problem of evil (Alexander R. Pruss, 2012)

The argument from partial theodicy (Alexander R. Pruss, 2015)

Why Does God Allow Suffering? (Lee Strobel, 2001)

The Problem of Observed Pain: A Study of C. S. Lewis on Suffering (Robert Walter Wall, 1983)

 

“GOOD: PROBLEM OF”

Dialogue w an Atheist on the “Problem of Good” (Dave Armstrong vs. Mike Hardie, 2001)

 

HELL: “PROBLEM” OF

Friendly Discussion on Presuppositions and Basic Differences (Particularly, Hell), With an Agnostic (Dave Armstrong vs. Ed Babinski, 2005)

Dialogue on Hell and God’s Justice, Part II (Dave Armstrong, 2009)

Debate: Can a Loving God Send People to Hell? (William Lane Craig vs. Ray Bradley, 1994)

Bradley on Hell (William Lane Craig, 2007)

Do the Damned in Hell Accrue Further Punishment? (William Lane Craig, 2008)

Reasonable Damnation: How Jonathan Edwards Argued for the Rationality of Hell (Bruce W. Davidson, 1995)

Hell (Peter Kreeft, 1988)

What kind of a choice is THAT?!: “Love me or Burn”? (Glenn Miller)

A Traditionalist Response to John Stott’s Arguments for Annihilationism (Robert A. Peterson, 1994)

Fallacies in the Annihilationism Debate?  (Robert A. Peterson, 2007)

The Dark Side of Eternity: Hell as Eternal Conscious Punishment (Robert A. Peterson, 2007)

 

HIDDENNESS: DIVINE

Why Isn’t the Evidence Clearer? (John A. Bloom, 1994)

The Argument from Divine Hiddenness (Daniel Howard-Snyder, 1996)

Hiddenness of God (Daniel Howard-Snyder, 2006)

Why Doesn’t God Make Christianity Clearer? (+ Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V) (Glenn Miller, 2000)

Coercion and the Hiddenness of God (Michael J. Murray, 1993)

 

INQUISITION AND CRUSADES

[see many links on my Inquisition, Crusades, and “Catholic Scandals” Index Page]

 

MORAL “DIFFICULTIES” OF GOD’S (OR HIS FOLLOWERS’) BEHAVIOR IN THE BIBLE / “DIVINE GENOCIDE”

The Judgment of Nations: Biblical Passages and Commentary (Dave Armstrong, 2001)

Debate on the Supposed Irrationality and Immorality of the Psalms (+ Part II / Part III / Part IV) (Dave Armstrong vs. Ed Babinski, 2004)

Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart, or Positively Ordain Evil? (Dave Armstrong vs. “DagoodS”, 2006)

Reflections on Original Sin and God’s Prerogative to Judge and Kill as He Wills (Sometimes, Entire Nations) (Dave Armstrong, 2007)

“How Can God [in the OT] Order the Killing and Massacre of Innocents?” [Amalekites, etc.] (Dave Armstrong, 2007)

Did Moses (and God) Sin In Judging the Midianites (Numbers 31)? (+ Part II) (Dave Armstrong, 2008)

Difficulties in Understanding God’s Judgment on Heathen Nations (and other “Problem Passages” in the OT) (Dave Armstrong, 2009)

Jephthah’s Burnt Offering Sacrifice of His Daughter (Judges 11:30-40): Did God Command or Sanction It? (Dave Armstrong, 2009)

Exodus 20:5: God’s “Punishing” or Descendants “to the Third and Fourth Generation”: Proof of an “Unjust” God? (Dave Armstrong, 2010)

Israel as God’s Agent of Judgment (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment? (Paul Copan)

Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics (Paul Copan)

Hateful, Vindictive Psalms? (Paul Copan, 2008)

Slaughter of the Canaanites (William Lane Craig, 2007)

The “Slaughter” of the Canaanites Re-visited (William Lane Craig, 2011)

Once More: The Slaughter of the Canaanites (William Lane Craig, 2013)

How Could a Good God Sanction the Stoning of a Disobedient Child? (Hank Hanegraaff, 2007)

Are Generational Curses Biblical? (Hank Hanegraaff, 2008)

The Inspiration of the Hebrew Bible and the Morality of God’s Commands (Peter van Inwagen, 2010)

Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims (Clay Jones, 2010)

OT Passages on what God considers worthy of ‘vengeance’ (Glenn Miller)

Is the God of the Bible morally repugnant? (Glenn Miller)

Is God Always Wrathful, Vengeful, Jealous, and Angry? (Glenn Miller, 2000)

Shouldn’t the butchering of the Amalekite children be considered war crimes? (Glenn Miller, 2001)

What about God’s cruelty against the Midianites? [Numbers 31] (Glenn Miller, 2001)

Is God harsh, unlovable, unloving, duplicitous? (Glenn Miller, 2003)

Why couldn’t Israel take in the Amalekites like they did foreign survivors in Deut 20? (Glenn Miller, 2006)

Was God being evil when He killed all the firstborn in Egypt? (Glenn Miller, 2009)

Did you overstate the case for Amalekites being accepted as immigrants into Israel? (Glenn Miller, 2010)

How could a God of Love order the massacre/annihilation of the Canaanites? (Glenn Miller, 2013)

 

NAZI HOLOCAUST AND THE CHURCH / ALLEGED “HITLER’S POPE”

Jewish Recognition of Pope Pius XII’s Support

Exposing Hitler’s Pope and Its Author (William Doino, Jr.)

In Defence of Pius XII and His Aid to the Jews (Rabbi David Dalin)

The Tragic Heroism of Pope Pius XII (George W. Rutler)

The Catholic Church and the Nazis (website)

Pope Pius XI [not Pius XII] and the Nazis (Jimmy Akin)

Hitler and Christianity (Edward Bartlett-Jones, 2009)

Was Hitler a Christian? (Dinesh D’Souza)

Pope Pius XII and the Jews (Sr. Margherita Marchione)

Nazi Policy and the Catholic Church (Karol Jozef Gajewski)

Nazis and Church Locked Horns Early (Zenit)

Hitler’s Pope? (Donald Devine)

Pius XII, co-conspirator in tyrannicide (George Weigel)

Cornwell’s Cheap Shot at Pius XII (Peter Gumpel)

Did Pius XII Remain Silent? (Fr. William Saunders)

Goldhagen v. Pius XII (Ronald Rychlak)

Blaming the Wartime Pope (Kenneth L. Woodward)

800,000 Saved by Pius XII’s Silence (Donald DeMarco)

Pope Pius XII’s Good Fight (Michael Coren)

 

“NEW ATHEISTS”

Critique of Atheist John W. Loftus’ “Deconversion” Story (Dave Armstrong, 2006)

Atheist John Loftus Reacts to My Analysis of His “Deconversion” (Dave Armstrong, 2006)

John Loftus’ Deconversion & Feuds w Atheists (Dave Armstrong, 2015)

What Michael Behe actually wrote in Time [about Richard Dawkins] (Michael J. Behe, 2007)

Richard Dawkins’ Argument for Atheism in The God Delusion (William Lane Craig, 2007)

Dawkins’ “Central Argument” Once More (William Lane Craig, 2008)

Dawkins’ Delusion (William Lane Craig, 2008)

Has Hawking Eliminated God? (William Lane Craig, 2011)

Curiosity With Stephen Hawking (William Lane Craig, 2011)

The New Philistinism (Edward Feser, 2010)

A clue for Jerry Coyne (Edward Feser, 2011)

Why can’t these guys stay on topic? Or read? [Jerry Coyne] (Edward Feser, 2015)

Red herrings don’t go to heaven either [Jerry Coyne] (Edward Feser, 2015)

From Rage to Faith: Peter Hitchens’ The Rage Against God (Joseph E. Gorra, 2011)

The Plight of the New Atheism: A Critique (Gary R. Habermas, 2008)

Village Atheists with Vengeance (C. Wayne Mayhall, 2007)

 

NON-BELIEF, ARGUMENT FROM

Dialogue on the Argument From Non-Belief (ANB) (Dave Armstrong vs. Steve Conifer & Dr. Ted Drange, 2003)

Reply to Atheist John Loftus’ “Outsider Test of Faith” Series (Dave Armstrong, 2007)

 

OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY AND THE BIBLE: MISCELLANEOUS

What about Those Who have Never Heard the Gospel? (Glenn Miller)

Did the Christians burn/destroy all the classical literature? (Glenn Miller, 1996)

How I would decide between conflicting revelations? (+ Part II) (Glenn Miller, 1997)

 

SEX SCANDALS (CATHOLIC)

[see many links on my Inquisition, Crusades, and “Catholic Scandals” Index Page]

 

SINNERS / HYPOCRISY IN THE CHURCH

[see many links on my Inquisition, Crusades, and “Catholic Scandals” Index Page]

 

SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY

The issue of ‘slavery’ in the NT/Apostolic world (esp. Paul) (Glenn Miller,  1999)

Does God Condone Slavery in the Bible? (Glenn Miller, 2004)

Christianity and the Slavery Question (Arthur Rupprecht, 1963)

[see many more links on my Inquisition, Crusades, and “Catholic Scandals” Index Page]

 

SOUL / CONSCIOUSNESS / LIFE AFTER DEATH / DUALISM / GENERAL RESURRECTION

 

The Possibility of Resurrection (Peter van Inwagen, 1978)

Resurrection (Peter van Inwagen, 1998)

The Case for Life After Death (Peter Kreeft)

Is there evidence for the existence of the “soul”? (Glenn Miller, 1997)

Is there evidence for the existence of “spirits” and some “spiritual dimension”? (Glenn Miller, 2001)

 

WOMEN, CHRISTIAN / BIBLICAL VIEW OF

Women: The Data From the Life and Ministry of Jesus (Glenn Miller, 1996)

Women: The Data From the Historical Literature of the Apostolic Circle (Glenn Miller, 1996)

Women: The Data From the Monarchy Literature (Glenn Miller, 1996)

Women: The Data From the Divided Monarchy Literature (Glenn Miller, 1996)

“Why do men get all the glory in the bible? Why are women only minor characters?!” (Glenn Miller, 1997)

Are the laws in the OT about rape and virginity indicative of a God who is unfair to women? (Glenn Miller, 2001)

Does female “pain-prone” reproductive physiology indicate that God apparently hates women? (Glenn Miller, 2001)

Women in the Bible: Pushbacks, Objections, Stereotypes [22 Objections] (Glenn Miller, 2001)

Did God treat women’s bodies as property, in the “rape” of David’s concubines by Absalom? (Glenn Miller, 2001)

Women: The Data From the Pre-Monarchy Literature (Glenn Miller, 2004)

Women in the Bible and Early Church (Glenn Miller, 2004)

Women’s Roles in the Early Church (Glenn Miller, 2005)

“Why was Jesus so mean and insulting to the Canaanite woman?” (Glenn Miller, 2006)

***

Bad links last removed: 6-10-18

 

 

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